I stayed away from the computer for a while. There's not much I can say about my daily life, and there sure isn't much I can say about what's in the news right now (if you know me, you know what I think). But then I read something kind of unimportant and get cranky...

So, once in a while there's a protest rally and some magazine sends some of its youngest and most promising writers to see what the real deal is, and they write things like these.

First the obvious: it doesn't take a Hunter Thompson, or even a John Stossel (sorry), to go to a large demonstration and discover that protesters are disorganized and that you can find a half-dozen 22-year-olds who will say uninformed things. That's not journalism; it's not even entertainment.

Second: is it too much to ask that writers covering an anti-globalization rally, and making fun of those inarticulate 22-year-olds for not expressing the issues well, show some understanding of those issues themselves? For instance, in this peculiar tirade, Alex Gourevitch—after claiming, based on a quote from a T-shirt, that the anti-IMF protesters are defining themselves as "victims"—argues that "victims" seek protection through "regulations" and "third-party intervention," which is no good because "regulation[s] ... are not freedom." Even if that passage had been backed up with any evidence at all, it just would've shown that Gourevitch has no idea what organizations like the IMF and treaties like NAFTA are all about: imposing economic policies on the world through regulations and third-party intervention. How embarrassing.

But that's all the easy part. The part that still bugs me is... some of these folks are really not such bad writers; they're just in a hurry. And if I were at that rally—one that I think was for an important cause—I'd probably be thinking many of the same things, and grinding my teeth. Yes, it can be annoying, can't it. And if I were back in college ... and especially if some magazine had given me an assignment ... I would've thought that those teeth-grinding thoughts were valuable and original and needed to be said—to shame all those ineffective, illogical people into getting their act together. So I would've written another snotty, half-reasoned article which would serve no purpose but to reinforce the beliefs of a lot of complacent readers. It never fails. The more opinionated and idealistic the young writer, the more he'll see the gaps in the reasoning of his peers, and the less he'll see his own, and the louder and sillier the result will be.

So here's the deal: I propose that no one be allowed to write journalism, opinion pieces, or social commentary of any kind until the age of 35. I'm 29 now, so if this goes through, you won't have to read this weblog for a while (or just about any other weblog). This would also mean that No Logo by Naomi Klein—who is about the same age as me, and is apparently very smart and has filled half of that book with valuable reporting and history, but filled the other half with stuff that reads exactly like all my last-minute college essays about social trends—would be off the shelf for a while, as would most of the responses to it. And idealists who want to write about protest marches would have some extra time to actually take part in some kind of collective action first, and discover that it's always going to be flaky around the edges, and that that's not a great insight.

Of course, there would still be plenty of over-35 writers left to crank out the same old crap. But imagine the ripening of the new crop—a bunch of would-be opinionists graduating high school, and then having to spend the next 17 years observing and participating in life, without the temptation of publishing all their first reactions to everything. By 2019 we might have some really kick-ass magazine articles! ... or preferably something real.

If you want an angry cartoonist, you've got one.

(Despite whatever he says, Tim Kreider is a nice guy. He really would buy everyone a drink.)

Not a commercial endorsement (I think everyone should make their own), just a note of appreciation for a product whose time has come:

Bill of Rights - Security Edition

Check out the "discuss" page for several predictable comments, and a few less predictable ones. I'm thankful to Mr. Jimenez in particular for the word "mootiful."

(And thanks to Renee French for the link.)

It was sad stories night at Teddy's Bar and Grill.

The cheerful waitress was helping to shuffle an old widow out to her taxi. She'd been bringing beer to the couple next to me, but she hadn't been eavesdropping on them, or else she could smile through anything...

He: 24-34, gaunt, with a little beard; staring at his burger; mean drunk, and either high as a kite, or just brain-fried over many years. She: 26, pained, sober, looking at him. He told his burger about a lot of vague family woes and people who had done him wrong, blackened his name. He told the world how people just go through life without understanding, and then they have kids; and how it's a noble thing to decide not to reproduce. "They say, I want kids, it's my right. I like dogs, I like cats, I like fish, I like kids." He told her, "You too—that's why you seek a husband, that's why you're sexual. You don't like guys because they're cute or interesting, it's just your body telling you to reproduce." He talked about how the "granola hippies" don't understand why he's drawn to the urban wilderness. And how junkies are no good, but getting high is a noble thing, as long as you know why you're doing it. He spoke in a low, impassioned monotone, without stopping.

Eventually she got up and went to the bathroom. When she came back, she told him the problem wasn't so much that he drank, but that he just wasn't ever nice or kind, and that he couldn't see it. Then he continued.

(Warning: this is long and no fun.)

Thanks to one of the cutest lawyers in Brooklyn, I ended up attending a NYC Bar Association event in which a panel of international law specialists discussed the legal status of war with Iraq.

I thought I might hear something I hadn't heard—or at least get a much-needed fix of cool logic. Well... sort of.

Here's the short version: Nicholas Rostow (General Counsel to the U.S. in the United Nations) argued for Bush's right to attack. Jules Lobel (University of Pittsburgh) pointed out that the letter and spirit of U.N. law absolutely forbid this. Thomas M. Franck (NYU), as the designated pragmatist, thought Iraq was a menace but found Bush's approach silly and unnecessary; he thought better legal wording would fix everything. And Oscar Schachter, the moderator, spoke only briefly and allusively, with a slight smile—maybe because he's been doing this through five decades' worth of wars.

What was new?

Well, here's one I hadn't heard before. Franck thinks Bush just got all impatient because the U.N. can't enforce its resolutions, because Russia or China can always veto a war resolution. But he thinks majority rule would produce common-sense results—his example was that the U.N. allowed NATO to fight illegally in Kosovo (in spite of the Russian veto) because it knew it had to be done. So, Franck said, the trick is to write a resolution saying that if weapons inspections fail, etc., war will be put to a non-vetoable U.N. vote, which, if the threat is real, will produce the right decision. (What he thought the right decision would be quickly became clear, as Franck dwelt on the familiar list of Saddam's horrific acts.)

After the other speakers, Franck's speech was sort of refreshing; in these times, there's something refreshing about a rugged old-fashioned faith in practical world government, backed up by dozens of properly chartered armies.(*)

(* Even if, like me, you really don't want any armies at all.)

And there was something charmingly magical about his idea that this would satisfy the U.S.—that is, that Bush would be happy to see the U.N. become stronger.

Lobel is a very articulate speaker, and with my limited knowledge, I couldn't find fault with anything he said. Either you accept that the U.N. Charter means what it says, or you reject it. There isn't any "pre-emptive self-defense," and violations of cease-fire terms (on inspections, etc.) don't turn the cease-fire into a fire unless the U.N. so decides. He concluded that the push for war is basically a maneuver to head off any challenges to our new policy of dominating the world forever. And he found that "very troubling." Well, that's one way to put it. Unfortunately, this is pretty much what I read every week in The Nation and it probably had just as much effect. Must logic and fairness always equal politeness?(**)

(** But I don't mean to say that Lobel is ineffective. He's been working overtime on many noble efforts.)

So the one I really hoped might say something a little different was the government man, Rostow. Oh well. He started with a disclaimer that we shouldn't take his remarks as official policy, because the administration hadn't had time to approve them, because he just threw them together the other night. No need for that disclaimer: his speech sounded like it was thrown together about five minutes ago, and it followed the official line so closely (and with no more legal depth than we hear every day) that he might as well have been reading from the newspaper. Thus: 1. If there seems to be a threat, then it's self-defense. 2. But we don't need that argument anyway, because the Gulf war never ended—the cease-fire is invalid because Iraq violated its terms (see above). Period. Nothing else he said had any reference to law; it was a political speech about the sins of Saddam.

I guess it should be no surprise that a former Reagan NSA employee has a casual, emotional and anecdotal(***) approach to international law.

(*** Apropos of nothing except the word "threat," Rostow told a little story about Poland: Lech Walesa wanted to get his own Bomb, because he saw how the U.N. couldn't defend Bosnia. "That's what I'm talking about here.")

But it was still a faint shock when he tossed off folksy punchlines in response to no one ("these threats are not nothing ... this is not funny") or just turned his back on inconvenient points (to a question about what "pre-emptive defense" might lead to in the case of Pakistan and India, he just chuckled and said "Let's not bring Pakistan into this, please").

This man is supposed to be helping to represent us to the rest of the world. And he spoke warmly, with reverent respect, of Schachter and Franck as teachers and mentors. Maybe they were thinking that their child had gone astray, or maybe not—in such a friendly venue, who could tell?

Of course, September 11 did not go unmentioned. It changes everything—the "context" of the threat of secret weapons—etc. This wasn't just from Rostow, either. It's as if until last year, no one had ever worried about old Russian bombs turning up at yard sales. Everyone had agreed to have a short memory—except for smiling old Prof. Schachter, who wasn't talking.

(Speaking of short memories: I kept wondering if, in a panel on the legality of open-ended war, someone would explain where we got the authority to fight a small war for the last 10 years over the "no-fly zones." Rostow did bring this up briefly—as evidence that a new war is really nothing new—and I asked about it, but no one else cared to comment.)

What do I think? I don't know what to think about the United Nations. It seems clear that the people trying to undermine it from our side are dangerous, corrupt and dishonest. But I don't really want more governments or more legal machinery for war, either. But I know the feeling people must have had in the Dark Ages, when they looked helplessly over the horizon, waiting for the Emperor and the Pope to step in and put the kings in line.

This page of rebuttals to Bush's big war speech will sound awfully familiar to anyone who's been following these things, but Stephen Zunes provided the funniest line I've heard so far:

Bush: "... a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and is capable of killing millions."

Zunes: "This is like saying that a man is capable of making millions of women pregnant."

This is going on all over your body right now! Be glad!

Picture of the Krebs cycle courtesy of R. J. Huskey from the University of Virginia.

I'm thankful that my ability to suppress inappropriate laughter has gotten a little better over the years...

We were all sitting through a long jury selection procedure, and the judge asked the latest batch of potential jurors some general questions. Finally: "Have you, or a family member, ever been the victim of a crime?"

A woman in the top row answered clearly: "Murder victim."

Pause.

"...Family member."

This Frontline program, about how prosecutors convinced a jury in Albany to find an insane man sane and send him to prison (where he killed himself), is one of the best TV documentaries I've ever seen. If there can possibly be a bright side to this awful story it's that this woman, who made the conviction happen despite knowing it to be wrong, is now belatedly speaking in favor of following one's conscience.

Unfortunately, her former boss is still not very reflective, to say the least. And there's no sign that anyone is seriously trying to deal with mental illness in prison in New York... unless you count our governor, who's broadened the definition of prison by having mental patients locked up without treatment even if they didn't commit crimes.

My web site is still full of embarrassing old crud, but I did fix up the comics links page a little. Besides a bunch of things you should already be aware of, it now includes a (Polish) bootleg picture gallery for the fabulous Roland Topor; a smaller shrine to Abner Dean (thanks to K. Huizenga); and back in the land of the living, a weekly comics/sketchbook site by some weirdos in Chicago, The Holy Consumption.

Not that I've been writing much of anything lately, but I should probably stay away from this for a while and try to finish some of my drawings.

But if you want to read... I've been catching up reading the savory travel diary of Dervala Hanley. What a good writer. Lately she's been riding ferris wheels in Burma:

At the top I could see the Ayerawaddy River wrapping around the the city, and the faces of all the people I hadn't said goodbye to before hurtling to certain death. I was cheered by the fact that this seemed an excellent way to go, and that my unborn nieces and nephews would have one half-decent bar story to remember me by.

And earlier:

The velvet flip-flops I bought in Yangon are still in a paper bag in my suitcase. Back in Bangkok, the Chao Praya river is knee-deep in the streets, a weak, lukewarm solution of dogshit and catfish. At street stalls, people still sit on little plastic stools and chow down as usual. But the unoccupied seats float away.

I advise reading the whole archive, starting in June if you want to start out sad, or July if you don't. But maybe not all at once. My head is still spinning and I'm oddly hungry.

I'm getting ready for a cross-country move in a little less than three months, and in order to have a reliable address for my self-publishing efforts, I decided to apply for a Post Office box in San Francisco while I'm still in New York. I could always get the box in a friend's name, but I don't know if my friend would want to keep having responsibility for the thing for however long I want to keep it. So I called some post offices in San Francisco and asked if I could apply for one by mail. They said no problem, just have the application forwarded through a N.Y. office so the local crew can check my ID and residence.

Unfortunately, the local crew didn't believe it. One clerk said you can't apply for a box in a different state. Another clerk said you can't apply for a box in a different neighborhood—"Maybe they do things that way in California, but this is New York." The third guy, who said he used to work in San Francisco, said I had it backwards: I should send the application to S.F., then they'll call N.Y. and ask them to check my papers.

So I called S.F. again and they walked me through it step by step: "You give the form to them, they check your information, and they forward it to us. We won't accept it if you send it directly. It's a common procedure—I just did one today."

"But what if I tell them that and they don't believe me?"

"Hmm. Wait a minute, I'll tell you where they can look it up. Postal Operations Manual, section 841.12.1(a), 'Post Office box service.'"

Full of faith, I went back to the Meserole St. office a week later.

"What? A box where? Are you living in California? Oh, we don't do that. What manual? 841 what? Wait, I'll go check. ... No, couldn't find it. Wait, I'll ask my supervisor. ... No, what you need to do is, you send them the application."

"They said they won't accept it from me. Please, could I see the rulebook? Could you humor me?"

"Wait here. ... They won't let you see it, but you can talk to the supervisor."

"Yes, can I help you? I spoke to you yesterday, didn't I?"

"Well, it was last week..."

"No, I think it was yesterday. Anyway, what you need to do is to send in the application yourself. If you're moving to California, we have no way to check your residence."

"My residence is still here. I'm not moving yet."

"Well, what's this California address?"

"That's my friend who I want to be able to pick up mail for me. My address is the one under my name, in the 'Applicant' space."

"Well, this isn't how we do things. I couldn't find anything in the manual. And how can I guarantee that they have a box available there?"

"You don't have to. Look, they said this is the only way to do it and they just did one the same way today."

"Well, if they're breaking the rules and doing things their own way, I can't be responsible for that."

After a few minutes I was talking to two supervisors. They decided to humor me.

"All right, we'll send it in but I won't guarantee anything. What's the address of the other post office? 'Civic Center Box Unit'?... is that supposed to be the name of the post office? That's not a post office."

"Well, they said they were a post office..."

(aside: "Look, just get rid of this guy and we can move on.") "All right, but all I'm going to do is send them this form."

"I would be grateful if you would do that. I'll let you know how it goes."

to be continued...

I notice I alluded to jury duty earlier and never said what happened. Well, I'm not on jury duty any more. After the city had left me alone for nine years, they called me up and I sat through two days of jury selection for a criminal case—a robbery-murder at a store in Brooklyn three years ago. On the first day, I was coasting on the novelty of it. On the second day, I was starting to think I might really not like to do it at all, but I figured I'd never be selected. The voir dire went on till about sixty people had been questioned. And then I was juror number 12—the last one selected except for the four alternates.

I had the weekend to think about it, and a few hours in the jury room on Monday to chatter about it with my fellow jurors. (They all looked like they'd done the same thing I did: stayed up late Sunday night because we weren't going to work the next day.) Then they brought us into court to tell us that the defendant had pled guilty, and I went home. I don't know what the sentence was.

The voir dire was sort of illuminating, though. First, because it reminded me how quickly I form opinions about people: right away I thought that neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney was someone I'd want to buy a used car from. Second, in the ways people managed to get themselves dismissed. About two dozen suddenly realized, after a few hours, that they couldn't speak English. ("And what is your first language, sir?" "Ah... Russian." "And how long have you lived here?" "Ah... twenty-five years." "But... all right, go back downstairs.") Two or three worked for the city or the courts and thought they might have met the prosecutor. Two or three had religious objections (I couldn't really say I did; it wasn't a capital case)—although one came back after checking with clergy and said it turned out not to be a problem.

Gradually people figured out that the surest way to go home was to admit to some insurmountable bias. Lady to prosecutor: "Because of my previous experience with crime, I can't be objective. I would always be on your side one hundred percent." Gentleman to defense attorney: "I was robbed at knifepoint 27 years ago." "But would it affect your judgement now?" "Of course not. It was 27 years ago. Except... well, now that I'm thinking about it... it makes me so angry." "Of course, it would make anyone angry. But it's in the past, right? It's separate from this case?" "I guess so. But... well, now that you mention it... now I can't stop thinking about it and I'm getting angry... and angrier and angrier. Actually I think about it all the time, every day." They were sent home, free to make whatever other big decisions they might be called upon to make...

When he weaves in
the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods
that binds his oaths together
he and his city rise high—
but the city casts out
that man who weds himself to inhumanity
thanks to reckless daring. Never share my hearth
never think my thoughts, whoever does such things. —Antigone

Last Saturday was a beautiful day to be out in a big crowd in Washington. And yes, it was a big crowd. No pictures... you just had to be there. (But Susan can show you what it was like in San Francisco.)

I'm back at a computer job this week, waiting for a lot of very slow programs to run, which means I'm reading the news. Pretty sad that the high point for me was another article about the Florida Board of Elections by Greg Palast. It's like last spring when I couldn't stop reading about Enron ... after a while, the incredible corruption of these schemes is just really funny. In this case, Palast is looking at the database that they used to decide who's allowed to vote in Florida: "Thomas Alvin Cooper, twenty-eight, was [disfranchised] because of a crime for which he will be convicted in the year 2007. According to Florida's elections division, this intrepid time-traveler will cover his tracks by moving to Ohio, adding a middle name, and changing his race." (Story from Cursor.)

Maybe we're all time-travelling; I know I've been reliving the 1980s for a year. There are unwise and dangerous people in charge, saying strange things on TV that don't make sense; there's a constant threat of instant death from a mysterious ruthless enemy with whom we might be at war forever; the country's livelihood is based on war, big cars, and fake money. And we can still truthfully say, "Just be glad you don't live in Russia." Maybe there's a global competition going on for criminal stupidity among the powers that be. I hate to think what the prize is.

(All the speculation about the "mystery gas" is pretty much beside the point. If they used anything for which naloxone was the antidote, then it was an opioid, which is pretty much like giving everyone a giant random dose of morphine. When they use drugs like that for surgical anesthesia, you're on a respirator and there's a guy watching your vital signs every second. They might as well have just smashed everyone on the head with sledgehammers.)

But I guess politicians can always get a lot of slack for saying they had to do something, anything ... Reminds me of that other experimental approach that the Philadelphia police came up with once.