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Slide in all directions
Jan. 31st, 2008 11:59 pm
Currently at Toronto Pearson: -5. High today: -5.
A news blurb that just ran during the Leafs radio broadcast just said that we will get "up to fifteen to twenty metres" of snow tomorrow. It's good to know that we might get less than fifteen metres.
I have just been looking through Uncle Wikipedia's files on the politics of Kenya, hoping to glean some clues as to why what's going on is going on, since the media reports, as usual, are only about the horrorshow. There is an amazing lack of anything about the politics of Kenya's political parties in the Wikipedia pages. It's almost entirely about personalities and victories and defeats and alliances and betrayals. As far as I can tell, there are these three indications of the politics of any of Kenya's political parties: the Green Party is, uh, a Green party; the Democratic Party, which Mwai Kibaki, the current president, founded and still leads, is a "conservative" party; and Raila Odinga, who officially placed second in last month's presidential election, is a self-proclaimed "social democrat", though the Liberal Democratic Party--which he appears to belong to, though this is not entirely clear--is a member of the Liberal International. (However: Odinga has been a minister in Kibaki's cabinets.) The one policy difference noted between any of the political parties on anything is that Odinga's party opposed a new constitution proposed by Kibaki's party (which was defeated in a referendum), the main effect of which would, apparently, have been to make the president a figurehead, and to create a position of prime minister
So much for Uncle Wikipedia. Looking briefly at the party "manifestoes" supplied by votekenya.org, it seems like there is this one political difference between Kibaki's coalition and Odinga's, underlying the difference on the constitution: Odinga's coalition is for devolution, though I haven't seen whether this actually manifests itself in any particular policy proposals, and Kibaki's is not. I saw on Wikipedia that Kibaki's coalition has accused Odinga's of "tribalism"; I guess the idea is that devolution of powers to the regions--or whatever--would enhance the power of the "tribes" in the areas they dominate. (It appears that "tribes" have never had anything much, or at all, to do with electoral politics until this last campaign, or maybe until the constitutional referendum; through Kenya's post-colonial history up until then, members of different tribes seem to have mixed in the main parties.) Otherwise, at a cursory glance they seem to pretty much echo each other. I looked at the Kibaki coalition's manifesto first, and saw that it was for cutting taxes while "broadening the tax base", and figured that must be where this "conservative" label comes from; then I saw that the Odinga coalition's manifesto says the same thing, virtually word-for-word.
This week, the Globe and Star have both run polls asking who will win the Democratic nomination. (I have no idea about the Star, but I don't think the Globe ran a poll about the Republican nomination. I have to say, the proportions of coverage being devoted to the two parties' nominations by every news outlet I've paid attention to is really kind of embarrassing.) In both of them, a majority said that Obama would win. This has me wondering whether a majority of Canadians generally believe that Obama will win, and whether a majority of Americans believe that Obama will win. The Iowa electoral stock market still has HRC around $60 (vs. $30-something for Obama), anyway. But given how much coverage is being devoted to Obama, and how overwhelmingly positive it is, it wouldn't be surprising if, in fact, a majority of Canadians, at least, are surprised if Obama fails to win the nomination.
Here's an idea I'm developing: Socrates was, ironically, put to death for impiety. He was officially put to death for impiety, for undermining the gods of the city and introducing new gods, but his real impiety was failing to obey the injunction of his daimon not to get involved in politics, which everyone assumes he did obey because he didn't become a politician. The god said through the Delphic oracle that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens, and he was impious enough not to believe the god but to put the god to the test, by testing the wisdom of everyone in the polis, and specifically the wisdom of politicians. Socrates's style of philosophy was political through-and-through, in the broad Greek sense of politikos (having to do with the polis, public, social), and it was, inevitably, politically threatening in our narrower sense of the political; his goading the jury into sentencing him to death was a political statement. Why did the Athenian democrats tolerate Plato, who was obviously not a fan of democracy? Because he was a-political. He shut his philosophy away in a school; he didn't take it to the streets. People think that Socrates is Plato's hero, but Socrates is a tragic hero, and tragic heroes are not innocent. Plato's story of Socrates is a cautionary tale.
And now, your Important Fact for the day (which will not be news to at least one of you): the words "scholar" and "school" are derived from the Greek schole, which originally meant leisure. Here are the various translations given in the Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary: leisure, spare time, rest, ease; peace, an activity in which leisure is employed (eh what?), disputation, discussion; school; delay, slowness; idleness.
A news blurb that just ran during the Leafs radio broadcast just said that we will get "up to fifteen to twenty metres" of snow tomorrow. It's good to know that we might get less than fifteen metres.
I have just been looking through Uncle Wikipedia's files on the politics of Kenya, hoping to glean some clues as to why what's going on is going on, since the media reports, as usual, are only about the horrorshow. There is an amazing lack of anything about the politics of Kenya's political parties in the Wikipedia pages. It's almost entirely about personalities and victories and defeats and alliances and betrayals. As far as I can tell, there are these three indications of the politics of any of Kenya's political parties: the Green Party is, uh, a Green party; the Democratic Party, which Mwai Kibaki, the current president, founded and still leads, is a "conservative" party; and Raila Odinga, who officially placed second in last month's presidential election, is a self-proclaimed "social democrat", though the Liberal Democratic Party--which he appears to belong to, though this is not entirely clear--is a member of the Liberal International. (However: Odinga has been a minister in Kibaki's cabinets.) The one policy difference noted between any of the political parties on anything is that Odinga's party opposed a new constitution proposed by Kibaki's party (which was defeated in a referendum), the main effect of which would, apparently, have been to make the president a figurehead, and to create a position of prime minister
So much for Uncle Wikipedia. Looking briefly at the party "manifestoes" supplied by votekenya.org, it seems like there is this one political difference between Kibaki's coalition and Odinga's, underlying the difference on the constitution: Odinga's coalition is for devolution, though I haven't seen whether this actually manifests itself in any particular policy proposals, and Kibaki's is not. I saw on Wikipedia that Kibaki's coalition has accused Odinga's of "tribalism"; I guess the idea is that devolution of powers to the regions--or whatever--would enhance the power of the "tribes" in the areas they dominate. (It appears that "tribes" have never had anything much, or at all, to do with electoral politics until this last campaign, or maybe until the constitutional referendum; through Kenya's post-colonial history up until then, members of different tribes seem to have mixed in the main parties.) Otherwise, at a cursory glance they seem to pretty much echo each other. I looked at the Kibaki coalition's manifesto first, and saw that it was for cutting taxes while "broadening the tax base", and figured that must be where this "conservative" label comes from; then I saw that the Odinga coalition's manifesto says the same thing, virtually word-for-word.
This week, the Globe and Star have both run polls asking who will win the Democratic nomination. (I have no idea about the Star, but I don't think the Globe ran a poll about the Republican nomination. I have to say, the proportions of coverage being devoted to the two parties' nominations by every news outlet I've paid attention to is really kind of embarrassing.) In both of them, a majority said that Obama would win. This has me wondering whether a majority of Canadians generally believe that Obama will win, and whether a majority of Americans believe that Obama will win. The Iowa electoral stock market still has HRC around $60 (vs. $30-something for Obama), anyway. But given how much coverage is being devoted to Obama, and how overwhelmingly positive it is, it wouldn't be surprising if, in fact, a majority of Canadians, at least, are surprised if Obama fails to win the nomination.
Here's an idea I'm developing: Socrates was, ironically, put to death for impiety. He was officially put to death for impiety, for undermining the gods of the city and introducing new gods, but his real impiety was failing to obey the injunction of his daimon not to get involved in politics, which everyone assumes he did obey because he didn't become a politician. The god said through the Delphic oracle that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens, and he was impious enough not to believe the god but to put the god to the test, by testing the wisdom of everyone in the polis, and specifically the wisdom of politicians. Socrates's style of philosophy was political through-and-through, in the broad Greek sense of politikos (having to do with the polis, public, social), and it was, inevitably, politically threatening in our narrower sense of the political; his goading the jury into sentencing him to death was a political statement. Why did the Athenian democrats tolerate Plato, who was obviously not a fan of democracy? Because he was a-political. He shut his philosophy away in a school; he didn't take it to the streets. People think that Socrates is Plato's hero, but Socrates is a tragic hero, and tragic heroes are not innocent. Plato's story of Socrates is a cautionary tale.
And now, your Important Fact for the day (which will not be news to at least one of you): the words "scholar" and "school" are derived from the Greek schole, which originally meant leisure. Here are the various translations given in the Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary: leisure, spare time, rest, ease; peace, an activity in which leisure is employed (eh what?), disputation, discussion; school; delay, slowness; idleness.
