Just coming up: Navy Panel Urges No Court-Martial for Sub’s Skipper. “The Navy’s court of inquiry into the collision between an
American submarine and a Japanese vessel has recommended
that the submarine’s skipper not be tried by a
court-martial, senior Pentagon officials said.” A reprimand and early retirement are likely instead. It makes sense to me not to scapegoat the commander too directly, but not for the Navy’s reason, which is to maintain morale in the Pacific Fleet. The blame probably lies higher up, with those who turned a lethal high-performance war machine into an amusement park ride for high-rolling political campaign comtributors.

The testimony indicated that the submarine went to sea that day only for the
sake of the 16 civilians on board, three of whom were seated at some of the
controls at the time of the collision.

The Greeneville’s regularly scheduled training mission had been canceled as
unnecessary, so a third of the crew stayed in port during the exercise, and the
commander did not take measures to reassign other members of the crew to
cover the absentees. He was also unaware that 9 of 13 sailors manning watch
stations had switched positions without telling him.

Some equipment was not functioning properly, but the commander did not
discuss that with his senior officers, according to the testimony. Because of a long
lunch with the visitors, the submarine was running behind schedule, and was
rushing to make up time. As a result, four safety procedures, ranging from the
way the Greeneville tracked nearby ships to the way it surfaced and used its
periscope, were skipped or abbreviated.

After the accident, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a halt to the
practice of letting civilians take the controls of military equipment.

How to mollify Japan, with which we could never get away with the brand of lying diplomacy we recently perpetrated on the Chinese in the spy plane incident, will remain an interesting challenge. New York Times

The B.C. comic strip flap: Here is the Jewish Defense League’s call for adherents to appeal to local newspapers “not to allow this insult to be printed”, as it is scheduled to be tomorrow. Of course, the color supplements to the Sunday papers were printed a long time ago and the strip cannot be pulled at this late date, respond the newspapers. A copy of the strip appears on the site. The JDL says:

B.C. is pushing Replacement Theology (the theory that
Christianity has replaced Judaism as “The Chosen” because the Jews do not accept Jesus
as messiah) down the throats of the readers — many of them children — of the Sunday
comics. As the candles burn, the menorah (a sacred and venerated symbol of the Jewish
people) is obliterated and turns into a cross (the symbol of Christianity).

The Anti-Defamation League, at a different place altogether in the Jewish spectrum, does not call for the retraction of the strip but finds it

insensitive and
offensive. While not anti-Semitic, the comic
strip’s message is reminiscent of the
theology of contempt, which for centuries
played a central role in fomenting Christian
violence and hatred against Jews. It is even
more troubling because the comic strip
appears during Passover, a season that
Christianity had historically used as an
excuse to defame the Jewish religion with
charges of blood libel, Jews as
“Christ-killers,” and pogroms. Sadly, we
thought that the Christian-Jewish dialogue
had moved us beyond such crude
expressions of contempt.

Time magazine has some background on Hart’s proselytizing here.

A Google search on (“Johnny Hart” and B.C. and Christian) looks like this.

1000journals Project distributes 1000 blank journals, they pass around the world with each recipient adding documentation of time and place, stories and drawings and then passing them along. Would love to hear what becomes of this. [via boing boing]

Keyless mystery returns: “Bremerton (Wash.) residents and businesses
once again reported a mysterious failure
of vehicles’ keyless entry devices for
several hours Thursday afternoon…

In March, the keyless entry failures began
at the same time the aircraft carrier USS
Carl Vinson returned to Bremerton.
Thursday, the outages began one day
after the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln
arrived at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.” Bremerton Sun [via Robot Wisdom]

The following is a very early draft of the letter sent by United States Ambassador to China Joseph H. Prueher to Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Tang prior to the release of the crew of the American surveillance plane. The letter was obtained by Rough Draft from sources in an alternate universe. (By Joel Achenbach, Washington Post)

Dear Mr. Minister:

We are sorry that our plane crashed on your island without obtaining the expressed written consent of your government at least 48 hours prior to the emergency.

We are very, very sorry that your brave pilot attempted suicide by flying his nimble fighter jet into our lumbering surveillance plane as it cruised through international airspace on autopilot.

We regret that aerodynamic principles required that we construct our plane out of metal, rather than out of cotton or silk or polyester or some other lightweight fabric that would have caused less damage in the collision your pilot instigated.

We are extremely sorry that this incident has strained the great friendship that has existed between our countries as a diplomatic fiction since the Nixon administration. We look forward to the resumption of the trust, good will and intensive espionage that is the historic foundation of our relationship. We are pleased that this unfortunate episode did not culminate in World War III, which we would have won easily.

We are a tiny bit sorry, but not really all that sorry, that we destroyed the electronic gear on our jet before allowing it to fall into your possession. We merely did not want you to feel sorrow yourself when you discovered that our military technology is not nearly as sophisticated as we claim it is in the written documents your spies have previously stolen.
Do what you will with the Polaroid cameras, sketch pads, binoculars and opera glasses we left behind. Note: The 24 pairs of “X-ray vision” glasses on board were obtained from the back of a comic book, and do not work worth a dang.

We are very sorry that, in a moment of overreaction to the crisis, we transferred the giant pandas from the National Zoo to the Sing Sing prison in New York State. We assure you that the conditions in the prison laundry and the license-plate manufacturing plant were relatively humane.

We are very happy to reflect that our countries share many similarities, such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when our professors lectured naked before marijuana-addled long-hairs, and your professors were exiled to “re-education” camps in a spasm of totalitarian horror. We are very, very sorry that you had that little problem with the Gang of Four. We’ve had some characters on our side, too.

We are pleased to report that, as a cultural gesture, Mao’s Little Red Book will finally be published in our country in Large Print Format.

We sympathize with your need to translate any and all portions of this letter as you see fit, even if it means turning the phrase “we did nothing wrong and wish you weren’t so paranoid” into “we prostrate ourselves before your mightiness and beseech your forgiveness.”

We are very, very, very sorry that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did not win Best Picture.

Sincerely,

Ambassador Joseph H. Prueher [thanks, Paula]

(“I confess that this
psychographic niche — the Christian,
free-software-writing, Emily Dickinson-identifying
raver on the attack sub — was new to me”, says the essayist.) What Is It Like to Be a Bat Listening to Santana? “The latest crop of MP3
plug-ins give you a whole
new way of looking at
music. Will anyone ever
drop acid again?” Feed The title is a play on the classic 1974 philosophical essay by Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? (and the thematic relationship is not trivial).

Rules of Disorder: on the American obsession with self-help books. “If the German craves discipline, the Italian
loves women, and the Russian lusts for vodka,
what does the American desire? Freedom comes
to mind, but judging by our cultural exports —
and the choice between Coke and Pepsi
notwithstanding — it’s not absurd for foreigners
to conclude that what Americans really love are
rules. Stretching from Dale Carnegie to Dr. Spock
to Ellen Fein, the modern tradition of rule-based
self-help books has edged out the short story as
the nation’s greatest contribution to world
literature.” Feed

Continuing my intermittent theme of the effect of language, this is an interview with Jonathan Miller in which he reflects on the book that would shape his worldview for the next forty years, philosopher JL Austin’s How to Do Things with Words. ‘ “For me, reading How To Do Things With Words is like having
a very, very good Swiss army knife with lots of blades and
scissors and things for getting pebbles out of hooves. Armed
with this, you can unpick an otherwise impenetrable problem.”

Austin’s breakthrough has had far-reaching effects on
post-1960s anthropology, child psychology and the legal
system. Miller applies his mentor’s teaching “at least daily, and
to every aspect of life” and finds it particularly illuminating
working in the theatre. ‘ The Times

Magic study scientists disappear to Las Vegas. “Two British scientists are to fly to Las Vegas to investigate magicians’ use
of psychology.

Dr Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire and Peter Lamont of
Edinburgh University believe that magicians exploit subtle details of how
the brain perceives the world to mount elaborate deceptions…

The magicians, who include Lance Burton and Max Maven, will be
videoed. A specialised eye tracker will then be used to investigate how
they manage to distract the attention of their audience with pacing, eye
contact and deliberate gestures. Dr Wiseman said: “This is their greatest
skill – attention manipulation. Close-up magicians doing coin and card tricks
are superb at making us look where they want us to.”

They will also study the magicians’ talent for lying to investigate if they
have better control over the subtle cues that we use to detect deception. Dr
Wiseman said that it was once thought that sleight of hand was all about
speed of movement. But it turns out that magicians do not rely on the hand
being faster than the eye, but on using slower – and less obvious –
strategies.

These are related to visual illusions, which occur when there is a breakdown
in the rules used by the brain to create a seamless 3D picture of the world
from the 2D information received by the eyes.

The Telegraph