At Least He Had A Plan

What kind of lefty friends do I have who don't alert me to such articles? Naomi Klein's Baghdad Year Zero in Harpers 4 years ago.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197

McCain doesn't use the honey metaphor anymore. I wonder why?

I Could Totally Do That

Watching the Brazilian women's volleyball team beat up on Russia this morning was a great way to start the day, and this video of an easy point they scored in 2006 raised a bunch of questions in my mind:
It's not that she hit the net. It was nowhere near the net. She hit the pole that holds the net.
How unskilled do you have to be not to make the Uruguayan team? Is volleyball like jury duty there? Maybe they just shouldn't field a national team if they're not confident about their talent pool.
Ms. Galusso certainly doesn't seem like she's going to be jumping up and blocking shots at the net. Shouldn't she concentrate on her killer serve? What is her forte?
Maybe she's more of a beach volleyball player and serving on a floor threw her.
I couldn't tell you word for word, but I have a pretty good idea what the commentators were saying.
Why did the Brazilians congratulate each other after such a gimme? Is that nicer than just standing there and laughing?
The Brazilian lady preparing to serve next is #13 Sheilla Tavares de Castro and I'm almost positive her serve cleared the net. She's bringing the hurt for Brazil right now in Beijing. I'll be tuning in.



Update 8/21/08: I saw gold medal-winning beach volleyballer Kerri Walsh hit the net on a serve against Brazil, so I guess it happens. Even the aforementioned Sheilla Castro hit the net with a weak serve in the 3rd set of Brazil's match against Italy. But it didn't hit the pole holding the net! Plus, Sheilla had 14 points in that match, which she ended with a rather violent spike. If anybody can direct me to Ms. Galusso's highlight reel I'll apologize.

Fourth of July - Brit Bashing Day?

Last month a Peace Corps friend of mine joked that her British husband would be spending the Fourth of July drinking gin and tonics and hiding from the inevitable anti-British backlash one associates with the holiday. It inspired me to write a sketch about an otherwise sensible Brit describing his misconceptions about how we Yanks celebrate our Independence Day. It's called The Fourth of July and I posted it on the sketches page at my site.

The Dress Code Sketch

I've posted a sketch entitled The Dress Code on my site at http://www.farrellpolymath.com/sketches.htm. I post sketches occasionally to www.zhura.com so people can view them, rate them and leave comments. That's where the folks at the Improv Asylum in Boston saw The Ex-Tutor and decided to perform it. I have a few more in the works, so stay tuned!

Haale Rocks City Hall

Last night the free concert series in City Hall Square in Redwood City featured Persian-American Stanford-grad Haale (pronounced HAH-leh) performing her "psychedelic Sufi trance rock." It was a complete coincidence that I ever heard about the concert. I was taking the boys to the city last Friday on the train and decided to leaf through one of the free rags at the train station. They had a story about her and mentioned the Bay Area shows. I checked her out on Rhapsody and was blown away by her music, especially "Ay Del" from her EP Paratrooper. She's like Niyaz with electric guitars and cello. I'm serious: the blistering solos on the songs are played by a cellist using a distortion box.

I drove down and checked out downtown Redwood City, which I haven't explored for a while. They're trying to revive it from its 70s decay: the huge megaplex is new and shiny, and there are some nice restaurants and shops moving in. I arrived early and saw Haale and her band setting up. Good as her music is, it doesn't hurt that she's gorgeous. But even after the sun went down she never took off her sunglasses.

The set was taken from her two EPs and new album No Ceiling:

1. Baz Hava
2. Middle of Fire
3. Chenan Mastam
4. Off Duty Fortune Teller
5. Navayee
6. Floating Down
7. Hastee
Intermission
8. Home Again
9. Ay Del
10. Mast

11. (Persian Chant)
12. No Ceiling
13. A Town On The Sea
14. Ay Dar Shekasteh

After the show I bought a CD and talked with Haale a little. I noticed that occasionally she wasn't fretting the guitar, so I asked her what tuning she uses. She tried to explain, but finally I just asked what the strings were tuned to, low to high. She uses an open C tuning (C-G-C-G-C-E) on her guitar to get that droning sound. I made a mistake and commented that "Ay Del" wasn't on her set list anymore, and she said, "We played it!" She patiently explained "Home Again" and "Ay Del" are played together, which explains why the second one seems to start rather abruptly when I've listened online. It must have seemed like I didn't even recognize my favorite song of hers, but come on, I'd only heard it for the first time the day before, and it's in Persian. It' s a poem from Attar:

"The Beloved is always ready and standing at the door

Open the window of your heart, be ready and alert for the Beloved."

I had to compliment the percussionist Matt Kilmer for sounding like such a full percussion section with so few instruments. Haale's music doesn't easily fit into any established categories; it's an unusual musical experience but ultimately rewarding.

The Origins of "Mau Mau"

There is much disagreement as to the origin of the name of the Kenyan peasant uprising which came to be known as the Mau Mau. It has no literal meaning in Gikuyu, the language of the tribe which led the rebellion. When I lived in Kenya I heard many unconvincing acronyms like "Mzungu Arudi Uingereza, Mwafrika Apate Uhuru," Swahili for "White man return to England, African get freedom."

The historical literature is divided. The only complaint I have with Edgerton's Mau Mau: An African Crucible is his take on the origin of the name. He gives too much credence to the theory of a Gikuyu "pig latin" for "uma uma," meaning "get out, get out," supposedly heard as the police broke up an oathing ceremony. Edgerton also calls it "plausible" that the term came from a mispronunciation of "mumau," the Gikuyu word for oath.

Compounding the problem is the fact that the movement was intensely secretive, with no manifesto, written records or public relations effort. Edgerton maintains the supposed public head of the Kenyan independence movement, Jomo Kenyatta, was never a member of the Mau Mau and was in fact opposed by many members of the Mau Mau before and after independence. This would explain (for example) why no Mau Mau veterans ever regained their land or received any benefits (two widows did), and why former Mau Mau detainee J. M. Kariuki was abducted and murdered by the police under Kenyatta's dictatorship. Lucy's mother still maintains her silence 45 years after taking her oath.

The rebellion was a largely tribal undertaking, and serious business among Kikuyus is conducted in a sort of code, inscrutable to outsiders. But Karari Njama was a schoolteacher and therefore one of the educated (in the Western sense) members of the rebellion. In Mau Mau From Within, he writes, "To the best of my knowledge, the members of the Movement never used this term when talking amongst themselves about their Society.... It was simply never accepted by the Africans involved in the Movement as being anything more than the white man's name for their association."

So when and why did the white settlers come to use the term? Njama considers many origins, but traces it to a trial in Naivasha in May, 1950, of a group of Kenyans, mostly Kikuyu, who were accused of taking the oath. One of the accused identified the elders who administered the oath as the "Kiama kia Mau Mau."

Njama quotes another informant: "Mau mau was not a widely known word among Kikuyu. Its only meaning was 'greedy eating,' sometimes used by mothers to rebuke children who were eating too fast or too much. In my location..., however, it was also used occasionally when talking about certain elders who, when called to hear a case by the chief, were more interested in the few shillings or goats they would receive than in dispensing justice. These elders often magnified the seriousness of the case they were hearing in order to get from the guilty person a fine of a goat or lamb, which they would then slaughter, roast and eat... as if they were merely carrying out traditional Kikuyu legal practices. Earning a reputation for being greedy, these elders were sometimes called the 'Kiama kia Mau Mau,' or 'Council of Greedy Eaters.' It is my belief that the man who used the term 'Mau Mau' at the Naivasha Trial was referring to the men who administered the oath as bad elders, who wanted only his initiation fee and the feast of a goat...."

So the white people heard the oaths were administered by the "Mau Mau Council" and thought it was the name of the movement. By August, 1950, the rebellion was being referred to as Mau Mau in all the white press, so the timeline is accurate. The whites had a history of misinterpretations and mispronunciations in Kenya (including the name of the country itself), and Lucy considers this explanation plausible. For an interesting depiction of Kenya during "the Emergency," check out the movie "Kitchen Toto" if you can find it.

Matters Of State

Yesterday we jetted over the ridge to Half Moon Bay, where it's at least ten degrees cooler and the boys enjoyed a record-breaking three and a half hour romp in the still-freezing Pacific. On the way we were stuck behind an SUV with Utah plates. I couldn't help but notice that state gets an unfair advantage by adding an exclamation point to its name, which should be brought to the attention of someone of authority. Does Utah think it's so exciting, important or emotionally significant that it warrants some possibly unconstitutional punctuation? On top of that is the plate's command to "Ski Utah!" which I would ordinarily ignore but the exclamation point makes it persuasive to the point of coercion. We're definitely going this winter.

I would also like to see the research supporting the "Greatest Snow On Earth" claim.