Chihuahuas are the most vicious dogs.

There was a whole series of dire possibilities that didn't even occur to people when the US government abandoned mandatory smallpox vaccination. In another excellent article, Gina Kolata discusses how now someone's got to make the choice about how to protect against a terrorist attack. The choice is

whether it is worth accepting a few deaths and serious injuries to protect the nation against a threat that may not materialize.

When we make choices, we're often biased, and tend not to make very good choices. When we hear stories of vaccine victims, all too often we respond with visceral fear rather than logic. Added to this is

the emotional power of the anecdote to erode a consensus � how the story of a single vaccine victim, or even one who mistakenly believed he was injured by a vaccine, can overwhelm logical arguments about risks and benefits.

Rational debate will be difficult. As usual.

The sourdough rye that I made last weekend has held up pretty well. I had a slice last night untoasted & with nothing on it, and it was pretty good. A couple slices toasted & buttered this morning were even better.

I mentioned earlier irony is a form of detachment. According to definitions about irony that I looked up earlier, "ironic" points to situations poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended: "madness, an ironic fate for such a clear thinker." Or it describes situations where an inconsistency suggests a lesson about human vanity, foolishness, or ignorance, or exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. I certainly feel fate leering sardonically behind my back. It's not detachment on my part. It's horror. The Death Clock, the Internet's friendly reminder that life is slipping away, will cheer me up.

I'm not sure what my identity is. Yesterday in class a Japanese student told me that on the basis of my ancestry, I should be styled English-American (I'd like Anglo-American, but that's too redolent of the "global leader in the mining and natural resources sectors.")

In The Blood Lust of Identity, Ian Buruma makes some observations about why people fear for their sense of belonging. According to Amin Maalouf, it's because they feel that their community is under threat. I didn't believe that about myself, but after 9/11 it was interesting to see my own identity as an American surface. Buruma also observes that those who blame globalization for threatening local cultural identities turn out to be mostly disaffected intellectuals.

Buruma goes on to discuss Tom Hayden as one of the worst instances of romantic nativism and identity chatter, occurring in the heart of the post-industrialized West itself.

Some blogger that I've lost recommended this article, which shows mindless packets of data following a few simple rules to produce artificial genocide. Yet the agents are separately and individually reacting according to rules rather than some kind of mob psychology. So apparently societies possess their own logic, and cannot easily be directed or anticipated.

Not even the Olympian modeler, who writes the code and looks down from on high, can do more than guess at the effect of any particular rule as it ricochets through a world of diverse actors.

No wonder God has made such a poor fist of things.

Ralph Peters' Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States:

Restrictions on the free flow of information.
The subjugation of women.
Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
Domination by a restrictive religion.
A low valuation of education.
Low prestige assigned to work.

He also says,

China, along with the world's other defiant dictatorships, suffers under an oppressive class structure, built on and secured by an informational hierarchy.

Ha-ha.

According to an article in the Far Eastern Economic Review by an American diplomat, after the U.S. EP-3 and a Chinese F-8 fighter collided last April,

For the U.S. side, among the biggest surprises were the Chinese government's apparent indifference to the facts surrounding the collision, and its apparent lack of concern about international procedures that, in an emergency situation, allow one nation's aircraft to land on the territory of another without permission. Even today, it is puzzling that the Chinese government did not seem concerned about how its handling of the incident might shape regional perceptions.

Guess what? Many in the Chinese government don't give a damn what anyone thinks. On reflection, I guess that's part of the reason for the article, to embarrass the Chinese government. Like they care.

George Bush adds $1,500 to cost of purchasing average new house in USA. Thanks, George. Not to mention the effects of ongoing protectionism on consumers of sugar, textiles, and steel.

From the European vantage point, steel companies here have put themselves through a grueling transformation while, for the most part, the big integrated American steel mills have not....European steel executives also note that American minimill producers are extremely competitive. The problems, they contend, are with the big integrated producers that begin with iron ore, smelt it to make steel and then produce finished products. European executives also tend to agree with American steel executives on an important point: the biggest hindrance to consolidation in the United States is the huge burden of paying pension and health benefits for retirees.

Yesterday (Monday) around 4:40 pm as I was walking home in a thunderstorm, holding an umbrella over myself, there was a startling flash and I felt a spark--like static electricity--jump from the middle finger of my gloved hand to the metal shaft of the umbrella. I thought I was dead. Nope. And not even a lichtenberg figure to show for it.

Horizontal newspaper text is replacing the vertical original in Chinese-American newspapers. One editor claims it's because of software & to integrate English words. But as the NYT points out, some speculate that a political conspiracy may be afoot to court Beijing at the expense of Taipei. And indeed, While most papers still use Chinese characters, in November the pro-Beijing China Press switched from traditional to simplified characters (after having switched from vertical to horizontal publishing three years ago). Despite a rocky start, the paper's circulation has jumped by 20 percent. And after all, there are increasing numbers of immigrants from mainland China. I wonder if ultimately they won't change US policy towards China.

What happens when an advance that prolongs life also prolongs a patient's misery?

There's no longer any privacy. You're not safe from being spied on by your employers, "friends," or even total strangers. Infrared hidden cameras will ensure you're not even safe in the dark.

Good news for Japanese consumers: food will get cheaper! In the past, they've paid premiums for Japanese brands, assuming that Japanese food is better, but Japanese mislabeling cases reveal that they could not actually tell the difference in quality between Japanese products and imports.

France betrayed Taiwan's confidence by passing top-secret information to China about the controversial sale of $2.5 billion worth of French frigates to Taiwan in the early 1990s. Taiwan was originally going to buy Korean ships, then suddenly switched to French ones & this abrupt procurement switch was matched in Paris by a major policy reversal. Shenanigans partially covered in Christine Deviers-Joncour's "Whore of the Republic".

Bush's proposed Taiwan envoy doesn't look very good. Not because he's identified with the first Bush administration's pro-China-engagement stance, or even because he publicly lambasted Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian for a litany of failures. Rather it's his dubious record of lobbying.

The conservative Club for Growth has bestowed several Republican in Name Only (RINO) awards, mocking "Republican office holders around the nation who have advanced egregious anti-growth, anti-freedom or anti-free-market policies." Anti-free-market, huh? I don't see George W. Bush's name. Bush's aides themselves say his steel and wood tariffs are consistent with his pledge to enforce the nation's trade laws.

Via geekpress.com: The bureaucrats and censors in China who block and monitor Web sites will find it difficult to control the future flow of blogs in and out of China due to the number and diversity of this new information platform. Internet content censors from China come from a different time and place in terms of technology. Blogs remain a concept difficult for them to understand for now.... Ironically, the concept of blogs in the next few years may see its full expression not in the West, but in China, where community, relationships and reputation can sway a highly literate population.

For lunch we had the sourdough rye/whole wheat bread I made yesterday. Sliced & toasted. With a salad on the side, pretty damn tasty. Now I'm off to make my own invention: apricot bread (spiced with cardamom). Which is pretty damn good, too.

Last night we saw "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), or rather I did. Linda didn't feel like watching it to the end. Even though I saw Betty Grable's name in the credits, I didn't recognize her until I found Alan Vanneman's website, which explained that the 17-year-old Betty Grable was the partner of 47-year-old Edward Everett Horton in "Let's Knock Knees." Hey, she must have done something right if Wittgenstein liked her. So says Alan Vanneman, who also characterizes "The Gay Divorcee" as a chaste, frothy, big-screen musical symbolic of the thirties, set in "a never-never land where no one was unemployed (where, in fact, few people even had to work), where everyone worried obsessively about scandal, but no one ever did anything that was wrong."

Then today, we watched "Journal d'un cur� de campagne" (1950), of which someone at imdb claims Andrey Tarkovsky recommended as an example of how the film director should work. A little too spiritual for me. (Coincidentally, last week we saw Tarkovsky's "Solaris", which was also a little too spiritual by my lights. I'd seen it in the 70's and liked it much better then.) Yes, I appreciate Bresson's style, but the priest's character struck both of us as a little weak.

Speaking of weak men, yesterday we also saw "Monsieur Hire" (1989), which both of us liked better. About a Peeping Tom who gets caught up in his obsession with one woman. A little much of the Brahms Piano Quartet, Opus 25, perhaps.