What We've Been Missing: the Classics in Color

Don't get excited, Ted Turner. I'm talking about classical sculpture and architecture, which has always seemed more abstract and universal because it lacked color (color: how garish! how baroque!)
But as scholars have known for a while but kept mostly to themselves, color was a big part of classical art, meaning that Renaissance sculpture and the later neoclassical style was actually quite innovative; it just thought it was being entirely derivative.
The true ancient style was dripping in color, that unfortunately washed away in time.
There's an exhibit right now at the Sackler Museum at Harvard, but I hope more reproductions start popping up in other places, too, so we can all witness the ancient world in color.

Here's some background from a German archeology site.

Quote du Jour: John Edwards/ Arcade Fire

So that's what that song that's hopelessly stuck in my head is about...

The black mirror knows no reflection
It knows not pride or vanity
It cares not about your dreams
It cares not for your pyramid schemes

Maybe...

I read an article in a British newspaper a couple weeks ago. It said, based on some work being done by American scientists -- suggested that the polar ice cap will disappear in 23 years, unless we change our behavior.

And once it's gone, it is not coming back. And this is -- you know, I won't claim to be a scientific expert, but I'm smart enough to figure out that a polar ice cap reflects the sun's heat. And when that ice cap is gone, the black, dark ocean is going to absorb the sun's heat. And it is not healthy for America.

from Edwards' MySpace/MTV presidential candidate forum last night

MTV, what have you done to me?
Save my soul, set me free!
Set me free! What have you done to me?
I can't breathe! I can't see!
World War III, when are you coming for me?
Been kicking up sparks, we set the flames free
The windows are locked now, so what'll it be?
A house on fire or a rising sea?

Why is the night so still?
Why did I take the pill?
Because I don't wanna see it at my windowsill

http://www.arcadefire.net/lyrics/neon/

No Second Thoughts: Bush Quote du Jour

from today's White House briefing with recently anointed new spokesperson Dana Perino:

QUESTION: Did it strike the president that 18 Republican senators voted for this bill? Did that make him have any second thoughts about his plan to veto?

PERINO: The president does not have second thoughts.

I like this new spokesperson already.

Well, it's hard to pick on a woman in a pink suit.

Although I've always admired that shade of salmon, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I don't think the pinker and gigglier Hillary is as endearing as the Hillary we all know and... respect... would be, (in my dream scenario) standing in a boring suit and talking about how maybe getting into Iraq wasn't such a great idea and getting into Iran would be even more not-so-hilariously insane.

From the WP on the debate last night.

And by the way...

While Iran's president is still on our turf, now the Senate is trying to hand Bush another ambiguously worded authorization for war?

I'm going to pretend I didn't notice the glaring omission of a certain junior senator from New York (whom I was almost ready to consider picking as a tentative frontrunner for my very own not-so-coveted primary vote) in the list of senators who voted against the Lieberman-Kyl amendment.
At least, happily, the most offending two paragraphs were removed from the amendment, the ones which essentially called (admittedly with all the force of a "Sense of the Senate" resolution) for war at any moment when the president happens to be feeling especially scrappy, and a sort of qualifying amendment was added at the end, but why did such an overwhelming number of Democrats feel compelled to vote for it at all? Have the neocons perfected their voodoo technology, or have the Dems learned nothing from these ever-present polls, their (now so distant-seeming) victorious election, etc.? Are they just trying to make Hagel and Lugar look especially heroic?
The American people do not want any more wars. We don't even want the one we've got.
Can't they hear us anymore, or have they just tuned us out?

Here's the speech by Jim Webb that I had just assumed was going to be more influential than whatever mind-altering drugs ended up in all but 22 of the Senate water pitchers.

And now let's welcome our very special guest, "a petty and cruel dictator."

I've always been a fan of dwelling comfortably with ambiguity, but Columbia University's president seemed to take it to an extreme today by inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and then discussing him in the introduction pretty much like he wasn't in the room (he had a translator, you know.)

Given the quality of Ahmadinejad's public discourse thus far, just not inviting him would have been a pretty decent decision.

He did offer some historical perspectives that were of merit, like pointing out the hypocrisy of the U.S. with regard to the nuclear issue (to applause) and our tendency to keep memories of the hostage crisis alive while burying those of our complicity in several decades' worth of intervention in Iran, from coups to Saddam's eight-year war against them.

However -- and effusive, flowery language aside -- he also said a bunch of stuff that was frankly unbelievable (painting his nation as a gentle, peace-craving haven of democracy where the press is entirely free, Jews are beloved, and women enjoy dizzy heights of freedom) and some stuff that was just plain nutty, which inevitably casts a shadow of discredit on the entire speech, even the snippets which may have contributed in some small way to a dialog. He and his Western Hemisphere counterpart Chavez are pretty good at doing that.

The excerpt below is probably the nuttiest part (and no, Mr. President, they weren't laughing with you for your remark about living in a straights-only zone. You have your 10 percent non-straights like everyone else, unless you've executed them all out of existence, which is the question you dodged and haven't yet answered. And I'm not sure all of the women in your country consider being "exempt from many responsibilities" as a sign of respect. We tried that argument in the West during the Victorian days, and it didn't quite hold up.)

AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country.

(LAUGHTER)

We don't have that in our country.

(AUDIENCE BOOING)

AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it.

(LAUGHTER)

But, as for women, maybe you think that being a woman is a crime. It's not a crime to be a woman.

Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instills in them. Women are respected in Iran. In Iran, every family who is given a girl is given -- in every Iranian family who has a girl, they are 10 times happier than having a son. Women are respected more than men are.

They are exempt from many responsibilities. Many of the legal responsibilities rest on the shoulders of men in our society because of the respect, culturally given, to women, to the future mothers.

Happy Birthday, Blog.

Here's a belated present (I wish it was surprising that I'm late for my own blog's birthday) of a new look.
At one year old yesterday, you've nearly come of age in blog years. I'm so proud. Next year I'll take the time to make you an original template, blog, I promise.

Letter to a Young Patriot

Naomi Wolf was on The Colbert Report last night to discuss her new book The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, and naturally had trouble getting a word in edgewise with her gracious host, but this Guardian article details her listing of the 10 steps democracies take on the path to fascism. Some of the later stages have only been lightly broached, but we have a pretty good handle on the first three or four, which is reason for caution, I think.
(And now I'm going to swallow my feminism for a moment and note that the author of the '92 bestseller The Beauty Myth, a big phenom during my college grrl days -- and Gore campaign styling consultant -- is looking pretty fabulous these days ;)

Belgium is not for sale...

... not any more, at least. (And I love the way the PR guy from eBay Belgium phrased it: "We decided to take [the ad] down, just to avoid confusion.")

This is the biggest headline I've seen involving Belgium since I left Belgium two weeks ago (and pretty much at any time in my life before traveling there as well.)

But seriously, folks, this is a great country in the heart of Europe with a history that's central to the story of Europe. It would be a darn shame to see it split into little sub-kingdoms and Brussels made into a no man's land like D.C., even if it would be so wealthy that no one actually living in city limits would probably care (quite unlike D.C.)

Quote du Jour: ACLU Director Anthony Romero

"Sen. Craig has not always been a great friend of civil liberties, but you shouldn't have to endorse the civil liberties of others to keep your own," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, alluding to Craig's history of voting against gay rights.

The ACLU, yet again proving it can be the bigger person, is supporting Craig by making a claim that his "bathroom bust" was unconstitutional.

I think their opinion is quite reasonable, and that a bit of light-hearted schadenfreude over the senator's shameful hypocrisy is probably preferable to inviting precedent for cops to spend their time hanging around airport bathroom stalls watching for foot signals.

It would be more satisfying, though, if the senator would just take this opportunity to cop to said hypocrisy, instead of holding onto his thoroughly transparent cover story and the self-hating bigotry that's already translated into discriminatory legislative positions.

Mother Teresa letters/ Nonbelievers coming out of the closet

These somewhat surprising letters should be a catalyst for thoughtful discussion. I say "should be" because they will probably instead prompt merely the drawing of the usual battle lines.

E.g. this "Hardball" debate (well, what do you expect? It's "Hardball") between Christopher Hitchens, author of an unsympathetic book on Mother Teresa (in this clip, he seems to have acquired a bit of sympathy for her as a pawn in the game, although that could simply be a rhetorical tool) and Father Bill "You wanna take this outside?" Donohue, who, in this exchange, makes Hitchens (whom I grudgingly admire but have trouble forgiving for his pro-Iraq war stance) look relatively equanimitous.

Here's the book which compiled the letters discussed in the Time article:
Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light by Brian Kolodiejchuk

*

And on a loosely related note, this article in the Washington Post notes the rise of the nonbelievers' movement since 9/11.

Update on Burned Iraqi Boy

Yes, the title of this CNN article is a bit giddy, but if there's something special about America, it's not what's going on in DC; it's the 12,000 CNN readers who contributed to the fund to help this boy, and the doctor who agreed to treat him for free.
Maybe if our policymakers consulted those 12,000 people more often, or gave a damn what they thought, we'd all be better off.

Related: Another heartbreaking story from Iraq...

AQSL, the terrorist formerly known as bin Laden...

... or, "What's in an acronym?"

First time I've heard that one.

from one of Tuesday's Senate hearings with Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker:

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Why do you think bin Laden is so worried about the outcome in Iraq?

AMBASSADOR CROCKER: Well, I think -- again, as I mentioned earlier, it has been regarded by Al Qaida senior leadership, AQSL, as the central front. They are trying to give us a bloody nose, which would be an enormous shot of adrenaline in the arm of international jihadists.

Bin Laden tape forged?

This blogger thinks so, for technical reasons.

Update on the Troy Davis case

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that they are willing to hear Troy Davis' appeal to present new evidence, but he remains on death row.

Related: Another reason why the death penalty sucks.

Back to Work...

... for me and for the good old 110th Congress.

I had a great vacation and am feeling jetlagged but revived in spirit. I hope the same is true for the legislative branch, and that they'll get down to accomplishing something tangible, especially on Iraq.

Harry Reid had the following to say in a press conference today, where he seems to take a stand against the kind of empty political compromise that gives moderation a bad name. Let's hope it holds true in the coming weeks.

We're going to take this matter up the week of September 17. The one thing that we're trying to do is to give the Republicans the ability to keep their word.

They said, in September, there would be a change of course. We're willing to go halfway with them, as long as everyone understands that we're not going to do something that's cosmetic in nature.

To say that a Democrat and a Republican get together and have a piece of legislation that we can all vote for and it doesn't accomplish anything -- I will do everything I can to stir up enough votes to stop that from passing.

I want some legislation that will change what's going on in Iraq, for the reasons I've already outlined.

This is a war that's going to soon be in its sixth year -- think about that -- costing this country -- we're close to three-quarters of a trillion dollars.

I think enough's enough.