What I've been reading

The number of books I read barely cracked the double figures in 2005. Considering all the things that compete for my time, I think it's a pretty good accomplishment to get through a book every five weeks.

Usually I gravitate toward the non-fiction section of the bookstore, but this year I read a few good works of fiction...

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera

2006 will mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Jungle. With its setting in Chicago, I think it would be appropriate for the City to make this book its One Book, One Chicago selection. But I kind of doubt they will, given the political climate these days, and given the book's unflattering portrayal of early-1900s, working-class Chicago.

Berghoff, Balaban

Yesterday I found out that The Berghoff restaurant in downtown Chicago is closing! I realize that nothing in this world lasts forever, but couldn't we make an exception for The Berghoff?

Looking west down Adams from the steps of the Art Institute, The Berghoff lies one block beyond the 'L' tracks. It's been there forever, a reliable source of wiener schnitzel and sauerbraten. And they've been brewing their own beer since long before the term microbrew was coined.

I understand that there will still be a "Berghoff Cafe" at O'Hare Airport, but it's an airport lounge. It's just not the same.

To offset that sad news item, I can report that work is underway on repairs to the Uptown Theatre. I got a good look at it from the Red Line yesterday, and they are definitely making some progress on the facade.

The Uptown Theatre was one of (and possibly the largest of) a chain of movie palaces built by Barney Balaban, Abe Balaban and Morris Katz. If the name Balaban sounds familiar, it might be because Abe's and Barney's nephew Bob is the movie actor Bob Balaban (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Best in Show).

Chicago's Uptown neighborhood was once an oasis of entertainment venues, but it was not spared the decay that afflicted urban centers in the latter half of the 20th century. The Uptown Theatre sputtered and failed, and the building was left to deteriorate. Later efforts to have the building restored have been plagued by financial troubles and scandal.

48th Ward Alderman Smith has expressed her commitment to preserving the building, but while it seems safe from the wrecking ball for now, the Uptown is far from being restored. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someday it will be home to something good.

More on wiretaps

When the wiretap story broke, the Chicago Tribune invited readers to send letters to the editor. I was pleased to see that a large majority of the letters they printed were critical of the warrantless surveillance policy, although I don't know if this is a representative sample of public opinion. My question is: What is wrong with that other small minority?

The justifications given seem to be (a) it is necessary to keep us safe, and (b) he who has nothing to hide has nothing to fear. Wrong and wrong. My previous entry on this subject rebuts the former argument. As for the latter, why do the same people who always complain that government is by nature inept and inefficient suddenly trust that unchecked executive powers will be used with infinite wisdom? We do need an effective government, but we do not need a government that treats its citizens as a strict, protective parent would.

It's been in the media this week that President Bush, in his 2004 campaign, frequently reassured voters that their civil liberties were being respected by saying that warrants were required for wiretaps. A recent MSNBC Hardball segment played a clip from July 14, 2004 in which Bush said:

Any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps, or roving wiretaps, without getting a court order.

Now that we see he's been circumventing the FISA court, he's singing a different tune.

Lastly, today's New York Times ran a story on how the surveillance is part of a much larger data mining operation in which large telecommunications companies are complicit. The Chicago Tribune got the story from the Times' wire service and ran it with this headline: "Nation's phones tapped: Government analyzing massive amount of calls, e-mail traffic." Paranoid yet?

An uncooperative model

I drew this sketch of my cat this morning.

King George is watching you

No need to read me my rights. I always keep a copy of the U.S. Constitution in my wallet.

Recent news has inspired me to reread the 4th Amendment. It says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Today it is understood that electronic surveillance counts as a "search." So the government can't do this without a warrant. Period.

If the government wants to do surveillance of U.S. citizens for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence information, it must obtain a warrant from a special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), as per the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. This court has processed many FISA requests over the years, and FISA even has a provision that allows the government, in case of emergency, to begin surveillance activities while the warrant is pending (see Section 1805(f)).

This past week we've found out that President Bush has been authorizing surveillance on U.S. citizens without going through the FISA process -- or any judicial process, for that matter. It is curious that he should choose to do so, given that FISA is intended to be quick and easy and should hardly pose any obstacle at all. The Chicago Tribune editorial page, usually a defender of all things Republican, ran an editorial yesterday criticizing the President for this "misstep" and noting that this is likely a violation of the law. It followed up with yet another article today, in much the same vein. Worth reading.

I'll leave you with a quote by Ben Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Agbar's anatomy

This past week I found out that my company was involved in the construction of La Torre Agbar in Barcelona, Spain.

It was the cover story in the latest corporate newsletter to show up in my mail slot, and I laughed out loud the moment I saw it. You know that someone at some point in the building's design must have said, "This building, it looks like a, a... dildo, no?" And yet, it was built anyway. You just gotta admire those Spaniards.

Does he think we're stupid?

Taking a break from some system maintenance on my office PC, I caught a few minutes of President Bush's speech on Wednesday. After the obligatory thank-yous, he opened with this:

I've come to discuss an issue of vital importance to the American people, and that is: Victory in the war on terror. On September the 11th, 2001, our nation awoke to a sudden attack, and we accepted new responsibilities. We are confronting new dangers with firm resolve. We're hunting down the terrorists and their supporters. We will fight this war without wavering -- and we will prevail.

In the war on terror, Iraq is now the central front.

Where to begin? First, there is the obvious conflation of the attacks of September 11 and Iraq, which had nothing to do with one another. Then, he describes Iraq as the central front in the war on terror, when, if this is so, it is only because of our own intervention.

These facts should be well established. It might make one wonder why Bush persists in repeating such nonsense, but this is not why I ask if he thinks we are stupid.

It's the little things I notice. Resolve. Victory. War on terror. Prevail. Freedom. These are but a few of the words and phrases that I hear Bush say not just repeatedly, but repetitively. These aren't words from Bush's natural speech patterns, and I'll wager they aren't even Bush's words. They sound more like something cooked up by his political brain, Karl Rove... or more likely, Frank Luntz.

Frank who? He might not be the most familiar name in politics, but he's indispensable in keeping his Republican clients on message. An example of his work can be found by following this link. Note Luntz's trademark "words that work" gimmick. You can find more of the same in his earlier Iraq talking points. One lesson Luntz tries to instill in his clients is to always, always, always, use the words that work. But who is he kidding? When I hear Bush say: "rejectionists and Saddamists [Mark M: new word!!!] and terrorists" or: "September the 11th changed our country" or: "a liberated [democratic] Iraq could show the power of freedom to transform the Middle East," I know he's using sophisticated marketing techniques to sell questionable goods. Your old Jedi mind trick will not work on me, boy.

Blotchy man beats holiday war drum

From what I hear, angry shouting head Bill O'Reilly has been inciting outrage among his viewers over the use of the phrase "Happy Holidays" in place of "Merry Christmas." Cry me a freakin' river, Bill. I've got this to say to you:

Shut up, shut up! Just shut up!

SHUT UP!!!

I know way too much energy is being wasted on this non-issue, but allow me to elaborate.

Though Christmas is a religious holiday, for some reason, one of its principal modes of observance in America is as a shopping season. This is a situation that makes retailers very happy. But if only 3 of 4 Americans identify themselves as Christians, that's a whole quarter of the population they need to reach out to. So they try to be generic.

If they can sell a Christmas tree as a Chanukah bush, maybe they can get you to buy stuff to decorate it, and then maybe they can get you to buy more expensive stuff to put under it.

Let's say you find a card that says "Happy Holidays!" You can send it to anyone, including your non-Christian friends, and so you buy more of them. For the guy selling the cards, it is a joyous season, indeed!

There is no conspiracy. The bottom line is... the bottom line. "Happy Holidays" sells.

Band music

Today I'm introducing a new media type to the blog -- audio! The Buffalo Grove Symphonic Band's fall concert was recorded and put on CD, and I've ripped a few tracks for you to enjoy (I hope) and maybe even copy to your iPod...

The Merry Widow by Franz Lehar

The Genius of Ray Charles arr. by Michael Brown

Perpetual Motion by Johann Strauss

Perfection it isn't, but that kind of goes with the territory with a community band recorded live in concert. All in all, I think we played well.

(Note: I put these MP3 files on my Comcast personal web page directory, which is free with my internet service. I can already see that the files take up most of my storage space, and I'm not sure if I'll have bandwidth problems.)

[08:40:00 17 JUN 2006] Update: The above entry used to have links to MP3 files. I've taken the files down to free up space in my Comcast directory.

One year of The Rag: State of the blog

It was one year ago today that I posted my first entry here. My intention was to use this site as a temporary scratchpad so I could learn about blogger.com and put that knowledge to use working on another blog. Now that other site is defunct.

When I made the decision to keep writing, I wasn't sure what I'd write about, but I never let it worry me too much. I write for myself, and if anyone finds it useful or amusing, I won't complain. Neither will I complain if no one bothers to read it.

As for the name -- Maslov's Rag -- it's just the first thing that popped into my head when I registered the site. Rag is one of those nice short words that have lots of entries in the dictionary. It could be a newspaper or a schmatte. Or it could be a musical work like one named after a nightclub in Sedalia, Missouri.

At times, I think about things I might do to customize this site. I could add a blogroll. Or I could get rid of those dots all over the page so that it doesn't look like every other Blogspot page. But these things take some effort, which I'd rather spend on writing content.

The most interesting thing happened this past year as a result of my blogging... I stumbled upon descendants of my great-great uncle who had not had any contact with my part of the family for many years. In order to leave a comment on my site, the one who wrote me, Natalia, had to create a Blogger account. While she was at it, she created her own blog, which is much more entertaining than mine.

As low as possible on the high road

An unusually long entry today...

Friday the Chicago Tribune ran a column by Victor Davis Hanson, who is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, one of those pressure vessels of willful ignorance. I almost always strongly disagree with what he has to write, but in this column, the title, "On torture, U.S. must take the high road," showed promise. It went downhill from there.

Hanson's basic thesis, if I understand correctly, is that even though we ought to reject torture, torture is extremely useful, and we harm ourselves by not making use of it. As for international reaction, we shouldn't be concerned about it because Europe and the UN "will fault the United States no matter what it does." (Funny -- that didn't seem to be such a problem ten years ago.) In the particulars of the article, Hanson makes some statements that I find outrageous. Allow me to refute a couple of them.

Hanson writes:

Contrary to popular belief, throughout history, torture has brought results -- either to gain critical, sometimes lifesaving, intelligence or more gratuitously to obtain embarrassing confessions from terrified captives.

I'll side with the popular beliefs. Hanson, talking out of both sides of his mouth, eventually comes out in favor of the McCain anti-torture proposal. But his premise here contradicts McCain. The same day Hanson's article ran, NewsHour on PBS ran a clip of McCain saying the following: "First, subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop." In other words, torture produces compliance rather than information. McCain, who was himself tortured in Vietnam, ought to know.

Hanson goes on to say:

There is also a danger that once we try to quantify precisely what constitutes torture, we could, in the ensuing utopian debate, define anything from sleep deprivation to loud noise as torture.

Now this really strikes me as an odd thing to say, because in most of the world (but apparently not here), the question has pretty much been settled that both sleep deprivation and loud noise (see Ireland v. UK, 1978) can be considered instruments of torture.

We have all experienced tiredness, and we have all experienced loud noises, so I think some people have a harder time imagining the circumstances where these can qualify as torture. When I talk about sleep deprivation, I'm not talking about the alarm clock waking you up at 5:00 a.m. -- I'm talking about not being allowed to sleep at all for days on end. The current revision of the Wikipedia page on this subject states:

Sleep deprivation is sometimes used as an instrument of torture ... [It] is highly unhealthy and should not be attempted under free will. Lack of sleep may ... result in ... hallucinations, nausea, psychosis, and eventually death.

Likewise, with respect to loud noise, I'm not talking about listening to Limbaugh with the radio turned up (as painful as some may find that). Let's take a look at the Wikipedia entry for Decibel. There you'll find a table that, like every other acoustic decibel table I've seen, has a line for "threshold of pain" at about 130 dB. Sound levels at 150 dB, representing a ten-fold increase in acoustic intensity, will actually start to destroy your organs. But even prolonged exposure to levels of 90 dB, a one-hundred-fold decrease in acoustic intensity from the pain threshold, will cause deafness. In addition, loud noises can be used to prevent sleep.

If there is a saving grace to Hanson's article, it is that he ends up, in the final paragraph, endorsing McCain's anti-torture proposal as a "reaffirmation of our country's ideals." If only he devoted a few more column-inches to elaborate on that, because these days it seems that a short treatise on human rights would serve the public well.