Conversations of Consequence Conducted with Yourself

A very guilty admission: I read the earnest and often illogically constructed arguments (however ultimately correct) at Feministing and Jezebel nearly every day. It goes well with The American Scene and Secular Right, and turns a bit rancid when digested with Racialicious and Think Progress (something about intersectionality in rights-based discourse gives this trailer-raised-from-grinding-poverty male somewhat of an acid-reflux type reaction--bad arguments are merely repeated from earnest outlet to yet-more-earnest outlet like Birther memes from Atlas Shrugged to World Net Daily.)

I chew their sometimes original cud over till that portion of my brain which handles most businessspeak-drenched coworkers kicks in and I am able to come back to a happy place, where empiricism isn't a bad word, it's not controversial to say I, as a destitute male, grew up with negligible privilege and advantages and that Milton Friedman did not puree poor people into hot mash for his hounds while Zionist Eldering Pinochet into war crimes and general cruelty.

There is no doubt that, at times, I learn something absolutely new or am relieved to discover that they do not, like Paul Ehrlich, pin their professional prospects on the prediction that my immediate ancestors were too swarthy/stupid to grow enough food to support a new generation of inscrutable heathens (yay! Borlaug may be forgotten, but Malthusian racism finds no favor among hip progressives of today!)

There are also days when I find links to indescribably unproductive prose such as this risk management technique for urban women--in a forum which does not screen by gender but rather by lockstep agreement with the premise that rape culture produces 100% potential rapists/nice-guy syndrome-afflicted nerds on the very precipice of becoming rapine hoodlums--and I wonder what is the point? Most people who have been targets (or know that they fit the profile of such--like south-asian graduate students who live in areas dense with low-income housing) already screen passersby for threat levels. Wouldn't the men they describe--those who approach and attempt to open conversation by coercive action--be the best audience for such instruction? Where would such men be found? On Kate Harding's blog? The inductive assumption is: no. These men are to be found exactly where they are harassing urban women--on the street, in the subway, on the bus. Not on a blog which screens comments for agreement with what is admittedly a foundational premise of Jezebel, Feministing, Feministe, Pandagon and nearly any other blog which discusses these issues.

How hard is this to understand? Profile this Sepoy all you like but the bacon grease remains on the cartridge and neither you nor I am better for it.

What is "Indian Food" in the Context of Richmond?

Since the beginning of the speech code era, it's been prudent to avoid saying words like "niggardly" in reference to stinginess or "niggle" in reference to minor injuries for fear of being mistaken for Rosie O'Donnell doing her best impression of Suzie Wong.

Since that time, Richmond has attracted many fervent believers in the 'progressive' tradition who may or may not enforce such speech codes in daily life--or simply believe that they do, that by doing so they are superior, and that any opinion leveled in opposition stems purely from animus towards some favored/disfavored minority, someone lacking agency, etc. etc.

There are some progressives who, repeatedly and without reasonable explanation (in the age of Google, how can one not know?), use a term so lacking in descriptive value that it might rival the phrase, "that's so gay.' I speak, of course, of those brash people who use the phrase "Indian Food."

Nevermind that there are 18 major languages, hundreds of dialects and innumerable local cultural quirks unique to a particular village or even street corner, don't bother with details such as these, thus is the life of the "Indian Food" progressive.

Even for the observant few who notice that Malabar doesn't quite taste like India K'Raja, or even the highly unlikely occasion of one observing that thosai made in the former resembles in texture and taste the golden-brown beauties outside Sabhas all over Chennai, there is a marked tendency to lean on the hollow categorical crutch of "Indian Food" when asked for 'ethnic favorites.'

Why is this so? In the age of diners finally catching on to the fact that what they've ordered from the local Chinese delivery restaurant comes from no part of China except that which exists in vaguely Orientalist fantasy (or rather nightmare, should you ever taste a truly regional cuisine)why are so many diners eager to reduce the the diversity of cuisines in south asia to Apu slanging makhani or Taj Bandalandabad banging out tasteless renditions of Saag from cookie-cutter menus?

Is it laziness? Ignorance? Some fetid combination of the two? Of one thing I am sure, to share iddiappam, hoppers, rasam, sambar, thosai, sambol or any of the other treasures that I grew up tasting with egregiously incurious consumers such as these, here in Richmond VA, would be not only a monumental waste but a crime against the generations of food alchemists who turned the bounty of colonial trade and tropical produce into the wealth of the diaspora--that which kept us whole and hearty through poverty, dislocation, alien surroundings and the suspicious glares of our erstwhile hosts. Those that took our tax money and gave us space for a scratched out cricket ground--a bone for the brown masses and that is all. For you, bloody idiots, there is no tamarind b'ath, no maalu paan, only disdain.

please note that, once proficient in the preparation of all these delicacies, I will bring them to Richmond--albeit in the privacy of the home and away from the licensure-loving eyes of the State. Also, I love progressives as people--just not as political and social ideologues.

Lanka Going Nuclear? Alack-a-Day, All Progress And No Yesterday.

Engaging with the arguments put forward here would require a tendentious and incredibly long post which would eat up so many of my productive hours that those fools Going Galt would find a very low price for Envy futures.

The premise is striking, though, as it required citing greenpeace against nuclear power on a hydro-favorable island--perhaps the oddest conjunction of mendacious and stupid I have ever seen.

Notre Dame: Victim of The Dastardly Empirical Bully?

My first thoughts on hearing the news were intemperate and rude:

Heterodox economists, those more generally sympathetic to maverick Padres rising up against the State, are being forced out after decades of telling neoclassical economists to suck it. A most maudlin exit for these cool fellows is no surprise--they are the dumbly gaping horse-trader aghast at the somehow threatening but also inscrutable corporate bulk of boiler, stack and exchanger.

but what of it? Does it serve any purpose to signal, by organizational shuffling and core curriculum alterations, that a particular set of objections to widely utilized quantitative methods should be received by undergraduates in a frame of inferiority or merely superfluous bugger-all?

An Analytical Question: What Is the Maximal Impact of GSP

Are there are any studies/literature regarding the impact of GSP status on SL manufacturing outputs, profitability and general employment? I would welcome any and all data.

I feel as if most arguing done over this topic is on the grounds of how the poorest components of the process, the garment workers, will be affected by losing employment. Not how many jobs will be lost, profitability disappeared or outputs lowered. Also, there seems to be a quick segue from economic arguments that are not empirically based straight into morality plays.

Let's enlighten everyone.

Shorter: Razeen Sally

Razeen Sally: Tamils adept at creating wealth, Singhalese not so much and not their fault. Singhalese elites live in world dangerously unconnected to real one. Will eventually turn country into Putinical Oligarchy.

Shorter: Kath Noble

Kath Noble, "Tissa, Pissa, Wicked Cracka"

"Yeah Tissa thing is a shame but c'mon machan, he's a bloody idiot, usreasonablepeople are 50/50 on whether he's really a sheep-fucker or not and I don't need to cite a goddamn line of this bloody idiot's writing to substantiate one thornbush-buggering thing I just wrote. Oh yes, and judges are so not interpreting text but rather clutching the urine-soaked security blanket of strict constructionism so close as to risk pneumonia after a cold snap. Mahinda mama, let this tiger-fellating fool outta jail."