Enfant Perdu

Как часовой, на рубеже свободы
Лицом к врагу стоял я тридцать лет.
Я знал, что здесь мои промчатся годы,
И я не ждал ни славы, ни побед.

Пока друзья храпели беззаботно,
Я бодрствовал, глаза вперив во мрак.
(В иные дни прилег бы сам охотно,
Но спать не мог под храп лихих вояк.)

Порой от страха сердце холодело
(Ничто не страшно только дураку!)  — 
Для бодрости высвистывал я смело
Сатиры злой звенящую строку.

Ружье в руке, всегда на страже ухо — 
Кто б ни был враг, ему один конец!
Вогнал я многим в мерзостное брюхо
Мой раскаленный, мстительный свинец.

Но что таить! М враг стрелял порою
Без промаха! — забыл я ранам счет.
Теперь — увы! я все равно не скрою — 
Слабеет тело, кровь моя течет...

Свободен пост! Мое слабеет тело...
Один упал — другой сменил бойца!
Я не сдаюсь! Еще оружье цело,
И только кровь иссякла до конца.

--Генрих Гейне / в пер. Вильгельма Левика

«Сердитый ветер надел штаны…»

Сердитый ветер надел штаны,
Свои штаны водяные,
Он волны хлещет, а волны черны,
Бегут и ревут как шальные.
Потопом обрушился весь небосвод,
Гуляет шторм на просторе.
Вот-вот старуха-ночь зальет,
Затопит старое море!
О снасти чайка бьется крылом,
Дрожит и спрятаться хочет,
И хрипло кричит — колдовским языком
Несчастье нам пророчит.

--Генрих Гейне / в пер. Вильгельма Левика

Some people in political office are mind-bogglingly stupid

...and this post isn't about the States! Actually, one thing that really irritates me is all the American-politics-bashing that goes on outside of America. American politics has its share of stupid personalities, but it's not like others don't. It's just that the stage is so much bigger in the States, the whole world gets to learn about it and gets to feel smug.

But I have to think that there are not many American politicians who are stupider than Lilian Helder, member of the Dutch parliament for the xenophobes of the PVV. I mainly like this video because I felt really good knowing that I still remember enough Dutch to get the general gist of what was happening, but take a look:

Mevr. Helder (speaking throughout) is discussing what to do with some kinds of criminals. Two approaches (one prison, one something else) are being compared, and it has been found that this something else approach has led to lower rates of recidivism (repeat offense) than the prison approach. She counters that this is like comparing cows and strawberries, because person A is not person B (she also helpfully adds that neither is person B person A). But, someone counters, the other approach has demonstrated lower rates of reoffense! To which mevr. Helder glibly states that you can't say that someone who went to prison wouldn't reoffend if they instead went to (this other thing) or that someone who went to (this other thing) would reoffend if they went to prison, because these things didn't actually happen! My eternal sympathies go to Sharon Gesthuizen (she also has a really beautiful "r" and a fantastic accent overall!) who asks whether the PVV then disbelieves statistical research in general? And asks in further disbelief whether, if, say, one hospital had heart operations fail 50% of the time, and another 3%, mevr. Helder would claim there is no difference in the quality of the hospitals.  Mevr. Gesthuizen, you are the best. I salute you!

By the way, expect this blog to further quieten its already quiet existence, as I've started a co-blog with a friend of mine. (ratedzed.wordpress.com). We swear a lot more there than I do here, I hope that's okay.

Brilliant Corners III

N: What's this band?
B: Guess.
N: Give me a clue?
B: I have it.
N: Chlamydia?

by the way, the band in question: Yo La Tengo. They are playing this thursday in Seattle, and this saturday in Vancouver. Anyone wanna go?

Sympathy for the Darrell

Ever been predisposed to dislike someone, and then read an article basically all about how the person is a crook, and yet end up somehow finding the person more likeable because of the article? No? I guess it's just me and

This profile of Darrell Issa

...

Okay, so the only point of this post is that I think the title is funny. So what?

Politicians are Surprisingly Good People

I realised don't really understand how political parties work given their reputations and incentives when it comes to getting power. So one thing that is a problem that is often discussed is that it's in the interest of parties out of power to sabotage the country so that the parties in power look bad. This is a problem, but in general it's not so bad because in most forms of government the parties in power are more numerous, and they certainly have greater power to enact their agenda (otherwise being "in power" is pretty meaningless). So, you would think that, even if the out-of-power parties were trying sabotage while the in-power parties were trying to improve the situation, overall it would be improved. And so it's reasonable to judge the in-power parties by their performance.

The additional problem that I don't understand how to resolve is the problem of reputation. Say, in America, the Democrats are associated with taking care of the poor, and the Republicans are associated with tough anti-terrorism measures. So, when people are really scared of terrorism, they are more likely to vote Republican. And when they are really scared of being poor and not taken care of, they are more likely to vote Democrat. Given that, it would be really good for the Republicans if there were more terrorist attacks, and good for the Democrats if more people were poor. Now, obviously, with some lag, there is a resolution. Given a long enough period of time, if it becomes clear that every time the Democrats are in power, there's a depression, and every time the Republicans are in power, there is a terrorist attack, then the reputations of the parties would change. However, that would take a very long time. Economic cycles are slow and terrorist attacks don't come so often that correlations are easy to discern. This isn't limited to the US - it is the case anywhere there are parties that are not based on leaders' personalities, but instead on policies.

Thus it seems to me if a party wanted to be cynically manipulative to stay in power, it should actually try to develop a reputation of caring about something the members don't actually care about and then make sure that's a strong concern for everyone (say, by completely neglecting doing anything about the issue when in power). Happily, this becomes somewhat problematic in a system where the party structure itself is somewhat democratic since party leaders would have to have the opposite desires from other party members, and that is unsustainable. One thing is I've not seen examples of this (except maybe Republicans on the Deficit?), so maybe politicians are not as cynical as everyone makes them out to be - they're not even acting in rational self-interest! They're, all things considered, being pretty altruistic.

The other upshot of thinking about this is that it is actually a good idea to have a grassroots-style primary process. Which is some consolation for the fact that as a result half of all time in American politics is spent campaigning. At least I see the point.

Propeller Hats

Imagine this: every time you wanted to drive or ride in a car, you had to wear a propeller hat. It would of course look silly and what's more, wouldn't be particularly comfortable. Due to a bizarre property of this hat, you couldn't in fact leave it in the car for when you needed it, because it can be stolen by telepathy by anyone walking by. Additionally, it has this feature that if it is raining outside, your head under the hat gets wet, and if it's cold your ears freeze. However, not to worry, you can keep your head dry by wearing a shower cap in addition to the propeller hat. And the ears freezing can be solved by wearing a toque underneath the propeller hat, but, of course, apart from looking incredibly ridiculous, this might make your propeller hat not fit on your head anymore, so you might have to get another one. These propeller hats would cost about a tenth of the price of your car, and if somehow you ended up bumping it, you would need to buy a new one. Not wearing one would seem to be a good solution, except that that will result in being stopped by police, usually followed by a fine.

Outlandish, you say, why would such things exist. But, as you may have guessed, my point is that they already do - except they are called "helmets" and they go with bicycles. I just saw this video (thanks A.A.!) of a talk by Mikael Colville-Andersen on how wearing helmets discourages biking:



Colville-Andersen is very engaging and charismatic. It's true that the talk is a little overwrought and conspiratorial - I think the speaker recognises this as well. But the upshot is, helmet laws make biking sound dangerous, which makes people not bike. To me, it seems rather commonsensical that bike helmets would increase bike safety, so, since I don't have data to the contrary, I'm not going to argue that it's not so (Colville-Andersen, however, does, and does). But just like the Times' "DANGER ZONES" story, it seems to me the increased safety of wearing bike helmets is more than offset by the increased safety hazard of less people biking. Helmets, both in their hazardmongering aspect and just in their inconvenience, means less people biking, means more people driving who are going to hit bicycles with their cars, means less motorists aware of cyclists, means less cycle-friendly infrastructure, which in turns means it's more annoying to bike and even less people do it.  I wouldn't say don't wear a bike helmet - wear one if you want. All I would say is that I seriously doubt mandatory helmet laws improve a city's overall bike safety.