Yanomami Science Wars, part six

Jacques Lizot’s critique

There is a cinematic quality between the clash of Napoleon Chagnon and Jacques Lizot. Chagnon, the blustering American who like to fire pistols to intimidate the Yanomami, could have been played by the young John Wayne. Lizot, the gay French disciple of structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss who seduced young Yanomami with gifts of cigarettes and pasta, could have been played by Alain Renais.

It is too bad that Patrick Tierney chose to emphasize Lizot’s sexual predations in his “Darkness in El Dorado”. While there certainly could be a case made that any adult taking sexual advantage of a young woman or man for that matter deserves opprobrium, one cannot escape feeling that Tierney was exhibiting old-fashioned homophobia in the name of defending Indian rights.

Although Chagnon and Lizot started out as collaborators, they eventually parted ways—no doubt a function of deep differences over how to regard the Indians. For Chagnon, they were like Jane Goodall’s chimpanzees waging primate war on their enemies. For Lizot, they were more like the Bonobo chimps that used sexual play—including homosexual—to relieve the tensions that lead to violence.

To be fair to Lizot, he did not literally think that the Yanomami were like chimps. In fact his main objection to Chagnon was over his sociobiology, a bogus science that reduces everything to genes.

One of the first articles to identify Chagnon as a sociobiologist was written by Lizot and Sarah Dart. Titled “On Warfare: an answer to N. A. Chagnon”, it appeared in the November 1994 issue of “American Ethnologist”.

Although Chagnon never described himself as a sociobiologist specifically, his efforts to situate anthropology in the framework of what he called “modern evolutionary thought” was clearly identifiable with E.O. Wilson’s theory. The notion that violence and warfare were a means to seize women of rival tribes so as to help propagate the genes of the dominant warrior group was nothing less than the “Darwinian fundamentalism” Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin were determined to debunk.

Lizot is in basic agreement with Gould and Lewontin, writing: “Let us say it straightaway: sociobiology is only in very imperfect agreement with modern genetics; it is linked to an outdated conception of Darwinism and to a series of ideas that were abandoned nearly half a century ago.” He adds that “Wilson’s theory has been challenged by a majority of biologists and geneticists, and Lewontin has even gone so far to declare that it is a caricature of Darwinism”.

Just as Marvin Harris was able to demonstrate that Chagnon used a highly atypical Yanomami village to prove that warfare was not related to food intake, Lizot examines Chagnon’s data about warfare between two other villages in order to invalidate his hypothesis about their “fierceness”. (One wonders what Chagnon, now in his seventies and living in northern Michigan—militia country—makes of the fact that the gay community uses the word “fierce” to describe something extraordinary.)

Lizot takes up the warfare between the Tayari-theri and the Pishaasi-theri in 1979 that Chagnon had described as costing the lives of a large number of adult men. Lizot was quite familiar with the first village since it was where he reigned as a kind of over-chief due to the largesse of trade goods he bestowed upon its inhabitants, often in exchange for sexual favors.

Lizot argues that the conflict between these two villages had little to do with competition for women. Instead the conflict grew out of “gossip, insults, stone throwing, provocations, garden thefts, and the boastful attitude of certain Tayari leaders.” Things reached such a sorry state that finally Pishaasi warriors killed two of their adversaries, which led to a reciprocal revenge—an Amazon version of Hatfield-McCoy so to speak–that led to the loss of men on both sides.

Finally, a well-organized attack by 150 enemies on the Tayari village led to its total destruction by fire. Despite the murderous intentions, only 6 Tayari tribespeople died that day. Lizot examines the fatalities involved in this conflict that Chagnon chooses to describe as typical of Yanomami “fierceness” and arrives at the following conclusions. One, it is indisputable that the war was costly. One out of four men was killed in the fighting. But, more importantly, only 0.3 percent of the marriages in all the villages involved in the fighting were with women taken from an enemy group. Based on these figures, there is no cost-benefit involved with fighting in order to secure childbearing females. Unlike the Trojan War, this blood-letting in the Amazon had nothing to do with stealing women.

Lizot then applies the coup de grace to the tottering figure of Chagnon:

Chagnon’s point of view is, moreover, marked by an underlying male chauvinism, and sociobiology is a garment that suits him well. According to his conception of things, women, in the quarrels of the men, are nothing but beings without initiative and will.

Although I obviously have problems with Tierney’s hostility toward Lizot, he does have some information that will make the Tayari/Pishaasi war more understandable. In his chapter on Lizot titled rather provocatively “Erotic Indians”, Tierney gives some background on the relationship between the French anthropologist and his beneficiaries. They had their own outboard motors and plenty of shotguns, all courtesies of the French academy just as “Chagnon’s people” enjoyed trade goods provided by the University of Michigan and various museums.

Relative to other villages, the Tayari-theri was well-endowed. When a headman from a rival village approached the Tayaris after an unsuccessful hunting expedition, he was pelted with mud. This humiliation, according to Tierney, was what led to the first attack. The coalition involved in the attack on the Tayaris was regarded by the Indians as “Chagnon’s people” and were at one point determined to kill Lizot himself.

One supposes that the main lesson of this particular war among the Yanomami is that it could have been averted if the anthropologists had simply stayed home.

Everyone’s watching us

Jimmy Conway, crime boss

A scene from “Goodfellas” between gang leader Jimmy Conway, played by Robert DeNiro, and Johnny Roastbeef, one of his henchmen who took part with him in a big robbery at JFK airport:

Jimmy Conway: Who’s this?

Johnny Roastbeef: This is my wife. Come here. I want to show you something, Jimmy. Isn’t she gorgeous? I bought it for my wife. It’s a coupe. I love that car.

Conway: What did I tell you? I talked to you, didn’t I? Didn’t I say not to go buy anything for a while? The fucking car.

Roastbeef: It’s a wedding gift from my mother. It’s under her name. I just got married. I love that car.

Conway: Are you nuts?

Roastbeef: Why are you getting excited?

Conway: Are you stupid? We got a million bulls out there. Everyone’s watching us.

Roastbeef: It’s under my mother’s name. It’s a wedding gift.

Conway: I don’t give a fuck. Didn’t you hear what I said? Don’t buy anything. Don’t get anything. What’s the matter with you?

****

Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman-Sachs boss

New York Post, August 4, 2009
Goldman Princes Told: Spend Like Paupers
By Mark Decambre

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has warned his employess to avoid making big-ticket, high-profile purchases as the gold-plated Wall Street firm hunkers down amid a firestorm of public and political anger over outsize bonus payments.

According to sources at the bank, Blankfein has Goldman in particular, should be toned down in light of the billions in bailout money that banks, including Goldman, have gotten from Uncle Sam.

A source within the bank said Blankfein first began calling for an end to the conspicuous consumption late last year, but has stepped up his campaign in recent weeks as the White House has sought to rein in compensation and as the firm has gotten dinged by a pair of high-profile magazine articles.

“This is a sensitive time for us, and [Blankfein] wants to make sure that we’re not being seen living high on the hog,” said one Goldman exec.

Indeed, the exec said that senior managers were ordered to tell their staffs that just because Goldman made a record second-quarter profit of $2.3 billion, they shouldn’t bank on getting a fat bonus just yet. Blankfein was quoted as reminding staff that bonuses are based on full-year results, and that the year is far from over.

Blankfein’s admonishing of workers about profligate spending comes as the firm has been hit with a barrage of negative press lately over its uncanny ability to make money not only in the best of times — but also the worst.

A Rolling Stone article referred to the firm as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,” while a recent New York magazine piece floated the idea that Goldman benefited from the rescue of troubled insurance giant American International Group.

A spokeswoman declined to comment.

Goldman’s speedy recovery in the wake of the global recession and the demise of many of its rivals has drawn more outrage than awe.

Observers question everything from the bank’s massive pay to its uncanny ability to serve as a incubator for Washington policymakers. Goldman alumni include former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Robert Rubin, and Jon Corzine, the current New Jersey governor and former US senator.

Goldman accepted $10 billion in rescue funds from Uncle Sam to help it stay afloat last year amid a crisis of confidence on Wall Street but quickly repaid the money thanks to record revenues.

The Goldman exec said that while Blankfein was cajoling workers to cut back on their spending to avoid negative publicity, he was also playing cheerleader.

In a company-wide voice mail left last week, the CEO assured employees that management is “focused on addressing the negative news and that [Goldman] remains committed to integrity and excellence.”

“I know you’re all working hard,” he added.

mark.decambre@nypost.com

Yanomami Science Wars: part five

Marvin Harris

Critique number one: Marvin Harris

This will be the first in a series of posts about Napoleon Chagnon’s critics. It will begin with a review of the arguments of Marvin Harris, a long-time member of the Columbia University faculty who died in 2001. Harris described his approach as cultural materialism, clearly influenced by Karl Marx.

Harris is best known for “Cannibals and Kings: the Origins of Culture”, a book written in 1978 that explains human history as a struggle to achieve nourishment, including the Aztecs whose ritual human sacrifices were interpreted as a means to a better diet! Many anthropologists regarded this approach as one-sided, including Marshall Sahlins who was Harris’s peer and also influenced by Marxism. In a November 23, 1978 review in the New York Review of Books, Sahlins faulted Harris for being overly deterministic:

Applied to the explanation of Aztec cannibalism or Hindu taboos, Harris’s utilitarianism incorporates the meanings other people give their lives within the kind of material rationalizations we give to our own.

Sartre appropriately called a similar intellectual procedure “terror,” for its inflexible refusal to discriminate, its goal of “total assimilation at the least possible effort.” Sartre was referring to the “vulgar Marxism” which could only see in an act of politics or a poem of Valéry’s some version of “bourgeois idealism.” Everything in the social superstructure could be reduced to its economic function.

Given this context, it should come as no surprise that Harris’s main beef with Chagnon was over whether the Yanomami were as well-fed as he claimed. If warfare was understood as the need to gain control over scarce meat protein in the rainforest, then the whole business about gene diffusion became less convincing.

It should also be stressed that Harris found Chagnon’s “war is in our nature” very much in line with the ruling class’s justifications for the war in Vietnam, which was raging at the time Harris began to mount his criticisms. Indeed, Harris was one of the few faculty members at Columbia University besides Immanuel Wallerstein who took the side of the student radicals in 1968. In June of that year, Harris wrote an article for the Nation Magazine titled “Big Bust at Morningside Heights” that made it clear where he stood:

I believe that there is a connection between the mentality expressed in the Columbia administration’s viewpoint and that which was responsible for driving this country deeper and deeper into the Vietnamese War. It is the domino theory, all over again. If we don’t punish the revolutionaries for taking over the president’s office, how are we going to stop them from taking over the entire university? The answer, as we have almost learned in Vietnam, is that if there are well-formed structural reasons for mass resentments against existing laws and authority, the dominoes have a good chance of falling no matter how many policemen are brought in to shore them up.

The fact that people like Marvin Harris has worked for Columbia University always made the relatively low pay and the lack of a career path acceptable. Never in a million years would have any of my old bosses at Goldman Sachs ever said anything remotely like that.

Harris wrote “Animal Capture and Yanomamo Warfare: Retrospect and New Evidence” for the spring 1984 “Journal of Anthropological Research”. It states in the third paragraph: “With the escalation of the Vietnam War, many anthropologists, myself included, became involved with the peace movement.” For Harris, Chagnon was clearly a figure who reinforced the dominant ideology of American imperialism:

Chagnon’s theory involved two major contradictions: Why should villages make war to protect their sovereignty when war itself places their sovereignty in the greatest jeopardy? And why should Yanomamo men artificially maintain a shortage of women through female infanticide and then fight over sexual access to them?

Why did these contradictions fail to bother Chagnon? Apparently because he believed that warfare and male sexism arose from genetic programming that was readily capable of inducing irrational or even insane behavior (from a materialist-ecological, cost/benefit point of view).

Harris took particular exception to a comparison that Chagnon made betweenYanomami warfare and the war in Vietnam in his 1974 “Studying the Yanomomo” that was intended in part to refute Harris’s protein deficiency thesis:

I know of no serious anthropologist who would argue that the American military activities in Southeast Asia were a direct response to territorial shortages or protein deficiencies in the United States but there will be some anthropologists who will feel cheated if another colleague claims that Yanomamo warfare is not related to ecological parameters…I find the parallels between the behavior of modern nation states and the military behavior of sovereign tribal villages very intriguing…Warre…is still with us…and causes statesmen to ponder the essence of security, and to conclude from time to time, that the best defense is a good offense…

‘Warre’ is an explicit reference to Hobbes’s spelling of the word. As I stated in the beginning of these series of posts, the Chagnon/Jared Diamond sociobiology approach is nothing less than neo-Hobbesian. It is predicated on the belief that Rousseau’s noble savage is a lie and that our genes require men to kill their rivals as a necessary strategy for Darwinian survival. The only way to avoid violence is to create a strong state that can rein in mankind’s homicidal impulses, a view that dovetails with neoconservative and “muscular liberal” beliefs in preemptive warfare and all the rest.

In the section of his article titled “Chagnon Refuted”, Harris presents data that undermines the entire basis of Chagnon’s gene-based ideology—namely the evidence that the struggle for survival in the Amazon rainforest does definitely center on the need to procure food rather than females.

In the March 2, 1979 issue of Science Magazine an article titled “Protein Deficiency and Tribal Warfare in Amazonia: New Data” by Chagnon and Raymond Hames tried to fend off Marvin Harris’s criticisms. They supply data from the Toropo-teri village intended to prove that “the protein intake of the Yanomamo is more than adequate”. They claim that the bulk kilograms of protein per capita consumed each day in the village was 52 during the period studied, an amount that satisfies normal dietary standards.

Harris explained that the Toropo-teri village was not typical. It was attached to a highly acculturated and larger village of Ye’kwana Indians who were in fact traditional enemies of the Yanomami. The Yanomami men in this village no longer lived communally. They tilled the manioc gardens of the Ye’kwana for which they received a wage. The money allowed them to buy goods and food, and even create barns for cows—hardly the model to serve to illustrate protein deficiency. The Yanomami women worked as well, making manioc flour and getting paid with dresses made on Ye’kwana sewing machines. This led Kenneth Good, an anthropologist who I will post about in this series, and Jacques Lizot to state:

We believe that the conditions at that community (as well as its extreme geographic marginality) have so drastically altered the group of Yanomami that they cannot legitimately be represented as Yanomami society. For this reason we believe that the data presented here have little importance for the discussion of protein and warfare among the Yanomami.

In my next post I will take a closer look at Jacques Lizot’s research, which reflects the best instincts of his profession despite Patrick Tierney’s unfortunate tendency to view him as nothing more than a pedophile in “Darkness in El Dorado”.

More on MRZine/Iran

For those following the controversy surrounding MRZine’s tail-ending of the Iranian government, it should be understood that this was not always the editorial position. I have access to the Monthly Review archives going back to 1993 and a search on Iran revealed three articles, excerpted below. As should be obvious, they are in sharp distinction to the current line.

‘Muslim’ women and ‘Western’ feminists: the debate on particulars and universals.
By: Shahrzad Mojab
December 1998

Just as Reza Shah forcibly removed the veil, the Islamic state has used extreme forms of coercion in order to impose it on all women, Muslim and non-Muslim. Disciplining the woman’s body through dress codes is now a priority of the state inside and outside Iran. Using diplomatic power, the Islamic regime promotes the veil globally, from the Olympic games to UNESCO. Imposed through state violence, the veil has turned into a means of sexual apartheid. If the use of hijab (head cover for women) signified anti-monarchist action for some Muslim women in 1979 Iran, today resistance to theocratic despotism takes the form of refusing the veil. Just as Reza Shah forcibly removed the veil, the Islamic state has used extreme forms of coercion in order to impose it on all women, Muslim and non-Muslim. Disciplining the woman’s body through dress codes is now a priority of the state inside and outside Iran. Using diplomatic power, the Islamic regime promotes the veil globally, from the Olympic games to UNESCO. Imposed through state violence, the veil has turned into a means of sexual apartheid. If the use of hijab (head cover for women) signified anti-monarchist action for some Muslim women in 1979 Iran, today resistance to theocratic despotism takes the form of refusing the veil

Clerical Oligarchy and the Question of ‘Democracy’ in Iran.
By Saeed Rahnema, Haideh Moghissi
March 2001

For more than twenty years the Islamic regime in Iran, along with its extensive repressive apparatuses, has created an impressive array of ideological and economic mechanisms of control to construct an Islamified civil society and build consensus for the establishment of a theocratic state. Through massive propaganda and the manipulation of religious beliefs the Islamic ruling bloc has succeeded in maintaining its monopoly of power against all external and internal odds. Political repression eliminated, jailed, and exiled the progressive secular forces that had initiated the revolution in 1979. Ideological indoctrination maintained a strong following for the clerical regime.

However, faced with social, political, and economic realities, a growing number of Iranians, even those who were once devoted supporters of the Islamic regime, have turned against it. The Islamic Republic is in deep political crisis. The Islamists’ economic policies have failed, the per capita income is less than half of what it was before the revolution, and the gap between the rich and the poor has drastically widened. The regime, which assumed power in the name of the dispossessed, is increasingly losing its popularity among the most dispossessed Iranians, and public unrest and dissatisfaction are on the rise. The Islamists’ moral crusades have also nm out of steam as people increasingly and openly express their disapproval through any means they can. The Islamification policies, primarily targeting women and youth, have produced the opposite of the intended result. Not only has the regime been unable to push women back into the home and reestablish the gender order of bygone days, but its policies have produced an unprecedented increase in gender-awareness and resistance by women. Likewise, the authority of the Islamic rulers faces a formidable challenge from Iranian youth, now over 65 percent of the population. Born and raised under Islamic rule, the youth in Iran have turned their backs on the political and moral regime established by the clerics. “Youth distancing themselves from the revolution and faith” has been a recurring concern of the Islamists. Political suppression, particularly the series of assassinations of prominent intellectuals and nationalist leaders, which came to be known as chain assassinations, have severely discredited the regime. A disgruntled public, which has remembered the unfulfilled promises of the 1979 revolution, grasps every possible opportunity to show it despises what the Islamists stand for. Iranian voters have repeatedly expressed their discontent with the regime by voting against the fundamentalists’ favorite candidates in parliamentary and presidential elections. Internationally, with the exception of the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the regime’s early policy of “exporting the revolution” failed to link it to other Islamic movements.

Backgrounds to the Parliamentary Elections in Iran
By Morteza Mohit
March 2001

The elections for the Sixth Parliament (Majlis) in Iran in February 2000 were not only a shock for the ruling clergy, but also an eye-opening event for the U.S. mass media and its believers who have for years portrayed the Iranian people as a horde of uncivilized, bearded, religious fanatics who did not deserve, and could not comprehend, the Shah’s modernization plan. Consequently, we saw a new twist in international reporting. The elections were reported as “the most democratic,” and the young voters as dancing lovers of Internet Cafes, Baywatch, rap music and Pizza Hut.

To get beyond this smoke screen, we should first ask the question: Was this election truly the most democratic? The short answer is that it was the least democratic election. To understand why this is so we have to take a look at the power structure of the Islamic Republic and the system’s top-down decision-making process.

At the top of the decision-making pyramid we have a Supreme Leader (Valli-e-Faghih) who is supposed to be the representative of God. Therefore, he practically and legally has the last word and the veto power on any important national or international decisions made by the government. He is not just the spiritual leader of the nation but also the ultimate political decision maker of the country. He controls the military, the police, radio and television and the judiciary system. Some of the most important commercial and industrial foundations are also directly or indirectly under his control.

****

Apparently the new editorial position has driven one board member to resign, as reported by Doug Henwood on his own mailing list:

I’ve just been informed (by someone who wants to remain anonymous) that Barbara Epstein resigned from the board of MR because of the nonsense that Yoshie has been posting to MRZine about Iran. When she made her complaints known to the board, they made it clear that they supported Yoshie’s work, so Epstein felt that she had no choice but to quit. She’s not interested in campaigning against what she still regards as a venerable institution, but she feels that Yoshie’s position on Iran has so discredited the organization that she couldn’t abide a formal association anymore.

Though I’m just the messenger on this, I completely agree with Epstein. Defending a regime that has jailed and killed thousands of socialists and Marxists is a disgraceful thing for a socialist/Marxist publication to do.

The impact is not just being felt at the top. Under the article that I called attention to in my last post, there is a comment that the Monthly Review editors can ignore at their own risk:

I fully agree with Doug Henwood. This article is the latest one in a very long row of shameless (indirect) apologias for Ahmadinejad and his assorted thugs. This last one month or two has been a huge disappointment for me, now I see MRzine in a completely different colour. I used to translate their articles and advise people to read Monthly Review, as an emblematic and trustworthy voice of the US left, now I have come to regret even that, and will surely not do so in the future.

I guess MRzine would also support Russia (re)invading the Baltic states, coz that’s “against US imperialism” too. with the Stalinist Lidia as a cheerleader, probably…

easterneuropean | 08.01.09 – 5:52 pm | #

Since MR is obviously not interested in whether its line on Iran alienates its readers, there is little doubt that a crisis is in store for this magazine that has been around for more than a half-century. You simply cannot push a line that antagonizes what I assume to be the overwhelming majority of its readers. This will be reflected both financially, as people do not renew their subscriptions, and politically as the magazine begins to be viewed as “cranky” along the same lines as Workers World and James Petras.

One might speculate on the current leadership’s failure to be accountable to its subscriber base. Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff came of age during a massive working class movement in which they played a role as theoreticians trying to respond to the urgency of the moment.

The current man in charge, one John Bellamy Foster, is a highly regarded sociologist with scant experience in the mass movement. His chief lieutenant John Mage was an attorney for the USSR and a member of the Lawyer’s Guild. The editor of MRZine, who is largely driving this “turn” toward the IRI, was a member of Solidarity briefly and has spent the past 5 years trolling mailing lists with her curious brand of neo-Foucauldian politics.

Not a very inspiring team.

Finally, it should be recorded that John Mage, evidently a skilled lawyer at one time, has mounted a defense of MRZine as supposedly an impartial source of information on Iran. If I were an attorney myself, I would regard this task as more difficult than the one on behalf of Bernie Madoff. This is what Mage wrote on the Leftist_Transpotters mailing list, a forum devoted to gossip about the left–a most appropriate locale for Mr. Mage. He is responding to Kevin Murphy, the most recent winner of the Isaac Deutscher prize and a rather fervent Stalinophobe:

> Another blithering third-worldist knucklehead duped into supporting

> a regime of executions, torture, and slaughter against its own people.

>

> Fortunately, in the U.S., the knucklehead block is limited to the

> Wally Worlders, MR, James Petras, and a few dinosaurs on Louis

> Proyect’s list. Am I missing any others?

>

> Kevin Murphy

FALSE spot!

MR has not been “supporting” the Iranian “regime.”

Ignored are our posting opinion and factual matter on MRZine critical

of the Iranian government and its response. Such as – among others -

Asmi Bishara “Iran: An Alternative Reading” (Iranian system is

“totalitarian”), linking to Abbas Barzegar in the Guardian (“the

Iranian government has pursued a self-defeating policy of blocking

international press access”), posting an excellent opinion piece by

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam (“These brave men and women on the streets of

Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, and other cities are moved by the same

utopia that inspired their fathers and mothers three decades ago: the

utopia of justice”), videos of the large “day of mourning” protest

June 18th, videos of the doctors and nurses protest in Tehran of June

16th (protesting “the deaths of seven people last night, reportedly

shot by basij.”), and the Amnesty International “Iran: Recommended

Action” urging viewers to appeal to the Iranian government to respect

the rights of those arrested, stop using basij, and “to stop

unlawfully restricting the freedoms of association, assembly and

expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart

information and ideas.”

“Supporting” the Iranian “regime”?

We have been attacked for posting on MRZine material that some don’t

want to see (and won’t on the US media), such as – among others – the

facts as to the opinions of Chavez, Lula, the position of the Chinese

government, the actual (and very important) statement by Khameini

week age Friday, or what in one case – deemed particularly heinous -

the fact that Iranian TV was asserting that 8 Basijis had been killed

“during Teheran unrest.”

And, yes, opinion pieces such as that of Michael Veiluva (“IRAN:

Message to US Peace Groups: A Little Humility Please”) suggesting

that the lap-top bomber US “peace” groups look at what company they

find themselves in … again.

Oh noes, perhaps MR thinks the CIA is involved in events in Iran…

what knuckleheads.

But, does that mean we’re “supporting” the Iranian “regime”?

We do not doubt that some of our critics are merely lazy, and not

looking at MRZine to see for themselves. Others I do not care to

characterize (but fuckingfailbuckets would be a good start).

But here I would have expected a little more care.

John Mage