Democracy! Yesterday! But free and fair, with sprinkles!

cassielsander has posted an interesting manifesto on Iraq. I think much of it is quite reasonable, but I've chosen to take issue with his demand for an early transfer of power to a democratically-elected Iraqi body. Simply put, I think the Iraqis--and a great many others--are naive about how quickly this can be accomplished in a country with no functioning democratic instutitions and, indeed, very few functioning institutions at all.

I keep hearing calls for more UN involvement in Iraq because they have so much more experience with nation building than the USA. As lhn has pointed out, this experience amounts to little more than the nation of East Timor (which seems to be getting along well enough, though the jury is still out). The parallels aren't extremely close, but East Timor did suffer the destruction of a great many of its institutions and infrastructure at the hands of the Indonesians. Up through independence, it was being destabilised by Indonesian-supported militias from across the border. Probably the most significant difference is that East Timor asked for UN intervention, whereas most Iraqis arguably did not want the fall of Saddam Hussein to come at the cost of a US occupation.

How soon was power restored to the people there? All in all, the UN transitional government was in place for 33 months. A transitional government made up of East Timorese wasn't formed until July 2000, general elections came more than a year after that, and formal independence was declared in April, 2002. Coincidentally, the Iraq Governing Council was formed in July of this year. If it meets the Dec. 15 deadline for coming up with a timetable, it will already be a month ahead of East Timor, which unveiled theirs in mid-January of 2001.

Dinner in Andersonville

Poor monshu! He was up Tuesday night with heartburn. This happened to me all the time before I got my prescription for sophisticated anti-reflux drugs, so I know exactly how much it sucks. I'd complained about how we haven't been to Andersonville in an age, so we met at @mosphere and dined at Jin Ju. He played it safe by having phacen and pipimpap, but I wanted something I hadn't had before, so I ordered talk kancang and capchay. I've had the latter lots of times, but never at Jin Ju, and I was curious what sort of spin they would have on it. They served it in a tangier sauce than usual and with chunks of tender sirloin. The "chicken soy sauce" was the real treat, though--fried (possibly roasted first) and dunked in spicy-sweet sauce. monshu tried a bite and said he could imagine making a meal of them. I said that, in fact, it reminded me of the Korean fried chicken I'd had a some place on Lawrence whose name I can no longer remember.

Before we ate, we stopped by Pars Grocery so monshu could pick up the pomegranate molasses he needs for some recipe we saw in a free foodie bimonthly. (If it's a keeper, I'll publicise it here.) He was thinking of following it with lamb and I volunteered to make an "orzotto" to accompany that on Sunday. At the store, I was fascinated by all the exotic influsions. Next to the cheapest rosewater and orange blossom water I've ever seen were dillweed water, willow water, and things that didn't even have English names. I would've bought some if I'd had any idea what to do with any of it.

A little Latin

Okay, if I were a good linguist, I'd be seeking to answer the question, Why is it that Americans try to pluralise all Latin nouns as if they were Second Declension masculines? But I'm just a crotchety amateur linguist, so I don't care why you people keep doing this, I just want you to stop. So listen up:

Penis belongs to the Third Declension. Its nominative plural is penes. Cf. avis, pl. aves.

Scrotum belongs to the First Declension, but it's neuter. Like most neuters, it takes a plural in -a, i.e. scrota. There are several First Declension neuter plurals floating around in English, like errata and corrigenda, and some Third Declension ones, like opera (singular opus).

Anus is...First Declension masculine! Go to town with your ani[*]!

Excursus belongs to the Fourth Declension. I know your brain is wired to say Ah! The plural must be excursi!, but, actually, the plural is excursus. (The final vowel is lengthened, but it doesn't show in this transcription.) Census and prospectus are like this, too, which is why, when we have to pluralise these words, we say censuses and prospectuses.

Now that you've been told, continuing to use these incorrect forms can no longer be ascribed to mere ignorance; rather I will be forced to attribute it to a willful desire to annoy ME PERSONALLY and respond with all the pedantic disdain I can muster. You have been warned.

Y'all may now return to your regularly-scheduled chimp-like banging of the keyboard.

[*] Strictly speaking, the accusative (anos) or ablative (anis) plural is called for, but the practice of declining Latin nouns in English according to case is too pretentious even for me to contemplate doing.