Geek of All Trades

"A towering figure on the culinary front"

Julia Child passed away on August 12, 2004.

I am sad today thinking of the loss of this culinary icon whom I have admired for so many years. Apart from being over six feet tall, Julia Child was confident, brassy, gutsy, smart, accessible, and real. She worked for the OSS in World War II. She was the first woman inducted into the Culinary Institute Hall of Fame. Her legendary Cambridge kitchen is now in the Smithsonian.

Raise a glass of Bourgogne to the memory of this great and grande dame of French cooking in America.

Bon appetit, Mrs. Child.

Like shooting fish in a barrel

George W. Bush during a speech at the defense bill signing ceremony last week:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

(Source: this was widely reported, but you can have it from the White House's own website, where there is a transcript of the President's remarks.)

Going through the motions

When I watch baseball, I like to watch for details. I like to notice whether a pitcher sets at the belt or at the chest, or whether he stands at the first or third base side of the rubber. I try to learn which batters have a level, inside-out swing, and which batters golf the ball with a long upper-cut.

Over at ESPN.com's baseball page, someone shares my love for the details of baseball, and has compiled a collection of photos of some of baseball's most unusual batting stances and pitching motions to be found in the game. I highlight two classics above: Satchel Paige (in whose honor I took my baseball discussion group screen name), and Japan's Sadaharu Oh. In his career Oh hit more home runs than Hank Aaron, and his bizarre one-legged batting stance is amazing to me; I wish I could have seen him play.

More judicial wisdom

"The patent lawyer understands better than most of us that the mystery of the universe lies in the detail."

Judge Charles Wyzanski, "A Trial Judge," in Whereas, A Judge's Premises (1965) (quoted in Amgen, Inc. v. Chugai Pharm. Co. Ltd., 13 U.S.P.Q.2d 1737, 1738 (D. Mass. 1989) (Saris, M.J.)).

Ouch

Last night I went to the gym and lifted weights for the first time in over two months. I knew I needed to lift light, and I think I did, but even light squats leave the legs feeling pretty rubbery and sore. It's a good kind of hurt though.

The Fog of War

The other night I watched The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. This fascinating documentary takes the form of vintage footage and photographs interspersed with and narrated by an extended interview with the Kennedy- and Johnson-era Secretary of Defense, who was at President Kennedy's side during the Cuban Missile Crisis and is frequently blamed for (or credited with) the escalation in Vietnam.

At the time of filming, McNamara was 85 years old, and had (as he freely admitted) the benefit of decades of hindsight with which to justify the decisions he made an actions he took half a lifetime earlier. He admitted that he had made many mistakes, but was careful to share the blame with others around him. For example, he maintained that the escalation in Vietnam in the mid-1960s was President Johnson's doing rather than his own (though the press liked to call the conflict "McNamara's War"), and recently declassified recordings back him up. The tapes reveal that although McNamara and Kennedy had a plan to withdraw from Vietnam by 1965, Johnson overruled that plan, ordering more troops and more attacks. The recording reflects an astonishing display of aggressive authority by Johnson - he all but called Kennedy and McNamara cowards - and I felt myself wondering if the horrors of Vietnam could truly be traced to the scared feather-puffing of a man who never expected to be president and felt he had to distinguish himself somehow from his charismatic and martyred predecessor.

On the other hand, McNamara could have resigned at that point, but he did not - rather, he carried out Johnson's orders, with the full application of his powerful mind. It would be another three years before Johnson would finally go to far for McNamara to continue working with him. "I don't remember whether he fired me or I quit," McNamara said. Whichever it was, it seems to me too little too late to absolve McNamara of the the responsibility he was given for the progression of the war.

Although "The Fog of War" draws no overt parallels between the Vietnam era and any modern political situation (it was filmed in 2002 and released in 2003), but watching the film in 2004, it is hard not to do so. McNamara speaks of trying to "win over the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people while slaughtering them and bombing their nation into the stone age. Some of the "eleven lessons" around which the film is organized - distilled wisdom-bites such as "Empathize with your enemy," "There's something beyond one's self," or "Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning" - are teachings that it seems our modern leaders would do good to take to heart. The final lesson, though - "You can't change human nature" - points up the hopelessness that can't help but creep into the heart of anyone who tries to tackle the problems that foment conflict and war.