I am currently reading through Mikhail Zoshchenko's Nervous People and Other Stories, which I'm borrowing from a dear friend, the same who lent me A Multitude of Sins (and, before that, The Following Story). This is from the side of Russian literature that deals with life in short and ultra-short stories, told satirically. Many of the stories are complaints about life under collectivism: "A Clever Little Trick" tells of a light bulb factory that, needing to make its quota that had been assigned in candle power, did so by churning out bulbs of 40 times the previous candle power, electricity use be damned; "Weak Packaging" is a story of the persistence of bribery; and so forth. In the midst of this, though, is "The Affidavit," a story in which the government does right [I've copied about 600 words of it below the fold.]

The story will come as a disappointment to those who believe firmly that unimpaired rational adults should be able to contract as they wish without fear or threat of government interference. In this case, there was a preexisting legal principle around which two people tried to contract. I agree wholeheartedly with the outcome in this case.

- - - "The Affidavit, by Mikhail Zoshchenko - - -

A very odd thing happened recently.

It's all the more interesting because it's true. There's none of your, well, make-believe or pure fantasy. Just the opposite; it's all taken, so to speak, from the wellspring of life.

And it's even more intriguing because there's a love interest involved. On the strength of this, many people will be quite amused to take a look at what sort of thing is going on at present on this rather important and up-to-date front.

Well, so two years ago in the city of Saratov the following event took place. A certain rather empty-headed young man named Seryozkh Khrenov, who was a government employee or, more precisely, worked in the receiving and inspection department of a certain office, began courting a young lady or, rather, let's say, a working girl. Or else she began courting him. Since it was such a long time ago, there is no possibility of clearing up this question. We only know that they began to be seen together on the streets of Saratov.

They began to walk and go out together. They even began strolling arm in arm. They began to utter all kinds of fond words. And so on. And so forth. And more of the same.

And this young dandy of a goods inspector once remarked to his lady friend, "I'll tell you what, Citizeness Anna Lytkina. Now," he said, "you and I are taking a stroll, and walking together, and we really," he said, "can't foresee what may happen and come of this. And," he said," please be kind enough to give me an affidavit just in case, if a child should occur, you'll make no claims on the party mentioned. And when I," he said, "am in possession of such a statement, I'll be nicer to you. In the opposite case, however," he said, "I would sooner renounce our mutual love than worry in the future about my actions and pay money for the support of progeny.

[Zoschenko notes again that the lady isn't particularly bright, and a bit insulted by the request, but sign it she does. The dandy has the paper properly certified and carries it with him always. A year and change later, the couple have a baby but no love between them. She takes her former lover to the court, confessing her signature but pleading for mercy. The man presents his prized paper:]

The people's judge glanced at the affidavit, looked at the signature and the seal, gave a laugh, and said, "It's a proper document, without a doubt!"

The goods inspector said, "Why, yes, completely, so to speak, proper, if you'll pardon me. And in general it leaves absolutely no room for doubt. It fulfills all requirements and is without any infraction."

The people's judge says, "The document is undoubtedly in order. But the following consideration appears relevant: Soviet law is on the side of the child and protects his interests particularly. And in this case, according to the law the child must not be made to answer for it or suffer if, by chance, he happened to land a pretty sharp son-of-a-bitch for a father. And on the strength of the aforesaid," he says, "you affidavit is worthless and has only sentimental value. Here," he says, "take it back, quickly, and hide it next to your heart."

In short, the ex-father has already been paying money for six months.

Thanks to the wonders of Craigslist, I'll be working this summer as a communications intern at the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation. It's a government-founded NGO that works with scientists in countries of the former USSR. Primarily through offering grants and coordinating research and work with American partners, the CRDF aims to

support exceptional research projects that offer scientists and engineers alternatives to emigration and strengthen the scientific and technological infrastructure of their home countries;

advance the transition of foreign weapons scientists to civilian work by funding collaborative non-weapons research and development projects;

help move applied research to the marketplace and bring economic benefits both to the United States and the countries with which the CRDF works;

strengthen research and education in universities abroad.

Perhaps I will create a separate category exclusively for Star Wars posts.

Amber Taylor asks why General Grievous's flagship is called "The Invisible Hand". Judging from the first 100-some hits of internet chatter, there are two reasonable theories. One is that this is Lucas's (perhaps anti-capitalist) joke, since Grievous is involved in the Trade Federation fracas, The Invisible Hand is Adam Smith's idea, so this is an allusion to the (perhaps evil) power of capitalism. The other theory is that "The Invisible Hand" is a reference to Grievous's secret allegiance to Palpatine/Sidious, since Sidious is in fact controlling the whole fight like pawns on a chessboard as a pretext to amassing power for himself. Recall that Mara Jade, one of Palpatine's best servants was famously "The Emperor's Hand" and it turns out that Palpatine had other Hands, too, although we learn much less about them. So, having Grievous call his ship "The Invisible Hand" can be Palpatine's early joke on the rest of the galaxy, since Griveous is just as much a handmaiden of the Emperor as Mara J. will turn out to be, but nobody will know this until it is too late.

Most likely, of course, both are true. The in-galaxy explanation for the name is The Emperor's obsession with naming his secret flunkies "hands", but the out-of-galaxy explanation is George Lucas's punny mind.

Paul Goyette wades into my aforementioned Scrabble-blogging. (My longest two comments are reproduced below the fold, because Haloscan will eventually delete them.)

First off, let me agree with Paul's entirely sensible point that it's very odd to retain the original Scrabble point-values (which were based on the frequency of letters in the newspaper, as I recall) rather than re-indexing them given the word source now available. This leads to the underscoring of V, overscoring of X, &c.

However, we shouldn't underestimate the importance of path-dependence. At this point a great deal of energy and time have gone into mastering the game under its current rules, so one should only change the rules lightly if one has an affection for mussing up current skill hierarchies. It sounds like Paul does, but an overenthusiastic tinkering with rules is what has destroyed many a Collectible Card Game. If we're going to shake things up, far more important would be updating the Scrabble word list or adopting the international one, but again, I think the reliance interests trump here.

But how strange it is that Paul disdains standardized dictionaries, i.e., "the privileged arbitrartion of the standard-setters" in the context of a newish game with rules laid down by Alfred Butts! Why seven letters rather than six, or nine, or how ever many one feels like? Why a board of a given size rather than a free-form grid on the table? Why demand English-language play? See PGA Tour v. Casey Martin, 532 U.S. 661, (2001) (Scalia J., dissenting) ("(T)he rules are the rules. They are (as in all games) entirely arbitrary, and there is no basis on which anyone--not even the Supreme Court of the United States--can pronounce one or another of them to be 'nonessential' if the rulemaker ... deems it to be essential. ... To say that something is 'essential' is ordinarily to say that it is necessary to the achievement of a certain object. But since it is the very nature of a game to have no object except amusement (that is what distinguishes games from productive activity), it is quite impossible to say that any of a game’s arbitrary rules is 'essential.' Eighteen-hole golf courses, 10-foot-high basketball hoops, 90-foot baselines, 100-yard football fields--all are arbitrary and none is essential. The only support for any of them is tradition and (in more modern times) insistence by what has come to be regarded as the ruling body of the sport.")

Paul, of course, is free to become his own rulemaker, playing whatever game he cares to invent with those who also like it, i.e. 8-letter Scrabble or 9-letter Scrabble or use-the-nonsense-on-the-internet-as-a-dictionary-Scrabble, but the standard reasons for adhering to tradition and the centralizes rulemaker (the advantage of focal points, the ability to meaningfully invest in a game whose rules are constant &c.) are pretty compelling to me.

There is more merit to the suggestion (which Paul is less enthusiastic about) of a you-can't-play-a-word-if-you-can't-define-it rule for friendly play, although presumably it would be better if it were more of a strong informal norm than a rule; otherwise adjudication would be pretty nightmarish. Who would decide whether the proposed definition was close enough to the canonical definition to "count" (especially given the dim and imperfect memory that many of us have of frequent Scrabble words), and in what canon? [E.g., When I played "mu" would "a letter" suffice to define it, or would I have to remember that it was a letter in the greek alphabet? Would I also have to remember that it was the 12th letter? Is "some sort of lava-something-or-other" a sufficient definition for "aa" or would I have to remember that it was a rough-faced and dried lava flow? Norms rather than rules can handle these sorts of situations flexibly, as they often do for time-limits in casual play.]

Appendix of previous comments:

I mean, you could have that [no words fewer than 4 letters] be the rule, but it's not, and it strikes me that 4-letter-word scrabble would be inferior to actual Scrabble for a lot of reasons. To wit

1: Placement. Without 2 or 3 letter words, your ability to place words is dramatically reduced, leading to much less spatial flexibility for everybody, and more importantly, many fewer possible plays. This means, for those who (like our hostess) like interesting words, that most of them will die stillborn.

2: Planning. As a consequence of this, and as a consequence of the 2-letter word ban, it becomes much harder to plan your next play before your turn comes around. (With a few exceptions, almost all of your plays will require you to incorporate at least one letter on the board into your main (and likely only) word).

2b: A consequence of both of these things is that game play will be much, much, slower-- with fewer places to play one's prized words, and much less ability to plan them before one's turn comes, the game will be at an excruciating pace unless timed.

3: Luck. This is probably most important-- eliminating 2 and 3 letter words vastly privileges the already good state of having a "good rack" (i.e., one well suited to forming a large variety of words, esp. 7-letter ones). A rack with a bad vowel/consonant ratio or a bunch of hard-to-use letters can often be scraped together for respectable play with some good 2- and 3- letter words (and if not, at least you can play *something* to slough off the much hated letters). If you're limited to 4-letter words with, e.g., no consonants or no vowels, your life will be very miserable indeed. Scrabble players sometimes try to play with their rack-balance in mind, but it's unclear why we should make the I-lost-because-I-got-a-sucky-rack-from-which-I- couldn't-recover effect any larger than we already do.

4: Bingos. Presumably if this rule were to catch on, serious players would just have to memorize all 8-letter words and most of the 7s. Play would mostly consist of long stringy words punctuating by pretty much random bursts of high-scoring play. The person who knew more 8-letter racks would get more 50-point plays, and presumably dominate. If you think memorizing the 2s and 3s isn't fun you won't even know what unfun *is* until you realize that banning the 2s and 3s just pushes the memorization competition back into the 8s, of which there are many, many, many more.

5: Q. Without qua or qat, getting stuck with the q sucks more than ever. Qaid is all right, but requires the somewhat rare d, tranq is okay, but long. We'll be back to the bad-old-days where getting stuck with the q is sort of like the queen of spades in hearts, just sitting there staring mournfully at the board until a rare u or blank comes along.

No thanks.
_______________

[Whether obsessive memorization sucks the fun from a game] depends on what one wants from a game. Surely there is room for pluralism. Some games admit of almost endless hours of study and obsession, and continue to reward (albeit with diminishing returns!) those who obsess, study, practice. [E.g., Scrabble, chess, checkers, Trivial Pursuit, go.]

Other games admit of some mix of study and sheer luck, so that beyond a certain point, it is mostly pluck and playing experience that give some players an edge over others. [E.g., Settlers of Catan, Monopoly.]

Still other games are basically levellers, where old and new, talented and incompetent, rub shoulders. [E.g. Candyland, Hungry Hungry Hippos.]

All of these (even Candyland!) can be fun in some circumstances, which depends partially on one's mood, who and how many people one's playing with and whether other people feel similarly. Playing Scrabble, for example, is an exhausting but enjoyable experience if your opponent also has a cutthroat spirit (even if one player has a better Scrabble-vocabulary than the other; fun is about attitude more than aptitude). But as my parents, among others, have learned, Scrabble is much less fun if one person is playing for keeps while the other one thinks that "pfui" or "oxo" or "aa" are unsporting.

So, the point isn't (or shouldn't be) that the fun gets sucked out of a game because some people obsess where others dabble. The point is instead that these two people are playing essentially different games. Obsessions are fun where mutual.

Some mock my exhaustive pursuit of Jacob Levy sightings across the blogosphere, but for all that I hate having to slog through comments for this stuff, sometimes one can run across surprising finds. E.g., Religion Professor Extraordinaire Douglas Laycock in the comments at ScotusBlog, or the former blogger formerly known as the Curmudgeonly Clerk at Southern Appeal.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that another Curmudgeonly Ex-Clerk appearance is here; he is still missed.