From The Morgue

Chicago Cityscape
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This is the view from the main entrance of the Field Museum in Chicago. It was an absolutely incredible day. We went inside the museum, which was mostly uninspiring (the two exceptions were an enormous and very complete T-Rex skeleton, and a Maori meeting house). The view outside the building totally stole the show.
Chicago has a great cityscape. It has a large city park along the waterfront, and the high-rise buildings form a wall along the north and west borders. Chicago was always on my list of places to visit just to see its famous architecture, and it didn’t disappoint.

In the Dom Post today an LA Times piece on the rise of Iran to regional dominance is illustrated with a big photo of a girl in hejab writing on a piece of paper. The caption reads:
“Signing their life away: Iranians register at Khageh-Nasir [sic] University in Tehran this month as suicide bombers to assist in the Palestinian uprising.”
The photo is sourced from REUTERS and bears no relationship to the Iranian article. The caption caught my interest, for fairly obvious reasons – it seemed like bullshit. So I did some digging online.
The story behind the photo seems to come from Associated Press:
Suicide Bombers Warn US, UK Of Attacks. A slightly different version, with extra information, appears in The Age.

• There is an Iranian group named Esteshadion, or Martyrdom Seekers, formed in late 2004, who held a seminar on suicide-bombing tactics at Khajeh-Nasir University.
• Their spokesman claimed that there were over a 1,000 members of the group, and that they would mobilise to attack American and British ‘sensitive points’ (in Iraq) if Iran’s nuclear facilities were attacked.
• Attacks on civilians – an abominable behaviour deeply associated with suicide bombing – are explicitly not condoned
• After the seminar about 50 of the 200-strong audience registered with the group.

Back in July, a report on the organisation aired on Al-Arabiya TV, transcribed here (of course no information on the reliability of the translation. It was rapidly picked up by all the extreme right-wing blog sites.) This report suggests that the movement is motivated more generally by concern over Islamic holy sites in Palestine and Iraq.
A movement leader in this report stresses that the movement is not symbolic, but the AP report suggests this view is not shared by all members – in that piece, a 23-year old signee is quoted “We are trying to defend Islam. It’s a way to draw the attention of others to our activities.” (At least, to me this suggests it’s a symbolic act; draw your own conclusions. It is, of course hard to tell for sure given the translation across language and the inevitable bastardisation of journalistic quotation.)
What to make of all this? I’m going to avoid getting into an essay about this. I will say that this indicates the caption the Dom Post used was inaccurate and irresponsible, and I just emailed them to that effect.

I have a plan to pick up chicks.
I now have a lighter. Someone bought it over the weekend and left it in the car I was driving. I’ve never owned a lighter before. I’m going to carry it around so I can light the cigarettes of girls who need their cigarettes lit, because, that’s how you can pick up chicks. (I learned this on television.)
So I need to find a chick I like, and then I need to get her to want to have a cigarette. What I might do is use my psychological training, because I learned about the way you can put an idea in someone’s head without them noticing, like Derren Brown does on that TV show. I don’t have good facial hair like Derren Brown but I do have an honours degree in psychology, so I’m confident I can do it.what I’ll do is, I’ll find a cute girl and I’ll subtly gesture with my fingers in such a way as to catch her eye, and then I’ll really quickly mime as if I was putting something cylindrical (like, say, a cigarette) in my mouth. I’ll have to do it so quickly that she won’t be sure if she actually saw it. (I could do it twice for extra effect but really fast both times.) That will put a subliminal suggestion in her brain that she should have a cigarette.
Then I’ll need to hurry outside. Because it is smoke-free in bars and cafes here. But smokers congregate outside, and I think if a woman is smart she’ll ask for a light from someone who is already smoking, and I won’t be smoking. So I think I’ll need to prepare for this and ensure she asks me for a light and not someone else. Maybe I could stand around nonchalantly holding the lighter, and issue a significant cough when she comes out the door? That would probably work. Or maybe I could sort of casually talk to myself a little bit, to suggest that I’d be really good at conversation. (Even better – I can say something to myself and then laugh, because then she’ll think I’m funny.)
The lighter is still in its plastic blister on the cardboard backing. I’ll keep it in the packaging, I think, because that way, when she says,’do you have a light’ I can say ‘yes’ and she’ll say ‘i bet you use this technique all the time to pick up chicks’ and I’ll bring out the lighter and say ‘but how can that be the case if my lighter is still in its plastic blister on the cardboard backing?’ So she’ll think she’s special.
I’m actually not very good at making them light. It’s a bit of a personal incompetence. So I need to have a plan to cope with this. I think what I’ll do is, when I hold out the lighter ready to light it, I will look amazed at something over her shoulder so she will look at that and not at me as I work at lighting it. Or maybe I will throw some salt in her eye? (Note to self: get some salt.)
And if she turns back/rubs the salt away too quickly and I still haven’t lit it then I’ll say that I did light it but I got bored of waiting for her to notice so I let it go out, and that she has missed her chance, which will give me mystique (ladies find that irresistible). And then if she asks me to light it again I’ll do the salt thing again to buy more time.
Then it’ll be easy, because we can have a conversation which is my forte. I can talk about how sometimes I fight crime.
But you know, the one problem is, I’m really not interested in women who smoke, because they’ll probably die younger, and I don’t see the point of putting effort into a relationship when she won’t be able to stay the distance. So I think I’ll have to pick up the friend of the woman who is smoking, the one who is looking upset that her friend is doing something bad for her health, but not who is hectoring her, because that isn’t very attractive either. She will be resigned but caring and supportive but hopeful and healthy but not obsessive. We will be so happy together!
And if something goes wrong and I need to make a quick getaway, I can do that salt trick another time. That never stops being effective.

For the first time since coming back, I felt like I was back on some kind of form in basketball, so naturally I injured myself halfway through.
The moment of injury is always a memorable one. When you feel something go wrong, and your brain tells you, yes, that wasn’t supposed to bend like that, and then you know that you’ve injured yourself, and what a nuisance, and you hope it isn’t serious, and you worry for a second that it is, and then the pain starts to well up and you go down and think, dammit! Ow!
Bad things about having a sprained ankle:
* it’s a lovely day outside but my preferred means of enjoying such days is going for a nice walk
* it takes three trips to get my cereal, juice and chai tea down to the place where I take my breakfast, and each trip takes a very long time, and hurts
* putting on underwear takes far too much concentration
Good things about having a sprained ankle:
* putting one hand on the left bench and the other hand on the right bench and swinging through the kitchen like an enormous tree-dwelling moose.
* um, that’s all?

Vancouver Skyline
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Vancouver is a beautiful city, set on rising hills amongst harbours and mountains and with clean, attractive architecture. This is one of the great views available about a minute’s walk from downtown.
I reckon this photo would make a great 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.
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Bonus! Photos of me being silly in the bush – they’re big,
so fast connections only…

This one time, I went along to a birthday gathering where I didn’t know many people, and there was a girl there with fascinating decorated trousers, with beads and patches and even a mirror.
By way of making conversation, I walked up to her and said, in reference to the mirror, “I can see myself in your pants.”
It took me a moment to realise that could be taken in two ways.

So many issues are tangled up in the publication of the cartoons of Mohammed that I’ve found it difficult to think through them and come to any definite firm ground. They’re definitely worth thinking about, though, as they relate to many crucial issues in today’s global cultural environment.
The original publication
The original publication of the cartoons was deliberately provocative, and succeeded beyond the expectations of the provocateurs. Indeed, the publishers have apologised for their error in judgement in publishing the cartoons.
Their intent was to test the tolerance of Islam, which claims to be a religion of tolerance.
On the surface this seems simple enough, although both aggressive and insensitive. However, this intention is worth examining in a bit more detail. Two points in particular are of note:
‘The tolerance of Islam’ firstly assumes that Islam is one body, and not a variety of cultural and religious expressions and understandings. Even the crude division of Islam into ‘fanatical’ vs ‘ordinary’ categories, itself problematic, is absent here. This obfuscation of complex and crucial variety within a category implicitly serves the purpose of demonisation, as has been seen in responses in the West, and signposts the publishers as subscribers to a view of Islam as inherently fanatical in character. (This view is in wide currency in the west.)
Even assuming that it is appropriate to conduct such tests of a religion’s character, we should examine whether this is an appropriate way to conduct such a test. (Certainly it is an insensitive way; I am at a loss as to how a test of tolerance could be anything but insensitive, however.) Absent from consideration is the context of the test subjects. It is widely felt in the Islamic world(s) that they are being targeted and victimised; without examining the validity of this sentiment in detail, we can all agree there is cause for it. In such a context, how can tolerance be fairly tested?
There is more that you can get from digging beneath the surface of this claim, but these two points seem the most important to me.
Images of Mohammed
An extra layer of complexity to the whole affair emerges from the way in which depictions of the Prophet are regarded within Islamic teaching.
In Islam, any image of Mohammed has a real quality of sacredness, as does the physical entity of a copy of a Koran. They are holy in the same way the communion host is to Catholics (although that dramatically overstates the degree of holiness, the principle is the same – the items themselves have a real, material sacred element).
Because of this, these cartoons cannot be directly compared to other depictions. An image of Jesus is not inherently sacred, much less an image of the Pope or the Christian cross.
This is not to deny that images of Mohammed are unknown; indeed, they can be found in many places where Islam is strong. One presumes that pious Muslims have been prepared to turn a blind eye to such depictions, or that they are unable to enforce the restriction of such images.
All of this adds to the complicated tangle of concerns here stirred up.
The republication
The decision by many newspapers and magazines around the world to republish the cartoons has its own set of concerns. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are not at issue, despite attempts to frame the decision to republish in these terms; there is no limitation on freedom except self-censorship, which is a different issue entirely.
Newspapers self-censor all the time and usually without reflection. Reasons for doing so include concerns about social impact of publication, potential legal ramifications, facilitation of editorial framing of stories, perceived merit as news, potential impact on circulation, personal moral judgement of editorial staff, and so on. Offensiveness is not a primary concern in and of itself, but rather as it emerges within the above.
In this case, there was definitely a desire within the public to see these cartoons, however mild. (I certainly wanted to see them.) Set against this was the inherently offensive nature of the cartoons and the variety of flow-on effects resulting from publication.
I can see the argument for publication in order to meet this public desire, but I think on the balance such a decision is unfortunate, principally because Islam is already a victimised community within the west and further publication is an insult to that community. It is true that no community has the right to avoid offence, or to be spared insult; but I wish the decision had been made to value avoiding offence and insult over public desire to see the cartoons.
The angry response
The response in the Middle East, of riots and destruction, is unconscionable and massively disproportionate. That this is so tells us a variety of things, principally that this incident is not perceived as an isolated event but as the latest in a long series of insults and persecutions.
It also indicates that, without any doubt, some religious and political leaders within the Middle East have stirred up response as much they could, to serve a variety of ends. Such activities are massively irresponsible but are par for the course; our own politicians would not hesitate to make as much political hay as possible out of any such opportunity coming their way.
The extent to which the publication (and republication) of the cartoons has led to condemnation of entire other governments and nations is also extremely concerning; any framing of these events that paints the West as anti-Islam in toto is very dangerous, feeding noxious ideologies and playing into the hands of extremists on all sides.
(Threats of trade repurcussions, I think, best understood as political posturing, even in the case of the hardline and devout Iranian president. They are real political acts, seeking a public drama of contrition and concession, but I think it unlikely that threats will be carried out. That’s my best read of the situation, and I’m prepared to be wrong on it.)
The commentary on the affair in the West
I am deeply, deeply concerned to watch this whole affair provide an open season on Islam. When the tenor of letters to the editor becomes akin to discussion on toxic right-wing hate sites, then (even accounting for the polarising bias within letters to the editor) there are deepset problems within our society.
Just one concerning factor in the whole affair is the willingness of many parties to blithely speak of Islam as if all Muslim people and peoples are essentially the same. Protestors outside the British Parliament, inciting violence, have been characterised as the voice of the entire world of Islam. Many people have portrayed the whole affair as evidence of the hypocisy of Islam and its fundamental violent nature. Such rhetoric I find deeply divisive and essentially abhorrent.
Serving power interests re: Iran
It’s also worth noting that the controversy serves the needs of Western power interests in their attempts to isolate and demonise Iran. But that’s another post. Next week, maybe.

Seen: Land of the Dead
Read: Madame Bovary
Yesterday I finished reading the 1940s translation of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and finally got a chance to watch George Romero’s Land of the Dead.
Madame Bovary is a sympathetic depicition of ordinary human life, and a warning tale against romanticisation. The world is not like popular fictions of soaring romance and high drama, and to expect such things is to invite disaster.
The novel follows, with some sympathy, the plight of the desperately flawed title character, whose dissatisfaction with her ordinary life leads her to an escalating series of poor judgements which eventually results in disaster.
Land of the Dead is Romero’s take on dehumanisation of the Other, with explicit parallels to Israel/Palestine, Apartheid, the Civil Rights Movement, and the widening income gap.
It starkly asserts that a society based on fear of the other will rapidly consume its own soul. Notably, however, Romero does not place much confidence in the ability of good intentions and egalitarian spirit to resist this corruption.
(Of course, it depicts the disenfranchised as a literal bunch of flesh-eating zombies, so it’s not entirely a straightforward parable.)
Hmm. If I was better at this pithy-blog-writer thing I would find a clever gimmicky way of relating these two together, for a cheap laugh if not for insight. But they really are quite different. Oh well. If anyone has a witty suggestion, chuck it in the comments, huh?
Both are highly recommended, although if you don’t like seeing zombies eating faces and intestines you might want to skip the Romero one.

Me and Lady L
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If you’re ever going to have a ‘grinning foolishly in front of famous monument’ type photo, it might as well be as cool as this. [Obviously I didn’t take this one – Brooke was the culprit.]