Saturday, September 27, 2008

Pure Genius from Madison Avenue



How do you answer those insufferable Mac commercials?

Beat them at their own game. I doubt this commercial will have any huge effect in the market, but it successfully makes PC's somehow appear interesting. Mac's monopoly on nonconformist conformity may really have been beat.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Another Pearl of Wit

from the Celebrated Dr. Boli.

Q. But if I don’t write down my personal information, how will I remember who I am?

A. For this purpose we recommend some mnemonic device such as a short rhyme. The renowned classical scholar Benjamin Jowett came up with this little ditty:

My name is Benjamin Jowett.
I’m the president of this college.
If anything’s knowledge, I know it,
and what I don’t know isn’t knowledge.

By means of this easily memorized poem he was able to remember, not only his name, but also his employment, and even the attitude he intended to adopt toward his students.

Friday, September 19, 2008

An Alarming Revelation

Sunday, September 14, 2008

On Bush Doctrines

There's been a lot of chatter these days, to which I reluctantly add, about Sarah Palin's obvious confusion and alleged ignorance when confronted by Charles Gibson about the "Bush Doctrine" during an ABC interview. This interview has met with almost breathless expressions of horror and undisappointed shock  from many, not only here in the Ivory Tower, who seem to be pleased at Mrs. Palin's ignorance, as if it confirmed some suspicions they already didn't doubt.

The most important fact about this controversy, however, was that "Charlie" is wrong. As Krauthammer has pointed out, four different ideas have been referred to as the "Bush Doctrine," and the most common use of the term is not exactly what Mr. Gibson pointed out. This Foreign Devil is somewhat of a Palin supporter, although not so much that I would feel the need to rush to defend her honor. The interesting thing in this interview is not Mrs. Palin or anything she said, but rather what Gibson's attitudes reveal about the American Left, of whom I think he can be taken as a representative.

"Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?" he asks, and pursing his lips, closing his eyes, and turning down his face in the manner of a disappointed grandfather, he awaits her answer. Her first response is reasonable, and the second not understandably seems to grasping for straws. But when Mr. Gibson condescends to educate this vice-presidential candidate, things get particularly revealing.

It is a shame, really, that the cameraman does not give us a shot of the lecturing Gibson, as he explains "the Bush Doctrine, as I understand it." Instead we may only look at Mrs. Palin's face, and it is the face of a person who is convinced she has slipped up. Even she, a professed opponent of the worldview embraced by the "media elites" (and no one has a better claim to be a media elite than Charles Gibson, who also sits on the board of trustees at Princeton); even she expects that Gibson knows the truth of the matter. On this she and Gibson agree: that Gibson probably knows best. This seems to be an almost universal belief in America. Whether or not he believes the Left to be morally superior, the average American, red or blue, assumes liberals are more cultured, more educated than their counterparts on the Right.

As soon as Palin opens her mouth, and speaks in an accent not learned in any classroom, she has already lost credibility to a certain degree. So it is an irony we can all enjoy when the pompous and measured tones of Gibson setting her up to fail are in fact themselves mistaken. It is a classic case of image vs. reality, perhaps the predominant theme in this election.

On a related note, a friend has enjoined upon me to read The Audacity of Hope, some reflections on which book I plan to post, as I think of them.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

A Virtual Tour of Narnia

Suite I43/44 of Pierson College early acquired the nickname of "Narnia," and not simply because it's a place of magic and wonder. While the bedrooms here are comfortably large, my roommate Mr. al-Yemeni decided to make some space by placing his wardrobe in the hall. But lest you fear, like the security personnel here at Pierson do, that such an arrangement might block off a fire "egress" (for some reason official Yale refuses to say "exit"), know that the back of the wardrobe was ingeniously disassembled, creating behind it a sort of "walk-in closet" that opens onto the fire stair that most friends of ours use to enter the suite. Once this was put into place, the suite's moniker was more or less inevitable.


Within the suite, I was lucky enough to get a truly phenomenal single room, which is a bit larger than it looks in these pictures and every bit as pleasant. The fireplace is a nice touch, and it seems to be the hallmark of a luxurious Yale room, but the rule on not lighting fireplaces is unfortunately one that they actually enforce here. I'm taking a course on architecture this semester, and as I do my course reading in this room I'm confronted with a fine example of how architecture can really construct a place absolutely suited for human dwelling.


The common room is small, but thanks to the presence of a wii and fine decor (for both of which Dr. Manutius deserves due thanks), it's become a fairly popular place. At right is a fairly typical scene at home, with Herr Goer and the Demoniac, some of the many Yalies who seem to spend more time here than they do at home, going at it on the wii while I subject myself to the Yale Daily News. The Russian Peasant also is nearly always present here in Narnia, but today she's gone off to some swing state or other to spread the true gospel of Obama, and has to miss out on this long and slow and wonderful Saturday afternoon at Yale. 

Friday, September 12, 2008

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, VI

In court, if I defend a crook,
He usually gets off the hook.
My arguments are super-slick;
I never miss a legal trick
To fool the jury. Even so,
What comes around around must go.
But till my ways catch up with me,
I grow rich when my clients walk free.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Popular Science

For those of us confused these days by all the talk of hadrons and bosons and Switzerland and whatnot, Dr. Boli offers a succinct explanation.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

An Ethical Thought

On my way back to the dorm, I gave a few dollars to a woman who, with assumed or genuine tears in her eyes, told me she needed to catch a train to wherever it was she said she lived. In retrospect, her routine was probably too slick to have merited alms. I can't regret giving her the money——at the very least there was nothing wrong with it——but it's this way with me almost every time I give someone money: I'm full of fear that I've been had.

Back in grade school I once read a story that made a lasting impression on me. It was about a family who, like most of the characters in that sort of reading textbook, suffered from some sort of social exclusion or domestic tragedy; I forget the specifics. But what I remember is a line spoken by the father of that family to his daughter, something along the lines of "Sometimes being taken advantage of is the tax you have to pay on your faith in human nature." I thought it was very profound.

Now I don't have much faith in human nature, and as a rule I assume most panhandlers are frauds, but I'm a sucker for sob stories, and beggars have an easy time getting money before me, however much I look down at myself for giving it. I write this not to "sound a trumpet before me," but because I think this story hints at a more important meaning:

We must really live in a fallen world, if even charity can make us feel guilty.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, V

I’ll make you clocks that ring and chime,
And accurately tell the time,
From brass and glass and tiny gears.
They won’t lose time for several years.
I’ll also make the outer case
And paint the numbers on the face.
I’ll pour my care and effort in it,
So that you’ll know the hour and minute.

I dream'd in a dream...

...I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the world,

I dream'd that was the new City of Friends,

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love——it led the rest;

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,

And in all their looks and words.

                                                                                                     ——Walt Whitman

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Virum Monumenta Priorum

YGQJ, the former web address of this blog, had the double defect of being impronuntiable and impossible to remember. It made sense, though. If you look at the chop at the top of the page, you will see the four characters that spell out the blog's Chinese name: Yáng Guǐ Qiǎn Jiàn, which is a rather highfalutin way of saying "The Foreign Devil's Humble Opinions." But I had long ago taken to referring to the blog as the Foreign Devil, so it was high time for it to have a shorter and more English name.

But when I tried to change the URL, I found that foreigndevil.blogspot.com already existed, and while it was wholly without content, the author, one Ronan, had provided for it a singular title:
From West to East, or, travels in the principal parts of Asia, being an authentick account of voyages in China and Japan, containing an accurate description of whatever is most remarkable in those countries, with accounts of customs and manners of the Chinese. Intermixt with great variety of modern adventures and surprizing accidents: being the truest and best remarks extant on those countries.
Now the Foreign Devil does not discuss Japan, and makes no claim to be "truest and best" of anything, but it was an unusual sensation to see a blog——even a failed blog——with a purpose so similar to my own here.

But hasn't that purpose been achieved? I am in New Haven again, in the great State of Connecticut (great at least until the fourth of November, when people on TV will probably just call it "Connecticut" again). And I'm at a university to boot, in the very heart and mind of the West. I don't have the heart, however, to shut down the Foreign Devil, and so, Ladies and Gentlemen, esteemed Readers of the Foreign Devil: watch this space.

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, IV

A good tradesman, I’m hardly poor,
With sundry wares stocked in my store:
Spices, cloth (both wool and flax),
Velvet and silk, honey and wax,
And foreign goods
——I’ve got all sorts——
That I ship home from foreign ports,
With worry and painstaking care,
For danger’s lurking everywhere.

An Endorsement

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, III

I’m a ship’s captain on the sea.
This compass here will show to me
Where on the ocean we are bound;
But when we hear the thunder sound,
And winds are high, and waves are steep,
We’ll plunge the anchor in the deep.
So that the ship will stay secure
Until cruel Fortune smiles once more.