Two things conservatives like to say:
Our constitutional rights aren’t granted to us by government. Our rights come from God, and the Constitution simply recognises them.
Illegal immigrants and terrorist suspects don’t have constitutional rights because they’re not American citizens.
I very much doubt that I’m the first person to have thought of this, but I haven’t found it mentioned anywhere else, so I’ll put forward my conjecture: might the title for Karel Čapek’s most famous (though certainly not best) work, R.U.R., have been inspired by the formerly all-pervasive (see, e.g., the abbreviation on the postage stamp at right) K.u.K., official symbol of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? (“K.u.K.” stood for “Kaiserlich und Königlich,” or “Imperial and Royal,” signifying that the Habsburg monarch was both Emperor (Kaiser) of Austria and King (König) of Hungary.)
As you can see, it takes only minor editing to transform “K.u.K.” into “R.U.R.”:
If this was indeed Čapek’s inspiration, he would hardly be the only author in 1920s Czechoslovakia to be slamming the Austrian rule from which his country had just emerged; anarchist Jaroslav Hašek’s scathing satire The Good Soldier Švejk would be the most obvious example, though Franz Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle have likewise been interpreted as being in part (no one thinks this is the works’ sole meaning) a critique of quondam Austrian rule.
Could R.U.R., the firm that casually treats the “robots” (the term comes from a Czech word originally meaning “serf labour”) as a lower order that can be put to work, especially war work (as one character says: “It was criminal of old Europe to teach the robots to fight. … Couldn’t they have given us a rest with their politics? It was a crime to make soldiers of them”), be meant to symbolise, in part, the K.u.K. monarchy that casually treated the Czechs as a lower order that could be conscripted into a world war in which they had no stake? (Of course Čapek’s satire, like Kafka’s, tends to operate at multiple levels simultaneously, so his robots can still stand, in addition, for out-of-control technology, social dehumanisation, the oppressed proletariat, etc., etc.)
The following picture appeared in Adventures of Superman #596, which by odd coincidence came out the same week as the 9/11 attacks:
Interesting article on Chinua Achebe’s Africna trilogy. (CHT Walter Grinder.)
A quick rundown of my trip to San Diego:
So the first three days were devoted to the ISME conference, which tends to be about half military people and half civilian academics. Some people in the talkback of my earlier post were wondering whether my paper would freak them out, but it’s actually a fairly diverse and laidback venue.
Cabrillo Monument
To give an idea of the range: of the two keynote speakers, one (Brigadier General H. R. McMaster) was a jingoistic, rah-rah, “our enemies are evil and it’s a privilege to kill them” type (that’s an exact quote or pretty close), while at the opposite extreme the other (David Rodin) was arguing that the moral burdens on justifying violence are so stringent as to require us to accept either pacifism or a radical revision of military ethics in the direction of law-enforcement ethics. Both speakers were received graciously by the audience, but neither uncritically (most of the audience being sufficiently steeped in the military ethos to wince at “pacifism,” but sufficiently enlightened to wince likewise at “privilege to kill”). I’d say most of the attendees, military and civilian alike, were Obama Democrats, whatever exactly that means these days. I think their eyes glazed over at my mention of anarchy, and as for the rest of my paper they didn’t seem to find it terribly controversial. I’ll have to submit something more provocative next year!
After the conference was over I switched from my Old Town hotel to one in Little Italy (both cheaper and closer to places I wanted to visit). On Friday I took a bus out to Cabrillo Monument, which I haven’t seen since I was eight or so. Then I headed for Bali Hai Restaurant on Shelter Island to revisit a childhood favourite, but it was closed for renovations (something it might have been helpful to mention on their website before I walked all the way out to Shelter Island!). Since by that time I was jonesing for Polynesian I headed for Mr. Tiki’s Mai Tai Lounge (sounds cheesy but isn’t) on San Diego’s wonderful Fifth Avenue.
Vincenzo's
The next day I hit my beloved San Diego Zoo and learned an interesting tip from one of the zoo staff: the way to make friends with an ape is not to stare them in the face (which they interpret as hostile) but rather to turn your back on them and then occasionally peek back over your shoulder at them. I didn’t have a chance to try it, though. I did buy a zebra for my mommy.
On Sunday I walked along the waterfront a bit, and then Gary Chartier and his wife drove down and we had lunch at Pokez (check out these somewhat deranged reviews by people whose experience seems to be rather narrow; in actuality it was a fairly ordinary place and the staff were perfectly polite, if somewhat inattentive) and then hung out for a while at Mission Bay.
Chief culinary discovery of the trip: the tonno rosso appetizer at Vincenzo’s in Little Italy: “Ahi tuna coated with a combination of chopped mixed nuts, paprika, garlic, curry, and pepper; seared and served rare, topped with a spicy pepper sauce.” Definitely recommended.
Tomorrow I head off to San Diego to give a paper at this conference; there are copies of some of the papers (including mine) online.
This is the same outfit I went to last year (blogged here and here).