Insolite

Trouvé: the longest sentence in Proust

2009-01-28T20:11:00.023-05:00

Found, after much mucking around [I really need to learn how to do more efficient Internet searches]: The longest sentence in Proust, the famous sentence from Sodome et Gomorrhe discussing the "race" of homosexuals and comparing them to the race of Jews. Conflating Dreyfus with Oscar Wilde while commenting on "secret intelligence", self-recognition, deception, self-loathing, internalized homophobia, internalized anti-Semitism, and the realization that "we are everywhere". From the indispensable Metafilter.com:

Cities of the Plain
(Sodom et Gomorrhe)
[Vol. 4 of Remembrance of Things Past--
(À la Recherche du temps perdu)]

"Their honour precarious, their liberty provisional, lasting only until the discovery of their crime; their position unstable, like that of the poet who one day was feasted at every table, applauded in every theatre in London, and on the next was driven from every lodging, unable to find a pillow upon which to lay his head, turning the mill like Samson and saying like him: "The two sexes shall die, each in a place apart!"; excluded even, save on the days of general disaster when the majority rally round the victim as the Jews rallied round Dreyfus, from the sympathy--at times from the society--of their fellows, in whom they inspire only disgust at seeing themselves as they are, portrayed in a mirror which, ceasing to flatter them, accentuates every blemish that they have refused to observe in themselves, and makes them understand that what they have been calling their love (a thing to which, playing upon the word, they have by association annexed all that poetry, painting, music, chivalry, asceticism have contrived to add to love) springs not from an ideal of beauty which they have chosen but from an incurable malady; like the Jews again (save some who will associate only with others of their race and have always on their lips ritual words and consecrated pleasantries), shunning one another, seeking out those who are most directly their opposite, who do not desire their company, pardoning their rebuffs, moved to ecstasy by their condescension; but also brought into the company of their own kind by the ostracism that strikes them, the opprobrium under which they have fallen, having finally been invested, by a persecution similar to that of Israel, with the physical and moral characteristics of a race, sometimes beautiful, often hideous, finding (in spite of all the mockery with which he who, more closely blended with, better assimilated to the opposing race, is relatively, in appearance, the least inverted, heaps upon him who has remained more so) a relief in frequenting the society of their kind, and even some corroboration of their own life, so much so that, while steadfastly denying that they are a race (the name of which is the vilest of insults), those who succeed in concealing the fact that they belong to it they readily unmask, with a view less to injuring them, though they have no scruple about that, than to excusing themselves; and, going in search (as a doctor seeks cases of appendicitis) of cases of inversion in history, taking pleasure in recalling that Socrates was one of themselves, as the Israelites claim that Jesus was one of them, without reflecting that there were no abnormals when homosexuality was the norm, no anti-Christians before Christ, that the disgrace alone makes the crime because it has allowed to survive only those who remained obdurate to every warning, to every example, to every punishment, by virtue of an innate disposition so peculiar that it is more repugnant to other men (even though it may be accompanied by exalted moral qualities) than certain other vices which exclude those qualities, such as theft, cruelty, breach of faith, vices better understood and so more readily excused by the generality of men; forming a freemasonry far more extensive, more powerful and less suspected than that of the Lodges, for it rests upon an identity of tastes, needs, habits, dangers, apprenticeship, knowledge, traffic, glossary, and one in which the members themselves, who intend not to know one another, recognise one another immediately by natural or conventional, involuntary or deliberate signs which indicate one of his congeners to the beggar in the street, in the great nobleman whose carriage door he is shutting, to the father in the suitor for his daughter's hand, to him who has sought healing, absolution, defence, in the doctor, the priest, the barrister to whom he has had recourse; all of them obliged to protect their own secret but having their part in a secret shared with the others, which the rest of humanity does not suspect and which means that to them the most wildly improbable tales of adventure seem true, for in this romantic, anachronistic life the ambassador is a bosom friend of the felon, the prince, with a certain independence of action with which his aristocratic breeding has furnished him, and which the trembling little cit would lack, on leaving the duchess's party goes off to confer in private with the hooligan; a reprobate part of the human whole, but an important part, suspected where it does not exist, flaunting itself, insolent and unpunished, where its existence is never guessed; numbering its adherents everywhere, among the people, in the army, in the church, in the prison, on the throne; living, in short, at least to a great extent, in a playful and perilous intimacy with the men of the other race, provoking them, playing with them by speaking of its vice as of something alien to it; a game that is rendered easy by the blindness or duplicity of the others, a game that may be kept up for years until the day of the scandal, on which these lion-tamers are devoured; until then, obliged to make a secret of their lives, to turn away their eyes from the things on which they would naturally fasten them, to fasten them upon those from which they would naturally turn away, to change the gender of many of the words in their vocabulary, a social constraint, slight in comparison with the inward constraint which their vice, or what is improperly so called, imposes upon them with regard not so much now to others as to themselves, and in such a way that to themselves it does not appear a vice."

And in French:

Sans honneur que précaire, sans liberté que provisoire, jusqu'à la découverte du crime; sans situation qu'instable, comme pour le poète la veille fêté dans tous les salons, applaudi dans tous les théâtres de Londres, chassé le lendemain de tous les garnis sans pouvoir trouver un oreiller où reposer sa tête, tournant la meule comme Samson et disant comme lui: "Les deux sexes mourront chacun de son côté"; exclus même, hors les jours de grande infortune où le plus grand nombre se rallie autour de la victime, comme les juifs autour de Dreyfus, de la sympathie - parfois de la société - de leurs semblables, auxquels ils donnent le dégoût de voir ce qu'ils sont, dépeint dans un miroir, qui ne les flattant plus, accuse toutes les tares qu'ils n'avaient pas voulu remarquer chez eux-mêmes et qui leur fait comprendre que ce qu'ils appelaient leur amour (et à quoi, en jouant sur le mot, ils avaient, par sens social, annexé tout ce que la poésie, la peinture, la musique, la chevalerie, l'ascétisme, ont pu ajouter à l'amour) découle non d'un idéal de beauté qu'ils ont élu, mais d'une maladie inguérissable; comme les juifs encore (sauf quelques-uns qui ne veulent fréquenter que ceux de leur race, ont toujours à la bouche les mots rituels et les plaisanteries consacrées) se fuyant les uns les autres, recherchant ceux qui leur sont le plus opposés, qui ne veulent pas d'eux, pardonnant leurs rebuffades, s'enivrant de leurs complaisances; mais aussi rassemblés à leurs pareils par l'ostracisme qui les frappe, l'opprobre où ils sont tombés, ayant fini par prendre, par une persécution semblable à celle d'Israël, les caractères physiques et moraux d'une race, parfois beaux, souvent affreux, trouvant (malgré toutes les moqueries dont celui qui, plus mêlé, mieux assimilé à la race adverse, est relativement, en apparence, le moins inverti, accable celui qui l'est demeuré davantage), une détente dans la fréquentation de leurs semblables, et même un appui dans leur existence, si bien que, tout en niant qu'ils soient une race (dont le nom est la plus grande injure), ceux qui parviennent à cacher qu'ils en sont, ils les démasquent volontiers, moins pour leur nuire, ce qu'ils ne détestent pas, que pour s'excuser, et allant chercher comme un médecin l'appendicite l'inversion jusque dans l'histoire, ayant plaisir à rappeler que Socrate était l'un d'eux, comme les Israélites disent de Jésus, sans songer qu'il n'y avait pas d'anormaux quand l'homosexualité était la norme, pas d'anti-chrétiens avant le Christ, que l'opprobre seul fait le crime, parce qu'il n'a laissé subsister que ceux qui étaient réfractaires à toute prédication, à tout exemple, à tout châtiment, en vertu d'une disposition innée tellement spéciale qu'elle répugne plus aux autres hommes (encore qu'elle puisse s'accompagner de hautes qualités morales) que de certains vices qui y contredisent comme le vol, la cruauté, la mauvaise foi, mieux compris, donc plus excusés du commun des hommes; formant une franc-maçonnerie bien plus étendue, plus efficace et moins soupçonnée que celle des loges, car elle repose sur une identité de goûts, de besoins, d'habitudes, de dangers, d'apprentissage, de savoir, de trafic, de glossaire, et dans laquelle les membres mêmes, qui souhaitent de ne pas se connaître, aussitôt se reconnaissent à des signes naturels ou de convention, involontaires ou voulus, qui signalent un de ses semblables au mendiant dans le grand seigneur à qui il ferme la portière de sa voiture, au père dans le fiancé de sa fille, à celui qui avait voulu se guérir, se confesser, qui avait à se défendre, dans le médecin, dans le prêtre, dans l'avocat qu'il est allé trouver; tous obligés à protéger leur secret, mais ayant leur part d'un secret des autres que le reste de l'humanité ne soupçonne pas et qui fait qu'à eux les romans d'aventure les plus invraisemblables semblent vrais, car dans cette vie romanesque, anachronique, l'ambassadeur est ami du forçat: le prince, avec une certaine liberté d'allures que donne l'éducation aristocratique et qu'un petit bourgeois tremblant n'aurait pas en sortant de chez la duchesse, s'en va conférer avec l'apache; partie réprouvée de la collectivité humaine, mais partie importante, soupçonnée là où elle n'est pas, étalée, insolente, impunie là où elle n'est pas devinée; comptant des adhérents partout, dans le peuple, dans l'armée, dans le temple, au bagne, sur le trône; vivant enfin, du moins un grand nombre, dans l'intimité caressante et dangereuse avec les hommes de l'autre race, les provoquant, jouant avec eux à parler de son vice comme s'il n'était pas sien, jeu qui est rendu facile par l'aveuglement ou la fausseté des autres, jeu qui peut se prolonger des années jusqu'au jour du scandale où ces dompteurs sont dévorés; jusque-là obligés de cacher leur vie, de détourner leurs regards d'où ils voudraient se fixer, de les fixer sur ce dont ils voudraient se détourner, de changer le genre de bien des adjectifs dans leur vocabulaire, contrainte sociale, légère auprès de la contrainte intérieure que leur vice, ou ce qu'on nomme improprement ainsi, leur impose non plus à l'égard des autres mais d'eux-mêmes, et de façon qu'à eux-mêmes il ne leur paraisse pas un vice.

Bacon Explosion

2009-01-28T20:07:00.010-05:00

I don't think anything else needs to be said.

from today's New York Times.

Oh, and the recipe is here:

http://www.bbqaddicts.com/blog/recipes/bacon-explosion/

Jesus Toast Alert

2009-01-02T14:35:00.002-05:00

January 2, 2009 - 1:05PM

A New Zealander is auctioning off a piece of toasted pita bread which looks like Jesus Christ.

The TradeMe online auction shows a photo of the pita bread, which broke into pieces after being put in the oven. One piece, the seller says, resembled the face of Jesus.

"I was tempted to eat it but for some reason I didn't," the seller says in their auction listing.

"I guess what you all want to know is whether it's a coincidence or real apparition. I'm not really sure."

The pita bread piece which measures about 4cm x 3.5cm has no reserve price. The auction ends January 8.

At the time of publication, there were ten bids with leading bid now standing at $NZ21.

The seller turned down an offer from one interested party to swap the pita bread for "a sack of onions that looks like Madonna".

A stone with an image resembling the Virgin Mary was put up for auction on TradeMe last year.

TradeMe is owned by Fairfax Media, publisher of this website.

stuff.co.nz and smh.com.au

And In Like a ...

2009-01-02T02:30:00.005-05:00

... bomb pop. a fudgesicle. a chocolate-covered Twinkie. a frozen banana.

Photo sent in response to Eric's question, "Why no pic of your pie hole?" (or words to that effect, actually something quite ruder that I can't repeat here.)

Lies, embellishments, half-truths and overwrought explanations to follow. Later.

It took me a long time to figure out what Kathy Griffin meant when she said to Anderson Cooper last night (as reported in The Huffington Post and other sources): "Hey, I don't come to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth!"

That may in fact be one of the rudest things I've ever heard.

Out Like a ........

2008-12-31T21:02:00.018-05:00

.... floating pair of gigantic turds that swirl and swirl and swirl around the bowl, going nowhere until they suddenly decide to both go down the pipe together at the same time, smashing together and jamming up and causing the toilet to suddenly stop emptying and begin to fill and fill and fill until you suddenly groan, "Oh Jesus Christ, NO!" and then you hear the first drops of water spilling over the toilet lip onto the bathroom floor and then the rush of water as it spills over and splashes just next to your feet, quickly soaking the mat and heading for the wall, and you throw open the cabinet under the sink and you're desperately searching for a plunger, only to find half-empty bottles of mouthwash and extra toilet paper rolls, and you start rehearsing the spiel you're going to have to give your host in about ten seconds to try to explain why no one can use the only toilet in his house....

There will be no end-of-the-year lists. There will be no parade of dead celebrities save this one:

from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 26:

"John Costelloe, a New York City firefighter-turned-actor who on The Sopranos played closeted mobster Vito Spatafore's lover, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. [...]

Costelloe, 47, was found dead in his Brooklyn home on Dec. 18. A funeral was held Dec. 22, with Sopranos alums Gannascoli and Steve Buscemi (who knew the deceased from their pre-acting days) in attendance."
from The Sopranos:

from an unknown, undated personal photo:

The sudden "gay turn" for the Vito Spattafore character was as odd as it was unexpected. Requiring further suspension of disbelief was his liaison with Costelloe's character, nicknamed "Johnny Cakes", who arrived on camera direct from the Castro in the late 70s, with authentic fu manchu pornstache and motorcycle gear. Johnny Cakes, unlike Vito, was delightfully convincing as the 70s clone trapped in rural New England. However, disbelief had to be loaded into a rocket and launched to the far corners of the universe for Vito's excursion into the New York (?) leather scene:

David Chase and the Sopranos writers were famous for their sense of humor -- witness the end of the last episode -- and it's true that just about anyone, straight or gay, can look pretty silly in leather, so it's very likely that Chase & Co. were having a good laugh and letting us join in. And okay, this is fiction, but.... Johnny Cakes hooking up with Vito?? Never made sense to me.
Still, the saddest news is the loss of the very gifted Costelloe to suicide, and at such a young age.
But no parade of dead celebrities, despite this year's bumper crop.
"Ashes to ashes, fun to funky, we know Major Tom's a junkie...."
Down the crapper we go.
It's tempting to hope that 2009 simply has to be better than 2008, but frankly I suspect it's going to be much, much worse for many more people. Call me fatalistic.
But enough of that.
Just skimming my friends' Facebook pages, it's certainly a flurry of parties, dances and happenings out there tonight. Doug writes on his page: "Not enough people have asked me: 'How was your Christmas?' and 'What NYE party are you going to?' " Even though I don't go out on New Year's any more and I don't even know whether the event is still going on, I never think of New Year's Eve without thinking of the Rapture parties I used to attend con mucho gusto in Vancouver back in my Rage to Live Years. Fond memories of meeting Robbie for the first time, despite the horrific walk back to Doug and Jeff's, literally across the entire downtown of Vancouver in blowing 35-degree rains sometime around 6 am, taxis being introuvables by that hour of the morning. Legendary. And here just the other day I got a very nice message from Michel telling me he's in Toronto now. Who knows, perhaps he's still coordinating Rapture in Vancouver; as I said I'm so far removed from all of that now I hesitate to even try to enquire. Most experiences are best left as memories. As the New York Dolls put it, "One day it will please us to remember even this." And so.

That said, I'm only too happy to spend a very frigid and snowy New Year's Eve here at home with Mike and Tom. May we all find the courage and inspiration to help us thrive, or at least survive, the coming year.

Boxing Day

2008-12-26T11:10:00.003-05:00

"Santa Opens Fire, Kills Five"

"14 Injured at Hanukkah Event"

"Eartha Kitt Dead at 81"

The world is too cruel.

She was my favorite Catwoman.

"This is a farewell kiss, dog!"

2008-12-14T16:44:00.005-05:00

"This is a farewell kiss, dog!"

Iraqi journalist throws both shoes -- one after the other -- at George Bush during Bush's farewell press conference, Baghdad.

In today's mail.

2008-12-10T22:16:00.002-05:00

Yay!

"I'm not perfect, but I'm perfect for you..."

A most excellent video featuring Keith Haring.

Ah, 1986...

Silliness, for once not my own.

2008-12-10T16:01:00.002-05:00

As seen on teh Intertubes, somewhere.

music blurb 9 Dec 08

2008-12-09T23:28:00.013-05:00

Listening to Dave Seaman's Renaissance: Desire (disc 1) and I'd forgotten how well it's made and how it instantly puts me in a great mood. Drifting in and out to Moby's "Southside" (Pete Heller Mix).

Need to document the euphoric qualities of the late 90's.

Not quite sure I enjoy Dave Seaman's progression into minimalism. Didn't care much at all for Renaissance Masters 10, although I love Renaissance Masters 7:

Hopefully over the break I'll have to time to catch up on all the music I've been buying lately. Still haven't listened to the new Danny Howells Renaissance mix and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Just got Grace Jones' Hurricane in today's mail and listened to it once. Sounded.... nice. Nothing too terribly dancy, but I'll wait for the remixes to appear, and I'm not good at judging a CD on first listen. Only a handful of my favorite CDs have ever grabbed me on the first listen (Röyksopp, Bryan Ferry, Talking Heads, Underworld's Everything Everything), most music I have to grow into.

Before I forget: I doubt this is accurate, but I have a hunch that the screaming sample that haunts most club tracks in the late 90's (see: Brainbug's "Nightmare" on Ministry of Sound's The Annual III, disc 2 [Boy George]) can be traced back to Yoko Ono's screaming "Ai ai ai ai ai ai..." from "Walking on Thin Ice". A wild-ass guess, somebody else will probably prove me wrong.

A Gentle Reminder to my Gentle Readers: Caveat Lector

2008-12-07T23:39:00.001-05:00

Some of these entries, like the one that immediately follows this one, are notes to myself and will most likely not make any sense to anyone but me. Yes, I'm probably disturbed, but not in the ways you might think from reading anything here.

Caveat lector, etc.

Creative XPlosion 1

2008-12-07T22:15:00.033-05:00

Notes to myself about writing projects. Move along, nothing to see here, move along...

"Something small falls out of your mouth, and we laugh..." -- The Cure, "One Hundred Years", Pornography

larger project: Skunked

Descente aux enfers, Une saison en enfer, The Fall with no redeption; ambiguous, indeterminate ending.

cf. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

Delacroix, Dante et Virgile aux Enfers:

one chapter: mock heroic: all night out in Vancouver with MS and Mark-with-a-K (MWAK or Mwak): from bar to after-hours to bathhouse (F212) to ... ? , finally back to D & J's as daylight breaks on cold, overcast morning. Skunk waddling down the sidewalk in front of building.

soundtrack: 1997-2004: (West Coast) Phil B, Neil Lewis, Bryan Pfeiffer, Mike Duretto, Joe King; (UK) Ministry of Sound: Judge Jules Classics, Boy George, The Annual II , III and Millenium, Annual Ibiza (Judge Jules & Boy George) , Galaxy Weekend (Boy George); (New York): Junior Vasquez, Peter Rauhofer, ... ?

Get quotes from old website.

Larger music projects on Pet Shop Boys, Talking Heads, Eno/Byrne, Roxy Music, Bowie, Psychedelic Furs, the Ministry of Sound label (start with the first line of the first song on the first disc of the first Ministry of Sound The Annual compilation: "GIT outahere with that little ... DICK!" from "(Don't Want No) Short Dick Man") "And we're off to a delightful start..."

Art/architecture projects: Pre-Raphaelites (Heliogabalus -- sp? suffocating under crush of rose petals), Bernini (Ecstasy of St. Teresa), Ulysses and the Sirens (Roxy Music, Siren)

the ecstasy of excess; the excess of ecstasy

Callas, "Mon Coeur s'ouvre à ta voix", "Pleurez, mes yeux"

Radeau de la Méduse

drugs, insanity, isolation:

Lady of Shallot (Waterhouse)

Millais, Ophelia

Joy Division, "Isolation", "She's Lost Control"

Proust, Bergotte's heart attack in front of Vermeer's View of Delft:

The irony of the deathbed revelation ("Proust, who would have known...")

Père Lachaise, tombs of Wilde, Proust; Callas in Colombarium; momento mori.

"Stories for Boys": U2, Winslow Homer, David Hockney, Flandrin:

Titles and works I like:

New York Dolls,"Personality Crisis", One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This
Legs Diamond, Please Kill Me
X, "You're Phone's Off the Hook, but You're Not"

So I wrote in my blog about starting this blog...

2008-12-07T19:29:00.017-05:00

"Wow, that's so meta," one of my students remarked, à propos of something else entirely.

Well, lemme tellya what this isn't, sez I....

What am I doing writing a blog, fer chrissakes. As if I shouldn't be working on a hundred other things instead. Once I told my students, "If you're keeping a blog, that means I'm not giving you enough homework." Yes, as usual, all about me. Hmmm.

And you, Dear Reader? What's in this for you?

Let's assume that I'll never be writing this without a sense of guilt for all the work I should be doing instead. Let's further assume that I'll always be seeking your approval all the while protesting that I'm really just doing this for myself.

Or maybe I'm just trying to have a record for later. For the day when I'll read these words and no longer remember writing them. Could come sooner than we all think. Twice now in two weeks I've walked out of the bathroom leaving the faucet running. Not a good sign.

Okay, what this isn't: everything. Contrary to most of what's out here, I tend not to discuss my private life in public. Let's further assume that your higher-order inferencing skills will be up to discerning my foibles, predilections, distractions, affinities, etc. Perhaps you share them, too. Mmm, could be fun. Maybe. Maybe not.

I follow a lot of economics blogs. If you don't like economics, remember: this isn't for you.

I gave up on the mainstream media during the Nixon administration. If you want to know what's really going on, you've got to do some digging. Thanks to the miracle of teh Intertubes, the digging's just gotten a lot easier.

In the same way I fear that I'm losing my mind at a speed I do not realize, I also suspect that the U.S. is headed for ruin, or at least we're well advanced in the Decline and Fall phase of our national history. Never have so many been so disgusted.... So this may or may not be an interesting record of one man's decline and fall as he enters his second half-century.

"There's a lot going on in there..." my sainted therapist remarked to me recently. No shit, Sherlock. Which I just learned is translated in French as "Pour sûr, Arthur!" As always, it sounds better in French.

Yes, there's a lot going on in here. Maybe this will help me sort of that stuff out. Help me defuse that occasional thunderbolt I'm about to hurl at those within my reach (and those outside my reach as well).

Enough for now. I've already said too much.

In Memoriam: John Lennon 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980

2008-12-07T14:28:00.003-05:00

image © Yoko Ono

Walking on thin ice,
I’m paying the price
For throwing the dice in the air.
Why must we learn it the hard way
And play the game of life with your heart?

I gave you my knife,
You gave me my life
Like a gush of wind in my hair.
Why do we forget what’s been said
And play the game of life with our hearts?

I may cry some day,
But the tears will dry whichever way.
And when our hearts return to ashes,
It’ll be just a story,
It’ll be just a story.

Music and lyrics © John Lennon and Yoko Ono

I love L.A.

2008-12-07T13:05:00.007-05:00

Especially at night. From the air.

credit: Astronomy Picture of the Day:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081203.html

"Big Deal: The [U.S.] Government's Response to the Financial Crisis"

2008-12-07T12:15:00.005-05:00

Working paper by
Steven M. Davidoff
University of Connecticut School of Law; Ohio State University - Michael E. Moritz College of Law
and
David T. Zaring
University of Pennsylvania - Legal Studies Department

Abstract:
How should we understand the federal government's response to the financial crisis? The government's team, largely staffed by investment bankers, pushed the limits of its statutory authority to authorize an ad hoc series of deals designed to mitigate that crisis. It then decided to seek comprehensive legislation that, as it turned out, paved the way for more deals. The result has not been particularly coherent, but it has married transactional practice to administrative law. In fact, we think that regulation by deal provides an organizing principle, albeit a loose one, to the government's response to the financial crisis. Dealmakers use contract to avoid some legal constraints, and often prefer to focus on arms-length negotiation, rather than regulatory authorization, as the source of legitimacy for their actions, though the law does provide a structure to their deals. They also do not always take the long view or place value on consistency, instead preferring to complete the latest deal at hand and move to the next transaction. In this paper, we offer a first look at the history of the financial crisis from the fall of Bear Stearns up to, and including, the initial implementation of the Economic Emergency Stability Act of 2008. We analyze in depth each deal the government concluded, and how it justified those deals within the constraints of the law, using its authority to sometimes stretch but never truly break that law. We consider what the government's response so far means for transactional and administrative law scholarship, as well as some of the broader implications of crisis governance by deal.

Download here:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1306342

The Deluder in Chief (New York Times, Dec. 7, 2008)

2008-12-07T12:13:00.000-05:00

The Deluder in Chief

Published: December 7, 2008

We long ago gave up hope that President Bush would acknowledge his many mistakes, or show he had learned anything from them. Even then we were unprepared for the epic denial that Mr. Bush displayed in his interview with ABC News’s Charles Gibson the other day, which he presumably considered an important valedictory chat with the American public as well.

It was bad enough when Mr. Bush piously declared that he hopes Americans believe he is a guy who “didn’t sell his soul for politics.” (We suppose we should not bother remembering how his team drove Senator John McCain out of the 2000 primaries with racist attacks or falsified Senator John Kerry’s war record in 2004.)

It was skin crawling to hear him tell Mr. Gibson that the thing he will really miss when he leaves office is no longer going to see the families of slain soldiers, because they make him feel better about the war. But Mr. Bush’s comments about his decision to invade Iraq were a “mistakes were made” rewriting of history and a refusal to accept responsibility to rival that of Richard Nixon.

At one point, Mr. Bush was asked if he wanted any do-overs. “The biggest regret of the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq,” he said. “A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction” were cause for war.

After everything the American public and the world have learned about how Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney manipulated Congress, public opinion and anyone else they could bully or lie to, Mr. Bush is still acting as though he decided to invade Iraq after suddenly being handed life and death information on Saddam Hussein’s arsenal.

The truth is that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been chafing to attack Iraq before Sept. 11, 2001. They justified that unnecessary war using intelligence reports that they knew or should have known to be faulty. And it was pressure from the White House and a highly politicized Pentagon that compelled people like Secretary of State Colin Powell and George Tenet, the Central Intelligence director, to ignore the counter-evidence and squander their good names on hyped claims of weapons of mass destruction.

Despite it all, Mr. Bush said he will “leave the presidency with my head held high.” And, presumably, with his eyes closed to all the disasters he is dumping on the American people and his successor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinion/07sun2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

France abuzz over alcoholic 'cure'

2008-12-07T10:05:00.005-05:00

By Hugh Schofield
Paris

An eminent French cardiologist has triggered an impassioned debate in the medical world over his claim to have discovered a cure for alcoholism.

Dr Olivier Ameisen, 55, one of France's top heart specialists, says he overcame his own addiction to alcohol by self-administering doses of a muscle-relaxant called baclofen.
He has now written a book about his experience - Le Dernier Verre (The Last Glass) - in which he calls for clinical trials to test his theory that baclofen suppresses the craving for drink.
Widespread media coverage of his book in France has led to a rush of demands from alcoholics for similar treatment, and some doctors have reported unexpected successes after prescribing it.
But many other specialists are sceptical, warning of the dangers of so-called miracle cures.
'Needed alcohol'
Dr Ameisen was associate professor of cardiology at New York's Cornell University, and in 1994 he opened a profitable private practice in Manhattan.
But, stricken by an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy - he says he felt like "an impostor waiting to be unmasked" - he found relief in large quantities of whisky and gin.

Encouraging people to think that there is a miracle molecule is to completely misunderstand the nature of alcoholism

Dr Michel Reynaud

"I detested the taste of alcohol. But I needed its effects to exist in society," he says in Le Dernier Verre, which comes out in English next month.
Dr Ameisen says he tried every known remedy to end his dependence. Between 1997 and 1999 he spent a total of nine months confined in clinics - but nothing worked.
Fearing for his own patients, he gave up his practice and returned to Paris. Then, in 2000, he read an article about an American man who was treated with baclofen for muscle spasms and found that it eased his addiction to cocaine.
Further investigation uncovered research showing that the drug worked on rats to cut addiction to alcohol or cocaine.

Some experts say curing alcoholism takes more than just a drug

But, strangely, Dr Ameisen found that baclofen was unknown to specialists on dependence.
In March 2002 he began treating himself with daily doses of five milligrams.
"The first effects were a magical muscular relaxation and baby-like sleep," he says. Almost immediately he also detected a lessening in his desire for drink.
Gradually, he increased the daily dosage to a maximum of 270mg, and found that he was "cured". Today he continues to take 30 to 50mg a day.
"Mine is the first case in which a course of medicine has completely suppressed alcohol addiction," he says.
"Now I can have a glass and it has no effect. Above all, I no longer have that irrepressible need to drink."
Not licensed
With its eye-catching message, Le Dernier Verre has been an autumn best-seller - prompting thousands of recovering alcoholics to ask to be prescribed with baclofen.

I have never had reactions like this before. We cannot ignore findings such as this

Dr Pascal Garche

Some doctors have decided to ignore the fact that the drug is not authorised for treating alcoholism, and report exciting results.
"I prescribed it to two alcoholics who were really at the end of the road. To be honest, it was pretty miraculous," says Dr Renaud de Beaurepaire of the Paul-Guiraud hospital at Villejuif near Paris.
In Geneva, Dr Pascal Garche put 12 patients on baclofen, of whom seven came through reporting marked improvements.
"I have never had reactions like this before. We cannot ignore findings such as this - the book is going to set the cat among the pigeons," he said.
However, many specialists fear that media excitement over Dr Ameisen's theory is obscuring the complex nature of alcoholism.
"Encouraging people to think that there is a miracle molecule is to completely misunderstand the nature of alcoholism, and is extremely irresponsible, " says Dr Michel Reynaud of Paul-Brousse hospital in Paris.
"We need comprehensive tests to determine how this drug acts, if it is effective and at what dosage, and if it is genuinely harmless in the longer term, " says Alain Rigaud, president of the National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction.
"But even if it turns out to work, that does not mean a drug alone is the solution."

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BBC News: Europe

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7768141.stm

Bush Dragged Behind Presidential Motorcade For 26 Blocks

2008-12-06T17:39:00.003-05:00

KANSAS CITY, MO—President Bush sustained serious head injuries, massive internal bleeding, and a broken left leg Monday morning after being accidentally dragged behind the presidential motorcade for a period of 15 minutes. According to Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan, Bush's necktie became caught in the trunk of the motorcade's second vehicle at 4:13 p.m., shortly before the driver accelerated. The president was dragged down 175th Street for 26 blocks and through four stoplights, leaving a trail of blood more than a mile long. Upon hearing shouts emanating from behind his vehicle, the driver abruptly applied the brakes, causing the third car in the motorcade to run over the president's left leg at a speed of approximately 25 miles per hour. President Bush is resting comfortably in Bethesda Naval Hospital.

The Onion, December 4, 2008 | Issue 44•49

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/bush_dragged_behind