"Yes" is my favorite answer

Pirates Return: World Figures Confused

2008-11-21T02:53:00.000-08:00

Background for people who don't read international news:

Piracy (actual sea piracy, where pirates hijack ships) of the coast of Somalia has skyrocketed in the last year, and shipping companies and world governments are struggling to figure out what to do about it.

Assessment of the situation:

I'm really seriously amused by all of this. People are so used to thinking in terms of the fantasy of the perfect Nation-State system (the idea that the whole world is divided up into governments ["states"] that rightfully represent specific groups of people ["nations"]), that a lot of people are coming up completely baffled by this piracy crisis.

This wouldn't happen if Somalia was a real nation state - the issue is that it isn't. Since 1991, no government has controlled more than like half of Somalia, and the currently internationally recognized government of Somalia (the one that's in the U.N. and the African Union and that has embassies in other countries) barely has control over any land or people at all (despite having a relatively good couple years where they actually sort of control Mogadishu, the "capital" of Somalia). In other words, Somalia is divided up by a bunch of unofficial, improvised, weak - and for all intents and purposes, completely independent and autonomous - states, overlapping with what in most places is effectively anarchy.

If people in the outside world accepted this, and built their expectations from the ground up based on reality, then at least this surge of piracy would be easy to understand. But it seems that the majority of outsiders don't understand the situation. They can't imagine a world where one of the "countries" is not controlled by a sovereign nation-state - so they imagine that it is. The U.N., the A.U., and most countries recognize the powerless "Transitional Federal Government" as the sovereign government of Somalia, and pretend that it actually controls the territory that it claims. Journalists believe them, and are forced to call the ramshackled independent governments and warlord kingdoms "semi-autonomous regions", as if they're required to answer to some higher authority, no differently than Scotland in the U.K., or Indian Reservations in the U.S.; and when they refer to the official government, they compromise and call it "weak", because they can't bear to imagine that it's actually completely powerless within most parts of Somalia.

I read a relatively good news report on the situation recently, which actually pointed out the confusion, and seemed to partly understand it. It had this quote, which I thought was a pretty good illustration of the political situation:

In New York, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize its sanctions committee to recommend people and entities who would be subject to an asset freeze and travel ban, measures that may be aimed at local officials suspected of aiding the pirates. But it was unclear how that could affect the pirates, who live off cash ransoms dropped in burlap sacks from helicopters or in waterproof suitcases loaded onto skiffs.

The idea is that the pirates are able to do what they do because there's no one stopping them on the shore. This has become the biggest industry in Somalia, with unofficial local governments not strong enough to do anything, and usually not interested. If the rest of the world wants to do something about it, they're going to have to pull their heads out of the clouds and realize that the situation on the ground is not a nation-state, but anarchy. No one can stop the pirates just by asking, "Why isn't the government doing anything?" Other governments are either going to have to take control themselves by force, or give some recognition and support to the unofficial organizations that want to be the new governments of their respective pieces of Somalia.

Value judgment:

All that said, I'm not sure I think of this "crisis" as all bad. It definitely sucks for people to be held hostage (most of the pirates' money comes from ransoms) - and that's something that I take very seriously because of personal experience having a family member held hostage - but other than that, if it can wake people up to reality, if it can bring support and recognition to the more viable regional governments in Somalia, if it helps disadvantaged and ignored people to assert themselves on the world stage; then maybe it's more of a good thing than a bad thing.

-Evan

What Goes Around Comes Around, or "Deep Fried"

2007-01-28T04:27:00.000-08:00

Here's a little Star Wars limerick I wrote about six months ago (inspired by the longtime activities of The Stooge, the StarWars.com Blogs' friendly resident comedian). I was going to post it on my somewhat neglected Star Wars blog, but apparently it was slightly too racy for StarWars.com's language filters. Oh well. Drum roll....

More seductive, easier, faster
Were the dark side and Palps, Annie's master
But Vader, a dad?
Palpatine made him mad
And he ended up tossing the bastard

Thank you, thank you very much.

-Evan

Odes

2006-10-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

So, in my Spanish class the other day we read Pablo Neruda's "Oda a la Papa" and the assignment our teacher gave us was to write our own ode to some everyday object. This is kind of a silly thing to assign us for what's basically a grammar class, but I didn't mind because it was something I could do pretty easily and have fun with. Still, I didn't really know when I would get around to it.

That night I came home late but didn't want to go to bed yet, and suddenly felt motivated to write some odes. I somehow managed to crank out nine of them in half an hour.

I now present the entire set, in the order they were written, edited only slightly for grammar and consistent capitalization (they are in Spanish).

Nueve Odas a la Vida Diaria
Por Evan

Oda a la Computadora

Mi computadora es
como un amigo

Que no siente
nada

Siempre esta aqui
para ayudarme

La maquina
tan complicada

Me encantan
los colores lindos

Y me caen bien
los aplicaciones

Que bueno es mi computadora!

Que bueno es la empresa de HP!

Oda a la Mesa

Que buena es la mesa
para poner cosas

Que bello es el mueble
para comer comidas

La mesa es mi amiga
porque siempre esta cerca

La mesa es tan buena
porque vive conmigo

En mi casa

Oda al Vaso

Como me encanta el vaso
de agua

Siempre es por mi lado
para acabar mi sed

Cada noche me visita
para evitar estar chuchaqui*

Cuando esta vacio mi vaso
Lleno otro

Oda a mi Diccionario

Tengo diccionario
de dos lenguas

Espanol y ingles
son los dos

Me encantan los dos
idiomas que hablo

Pero muchas veces
necesito transducir algo

Y consigo ayuda
de mi diccionario

Oda a mi Reloj

Mi reloj
es un buen reloj

Siempre tiene la hora
No importa que es

A las dos de la madrugada
aqui esta mi reloj

Y me dice que son
las dos y diecisiete

Estoy borracho
y todavia funciona mi reloj

Oda al Piso

El piso es lo mas importante
en mi vida

Porque siempre esta abajo
para apoyarme

Cuando camino sobre la casa
todavia esta abajo

Es la fundacion de la casa
Es la fundacion de mi vida

En los Estados y en el Ecuador
esta igual

Siempre el piso esta listo
para apoyarme

Oda a la Puerta

La puerta servir en mi vida
para separar las salas

A veces esta abierto
Y otras veces esta cerrado

Decide si puedo pasar
o no puedo pasar

Es como la reina
Me dice que se puede hacer

La reina del pasaje
Viva la puerta!

Oda a las Ventanas

Las ventanas
son claras

Las ventanas
son grandes

Las ventanas
nos sirven bien

Puedo ver a traves
de la ventana

El mundo afuera
El mundo extranjero

Mi ventana es la puerta
al mundo afuera

Oda a las Camisetas

Tengo muchas camisetas
Son individuales

Una de Spiderman
Una de Los Shins

Una de los Decemberists
Una del color azul

Dos del color rojo
Una del color verde

Todas son miembros
de mi familia de camisetas

Todas son bellas
Todas son miyas

*Evitarlo cada noche! That's quite an exaggeration....I don't know where that came from. ^_^

-Evan

Pirates!

2006-07-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

Originally written early morning of July 12, 2006

Today (Wednesday the twelfth - it's not Thursday until after I go to bed! Or until the sun comes up....) I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (sequel to the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, for any of you not fortunate enough to have seen that one....or not cool enough to like it ^_^ ). This is my story and spoiler-free review.

I went with my family - parents, brother Tyler, cousin Hanne, and uncle John - and my friend Bryn and my brother's ex-girlfriend Emma. We ate Chinese food first, then went to see the movie, at the Carmike Cinemas in Corvallis.

Me and Bryn got into a fight in the parking lot. Not like we were angry at each other. I just sorta attacked him out of the blue, and he tried to defend himself, and took my hat. We ended up rolling on the ground. It was fun. I hurt my toenail, but you know, all in a day's work. Oh, and I guess I should mention that he basically won. I was still lying on the pavement as he walked away with my hat in his hand.

The previews were unusually entertaining, I thought. Lady in the Water looks pretty cool/interesting...like I really want to see it now...maybe it would look more like a throw-away thriller or something, but I know M. Night Shyamalan better than that; I've found all his big movies to be really well done, surprisingly great at best, pretty interesting at least. The preview isn't what I expected from the teaser, and I wouldn't be surprised if the movie isn't what I would normally expect from this preview...that's what's so great about his movies. :) Talladega Nights actually looks pretty funny...a silly one, but funny. Snakes on a Plane looked about how I might expect....not sure what to think of it. There was a teaser trailer that I really got a kick out of....it starts out about a Mars probe that supposedly crashed (an actual, real-life event), and then you might be able to imagine where it goes from there....but what movie it is might suprise you; it's likely not many people will get such a huge sense of amusement out of this as I did, but I'll leave the title unsaid just in case. Accepted was another one that looked reasonably funny. There might have been some others that I forgot about....

So, the feature presentation! The new Pirates of the Caribbean is a really great movie. It's not the same as the first one, and I don't know if I'd say it's quite as good, but it doesn't disappoint. I loved it!

It does have some weaknesses. There's a lot of zany action scenes with crazy predicaments and situations, which are great (and served the first movie well), but there are maybe too many of them. Sure, these parts are fun, but after awhile it gets a little too excessive to take seriously. There are also quite a few clever allusions to events and characters and situations from the first movie. Which are great! But again, I think this is a little overdone - it starts to get old. Luckily this stops happening very much about halfway through the movie.

Lastly, this one is just quite a bit goofier and fantastic than the previous one. I don't mean it has a lot of stupid humor or something. I mean it's less grounded in reality....it feels less like something that might really happen. This is partly due to the crazy, perhaps-contrived action sequences I mentioned already, and also because of a higher amount of bizareness and alienness in the supernatural elements of the story. Where the first movie had a crew of cursed undead who were revealed as skeletons under the light of the moon, this movie has barnacle-encrusted, half-human-half-various-sea-creatures undead, led by a man with an octopus for a head, crewing a ship that can submerge at will....and don't forget the dreadful kraken, an enormous tentacled sea monster. I'm mostly okay with it. It's not way overdone. It just takes things a bit farther than I was comfortable with.

But here comes the good part - all of this barely matters! Because while the filmmakers could have relied on the crazy action, the fantastic creatures, the clever allusions, to make this movie entertaining (and only entertaining, nothing more), they didn't! No cop-outs in sight. Dead Man's Chest has all intelligence of plot and most of the depth of character and original cleverness of the first Pirates of the Caribbean. Maybe it doesn't quite add up to the brilliance of the first one, but all the good stuff is still there.

One of the things I loved most about the original Pirates of the Caribbean was the complexity of the plot and the attention to detail. There are tons of little things that support the plot or add interesting details, many of which you need to watch it over and over again to catch. It's fun, it's a complement to the viewer's intelligence, and it makes it feel like it's a real story with real people. If you can pay close enough attention to these things the first time, you might even get insights into what could happen later - it's not predictable, it's just so seamlessly put together that everything is connected.

The new movie has this too. I love it!

And of course, all the familiar characters are back (when I say "all", I mean really, more than you might think)! But no contrived backstory or plot is necessary to make it work (at least not so far....I have questions about one particular character), it's just a natural progression from the way the last movie ended. They're the same characters we know and love, but there are certainly still some interesting developments. Some might feel that character depth has taken a backseat to character action, execution of the characters' personalities (not execution like the gallows; execution like doing things), and I maybe feel a little bit that way (duh, I'm the one who brought it up in the first place...), but it's not obvious enough to be too bothersome.

What it comes down to is, this movie has all the great things the first one did, just a little (I mean a little) less of each, and more crazy action and fantasy.

I recommend that you go see this movie! If you haven't seen the first one, watch that first - you don't have to, but you'll appreciate this one a lot more. If you've seen the first one and love it, you'll love this one too!

I'll leave you with one last warning - remember (if you already knew) that this is a trilogy. ^_^

Freedom from Fear

2006-04-26T03:14:00.000-07:00

Stacks of paperwork, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Backed-up to-do list, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Anxiety of telephone calls, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Anxiety of strangers, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Broken glass on the ground, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Alleged long waits in airport security, I refuse to be afraid of you.

People who tell me what I should believe, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Giant corporations, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Reactionary fanatics, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Intolerant people, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. Bin Laden, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. Bush, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. Cheney, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. Rumsfeld, I refuse to be afraid of you.

People who use straw-man arguments against me, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Sensationalist news outlets, I refuse to be afraid of you.

People who call me un-American, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. Hannity, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. O'Reilly, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. Carlson, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. Dobbs, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. Murdoch, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Color-coded terror alert levels, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Racial and religious profiling, I refuse to be afraid of you.

Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Hannity, Mr. O'Reilly, Mr. Carlson, Mr. Dobbs, Mr. Murdoch; I refuse to be afraid of what you tell me to.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself. Refuse to be afraid, and you will set yourself free.

Spread the word.

-Evan

Sunshine is a good thing

2006-04-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

Today is sunny.

I went to bed at eleven-thirty last night (!!!) and got more than nine hours of sleep in advance of my ten o'clock morning class...it was pretty great. After that it was still cold outside but gloriously sunny. I rode my scooter a longer way home so I could stay in the sun longer and pass through the crowds of people. I ran into Jason, someone I know from back home, and Bryn, my roommate and de facto best friend. But I see him all the time.

I went to the University Health Center because I had an appointment. I'm applying to study abroad in Ecuador this Fall, and the government of Ecuador wants me to prove I'm not going to go there and spread a bunch of diseases. I'm officially HIV negative. :)

Then I went to Fred Meyer, because I needed a replacement filter for my water pitcher.....the indicator said it was dead a few weeks ago, and last week the water started actually not tasting filtered. They only had four-packs of the kind I needed, so I got that. My parents have a similar pitcher so they offered to buy the extras from me. Or whatever. I was basically using money they gave me anyway. I also bought two CD's because they were on a two-for-$10 rack. Sweet.

I rode the bus most of the way, because Fred Meyer is pretty far away. I saw a sign on an auto accessories shop that said:

NEW BLUE TOOTH
HANDS FREE HERE

My first thought was something like, I wonder what blue tooth hands are? And my second thought was something like, And why would they be giving them away for free? But I figured it out.

I also saw a sign in someone's yard that said "Vote for Vogt". Heh.

There were people at the bus station asking me to sign a petition, but I was in a hurry to catch the bus the first time I went by, and they were gone when I came back.

I've done all this stuff and it's not even four yet. Wow.

-Evan

[Cross-posted elsewhere.]

¡Ya basta!

2006-04-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

I hereby present proof that there is such a thing as a Republican politician who is neither an idiot nor particularly slimy.

Last week I was watching live proceedings from the U.S. House of Representatives, via C-SPAN. I was stricken by a speech given by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), which showed an admirably spirited and independent concern for the well-being of our country and the world, a rejection of a lot of the negative things the Republican party has come to stand for.

Now, don't take this as an all-out promotion of Rep. Paul's politics - I have some major disagreements with him, for example on the topic of immigration. But really, I'm impressed and inspired. Here's an excerpt:

I smell an expanded war in the Middle East, and pray that I’m wrong. I sense that circumstances will arise that demand support regardless of the danger and cost. Any lack of support, once again, will be painted as being soft on terrorism and al Qaeda. We will be told we must support Israel, support patriotism, support the troops, and defend freedom. The public too often only smells the stench of war after the killing starts. Public objection comes later on, but eventually it helps to stop the war. I worry that before we can finish the war we’re in and extricate ourselves, the patriotic fervor for expanding into Iran will drown out the cries of, “enough already!”

Full speech: http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr040506.htm

Keep in mind guys, this isn't Ralph Nader or Howard Dean or Al Franken - this is a Republican congressman from Texas. All those of you who are U.S. citizens and old enough to vote should read the rest of this (do it for me? O_O ). Really. Make time. And it wouldn't hurt the rest of you either.

-Evan

[Cross-posted elsewhere.]

An Essay on Fundamentalism

2006-04-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

In writing on this topic, I don't claim to be an expert, and I'm not looking to offend anyone, but this is how I feel.

Fundamentalism, when I here refer to it, is the doctrine of absolute adherence to the every word of a religious or other guiding document, whether it be the Bible, the Qur'an, or even the U.S. Constitution. A fundamentalist claims to honor the text in the one and only fundamentally correct way - literally and absolutely. This verbatim devotion includes not only the content of the narrative (when present, e.g. the story of Jesus in the Gospels), but usually also the wording of each statement made, especially if the statements are attributed to an allegedly prophetic or divine figure (e.g. Muhammed, God, the Founding Fathers).

I have a problem with fundamentalism. Well, several problems actually.

First and foremost, the fundamentalist approach strikes me as incredibly juvinile and ignorant. And I mean that - these are words carefully chosen, not for their potention to offend, but for their accuracy, in my opinion. It is one thing to believe that the entire narrative of a work has been recorded in good faith. With older works, like the Bible, especially the early parts, this seems a bit naive, given time and human nature; but at least it's plausible. And the same applies to faith that statements have been transcribed accurately over time. But in other areas faith in literality can begin to get a bit ridiculous.

I use here the example of the Christian Bible, only because I know more about it than, say, the Qur'an or the Buddhist scriptures. Many fundamentalist Christians claim to adhere verbatim to the Holy Bible. This works fine for the ignorant, or perhaps for those who believe Bibilical transcribers and translators to be divinely inspired in some very direct and detailed way. But anything less and, in light of even elementary knowledge of history or language, it starts to look pretty silly.

The content of the so-called Old Testament of the Bible was passed on orally for thousands of years, during which strict quality standards may have largely preserved it, but probably not totally. Once these and later the Gospels were committed to paper, historians and Biblical scholars will tell you that they still weren't preserved perfectly. Every time they were copied (and they were, many times - we don't have the original documents) numerous errors had the opportunity to creep in, and it would be quite plausible to surmise that small things could have been changed out of good intentions.

In fact, I'm under the impression that among those early copies of documents that are known, there is variation present. The church councils had to pick which versions to use, and I imagine they made decent choices, but I don't think any of them would have claimed at the time that the other versions were the only deviations and that the versions used in the Canon were pure and in their absolute original forms. For that matter, I'm also under the impression that even the four have some direct contradictions. I hardly think it makes sense to claim that two contradicting statements are both true completely and literally.

Furthermore, anyone who knows more than one language, or who has studied a second language to any significant degree, can tell you that translation is not simply a matter of looking up each word in a dictionary. Many words, especially among languages that aren't closely related, have no direct equivalent. Most multi-word expressions don't either. Connotations are different, cultural and linguistic context is different. Inevitably, translation includes an element of subjectivity, in which the translator is forced to make many decisions that have no one right answer. And unless you're reading the Bible in Greek, or Hebrew, or some other language the books may have been originally written in (I don't know for sure, I'm not an expert), then the version you're reading has been translated at least once, probably more times (I guarantee you the Bible was not originally written in English). Again, unless God was making the calls for the translators on a word-by-word basis, there's really no excuse in considering it to be "pure".

When fundamentalists insist that the words of, say, Jesus Christ, are to be taken literally 100% of the time, that's where the juvinility comes in. Isn't Jesus allowed to use metaphor and symbolism? Those are some of the best ways of getting points across for anyone, and to deny them to someone who is supposed to have been spreading God's message seems to be a bit, well, rididulous, silly, and maybe dependent on illiteracy (not the actual inability to read and write, but the lack of knowledge of the nature of literature). When Jesus says, "This is my body...This is my blood," does that mean that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are literally human flesh and blood? Of course not! They're obviously not, and there's really no reason to deny otherwise, unless you believe above all things (solid evidence included), that Jesus really mean they were, and that he was right. But even then, isn't it far more plausible that he was speaking metaphorically? Why not?

My second problem with fundamentalism is that most of its followers don't bother to actually do a good job of following it. That is, they refuse to see the whole picture, focusing only on whatever parts are most convenient for them. Many fundamentalist Christians here in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere) do this. They find a one-liner that fits well into what they already believe, and ignore the context and any differing parts of the scriptures. This is not only intellectually irresponsible, but also a betrayal of the very tenets of fundamentalism. What I'm saying is that because it is so extreme, fundamentalism tends to beget irresponsibility, by attracting people who can become very devoted to the concept without actually applying it. Fundamentalists end up professing their own beliefs (i.e. what they've been told to believe by people around them) in the name of the text. Among Christians, I think this might be what's called "using the Lord's name in vain," and it's one reason why many people who don't know better think that Christians are, if you'll excuse the expression, a bunch of assholes.

Third, because fundamentalists tend to choose pieces of their text that suit them and take it to the extreme, fundamentalism is all too often used as an excuse for extremist action and even violence. I don't know very much about what passages from the Qur'an Islamist terrorists use as an excuse to slaughter little kids, but I do know that American Christians all the way up to the mid-19th Century took passages from the Bible out of context to justify slavery, and fundamentalist Christians today use them to discriminate against homosexuals and launch crusades of hate against those and other people, despite Jesus's prominent teachings about loving everyone and not judging people.

And it's not just religious people doing these kinds of things. Here's the second amendment to the U.S. Constition, a document that we do have the luxury of knowing is accurate, since we still have the original, untranslated document:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Does that mean everyone of all ages should have the right to own their own personal artillery canon? Of course not. But many people who like to shoot things insist that based on this, they be allowed to own dangerous weapons that are designed for use against living people, like automatic machine guns. Well, maybe they should, or maybe they shouldn't, but correct me if I'm wrong when I observe that the amendment does not say:

The right of the people to keep and bear and use any kind of Arms, for whatever reason they feel like, shall not be infringed.

Of course, some fundamentalists make it out to mean that. Now, I'm not trying to put down hunters, or people who just like to shoot things, or even people who just like to shoot things with machine guns. I just mean it as a rebuke to anyone who claims that the Consitution gives them the absolute and unlimited freedom to bear arms for any reason. It's the fundamentalism that I don't like.

If you disagree with what I've said here, or if I've offended you, or if you have something else you want to say, please feel free bring it to my attention. I'm open to opinions.

That's all for now.

-Evan

[Cross-posted elsewhere.]

On the loss of sweatshirts

2006-02-15T00:40:00.000-08:00

Someone stole my sweatshirt! Or something. It was my favorite of the two sweatshirts I own, and now I can hardly even wear any of my red t-shirts because they don't go with my red sweatshirt! Not cool.

If you're out there (on the web...), and you took home a dark blue sweatshirt that wasn't yours from that party at the hockey house last Saturday, now would be a great time to get it back to me....

I wouldn't even be mad. I'm not even mad now. Just disappointed.

Hello World

2006-01-22T07:22:00.000-08:00

So here you are reading the first post on my blog. It's 7:30 in the morning and I haven't gone to bed yet, so I should probably go do something else now, like eat applesauce and watch le television. But I just wanted to get it started. I'm going to change the blog title as soon as I find something better, which shouldn't be too hard (for posterity, it's currently "Words About Things," which I think might be overly generic....).

Well I'll post something more sometime, maybe even soon, but in the meantime, here are a couple pictures of my nifty France-shaped rock (found it myself). It's pretty much the sweetest rock ever.