Derb-Wehner punch-up My month started off on a combative note, Peter Wehner and I trading insults over George W. Bush’s PEPFAR program to subsidize AIDS drugs for sub-Saharan Africans. If you missed it, here are:
• December 1: Bush’s World AIDS Day op-ed in the Washington Post.
• The article I was referring to: “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The Unintended Consequences of Washington’s HIV/AIDS Programs” by Princeton N. Lyman and Stephen B. Wittels in the July/August 2010 issue of Foreign Affairs.
• December 2: National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez chiding me gently.
Some friends urged me to respond to Wehner’s last. I didn’t, because I thought enough had been said on both sides for readers to make up their minds for themselves as to who had the better of the argument.
Definition of “enough”? Well, let’s see: Those links give you 768 words from George W. Bush, 3,721 from Lyman & Wittels, 227 from Kathryn, 2,797 from me, and 2,773 from Wehner. The total is over 10,000 words — longer than Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Does anyone really need more?
In any case, I got my disputational training in my high-school debating club, and I default to the standard structure thereof: Red makes its case, Blue makes the counter-case, Red answers Blue, Blue answers Red, audience questions, closing summaries from Red and Blue, audience votes. I have neither the patience nor the inclination for interminable who-gets-the-last-word nitpick-a-thons, and can’t believe many readers have, either. There is certainly enough material in those 10,000-plus words to let you judge for yourself whether, for example, my description of the Lyman-Wittels paper or Wehner’s is closer to the paper itself.
Other readers — and, vide supra, my colleague Kathryn — regretted the rancorous tone of the discussion. I don’t really see their point. I am of the same kidney as the late Auberon Waugh, who defined opinion journalism as being among “the vituperative arts.” I enjoy the sensation of my boot connecting with the other bloke’s groin. Perhaps it’s an English thing. If you prefer the genteel murmured sonorities of a David Brooks or a Jonathan Chait, I’m not for you. Neither, clearly, is Peter Wehner.
That latter tendency adds some spin to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I refer you to the excellent mil-int blogger “In from the Cold” for the grisly details.
Fashion stasis My daughter, who turns 18 on January 5, gets a fashion magazine titled Nylon. I’ve never read the thing. It’s all clothes, fashions, hair, styles, glamour, and other such stuff — a zone of the human parade in which my interest is, and always has been, at absolute zero.
She leaves Nylon lying around, though, so I got a look at the cover of the December/January issue. It features movie actress Mila Kunis in a modelish pose. “Good grief,” I thought, “it’s Jean Shrimpton.”
For those of you who weren’t present, Jean Shrimpton was the supermodel of the early 1960s. She brought in the bony, pouty look that has been with us ever since. (Yes, I know, Brigitte Bardot was pouty before Shrimpton. Bony, however, she wasn’t.) With only slight changes, you could put that Mila Kunis picture on the cover of a 1963 fashion magazine, take it back in a time machine, and people would think it was the Shrimp.
"According to this doctrine, absolutely every human trait is entirely a product of environment."
Don't tell that to the gay rights crowd. Nothing exposes the internal inconsistencies of liberal thought then the idea that gender is a social construct while sexual preference is an immutable product of our genes.
We were privileged to attend an early screening of The King's Speech. It's a very good movie. The cast is excellent, and the story is compelling. I have a slight stutter, and could identify with George VI. One parental note: one of the treatments for controlling a stutter is cursing, which resulted in a short scene heavy with f-bombs. Be forewarned.
Another stutterer who took the singing therapy to heart: Mel Tillis.
"honest COBOL"... Good Lord, Grace Hopper's revenge has a fan?!? Having written many an ISAM database in COBOL, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one John.
"...but electronics is almost the only area in which we’ve made any progress this past half-century"
Sweeping generalization season is upon us again, I see. Forgive me for assuming that you wouldn't actually want to be treated by physicians using only 1960s medical technology...
While I welcome Derb's defense of the "nature" side of the nature v. nurture debate, I believe he risks missing an even more controversial finding of recent research: nature doesn't stop once a child has left the womb.
Meaning, brain development isn't like a switch, magically shut off the moment a child is born. In the past, people-- including scientists-- tend to be rather arbitrary in their division between genetics (what we inherited) and the environment (where we live). In recent decades, we've seen more research into the pre-natal stage of development, so much so to the point that hormonal changes in the womb may go a long way towards explaining sexual identities and the like seen much later in life. Something like homosexuality, transgenderism, and the like can be explained as being "born" that way-- but not because of their DNA, but because of the biochemical and physical influences in their mother's pregnancy.
That said, what will REALLY blow people's minds is the knowledge that many more behaviors than previously thought can be affected in the early years after birth. Yes, we've long known that things like malnutrition, physical contact, and physical abuse can alter a child's prospect for a healthy and well-adjusted adulthood. What's less understood is the influence of relatively minor or insignificant stimuli on other behaviors later in life. We're talking minor influences that later manifest as major behaviors like alcoholism, gambling, sexual fetishes harmless and hostile, etc. Freud may have gotten a bum rap after all.
It may not be enough to say that heterosexuals and homosexuals are "born" that way-- their later environment may indeed influence how they turn out. Bobby may have been born liking boys, but it wasn't until random influences in the early development cycle (< 3 years) resulted in Bobby REALLY loving boys-- or not loving them at all, but loving women (or feet, or nylon), but just not as much as Billy does.
Coming to grips with the latter will pose challenges to both the Left and the Right. The Left will continue to (correctly) argue that sexuality is not a choice, but the Right will correctly argue that there are environmental factors at play post-birth that may affect these things. Unfortunately for everyone involved, accurately determining what those environmental factors are, their relevant weighting, their temporal impact, etc., may be for all intents and purposes impossible to ever determine.
"The planes of 2010 are very closely similar to those of 1963, which are utterly, radically different from those of 1916 (to the degree that there even were any)."
Oh please. By this absurd logic, a Prius is "very closely similar" to a Model-T Ford. Both have four wheels, seats, a steering wheel, and pedals, you know! Just because planes from different eras have wings, engines, and a body where the passengers sit, doesn't mean they're closely similar.
“You don’t really have a word in English for xiaoren, do you?”
We have lots of words for unrighteous immoral folk who do not grasp the Proper Virtues: conservative, racist, capitalist, Republican, polluter...
"Over the last two months, the eighth-largest army in the world — more men under arms than Iran; more than France and Germany combined — deployed to the woods of a single American state to help keep the deer menace at bay."
That is only right and proper!
Number of deaths in the USA caused by al Qaeda in the past 9 years: zero.
Number of deaths in the USA caused by deer in the past 9 years: 1,800.
I'm not terribly convinced that "caitiff" is entirely necessary. We have plenty of names for the concept; most of them are mildly profane, I admit, but the readiest example in American English to fit the bill is nothing more than the ubiquitous [donkey]hole. British English has I think one of the loveliest assortments of derogatory epithets in existence, ranging from ones flavoured with mere contempt for sub-par intelligence or a lack of wisdom to ones more explicitly stating a lack of moral character. One could write a dictionary full to the backteeth with delightful English ways of ascribing low worth to the subject. Not a few of the entries would be euphemisms for anatomy, I should imagine.
Regarding the prime 2011: It’s square root rounds up to 45 and in the year 2011, we are enjoying the expansive liberty and prosperity wrought by our 45th president. This numeric coincidence won’t happen again ever, unless Obama continues in his current role until 2070.
Passwords are an interesting problem. They are also a common subject of lamentations in the computer security field: we develop sophisticated algorithms to protect secret data, then turn them over to secretaries who will use "password" as their password or give away their password to someone who offers to trade them a plastic dinosaur.
There needs to be a balance in passwords between easy and difficult ones. Make your requirements too easy and you get "123456" and "password." Make your password requirements too strict and you'll have a "secure" password written on a sticky note posted on top of the secretary's monitor. By all means, keep consecutive digits and "password" out, but you can't ask (most) people to memorize a random sequence of letters, numbers, and characters.
The answer to the problem of the gap in our language is contained within the second paragraph of that section. Perhaps we should call a petty person motivated only by self-interest a "biden".
I think "caitiff" is a stronger word than necessary for your purpose, Sir. "Knave" would serve well enough, or "churl" as a second choice. Our low-democratic culture does not care for such words; hence their infrequent use. The cruder and more common anatomic references suggested by others describe a man who is offensive, but English does have normal terms for men who are also base.
Expecting good programming from the IRS? Silly boy.We tax attorneys thank them so we can now be wrongly blamed for such idiocy as thousands of our clients yell at us for their refunds being unduly delayed.
Also, the IRS has extended filing through April 18th for "Empancipaton Day", and in the northeast through April 19th for New England's Patriots Day. They don't even make collecting revenue a priority.
Here in southeast Oklahoma, the schools are closed the entire week of Thanksgiving for the start of deer season. I usually joke that it's because all of the teachers are out in the woods. And so are their husbands.
The core sense of "xiaoren" concerns pettiness (per John Rohsenow’s very good translation cited by Derb) and meanness (in the sense of miserlyness). From an etymological perspective, the word "pusillanimous", i.e. small souled, captures a lot of it. It also implies spitefulness and closed-offed-ness (as opposed to the "junzi" who is both magnanimous and open / transparent). It touches on, but is not primarly about, wickedness and is much less if at all about boorishness or lack of class as implied by some of the words suggested by commentators above.
To give a pop culture example, Rodney Dangerfield's character in Caddyshack is a boor and an [donkey]hole, but he is not at all a "xiaoren". Ted Knight's character is "high class" and not boorish but is the epitomy of the "xiaoren" (he's also an [donkey]hole, but that just shows the overly broad connotations of that word).
And as for English lacking a single word for it, as Derb well knows, the single Chinese word contains two elements, one of which is "man", so there is a sense in which Chinese doesn't have a single word for it either. And in fact, many of the English words that capture the "xiao" portion of the "xiaoren" -- pusillanimous, petty, mean, tight, spiteful -- are arguably much more specific than "xiao", lit. "small", is on its own.
James Legge in his translation of the Analects, translates the term variously (and, to my ear, quite well) as "mean man", "petty man", "little man", "inferior [man]", "lower man". Legge, working from the 1840s through the 1890s, and famously "retro" in his vocabularly even for a man of his era, was certainly aware of the available English choices. I think he caught the essense of the term in a way the other one word suggestions here do not. Even taking into account the additional hundred odd years since Legge was translating as well as the fact that Derb is pointing to its use in modern as opposed to classical Chinese, I think "petty person", "mean person" or "little man", in the proper context, capture the term better than can any revived single English word.
Excellent points, Dregs. The idea of xiaoren as a compound word meaning "small man" is not something that would be unclear in meaning in English. For those who have seen Ricky Gervais' and Stephen Merchant's BBC "The Office", the ending scene where David Brent fake-fires his receptionist, bringing her to tears, in an effort to seem funny and cool to his new intern, the enraged receptionist delivers an insult that in context has a decent bit of weight (and not a little awkwardness). "You're such a sad little man." She might as well have spat "xiaoren!" at him. Petty man, small man, sad, contemptible little insect of a person.
I too am interested in seeing The King's Speech. It seems a rare instance where Colin Firth is expertly cast. He always struck me as a comically miscast romantic lead, but he sounds ideal to play a stuttering, fearful Royal named Bertie, of all things! Hugh Laurie though would have been a better pick (I'm trying not to be biased by his portrayal of a more comic Bertie), perhaps, but perhaps he's gotten too craggy and weatherworn in appearance.
