is dead.

[update 1:]
Michael Berube’s discussion of Derrida is an illuminating one, and one that echoes ones I had in his postmodernism seminar, in ages long past. 

This is a bit too surreal.  You may have been following this story at the epicenter of the Bloggerized revolution, but an article I just spotted at Salon is making me take this seriously.

Remember Bush’s strange outburst during the debates, when he exclaimed “Lemmie finish!” while he had plenty of time remaining, and no one had said a word?  Well, the claim is now that George Bush was secretly receiving radio messages during his debate with Kerry, though a tiny earpiece.  And it is starting to look pretty credible.

Bloggers stoke the conspiracy with the claim that the Bush administration insisted on a condition that no cameras be placed behind the candidates. An official for the Commission on Presidential Debates, which set up the lecterns and microphones on the Miami stage, said the condition was indeed real, the result of negotiations by both campaigns. Yet that didn’t stop Fox from setting up cameras behind Bush and Kerry. The official said that “microphones were mounted on lecterns, and the commission put no electronic devices on the president or Senator Kerry.” When asked about the bulge on Bush’s back, the official said, “I don’t know what that was.”

So what was it? Jacob McKenna, a spyware expert and the owner of the Spy Store, a high-tech surveillance shop in Spokane, Wash., looked at the Bush image on his computer monitor. “There’s certainly something on his back, and it appears to be electronic,” he said. McKenna said that, given its shape, the bulge could be the inductor portion of a two-way push-to-talk system. McKenna noted that such a system makes use of a tiny microchip-based earplug radio that is pushed way down into the ear canal, where it is virtually invisible. He also said a weak signal could be scrambled and be undetected by another broadcaster.

Mystery-bulge bloggers argue that the president may have begun using such technology earlier in his term. Because Bush is famously prone to malapropisms and reportedly dyslexic, which could make successful use of a teleprompter problematic, they say the president and his handlers may have turned to a technique often used by television reporters on remote stand-ups. A reporter tapes a story and, while on camera, plays it back into an earpiece, repeating lines just after hearing them, managing to sound spontaneous and error free.

Suggestions that Bush may have using this technique stem from a D-day event in France, when a CNN broadcast appeared to pick up — and broadcast to surprised viewers — the sound of another voice seemingly reading Bush his lines, after which Bush repeated them. Danny Schechter, who operates the news site MediaChannel.org, and who has been doing some investigating into the wired-Bush rumors himself, said the Bush campaign has been worried of late about others picking up their radio frequencies — notably during the Republican Convention on the day of Bush’s appearance. “They had a frequency specialist stop me and ask about the frequency of my camera,” Schechter said. “The Democrats weren’t doing that at their convention.”

You can check out the rest of the story at Salon (you’ll have to watch an ad if you’re not a subscriber).  Or perhaps we’ll see this story jump out all over the media in the next few days.

[UPDATE]

Speculation over at Kos suggests this may not be a wire (though this possibility can’t be eliminated).  But rather a therapeutic back-brace or a bullet-proof vest.  One poster claims to know that the President’s bullet-proof vest is equipped with a handle that the secret service uses to move him about, in the event of an emergency, or to keep him moving in crowds, etc.  This might explain a lump that doesn’t seem characteristic of most such vests.  I must say that I may like the idea of GW with a secret E-Z carry handle even better than GW with a little radio in his ear.

In any, case credence seems lent to these non-radio theories by this image:

So was Bush wearing a wire?  I’m inclined to doubt it.  But maybe.  In any case, the story provided a welcome diversion from “Pen Gate” and “Oompaloompa Gate”

An interesting “Town Hall” style debate tonight.  Town-Hall style is *in*!  No predictions this time, but perhaps a little reaction afterward.

Four or five summers ago, I worked in the University Special Collections, updating a database on censorship and memory in Russia and the former Soviet Bloc.  I’d worked for the Rare Books room before, and for special collections, updating the Rare Book Room’s databases that record their collections of correspondence of Charles Sandburg, W.S. Merwin, and especially H.G. Wells.

So they hired me to update and maintain a database concerning censorship in Russia, although of course I speak not a word of the language.  The database’s retiring originator handled these items, or marked them up for me to enter.  I was happy to have work for the summer.

So I sat in a small room for several hours a day reading and summarizing articles about freedom of information in Russia, in the period immediately following V. Putin’s election.  From various sources and news feeds-for example the surprisingly reliable RFE/RL Russia, which I still check-in on occasionally, when I want to see how my old comrades, Boris Berezofsky and Vladimir Gusinsky have been faring.  (Not well).

Even then, in the hands of its nationalist KGB leader, Russia was obviously sliding into something bad.  I’d enter little stories into the database about the murders and shut-downs, carried out in ominous patterns across the former republics, and East of the Urals–stuff that would never make the CNN ticker, but would add up to something unavoidable.

Lately, things there have been changing fast, and becoming more visible:

President Vladimir Putin’s 13 September proposal to replace the direct election of regional-administration heads with a system under which local legislatures confirm candidates nominated by the president provoked very little reaction among the Russian public. In Moscow, liberals and leftists were able to summon no more than 100 people to their modest demonstration against the measure. Public-opinion polls generally show that society — tired of years of badly discredited local and national elections — is not particularly worried about this possible curtailment of its democratic rights.

Still no one seems too worried here.  The last question of the presidential debate concerned Russia.  But no answer seems forthcoming.  As an ally in an war on terror, any criticism of Russian must be delicate.  Bush noted that he’s publicly questioned Putin’s commitment to “checks and balances,” but added:

I mean, he’s also a strong ally in the war on terror. He is — listen, they went through a horrible situation in Beslan, where these terrorists gunned down young school kids. That’s the nature of the enemy, by the way. That’s why we need to be firm and resolve in bringing them to justice.

That’s precisely what Vladimir Putin understands, as well.

All this comes to mind as the result of an excellent article from The Chronicle on censorship and political and economic freedom in Russia.  The parallel slide of the US and Russia towards authoritarian nationalism, accompanied by similar happenings in Japan and elsewhere make the world bleak-seeming indeed. 

I can’t help thinking of H.G. Wells - who’s letters I worked on before turning to Russia.  I remember his 1946 end-of-life speculation, _Mind at the End of the Tether_, where amid the ruins of Europe and the destruction of Hiroshima he, like JC and Oscar Wilde, loses his faith at the end.  Wells rejects his life-long optimistic futurism, and his own moral code, concluding that “[T]his world is at the end of its tether.  The end of everything we call life is close at hand and cannot be evaded,” and declaring:

After all, the present writer has no compelling argument to convince the reader that he should not be mean or cruel or cowardly.  Such things are also in his own make-up in large measure, but nonetheless he hates and fights against them with all his strength.  He would rather our species ended its story in dignity, kindliness, and generosity, and not like drunken cowards in a daze, or poisoned rats in a sack.  But this is a matter of individual predilection for everyone to decide for himself.

Wells’s position, held by him, was perhaps forgivable in 1946.  But it wouldn’t have been in 1904.  And it’s not one that I could forgive in myself now, however difficult it may be to resist.

Preposterously, I’ve pledged to grade and return 20 paper by Wednesday—two days from now.  This adjuncting business can be a little crushing, once one nears the middle of the semester. About 70 students in three writing-intensive classes makes for a considerable amount of heavy lifting.  Will to try in any case for nine papers tonight and eleven tomorrow.  Survival is doubtful.

A friend asked me today for suggestions for films and readings for a “philosophy and film” class.  Now of course the great Moulin Rouge is the obvious choice, paired with the Phenomenology of Spirit.  But I mean, aside from that, I wonder if anyone has any killer suggestions.

Ok.  Well. Back to the grinder, then.

The mid semester crush is upon me.  I can feel my teaching prepartation slipping under the burden of grading.  With discipline, this could be worked through, but I have surely lacked such this weekend.  This blog has not been an asset in this respect.

I need to:

print attendance sheets
redo syllabi
print assingment 2 for my 109 class
grade three stacks of papers
read Hard Times
read for 109

Do my own dissertation.

It’s all just too much, it seems, though not that much really.  Grading is just hard.  A grind.  I get depressed and walk away.  I get bored.  My hand gets tired.  It just sucks. 

I need to exercise better grading discipline.  Maybe a schedule, or a place to work.  A workspace.

Move the table back to the living room and get a timer.  Maybe you can justify some tea.  But get clear space and a clear head and *get to it*.  The thing is, is that the procrastination on grading piles into and destroys everything else.  Grade just three papers at time, perhaps, but do it twice a day, every day.  Or at least once a day on days when you really want to do diss work.  I don’t know.  But don’t loll about disponding that you should be grading, or that you are, since a paper sits half-graded on the couch.  Do it, quickly, and be done, and move to something interesting that  you would like, as you *would* like most of the other stuff you have to do.

Keep clean and orgainzed and move briskly through neat things.

Also, use the Blog productively, to challenge yourself, and keep interested in things.  No despondent constant checking for comments, and web-hits.  Surely this could easily get obsessive and out of hand.

Later,
Mark

On Friday, I was tired.  I wrapped-up my office hours, and took a slow walk to the bus stop, over at Green and Wright.  It sunny and brisk and a very fine day.

I arrived at the bus stop, and stood near one of the concrete benches, looking down Green Street, to seen whether any useful bus might soon be arriving.  Seeing none, I resolved to sit down, chill out, and wait.  This plan was interrupted however, by a gigantic mantid.

Ok, not gigantic, perhaps.  But good-sized, anyhow.  On the shaded concrete block of a bench that was immediately beside me was a white semi-opaque plastic cup.  Large—the kind you might find at a party—well-suited for rum and coke.  The cup was on the bench, weighed down by about an inch or so of water remaining inside it.  Balanced absurdly on the lip of the cup was a large brown praying mantis!

Moreover, it was not just balancing there.  Its little triangular head was pivoting about, and its arms were moving.  Its whole body was swaying back and forth in a manner entirely weird and disturbing–something I hadn’t know was a regular feature of mantis behavior (.  Mantises, it seems, possess an unusual adaptive camouflage, in their habit of swaying weirdly back and forth to simulate the motion of some non-sentient foliage, swaying in the breeze.  They are able to approach prey by using an imaginary wind.

Anyway, on the plastic cup it didn’t look too convincing, I’m afraid.  And you could walk around the mantis, causing it to turn and follow you, waving and undulating back and forth.

Now, I don’t know what others might have thought, but to me this was way cool.  I checked-out the mantis for a little while, and then thought to look around for anyone I knew who might like to take a look at this odd and yet kind of menacing dancing bug.  Usually at Wright and Green around that time you can find a person or two from the department or whatever, waiting to head  home.  But no luck.  No one I knew was visible near the Busy Green/Wright intersection, either.

However, a woman had just sat down at the other end of the bench.  With no one else to show the mantis to, and after just a moment of hesitation, I said something like, “Hey, did you check out this preying mantis?”

She may have muttered something like “oh wow” before getting back to her book.  And I decided against asking whether she had noted the mantis’s dance, though I was sure she hadn’t.  For the next few minutes she, the dancing mantis and I waited in silence for the bus. 

I suppose that this women probably just wasn’t too interested in bugs.  But also, and given that, she probably figured I was either out of my mind, or some guy mostly interested to begin a seductive-type conversation with her.  Which really, I wasn’t.  But then it struck me how cool it would be if this were my seduction technique.  When my bus arrived before hers, I thought of how neat it would be to pick up the cup and the mantis, and stick each of them in a pocket, before shooting her a disgruntled look.  Just to confirm and elaborate on her suspicion.  That maybe I am a guy with a dancing mantis and a cup, who places the cup in public spaces so that he can strike up conversations with any unwary lovelies who happen by.

Surely this would be the ultimate in pick-up techniques!  Forget the whole puppy thing.  All I’d need is a little dancing mantis, a plastic cup, and a lid with some holes poked in it.  Who could possibly resist?

[apologies of course to David Rees]

So I’ve been toying with the design of this space.  I’ve managed with great effort to stick a pretty sloppy image at the top of the page. 

It is just possible that a blog with ‘dark’ in the title and a little skeleton in the corner is a bit much.  But the thing is, skeletons are fun.  Yes?  They are almost always having a good time, as far as I can see, as the one in my corner is most clearly doing.  Even if the fun is not exactly wholesome.  As that recent Johnny Depp movie showed us, the reason people like pirates is that they behave like skeletons.

Anyway.  The picture is from Jan David’s 1606 emblem book, Veridicus Christianius, which offers a healthy warning concerning our dangerous senses.

Also, you’ll note a little tag-line: “sudden access”–a phrase that comes from one of the senses of the word “Qualm.”  Liberally adapted from the OED:

1. General or widespread mortality of men or animals; plague, pestilence.
b. Loss or damage.
c. attrib., as qualm-house, -stow.

2. Croak.
      (c1374 CHAUCER Troylus v. 382 Augurye of thise foweles..As ravenes qualm)

3.  1. A (sudden) feeling or fit of faintness, illness, or sickness
      b. transf.    a. A fit of sickening fear, misgiving, or depression; a sudden sinking or faintness of      heart.

4.  The Act of Boiling.

5.  A fit or sudden access of some quality, principle, etc.
        (e.g. 1655 JER. TAYLOR Guide Devot. (1719) 125 If the Fit or Qualm of my Devotion holds out longer.)

It’s likely I’ll end up breaking this site, as I play around with code I don’t understand.  So please forgive any vanishing that might occur.

(this message has been edited around a bit).

So a few friends came over last night, and we watched Kerry v. Bush while drinking wine and rum and coke.  We relaxed afterwards by listening to Tom Lehrer records, and just a little Gordon Lightfoot.

I then returned to my computer and wrote-up my initial reaction to the debates (and to Sarah’s thoughts on the matter).  I was not enthusiastic.  Bush seemed to use Kerry’s claim that Iraq was the “wrong war, wrong time, wrong place” like a club, chasing Kerry around with it.  I’d wanted Kerry to be the one saying that kind of thing, and saying it with feeling.  That, I did not see last night.

But on the other hand, others do seem to have seen Kerry winning last night.  That’s great and I’ll take it.  Three major news polls indicate that most viewers seems to think Kerry won.  Perhaps Kerry’s muted grumbling represents the most angry one can now become on TV without getting the Dean Treatment.  We’ll just have to wait and see whether Kerry’s debate performance translates into better poll numbers.  Here’s hoping.

Kerry’s performance just might have been better, and closer to what I’d hoped for, than I at first recognized.  Finally, we’ll have to judge his performance by its results, I guess.