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The ninth in an occasional series.
Ten: Predatory seating
Nine: Culinary relativism
Eight: PreÎmptive planning
Seven: Premature mastication
Six: Irrational discalceation
Five: Radiotj‰nst i Kiruna AB
Four: Temporal engineering
Three: Tunnelbana visionTwo: Simˆlacra
I've learned a few lessons in life I'd like to pass on.
Don't drink British wine. Don't drink Italian beer. Don't drink cosmopolitans in dive bars, don't drink Rolling Rock in diva bars. Do as the locals.
Don't drink decaffeinated coffee. Don't drink de-alcoholized beer. Don't eat vegetarian food made to look like meat. Seek out authentic things.
But what to do if these two prescriptions for life clash? What if the locals seek out simulacra? I am referring, of course, to that sad abomination of an acoholic beverage, l‰tt ˆl [Swedish], a Swedish class of barely beers, "light" on taste, alcohol and point, a straight-to-bladder production that not even the state alcohol dispensing monopoly, Systembolaget, could be bothered regulating.
And yet Swedes don't get the hint about what that implies. Every day, at luncheon places all over Sweden, hundreds of thousands will optimistically ask once again for l‰tt ˆl by name, just in case that, over night, it might suddenly have developed into something substantive.
It's hard to describe the lack of taste it has. You know how sometimes, when you buy a coke from a concession stand and the dispenser has almost run out of syrup, you get to drink something with a hint of coke that is actually far worse than just water? L‰tt ˆl is the beer equivalent.
To be honest, I don't understand why Swedish beer is drunk at all. Sweden has worldbeating vodkas and aquavits and wonderful traditions involving punsch and mulled wine. Swedish beer, on the other hand, is atrocious.
Yes it is, and you know it — there is a reason why you don't export it. I'm not necessarily saying only Belgians can make good beer — the Germans produce competent brews, even if their restrictive Reinheitsgebot guarantees they're boring; the Americans have some excellent microbreweries; give them a few more generations as they chisel away at the rough edges, and they will have something that approaches the complexity of the palate of an Orval. But as for Swedish beer, there is no hope, and the whole enterprise should just be put out of its misery.
At least l‰tt ˆl consumption has fallen by half over the past ten years, for which we have the EU to thank. Price-sensitive consumers have been getting more booze for their buck by nipping over the border and carting home something realI've described the role alcohol plays in Sweden's social life before.. This upgrading of Swedish drinking habits is encouraging, but Swedish alcohol consumption still ranks below the EU mean — so if Swedes want to bolster their until-now entirely undeserved international reputation as a drinking nation, there is still much work to be done.
I suggest refocusing on core Nordic competencies — bring back Viking meadAnd if you hire Absolut's marketing geniuses you'll have another runaway export success on your hands.. Read up on Norse drinking culture, convert Spendrups's breweries into meaderies, then start enjoying an alcoholic heritage that is both local and authentic.
For the last few days I've been playing with the public beta of NetNewsWire 2, the successor to the first popular newsfeed reader for the Mac and new competitor to Shrook 2, the current favorite in the fieldA Newsfeed reader lets you collect, manage and display newsfeeds, which are stripped-down versions of the most recent stories published by websites such as newspapers, wire services and blogs. A site's newsfeeds are updated whenever the site is updated; they come in standardized formats (such as RSS), and are fetched regularly by the newsfeed reader, making it possible to keep tabs on hundreds of websites automatically, instead of having to visit these sites individually to see what's new..
I have taken an instant liking to NNW2. While I was impressed by the features of Shrook 2 when that application came out, I found it to have too many quirks for me to use it as the predominant way of being apprised of what's new on my favorite sites. Instead, I returned to hunting and pecking at websites with my conventional browser, these days Camino.
NNW2 has quirks too, and it is still beta, but the frustrations I have with this application are of a different kind. NNW2 is so good that I can now see how I will surf the web in a year or two; it's just that it's not quite there yet.
How will I surf the web in a year or two? The application I will use will be a browser, with tabs, history, bookmarks, pop-up blocking and what-have-you, but also with souped-up feed management and display tools much like what NNW2 and Shrook 2 offer today.
Both these newsfeed readers now let you toggle between the stripped down version of a story and the much prettier browser version, rendered inside the application. But whereas Shrook 2 does this as a feature, it is much more central to NNW2, which has a back button, an address bar, tabs even! It feels so natural to begin using NNW2 as a starting point for one's net adventures that it comes as a shock when you instinctively look for but can't find a google search bar on the top right, or a browse history, or a home button, or lack the ability to access your non-feed shortcuts.
But I now know what I want. And if you read NNW2's feature request/bug report page, you can see that other beta users are also screaming for a full-fledged in-line browser. The future lies not with newsfeed readers that also render websites but with browsers that also manage and display newsfeedsApple's next iteration of Safari, shown in the preview of OS X 10.4, lets you collect and display newsfeeds, though it is far from clear how impressive the newsfeed management system is..
What's more, my future browser will have a system for organizing my feeds that is a hybrid of how Shrook 2 and NNW2 do it today. Simply put, Shrook 2 uses the iTunes library/playlist metaphor, NNW2 uses the email folder metaphor. Both have drawbacks — Like iTunes, Shrook 2's system is not hierarchical; like Mail or Microsoft Entourage, NNW2's system does not allow aliases of the same item in different foldersSure, in NNW2 you can subscribe to the same feed as many times as you want and put these shortcuts in different folders, but that is not efficient on many levels..
I want hierarchical folders like NNW2 has. If I highlight my top-level folder called "Sweden", I get to see all new stories contained by all the feeds in all the subfolders (NNW2 calls these folders "groups.") If I expand that folder and highlight a subfolder, say, "Politics/media," I get to see new stories from just the feeds therein. In Shrook 2, on the other hand, you can't expand folder/playlists in the left-most column — a whole extra column is required to see what's in them, leading to a four-column layout that I find unwieldy. And, unlike with folders, playlists (Shrook calls them "channels") can't contain subplaylists. I have no idea why not, actually.
But I also want to be able to scatter multiple instances of a newsfeed across folder/channels, like Shrook 2 allows. For example, I'd like www.kimthew.com to show up both in my "Friends" folder/channel and "New York" folder/channel. However, should I decide I want to banish my friend forever, it should take but a single swipe from a master library. NNW2 doesn't let me do this.
And then there are features I want that neither application has yet: For example: hierarchical smart foldersSmart folders are folders that are dynamically populated by news items that meet specific criteria, such as, say, those containing the text fragments "swed" or "svensk" or "sverige".. Current implementations of these smart folders are a bit crude: You have to choose between matching any criteria or all criteria. You can't currently make a smart folder that displays items containing either the text "SvD" or "DN" or "Expressen" or "Aftonbladet" but which must also contain the text "Stefan Geens", for example. In other words, you can't mix and match the logical OR and AND operators. One solution would be to allow hierarchical smart folders — A top level smart folder would look for the mention of Swedish daily newspapers, a sublevel smart folder would look for my name among those results.
Many of the features in NNW2 were first introduced by Shrook 2. But a couple of them are unique to NNW2, to my knowledge:
NNW2 can compare the current newsfeed's contents to the previous one. The results can be highly amusing:
NNW2 let's you save a search in Feedster, Daypop or Blogdigger — they're like Googles for newsfeeds — as a virtual newsfeed. The most recent news items that include your search term are in it. If you want to know if anyone at all is blogging "Belgium", even if you don't subscribe to their newsfeed or have never heard of them, this is the way to do it.
Other clever ideas include connecting scripts to a virtual newsfeed, so you can go scrape websites that have no newsfeeds themselves; a customizable toolbar that provides excellent access to quick toggling of viewing styles; and a tool for finding "dinosaur" newsfeeds, which haven't been updated in a while. There is also something that is supposed to share your newsfeed collection with others, but it doesn't work yet in the beta.
Update 2004-09-28: Ranchero have now announced they too will support syncing and bandwidth use managment in NNW2.Shrook 2, meanwhile, still has a much better solution in place for managing bandwidth issues: Their distributed checking feature is truly clever, whenever it works. They also let you access your newsfeed collection via any browser, so you can keep up when you are travelling.
A list of other Mac newsreaders can be found here.So if you have already shelled out $25 for Shrook 2, your investment is safe, but if you have yet to adopt a newsreader as your own, take a very good look at same-priced NetNewsWire 2 when it comes out of beta.
As a consequence of the need to tend to several work-related projects, the presence of a looming urge to redesign this blog, a spurt of blogging over at MemeFirst and a rather heavy post on Leopold II last week to come down from, you will now be served a few posts blissfully free of any import or presumption: A roundup of recent Mac software I've used and can recommend. Today:
A voice chat application for both PC and Mac that lets you talk to other users for free but also make cheap calls to real phones.Skype: This second beta for the Mac, out since a week ago, now works seamlessly. I actually only use one of Skype's features, SkypeOut, but what a feature it is: 2-eurocent a minute "voice chat" to real phones in the US, Europe and Australia from anywhere I can plug my PowerBook to the internet — and with the same sound quality as a normal phone call.
This changes everything. Consider my setup: Because I've been moving frequently these past few years, I haven't bothered getting landlines, relying instead on my mobile phone to make calls, even if calling out is expensive, at 1 euro per minute to the US. Today the 10 euro credit I bought on Skype will let me talk 500 minutes, as opposed to the 10 minutes I would have gotten via Telia on my mobile. That's also far cheaper than using landlines or calling cards.
Friends in New York who are all avid Vonage users have asked me why they should use Skype instead. They shouldn't. Unlike Vonage, Skype can't receive calls from real phones. But Vonage, inexplicably for the business they're in, only takes credit cards with US addresses (trust me, I tried); Skype takes all comers. And since I already have a mobile phone on which I can receive calls for free, I don't miss Skype's inability to do so.
If you live in Europe, have broadband and still initiate long distance phone calls using landlines, you are being fleeced. Help kickstart the voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) revolution and get Skype. (Did I mention it's made in Sweden?)
Det finns blog@stefangeens.com, MemeFirst, Swedish Research News och Oog som jag k‰nner mig ansvarig fˆr, men den sista har faktiskt blivit min fars fotoblogg.
2. Hur valde du detta namn och avspeglar det p nÂgot s‰tt syftet med din blogg?
blog@stefangeens.com och Swedish Research News ‰r j‰ttetrÂkiga som namn, men de har fˆrdelen att namnen ‰r ‰rliga. N‰r jag bˆrjade blog@stefangeens.com behˆvde Blogger (som jag anv‰nde dÂ) en titel, och jag hade ingen inspiration. Kanske ocks anade jag att om jag gav min blogg en kvick titel (t.ex. New York State of Mind, CeÁi níes pas un Belge eller Stockholm Syndrome), jag skulle trˆttna p den innan att jag trˆttnar p min blogg.
MemeFirst ‰r en helt annan ber‰ttelse. N‰r jag var p semester med nÂgra kompisar var det s trÂkigt bara sitta p stranden att vi best‰mde oss vi skulle skriva och regissera en kortfilm, îBeaver Me First,î och d‰rinne fanns en kult som hette îMe Firstî. Kultmedlemmar var egoistiska, sj‰lvklart. N‰r nÂgra av oss senare ville starta upp en gruppblogg som skulle befordra argumentationer, insÂg vi att det skulle ang bada konflikter mellan individer (me first), och konflikter mellan memer (meme first). Jag tycker fortfarande om namn.
Oog betyder ˆga p flaml‰ndska. Bra namn fˆr en fotoblogg, tycker jag.
3. B‰sta svenska bloggnamn? Media Culpa
4. B‰sta utl‰ndska bloggnamn? Memepool.
If King Leopold II were alive today, there is no doubt he would be on trial alongside Milosevic at The Hague for genocide and crimes against humanity. You might have heard about Leopold II's exploits in the Congo at the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries — perhaps from Adam Hochschild's book King Leopold's GhostExcerpts from Hochschild's book are available in PDF format here. It's essential reading., or else White King, Red Rubber, Black Death, a BBC documentary that enraged the Belgian royal family when it was shown in Belgium earlier this year.
Many Belgians have never heard the story. Among the allegations, briefly: The Congo Free State, the personal property of King Leopold II, suffered a decline in population from 20 million to 10 million in the decades straddling 1900 as the king, in constant need of cash, had his colonial agents implement a brutal regime of forced labor on the native population. The process went thus: Belgian agents would enter a village and hold the women and children hostage; to secure their release, the men would have to head into the forest, find rubber trees, tap them, and return with superhuman quotas of sap. Many were worked to death, or else killed. If agents killed those held to ransom, they might chop off (right) hands, to prove that the bullets used hadn't been wasted on game.
If you were the King, or Milosevic, how would you structure your defence? The numbers are exaggerated? They died from other causes? You never ordered such barbaric acts? You weren't aware this was going on? It wasn't systemic, but the actions of isolated individuals? You were framed? The natives did it more than you?
Of course you would. And now, a document [MS Word] published by the Belgian Embassy in LondonDon't get me started — here is a PDF version I made. in the wake of the BBC documentary mounts a defence of Leopold II precisely along these lines. I have no idea why it even exists — why should government resources be expended defending the personal projects of a long-dead king from the work of historians and documentary filmmakers, irrespective of the accuracy of the claims? Can't this matter be settled among academics? The Belgian constitution does not grant the current king policy making powers, so I don't see why royal hissy fits should turn into national policy stances.
It's a bizarrely defensive document, and stiffly phrased. For example, it doesn't start, "Yes, King Leopold II's actions are indefensible, certainly by today's standards and even by the standards of his contemporaries, but the context in which he acted is more nuanced than a portrayal by a BBC documentary..." Instead, we get nuggets such as these:
About the allegations:
Translation: 'Weakened,' 'some even killed;' doesn't sound so bad. And they call this genocide?These media claim that numerous deaths and cruelties ought to be ascribed to the system of licensing that King Leopold II had set up for the exploitation of rubber. The indigenous people were claimed to have been weakened and some even killed by forced labour for the exploitation of rubber in Congo. The reign of Leopold II is described as ìgenocidalî.
Some excerpts from the defence:
Translation: It wasn't systemic, and in any case, the locals were doing it too. Bonus gratuitous swipe: They're still doing it.It was not a practice ordered or imposed by Congo Free State or by Leopold II, but was the result of individual acts, based upon prior existing local customs. Mutilations were not introduced by the Belgians, but already existed (and still do) in some parts of Africa ñ they occurred not only in the Congo, but for instance also recently in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Taking the ìscalpî of the enemy is not even peculiar to Africa.
Translation: There weren't enough Belgians in the Congo to kill that many (even though they tried). And anyway, of the agents implementing Leopold II's regime of forced labor, many weren't Belgian. This reflects well on Leopold II, for some reason.3. Another reason why the accusation of ìgenocideî is out of proportion and unrealistic, is the fact that only 175 agents were in charge of the exploitation of rubber in Congo at the beginning of the 1890s. Most of them were not Belgian and a considerable number of them quickly succumbed to tropical diseases.
Translation: Some natives died before Leopold's agents could exploit them. Surely he can't be held responsible for that?4. [...] The alleged deaths for the whole of Congo cannot be ascribed to the Belgians, simply because at the beginning of the colonisation, they were not even present or active in the whole of Congo. (their emphasis)
'Demographic changes'!! My nomination for euphemism of the year. Translation for 'Migration': Apparently some Congolese didn't like living in Congo Free State. 'Tropical diseases': Who would have guessed that exhausted, malnourished and mistreated workers have lowered immune systems? And re the slave trade, which Leopold II made 'great efforts' to 'completely eradicate': Well, if it contributed to a depopulation of the Congo, how successful were the efforts then? Even if demographic changes would have taken place in certain regions of Congo, they cannot solely by [sic] attributed to the reign of Leopold II. Other factors that have to be taken into account are: migration, tropical diseases and slave trade (which had been taking place in many parts of Congo before the reign of King Leopold II and which he made great efforts to completely eradicate).
Now, all this is just so tactless. Even the one narrow point I am willing to concede is made practically unpalatable by the smug logic the authors use to underpin it:
First of all, the use of the term ëgenocideí is debatable in this context. ëGenocideí can only be used if there is a clear intention to destroy a population on nationalistic, ethnic, racial or religious grounds. Neither King Leopold II nor his administrators ever ordered the extermination of the Congolese population, or of some groups of it. On the contrary, the Congo administration needed the local labour for the cultivation of rubber and therefore had no interest in decimating it.
How enlightened. That practically sounds like sustainable development. Au contraire, the rubber quotas demanded by Leopold II were so large that rubber trees died from overexploitation, requiring desperate Congolese to head further and further into the jungle in bids to secure the release of their kin.
A brief aside here: I don't believe in holding historical figures to modern moral standards — Vikings just didn't know any better than to rape and pillage; they were never aware of modern moral alternatives to such methods (like joining the EU, for example) and so cannot be held to task for not choosing them. I do believe in holding rulers to the moral standards of their contemporaries, however, especially if there was widespread condemnation already then on moral grounds. In Leopold II's case, he was the target of a sustained campaign to stop the abuses in the Congo. People like E.D. Morel, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph Conrad made it impossible for the king not to be aware that his rule was morally bankrupt. And yet he did not change. This is what makes the moral indictment stick, in my mind.But, yes, according to the narrow legal definition of genocide, Leopold II did not perpetrate that. He just didn't give a damn about the Congolese, despite knowledge of the effect his policies were having. The mass depopulation of the Congo was the consequence of his policies, not the aim. In our moot court, however, this makes not an iota of difference to his culpability for crimes against humanity.
The authors, meanwhile, seem to believe that their defense brings his actions back to within the norm of acceptable behavior for a turn-of-the-century monarch — making him someone whom Belgians can continue to honor and respect. But even if everything in the document were true, these defences are so pathetic that Leopold II would still emerge as one of the vilest statesmen of the 20th century. He would still be a vain, racist philanderer whose colonial ambitions led directly to the deaths, estimated far too conservatively then, of at least a million Congolese; and he knew it.
Yet he was king of Belgium, and so there are statues of him around Brussels today. There is one on the Place du TrÙne, around the corner from the Royal Palace and a stone's throw from EU headquarters. Leopold II is buried in the royal crypt on the grounds of Laeken, a palace he rebuilt entirely with Congo profits, and in which the current royals live.
If you are a soldier or civil servant, put in enough years and you will get a medal with his name on it. Thirty years after becoming an officer, for example, you get to be Commander in the Order of Leopold II. Today.
I find that disgraceful. It's clear to me that this man needs to be unambiguously disowned by the Belgian state, regardless of the wishes of the royal family. His statues need to come down, his medals need to be replaced (may I propose the Order of Patrice Lumumba?) and, in a gesture of contrition, Laeken needs to be sold to fund thousands of scholarships for Congolese students, so that these ill-gotten gains can finally do some good. (The king has another lovely palace in the center of town where he can live.)
There will soon be an opportunity for all this to happen. In 2005, Belgium's Africa Museum, founded by Leopold II and which for a century has neglected to tell the story of his rule, will be hosting an academic conference, in order to ascertain the "historic truth" behind Hochschild's story. An exhibit will accompany it. Sound promising?
The Belgian government admits that individual abuses took place in Congo, but rejects the accusations that circulate in the press. That is the reason why next year the Africa Museum in Tervuren is organising an exhibition, which will portray an independent and realistic picture of Congo under colonial rule.
I guess not.
FrÂgor kommer frÂn h‰r.1. Vilken fˆrfattare, dˆd eller levande, skulle du vilja se som bloggare?
Utan tvivel, JM Coetzee. ƒven om det var bara en av hans rena, minimalistiska paragrafer varannan vecka. Jag tror fˆrresten att han inte skriver hans romaner snabbare ‰n det. Jag undrar d‰rfˆr om det betyder att Coetzee inte skulle orka skriva fler bˆcker om han bˆrjade blogga.
2. Borde fler bloggare fˆrsˆka ge ut sina anteckningar i bokform (se
"Supermamman")?
Ja, s l‰nge det inte ‰r deras blogg innehÂll som blir fˆrlagt som bok; bloggar och bˆcker ‰r helt annorlunda litter‰ra former och jag tror att det som passar bra i en blogg blir mindre i en bok. Fˆrresten ‰r bloggkompetenser helt annorlunda som romanfˆrfattarekompetenser. En kompis sa en gÂng, "bloggers are novelists with ADD." Jag hÂller med. Det finns m‰nniskor som kan bÂda, men det ‰r inte sj‰lvklart.
Vi kommer att se hur Belle de Jour gˆr det. Om hennes roman dokument‰r blir en sexy version av Bridget Jonesís Diary kan det funka. Men Helen Fielding skrev aldrig hennes bok kronologiskt, som en verklig dagbok. En roman blir bra om ber‰ttelsen har en stor struktur (en îdramatic archî), och det klarar man inte genom att skriva p ett rent kronologiskt s‰tt, som p en blogg (utan att vara ett geni).
Jag utesluter inte att man fÂr publicera en novellsamling av blogginl‰gg, men noveller inte heller ‰r vad flesta bloggare skriver p deras bloggar.
Fˆrresten: Jag tycker faktiskt inte om att man tar bort blogginl‰ggen frÂn webben n‰r de blir fˆrlagt som en bok. Det ‰r mot min bloggaretik. B‰ttre att skriva nya grejor fˆr boken.
3. Skulle DIN blogg kunna redigeras om till bok?
Nej, tack.
4. Vore en bok skriven i bloggform (en post = ett kapitel), en bra idÈ?
Ja, om fˆrfattare har skrivit och redigerad mesta av innehÂllet innan att hon bˆrjar publicerar det som en blogg, s att vi l‰sare kan nˆja oss av en riktig handling. Till slut, det ‰r mycket svÂrare fˆr en blogg att bli en bra bok ‰n fˆr en bok att bli en bra blogg.
The rather lax updating schedule around here has had to do with a string of long weekends on the archipelago and a move. Regularly scheduled blogging will resume shortly, though I really should finish off that site redesign first. It's impressive how soon after acquiring a bicycle, which I did last week, one becomes a bicycle fascist. Those ample biking lanes that snake through the center of Stockholm — you know, the ones that until last week, in my pedestrian ignorance, I would wander onto for extended periods of time — have now become hallowed ground, to be defended from the promenading proles by highly aggressive cycling tactics, strafing past them at rakish angles so that they know, they must know, that if they venture onto bicycle lanes they are doing something terribly dangerous and very very wrong.
Never mind that I'm not wearing a helmet (yet), and that my light doesn't work, and that the sense of exhilaration I feel after far too many years of not cycling is making for crazy cruising speeds, and that frankly, other cyclists are going a bit too slow for me and not paying enough attention to those overtaking from behind at great speed. But these are but minor quibbles I have with myself. I am simply impressed by the ease with which I have managed to switch my allegianceNot unlike the manner in which Kungsholmen, the part of Stockholm I have just moved to, has suddenly eclipsed Sˆdermalm as the undisputed happening place in Stockholm. towards the becycled, of which I am now one.
What's going on? I believe the technical term for my mental processes here is "asymmetric accounting", whereby the wrongs done to me and my particular clan are always perceived as more grievous than the same wrongs I do unto others and their clans. Conversely, favors I do for others are worth more than the same favors done for me. An everyday word for this is hypocrisy, though it is only ever blatant in those cases when you get to switch clans at short notice — me buying a bicycle, for example, or aggressive drivers who become militant pedestrians once they park their car.
Asymmetric accounting is deeply ingrained in all of us — every parent knows it is impossible to reconcile sibling rivalries with appeals to an objective notion of fairness. I suspect a genetic origin: A perennial sense of injustice, of deserving more, of needing things at the expense of others — these are healthy instincts from an evolutionary perspective. It may not be that greed is good, but it certainly is good for you.
At the level of the clan, the ethnic group, and the nation, asymmetric accounting has driven history. The divergent popular histories in the Balkans, of the Semites and in the Caucasus, to name a few, all accentuate those wrongs that were suffered, not those that were meted out. American perceptions of US foreign policy over the last 100 years tend to accentuate the positiveBelgian perceptions of its colonial policy have long suffered from this effect too, of course, lest anyone try to levy accusations of asymmetric accounting at me beyond my cycling crimes, to which I've now owned up., leaving it to others to accentuate the negative — among Muslim countries especially, as Bernard Lewis likes to point out. This observation is not the same as the relativist assertion that the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle: I'm saying that asymmetric accounting is a mental process that everyone is susceptible to, irrespective of where the truth lies.
For asymmetric accounting to do real harm, it needs to be coupled to the notion that members of the opposing group are fungible — that all are guilty by association for perceived transgressions, and hence that any are fair game for retributive justice. Such dehumanization of the enemy is a prerequisite for modern terrorism, as it has been for traditional warfare until recent examples came alongExamples of recent humane wars: US intervention in Somalia and ex-Yugoslavia.. And so Beslan happened, and 9/11, and before it, World War II, and I.
Is there any chance that an awareness of our biases in the tallying of grievances might lead us to correct for this, rationally? If and when I stop cycling through red lights across zebra crossings, you'll be the first to know.