Positive Liberty

Leitmotif: Place a cloth–a napkin will do–over your head to hide your cruelty from the sight of God.

Department of Wow: I first noticed this strange clone of Decorabilia in searching for one of Jim Anderson’s archived posts. There it is, apparently the whole blog, albeit with a couple of adverts and a buggy script that won’t run in Firefox. (Personally, I was a little relieved that the script wouldn’t run, since I concluded that the site must be a spamblog clone.)

Jim did some digging–and it turns out that Decorabilia is banned in some Asian country, presumably Pakistan. But Pakistanis can still read his daily journal thanks to pkblogs.com, which hosts the clone and circumvents the censorship in India, Pakistan, Iran, and China. Awesome!

Department of Yuck: Here’s a list of the yuckiest foods in existence, at least by the writer’s own lights. I owe someone a hat tip for this list, but I forget who it is.

I’ve actually eaten two of the items, though I didn’t particularly enjoy them: For one thing, crispy roasted larvae aren’t really an improvement over crispy roasted soybeans, rice, or corn. They’re just not different enough to overcome the yuck factor. And for another thing, Asian-style snake-based alcoholic drinks are vile. They’re utterly repulsive, not just in appearance, but in taste as well. But I’m jealous of the squid ink ice cream–I’d try that immediately. I bet musk-flavored Life Savers are yummy, too.

Also, I’d like to commend to the author of the list the inimitable ortolan:

You catch the ortolan with a net spread up in the forest canopy. Take it alive. Take it home. Poke out its eyes and put it in a small cage. Force-feed it oats and millet and figs until it has swollen to four times its normal size. Drown it in brandy. Roast it whole, in an oven at high heat, for six to eight minutes. Bring it to the table. Place a cloth–a napkin will do–over your head to hide your cruelty from the sight of God. Put the whole bird into your mouth, with only the beak protruding from your lips. Bite. Put the beak on your plate and begin chewing, gently. You will taste three things: First, the sweetness of the flesh and fat. This is God. Then, the bitterness of the guts will begin to overwhelm you. This is the suffering of Jesus. Finally, as your teeth break the small, delicate bones and they begin to lacerate your gums, you will taste the salt of your own blood, mingling with the richness of the fat and the bitterness of the organs. This is the Holy Spirit, the mystery of the Trinity–three united as one. It is cruel. And beautiful.

They do mean literally drowning the bird in brandy, too, not just figuratively. To me, this is an atrocious waste from start to finish–oats, millet, figs, songbird, brandy, oven, napkin–and it might actually explain, in a purely aesthetic way, why I can’t believe in God, either.

Department of 08:

If Giuliani ever becomes president, I have little doubt he’ll show his true colors as a social conservative–abortion and gay rights notwithstanding. I have little doubt that in the upcoming campaign, his authoritarianism will shine through and will appeal to those who think America’s major problems today are permissiveness, toleration, cultural decadence, and secular humanism. And I won’t be surprised in the least if he wins the GOP nomination, becomes president and–exactly like George W. Bush before him–stuns the pundits who kidded themselves that he was a social “moderate.”–David Greenberg.

I’m committed to divided government, which means I’m on the Republicans’ side for now, which means I might just be committed to Giuliani in 2008.

I do think Giuliani is the only Republican who can win both in the GOP primaries and nationally: McCain ruined his image as a maverick by his general support for the conduct of the war. Brownback and Romney are presumptive nonstarters: The religious right has never gotten their candidate on the national ticket unaided; Bush won because he was considered a moderate and a continuer of his father’s legacy. Now that we know how a religious conservative will govern, I doubt the swing voters will want another one.

Chuck Hagel could mount a serious primary challenge, but he won’t win the nomination: You have to seem tough on Iraq, or at least on terrorists, and his opponents are going to plaster him for his criticism of the war, even if it has been smart, incisive, and much-needed (there’s a fine line here, between criticizing too much and too little, one best walked in total silence). Ron Paul’s candidacy will simply underline how homeless libertarians have become in today’s GOP. He still gets my vote, of course, for what little that’s worth. But I’m afraid it’s going to be Giuliani in 2008.

As to Libertarians, I admire Steve Kubby’s activism, I’m sympathetic to his plight, and he’s got a life story like something out of an Ayn Rand novel–with a little cannabis thrown in. I just don’t know he’d make the best presidential candidate given his fragile health. (Note I do not say “the best president.” I say the best candidate, because I have no illusions of a Libertarian ever being elected president. Still, campaigning well–also a useful activity–is demanding on the health and strength of the candidate.) George Phillies seems a better choice.

But this time around I’m going to push for Ron Paul–Just being inside one of the major parties guarantees more press for Paul as a candidate, and that’s what campaigns are all about for those of us in the far political minorities. I’ll worry about the general election when it gets here.

Department of Easy Explanations: Regarding gays in professional sports, Tyler Cowen writes,

I never knew you all had such a pent-up demand to discuss matters gay. Having read through 110 plus comments, I am now more inclined to see genetic correlations–rooted in the human mind rather than the body–with athletic achievement (NB: I don’t agree with all the “genetic” claims in the thread, by any means).

Most of all, I am struck by how few former male athletes have come out of the closet. That would seem to adjust for “the locker room effect” and “the endorsement effect,” as explained in my original post. Once an athlete is retired, those factors shouldn’t matter much.

I also noticed that Amaechi signed a book contract about being gay in the NBA. He was a pretty feeble player, and quite nerdy, more here. How large was his book advance? 50K or 100K is not a bad guess. I’ve known plenty of gay guys who would self-identify for much less; the fact that so few former male athletes have done so is striking.

And I’m going to call him out for a little mockery. Hopefully of a good-natured sort.

Let’s put it this way: In my middle and high schools, and almost without a single exception, the very worst of the homophobic cretins were inevitably on the team sports. Unless I miss my guess, this pattern was replicated at every single middle and high school in the Western world. It’s only been changing in the last few years, and even then not completely.

I stopped playing the team sports I played–soccer and track–when I realized how much most of my teammates really and honestly despised who I was. I got into the drama club and the school newspaper, activities that were reputed, correctly, to be much more gay-friendly. I didn’t come out in high school, but I knew that if my secret were ever somehow discovered, at least my “friends” wouldn’t beat me to a bloody mess over it.

As a result, I became increasingly bookish. I retreated into intellectualism not just because I had a talent for words and languages, but because I feared for my life. The result is that I forfeited whatever marginal chance I or someone in my situation might have had at becoming a professional soccer player.

Perhaps, though, I only did this for genetic reasons.

Also, Dr. Cowen, do we ever stop to ask–Maybe there’s something genetic to homophobia? No, of course not, because we don’t consider homophobia a problem or a defect to be explained. Homophobia is natural, after all.

Department of Navel-Gazing: But perhaps I’m being to difficult here. On the subject of personality changes wrought by blogging, Cowen also declares,

Blogging makes us more oriented toward an intellectual bottom line, more interested in the directly empirical, more tolerant of human differences, more analytical in the course of daily life, more interested in people who are interesting, and less patient with Continental philosophy. All you bloggers out there, or spouses of bloggers, what effects do you notice?

I’d say that it’s helped me create an ongoing record of my intellectual life. I like that I can search the archives to see if a particular thought or subject has occupied my attention. I’ve been a bit frightened to find out how often I’ve forgotten things, but this is more than balanced by the impetus I’ve had to think about them in the first place–and by the record that ensures I can still recall them, even if I become considerably more forgetful in the future.

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