It’s not only work to find work, it’s practically a full-time job to fill out the paperwork once you get ready to start.  I realize that I’m supposed to be grateful that I found something in the first place, and indeed I am, grateful enough to put up with 30 minutes of mind-numbing paperwork, all of which was there to satisfy attorneys and government agencies.

I can’t even remember half the forms, but I do remember filling out my name a dozen times, my address at least half a dozen times, my phone number and social security number half a dozen times as well, but on different forms.  Every company re-creates the receipt for the building key and the locker room key in its own warm, friendly, welcoming style.

Now, the government has decided to try to keep track of “new” jobs created, or people who are being hired back, or some such self-congratulatory statistic on what a great job they’re doing pulling us out of this mess, which means three additional forms asking my age and how long I’d been looking.  Naturally, we’ll never know the name of the concrete-tendured overpaid genius who decided to give half the population flashbacks to their days of taking standardized tests, but two of them were bubble-sheets, and one of them required bubbles for my name, address, city, state, zip, phone number, and social security number.  You sort of feel like filling in the letters properly, and then randomly filling in bubbles, just to let them know, but that’s just risking the Wrath of the Bureaucracy of Unreconciled Data, and God only knows what they might decide to do in revenge.

Admittedly, except for these couple of competency tests, the real problem here lies not so much with the government as with the companies themselves.  It ought to be easy enough to put these forms online, and the one form that is online, the I-9, is a government form.  I suspect the reason they don’t is that, well, the don’t have to.  I’ll only fill this form out once, and they’re not paying me when I do, so you can see where the incentives are on their end.  On my end, it goes back to that whole gratitude thing.

And yet, for a contractor, who might have to fill out three or more of these bibles during a year, it’s beyond ridiculous.  And a large company, who might bring in a dozen new employees every week, a couple of dozen right after graduation, is paying these new employees to sign off on the benefits package, note that they received the policy handbook, note that they received the safety instructions, apply for direct deposit, and fill out bubble sheets.  So you’d think they wouldn’t mind getting those new guys through training 30 minutes earlier.

In honor of those men and women who’ve given their lives in defense of our country, I’d like to call on the Memorial Day remarks of Presidents past:

From Ronald Reagan in 1988:

Once each May, amid the quiet hills and rolling lanes and breeze-brushed trees of Arlington National Cemetery, far above the majestic Potomac and the monuments and memorials of our Nation’s Capital just beyond, the graves of America’s military dead are decorated with the beautiful flag that in life these brave souls followed and loved. This scene is repeated across our land and around the world, wherever our defenders rest. Let us hold it our sacred duty and our inestimable privilege on this day to decorate these graves ourselves — with a fervent prayer and a pledge of true allegiance to the cause of liberty, peace, and country for which America’s own have ever served and sacrificed.

…

Our pledge and our prayer this day are those of free men and free women who know that all we hold dear must constantly be built up, fostered, revered, and guarded vigilantly from those in every age who seek its destruction. We know, as have our Nation’s defenders down through the years, that there can never be peace without its essential elements of liberty, justice, and independence.

and previous to that, in 1982:

The willingness of some to give their lives so that others might live never fails to evoke in us a sense of wonder and mystery. One gets that feeling here on this hallowed ground, and I have known that same poignant feeling as I looked out across the rows of white crosses and Stars of David in Europe, in the Philippines, and the military cemeteries here in our own land. Each one marks the resting place of an American hero and, in my lifetime, the heroes of World War I, the Doughboys, the GI’s of World War II or Korea or Vietnam. They span several generations of young Americans, all different and yet all alike, like the markers above their resting places, all alike in a truly meaningful way.

Winston Churchill said of those he knew in World War II they seemed to be the only young men who could laugh and fight at the same time. A great general in that war called them our secret weapon, “just the best darn kids in the world.” Each died for a cause he considered more important than his own life. Well, they didn’t volunteer to die; they volunteered to defend values for which men have always been willing to die if need be, the values which make up what we call civilization. And how they must have wished, in all the ugliness that war brings, that no other generation of young men to follow would have to undergo that same experience.

And from President Clinton, in 1994:

Here at Arlington, row after row of headstones, aligned in silent formation, reminds us of the high cost of our freedom. Almost a quarter of a million Americans rest here alone, from every war since the Revolution. Among them are many names we know: General Pershing, Audie Murphy, General Marshall and so many others.

But far more numerous are the Americans whose names are not famous, whose lives were not legend, but whose deeds were the backbone that secured our nation’s liberty. Today we honor them. We honor them all as heroes — those who are buried here and those who are buried all around the nation and the world.

If you look at the headstones, they don’t tell you whether the people buried there are poor or rich. They make no distinction of race, or of age, or of condition. They simply stand, each of them, for one American. Each reminds us that we are descendants, whatever our differences, of a common creed — unbeatable when we are united, one nation under God.

The British electorate has turned decisively against Labour, but has failed to give the Tories a decisive majority in Parliament, meaning that the horse-trading can start.  The Liberal Democrats are clearly more ideologically aligned with Labour, and indeed, even as the returns were coming in last night, Labour spokesmen were talking about the current electoral system being “on its last legs,” and electoral reform being necessary. 

Of course, hung Parliaments in Britain are exceedingly rare, and the occurence of one in the last 40 years or so hardly means that the system is “on its last legs,” but the left rarely lets rules, or public attachment to them, get in the way of a good power grab.

What they have in mind is a continental-style proportional representation system, where parties would get seats based on the total popular vote.  Such as  system would make it almost impossible for either of the major parties to ever form an outright majority again, putting the LibDems – a distant third in both popular vote and seats under the current system – in the driver’s set in determining future governments.  It’s unlikely that the Tories would sell their political soul for such a deal, but Labour has made it clear that it’s willing to consider the proposal, or at least nudge Britain in that direction.  There would need be no popular referendum on the matter, and I’m not even sure that Lords would have to vote on it, or that a Labour-stacked Lord would stand in the way.

Still, it seems that as long as we’re playing with the future of the UK here, the Tories might have a card to play, as well.  Under pressure from the SNP, the Scottish National Party, Labour’s Tony Blair got Scotland a parliament of its own, and home rule after a fashion.  Labour has long dominated Scottish politics at the national level, and there was a time when the SNP looked as though it might become the major party there.  So it made sense for Labour to keep the SNP in the fold this way.

So perhaps the Tories could do the same thing with the SNP, offering greater autonomy for the Scottish Parliament, moving them in that direction.  As long ago as 1987 (I was there at the time), the Tories got more or less swept from Scotland, and people were raising questions about the moral authority of a Tory government to govern a Scotland where it didn’t have any seats.

Those questions about legitimacy could work in reverse, especially given an outright Tory majority in England and Wales combined.  Should Scotland, which already has its own Parliament, provide the working margin for a government that the rest of the country has decisively rejected?

In fact, on a Beeb interview last night, an SNP member suggested exactly that.  Just before he sent the presenter into an apoplectic fit by suggesting that they’d talk to the Tories, and might support a Tory government in return for “protection” or something like that, for Scottish interests.  That there was no such apoplexy regarding a similar “selling” of votes by the LD for Labour shows, again (sigh), the BBC’s bias, and that there might be a real threat there.

Of course, last night’s elections, with the SNP winning only 6 of 59 Scottish seats, point to the idea that what the Scots wants isn’t independence but a free ride on the productive part of the country.  If that’s the case, then such a deal would be totally about power politics and not about satisfying any particular part of the electorate.

Kind of like what Labour has in mind.

The Cold War.  This idea is so old – and yet so new – that I don’t even have a category for it.  I mean, the USSR is so last century.  Really, it embodies pretty much everything that went off the rails from 1914 – 1989.  You want evil, the Soviets have it all.  Genocide.  Secret police.  Armed suppression.  Grey masses wearing grey clothes eating grey mush.

Let’s face it.  We do best when we can make fun of our enemies.  (It’s the main reason that the suppression of the Mohammed cartoons is so dangerous, and the main reason that the academy’s meek acquiescence in the matter is so dreadful.)  But if we find it funny it’s because we were winning, and we didn’t have to live with this crap, and if any Russians find it funny, it’s because they don’t have to live with it any more.

So why do I bring this up?  Because apparently, there are people abroad in the world who are not entirely convinced of this.  I don’t mean Putin, who was apparently plotting to re-create the Czarist Empire from the moment Hungarians started issuing visas and half the Germans under his watchful eye decamped to the West for some refreshingly non-destructive window-shopping.  I don’t mean Inner Party members or even Outer Party members.  I mean Americans, westerners, people who supposedly spent the better part of a century working to eliminate Homo Communismus from the taxonomy of living political beings, who are not entirely convinced that it was a good thing that the GDR went out of business.

I ran into one today.

I won’t recount the conversation at length, since I can’t do it justice, and you’ve heard it all before.  (If you haven’t heard it all before, a major part of your philosophical education has gone missing.  But since you’ve probably been to college, this is extremely unlikely.)  But the arguments are worth hearing on their own.

• Oh, East Germany wasn’t free?  Well, what do you mean by free?
• Well, no, nothing in our Bill of Rights would have been respected, but they did have a certain freedom conferred on them by their social services
• The only reason the system never became self-supporting was because we never invested in it
• Or because we offered the Marshall Plan with strings attached
• Germany has re-created an internal police system every bit as invasive as the Stasi
• 1956 was our fault, because we encouraged the Hungarians

While some may have encouraged the Hungarians, Budapest 1956 was notable for Soviet brutality, not American duplicity.  And, of course, there’s only the West to blame for the GDR’s economic failure, since only a capitalist economy had wealth that could go looking for foreign markets.

Still, to compare East and West from a purely materialistic point of view misses the point.  What good is having free health care if I get carted off to prison for making a joke about Honecker?  There’s no dignity in being a perpetual supplicant to the state for my subsistence.  Of course, even on purely materialistic terms, the East failed its citizens compared to the West.

(Some people will be tempted point to the debate here in the US now as mirroring my argument with this gentleman, but it is worth pointing out that nothing in long-time socialist Western Europe begins to approach the totalitarianism of Stalin and Brezhnev.  So while the philosophical points are similar, and the practical arguments may sound the same, East Berlin 1967 was several orders of magnitude worse than Berlin 2010.  Let’s keep things in perspective.  Helmut Schmidt was no Erich Honnecker.)

In the brilliant film, The Lives of Others, there’s a joke going around East Germany:

Erich Honnecker wakes up, and the sun is just coming up.  He leans out the window and says, “Good Morning, Sun!”  And the sun replies, “Good Morning, Erich.”

At lunchtime, Honnecker leans out the window and says, “Good afternoon, Sun!”  And the Sun replies, “Good afternoon, Chancellor!”

And in the evening, Honnecker, after a hard day at work, goes to the window and says, “Good evening, Sun!”  Silence.  He tries again, “Good evening, Sun!”  Nothing.  “What is that matter, Sun, why don’t you reply?”

And the sun says, “Screw you, I’m in the West now!”

I have to admit, I was flabbergasted to be revisiting conversations I had had innumerable times in the 80s.  To come across someone who still, after all this time, felt that East Germans were better off under the Communists than they are now.  Because surely the East Germans didn’t think so, at least not when they got a chance to make the choice.

So with the move to digital, we’re putting the stereo up for sale.  It’s a Fisher Studio-Standard system from 1987, and it’s completely intact and in working condition.  It includes all the manuals (as though you would need them), and the rack, although the glass door is missing.

It includes:

• Speakers
• CD Changer
• Tape Deck
• Equalizer
• Amp
• Turntable
• Manuals
• Speakers

As always, click to enlarge.

As always, click to enlarge…

I’ve always been a sucker for the Byzantine Empire. The eastern outpost of what was once called Christendom, the last remnant of the old Roman Empire, slowly melted away on the maps, until in 1453, it gets winked out altogether. (The timing of that fall also fascinates. It would be only 39 years before Columbus would open up the West, at a time when the East seemed to be closing in.) The Empire would never stop thinking of itself as Roman, the Emperors would always think of themselves as heirs to the Caesars.

Because of its descent into chaotic palace intrigue, and its relentless decline, Byzantium doesn’t get the credit it deserves. The fact that it was only a shell for several centuries before its final conquest also cemented its feeble image in Western minds. By 1453, the last emperor couldn’t be crowned for fear of religious conflict, and even said that the city needed a mayor more than an emperor. Despite that decline, the empire revitalized itself three different times, each time altering its character to the political and military environment that it faced. In doing so, it performed two invaluable services to the West.

First, it bought time for Western Europe to get its act together. By the time the Empire lost its breadbasket and source of manpower, Asia Minor, at the battle of Manzikert, Western Europe was on the cusp of the High Middle Ages, beginning to develop cohesive social structures, a revival of trade, and would soon begin to reconquer the Iberian Peninsula.

Second, it preserved classical literature and wisdom. In contrast to currently popular imaginings, it was not the Muslims who preserved the Greek & Roman world for Western Europe, but rather Byzantium. Those works would become the common cultural inheritance of the west, and would greatly inform the Founders as they struggled to create the United States.

I haven’t heard Brownworth’s podcasts, but they’ve been fairly widely praised. So I had pretty high hopes for this history of Byzantium. The subtitle led me to hope that it would take on that myth about who had preserved classical learning, and that it would discuss in detail the relationship between Byzantium and the West. Instead, what I got was a fairly linear history of the Empire, which touched on those subjects.

It’s not entirely fair to judge the book by my expectations, but even on its own terms, it fall short in a number of key areas. The storytelling is uneven. Repeatedly, we’re told that armies are scattered, treasuries are emptied, frontiers broken, and yet as if by magic, the next general is somehow paying men and leading them to victory. Another time, “every citizen” takes turns manning the walls. Every citizen? Really?

Brownworth could also have benefitted from a little editing. Several times, we’re treated to the same turn of phrase within paragraphs. And on one occasion, the details of a succession struggle prove too much even for the author, as he fails to identify one of the key participants. It left me flipping back over the account to see what I had missed. Imperial murders, riots, rampages, coups, and poisonings are difficult enough to follow when you do have a scorecard. And if we’re going to have to plow through them, they ought to have a point. Too often these accounts seem to lead nowhere but the next rebellion.

Finally, there weren’t enough maps. Military history is geography. A few more well-placed maps should have been easy to place. Instead, I often found myself looking for cities on maps from hundreds of years earlier. They might tell me where a city was, but often it was in the wrong context.

One studies history to learn about today, and some lessons do come through. Basil II, perhaps the last great emperor, cemented his power through tactics that would seem familiar to close observers of the current administration. And inheriting a sound empire, his successors tossed it away through infighting, civil war, and counterproductive tax and fiscal policies. Sadly, these resonances are too few and far-between to rescue the narrative.

A couple of years ago, I bought the Teaching Company’s audio course on the Byzantine Empire. While the professor had a little more time to make his points, I thought he covered the material in a more sensible manner, filling in gaps that Brownworth leaves open. If you have the time to read the book, you also probably have time to commute to those CDs. I think you’ll come away having learned a lot more.

In the meantime, I’m still looking for that other history, the one I hoped I was getting.

This explains this.  It’s one thing to have the administration pushing quietly and unsuccessfully for the return of a would-be dictator over the rule of law.  It’s another thing entirely to have succeeded, in contradiction to Congress’s own legal research.

People of Iran, you are the cavalry.

Look, there are a half-dozen obvious ways of interpreting what the Swedes were thinking

This was the left-of-liberal left congratulating itself.  This was the left-of-liberal left honoring the President who will lead the US into retirement.  This committee was trying to encourage him in a Young-World-Leader-Most-Likely-to-Succeed sort of way.  The committee really believed what it said about “outreach.”  The committee was meeting in Malmo.  The Scandanavians were sorry about how the IOC treated him the last time he was over there.

What’s clear is that this award isn’t for actually having done anything.

There was a time when Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” was eagerly awaited.  Right up until they named. “The Computer” the Person of the Year, never mind the actual, you know, people who had invented, marketed, and exploited it.

This is a continuation, almost a logical conclusion, of the phenomenon of being famous  for being famous that Daniel Boorstin wrote about in The Image all those years ago. It’s a world where celebrity is based on prior celebrity, rather than on concrete achievement or accomplishment.

In a way, it’s a surprise that it took this long.  We’ve had science-by-press-conference, wherein little actual peer-reviewed science is done, but plenty of politics is practiced.  And the Middle East has long been a bastion of “peace by press conference,” where meeting and negotiations are announced, and everyone sits around reading the coffee grounds to see what they mean.  (Hint: they still hate us.)

The worst thing about this prize is that it’s not likely to encourage actual peace-making, it’s just going to encourage all that’s worst about the Cult of Obama, and its practitioner-in-chief.  Winning what used to be the world’s greatest secular moral award is likely to reinforce Obama’s sense of his own magnificence.  Any hopes – and they were slim – that he might have learned something from last week’s Denmark Debacle are dashed.  The man could probably walk away from the Infinite Perspective Vortex unscathed at this point.

If this were just the Nobel Equivalent of 4th grade social promotion, it might not be so bad.  That’s what it’s been in the past.  You collect your prize, you go home to Georgia or Ramallah and hang it on a wall.  (In Al Gore’s case, you find some way to electrify it so it lights up the night sky.)  But this is to a sitting President, with real duties to discharge.  Failures have real-world consequences for the US and its citizens, and nurturing Obamanian Infaalability isn’t likely to help him avoid them.

If the Nobel Committee had really wanted to do what all of its apologists suggest – encourage peace prospectively – they could have given it to the Iranian opposition, who are busily dying in the streets for their liberty and their country.  Hanging the mullahs by their turbans in the public square and establishing a decent secular regime there would do more to promote peace at this point than just about anything.

A nonprofit group is seeking permission to write every word of the healthcare bill on the Capitol steps.