A Curious Little Blog

Military Rape

2012-01-21T21:41:00.002-05:00

Serving in the military is dangerous enough, you would think, without having to worry about your fellow soldiers raping you. Killing you is bad enough; we know that there are deaths to friendly fire, and almost certainly always will be. Getting raped by the other side is also a danger that, I would imagine, the laws of war will never completely eliminate. But there is increasing news coverage of people getting raped by members of their own side.

A Democratic Congressman has introduced a bill that would take military rape cases out of the military chain of command. If the Defense Department is to be believed, there is a veritable contagion of rape among soldiers: 19,000 sexual assaults in 2010 alone. Even granted that not every sexual assault would qualify as a rape, that's still a staggering figure. A new documentary called The Invisible War delves into the problem up close and, from what I have read, in a heart-rending fashion.

I don't know whether other countries have a comparable problem. I do know that rape is deplorable, and rape on this scale is a scandal. I also think that this consequence of mixing women and men in military units should have been entirely predictable. In general, mixing men and women in close living quarters is almost certain to result in sex. Mixing men and women in close living quarters where they are deprived of a normal social life is even more likely to result in sex. Mixing men and women in close living quarters and a stressful position is almost certain to result in rape. It is deplorable, but true. Of course, one would have to adjust for factors such as the prevalence of rape in a society in general; within a given society, however, I would have to think that this is a recipe for rape, even if not necessarily on the same scale that the U.S. Army is experiencing.

Obviously, the military's response to sexual assault is also an important factor. It appears that commanders have not taken rape accusations as seriously as they should have, and that may be due to an institutional failing. I don't, however, think that they are going to eliminate the problem entirely. And, no, I don't have a solution. The best alternative, in my opinion, would be to have all-male and all-female units, but that creates other problems. Women don't officially serve in combat roles now, but can you imagine if they did, and you had to choose between sending in an all-male or an all-female unit into a dangerous situation? Whatever you picked, the answer would be wrong, and the military would probably end up creating rules about which units had to be committed that would be contrary to good tactics. I don't have an answer, but the situation needs to get better.

In Defense of Manning?

2012-01-16T22:29:00.003-05:00

I have been following the case of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of passing over 700,000 classified documents to Wikileaks, with some interest. I am curious how so many people seem to be defending him. Since a preliminary investigation led an officer to recommend his prosecution on all 22 counts, we now get to see how his lawyers are going to defend him. According to the Huffington Post, "defense lawyers say Manning was clearly a troubled young soldier whom the Army should never have deployed to Iraq or given access to classified material while he was stationed there from late 2009 to mid-2010." Also, "others had access to Manning's workplace computers. They say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay soldier at a time when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces."

In other words, he didn't do it, and they shouldn't have let him near classified information anyway, and, besides, it didn't do any harm.

The first of these is the only legitimate defense -- he didn't do it. I suspect that this is also going to be the weakest line of defense, since there are probably plenty of emails from Manning to Assange and others indicating his intention to release the documents.

Moreover, this defense flatly contradicts the two fallback positions: it's the Army's fault for letting him near the information, and releasing it didn't damage U.S. interests. These are two sophistical arguments that I happen to despise, seeing them frequently among high-profile court cases in which the defendant has no real defense.

The Army should certainly have good procedures to keep the unqualified away from classified documents, and from what I have read, Manning's superior officer was going to cut his access shortly before the documents were leaked, but didn't get around to it. Still, is this a defense? The law (or Army code) is pretty clear about protecting classified information. Even if the Army slipped up and let someone near classified information when it shouldn't have, is that a reason Manning should not be prosecuted? Manning could be a Taliban spy and the same logic would apply: the Army would be, in that case, foolish to let him near the documents, but he would still be guilty. Can a bureaucratic mistake excuse an illegal action? And can anyone who knows how time-consuming a process it is to get a clearance on Manning's level really want the Army to add even more safeguards?

Manning's emotional state might at least count as mitigating circumstances, but the excuse that he was a homosexual at a time that homosexuals were barred from serving openly doesn't count for much. The rules were in place, and well known, before he signed up. If you were a polygamist and signed up for the Army, you might be stressed out about it -- don't sign up! There was no draft that put Manning in this situation; he did it to himself.

The last argument is one of the most frivolous: that the documents did no harm to U.S. interests. While one or more of the charges on which Manning is being brought up may require actual damage to be done, surely he is in defeault of at least some rules regardless of the actual consequences of what he did. I can understand that one would want some rule about significance; you wouldn't want to send someone to prison for a long period of time because he leaked a single, trivial document, for instance. But Manning leaked over 700,000 documents. It should not be up to the court to decide whether these documents actually harmed U.S. interests, because then every case of leakage would degenerate into a debate, not about the law, but about the effects of the leak. People would be able to release classified documents with impunity as long as they did not rise to whatever level of "damage" a military court happened to hold. It would be risky, of course, but I imagine there are people who would be happy to take the chance.

Unless Manning has some extraordinary exculpatory information that his defense lawyers have yet to bring up, therefore, the case against him looks very strong. I have long since lost much faith in our jury system, but, since Manning will be tried by a military court, there is some hope that justice will be done.

Think This Through

2012-01-15T17:54:00.000-05:00

I got an email about some training that I have to attend. It includes the following warning: "Due to limited seating, please plan to arrive early." I would like to know what train of thoughts went through the head of the author as he wrote that. If there aren't enough seats, having people arrive early is not going to solve the problem. Sure, those who do arrive early might get seats, but that just pushes the lack of seats on to those who fail to arrive early. No matter how early you tell people to arrive, and no matter how much they follow your advice, they will never produce more seats.

Is There A Place For Paul?

2012-01-14T17:44:00.001-05:00

Hardly anyone, probably not even the candidate himself, believes that Ron Paul can win the Republican nomination. But his strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire have turned him from a marginal figure into major player in Republican politics. For many, a strong but unsuccessful run to be a party's presidential nominee could be used as a basis for a future presidential run, perhaps by becoming vice president first. I think it highly unlikely that Paul will become a vice-presidential nominee, however, because he is too polarizing. Moreover, at age 76, this is likely to be his last run.

Is there any hope that the Republican candidate, should he win the presidency, will offer some sort of post to Paul? Should he? Paul represents an unusual constituency, a small but dedicated group who differ from Republicans in general on a number of issues. Every political party is composed of diverse interests, but libertarians present a special set of challenges to incorporate into the party mainstream. Unlike another small but devoted following, the avidly pro-life section of the party, libertarians are not single-issue voters. There is not even a major issue most frequently identified with them; instead, their views are relevant in nearly every political action. And while most libertarian views are congenial to most Republicans, there are some views that are so far out of mainstream conservatism that they alienate many potential voters -- issues like drug enforcement and foreign policy, for instance. It is therefore possible for a Republican candidate to say many things that libertarians approve of, but to have a single libertarian in a Republican administration is likely to attract enormous criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.

Still, you don't want to write off the support of this important group of people. Even if a third party is not likely to rise up any time soon, just having libertarians stay home could mean defeat for a lot of Republicans in close races. I have even heard of people identifying themselves as "liberal-tarians," libertarians who somehow believe that the Democratic party represents their views better than Republicans. I find this absurd, but I have to admit that the way Republicans often behave while in office, I can understand why libertarians would be anxious to find an alternative.

So could a Republican president find a place for Ron Paul in his administration? The department of state can be a refuge for a politician out of step with the main line of opinion in his party, as when Colin Powell served there for George W. Bush. In Paul's case, however, this is out of the question. Paul is such an isolationist that his appointment would alienate everyone, including, probably, our allies. Most other cabinet -level positions would almost be contradictory for Paul to hold. Labor? He'd probably want to get rid of it. Energy? Likewise. Housing and urban developement? Same. It is hard to imagine someone with Paul's long and consistently-held beliefs taking over the administration of a department that he doesn't think serves a legitimate purpose. (I'm thinking of Leon Panetta's sudden shift to a defense hawk after his appointment as secretary of defense; I'm not suggesting that Panetta is insincere, but his political philosophy is considerably more flexible than Paul's.) I suspect that he would decline the position, even if offered.

There is one possible alternative, and that is the department of the Treasury. It is true that Paul's website calls for a 0% tax rate, which is one of the things that makes it impossible for Paul to win national office. However, it seems that even he must admit that the government needs to collect some revenue; and since the Treasury was one of the original three cabinet departments, he can't claim that we have ever done without it. Assuming that he would continue to enforce existing laws while promoting their repeal, Paul would make a strong advocate for decreased federal spending as Secretary of the Treasury. He would be a strong advocate for taxpayers, and you can bet he would make the IRS less aggressive in its collection methods and less exacting in its rules.

A president would have to have strong assurance from Paul that he would actually enforce existing laws, because his appointment to such a position would have to excite some fears that he would just refuse to collect money; and while I'm pretty sure he wouldn't do that (or would refuse the position if it was contrary to his conscience), you would want some public statements to that effect at the time of his appointment to calm financial markets. There is always the chance that he would not be approved, and that kind of split with libertarians would be far worse for Republicans than simply leaving Paul to the side. On the whole, I think the risks of appointing Paul to any cabinet position make it very unlikely that a president would take the risk, but I can think of worse people to hold the office.

Jazz

2012-01-11T21:14:00.000-05:00

Those of a certain age may remember a 1980's band called "Johnny Hates Jazz." Maybe they should have called themselves "Johnny Hates Music," or simply "Johnny Has No Taste."

How can you hate jazz? I am a little more understanding of people who hate, for example, country music. I love it, but I grew up with it and it appeals to me in many ways beyond its musicality. Bluegrass is an even better example. I like classical music, but if some people find Tchaikovsky boring, I can totally understand that.

But jazz? Jazz is like a cool drink when you're thirsty. Jazz is the feel of water covering your body as you relax in the pool on a hot day. Jazz is a full—body massage with scented oils. I guess improvisation might not be for everyone; it might not be your favourite kind of music. But hate it? I don't understand that.

I should qualify that by noting the different types of jazz, some of which are definitely less likable than others. Do you listen to bebop, bossa nova, or Dixieland? Hard bop, neo—bop, post bop? There are even such unlikely types as acid jazz, punk jazz, and ska jazz. I'll be honest, I couldn't tell you the first thing about how these forms differ. I didn't even know what type I liked myself until very recently. I have always liked jazz, but it seemed that every time I listened to an album, it wasn't quite what I wanted. For a long time, I thought I must want smooth jazz, because that is how it sounds to me. It turns out that I was actually looking for cool jazz; smooth jazz is more like elevator music. I can probably attribute my mistake to the time when I grew up, when the adjective 5 "cool" was passe and people were more likely to strive to be smooth. Cool jazz grew up after World War II, when cool was definitely the thing to be.

It's kind of surprising that I would like jazz, because I usually prefer order over spontaneity. There is, however, something incredibly satisfying to the soul to hear a saxophone wander, unpredictably but beautifully, over a string of notes, mixing in happy and sad, anxious and relaxed, leaving me feeling simply content. I find that I want to give a thumbs-up to almost every song. So, if you haven't tried jazz, open up Pandora, type in cool jazz, and give it a listen. You might understand why I am so confused about Johnny's peculiar tastes.

Republican Presidential Candidates: Not Romney

2012-01-10T21:09:00.000-05:00

In accordance with my contrarian nature, I disagree that the other Republican presidential candidates are not up to par. I don't have a strong favourite among them, but I think almost any would do a good job.

I admit that I was excited about Herman Cain briefly. In general, I think it is good to get outside opinions into Washington, so much so that I strongly support term limits. My concern with Cain was that he had no previous political experience, not even on a local level. I was afraid that he might get into office and make some embarrassing mistakes because he just didn't have the political background to know how to handle situations, much as our current president has made a number of gaffes, especially in foreign affairs. I acknowledge that this is a trade-off: you can't ask for an outsider and at the same time get the level of comfort that comes with a political insider. I certainly wouldn't rule Cain out because of his lack of experience, but it was a concern. For better or worse, he is no longer a candidate, so I don't have to consider that issue further. (Do you see why I don't follow these things too closely?)

Ron Paul presents another level of discomfort. Unlike Cain, he has a lot of experience, and his stances on the issues are well known. I probably agree with most of his domestic policies. His foreign policy -- the foreign policy of libertarians in general -- is more problematic. When I first saw libertarians promoting themselves as peace candidates back in the 1980's, I was appalled, because I was a hawk and I couldn't understand how these people -- whom I considered allies -- could have such different views. Since then, my views have moved a lot toward a non-interventionist stance (see "A Good Word For Isolationism"). If that were all libertarian foreign policy was about, I might be able to support it. However, when I hear Paul claiming that we are responsible for making Muslims hate us, and saying that a nuclear Iran is no threat, I part ways. A realistic foreign policy can conclude that the U.S. should not be as involved in policing the world as it is now. A realistic foreign policy cannot be premised on the idea that supporting Israel is a good reason for Muslims to hate us. Muslims are going to have to take responsibility for their own destructive actions, and we cannot withdraw from the world so much that we allow vulnerable states to be destroyed to save ourselves from raving fanatics.

Newt Gingrich is an extraordinary person. When he engineered the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, he was my hero. It wasn't long after that that I began hearing some of his curious statements. I particularly remember one interview in which he berated a bunch I of reporters for being surprised that he and President Clinton had been able to work together on an issue: "Let me tell you something: This is a new era. The old rules don't apply." First, his condescending tone was annoying. Second, my scepticism alert goes off whenever I hear anyone talking about "a new era" or "old rules not applying." It's not that things don't change, but they generally do so rarely and slowly. People are too eager to proclaim new eras for the obvious reason that it gets them attention, or -- in Gingrich's case -- because he genuinely thinks that he is capable of bringing about such a formidable transformation. I didn't let these things bother me too much at the time, because I was still in awe of his electoral accomplishment. However, his subsequent statements have reinforced my impression of him who thinks too much of himself. That would not be a serious problem in itself; really, anyone who runs for president has a big ego, and it seems a little trifling to worry about whether Newt's is bigger than everyone else. My concern is that he is a little too interested in placing himself above ideology. He is determined to be an independent i thinker, which is good, but I think he takes pleasure in demonstrating that he is not bound i to standard conservative positions. His well-known support for the global warming crisis 1 is just one example. I can see him waking up some day with a grand government scheme that would transform America and mark him as a heroic president. Liberals would jump all over it because it is basically a liberal idea, and conservatives would be left trying to fight a Republican president.

I took an interesting quiz recently that identified Rick Santorum as the candidate closest to my views. From what I have read, he is a very grounded person with deep beliefs, which is important to me. I was pleased by his good showing in Iowa, but I doubt he is strong enough to win the nomination. My feeling, for what it is worth, is that Mitt Romney will be the Republican candidate I think, in fact, that he is going to win the election as well. It is difficult to tell if this would be a benefit for conservatives, but there are many ways that it has to be better than another term for Obama.

Republican Presidential Candidates: Romney

2012-01-04T22:28:00.001-05:00

Since I am conservative, you might think that I would be following the Republican primaries closely. I used to: when I was in 5th grade, I carefully tracked the race between Reagan, Bush, and Anderson on a piece of graph paper, recording percentage vote and delegates for each state. In the meantime, I have become jaded. Not that there is anything wrong with the process, but I have so little to do with the outcome that I don't bother to learn much about it until it gets much closer to the convention.

Being unimportant and ill-informed does not, however, prevent me from sharing my views with the world. I have never been as down on Romney as most people are. To begin with, he is absolutely right about the distinction between state vs. federal mandated health care. Not too long ago, I was arguing this point with someone who said, "Don't be naive, Virginia's constitution is more restrictive than the federal constitution, yet Virginia requires people to buy automobile insurance." I was curious, so I looked it up (as expected, the Virginia constitution is on line). Here is what I found: "The authority of the General Assembly shall extend to all subjects of legislation not herein forbidden or restricted" (and further verbiage to the same effect; Article IV, Section 14). In other words, the Virginia constitution is the exact opposite of the federal one, in that it reserves all powers to the government that are not specifically denied to it, whereas the federal constitution reserves all rights to the people and states that are not explicitly granted to Congress. This difference is there on purpose, as the states are supposed to be sovereign governments, and Congress is supposed to regulate relations among them. Even though I would not have proposed a health insurance mandate had I been governor of Massachusetts, Romney is clearly correct to say that it is a separate issue from whether he supports a federal mandate.

I also disagree with the criticism of Romney as too smooth. To be honest, I don't completely understand this criticism. I can see how "smooth" might come across as "phony" in some instances; however, in my view chances to view Romney speak, he seemed anything but phony. Being smooth is not a flaw; it is a highly desirable trait (and I say this as someone who noticeably lacks it). Being smooth implies knowing who you are and where you stand; it implies coolness under pressure. These are precisely the traits that one looks for in a leader. "Leadership" is a fuzzy concept, but I have come increasingly to appreciate its value in politics. Leadership sometimes means taking an unpopular but morally correct stance in public, but I think that is just one aspect of the broader sense of leadership as getting people to do what you want. Sooner or later, politics comes down to persuasion; it is about convincing people of the right path. Surely, having some beliefs that you stick to is part of persuasion. If you merely do what is popular, there is no need to persuade. But that is more like a necessary prerequisite than an essential characteristic of leadership. Leadership requires one to present a convincing case in a convincing manner. It means reassuring people to stick by a decision even if it doesn't appear to be right in the short run; even if, by human measure, it will never seem to work out, but you should do it anyway because it is the right thing. Leadership can be used for bad purposes, of course, and often is. That does not mean, however, that people with good purposes should eschew leadership. It is not only possible, but highly desirable, for a good person to be a good leader. This can come across in different ways. Sometimes a shy or awkward person can turn out to be a good leader. More often, one would expect leadership from someone who is confident in himself and his beliefs. I don't know if Romney necessarily qualifies as a good leader, but his demeanour suggests that he may be, and I don't perceive that as a negative characteristic.

A Good Word for Isolationism

2012-01-03T19:15:00.001-05:00

I am not an isolationist. I am, however, a lot closer to that position than I was 25 years ago. Back then, the major threat to the United States was the Soviet Union. We were in a Cold War, and I thought it was important to fight and their proxies everywhere.

I don't know if my views have changed because we're fighting a different sort of war now, or if it's just because I've gotten older. Either way, I'm definitely finding more reason to be sceptical of foreign intervention in a whole host of places.

I was not a big proponent of the Iraq war. (Is that how history will know it, as "The Iraq War"?) Attempts to paint it as a "war for oil" are really hard to take seriously, but I was never convinced that Saddam Hussein and his regime posed an urgent threat to the United States or any of its immediate neighbours. I was not strongly against the war, as I viewed getting rid of a brutal dictator as a good thing. My major complaint was that Bush should have gratefully accepted the U.N.'s offer to rebuild Iraq after the war was over. I certainly did not foresee the long counter-insurgency war the U.S. would have to wage to pacify Iraq, but it was easy to predict that establishing a stable government there was going to be a lot harder than defeating Iraq's armed forces. Having disposed of the dictator, I thought it would be great for the United States to allow the U.N. to manage the more difficult job of reconstruction. It is a bit cynical, but it would also, I think, have been the best thing for all involved. Besides, if the U.N. then had problems, the U.S. could always complain, "You should have let us do it!"

But why invade Iraq in the first place? A nuclear weapon in the hands of such a state is certainly destabilizing and threatening, but I would have to have evidence not only that Iraq was working on nuclear weapons, but that their developement was imminent. Chemical weapons, which also get lumped under the WMD designation, are not nearly so threatening on a mass scale.

What about Afghanistan? Since Al Qaeda had effectively declared war on the U.S., and since the Afghan government was either unwilling or unable to restraint it, it makes sense that destroying Al Qaeda's bases in Afghanistan would be an important U.S. interest. On the other hand, did we need to establish an effective, friendly Afghan government that would prevent all future terrorist activity for all time to come? I thought the British and Russians had pretty much demonstrated that fighting a war of conquest in Afghanistan was a losing proposition. (We're not trying to conquer Afghanistan, of course, but establishing a friendly Afghan government is, if anything, an even higher bar.) The country is mountainous and hard, people are among the poorest in the world, and they pride themselves primarily on being fighters. Yes, it would be nice to clear Afghanistan of terrorists, but is that a realistic goal? Is it easier to establish a solid government there that will prevent terrorism, or to invade and wipe out terrorist camps whenever they become a problem? We had destroyed the camps within months of 9/11; all the rest of the time has been focussed on making Afghanistan safe for the future.

The idea of making the world perfectly safe is characteristic of modern America, where adults often part with the words, "Drive safely," and kids are methodically protected from everything that might possibly cause them physical harm. It is also, however, characteristic of great empires, which don't like to tolerate unruly border states. Who wants to allow potential enemies to develope? It is important, however, to decide what is worth fighting for and what is not.

I hear a lot about "vital American interests" when discussing wars. What constitutes a vital national interest in Afghanistan? Is an unstable Afghanistan like to cause an immediate threat to the United States, or is it a place where a threat could develope in the future? If there are terrorists there, are they really vital threats to America? Is it better to attack them there, or to protect America's borders? I'm not sure what the answers are, but these are the questions that we need to ask.

There is one thing that I am sure is a vital American interest, and that is the developement of nuclear arms by Iran. Any nuclear proliferation is a potential threat, but an Iranian nuclear arsenal is a more serious threat than most. Not because Iran would be likely to bomb us -- it will be a long time before it has a missile capable of reaching America. There is the threat of a terrorist sneaking a small nuclear device past customs; I am not sure how likely that is, but I'm sure Iran would not hesitate to use such a weapon against the U.S. Even without such direct damage, an Iranian nuclear weapon has the potential to lead to nuclear war in the Middle East. Regardless of which state is targeted, and regardless of whether the U.S. even needs any oil from the Middle East, a nuclear war there would be disastrous. The other industrial economies of the world, in Europe and Japan, would be crippled without this oil; and the U.S. economy would be crippled without our major trading partners. We would have a humanitarian and a selfish interest in preventing such a war.

Isolationism is not a bad word. The United States will spend itself into oblivion if it defines its interests in such a way as to require preventing every possible threat from developing. That doesn't mean that there aren't steps short of war that can be used to apply pressure to countries to be more co-operative. It also doesn't mean that there aren't times when war is the best option. My concern is that we have decided on war, and the goals of our wars, without adequately consideration the limitations of this aspect of policy.

Things I've Learned This Year: Part II

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

More things I learned this year:

Fermentation -- I have been reading Cooking for Geeks, which has taken me down a long road of learning about food. One of the things that fascinates me is fermentation, which I was long aware of as a source of alcohol, of course, but which is also used in a number of other aspects of food preparation.
Fungi -- fermentation can be accomplished by bacteria or yeast, and I was amazed to learn that yeast are a type of fungi. This led me into something I have long wanted to know more about, namely the various types of unicellular organisms.
Onychomycosis -- My other encounter with fungi was not so theoretical: I learned that I have toe fungus, which sounds so much better when you use the scientific name. It's one of those common ailments that medicine has somehow not devised a simple cure for, so I have been soaking my toes for 10 months now.
Fermentation also led me into learning about the many products that can be made from milk. I think I have a little better grasp of them now, but this chart will give you an idea of how complicated it all is. Even the simplest aspects of our lives involve incredible complexity, most of which is hidden from us.
Stretching works to relieve back pain, if you do the right kinds. I have had terrible back pain for about 15 years now, and the kind of stretching that I had done until now -- lying flat and pulling my knees, one at a time, to my chest -- was not effective beyond a certain point. There are so many back stretches that it is intimidating to consider them all, but I felt I needed to try something. I found that sitting with my legs stretched out in front of me and reaching for my toes was the one stretch that I really needed to add. I can't express how much better I feel now.
I have a wonderful family. That isn't really something new, but I keep rediscovering it all the time.

Democratic Hate Speech of the Week

2011-12-21T11:09:00.001-05:00

Apparently, irony is unknown in liberal circles. That's why the same people who blamed Republicans' inflamed rhetoric for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords are capable of saying of News Gingrich, "He's a political killer, a gun for hire." This is Chris Matthews, who added that Republicans are "about to begin the nomination for President of a figure who represents the Mephistopheles of what they preach. He is nasty, brutal, ready to fight and kill politically." Besides the violent images, naturally he accuses Republicans of being "ready to bow down before this false god of hatred."

Yeah, Republicans are haters.

Things I've learned this year: Part I

2011-12-19T21:06:00.000-05:00

Learning is one of my great pleasures in life. I don't mind doing just about anything as long as I get to learn something new from it. Sometimes I manage to turn even that on its head by thinking, "How could I be so stupid as not to know that sooner?" I long ago stopped making New Years' resolutions, but I thought the end of 2011 might be a good time to contemplate what I have learned in the last 12 months.

Look first, then back up. This is my big lesson. It seems obvious, but for some reason I have a bad habit of starting to back up before looking behind me. After smashing the rear window in my van last spring, as well as ruining a mailbox, I hope I have finally learned my lesson. And I am thankful that I have not hurt anything worse in the meantime.
The Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets. I only learned the Arabic consonants, and I've probably forgotten many of them by now, but it was nice to be able to make out some basic letters. I hope I've retained more of the Cyrillic alphabet, which, unlike Arabic, actually comes in handy sometimes even if you don't know Russian, since there are many loan words in Russian that one can make out.
A lot about computer security, which I picked up recently in order to get my Security+ certification. I've never worried too much about security in the past, but if I approach it from the point of view of, "How would I go about breaking into my network?", it's much more interesting -- and scarier.
I can do a lot more than I thought I could. I was amazed to discover that I could lose 30 pounds this year just by going on the "don't eat too much" diet. To think I paid hundreds of dollars for a weight-loss program about 10 years ago to do the same thing, and I gained all that back in a short time.
Invisible fences are wonderful. They allow my dog to run around the yard to her heart's content, and still be able to see everything that is going on, and they are much cheaper and easier to install than physical fence (which might be against neighbourhood policy in any case).
Publishers are not interested in my book topic. I say "book topic" because no one has bothered to look at the book -- the topic alone is enough to determine that "it does not fit into their list."
This blog has been attracting far more visitors than I realized. I've been getting over a hundred hits a month, which isn't much, but it is if you consider that I've only posted a few times this year. I was also surprised that the most popular post, by far, is the one on Hume and Popper. The second most popular is the one on offensive mascots.
What I had in storage. When we moved into a house this summer, we got all the stuff out of storage that we hadn't seen for over 2 years. Some of it I could do without, but much of it I am glad to see.

McQueary's Reaction

2011-12-15T20:31:00.000-05:00

With my usual timeliness, I would like to comment on the Penn State situation now that it has been out of the news for several weeks. What struck me most was how hard people came down on Mike McQueary, the assistant coach who witnessed some sort of inappropriate behaviour between Sandusky and a young boy in 2002. I'm used to this sort of thing from sports news columnists, but I was surprised to see it at the usually calmer National Review. The gist is this: McQueary witnessed a rape in the PSU showers in 2002, and did not stop it, even though he was physically larger and stronger than the assailant. Why did he wait until the next day to report it rather than intervening immediately?

I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with David Brooks in this case. His position, and mine, is that people have overestimated their own probable response had they been in McQueary's position. I have read a number of comments to the effect that "I would have intervened immediately and stopped the rape," which, while it seems like a reasonable reaction, is rather too self-confident for my tastes. First, as Brooks points out, no one knows what he will do when confronted with such a bizarre and disturbing scene. One of my chief lessons in life has been that it is easy to condemn cowardly or stupid behaviour when one is hearing reports of what someone else did; actually being in that situation, however, is another thing entirely. McQueary was in his mid-20's, and Sandusky had been on the coaching staff during his (recent) career. The mere fact of seeing an older authority figure in such compromising activity would have caused brain freeze in virtually all of us. That's not to say that we shouldn't or couldn't have overcome it, but if his first reaction was to go somewhere else to gather his wits, I hardly find that surprising or greatly reprehensible.

Second, we don't know exactly what McQueary witnessed. The more egregious the crime, the greater the responsibility to react immediately. If Sandusky had been beating the child to death, no doubt we would expect McQueary to stop it. Anal rape would warrant reaction on a similar level, but was that what he saw? What kind of inappropriate behaviour did he witness, and was it so inappropriate and damaging that it required immediate action? What were the consequences of the action continued? Is it reasonable that McQueary might have needed to think through his reaction?

Clearly, McQueary did respond eventually, reporting what he witnessed to the appropriate authorities. What we have to criticize him for, if anything, is only his spontaneous reaction to a single incident. Paterno, however, is another matter, and here I differ from Brooks. As an authority figure himself, and one responsible for Sandusky and everyone else associated with the football team, Paterno's burden was to act on the information. Moreover, Paterno had time to consider his response -- nearly 10 years, in fact. There is no excuse for his continuing to tolerate Sandusky's presence with the Penn State football team, and arguably he should have done more to make sure the accusations were investigated and, if appropriate, punished. But this is also dependent on what Paterno heard, and we don't know that for sure, either. He may have heard something that should have stimulated a strong response, or he may not; and that may reflect back on McQueary. However, we are in no position to judge that. The information will come out, I hope, at the trial, and the guilty will be held responsible. In the meantime, we can only outline hypotheticals.

What if the economy improves?

2011-12-14T19:43:00.002-05:00

In my last post, I argued that Obama could win re-election -- and it wouldn't be miraculous -- if the economy only continues to improve gradually between now and next November. But how is it possible for the economy to improve? From what we've heard from Obama, Paul Krugman, and others, the economy is stuck in a rut that it cannot jump out of except by massive government debt spending -- more stimulus. And since the last stimulus was too small, I can only assume that something as puny as Obama's latest jobs bill, which is only a fraction as large, would have even less of an effect.

What, you think the economy might be able to recover on its own? That is a very serious admission if you are a Keynesian. That changes the argument from "We absolutely must have stimulus spending for the economy to improve" to "We need stimulus spending if we want the economy to improve fast enough." Since even Keynesians (or many of them, anyway) admit that we have a serious debt problem (at least, when there is a Republican president), we would have to balance the faster improvement of the economy against the greater debt load our country would be taking on. If the economy is capable of working unemployment down to 8% in the next year, I would argue that our economic problems are not so serious that they require us to dig an even deeper hole that we will have to find some way to get out of later.

But what if the economy does not get better? Does that prove that a stimulus was necessary? No, because we have other things dragging on our economy that we have not had in the past: the new health care mandate, along with ever greater regulations. I am confident that our economy would grow out of even these problems eventually; people are amazing, and they have managed to improve economies under some of the most repressive regimes, of which ours is not even close. But there is a cost to these regulations, of course, and that is slower growth.

Obama Can Win

2011-12-13T22:17:00.000-05:00

In my usual timely fashion, I am here to present yesterday's news. It has been clear to me for some time that Obama's defeat in the next election is not the foregone conclusion that some people think it is, and not because Republicans don't have worthy challengers. Obviously, some of the Republican candidates would stand a better chance against Obama than others, but I don't think this is a case of a large number of mediocre candidates. It is, rather, the usual short-sightedness of analysts.

When the Republicans won big in the mid-term elections, many were justifiably concerned that they not repeat their mistakes in 1995 and 1996, which allowed Clinton to win a second term even though it seemed hopeless in 1994. Even though a similar scenario played out with regard to budget issues this year, Republicans have not taken a big hit. Their position is not much weaker than it was last year, when they won big in the election. Why do I think they might not win next year, then?

It's the economy, stupid. Admittedly, the economy still isn't great, and I doubt if Obama would win if the election happened now. However, it may be turning around. The recent drops in the unemployment rate suggest that things are getting better -- only marginally at the moment, but project that out over the next 10 months. Could unemployment be below 8% next November, as Obama has suggested? That would be a drop of less than 0.1% per month. If the recovery accelerates, unemployment could conceivably fall close to 7%. At that rate, people might start to think that Obama's economic program wasn't so bad after all.

To be clear, I'm not saying the economy will improve that much by the next election. We might be dawdling around 8.5-9.0% unemployment still. I'm also not saying that Obama necessarily will win re-election even if unemployment does improve significantly. We still have large numbers of discouraged workers, an unprecedented national debt, illegal immigration, and a war in Afghanistan, among other issues. But we're out of Iraq, which has been a sore point for liberals since Obama was elected, and we are scheduled to begin withdrawal from Afghanistan next year. People could easily look at that and conclude that Obama has well begun the process of pulling America's forces back, even if he wasn't as fast as he promised. If the economy is also starting to recover, and more people are finding jobs, there could be enough optimism for the future to carry him into office. It would certainly make for a very tough campaign for his challenger.

1995

2011-07-24T16:26:00.000-04:00

Anyone following the debt-ceiling debate who is old enough to remember 1995 is bound to be thinking about it. The Republicans had just won big in the off-year elections of a Democratic president, and their very first budget resulted in a showdown. In that case, the Democrat won big, and was able to get re-elected in 1996.

As a Republican, you have to be worried about this. I am surprised to see them challenging Obama in a way that mirrors the negotiations with Clinton 16 years ago so closely. Their position isn't even as strong now as it was then: at that time, they controlled both houses of Congress. Moreover, they did exactly what I would have recommended, which is to pass a budget and dare the president to veto it. Then, I thought, the resulting government shutdown would clearly be Clinton's fault, and he would get the blame. Instead, Clinton simply said that the Republicans needed to send him a bill "that I can sign," and for some reason the Republicans ended up taking the bulk of the blame (although they did retain Congress in 1996).

Now, the Republicans can't even send Obama a bill because the Senate won't pass the budget approved by the House. Moreover, the Republicans seem even more likely to get the blame this time, because they are absolutely refusing to negotiate on a key point, which is raising taxes. If a deal fails, it seems they are set up to take responsibility.

Of course, things rarely repeat themselves that closely. This scenario could happen, but something quite different could also occur. I wonder, for example, if Obama's failure to present his own budget will be a serious liability in the event of failure. Then, too, spending has unquestionably gone through the roof during his administration, even not counting the stimulus. It would take massive spending cuts just to bring the budget back to where it was in 2008, so it's not as though Republicans are proposing gutting the government as it has long been.

Still, I think any Republican would have to be nervous about how the debt ceiling negotiations will play out. I know I am.

The Monoceros

2011-07-07T23:56:00.000-04:00

I have always liked the word "unicorn" for some reason that eludes me. It just sounds beautiful. And yet, why do we call it a unicorn? The name is from Latin, "unus" = one, "cornus" = horn (e.g. cornucopia). Every other animal, it seems, gets its name from Greek roots. Thus, we have the hippopotamus, not the equuflumen, and the rhinoceros, not the nasocorn. Dinosaurs have Greek names, too: stegasaurus, "roof lizard," brachiosaurus, "arm lizard," and triceratops, "three-horn face." (Although I should mention the oddity of tyrannosaurus rex: tyrannosaurus is Greek for "tyrant lizard," but rex is Latin for "king." Tyrannosaurus basileus, anyone?) Even other mythical creatures usually have names of Greek origin, such as the phoenix and the chimera.

According to Wikipedia, source of all knowledge, the unicorn originated in Greek myth. Why, therefore, does it get a Latin name, unlike almost every other real or imagined beast? Did someone just decide that "monoceros" sounded too lame (I would agree) and therefore went with the more mellifluous "unicorn"? Or did the name get changed some time in the Middle Ages, when everyone in the West knew Latin but Greek was uncommon? Oddly, there is a constellation named "monoceros" (discovered in the 17th century), so it's not like the idea never occurred to anyone.

Maybe Next Time He'll Think Before He Tweets

2011-06-14T22:10:00.000-04:00

I was reading some Democrats lamenting the loss of such an obviously great guy as Anthony Weiner as a public servant just because he cheated on his wife. But wait, they say, he didn't even cheat; he just flirted. And I had to ask myself whether what he did was worthy of losing his seat in Congress. (Whether we are talking about removal by Democratic leadership or by his constituents is immaterial to me; I just want to establish whether we would want someone in Congress who did what he did.)

Weiner has made it easy on us because of his reaction to the affair's discovery: not only denying it (that is natural, albeit wrong), but actively accusing Andrew Breitbart of smearing him. Anybody who can lie so baldly definitely deserves to be out of Congress, Republican or Democrat.

Then there is the question of whether he knowingly flirted with underage girls, as it appears he may have come on to a high school student that he met at a rally. Then there is the question of whether he might have done anything besides just sending pictures and lewd texts, or whether he intended to do anything...

But let's leave those questions to the side and focus on the issue of whether a married Congressman who flirts with other women deserves to lose his seat. There is flirting and there is flirting. I tend to think of flirting as things like being overly attentive to someone or making sexual innuendo, and while those things are dangerous to a marriage, they don't rise to the level of cheating, or at least they might not, depending on the context. Saying "you make me hard" and sending close-ups of your groin clad only in underwear is a different sort of thing. To me, it clearly expresses the desire to cheat, and, even if the person never intends to follow up on the desire, I would not trust him (or her) alone with the flirtee for 10 minutes. I would not trust him alone with any member of the opposite sex for 10 minutes. The other kind of flirting may be the same thing by a more discreet, or just plain scared, person, but it could also be just playful -- again, the context matters.

Still, neither is quite the same as cheating; it is certainly worth making a distinction between having sex and talking about having sex. How does this rate in the scale of transgressions? It is certainly a transgression, although many Democrats have tried to dismiss it by pointing out that Weiner has never tried to regulate other people's morality. They overlook, or willfully ignore, the fact that Weiner took an oath of fidelity to his wife (and not all that long ago, from what I gather). If he were single, or if he had an open marriage, the "no hypocrisy here" defense might work. In his case, it certainly does not. Politicians tend to be married, and they tend to derive political advantages from their marriages, or at least they think they do. I think we are certainly entitled to consider a person's fidelity as part of an overall evaluation of his fitness to serve.

Weiner's shameless and tasteless self-promotion -- sending out pictures to unwitting women to see if he could get a positive response -- make this a more egregious case. I cannot, however, say that I would always disqualify a politician for flirting, even of the flagrant variety, nor even necessarily for cheating. It would count against him. But our hearts lead us in strange ways, and I would not want to rule out an excellent legislator solely on the ground that he broke his marital vows. Things like self-control, and, failing that, discretion, would also enter into my assessment.

The Birth Certificate

2011-04-27T23:42:00.000-04:00

Obama finally decided to end the controversy about his birth by releasing his birth certificate. This can only mean one thing: he felt it was hurting his popularity. He had a legitimate birth certificate all along. Being an American citizen is a requirement for the presidency, and some people were questioning whether he qualified. He was actually spending money to defend himself against lawsuits that requested him to prove his citizenship by releasing the birth certificate. I thought the most likely explanation for his stubborness was that there was something embarrassing on the birth certificate -- perhaps it named him a Muslim -- that he didn't want made public. Since there isn't, the only logical explanation is that he refused to release it because he wanted to keep alive the meme that his opponents consisted, at least in part, of nut cases. (Well, everyone politician's opponents consist in part of nut cases, but let us say, a larger proportion than usual.)

Imagining myself in his situation, this seems like an extremely cynical policy. Sowing seeds of doubt when he knew the situation to be clear -- and could have made it clear by a simple step -- is political calculation at its most Machiavellian. But whereas he could ignore questions about his birth when his approval rating was running 60%+, he apparently feels he cannot now that it is in the 40's (and the next election is approaching). I can't say that his actions are morally wrong, but they certainly are not the kind of behaviour I prefer in our national leaders.

A Conservative Case for the Confederacy

2011-04-26T22:34:00.002-04:00

It's the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War (actually earlier this month, but it is being celebrated the whole year), and with it comes a whole new debate about the Confederacy, the right of secession, and the use of the Confederate flag today. While most people probably associate Southern apologists with conservatives, I have been seeing many attacks on the Confederacy and the flag from conservative sources, one of which goes so far as to nominate Jefferson Davis as the worst person in American history. It probably is true that most Southern apologists are conservative, but it is apparently far from true that most conservatives are Southern apologists. This is unfortunate, because the case for secession is at the core a case for liberty. This is, of course, a controversial statement, but I think a defensible one -- in fact, the only logical one. Here, then, is a brief but long-considered defense of the Confederate States of America.

The CSA starts with two strikes against it, because it was created in defense of the institution of slavery, which is universally (and rightly) condemned today. It's hard to overcome that, and I'm not going to pretend that South Carolina or the other Deep South states seceded for any reason other than the desire to preserve slavery. But that's not the end of the issue.

Slavery is bad, and it was as bad in the 1860's as it is today. It was not, however, as clear to everyone at that time that it was bad. As hard as that may be to accept, we have to take it into consideration. Remember that few people in the 17th or 18th centuries condemned slavery. Remember that all colonies and states permitted slavery at some point. Remember, too, that many slave traders came from the North prior to independence, and that no Northern state actually freed any slaves owned by its citizens -- they all allowed the institution to die out by declaring anyone subsequently born to be free. I'm not trying to set up a moral equivalency between the North and the South on this issue, but it is important to establish that the country was not always divided. The North was not born in innocence; it developed a conscience regarding slavery over time, and it did so without a large slave population to create economic and social problems with emancipation. Slavery was not an issue that Northern states proposed to abolish in their own borders by any sudden measures, and indeed their were still slaves in the free state of New Jersey as the Civil War began, not to mention those in the slave states of Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. This is significant for two reasons: one, the Civil War was not a crusade to end slavery, even though it ended up with that result; two, even though many (probably most) Northerners opposed slavery, they were unwilling to take drastic action where their own property was at stake.

I think it is a good idea to think about slavery from the perspective of a modern issue about which people are divided. One obvious case is abortion, because, like slavery, it involves the question of whether certain beings qualify as human. A good portion of the country thinks abortion is nothing less than killing a baby; another portion thinks it is the equivalent of removing bodily tissue. There is not much room for compromise between these views. Opinion is not sharply divided geographically, as it was with slavery, but let's suppose it was. Suppose the New England states, along with New York and New Jersey, were strongly pro-abortion, and the rest of the country was pro-life. Suppose the national government passed, or threatened to pass, legislation outlawing abortion. Would it be permissible for the pro-choice states to secede to preserve what they viewed as a human right? If they did, would the rest of the country be justified in invading to take away that right? Would we applaud the country if, after the deaths of millions of people, they finally managed to win and preserve the rights of fetuses?

The trick about this case is, of course, that there is no consensus on the morality of abortion as there is on slavery. There may never be. That's what makes it a good analogy, because there was also not a consensus over slavery in 1861. You have to think about your answer to the abortion question as though we could look back on it 100 years later and all agree that abortion is bad. (Or, if it would make the analogy resonate with you, imagine it the other way around: pro-abortion states invade and conquer pro-life states to preserve the woman's right to an abortion.) If anything, the case for enforcing abortion rights is even weaker than that for enforcing slavery, because slavery was endorsed in the Constitution. That doesn't make it morally right, of course, but it does make it a part of the legal foundation for the union of the states; removing it would, therefore, remove part of the basis by which the states had agreed to form a nation in the first place.

At what point does a moral issue become so clear that it overrides all legal concerns? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm pretty sure that it stops short of changing the fundamental nature of a society to which you agreed to be a part. The North, in other words, had no right to end slavery because they had agreed to join with slave states in the first place. They would have had a right to secede -- to divorce themselves from what they viewed as an iniquitous society -- but not to forcibly remove slavery. They would also have had the right to work for the ending of slavery, via constitutional amendment or via some sort of compromise proposal that would have led to, say, the federal government buying slaves. There were plenty of Southerners who were uncomfortable with slavery and who would have been happy to find some way to get rid of it if they could do so without creating massive social and economic disruption. It may have been that, over time, something could have been worked out. But thundering invective and cheering on John Brown's attempt to lead a slave revolt were hardly the sort of thing that were likely to build bridges to the moderates in the South.

There is also the matter that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. Yes, I conceded above that the South seceded in order to defend the institution of slavery; there is no question about that. The North, however, did not attack the South to end slavery, but rather to preserve the union. This is well enough documented that I don't think it needs much elaboration here. Lincoln's oft-quoted sentence, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also so that" is evidence enough of his own views on the subject.

The case of Virginia, a Confederate state but not one of the founders of the Confederacy, demonstrates the difference. Virginia preferred to remain in the United States rather than join the Confederacy, but it changed its position in response to Lincoln's call for volunteers for an invading army. There is no question that Virginia (along with North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) joined the Confederacy not to defend slavery, but over the Constitutional and moral issue of the right of states to secede and the wrong that Lincoln was doing by trying to keep them from leaving by force.

What about the firing on Fort Sumter? Didn't the South initiate the fighting? It is true that the South Carolina militia attacked the relief ship bound for Fort Sumter and then the fort itself, but this was merely the beginning of hostilities that Lincoln had made inevitable. Already in March, he had announced that he intended to enforce the laws of the United States in the Confederacy, including collecting taxes. South Carolina had been trying for months to negotiate the purchase of Fort Sumter from the United States; and, as Stephen Douglas pointed out during debates in Congress, what purpose could the United States possibly have for holding a fort in Charleston harbour but to keep Charleston under control? Lincoln cleverly maneuvered so that the South would fire the first shot, but his stated policy is what made conflict unavoidable.

I have heard people ask whether the Union could not have attacked the Confederacy as a foreign country. Even supposing secession was legal, what would stop the rest of the United States from attacking the now-independent country to its south? This is a fun game for armchair historians, but it has no basis in reality. The Union insisted from the beginning that the South was not a separate country, and it staked its diplomacy entirely on this viewpoint. If the South had been an independent country, the North could not have legitimately complained to England about supplying military equipment, especially commerce raiders, to the South. Moreover, it would have been inconceivable for the North, having once defeated the South, to try to occupy the territory and bring it in to the United States. Reparations, a forced end to slavery, some favourable trade agreements: these would have been likely, but not an outright conquest.

This brings us to the crux of the matter: how could a collection of free states justify forcing others into its government? Less than a hundred years previously, the United States had been formed by a secession movement of the 13 colonies against the British government. Somehow, now, secession was not justified, even though the government of the United States was a voluntary union and that of the British crown an acknowledged empire under a hereditary monarch! George Washing was a hero; Jefferson Davis, a traitor.

Attempts to justify the distinction based on the supposed justice of the cause in 1776 versus that in 1861 are doomed to failure, for when will a government ever accept the separation of a large part of its territory voluntarily? The one thing that is essential is the will of the people, and no one can doubt that the legislatures and, in many cases, the populations of the Confederate states had legitimately voted in favour of separation from the United States. This was not the case of an individual, group of individuals, or a city attempting to withdraw from its legitimate government, but of the acknowledged sovereign units of a government deciding to revoke the power that it had voluntarily (but, as Thomas Jefferson argued, always conditionally) conceded to the central authority. The United States violated its own most sacred principles of government in ignoring the South's wish to form a separate government.

I will close with, once again, the qualification that this is in no way an endorsement of slavery, racism, or anything associated with it. Slavery was ended after the Civil War; without the Civil War, it would doubtless have continued longer; to that extent, the Civil War was clearly good. But do we justify bad actions by pointing to their positive results? There is no point in hiding behind the pretense that the North was engaged in a noble enterprise to end slavery, because that was not the motivation of most of the participants, least of all the revered leader of the Union. It was engaged in what it saw as a noble enterprise to preserve the republican government of the United States -- a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" that it was prepared to defend by killing hundreds of thousands of people and forcing millions more into a government that they had voluntarily chosen to leave. It set a terrible precedent, that good results could justify practically any government action no matter how bad its motivation or its other effects.

Qaddafi

2011-03-23T19:40:00.000-04:00

What is it with Qaddafi? He's been dictator for over 40 years, and he's still only a colonel? Did it never occur to him to promote himself to general?

I enjoy issues like Libya -- not for their content (killing is bad), but because neither liberals nor conservatives have pre-conceived notions about what should happen. Therefore, both sides are divided and everyone is scrambling to come up with a coherent position. It gives everyone a chance to think, which is nice for a change.

Defending the Indefensible: Part II

2010-09-23T18:58:00.000-04:00

I regret, in a way, that Terry Jones did not go through with his plan to burn the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11. I normally prefer to avoid provocative gestures, but the overreaction to his announcement was so thorough that I found myself rooting for him to complete it. It was hard, I imagine, for liberals to condemn him in good conscience, since they have such an absolute ideal of free speech that includes, even promotes, provocative gestures against Christianity; nevertheless, they did so. Conservatives have long advocated positions of "you have a right to say it, but I don't think it a good idea" (along with "I don't think the government should fund you"), so I wasn't surprised to see them objecting. I was surprised, however, at seeing Jones condemned so uniformly in such drastic language. National Review was all over him, including editor Jonah Golberg, who called it "stupid, irresponsible, and repugnant."

Let's think about it. Repugnant? It doesn't seem particularly Christian, at least by today's definition. (Probably 17th century Europeans would have had a different idea.) I have Muslim friends, and I would not want to insult their faith in this way. Stupid? How so? If he aimed to draw attention to himself, he did a brilliant job of it.

Irresponsible? There's the crux of the matter. Would burning the Koran result in increased Muslim violence? Petraeus said that it would endanger the troops in Afghanistan. First of all, I seriously doubt whether burning a few Korans would significantly alter the battlefield picture. I'm sure the Islamist terrorists are already doing everything they can against our troops already. It might trigger a terrorist attack on civilians, which is a concern. But should it be? I don't want to be put in danger because of something a pastor in Florida is doing. On the other hand, I don't want to have to restrict my activities because I'm afraid of a terrorist reaction. It seems that our whole society is built on the idea that we can say whatever we want. Jones is not advocating violent action against Muslims (as far as I know), which means that there is no fuzzy line here between acceptable and unacceptable speech (in a legal sense). That's what Petraeus is over there fight for, in other words. Far from urging Jones to stop his action, Petraeus should be defending his right to do it. I realize that those two are not mutually contradictory: he might defend Jones's right, but still wish that he wouldn't do it. What we got, however, was all reticence and no defense.

Defending the Indefensible: Part I

2010-09-19T19:02:00.000-04:00

I don't try to be disagreeable, but I seem to come out on the minority side of issues an awful lot. Two such issues came up in the past week, so I thought I would give my side of the story in both of them.

The first is the article Portis voices ugliness in NFL culture by Dan Wetzel. The issue concerns comments made by Redskins running back Clinton Portis about having a female sports reporter in the Redskins' locker room after a game. After playing football for 3 hours and getting sweaty and dirty, the first thing players do in the locker room is get a shower and change into regular clothes. Male reporters have been going into locker rooms for years to get interviews right after the game, but when female reporters started to enter the scene, some players objected. This is not a new issue: there was an incident back in 1990 involving the New England Patriots' locker room and tight end Zeke Mowatt. Some Patriots' players complained that reporter Lisa Olson was spending more time observing naked players than interviewing, and Mowatt subsequently exposed himself in front of her deliberately. She won a lawsuit against him and the Patriots.

I haven't heard much about the issue since then, but recently there were allegations that some New York Jets' players harrassed another female reporter. When asked about the incident on a radio interview (Portis is not on the Jets and had nothing to do with alleged events; he was merely asked his opinion as a player, as far as I can tell), he expressed his discomfort with having women in the locker room:

“You know man, I think you put women reporters in the locker room, in positions to see guys walking around naked, and you sit in the locker room with 53 guys, and all of the sudden you see a nice woman in the locker room, I think men are going to tend to turn and look and want to say something to that woman.
“For the woman, I think they make it so much that you can’t interact and you can’t be involved with athletes, you can’t talk to these guys, you can’t interact with these guys.
“And I mean, you put a woman and you give her a choice of 53 athletes, somebody got to be appealing to her. You know, somebody got to spark her interest, or she’s gonna want somebody. I don’t know what kind of woman won’t, if you get to go and look at 53 men’s packages.
“And you’re just sitting here, saying ‘Oh, none of this is attractive to me.’ I know you’re doing a job, but at the same time, the same way I’m going cut my eye if I see somebody worth talking to, I’m sure they do the same thing.”

Wetzel called these comments "ugly," "ignorant," "pathetic," "insulting," and called Portis "a clown" for making them. In his view, Portis "still assumes that female reporters are eager to look at the players’ 'packages.'" Let me offer an alternate interpretation.

Portis clearly does not assume that female reporters are "eager" to look at naked players. What he said was that, out of 53 naked men, it was normal that a woman would find at least one of them attractive and want to look at them. Far from picking on females, he explicitly notes that he would behave the same way himself. I don't fully understand his other comments about female reporters, how "they make it so much that you can’t interact and you can’t be involved with athletes, you can’t talk to these guys, you can’t interact with these guys," but he seems to be suggesting that it is uncomfortable to be naked in a locker room with women around.

Is that so unreasonable? Is it bizarre in our society to suggest that men might not want to have women seeing their naked bodies? Do you think female athletes might feel uncomfortable if they were forced to shower in the presence of male reporters? I don't actually know whether men are allowed in the locker rooms of female athletes, such as those of the WNBA. (I assume individual performers, such as tennis players, are allowed to shower in private.) One of the Wikipedia articles I linked above says that women reporters are allowed in men's locker rooms by virtue of a Supreme Court verdict, and I would be curious to know if the same logic applies when the sexes are reversed. I think anyone would have to be crazy to think that male reporters would not enjoy seeing female athletes undressed, but apparently it is offensive to suggest that women might be turned on by men. Of course, women are not men, in spite of what some people would have us believe; we are different in many ways, including the degree to which we are aroused by visual stimuli. But individuals also vary from the group, and if someone thinks there aren't many women who would be aroused by seeing naked, athletic men, they are almost as ignorant as those who think men would not be turned on by women.

Does this mean female reporters shouldn't be allowed in the locker room after football games? No, I don't care to tackle that question. What bothers me is self-righteous sportswriters who assume that anyone who disagrees with them is an ugly, ignorant, pathetic, insulting clown. Maybe it would be just as well to try to see the other person's point of view before condemning it. On the other hand, that probably doesn't attract as many clicks on the website, so why bother?

Wrestling

2010-08-24T18:00:00.001-04:00

My eldest son, who is 10, has become extremely intereted in professional wrestling. This is bad for so many reasons. Even the good guys on wrestling make terrible role models for the most part, especially the constant bragging and trash talk. Even worse is the false idea of violence that wrestling gives. I'm not opposed to violence in principle, but I don't want my son to think that you can hit someone over the head repeatedly with a blunt object and he will still be able to get back up a minute later to keep fighting. I fear that such a false impression might cause someone to do permanent damage under the impression that he is just doing normal wrestling stuff.

I also enjoyed professional wrestling when I was 10. It's understandable at that age. But when the camera pans around the audience and shows normal-looking adults in the audience, it concerns me. I'm not sure which is worse: that they think the fighting is real, or that, thinking it real, they still want to watch it. Even if you didn't know anything about how fighting actually works, there are so many tipoffs to the real nature of what is going on. Does anyone ever wonder where there is never so much as a bloody nose in wrestling? Why do MMA and UFC fighters, who do much less hitting during matches, look like abuse victims, while wrestlers look as pretty as actors? In our lawsuit-crazed society, does it ever occur to any wrestling fans that the promoters would be getting sued left and right for injuries, especially those that occur outside of the ring?

I will have to say this for wrestling, though: its promoters have created an enormously popular event. Monday night wrestling is celebrating its position as the Longest running weekly episodic television series in history. Every month or so, wrestling is able to convince a substantial number of fans to pay $45 for a three-hour pay-per-view show. Can you imagine if football could charge that much for a single game for television access? I'm not saying that wrestling is more popular than football, but it seems extraordinary to me that it can extract so much money from fans.

Part of the appeal of wrestling, I figure, is that it is so realistic in some respects. Sure, those double-spin pile drivers off the turnstyles look as phony as they are, but wrestlers do an excellent job of pretending to be injured. My wife, who already knew it was fake, thought that one guy might have been accidentally hurt. The actors I admire the most, however, are the announcers. They are not only completely deadpan in their delivery, but they sound exactly like regular sports announcers. Perhaps, it just occurred to me, they don't even know what's going to happen, which would add authenticity to their surprise when unusual things happen. They debate the relative merits of fighters, discuss upcoming matches, and feign indignity at various extracurricular activities just as though wrestling were a real sport.

Newspeak

2010-08-18T21:35:00.000-04:00

One thing I look out for in politics is people saying something that makes no sense. Okay, people say things that make no sense all the time, but I'm referring to an argument that becomes a stock political weapon in one side's arsenal. To take an example, there is the idea that prohibiting gay marriage is contrary to the Constitution.

I want to make it clear one can make a strong argument in favour of homosexual marriage. I'm against it, but I see an argument on the other side and I'm willing, even interested, to engage in debate about it. But for a judge to rule, as Vaughn Walker did recently, that not allowing homosexual marriages is a violation of constitutional rights, is contrary to all reason. Until recently, no state in America had ever recognized homosexual marriages. Wouldn't that mean, by Judge Walker's logic, that the entire country has been in violation of the Constitution for the entire history of our nation? Or at least since the 14th amendment was passed over a century ago? Obviously, no one has understood the Constitution as requiring homosexual marriages until now, so it seems reasonable to me that it can't possibly have meant that.

It could be the case that a document might mean something that no one acknowledges, but it would have to be much more explicit. Since there is nothing in the Constitution about marriage, the only way to make homosexual marriage a Constitutional right is to draw inferences, and if no one has ever drawn those inferences before, they clearly were not intended to be there. One could also argue that standards have changed, and that what did not appear to be a right 200 years ago has become one now. That kind of logic can make sense, but only if it is applied to obvious cases, e.g. if thumbscrews had been a common punishment in the 19th century, one could say that they are now "cruel and unusual punishment" because no one does it and the vast majority would find it cruel. But to say that such a contentious issue as homosexual marriage has become a right by "evolving standards of decency" (in the notorious words of the majority Supreme Court opinion in Trop v. Dulles, 1958) is a way of depriving the Constitution of all meaning. There clearly is no consensus on whether homosexual marriage is even permissible, much less a human right, so Judge Walker's ruling is nothing more than a judicial fiat that bears no relation either to the Constitution or to contemporary standards of decency. Even if 80% of people thought that homosexual marriage should be a right, I would argue that it would still not count as such under the Constitution, but rather should be left for legislatures to decide.

The other problem with arguing that homosexual marriage is a Constitutional right without any historical framework is that it opens too many questions about what is really a right. Judge Walker and his ilk justify the permissibility of homosexual marriage on the grounds that there is nothing necessary about marriage being defined as the union of a male with a female. If you take a totally nihilist, ahistorical perspective, I suppose he is right: I don't know that anyone has made a compelling moral argument for traditional marriage, and it would be difficult to convince everyone in any case. But why stop there? Why should a marriage be limited to two individuals? There are plenty of people who would opt for polygamy if that were an option. Or why limit it to adults? Every state has a minimum legal age for marriage, usually around 16 with parental consent, 18 without. Why should we prevent consenting children of age 14, or 12, or 10, or 8, from getting married? Much of Hillary Clinton's policy thrust has been toward making children full legal actors, so it's not like this is an argument that would come only from people in the backwoods. Why stop there? Why not allow people to marry animals? I'm sure there are a few nuts who would actually do that, and animals increasingly enjoy certain rights under the law anyway.

My point is not that homosexual marriage means we would have to allow polygamy or the marriage of children, only that there is no compelling reason why, once we declare "marriage" a generic term for a certain legal status between individuals, that we should limit the newly-minted right to get married to homosexuals. There is, therefore, no basis for inferring a right to homosexual marriage where it has never previously existed. Contrary to Judge Walker's logic, marriage is implicitly between one male and one female until someone makes a compelling argument that it is not -- and unless 99% of people agree with the argument, the only convincing way to create a new right is to pass a law, or a Constitutional amendment, that declares it. That's what a democracy is all about, after all. Not that the majority gets to oppress the minority, but that a group of people have come together with certain established principles such as the right to free speech and the right to bear arms, and have left other principles to be decided by majority decision. The majority is constitutionally limited not to violate those rights commonly agreed upon, but it is not required to respect rights that some group of people decide they are entitled to.

I want to emphasize again that my argument here has nothing to do with the merits of homosexual marriage as such; that's a totally separate issue. This is about a judge pretending that the right to homosexual marriage exists in the Constitution when it plainly does not, and could not if our legal system is to make any sense. It is important not to present every argument that one's opponents make as absurd prima facie, but it is also important to point out those arguments that make no sense and draw attention to their absurdity. Then we can get down to discussing the real issues.

Democrat Hate Speech of the Week

2010-08-12T19:57:00.000-04:00

Since Democrats frequently accuse Republicans of "hate," I thought it would be appropriate to have a regular feature highlighting examples of Democrats demonstrating hate speech. The qualifications are that the speech must use the word "hate" or some synonym, resort to non-political name-calling (i.e., calling someone an extreme conservative doesn't count, but calling him a jackass does), or wishing someone dead, injured, or humiliated.

The first award goes to Democrat Keith Halloran, a candidate for New Hampshire's state assembly, for saying that he wished Sarah Palin was on board Ted Stevens's plane when it crashed. To his credit, the state Democratic party leader denounced the comment and called on Halloran to apologize, which he apparently has not done as of this writing.

The problem with talk radio

2010-08-10T21:55:00.000-04:00

Since I was in elementary school, I have liked talk radio. I can remember listening to sports talk radio as my dad drove me to school in 5th grade. I was disappointed when the station announced that they were going to move to more music and less talk. I do listen to music in the car sometimes, but I am drawn to talk, which engages me more directly.

Unfortunately, there are two major problems with talk radio. To become a talk show host, and spend hours every day telling people your opinion, you have to have a certain amount of ego. (Arguably, this is true for blogging as well, but probably not to the same extent.) Talk show hosts therefore tend to be insufferably self-centered. I suppose that many people get into news because they, too, like to tell people what they think, but the dynamics aren't the same. In news, you are basically paid to tell people what happened; you may do so in a very biased fashion, but you can't just give opinions without mentioning facts. Besides, news is typically broken up into small segments, and one person is rarely talking for long about the same thing. This brings up the second problem with talk radio: repetition. Because the host has to fill up several hours, he tends to repeat himself, and repeat himself, and repeat himself. It's never enough to make a point and move on; he has to make a point, restate it, emphasize it, and then make it again several times. This gets tedious very quickly. Remember, a host is not only giving the audience the benefit of his opinion, but he is also often trying to stir up controversy to drive his ratings higher. For instance, last week Jim Rome talked about Yoda as a mascot for the San Diego Padres. He said Yoda was not worthy, because he was a coward. Fine, he offended that part of his audience that cared, which is probably not many people. But then he proceeded to expatiate on why Yoda was a coward and what he should have done for the next five minutes. He seemed to forget that he was on a sports talk show, that this was really about the San Diego Padres. Yoda might be worth a mention, but it is definitely not worth the trouble to hear a long discussion about his moral virtues or lack thereof. At least, it wasn't worth it for me; I turned off the radio.

When there is a single host, as on Jim Rome's show, the egomania and repetition tend to take center stage. I generally prefer shows with multiple hosts, because if one guy doesn't have something to say, he can be quiet for a while and let his partner talk. Also, the differences of opinion between the hosts is often a source of insight for me. I enjoy Mike and Mike, for instance, although Mike Greenberg often dominates the conversation so that they lose the benefit of having two hosts. My favourite sports talk show host is Dan Patrick. He came across as conceited on SportsCenter, but he is more likable on his radio show, and he doesn't exhibit the same ego as most hosts. Also, even though he is the only host, he talks frequently with several other people in his studio, so one rarely has to listen to him drone on and on about some subject to fill up time.

I can't end this blog entry without mentioning political talk radio, specifically Rush Limbaugh. I have to be honest: I can't listen to Rush for long, for the reasons that are common to talk show hosts enumerated above. I don't think he is particularly insightful. On the other hand, I am grateful that Rush is broadcasting, because I am convinced that the so-called mainstream media is hopelessly, incredibly biased toward the left. The only way to deny this is to compare American media to Swedish politics; compared to Sweden, a liberal might say, American media is really middle of the road. Very well, but we are not in Sweden, and I see no reason for privileging Swedish politics (or those of any other country) over American; and the American media is undoubtedly far to the left of the American public on political matters. Since newspapers and television stations seem intent on going bankrupt rather than changing their politics, Rush and his ilk are one of the only ways that conservative views get heard publically (outside of politicians, of course). It's a lot better now because of the internet, but 15 years ago the situation was very different. I am grateful that Rush has been carrying the conservative banner, and, even though I wish a more profound thinker occupied his position, I realize that such a thinker could probably never reach such a broad audience.

Ironically, now that there are liberal talk shows (chiefly in television), we have seen that Rush is not extraordinarily opinionated for a member of his profession. In particular, Keith Olbermann is utterly insufferable as a loose cannon prone to the most absurd exaggerations and demonizing of anyone who disagrees with him. I'm not surprised, since he was the same way as SportsCenter host (though thankfully with fewer opportunities to vent his opinions), and because it is endemic to the job. I'll refrain from mentioning my favourite political talk show host here; I'll save it for another time.

Orientated

2010-08-09T15:30:00.000-04:00

I went to company headquarters for my new company for orientation today. Does that mean I got orientated? No, I got oriented -- for some reason we add an extra -at- to the root word in this case. Admittedly, "oriention" would sound weird; is that the only reason?

I am adopted, and when I was young I used to speak of the "adoptiation agency." For some reason, it didn't occur to me that I could have said simply "adoption agency"; but why do we add -at- to orient but not adopt? (Okay, I threw in -iat-, and, again, "adoptation" would not sound nearly as good.)

Another word that adds -at- is preventative. At the oriention this morning, I noticed they used the word "preventive" to describe certain kinds of health care that we employees are eligible for, so I thought maybe preventative was just incorrect, along the lines of adoptiation. But, no, it appears to be a legitimate alternative, sometimes with a slightly different meaning (preventative is a noun describing a procedure in preventive medicine), but sometimes with the identical meaning.

Censoring music

2010-08-01T14:40:00.000-04:00

People get worked up when music albums have warning labels to indicate their suitability for children (Tipper Gore's crusade), but music gets censored regularly on the radio without comment. It's not so much whole songs that get left out, but individual verses, or offending lyrics are subtly altered. I have noticed the following in country music:

Garth Brooks, "The Thunder Rolls" -- this song about a woman who shoots her cheating husband is usually only played through two verses, when she finds out about the infidelity but before she shoots him. I didn't even know there was a third verse for years. The fact that I have heard the full song on the radio makes me curious about the source of censorship: do radio stations voluntarily refrain from playing the third verse? It also interests me because there is no shortage of country songs about killing unfaithful spouses, e.g. "The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia," "Independence Day," and Garth Brooks's own "Papa's In the Pen." The only difference I can see with "The Thunder Rolls" is that it is more vivid and powerful than the other ones.
Taylor Swife, "Picture to Burn" -- This song contains the lines
```
So go ahead, tell your friends
I'm obsessive and crazy
That's fine
I'll tell mine
That you're gay 
```
First of all, this isn't even particularly insulting to gays – it's just intended as a tactic to keep the guy from getting dates with members of the opposite sex, which is the kind he wants. Second, pop in the latest Eminem cd and tell me if he doesn't insult a lot of groups of people explicitly, yet some of his songs – even ones with foul lyrics – get on the radio. There really is a special class of protected people (actually, several: women, blacks, Muslims, gays) that gets preferential treatment.
Zac Brown Band, "Toes" -- This song begins, "I've got my toes in the water, ass in the sand..." Unlike the other songs I've listed here, I'm just as glad for this one to be censored. Not because it is evil, but just because I don't care to hear the word "ass" in the first 5 seconds of a song. If you're going to use that word, at least bury it somewhere in the middle where it is possible to overlook it. It also seems completely arbitrary to use such a word as opposed to one that, say, I wouldn't mind my kids hearing. I find it curious that when he recorded a new version, he didn't choose an innocuous synonym like "tail" to fill in, but instead repeated "toes": "toes in the water, toes in the sand." Obviously this is not a matter of FCC censorship, because obscene words get played all the time on the radio; presumably radio stations are just reacting to complaints from their audience.
Toby Keith, "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue" -- this song made quite a splash when it came out because ABC first invited, then disinvited Keith from performing it on a show about 9/11. When I recently attended the Independence Day celebration sponsored by the Air Force Reserve in Warner Robins, Georgia, this was one of the songs that they played during the fireworks -- but without the second verse than ends, "'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American Way." No doubt they were thinking the same thing that Peter Jennings did: they didn't want to stir up too much anger. The use of "ass" is not the key point here, although I will point out that it is entirely within the context of the song. I'm still not thrilled about my kids' hearing it, but at least there is a good reason for him to use such a word, and it is far enough along in the song that I could turn it off if I wanted to.

I wish I knew more about the stories of these cases of censorship (probably mostly self-censorship). In two cases, "Picture to Burn" and "Toes," the singers seem to have recorded new versions of the songs, although it's hard to tell if that was under pressure or voluntarily in response to listeners' concerns. I know that Charlie Daniels recorded a new version of his song, "Long-haired country boy," removing references to getting high and toking because he didn't want to promote drug use. I also wonder if rock music ever gets censored like this, because there is never any news about this quiet censorship.

TV

2010-07-28T21:51:00.000-04:00

It is generally accepted that Americans have a short attention span. I believe this to be true, and I think I am an example. I have sat in numerous academic roundtables, where non-Americans take 10 minutes to make a point that Americans would make in 2. Just give me the gist, and let's move on; a roundtable is not a place for definitive proofs, but for raising ideas. While in Germany, I began reading a news magazine called Focus, and I remarked to a colleague that the articles in it were very long compared to its American counterparts such as Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. She said she was surprised, because the articles in Focus were shorter than those in other German magazines.

I like things to make a point, but I can't say that having a short attention span is necessarily good. I admit that I would benefit from having a little more patience to read longer articles. There is definitely a tradeoff between getting down to business quickly, and being superficial.

It is commonly accepted that television is in part responsible for our short attention spans. Oddly enough, though, I find that I have too little attention for television. Ad breaks are, of course, annoying, but what really bothers me is the fluff that goes into the average broadcast. I occasionally watch SportsCenter, and I have grown utterly sick of the opening theme music. I know why they play it so much (to build a brand), but I just want to hear the news. Then, right before a commercial break, they tell you what is coming up...after the second following commercial break. Again, it is an understandable tactic to keep you watching, but it drives me nuts.

The fundamental problem with t.v., or video of any sort, is that it is linear. Often I don't want to watch a good portion of the news, but I'm stuck watching it anyway because you only get one part at a time. This is what really turned me off to news broadcasts. Liberal bias is everywhere and it is annoying, but Fox news is subject to the same limitations of linearity as the others. In a newspaper, I can quickly scan the headlines and decide which articles I want to read; and I can stop reading at any point, if I have gotten the information I wanted. (News is typically written in an "inverted pyramid" structure, with the most important information first, which encourages skimming (though probably not intentionally -- it's made to grad readers' attention). It also leads to a lot of duplication as the article delves into details, as opposed to a more expository approach that reveals details in sequence.)

Hypertext is wonderful for facilitating skimming, but a plain old newspaper also works pretty well. Video, whether on television or on the web, is inherently linear. That's why I normally skip all video links that I see, even if the topic interests me.

DMV

2010-07-25T20:53:00.000-04:00

I had to go into the DMV last week to get a new driver's license and register my vehicles. This is the ninth time I've had to get a driver's license, and the third time in Virginia. I always dread it, because the DMV office operates according to different rules of time. It's like the land of the Lotus-Eaters, only without the pleasant associations. I do like the way they set up an information booth to perform a sort of triage on incoming customers. That avoids the possibility of waiting in a long line, only to find out that you should have been in that other line the whole time. It's also good that they give you tickets, so you can sit down rather than having to stand in line. This hasn't always or everywhere been the case, and I appreciate it.

The tickets have letters and numbers on them, like a game of Bingo. We were D73. An LED display showed the numbers of the customers currently being served, and we had to wait quite a while before another D even showed up -- D68. Meanwhile, other tickets being served started with A, F, M, R, and several other letters. I was curious whether the letters actually stood for something, and I regret not asking (but I was undertandably too relieved to get my license at last to think about it). It would make sense, especially since the letters were not simply consecutive from A to G (or whatever). On the other hand, I wans't entirely sure. It could be that they mix the letters up just so you won't know how many people are in front of you. If they numbered the tickets consecutively, it could be demoralizing to find that you were 73 and they were now serving 15. You might also get angry if someone with a higher number went ahead of you. If the letters really do indicate different tasks, it would make sense that not all clerks were trained or equipped to perform all tasks. If you happened to have a task that was able to be performed by few people, such as getting a license, you might have to wait longer than someone who needed to do something simple, like renewing a registration.

Anger management is certainly an issue at the DMV. Each window has a security camera pointed at it, and I was curious enough to ask the clerk if these were for angry customers -- she assured me it was. "No matter what happens," she told me, "it's always our fault." It's true that people can be unreasonable -- very true. However, people tend to be a lot more unreasonable after they have been waiting for an hour and a half. If you've wasted that much time, you are certainly going to be disappointed if you can't even finish what you came to do, and you are going to blame the DMV. So why don't they do something about the wait?

Actually, they've done about as much as they can do, having streamlined the process quite a bit. The one thing they need now is more clerks (and possibly a bigger building), but that would cost money. Any business swamped with customers would certainly spend the money to expand; they want the extra work, and they are going to lose people if they make them wait over an hour to get served. But the government doesn't work that way. People have no choice but to go to the DMV, so there is no danger of customers fleeing elsewhere (I doubt anyone ever moves to another state because of poor DMV service.) The wait times do generate irate customers, but the people who have to deal with them are clerks, not high-ranking officials or members of the General Assembly.

Of course, the government could raise fees to finance improving DMV service. I suspect, however, that fees are high enough to provide a much better level of service. The problem is that it is very tempting for lawmakers to siphon money paid by motorists into other things, possibly transportation related, possibly not. There is no direct correlation between revenue and expenditure. This can occur in a large corporation, too, but a corporation risks losing customers. Since the DMV doesn't have to worry about this, it is easy to cut service short and spend the money elsewhere.

Deadliest Warrior

2010-07-22T23:01:00.000-04:00

When I was a graduate student in a military history seminar, a professor once told us about an undergraduate who wanted to do a term paper on how a Roman legion would fare against a Panzer division. The idea sent me into hysterics as I imagined tanks running over guys armed with swords and shields. It seemed silly on the face of it to want to make such a comparison; the odds were all on one side.

My professor was against the idea more on principle. He did not think it was useful, or historically valid, to make diachronic comparisons like that. I can't do justice to his reasoning, because I don't really understand it, and I do not share his beliefs. I do think comparisons of historical phenomena across time can be useful, and I see no reason why military effectiveness should not be included.

Therefore, I was interested to discover the television series "Deadliest Warrior," which compares weaponry of various famous armies, from modern times (Navy SEALS, the FBI) to ancient history (the Persian Empire, Sparta). They choose four weapons from each army -- long range, medium range, short range, and special -- and compare how much damage they can do. They then run a computer simulation using their results to determine which side wins the majority out of 1000 combats, and declare the winner "the deadliest warrior." They have, as far as I can tell, not made the mistake of pitting soldiers with modern firearms against those who have to fight with swords and spears. Nevertheless, the series is silly in many ways.

The focus on weapons is understandable, as it is concrete and easier to quantify, but it still pretty much undermines any attempt to reach an overall conclusion. First, they act as though every soldier carried all four weapons -- that's the only way the simulation can work -- which is very rarely the case historically. Second, they evaluate the weapons in terms of one-on-one combat. While there are some weapons for which this makes sense, there are others that it makes a mockery of.

As an extreme example, consider the pike, essentially a long spear. One person with a pike is hardly a dangerous competitor. His weapon is maybe 10, maybe 14 feet long, and the only dangerous part is the very tip. Even if it wasn't very heavy -- which it was -- it still would have been virtually impossible to maneuver against a single opponent because of its length. (If you want an idea of how difficult, take a laser pointer and aim it at a wall 14 feet away. You will find that the light on the wall moves around as if you suffered from palsy, because every little move your hand makes gets magnified over the distance to the wall.) You could easily get around the point of the pike, at which time he would be at the mercy of whatever shorter weapon you possessed. Put a block of several hundred men with pikes together, however, and the situation is reversed. Then your sword, no matter how large, will seem puny as a wall of pike points advances toward you. If you get pase the first rank, you will face another rank of pikes, and another, and another. Unless the pike square gets disorganized, it is virtually unbeatable by non-projectile weapons.

I haven't seen any pikemen on Deadlist Warrior -- no doubt for good reason -- but every comparison of weapons must suffer to some extent from the failure to consider how the weapons were employed tactically. To pick an example, they recently analyzed a Comanche scalping knife against some kind of Mongolian bladed weapon. It was totally pointless, as the scalping knife was never intended as a battle weapon, as they fully admit on the show. It was apparently used to kill (not just to scalp), but it was a very small weapon used chiefly in raids and ambushes, not something to be wielded against a mass enemy. They were debating whether the Comanche would be able to get in close against the Mongolian warrior, as though they would ever be facing each other armed just with those weapons.

Another dubious point is that they test the timing and accuracy of the weapons by having a modern Comanche descendant and Mongol use them. While I am impressed with the skill these people showed with the bow while mounted, it cannot possibly compare to the ability of the actual warriors (on either side), who learned how to ride and shoot at an early age and, at least for the Mongols, spent virtually their whole lives practicing.

Having said those negative things (in brief: don't believe any of the conclusions of the show, they are meaningless), I am still impressed with Deadliest Warrior in several ways. First, they have assembled some experts capable of creating and evaluating some very interesting tests on these weapons. I know something about modern attempts to test 17th and 18th century firearms, and it is very difficult to do. It is great that they are able to do this; their experiments will become historical evidence, even if their conclusions are ignored. I am interested in how they managed to recreate these weapons. They might be using historical artefacts in some cases, but we certainly don't have any Mongolian bows from the 13th century left around. Of course, this also opens up the possibility that the recreations are not entirely authentic. Creating a Mongolian compound bow, which consists of layers of bone, sinew, and wood, was a complicated art, and I'm sceptical how easily we can do that today.

Second, I am surprised and interested to see ethnic relatives of the warriors who know so much about combat. Some people take this stuff very seriously, and they obviously care about the outcome on more than a scientific level. It's one thing to know about weapons, but quite another to be able to use them effectively.

Third, I have to say that this show is a great idea for attracting interest in history. I'm always alert to ways to make history appealing to people, and this is certainly a striking one. It is a little disturbing to see conclusions being drawn from just weaponry, but at least they are doing really interesting experiments with weapons, and I'm sure many people will be drawn to learn more about some of these armies through the show.

Human nature

2010-07-19T22:58:00.000-04:00

I'm picky about language, but most things don't bother me seriously. I know people are going to quotation marks around random words and misuse expressions, and I know they do it innocently, so I tend to ignore it. But my rant for today really annoys me, because the people doing it should know better.

I have been listening to courses from The Teaching Company, courtesy of my father-in-law. These are various series of lectures on specific courses, given by college professors, at a level suitable for college (but without the homework, grades, or credit). In two of the courses I have heard recently, different professors have referred to the timeless desire to understand "the nature of human nature."

Just roll that phrase around in your mind for a moment. I hope it should be obvious that what these professors meant was the desire to understand human nature. If not, a few moments reflection should clear it up. When we speak of human nature, what do we mean? Surely it can only be "the nature of humans," i.e. what humans really are. Therefore, to say "the nature of human nature" is to say "the nature of the nature of humans," which could possibly make sense in some abstract, logical way, but it certainly would not refer to the same thing as the nature of humans. If Joe Schmoe made a mistake like this, I would totally understand, but we're talking about professors here -- and professors of philosophy, no less, who should be able to parse a phrase. These are the best professors the Learning Company could find to deliver these lectures. In short, they should know better, and it drives me nuts that they don't.

This particular phrase bothers me because it should be obvious on the surface -- you should hear the phrase and immediately think, "that can't be right, based on the meaning of the words in it." Other mistakes, such as mispronunciations, are more understandable. Even so, I was shocked to hear, in a different lecture series, a professor of Chinese history pronounce "fief" as "fife." I'll grant that maybe the feudal period of Chinese history is not his specialty, but still, he does teach Chinese survey courses that cover that period, and he did mention the word several times. If no one has ever corrected him, I suppose it is possible for him to have his misconception of the pronunciation, and I can't really blame him for not looking it up (I rarely bother to look up a word unless I hear someone pronouncing it differently, and I want to know whether I am wrong or he is). Still, it is a matter of some astonishment that a professor at an Ivy League school of over 20 years tenure could have gone through life saying this word incorrectly and never have had his error politely pointed out to him. Or never have heard anyone else pronounce it correctly, and have been curious enough to check for himself. It's the kind of thing you just don't expect to see.

In this case, I think part of the reason may be that he teaches in a very obscure and difficult foreign area. My experience is that people who do research in difficult languages -- Arabic, South Asian, or East Asian, for example -- tend to get a pass on a lot of what they claim. The reason is simple: very few people know enough to contradict them. If your research area is Western Europe, there are going to be many more prying eyes; and if you research about America, you will be very unlikely to get away with anything. (Of course, this is because we are talking about professors in American universities. The situation would be reversed in China.) Mispronouncing "fief" is not, of course, directly related to this same cause, but it seems symptomatic of the leniency provided to these obscure areas. If you were a French historian and mispronounced fief, you would certainly be skewered. (Incidentally, I don't mean to diminish the difficulty of doing research in difficult languages. It is certainly a fact that people in these fields must spend a vastly greater proportion of their time mastering their research languages, which leaves them less time to learn other things.)

Copycat Chains

2010-07-18T22:26:00.000-04:00

I'd like to be a venture capitalist who specializes in founding chains that copy the business idea of other chains. Not too long ago, I was introduced to Cold Stone's, an overpriced ice cream shop (on the order of $4 for a cone) that hand-mixes toppings such as sprinkles, M&M's, and oreo cookies into ice cream. I just recently discovered another chain called Maggie Moo's that uses the exact same technique. I'm not sure that Maggie Moo's copied Cold Stone's directly (it was founded slightly later), but I don't think two stores came up with this same idea independently. Another case of mirror-image chains are Cici's Pizza and Stevi B's, both of which feature excusively fixed-price buffet meals. Stevi B's is a little more open about copying Cici's (well, they don't mention Cici's by name, but they admit to copying someone, and Cici's seems the most likely).

These little stores jump out at me because I have only learned about them recently, but the same goes for larger chains, such as Lowe's and Home Depot, or Staples, Office Depot, and Office Max. If you were led into one of these stores blindfolded and then had the blindfold removed, you would probably not be able to tell which one you were in until you eyes lighted on some reference to the store's name inside.

I'm not saying these copycat stores don't add value. Often they take the original concept and improve upon it, in the way that Papa John's consciously sought to create a better Domino's, or Ryder a better U-Haul. Ironically, the original chain often ends up copying some of the improvements of their competitors, with the result that the stores evolve in tandem and remain very similar. I'm just thinking that the original idea, and most of the implementation, are the most important components, and copying them would be easier than coming up with them in the first place. Of course, copying is no guarantee of success, but at least you know that the market is there.

On the level

2010-07-15T19:00:00.002-04:00

Frequently people use the metaphor of "levels" to describe different modalities of understanding. You have almost certainly hear someone say, "That is wrong on so many levels"? It is a cliché, and it is intended (usually) to be humorous, so I don't bother too much about what it means. But I am curious about the use of the metaphor of levels in general. It was nicely lampooned in one of my favourite scenes from "Friends." Phoebe was preparing to move out of the apartment with Monica, and Ross was telling her that she ought to inform Monica of her plans.

"I think on some level, she already does know it," Phoebe responds.

"How?" asks Ross. "She doesn't know that you've changed your mailing address. She doesn't know that you're sleeping at your grandmother's every night. She doesn't know that you already have a lease on another apartment."

"Well, maybe not on those levels," Phoebe admits.

The obvious question is, what could Phoebe mean by saying Monica already knows it "on some level"? It can't mean she knows part of it; that wouldn't be a level, but a section. Levels cover the same area, but overlap completely. They are often used when dealing with literature, which can be understood literally or metaphorically. The story of Little Red Riding Hood is literally about a girl being attacked by a wolf, but it could be understood metaphorically as a story about sexual predators. (Actually, I don't know what it is a metahpor for, but let's just ignore that for a moment.) It makes sense to describe these as two different "levels" of understanding, because they both encompass the whole story, but they interpret it within an entirely different framework. If one wanted to apply a Marxist interpretation, that would be another level as well.

So it doesn't make sense to say that Monica doesn't understand that Phoebe is moving out "on the level of" she sleeps at her grandmother's apartment. That's not a level; it's an aspect. It isn't the complete story on a different layer, but rather a segment of the story on a very literal layer. Arguably, Phoebe could mean that Monica knows it on an intuitive level -- that she was aware of what was going on, but wasn't conscious of her awareness. That would be "knowing it" on a different level: fully grasping it, but not in a way that she could discuss it.

I'm not sure, but I suspect that most of the time people use levels in this metaphorical way, it doesn't make much sense. I am as guilty of it as anyone. The use of "levels" to describe knowledge has entered the popular idiom and it just sounds right a lot of times even when it isn't really the best word, just as people intuitively use "cool" to describe anything good. (I hope to write a future entry on coolness, which I think is a very interesting concept.) Of course, people understand its meaning in context, so, arguably, "levels" is just as good as, perhaps even better than, other word choices that are more logically consistent. I try to resist using popular idioms like this, and I often find myself struggling to express the concept in other words. Still, I think it's a good habit to get into. Using clichéd words is easy and can make one's meaning clear in the short run, but I think in the long run it tends to become so broad as to be meaningless. People who speak in clichés often end up saying nothing meaningful, the way corporate mission statements repeat business clichés without conveying any content. Besides, I like to give my mind the exercise of trying to think about what I actually what to express, rather than just letting the words fall out. That seems the right thing on so many levels.

Country Rap?

2010-07-14T21:59:00.001-04:00

"Save a horse, ride a cowboy" is one of the most annoying country songs ever recorded. Not only are the lyrics insipid and the melody, if you can call it that, weak, but it advocates a completely self-centered, hedonist lifestyle. One person (who liked it) said it was country's venture into rap music, which is an insult to country and rap at the same time. I don't like rap (chiefly for the content), but one thing I am certain of is that this is not country's first rap-like song. In fact, on reflection, country has a long history of "rapping" its lyrics, although it is obviously not the primary mode of expression. Johnny Cash, for example, spoke the verses to "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," singing only the chorus. I would describe it as a failed attempt -- certainly one of his worst songs, in a musical sense. He used the same speaking voice in "One Piece at a Time," which is at least a far more interesting song.

Country rap (if I may describe it like that) hit the big time with "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniel's Band. It was not only a #1 country hit, but reached #3 overall. Even though I generally don't like songs that are spoken, I love this song; it was popular when I was growing up, so maybe I wouldn't care for it so much if I heard it for the first time now. I also like Jerry Reid's "She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft," which I can't attribute to youthful exuberance, since I didn't even hear it until about a year ago. Obviously the chief interest in this song is the humour; musically, it is more like Johnny Cash's rap songs, and is not nearly as interesting as "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

Then there is Shania Twain's "Honey, I'm Home," which is not just a spoken song, but more like a hip-hop song in feel: supporting music, especially in between verses, and a heavy emphsis on the rhythm of the spoken words. She also makes a lot of use of spoken words in her other songs, such as "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" and "That Don't Impress Me Much" -- and in a way that works, unlike Taylor Swift, who seems to lapse frequently into speaking in her songs but only in a way that detracts from them.

Memorial Interchange

2010-07-14T09:17:00.002-04:00

Naming roads after people is a common way of honouring their memory. You can find stretches of interstate named after someone, such as Carl Sanders Highway, the name for part of I-20 in Georgia (called after a former governor of the state). One thing that I have only noticed fairly recently, however, is the naming of interchanges in memory of someone. It seems to be common in South Carolina, through which I have driven frequently in the past three years along I-20 and I-77.

For some reason, the one that sticks out in my mind is the F. W. "Billy" Caughman Memorial Interchange. It appears to have been so designated in 2003 in memory of the "community, civic, and political impact" that he made "on the city of Lexington and Lexington County." It has successfully preserved his name, although I have no idea who he was or what exactly he did -- the only person of that name that I found on the internet is a 15-year-old on MySpace, also from Lexington, SC, presumably a descendant.

There is something ludicrous about naming an interchange after someone, and it doesn't help that this particular one uses the person's formal initials along with his nickname in quotation marks. Would it have seemed disrespectful for them just to call it the Billy Caughman Memorial Interchange?

It is possible that the South Carolina legislature has resorted to naming interchanges because they ran out of more conventional things with which to memorialize people -- all the good ones were taken, in other words. This became something of an issue at the residential college where I lived while a student at the University of Virginia. At the time I stayed there, it was called "Monroe Hill Residential College," so named because James Monroe owned the plot of land at one point. Shortly after I graduated, someone donated a large sum of money to the university on the condition that it rename the location to Brown College. The university accepted -- who can turn down money? -- but tried to placate traditionalists (which means everyone in Virginia) by calling it "Brown College at Monroe Hill."

If this is a problem for the University of Virginia, it is an even bigger problem for Yale, which is more than a century older. I say "problem," but really it is an opportunity. Yale has adopted the practice of appending additional names to its buildings, such that many of them now have hyphenated titles. My favourite is Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona. Now that is a name that says, "We are a very old and very famous university. We have so many famous people to name buildings after that we have to stack them on top of one another. Moreover, our famous people have names like Sheffield, Sterling, and Strathcona, which are upper class names, not boring common names like Brown, Smith, and Jones." Compare this to the University of Illinois, a fine institution (from which I hold my Ph.D.), whose main library is still called...the Main Library. Surely there must be some person, either a famous graduate or a wealthy donor, after whom the university could name arguably its most important building? Or perhaps it resists giving it a specific name in respect to its egalitarian mission, one of the original land-grant universities whose motto is not some high-sounding Latin phrase but rather the simple "Learning and Labor."

I think we can all agree that a library would be a fine thing to have named after one. Interchanges, however, are a more dubious proposition, and I say this without wishing to cast any aspersions upon the memory of F.W. "Billy" Caughman, whatever he may have done. So if, after I die, someone comes up with the idea of preserving my name (a doubtful premise, I admit) on some interchange, rest stop, or weigh station, let me save them the trouble by declaring that it is an honour that I would be just as happy to do without.

Taylor Swift

2010-07-12T22:24:00.000-04:00

My wife has a Taylor Swift album. I do, too. It's called "a radio."

More church names

2010-07-07T18:50:00.000-04:00

I was down in Georgia again this past weekend, where I discovered another interesting church name. (For others, see here and here.) Well, technically not a church, I guess; it is the Temple of Miracles Worship Center. What is a worship center, and how does it differ from a church? I presume the people who came up with this name had some reason for it. Probably they avoided the word "church" deliberately, since church can have negative connotations for some.

I have even less clue about the motivation behind the "Family Aquatic Center" in Charlottesville. Okay, it's more than a pool, but we always call it a water park, because it has many of the same features (lazy river, lots of fountains, water guns, etc.). It is smaller than what you would normally call a water park, but that still seems a more reasonable name than "aquatic center." This is the kind of name you get when a committee comes up with it.

I discovered another interesting church, although not for its name, but rather its type. It is a "biker church." Apparently there is a whole series of churches designed to minister to bikers. Ironically, I heard someone refer to a Christian biker gang last weekend as well, another new idea to me. I love the way Christianity reaches out to even the most unlikely of converts; and, although the rhetoric may use aggressive metaphors (I heard someone refer to "spiritual warfare" yesterday), the result is inevitably more peaceful than what proceeded it (so long as government is not involved).

July 4th

2010-07-06T20:40:00.000-04:00

Few Americans actually refer to the holiday known as "Independence Day" by its name; to most of us, it is "July 4th." It is ironic, therefore, that we have lived in many places that do not celebrate on the fourth day of July. I mentioned yesterday the fireworks in Warner Robins, Georgia, which were on July 2nd. They are recorded and broadcast to American service personnel on July 4th. Columbus, Ohio hosts a large "Red, White, and Boom" festival on July 2nd, timed so as not to interfere with the smaller celebrations of its suburbs (my favourite of which is Reynoldsburg, which bills itself as "The Birthplace of the Tomato" for reasons that I have not yet figured out). And Detroit holds its celebration on the last Wednesday in June. It is called the International Freedom Festival, and honours Canada Day (July 1st) as well as Independence Day.

Independence Day

2010-07-05T21:04:00.001-04:00

I didn't like fireworks when I was growing up. Sure, they look pretty, but the loud noises hurt my ears. I remember, well into my 20's, wincing every time I would see a bright flash indicating a particular loud noise was coming. I also don't remember hearing much about independence on Independence Day, and we didn't cook out, so July 4th was just another day off to me.

Now I think of it in very different terms. Independence means more to me as I get older. Several years ago I made a decision to take the holiday more seriously specifically because I wanted to celebrate American independence -- and personal freedom -- more. The rise of the Tea Party movement has made me even more interested in American exceptionalism and the threats to it. And, I outgrew my dislike of loud fireworks; either I'm more hard of hearing, or I just got used to the noise, I'm not sure which.

So I was glad to go see the fireworks put on by Robins Air Force Base this year. It took place in McConnell-Talbert Stadium, which is where the local high schools all play. I haven't been able to find seating information, but it is a very impressive stadium for a high school; I'm sure many colleges don't have one so nice. The field was packed with viewers, and the stands were about 3/4ths full. We were treated to the Air Force Reserve Component Band, which is apparently a pretty good band (I'm no judge of music, but I enjoyed it), followed by Diamond Rio. Then we got a very nice fireworks display, much grander than the one I'm used to in my hometown. I really liked the fact that they played patriotic music in the background during the fireworks. It inspired me and made me think of the bombs bursting in air, so much that I actually relished the loud bangs at the end. The music, which was mostly country, suited me perfectly -- so much so that when I created a patriotic mix album a few years ago, I used many of the same songs they played.

Georgia cities

2010-06-20T22:49:00.003-04:00

I'm sure it's a coincidence, but Georgia has more cities that share names with other well-known cities than anywhere else I've been. There are Athens, Rome, and Sparta; Vienna, Milan, and Dublin; Albany, Boston, and Columbus; Dallas, Duluth, Decatur, Gainesville, Macon, Roswell, and Augusta. When in Georgia, you have to be careful to specify which of the above cities you are talking about. Actually, this is easy for some of them, because Georgians have their own special pronunciations: Vienna is vye-ENN-uh, Milan is MY-len, and the town of Lafayette is la-FAY-et.

Sure, every state has some towns that share names with cities in other states, but most of them are tiny towns of no importance. Augusta, Columbus, Athens, Macon, Roswell, and Albany are all among Georgia's top 10 largest cities, and Gainesville, Rome, and Dublin are among the state's top 20 metropolitan areas. Albany and Macon hold the dubious distinction of being among the country's 10 poorest cities. Duluth and Decatur are important Atlanta suburbs. Imagine my surprise when I first heard that a large Pokemon tournament that my kids wanted to play in would take place in Duluth.

Many of these towns were named after their more famous predecessors (Athens, Rome, Sparta, and Albany, for instance); others were named after the same person, such as Columbus and Decatur. Macon was named after a person of that name, not the city in France, and my home county of Houston (pronounced HOW-ston) was named after a governor of Georgia, not the famous Sam Houston who pronounces his name funny.

Georgia on my mind

2010-06-17T15:53:00.001-04:00

Georgia is a lovely place to live. Apart from being hotter than Hell for 4-5 months out of the year, that is. But even the heat has its advantages: it's a wonderful place to go swimming, because between May and September you never need to worry whether the water is too cold.

Georgia is sort of the prototypical state of the Deep South in popular culture. You hear more about it in songs, I think, than Alabama or Mississippi (probably not than Tennessee, though): of course "The Devil went Down to Georgia," but also "Good Directions," "Meet in the Middle," "Toes," and many others. ("Georgia on My Mind" is also one of the most beautiful state songs.) It has even given rise to an expression, "Hell's broke loose in Georgia," that is widely used. (However, I have no idea where this expression comes from, and I would love to hear about if any knows.)

Georgia's iconic status was cemented, in a very bad way, by the movie "Deliverance." I avoided this movie for years because I thought I would hate it, but I finally gave in -- since I live in Georgia, I figured I ought to see it. I was right, I hated it. Actually, it was a very good movie apart from the one awful scene that everyone knows about, but that scene was really, really bad. One of my colleagues from South Carolina met James Dickey while he was teaching at the University of South Carolina, and asked him why he would write such a thing that portrayed Southerners in such a negative light. "Well," he said, "the money was good. Besides, it takes place on the other side of the river" (i.e., in Georgia rather than South Carolina). I was interested to learn recently that James Dickey was a pathological liar. Not that it makes any difference to the story (it is fiction, after all), but it was interesting to learn.

Health care

2010-01-21T12:16:00.002-05:00

Kudos to Mona Charen in this article for a nice turn of phrase: she describes the health care bill as "oozing" its way through Congress. Will Brown's election stop the ooze? And how should Democrats react? If I were a Democrat, I might well be in favour of pushing the bill at all costs. This is based partly on my depressing assessment that major legislation almost never gets repealed, and usually, to the contrary, expand over time. It might mean a beating for the Democrats in November, but it would be a major advance for them in the long run.

Nancy Pelosi ("We will have health care one way or another") seems to be in favour of ramming the bill through, and I can't disagree with her logic. I do disagree, however, with these academics, who somehow conclude that "If there is a lesson in the Massachusetts vote, it is this: pass a bill." I understand what they are saying: a lot of Democrats are upset at the compromises that have been made on the bill, and that may have kept some of them away from voting. And I'm sure they're right that Scott Brown did campaign a lot on other issues. Nevertheless, it is not only implausible, but downright silly, to think that a liberal state like Massachussetts would vote for a Republican if the majority of liberals there wanted a health-care bill. That's not the way people work.

Democrats still control large majorities in both houses, so they have a reasonable chance of getting a bill through. There has been much talk of pushing the vote through before Brown is seated, or using other dubious tactics to ram something through. I am glad to report that Barney Frank -- whom I dispise in many ways -- has come out on the side of honesty, saying, "I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in Congress must respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results."

Republicans in Massachussetts

2010-01-20T12:36:00.003-05:00

While Republicans are obviously elated at Scott Brown's victory yesterday, many are already talking about the likelihood that he will lose the next election in 2012. I am a little surprised; I figure that if Brown can win once, he can win again, especially with the advantage of incumbency. Massachussetts has had Republican governors, so a Republican senator does not seem like too much of a stretch.

I once met a Boston-area radio talk show host (I'm sorry that I've forgotten his name). When I heard his profession, I assumed that he was a liberal, but he turned out to be conservative. I prodded him about what sort of audience he had, and he told me that people in Boston were quite conservative on many issues, in spite of being very pro-Democrat. This may seem incredible, but it is fairly well known that blacks, for instance, are conservative on a number of key issues -- abortion, foreign policy, crime -- in spite of voting around 90% for Democrats. I've forgotten what specific issues the talk show host mentioned to me, but I'm sure abortion was one of them. In any case, I think it is at least plausible that there is an undercurrent of conservatism in the state that could keep Brown in office in spite of his being a Republican. I don't deny, of course, that Democrats will put up a stronger candidate next time and run a better campaign, and there is always the possibility of a "macaca" moment that throws calculations off. I expect he will have a tough race, but I think he has a reasonable possibility to get re-elected.

I strongly disagree with Daniel Larison, who says that the election is all about anti-incumbent feeling. For one thing, there was no incumbent in this race. For another thing, I think pure anti-incumbent feeling is very rare; most often, it is "anti-party-in-power" sentiment. Considering the context of the election -- the health-care bill on the verge of passage -- I would be amazed if the voters were not voting in large part on the basis of Brown's promise to be against the bill.

I couldn't help myself from reading the Daily Kos, to see how extreme liberals were reacting to the vote. Activity was way down from the last time I checked (during the past election season, admittedly), and was basically what I expected: the world is ending, the voters were stupid, etc. One person said that it was sad when an election could be decided by not knowing which team a particular athlete was on, referring to Coakley's gaffe about Schilling being a Yankees fan. I have some sympathy for the idea that sports should play no role in elections, but a few thoughts. First, it is always a good idea to know some basic facts about the local sports teams, especially in Massachussetts where the Boston teams have such an avid following. (It would be a different matter in California, which has so many teams.) Second, if Coakley didn't care about Schilling's endorsement of Brown, she should have said so. Once she tried to label him as a Yankee's fan, she had bought into the idea that Schilling mattered, and opened herself up for the mistake. She could just have easily said that the endorsement of sports figures (or actors, singers, and the like) was not important, since they have no special insight into politics.

I also want to give credit to Obama for graciously commending Brown for a well-run campaign, and to Coakley for complimenting him on his election. Although this behaviour is still expected of politicians, it seems to be increasingly rare in the public debate (e.g. Keith Olbermann's insane rant against Brown), and I'm always happy when minimal standards are upheld.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

2010-01-14T21:03:00.004-05:00

"I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.'
'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown."

This quotation, from G.K. Chesteron, is compelling in his usual irreverent fashion. I find much to agree with in what he says, so I have been inclined to think that there must be some practical value in philosophy. Sometimes, however, I wonder if the chief purpose of philosophy is not simply to keep other people from making false claims on its behalf, in the same way that James Bryce claimed of history that its "chief practical use...is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies." I am speaking in this case of that basic philosophical question, Why is there something rather than nothing?

I was first introduced to this question by one of my college professors, Dante Germino. He said that some philosopher had posited two fundamental questions: why is there something rather than nothing?, and why are things the way they are and not some other way? I thought the second question was superfluous, since, if you could explain why there was something, you would know why it was the way it was.

I've forgotten who the philosopher was supposed to be. I thought it was some ancient Greek, but I see now that Martin Heidegger is famous for saying that the first question -- why is there something -- is the fundamental question of philosophy. I haven't seen any reference to the second question, so I'm not quite sure it was he to whom Germino was referring, but it seems a good bet.

I have always liked this question, partly as an endless source of pondering, and partly because it provides some basis for religion, or at least the limitations of science; because I am convinced that science will never be able to provide an answer. It brings our minds to the limitations of reason, because we cannot conceive of something without a cause, and yet, despite the paradox, something does indeed exist. It may have an explainable cause, but its cause must have a cause, and so forth in an infinite regression. St. Thomas Aquinas used this as one of his arguments for the existence of God: there must be an uncaused cause. In his "States and Empires of the Moon," Cyrano de Bergerac mocked this proof as akin to saving oneself from the rain by jumping into the river: how does positing an uncaused cause get us out of the difficulty at all? We're resolving a logical paradox by resorting to a deus-ex-machina, something that literally is outside of logic. We can't logically understand what an uncaused cause would be any more than we can resolve the issue within our logical framework. I suspect that Aquinas was more sophisticated on this issue than Cyrano gives him credit for; Aquinas probably realized that the need for an uncaused cause doesn't tell us anything about God himself, but rather points to the need for an explanation outside of human reason. I like to think of it as Soren Kierkegaard's paradox, "the thought that thought itself cannot think." He doesn't attach the paradox to any particular idea, but I think this is as good a candidate as any. Trying to conceive of the beginning of the universe is an exercise in the limitations of reason.

The Big Bang is, of course, no answer to this paradox. The Big Bang explains how matter was compressed down to a singularity and then exploded suddenly, setting off the processes which led to the formation of the universe. It does not answer the question, "why is there something rather than nothing?" I had an unpleasant shock from an explanation which seemed to circumvent this limitation, from a very smart friend whom I met in my first year of college. He explained how particles and anti-particles routinely come into existence and then annihilate each other almost instantaneously. Sometimes, however, they don't come back together, and there exists a tiny bit of matter (and its opposite) that didn't exist before. Given enough time, matter might accumulate in such quantities to create a whole universe, such as the one we live in.

I was very depressed about this at first, for it seemed to bring existence itself into the realm of science. Eventually, however, I realized the that it did no such thing. The scientific explanation may tell us how matter forms, but it can't tell us why it forms. Why should there be such things as matter and anti-matter in the first place? And why should they come into being in matched pairs? The existence of scientific laws that govern the universe needs explaining as much as matter and space.

I see now that some people are trying to finesse the problem of "why is there something rather than nothing" by asking, "why not?" This seems clever at first; why should we "privilege" non-existence as a more natural state than existence? Isn't it just as likely that existence is natural, and nothingness is what needs explaining? Personally, I still can't make this logical leap; I am trapped by the idea that nothingness naturally precedes existence (perhaps because it is correct). If we are wandering in the desert wilderness and come upon a house, and I ask, "I wonder why that house is there?", no one would be convinced by the answer, "Why not?" It is evidently the existence of the house that needs explaining, not its non-existence in every other part of the desert. Now, I realize that a house is not the same as matter in general, and that, while a house must evidently have to be constructed, it is not immediately obvious that matter has to be made. Still, I can't help seeing the circumstances as parallel.

But let's ignore that for a moment, and let's agree with the sceptics that existence is as natural as non-existence. The sceptics' argument is still very weak, because they are ignoring the other fundamental question: why are things the way they are, and not some other way? If you're going to say that being is as natural as, or even more natural than, nothingness, you also have to explain why things exist in one form and not in an infinite variety of other forms. And this is going to be difficult. When dealing with being and nothingness, it is possible to make a case that neither should be privileged over the other, but it certainly is difficult to make a convincing case why things should exist in one particular configuration over all other possible configurations.

One could make the case, as I believe some have done, that we exist in only one of an infinite number of parallel universes; therefore, there is no reason to think that our universe even is privileged, just that it happens to be the one that we are in. But this, I think, requires even greater credulity, and it has nothing whatever to do with science. It might be right, but we can't hope to test it; we can only take it on faith as seeming more likely that other explanations. I think most people, however, will find the idea of infinite universes to be rather less likely than alternate explanations.

Scientists have even tried to claim that there is no beginning to time; that there is no point at which things began, because time folds in on itself. I don't pretend to understand this idea (which I read in Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time"), but I do know that it is no more an answer to the uncaused cause than any other explanation. For, why should there even be such a thing as time? Science can push this matter very far, but I don't see how it can ever answer it.

Science and Philosophy, Part II: Thomas Kuhn

2009-12-30T19:28:00.003-05:00

Thomas Kuhn objected to Popper's positivist approach to science. Although Popper set a high bar for what he regarded as "scientific," he nevertheless believed that humans can and do make steady progress in learning more about the world. Kuhn was more sceptical; he thought that the best we could do is come up with more and more sophisticated models of reality, without, however, approaching "truth" (knowledge of the Ding-an-sich, or what really lies behind our models).

Kuhn's inspiration was what he called "the Copernican revolution." Prior to Copernicus, Western astronomers since Ptolemy had worked out a very detailed model of how the planets, sun, and stars revolve around the earth. To make their model match observations, they had to add layers of complexity: celestial bodies not only moved in great circular orbits, but also sometimes in smaller orbits around a point in their major orbit (see the explanation and diagram at Wikipedia). Sometimes there were epicycles on epicycles. It was a messy model. Copernicus created his model of a heliocentric solar system partly because it allowed him to dispense with some of the complexity of the older Ptolemaic system. His model was no more accurate, but it appealed to him because it was simpler.

Kuhn described the shift from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican astronomy a "paradigm shift." It was not the result of a gradual improvement in science through falsification or any other such method, but a radical rethinking of the universe on new terms. To him, this proved that Popper's rigorous scientific method did not lead to an ever-closer approximation of the truth, but rather to ever more sophisticated models of reality. He compared these models to human evolution, which has seen homo sapiens evolve from primitive, simple forms to ever more complex forms; and yet humans are not evolving toward any particular end, just as scientific models are not evolving toward any particular truth.

I was with Kuhn up until the analogy with human evolution. For one thing, it is curious for him to point to scientific models as ever more complex, when one of his points with the Copernican revolution is that Copernicus's model was actually simpler than what it replaced. More important, while I see his point that scientific models are only models and not an actual representation of the Ding-an-sich, I find his analogy fundamentally flawed. Humans are not evolving toward any particular end, but science is not the same as evolution. It is true that Copernicus's paradigm of planets orbiting in circular patterns around the sun was not perfect, and would be subject to further revisions by later astronomers, notably Kepler's insight that orbits are elliptical.

On the other hand, there is something fundamentally right about Copernicus's idea. No one is ever going to discover that the earth really is the center of the universe after all, and that the planets and sun are really revolving around it while it remains stationary. They can't, because it is wrong. Neither is anyone going to demonstrate that Kepler was wrong and orbits are really circular rather than elliptical. Unlike evolution, scientific advances cannot travel down certain paths. We may lose knowledge, and people may be deceived for a time, but a scientific advance is not repealable in the logical sense.

I can't quite express my ideas in rigorous terms, because I know that it's possible for scientists to be mistaken; I can't, therefore, assert that science is always moving toward truth. On the other hand, I feel that there is a truth in Copernicus's ideas that go beyond mere modelling to represent what actually happens in the solar system better than the Ptolemaic system. I'm convinced, therefore, that Kuhn is wrong, without being able to come up with a complete theory of my own to replace his.

Science and Philosophy, Part I: Hume and Popper

2009-12-29T11:52:00.007-05:00

I've been listening to a lecture series on philosophy recently, and, even though I haven't gotten past the Greeks yet, it has reminded me of a number of issues that trouble me about science. I want to take the opportunity to express my concerns here. Along the way, I will probably oversimplify philosophy a great deal -- not on purpose, but rather because I have only a simplistic understanding of it. I welcome responses to clear up my misconceptions.

One of my issues with science is the famous idea of Karl Popper that it can never establish positive claims, only falsify wrong ones. The history of this goes back to David Hume, the 18th century Scottish sceptic. He shook up the philosophical world by claiming that science could never prove anything through induction -- that is, drawing conclusions about physical laws based on observations. The classic illustration is the sun's rising. Even though the sun has risen every day for our whole lives, and for countless human lives past, we cannot therefore conclude that the sun will rise tomorrow. Popper took this a step further and argued that science can never prove anything. A thousand experiments that produce the same results do not prove that the next experiment would end up the same. On the other hand, one observation is sufficient to disprove a hypothesis. If we say that the sun comes up every morning, and we observe that it does for years in a row, we have not proven that it will rise tomorrow. On the other hand, if the sun does not rise one morning, our hypothesis has been proven wrong.

The true goal of science, according to Popper, is to produce falsifiable hypotheses that it can test. There is a lot of benefit in this method, as it tends to prevent speculation about unprovable ideas; and scientists have largely adopted Popper's ideas. In graduate school, for instance, I took a course on statistics. We learned methods to demonstrate a statistically significant correlation between two things that we can't measure directly. We don't know, for example, how individuals vote, but we know the vote breakdown by precinct. By comparing vote counts across precincts with different characteristics, we could infer a correlation between how people vote and things like how much money they made or what race they were.

Only, we weren't allowed to draw direct conclusions. Because of Popper's ideas, we could only deny the reverse of our conclusion. For instance, we could not say that people tend to vote for candidates of their own race; we would have to say that "we reject the hypothesis that people do not vote for candidates of their own race disproportionately."

I didn't see the point of this exercise at the time, and I continue not to see it today. I actually agree with Hume and Popper that induction can never demonstrate logically conclusive physical laws; only abstract principles like mathematics can do that. The Pythagorean Theorem is true, and it will always be true in all cases, and I have absolutely no concern that anyone is going to prove it wrong. Newton's laws of motion, however, were only true up to a point, and Einstein demonstrated the point at which they cease to be true.

The problem is that I don't see the correlation between these cases. Science aims to produce the best possible model of the universe. While some scientists may believe that they arrive at essential truths, I think most would acknowledge that they can never apprehend the "thing in itself" (Ding-an-sich, a Kantian term for the ultimate nature of a thing). That doesn't matter; they are not producing logically infallible models, but models that correspond closely with observed behaviour. They've done a good enough job that I cross a bridge without worrying, usually, about whether it will collapse, and I fly without worrying that the principles of aerodynamics are actually different that what scientists say they are and the plane will suddenly plummet to the earth.

Moreover, I fail to see how reducing everything to falsifiability assists the process of scientific inquiry (besides encouraging people to make testable claims, as I indicated above). We may observe millions of sheep and find them all to be various shades of black, white, or grey, but never purple. Popper is correct that we could not therefore infallibly conclude that sheep are never purple, but would the existence of a single purple sheep disprove our hypothesis? Perhaps there is something wrong with our observation -- maybe we were drunk, or maybe we were viewing the sheep through purple glasses, or in a purple light. Or maybe someone dyed the sheep purple. That would indeed falsify the idea that no sheep are purple, but it wouldn't falsify the idea that no sheep are born purple.

The idea of falsification seems even more dubious in the case of statistical studies, such as the ones mentioned above. Falsification is an extremely rigorous standard; by it, you are only allowed to make statements that are tautological, to the extent that you know (assuming your observations to be correct) that you are rejecting a false claim because you have seen something that directly refutes it. It works if you want to prove everything with the same certainty as the Pythagorean theorem. Statistical methods, however, are exactly the wrong kind of approach to use if you want falsifiability. You can never demonstrate with apodictic certainty that a statistical correlation matches a real causal relationship; you can only demonstrate that it is very unlikely to be false. But if you are dealing in the realm of probabilities, why use a method designed to grant a priori certainty? A statistical correlation of voting patterns shows that some aspect of voters is likely influence how they vote, never a 100% chance that it does. Why not phrase this in the positive form rather than the negative? And the same logic can be extended to cases where statistics are only used inferentially: if I have seen a million sheep from all parts of the world, and I have never seen a purple one, I am on a statistically sound basis if I assert that sheep are not purple. I can't prove that no one will ever see a purple sheep, but that doesn't stop my observation from being scientifically useful.

Perhaps Popper took some account of these concerns -- I don't pretend to be an expert in his thought. There are just the things that make me doubt the dogma of falsification as a useful tool, and I really doubt whether most scientists actually think in terms of falsification rather than positive assertions.

Next time, I will consider the scientific views of one of Popper's opponents, Thomas Kuhn.

Ho, ho, ho

2009-12-15T23:19:00.002-05:00

Christmas carols: love them or hate them, it's hard to avoid them this time of year. I like carols, but I tend to prefer the older ones. Not that I have anything against adding to the canon, but there is something a little...I don't know, empty...about songs like "Winter Wonderland" and "There's No Place Like Home For the Holidays." I don't apply that to "Frosty the Snowman" or "Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer," which strike just the right note for me.

My son is in his school's chorus, which means I've gotten to hear every Christmas song at each of his performances. One of the classics, a song I actually like, is "Up On the Rooftop." I like it, but I admit that I am puzzled by the refrain: "Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn't go?" Who wouldn't go where? Up on the rooftop? If that's what it means, it seems a weird question to ask. I think the composer just needed a rhyme there.

I found this cute photo at Supertremendous.com in a collection of ironic photographs. They are probably not "the 25 most ironic photos of all time," but some of them are pretty funny.

One Hundred

2009-12-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

When I began this blog about 6 months ago, I did not expect it would attract a large audience. My expectations have been fully met. The only exception came when Linkiest decided (at my request) to link to my blog post on liberal denial of media bias. That created a viewership spike that screwed up the graph on Google analytics, because it was totally off the scale.

In case some of those new viewers from Linkiest are still around, I figured the hundreth post would be a good time to highlight some of the most interesting previous blog entries. Here are my completely subjective choices:

Economics in One Lesson

2009-12-01T22:10:00.000-05:00

No wonder people don't trust economists. When people tell you that cap-and-trade will lead to job growth, it doesn't fit common sense. Of course, a new government program on this magnitude will certainly create jobs, exactly as claimed: "research and development in new technologies, new factories to produce solar panels and wind turbines, and energy-efficiency retrofits of commercial and residential real estate." But the question is, will it be a net increase in jobs? Because even the authors of this article admit that "some businesses that rely on dirty energy will be hurt." (Why not all of them? Are some of them getting permits for free?)

Things get the most confusing when they involve money, because money is a very slippery subject. According to the article cited above, "almost all of the revenue from the permit auction is returned to the American public." Therefore, even though the authors admit that energy prices will rise, they assert that "the refund can make up and even exceed the additional expenses for most Americans." Is that true? If so, we can make our economy infinitely cleaner simply by returning the costs paid by business back to consumers. Why tolerate any pollution at all?

Of course it's not true, as most people will recognize intuitively. To see why, let's take money out of the equation. Let's take out jobs, too, while we're at it. Our economy's productivity is not based on how much money we have or how many jobs it creates. Banks can print money without adding any value, and we can create jobs -- temporarily, at least -- by downgrading technology. If we outlawed the transport of goods by motor vehicles, there would be an explosion of jobs for people to portage goods on their backs, but no one would think this was good for the economy.

No, our economy's productivity is based on the goods and services that we get out of it, regardless of nominal prices or labor inputs. And the one thing we can be sure of is that changing to cleaner energy sources will require more inputs per unit of electricity -- in other words, we will have to work harder to get the same amount of juice. A new Berkeley study admits as much, although Barbara Boxer touts it as evidence that clean energy is a jobs producer (scroll down to "Barbara Boxer's Good News"). The problem is that the additional people and resources devoted to producing electricity will not be available to produce other things, like televisions, health care, and blogs. That's something that even liberals would not be happy about.

This is not to say that mandating cleaner energy is necessarily bad; clean air and water provide health benefits as well as intangible advantages. But they also, always, require tradeoffs. It would be best if our politicians acknowledged the tradeoffs openly rather than pretending that we can improve the environment for free.

The title of this post comes from Henry Hazlitt's wonderful book, still popular after all these years. And if more politicians would read it, they would not keep making the same mistakes.

Five words that you are probably mispronouncing

2009-11-30T22:37:00.004-05:00

When I was in graduate school, I served as a teaching assistant for the lowest-ranking professor in the history department. He had never published anything, so his salary was unbelievably small -- under $30,000 in 1991. I heard him pronounce a few words strangely during his lectures, and I mistakenly jumped from his lowly position in the department to the belief that he must be wrong. I had to eat humble pie when I looked those words up in the dictionary and found out that he was right, contrary to almost everyone else I have heard say those words. Here they are, along with some others that I have been surprised to learn:

schism: ignore the "ch" in this word; it is pronounced "sism."
eschew: unlike schism, pronounce the "ch" firmly in this word; ess-chew.
long-lived: most people say this with a short "i" sound, like the verb, "to live." It should be a long "i." Think of it as "long-lifed," with the "f" changed to a "v." This makes sense when you think about other words that you might add "long-" in front of: long-legged, long-winded, long-eared. They are all nouns.
coitus: there is no "oy" sound in this word. It is co-itus, literally "going together."
dour: pronounced like "door"; it does not rhyme with "sour," despite appearances.

I'm not sure of the value of pronouncing words correctly. You might impress someone with your erudition, but it's more likely that he doesn't know the correct pronunciation, so he will think you are doing it wrong. I do it because, once I learn the right way, I can't bring myself to say it the wrong way; but I don't know that it does me, or anyone else, any good.

Offensive mascots

2009-11-27T00:29:00.005-05:00

Thanksgiving started when pilgrims and Indians had a meal together in peace, so it seems like a good time to think about those who want to make Indians and white people hate each other. I am referring, of course, to the small but loud-mouthed minority who object to sports nicknames based on Indians.

(I know, I should say "Native Americans," but I think that is offensive since the name "American" comes from an Italian, so it's not really any better than Indian, is it? We should call them some Indian name, but since Indians spoke over 1000 languages, we could hardly hope to come up with one name that identified them all. So I will stick with Indian, because it is a lot less typing than Native American.)

The issue of Indian team names also comes up this time of year because the NCAA ruled in 2006 that no college can host a bowl game or an NCAA tournament game if they have an Indian team name or mascot that the NCAA deems "hostile or offensive." Apparently the NCAA, along with many liberals, is under the misapprehension that team names are created to "exploit" and "disrespect" their subjects. If all but a few teams used nicknames like the wildcats, tigers, and panthers, there might be a case that Indian names are disrespectful. But how, then, could one explain the use of state nicknames such as the North Carolina Tar Heels, Indiana Hoosiers, Oklahoma Sooners, or Tennessee Volunteers? Why would many schools adopt nicknames based on their field of study -- the Navy Midshipmen, the Purdue Boilermakers, the UTEP Miners, and Aggies at a number of agricultural schools? Why would religious schools often use religious themes when choosing their names and mascots: the Providence Friars, the Holy Cross Crusaders, the Siena Saints, the Ohio Wesleyan Battling Bishops, even the Wake Forest Demon Deacons? I particularly like the fact that the University of Pennsylvania's teams are named the Quakers, since sports are competitive and often adopt war-like imagery, whereas Quakers are commonly pacifists. Strangely, I haven't heard of any Quakers complaining that their religion is being exploited or disrespected by Penn.

Some people try to draw a distinction between mascots that represent a college's origin and those chosen arbitrarily (see the Wikipedia article "Native American Mascot Controversy" for this and other arguments against Indian mascots). This may work for Louisiana Lafayette's "Ragin' Cajuns," but it is a complete flop for Notre Dame's Fighting Irish: as you might gather from the name, the school was founded by a Frenchman. Notre Dame may or may not have had a large Irish contingent prior to its naming (I have been unable to confirm this), but it is certain that another team, the Boston Celtics, has an Irish nickname with absolutely no basis in its founding or its players. The name "Celtics" was adopted, first, because of a successful prior basketball team with that name; and, second, because of the large number of Irish living in Boston.

In other words, the team's nickname was chosen not because of what the team represents, but because of what it thought its fans would identify with. Professional teams typically adopt names with strong local connotations, commonly an industry (Steelers, Pistons, Magic), but, in this case, a nationality. Similarly, college teams tend to adopt names associated with the college's type of education or with some local significance. That's why we have the Iowa State Cyclones, the Miami Hurricanes the Brooklyn Bridges, and the Oklahoma State Cowboys. It's also why we have the Florida State Seminoles, the Central Michigan Chippewas, the Utah Utes, the North Dakota Fighting Sioux, and the San Diego State Aztecs. Other teams choose animal names, but, in all cases, they choose names that will excite pride among their players and their supporters. (Except for the UC-Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, but they are just weird.)

Another argument used against Indian nicknames is to point out the lack of black, Mexican, or Asian nicknames in sports. As one person wrote, "Could you imagine people mocking African Americans in black face at a game?” he said. 'Yet go to a game where there is a team with an Indian name and you will see fans with war paint on their faces. Is this not the equivalent to black face?'"

No, no it's not. A person wearing face paint at a sports event is not trying to mock Indians, but to indicate his identity with them. People dress up and put on face and body paint because they are proud of their school and want to show it; and it is not just teams with Indian mascots whose supporters paint themselves. But why Indian mascots and not other nationalities? The unfortunate truth is that Indians and whites have spent much of their history at war. Even at a hopeless techonological disadvantage, however, Indians fought bravely, and we still admire their courage and tenacity in face of the odds. There is no such history of blacks, Mexicans, or Asians in America -- so much the better for their survival, but so much the worse for their suitability as mascots. It is also interesting that, apart from Indian names, the most common racial names are celtic: in addition to the Fighting Irish and the Celtics, there are the Iona Gaels and the Wooster Fighting Scots. Like Indians, Celts have a tradition of being the underdog, and of fighting stubbornly even though outnumbered and outmanned.

Opponents also argue that mascots do not provide "realistic" and "positive" views of Indians. Mascots are not sociology books, so I don't expect them to give a very realistic impression; mostly they emphasize characteristics relevant to sports. Not all mascots are about positive stereotypes, either; Notre Dame's symbol shows a short Irishman ready for a donnybrook, and the Deacon of Wake Forest is a grumpy old man with a cane. Since Baptists are in as much danger of being stereotyped today as anyone, I would have expected them to complain about this if it were a bad thing. But the stereotype Indian mascot is overwhelmingly positive: brave, loyal, and steadfast. If anything, it seems that Indians are idealized, not denigrated, in team mascots. As for historical accuracy, if a mascot named after a particular tribe uses an incorrect costume or is otherwise inaccurate in its portrayal, I suspect that the college would be likely to correct the problems if the Indians wanted to point them out.

I am not completely insensitive to the idea that mascots could be offensive. Unlike some people, who think it is a fine thing to submerge a crucifix in urine or to spread elephant dung on a portrait of the Virgin Mary, I think society works best if we don't go out of our way to offend each other. Of course, no one has a right not to be offended, but I would certainly think twice about doing something offensive to others. That's why I consider it relevant that the vast majority of Indians are not offended by Indian team names. A Sports Illustrated poll in 2002 found that 83% of Indians favoured keeping Indian names on professional sports teams; even 67% of Indians living on reservations supported the use of Indian names. An Annenberg Public Policy poll from 2004 provided even more affirmative results: 91% of Indians approved a nickname that people commonly assume to be offensive, that of the Washington Redskins. The bounteous common sense of most Indians should shame liberal activists into silence. Here is Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, not only an Indian but director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office in Kykotsmovi, Arizona:

"I don't see anything wrong with Indian nicknames as long as they're not meant to be derogatory. Some tribal schools on Arizona reservations use Indians as a nickname themselves. The Phoenix Indian High School's newspaper is The Redskin. I don't mind the tomahawk chop. It's all in good fun. This is sports, after all. In my living room, I'll be watching a Braves game and occasionally do the chop."

Several Indian tribes have officially endorsed the use of their names by colleges: the Utes (Utah), the Seminoles (Florida State), and the Chippewa (Central Michigan). But the fact that most Indians take mascots in the spirit in which they are intended is no deterrent to the activists who want to get rid of them. Central Michigan University recently held a forum "to discuss different views on the use of the nickname." Not only does this seem to be superfluous in light of the Chippewa's professed support (including financial backing to the school), it's also odd that the "different views" on the panel did not include a single representative in favour of keeping the name.

Obviously, some Indians are offended by Indian mascots. But why are non-Indians so anxious to end the use of Indian mascots? Doesn't the approval of most Indians suffice for them? Of course not; for them, the use of Indian mascots is bad, and it doesn't matter what Indians think. (See, for example, this article from the American Indian Sports Team Mascot website which disputes, not the Sports Illustrated poll itself, but its significance in the debate). If I were an Indian, I would be more offended by this patronizing attitude than by any mascot.

Personally, I am saddened by the loss of Indian team names and mascots. Who would have thought, a century ago, that white people today would probably proclaim "I am a Seminole" or "I am a Ute"? We can't bring back those who have died, but we can honour them by holding them up for emulation. This was the case with Chief Illiniwek, the mascot for the University of Illinois until 2007. As recently as 1995, the chief of the Peoria Tribe (the closest living descendants of the Illiniwek Confederacy), declared:

"To say that we are anything but proud to have these portrayals would be completely wrong. We are proud. We're proud that the University of Illinois, the flagship university of the state, a seat of learning, is drawing on that background of our having been there. And what more honor could they pay us?"

Another tribal elder, Ron Froman, said that protesters "don't speak for all Native Americans, and certainly not us." At some time in the next 5 years, however, Froman changed his views entirely; as chief of the Peoria in 2000, he led the council to pass a resolution calling for the retirement of the chief. Under pressure from the NCAA, the university stopped using the chief in 2007.

Pressure will undoubtedly increase on other schools, and, eventually, they may give in. The University of Iowa is among those pushing for a change, as it refuses to schedule non-conference games with teams that have Indian mascots. Ironically, the Iowa nickname, Hawkeyes, was itself derived from an Indian. A friend of Chief Black Hawk suggested the name in order to "...rescue from oblivian [sic] a momento [sic], at least of the name of the old chief." The university has buried the Indian origin of its name by adopting a hawk as its mascot. And so Indians are steadily removed from one of the last areas of public life that their memory and heritage are preserved.

Psychology and conservatism

2009-11-25T00:12:00.003-05:00

You may not think that psychology is likely to be of much use to conservatism as a movement, given that psychology is a soft science, and academics outside of the hard sciences are likely to espouse feel-good, politically correct ideas. I would have thought so myself, except that I accidentally stumbled upon the blogs at the Psychology Today site. I forget how I ended up there, but one of the first blogs I read was The Scientific Fundamentalist by Satoshi Kanazawa. I'm not a religious fundamentalist, but I can't help taking a title like "The Scientific Fundamentalist" as though the author had slapped me across the face with his gloves and dared me to a duel. Naturally, I couldn't resist reading some -- and I couldn't have been more surprised.

In a blog post provocatively entitled "How to Be Happy," Mr. Kanazawa offers this advice: "The best thing to do is to kill all the feminists and hippies and liberals." Why would this aid our happiness? Because, contrary to what feminists claim, men and women are very different, and "one of the ways that men and women are different is in what makes them happy." He explains, "Forget what feminists, hippies, and liberals have told you in the last half century. They are all lies based on political ideology and conviction, not on science. Contrary to what they may have told you, it is very unlikely that money, promotions, the corner office, social status, and political power will make women happy."

After a blog post like that, I naturally went on to read more of his stuff, such as Why modern feminism is illogical, unnecessary, and evil. It is fascinating stuff, and I think I would be fascinated even if I didn't find him convincing. Not everything he writes supports a conservative position, of course (although if we follow his advice and kill all the liberals, there won't be much opposition), but it all provocative. His current blogging subject is Why Do People Vote?, which concerns an interesting political problem from a psychological point of view.

There are more blogs at the Psychology Today site than anyone could possibly read. My sampling suggests that many of them are likely to be interesting; I've also discovered that Kanazawa is not the only psychologist whose conclusions support conservatism. Just today I came across a blog entry, The Danger of Self-Affirmation by William B. Swann, Jr., that points out the futility of our obsessive attempts to instill people with self-esteem.

Three stages in liberal denial of media bias

2009-11-19T20:41:00.005-05:00

I was 15 years old in 1984, and an avid follower of politics and the news. When Reagan was making his decision whether to run for re-election, I was opposed to it. It wasn't that I didn't like Reagan; I loved him. But I was convinced that he wouldn't stand a chance in the election, and I didn't want to see him lose. Of course, he went on to win one of the most lopsided elections in history. Why was I so wrong? Because I had been watching network news (the only kind, back then) and the coverage was overwhelmingly negative.

Since that time, I have watched with disbelief as liberals have criticized Fox News as unbalanced, culminating in the amazing spectacle of the president himself declaring that Fox is not a legitimate source of journalism. Meanwhile, these same liberals refuse to acknowledge that ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, etc. (ad nauseum) have any bias of their own. What makes this all the more incredible is that a number of studies have been produced demonstrating media bias in a scientific fashion: use of "extreme conservative" and "far right" vs. "extreme liberal" and "far left," describing liberals as "pragmatic" and conservatives as "ideological," citing self-identified liberal think-tanks as news sources, and so on. Even when the evidence is clearly against them, however, liberals refuse to admit that it is an issue.

My aim in this column is to outline the three modes of defense that liberals use against claims of media bias. I was inspired to this task by a recent article in Forbes. The article contains the results of yet another study demonstrating liberal media bias, but what interested me particularly were the comments. Because Forbes is a mainstream publication rather than a specifically conservative one, it has attracted a number of comments from liberals, where you can find the following defenses advanced:

It's all subjective

The first line of defense is to claim that bias is in the eye of the beholder. Conservatives think some outlets are biased liberal, liberals think some outlets are biased conservative, so who's to say which is right? For example, Todd Charske writes the following in the comments: "Opinions and words can be taken however you want. Fair and balanced I'm sure they think that but probably CNBC thinks the same thing. Strange world."

It's only unbalanced by American standards

The previous line of defense only works as long as you are willing to ignore the evidence, so liberals eventually fall back to a second defense: Sure, the news leans to the left, but that's only because America is so far to the right. Compared to the rest of the world, our news is actually to the right. I didn't see this argument used in the article's comments, but I heard an otherwise very intelligent history professor use it.

Journalism isn't supposed to be balanced

The idea that news in the United States should be held to the political norms of France, Sweden, Brazil, or North Korea is prima facie silly. Since there is no other way to defend the news as balanced, liberals instead offer that news is not supposed to be balanced; it's supposed to be right. Journalists favour liberal politicians because they are on the right side of the issues (and not lying crooks like conservatives). Here's user "mynameisjon" commenting on the Forbes article: "Here's the problem with the article and Fox's claim of fair and balanced in general:
Journalism doesn't have to be balanced. If one candidate is horrible, makes dozens of mistakes while making a damn fool of himself, then the coverage he gets is likely to be, and should be, predominately negative. Creating a sense of balance which doesn't naturalistically exist without prompting is creating a bias, no matter which way the scales tip. So to say Fox is more balanced because it was harder on Obama than the other networks doesn't show that Fox has more integrity, is more honest or has tougher journalistic standards. It only shows that they gave McCain a bigger pass and slung more mud at Obama than the other news outlets while ignoring the facts that were staring back at them. By failing to report on the McCain's missteps, time and again, they blurred the lines of reality in order to make their chosen candidate seem more appealing than the alternative."

Another user, "schmoe," put it more simply: "Let's suppose that Abraham Lincoln is running against Joseph Stalin. Would it be "fair" for a news network to post positive/negative coverage of each candidate equally? Of course not. Balanced, yes. Fair, no."

Finally, we are getting somewhere. Liberals who take this position are at least being honest, and, truth be told, I have no problem with journalism presenting a particular point of view. Everyone has his own ideas, and those ideas are bound to come out in journalism. Far better to make your point of view explicit than to try to sneak it in under the guise of neutrality. Besides, the idea of journalism promoting the best ideas is the only way I can see that we can excuse not covering Dennis Kucinich, Lyndon LaRouche, and David Duke to the same extent, and with the same neutral tone, that we cover sane politicians.

For many years, almost every newspaper in America was openly partisan, aligned clearly with one party or the other. It is only since World War II that objective, neutral journalism has become the ideal. I don't want to say that objective journalism is a bad idea. If we could have someone report on events without any bias, it would be nice -- although even then, the person would have to make decisions about which events warranted inclusion, and I don't think there's a completely objective way of determining that. What irritates me are journalists who claim to be the height of independence and neutrality when they are, in fact, more liberal than 95% of the population. Their reason for claiming neutrality is clear: it gives them certain privileges and respect as protectors of democracy, and it lends more credence to their partisan views.

Thankfully, the American people do not seem to be falling for this confidence game. They are very sceptical of network news, and are fleeing it for Fox in droves. In the end, therefore, the issue of liberal media bias doesn't concern me too much as a pratical issue. What does concern me is when the White House attempts to shut out Fox News because it is supposedly biased, or when Democrats talk about reviving the misnamed "Fairness Doctrine" with the idea of limiting conservative outlets such as talk radio -- and exempting the purportedly objective network news, of course.

Obama and Fort Hood

2009-11-10T12:51:00.003-05:00

I wrote on Friday that I had not realized how oblivious many liberals were to the Islamic war -- their war against us, not ours against them -- until their reactions to the Fort Hood massacre came in. I have learned something that surprised me even more: that even senior Army commanders are oblivious to the war. I read a quotation from one that Fort Hood was a tragedy, but it would be an even greater tragedy if the army's diversity were lost as a result. I'm all for diversity in the army. I've known several devout Muslims, and I would trust them with my life. But would their exclusion from the military be a greater tragedy than 13 dead and 40 wounded? And how many other people who have died in the cause of diversity already, and will yet die in years to come? What is your definition of "tragedy," general?

In any case, I'm not arguing for the exclusion of all Muslims from the military. What I want, and what most Americans want, is some common sense on the part of the Army. I want them, and the FBI, to recognize that there are radical Muslims who want to kill Americans and overthrow our government; and when a Muslim declares openly that terrorists are right and Americans are wrong to be fighting them, they might want to classify that person as a radical and keep close eyes on him. If he's in the military, they might even want to expel him and to deny him a license to own firearms. That's the least they can do. People talk about an anti-Muslim backlash, but they are making a backlash more likely, not less, by failing to act against likely terrorists. If you were a soldier, how would you feel about serving near a radical Muslim? How would you feel if you lived next door to one?

Obama has said that he wants to make sure that the massacre at Fort Hood never happens again. That's great, but is he prepared to take the steps to ensure that? Is he going to acknowledge that there is a terrorist threat and take action against likely terrorists? Is he going to pursue the war against terrorist abroad with the vigour his predecessor did?

Obama is vulnerable on terrorism, politically speaking, because he has opposed almost everything the Bush administration did to fight it. The fact that Nidal Hasan was apparently operating in isolation gives him some breathing space -- had it been organized in conjunction with Al-Qaeda, it would hurt Obama a lot more. But there could be another terrorist attack at any time, a planned attack targeting civilians. If that happens, it seems likely that Obama will take a lot of the blame. How will he respond? Will he attempt to minimize the threat, or will he respond forcefully.

Honestly, I expect Obama would morph into a hawk in that case. He desperately wants peace with Islam, but his opinion could change in the event of a major terror attack during his watch. He has already disappointed his leftist supporters by moving cautiously on the release of Guatanamo Bay prisoners, moving slowly on withdrawing from Iraq, and retaining some of Bush's surveillance procedures. We can't know his true motivations, but one would presume that he thinks his actions are necessary for the security of our country. If that security were to be breached by a terrorist attack, I think he would revise his defense policies even further in the direction of safety over rapprochement. A strong response would also enhance his popularity, an even better reason to expect that route.

November 9th in German history

2009-11-09T17:54:00.002-05:00

Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the crucial events in German history. Most people don't realize that November 9th was already an important day in German history prior to 1989. On this day in 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and the German republic was proclaimed. On this day in 1923, Hitler attempted a coup in Munich and was decisively defeated, the failed "Beer Hall Putsch." And on this day in 1938, Germans looted and burned Jewish stores and synagogues in what became known as Kristallnacht. Except for Kristallnacht, a pretty good day for Germany and Germans.

Of course, the significance of November 9th is coincidental. Many other major events in 20th century German history -- the outbreak of both world wars, Hitler's election, the Reichstag fire, the Berlin blockade, and the erection of the Berlin Wall -- happened on other days, and only Kaiser Wilhelm's abdication and the fall of the Berlin Wall would come up in importance to these other events (unless Kristallnacht is considered a crucial stage toward the Holocaust). Moreover, the date of the kaiser's abdication is fairly arbitrary, as it was just one stage in the process of creating a democratic government. The Allies would likely have given Germany some form of democracy anyway; and this government was not destined to last, so that it had to be rebuilt in 1945.

All the same, I love historical coincidences like this. It reminds me of my favourite of all time, also relating to German history: the Diet of Worms. It was during this meeting in 1521 that Martin Luther, prior to being condemned, issued his famous words: "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen." There is nothing coincidental about the historical events, but the name "Diet of Worms" still makes me giggle inside whenever I hear it. The name "Worms" is a German corruption of a Latin corruption of a Celtic name, which has nothing to do with platyhelminthes, nematodes, or annelids. I once had a political theory professor (Dante Germino, author of an important textbook on political thought) who claimed that the name "Diet," as opposed to assembly, parliament, or some other term, was arbitrary, but I don't think he was right about that. An Imperial Diet is literally a Reichstag, or "Imperial Day," I presume from the fact that a particular day was designated for the Imperial estates to come together in a meeting; and "diet" comes from the Latin word for day, dies, recognizable in such terms as ante meridiem and diurnal. Therefore, nothing could be more natural than to call this assembly a diet; and nothing could be funnier than a Diet of Worms.

Even if the German events associated with November 9th are not as striking as they might at first appear, it is still a fascinating day for its other events, which include the Meiji Restoration, Napoleon's coup, Robert McNamara's appointment as the first president of Ford Motor Company not in the family, and Garry Kasparov's becoming the youngest world chapion in chess. Perhaps we will have more to say about this day next year.

Fort Hood and Berlin

2009-11-08T21:01:00.002-05:00

Obama was in the news for two things toward the end of last week: his reaction to the shootings at Fort Hood, and skipping Germany's celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some people are outraged about his non-appearance in Berlin. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it certainly does seem strange to me. Of course, the president can't go everywhere he is invited, but this does seem like a particularly strong case: Germany is a very powerful country, and one of our close allies; the fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the seminal moments in German history in the past 50 years; and America was closely involved in the story of the Berlin Wall, both its erection and its destruction. I don't know why he would choose to miss a chance to celebrate the occasion. I'm sure the Cold War is not one of Obama's strong points; as someone pointed out, Obama was hobnobbing with Marxist professors at the time the Berlin Wall fell. Still, this was a no-cost opportunity to talk about the triumphs of freedom over tyranny and to strengthen relations with an important ally, and I don't see why he would miss it.

I occupy a similar sceptical position regarding Obama's response to the Fort Hood shootings. Some people are outraged that he began the announcement with some light-hearted comments about other events, including a shout-out to a colleague. (Remember when Sarah Palin gave a shout-out during her debate with Biden, and it was widely ridiculed? See, e.g., the fourth paragraph of this article. Funny how Obama is now doing it.) I don't feel strongly one way or another: on one hand, the moment was obviously serious; on the other, it doesn't seem too bad to get the less important things out of the way. Perhaps if I was there, I would have a stronger visceral sense of the rectitude (or lack thereof) of his actions.

What I don't understand so well is his warning not to jump to conclusions on the motive of the shootings before we have all the facts. In general, I agree that not jumping to conclusions is a good thing. Most major events are followed quickly by people journalists and opinion-makers jumping to drastic conclusions about their significance. After a close election in 2000, we heard that America was permanently divided; after Obama's victory in 2008, the Republican party was doomed; after the election last week, not so much. Everyone wants to make a big deal out of everything, because that is how you get attention. You don't get a lot of hits on a blog by making qualifications; you get them by making assertions.

Even so, I have to wonder, what was Obama afraid of? If some people do jump to conclusions, what then? Are there going to be riots in the streets and massacres of innocent Muslims in America? Almost certainly not -- if there weren't after 9/11, there very likely won't be any after Fort Hood. Perhaps Obama did not have enough information at that early stage to identify the motive himself, but I don't think he needed to urge people to caution. Moreover, now that the incident is well over and the motive is perfectly clear what the motive was, I think he needs to make a statement placing it in context. The problem is, I'm not sure he understands the context.

Until the Fort Hood shootings, I didn't realize how little liberals grasped the nature of our struggle against radical Islam. Sure, they opposed the Iraq war, but that was not primarily motivated by the conflict with terrorists. Sure, large numbers of Democrats think Bush was responsible for 9/11, which is scary, but a lot of people who aren't closely attuned to politics have nutty views, and I try not to worry about it too much. But I thought that most liberals realized that there were Muslims out to destroy our country; Muslims who preached against the United States and whipped people into a fury about us and even urged people to commit suicide to hurt us more effectively. Now there's a guy, a Palestinian Muslim, who not only opposed the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who actually said he supported the other side -- this guy shouts "Allahu akbar" and shoots nearly 50 people, and liberals are still, like Obama, not sure why he did it. Oh, Muslims shout Allahu akbar all the time, it doesn't have any particular meaning. Sure it doesn't. I have known some devout Muslims, and I have never heard them say Allahu akbar (or the translated equivalent); and while I wouldn't be surprised, or even particularly alarmed, if they did say it, I would certainly consider any subsequent action to be religiously motivated.

Come to think of it, this really does have a lot to do with the Berlin Wall, because, in both cases, liberals refused to recognize our enemies even when the enemies themselves declared themselves as such. They justified the "we will bury you" quotation as humourous or ironic, and they ignored or justified all the other explicit Communist statements about destroying capitalism; and now that radical Muslims are making very similar statements about the U.S., liberals are again examining the situation carefully and concluding that their attitude isn't somehow fundamentally hostile.

There's a book in the library in my children's school called "The Lovables in the Kingdom of Self-Esteem." I'm not sure I would believe it was real if I hadn't seen it myself.

More church names

2009-11-05T20:13:00.002-05:00

I have written before about churches with strange names that seem to conceal their religion rather than reveal it. Today I received a flyer in the mail from another one, the Harmony Community Church. In the fine print, it says it is Southern Baptist, but nothing much else on the flyer would give you that idea. I'm also not too sure about the motto on the back of the flyer, "Family is everything...come be a part of ours." If you're a Southern Baptist, or any sort of Christian, it's pretty clear that family isn't everything. No doubt they are exaggerating in order to attract visitors, but it grates on me to see it expressed in such terms. Couldn't they have said, "Family is important," or even "Family is vital"? "Family is everything" sends the wrong message, in my opinion.

This reminds me of one of the first churches I attended after getting married, a Lutheran church in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. They gave us a refrigerator magnet with the motto, "There's a place for you!" Now, there should be a place for everyone in a Christian church, so in that sense the motto is perfectly reasonable. However, after attending the church, it seemed to me to be a hint that it was a church without strong beliefs; "Come join our church," it seemed to be saying, "we don't have any core dogmas!" Again, I recognize that there is room for a lot of flexibility in one's understanding of religion within a church, but there ought to be some uncontestable beliefs. When I read about one Anglican priest who didn't even believe that Christ had died for people's sins, I had to wonder why he wanted to be in the church at all.

Environmental pathos

2009-11-04T19:55:00.002-05:00

I know that the big news of the day is yesterday's election. As a conservative, obviously I am happy at how things turned out. As a Virginian, I am excited that Virginia has elected a Republican for a change -- only the third since I began following politics in 1980. As an analyst, however, I have nothing new to add, so I will write about something else: environmentalism as a support system for the depressed.

I was excited recently to find a link to the following video, which I had seen back in May, but had been unable to locate a link since then (thanks to Linkiest):

Everyone ought to see this video to see what some environmentalists are like. As their name indicates, "Earth First!" is about "biocentrism," or "spiritual and visceral recognition of the intrinsic, sacred value of every living thing" -- plants on the same level as humans. Actually, as you can see in the video, "Earth First!" also values decidedly non-living things such as rocks, to which at least some of its members ascribe life.

What can one say about such beliefs? Would it be reasonable to describe them as geocentrism, since Earth (and not people) is obviously at the center? Would it be reasonable to describe it as a form of paganism, since it attributes spiritual value to plants and inanimate objects? I think that comes close, but I would guess (and it is only a guess) that a druid from Caesar's day who should happen upon these people would be even more puzzled by them than we are. The thing that strikes me most is that the people in the video are extemely sad and very much focussed on non-essential things. All life is valuable, but if you find yourself attaching as much spiritual meaning to a tree -- let alone a rock -- as you do to a human, you have gone seriously astray.

I love the internet for the chance it gives to view video clips like this, and like Jeremiah Wright's sermons, that people would never get otherwise. Conservatism has benefitted from new media in a number of ways: the existence of Fox as a counterpoint to broadcast news, and especially talk radio. On the other hand, it strikes me as interesting that I have never seen a real conservative take on the mock news show, à la Jon Stewart (or Saturday Night Live's versions before him). I was therefore happy to find "NewsBusted," a very brief but well-done news humour video from a conservative perspective:

It has been coming out at least since 2007; I'm sorry I didn't hear about it before.

"Policy Translated" is a conservative video with a different approach: the videos show an individual discussing a particular area of public policy, while subtitles translate the wonky talk into popular slang. I love these, but they haven't produced any new ones in a while, and I don't see any way to embed them.

Speaking Truth From Power

2009-11-02T18:26:00.004-05:00

President Obama's Senior Advisor recently announced that the administration was going to "speak truth to power." This is, of course, ridiculous, since the administration is power (although I recommend you read the linked article anyway, as it is amusing). I'm not going to focus on the obvious logic lapse in this incident, but rather the assumptions implicit in the idea of "speaking truth to power," because they underlie a great deal of liberal reasoning. It might seem contradictory that liberals support freedom for all manner of violent, abusive, and perverted speech while, at the same time, promoting speech codes on college campuses; but I will give them this much credit, that some liberals, at least, are aware of the paradox, and have an answer for it: the rules are different depending on whether you are in power or not. The poor and downtrodden are allowed to do almost anything because they are poor and downtrodden, and therefore don't have a fair chance to express their views on society. We have to let them bend the rules in order that they might be heard. And, by extension, liberals who support the downtrodden are allowed the same freedom.

Why is it okay for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to make derogatory comments about Jews, but not okay for whites to make comments about blacks (even completely innocent comments such as using the expression "catch a tiger by the toe")? Because whites are in power and blacks are out of power. Why is it okay for women to talk about men as Neanderthals, but not for men to make condescending comments about women? Because men are in power, and women are not. Why is it okay to submerge a crucifix in urine but not to make fun of Islam? Because Christians are in power and Muslims are not. Why is it okay for liberals to speak out against George Bush, even alluding to (or frankly recommending) assassination? Because Bush was in power.

Here we hit a stumbling block, because Bush is no longer in power, and Obama clearly is. The rationale for suspending the rules of rational discourse is over, and yet the desire remains. What is a liberal to do? One option is to embrace power and decide that it isn't so bad as long as a liberal is in charge. Therefore, anyone who opposes Obama is a hooligan, a racist, etc.; there are not only no liberties to be taken when speaking truth to power, but actually fewer liberties than those in power have to expound their ideas.

Some liberals have adopted this approach. However, it is difficult for many liberals to accept the idea of being in power. The whole idea behind liberalism, at least that branch of it going back to the 1960's (in which many current leaders were bred), is resistance to authority. Therefore, you get ironies like Valerie Jarrett, the senior Obama advisor referenced above, talking about "speaking truth to power." If one were to ask her to clarify what she meant, I bet she'd justify it by reference to the supposedly dominant white, male, Christian, conservative culture, as though the existence of a Democratic president and Congress meant nothing against the murky background of a vast, right-wing conspiracy. I expect to see more evidence of this sort of thought in the remainder of Obama's presidency.

I should add that I don't think liberals are entirely mistaken that the rules should be bent in certain circumstances. Women do get beaten by their husbands, a lot less now than historically, I would suspect, but it is still a problem; I think it is worth being more careful about not seeming to endorse wife-abuse than not endorsing husband-abuse, which I doubt seriously will ever be an endemic problem anywhere. Where I differ is that I believe the law is blind, and should not be changed to give preferential treatment to certain groups of people, even if historically oppressed; and free speech is free speech, regardless of how unpleasant. I put the burden on the private individuals and institutions in the country to promote civility; moreover, I call for civility from everyone, not just those historically or presently in power.

Elevating political discourse

2009-11-01T12:13:00.002-05:00

I like to report on people doing the right thing, so I was happy to discover Megan Carpentier at Air America calling out Keith Olbermann for his pointless ad hominem attack on Michelle Malkin.

One can say a lot of things about Michelle Malkin's politics, her tactics, her strained relationship with reality and her commenters' propensity to embody the worst of the Internet. Or you could do what Keith Olbermann did...A liberal, progressive critique of Malkin need not and should not resort to an attack on her looks or her gender or rely on silly stereotypes or imagery that brings to mind victims of domestic violence.

If people on both sides would be more honest about criticizing each other for doing the wrong thing, the debate would be entirely more civil. Unfortunately, they are usually too busy circling the wagons to be willing to point out faults among others inside the defenses, and the ever-escalating rhetoric contributes to this sense of beleaguerment and us-against-them mentality. It takes courage to come out and say it isn't worth winning at the cost of losing one's honour, so kudos to Mrs. Carpentier for her essay. Her readers' comments show that, unfortunately, most people are more than willing to sling mud rather than to engage in debates.

On a similar vein, thanks to Sarah Palin for her gracious comments on Dede Scozzafa's withdrawal from the congressional race in New York. While I strongly support running more conservative Republican candidates over moderate ones, I agree with Newt Gingrich that there is no reason to run the moderates out of the party. Members of one wing of a party can take over from another, but they can only govern if they keep the party whole.

I wrote some time ago about content as the major factor differentiating country music from rock. Given that the content is overwhelmingly nationalist and Christian, it is easy to assume that country music listeners would be more likely to vote Republican than Democrat. Now someone has come along and done the research to prove it, and there is even more correlation than I had expected: the existence of country music stations is a highly predicitve of a region's voting pattern. While television, movies, and most music stations are on the liberal side, country music has become a major voice for conservatism in entertainment.

Peace of Westphalia Day

2009-10-24T12:00:00.000-04:00

I'm excited about writing this blog entry because I get to spread the word that today is Peace of Westphalia Day. 361 years ago today, representatives gathered in the town of Münster signed two documents, the Treaty of Onsabrück and the Treaty of Münster, that ended the Thirty Years' War. Not many people celebrate this holiday in the way it deserves, with a full day off from work, lots of decadent food, and reading my books on the subject, but I think that will change once I get the word out and people start to realize what they are missing.

Okay, I might be a little biased on the subject. Hardly anyone knows what the Peace of Westphalia is or even what century it occurred in, which means I probably could have picked a better subject to pour my heart and soul into writing a book about. Heck, hardly anyone knows that October 24th is United Nations Day -- the U.N. charter was signed on this day in 1945 -- so I can hardly expect its predecessor by 300 years to catch on.

Someone recently asked me a good question: what is my favourite personality from the Peace of Westphalia? I had never considered that before. No one knows the negotiators, so my first thought was Blaise Pascal, who was active at the same time. Pascal really is a fascinating figure, but I later realized that I should have said Cardinal Mazarin. Mazarin was the effective head of French government during the Congress of Westphalia while King Louis XIV was still a boy. Not many people know him, although I suspect a lot of people have heard of his predecessor, Cardinal Richelieu, who directed French government during the reign of Louis XIII. There wouldn't be much point in discussing Mazarin's politics, but he is an interesting figure in so many other ways.

For one thing, Mazarin was an Italian (originally Mazarini). Like Catherine de Medici, another Italian at the French court, he helped bring Italian culture to France; for instance, he put on the first opera in France in 1647. He collected art and books lavishly; his enormous book collection, which he bequeathed to the crown, became the foundation for the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Until recently, his Parisian palace also housed most of the collection and the reading room for the library. A number of cultural artefacts carry his name, some of which I can trace to him for sure, others with less certainty. The first brilliant diamond cut is called the Mazarin cut. He is the namesake of the Mazarin desk (or bureau Mazarin). He owned a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed in Europe, which is also known as the Mazarin Bible. A famous piece of Japanese laquerware, the Mazarin Chest, probably derived from his collection. There is a shade of blue called mazarine. I once found a floor pattern named after him, but I can't find a reference to it now. My favourite Mazarin object is the Mazarin cake (or tort). It comes from Sweden, but it is not out of the question that it was named for the cardinal. France did have close relations with Sweden during his rule: Sweden was France's ally and co-signatory of the Peace of Westphalia. It was ruled, by the way, by Queen Christina, who is fascinating in her own right. I have no evidence connecting Mazarin with the cake of the same name, but really, how many people could it have been named after?

If you want to get a fictional view of Mazarin, you can read "Twenty Years' After," which is a sequel to "The Three Musketeers" that takes place during 1648 -- the same year as the Peace of Westphalia. Umberto Eco's book "The Island of the Day Before" also includes Mazarin as a character, although a minor one.

The War on Fox

2009-10-23T13:00:00.000-04:00

If you use Firefox, you should definitely get this Halloween theme. It is beautifully well-done, and gets me in the spirit for a holiday that I don't even particularly care much about. I look forward to this time of the year just so I can use this theme for a few weeks. There is also an excellent Christmas theme available.

I should probably be more upset by the White House's attempt to discredit Fox as a news agency, but in fact I find myself just shaking my head. No presidency has attempted to take on an entire news station, and I doubt if any attempted to take on a particular newspaper, either. And for good reason. First, in a country devoted to free speech, it is dangerous for a government institution to try to decide who is and who isn't authorized to deliver the news. Second, it seems unlikely to work, and may very well backfire. Third, it is pointless. News agencies are not sworn to neutrality. We went through a period of history when journalists claimed to deliver just the facts, and in fact they may have tried to do so for some of that time. In times past, however, newspapers were blatantly partisan and were often simply party organs, and the democracy survived. The increasingly wide divide between journalistic opinion and that of the majority of Americans has made the pretense of neutrality into a sham and then a farce. I'm not going to turn this into a debate on whether the "MSM" (mainstream media) are biased, but I will say this: whenever I have seen liberals confronted with objective evidence of media bias, their response is invariably, "Well, of course, that's because the American electorate is skewed so far to the right." You may or may not like the way Americans vote, but when one speaks of journalistic neutrality, one would expect the journalists to be neutral relative to the country that they are covering. American media may be middle-of-the-road by the standards of French or German politics, but that doesn't carry much significance when discussing their role in America.

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with having a point of view. My objection to network news is not that it is biased, but that it pretends to be neutral; my objection to Keith Olbermann and his ilk is that name-calling degrades political discourse. Polite but overtly partisan journals, such as The Nation and National Review, are considered seriously by people in the public sphere, and I presume they get treated with the same respect as Newsweek or other supposedly neutral magazines. They don't get the same privileges, because their audience is much smaller, but they still get treated like journalists.

Obama's attack on Fox (and Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, and others) is surprising because it seems like such a fruitless venture. If George Bush had attacked MSNBC for its partisan politics, he would have had much more right to do so, but he would have been roundly criticized for it -- and rightly so. Even to try such a thing suggests to me the inexperience of Obama and his staff. Obama was treated with kid gloves during his election campaign, and now he apparently can't tolerate the thought that some people disagree with him. It is a sign of intellectual bankruptcy for a politician to declare war on the news. It might be more sensible to pick on a single agency as Obama is doing, rather than criticizing the media in general à la Richard Nixon, but it is also more ominous. If he succeeds in driving Fox out of news, it will be a sad day for our democracy; if he doesn't, it will be a severe blow to his presidency.

Yellow

2009-10-22T12:21:00.003-04:00

Yellow has never seemed like much of a colour to me. It's more like off-white than a separate colour. I want to describe it as a dark white, but at the same time as a bright white. Are dark and bright opposites? I don't think so, because light blue is not bright; but I'm not really sure what bright means, unless it's perhaps "reflective."

This brings me to the question of what distinguishes yellow from gold (and grey from silver). I remembering wondering about this when I was a kid, because Crayola's 64-pack had separate colours for yellow and gold, but I couldn't figure out what mixture of paints would reproduce gold. The trick, I realized, was that gold-coloured crayons had a sparkly element in them that clearly distinguished them from yellow; ditto for silver vs. grey. In practice, gold seems to be a little darker than pure yellow, but that doesn't stop people from describing blond hair as "golden."

Yellow is one of the three primary "subtractive" colours. I first heard of the idea of subtractive colours while sitting next to someone from the printing industry on a flight to Europe. We had a lot of time to talk, and he wouldn't let me sleep, so I got to hear a lot about how printing is done. I was baffled by his description of how printing nowadays is subtractive: a page goes through the printer three times, each one "subtracting" a certain colour. I was envisioning a black page being lightened to white, and his description did nothing to clarify the process to me.

I understand now that "subtractive" is just a term for how we perceive colour in objects. The colour we see corresponds to the colour (wavelength) of light that is reflected back to us; the object absorbs all other colours. If we add all colours to an object, it absorbs all wavelengths of visible light, and therefore we perceive it as black. By "adding" colour, we have subtracted from the amount of reflected light.

This makes more sense if you think about a computer monitor (or a television), where we perceive the light directly. Each picture element actually contains three light sources, one in each of the primary colours. If no colour is on, the element is dark, i.e., black. If all colours are on full-strength, the element shows white light. In this case, when you add a colour, you bring it closer to white; on paper, if you add a colour, you bring it closer to black by subtracting from the reflected light.

Yellow is one of the three primary subtractive colours, but here's the strange thing: in additive colour (i.e., light), the primary colours are red, blue, and green. This is one of those asymmetries in the world that keeps me awake at night. It's like the problem of why objects in a mirror are reversed left to right, but not top to bottom; only I think I've solved that one, whereas I have no idea why the primary colours should be different in additive vs. subtractive colour. It would make far more sense to me if the primary additive colours were purple, orange, and green. I would still have no idea why they would be different, but I would have some hope of understanding it someday. To add to the confusion, the colour spectrum of light places yellow just where you would expect it, between orange and green, and green is between yellow and blue. It would seem perfectly logical that green is formed by combining yellow and blue, not that yellow is formed by combining green and blue. The whole thing is so crazy that I wouldn't believe it if someone told me; but you can actually try combining different colours of light and demonstrate that it is true.

School fundraisers

2009-10-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

You have probably seen the following on a bumper sticker: "It Will Be a Great Day When Our Schools Get all the Money They Need and the Air Force Has to Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber." (For information on the origins of this sentence, see here.) I don't see it as much as I once did; I'd like to think it's less common because it is such a fatuous sentiment that people see through it, but it is probably just the fact that it is too long to be really catchy, like "Make love, not war" or "Yes, We Can" (which are equally fatuous, but far more popular).

But I don't want to focus on the military side of the slogan; instead, I want to ask about the school side. Because the fact is that I am inundated with school fundraisers, and I'm really tired of them. My question is, just how much money does my children's school need, and why can't they get adequate funding through taxes? I realize that there is always a tension between government budgets and school needs; every part of the government, like every part of a corporation, wants more money than it gets. And I can understand that schools want to make up some of that difference by holding fundraisers. But schools today seem to be running permanent fundraisers, like politicians who never cease raising money for their next run for office, and I have to wonder just how serious their need for money is.

Our elementary school has participated in a major fundraiser for the last two years called the Boosterthon. It involves kids getting running laps, and getting pledges for each lap that they run. It promotes health, character, and all sorts of other good things, and it raised $18,000 this year for the school. I don't have too much to complain about it, except for the cult-like way it tries to get kids excited about raising money. As with other fundraising activities nowadays, there are prizes for kids who reach certain plateaux, so my kids came home excited about the wonderful prizes they could earn, and I don't really appreciate the way it has been sold to them.

One would think you could buy a lot of school supplies for $18,000, but the fundraising doesn't stop there. Almost every week, the school has an arrangement with some local restaurant in which a certain amount of proceeds from families that dine there goes to the school. They not only remind kids of this in school, but send them home with a sticker on their shirts so they won't forget. Naturally, kids get excited about the prospect of eating out, and parents are put in the position of taking them to the restaurant or disappointing expectations that have been built up in school.

That's not all. The school also sends home some postcards for magazine subscriptions that kids are supposed to send to relatives; there is a whole catalogue of school spirit-wear; t-shirts for field day; school pictures twice a year; at least two festivals per year where kids can pay to play games; the school sells lollipops (nutritious ones, of course) before school, and has a sale around Christmas time with small gifts kids can buy for family members. And on and on and on. The demands for money are virtually endless.

When I was growing up, I don't remember having any school fundraisers. I do remember selling lottery tickets for my baseball team, which brings up another point. My mom sold some tickets at work, but I also went door-to-door selling them in my neighbourhood. Nowadays, schools specifically tell students not to go door-to-door; it is completely up to the parents to sell them. While I'm just as happy not to have my kid selling things door-to-door, it isn't much of an improvement to have the responsibility pushed onto me.

What is all this money used for? The only references I can find in the school council minutes say they are for "school supplies." I remember one fundraiser in particular that mentioned the money was being used for a lunch for award-winning teachers. Otherwise, I can only guess. How much worse would our kids' education be if the school did not have this extra money? I don't know, but I would certainly like a chance to judge for myself whether the investment is worth it. Fundraising is like the school's underground economy: there is no accountability for the funds, and the pressure to donate comes through kids rather than direct appeals to parents. As a result, schools can soak up large amounts of extra money without anyone having any idea how benefician it is.

If the school really needs that extra money, I'm all for raising taxes to pay for it. If the biggest fundraiser of the year brings in $18,000, the amount of extra taxes would be minimal. Or, if the government can't or won't come up with the funds, the schools could send out a letter to all parents (or even all school-district residents) to explain their needs and to request additional funds. If they can't get the money through such a direct appeal, they should not be allowed to solicit funds by playing on parents' (and their relatives') guilt feelings.

Purple

2009-10-19T11:00:00.000-04:00

Are red, yellow, and orange really "warm" colours? I remember learning about warm vs. cold colours in 1st grade, and I had absolutely no idea what the concept meant. The first thing that came to my mind was that blue must be a warm colour, since blue was my favourite colour. You can argue that yellow is warm because it is the colour of the sun and red because things turn "red-hot," but there are serious limitations to this claim. Fire is yellow, but it is also blue; items that get hotter than red-hot turn white-hot. Water and ice are commonly associated with blue and green, but they are really clear, and only appear in colour in certain circumstances. Maybe red, yellow, and orange share some common characteristic that we have arbitrarily designated "warmth," but I don't think it has anything to do with temperature.

Green is generally seen as a cool colour, even though it is a mixture of a warm and cool pigments. What is purple? I'm not sure I've ever heard it listed as warm or cool. I'm inclined to say it is cool, but since I obviously have no feel for this subject, you'd probably be better off assuming the opposite if you aren't sure.

Traditionally, of course, purple is the colour of nobility. The only purple dye in antiquity was obtained by extracting mucus from the murex sea snail, which was hard to find and expensive to process. I don't know why they couldn't mix red and blue, but I suppose there must have been reasons.

Purple is associated with girls these days. Some purples are, admittedly, extremely close to pink, but since purple is a mixture of red (i.e., dark pink) and blue, it doesn't seem like it should be particular to either sex. Wikipedia has a discussion of how purple is different than violet, but I have to admit that it totally escapes me. If we distinguish three primary colours, and if we distinguish green and orange as secondary colours created by mixing two primaries, why should distinguish more than one colour as the mixture of red and blue? I won't argue that there aren't good technical reasons, but, whatever they are, they are beyond my comprehension.

Some people are really into purple. I saw a magazine spread once on a woman whose whole house was purple -- purple paint, purple furniture, purple rugs, and she even served purple food (blueberries, chiefly). The names of purple shades -- fuchsia, mauve, lavender, lilac, amethyst, and periwinkle -- sound exotic, but most of them are just flowers. I always hated fuchsia until I learned how to spell it, but why is it pronounced so strangely? I don't know. The colour is named after the flower, which was named after the German botanist Fuchs (sort of rhymes with "books"); perhaps the person who named it also gave it the bizarre pronunciation. There is also a "fashion fuchsia" that is more like hot pink. The most interesting shade of purple, historically, is mauve (rhymes with grove). It was named in 1856 when William Henry Perkin discovered a residue from his attempts to create artificial quinine, and became commercially important as the first aniline dye -- the beginning of the chemical dye industry. The 1890's in America have been described as "The Mauve Decade," not only because the colour mauve was popular, but also as a derisive commentary on the pretensions of the era. The derogatory sense of mauve comes from James Whistler's dictum that "mauve is just pink trying to be purple."

Amethyst	Fuchsia	Indigo	Lavender

Mauve	Periwinkle	Violet	Lilac

Hating

2009-10-16T20:59:00.006-04:00

Today is National Bosses' Day. That sounds like a great idea. Bosses make more than anyone else in the office, and spend all day telling people what to do. They need a special day for themselves. I'm not that crazy about Secretaries' Day, but at least it makes sense: secretaries do the menial work in an office every other day of the year, so having one day in which they get special treatment seems appropriate. I'm fortunate that my boss is very nice. I've heard that your relationship with your boss is the most important factor in job satisfaction, and I've been lucky that all but two of my bosses have been very easy to get along with. The other two weren't bad; they just weren't as good.

About hating: Liberals love the subject of hating. They accuse their opponents of it all the time. One of their biggest insults is to call someone a "hater." Of course, they are immune from hating -- or rather, anytime they hate it is justifiable, because they only hate bad people. Thus, Keith Olbermann can rail about Michelle Malkin's "fascistic hatred," and yet in the same breath call her "a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick." Very classy.

At Obama's town hall in New Orleans yesterday, a fourth-grader asked the final question: "Why do people hate you? They're supposed to love you. And God is love." Excellent point, young man. I'm sure you and the adult who put you up to that question love Obama, just as you loved George Bush when he was president. But what about other people?

I don't hate Obama. I don't like to hate anyone, because my religion tells me it is wrong. If I hate someone, it is a sign that my frustrations have gotten the best of me, and I prefer to be in control of my emotions.

Obama strikes me as someone who would be hard to hate in person. I heard a radio clip of him calling Kanye West a jackass for interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the Grammys, and I couldn't help liking him. It wasn't just what he said, but that deep voice of his, and the total sincerity with which he said it.

I don't really think politics is the place for putting personal emotions -- good or bad -- ahead of ideas. I wrote in a previous post about how David Brooks seems to have let Obama's personal features outweigh rational considerations. I'd like to be led by a charismatic person with whom I agree, but I'd rather be led by a jackass with whom I agree than a charismatic person with whom I disagree. Charisma is useful in a leader, even if I don't personally like him (because it makes him more effective), but it's more important to be led in the right direction.

I get frustrated with people like Olbermann (and there are many others like him) who talk out of both sides of their mouths, accusing their opponents of hating while at the same time spreading hatred. I'm frustrated, but I don't want to respond by hating them back. I try to look on them with pity instead. This is often justified in one sense, because people with that much anger in them are usually not very happy anyway. Whether justified or not, I think it's the best approach. Anger leads to more anger and ever-escalating distrust and contempt for one's political opponents. I don't know if the present state of discourse in America is any worse than it has been in the past (I doubt it), but it seems like it would be better if we could have our debates without the anger. It also seems like a good political strategy, because responding civilly to the other side's uncivil attacks might swing moderate voters.

I know that this line of argument can't be carried too far, however. Arguably there are some people whom one should work up a righteous anger about, people who threaten the existence of our democratic system. I would not include any politicians in that category; I'm thinking more of the terrorists who want to destroy us. And while being civil might garner swing voters, it might just sacrifice the enthusiasm of anger for no apparent gain, allowing one's opponents to win.

I'd like to think that's not the case, at least not if it's done right. And I'm just tired of all the extremist rhetoric that I hear, mostly from the left, although also, of course, from the right. So I will stake my position on civility; and, although I'm sure I will fail at my goal many times, I hope I will stick close to it, and do my tiny part to help bring political discourse out of the gutter.

Hurricane Katrina lives on

2009-10-15T20:49:00.004-04:00

I heard on the radio today that President Obama was in New Orleans, which has still not recovered from Hurricane Katrina. (CNN article here.) I wouldn't expect it to be 100% recovered, but apparently a lot of it is still a disaster area. One of the questions that Obama fielded was, naturally, "Why hasn't the government done more?" Obama's responded by saying that he was working on improving things: "My expectation is that by the time that my term is over, you guys are going to look back and you're going to say, 'This was a responsive administration on health care, on housing, on education, that actually made sure the money flowed and that things got done the way they were supposed to get done."

I doubt whether any president can introduce drastic changes into any organization as large as FEMA. Because of the civil service system, 99% of its employees cannot be changed by the new administration. (I don't like to toss around percentages lightly. I found this article which shows FEMA having a projected employee count of almost 165,000 in 2003, and it is almost certainly higher now. I don't know exactly how many political appointees there are among those, but I doubt very seriously if it comes anywhere near 1650. Probably more like 16.) The result is an incredible institutional inertia that grips any large bureaucracy. I'm not saying that bureaucracies are bad, or that they can't be changed, but I am sceptical of how much they can be changed in four years by a few appointees at the top.

The whole Katrina story made me ill because of the way Bush was blamed for it. First, the hurricane was a natural disaster; and, no, global warming had nothing to do with it. For several years afterward, the national weather service predicted that hurricane season would be more severe than normal because of global warming, and they have been wrong every time -- in fact, hurricane seasons have been milder. It was just a coincidence that Katrina struck on Bush's watch rather than Obama's. In fact, it appears to have been a coincidence that it didn't strike at any time in the previous 30 years, since engineers had been anticipating a disaster for New Orleans for that length of time.

Second, I reiterate that I am dubious how much of FEMA's problems can realistically be assigned to the president. Yes, the president is head of the administration, but it is an enormous administration -- and FEMA is probably pretty far down on the list of priorities. Imagine how much worse it would be for a president if there were such incompetence in the military, the CIA, the FBI, the IRS...okay, maybe there is, but they're all higher priority than FEMA (at any time save a major natural disaster). What would you rather have, (a) a president who supported your political views but was a lousy administrator, or (b) one who opposed your views but who was an excellent administrator? Obviously the answer is (b) for over 50% of the country, because they voted for Obama in spite of the fact that he has virtually no record as an administrator. He might be excellent, but there is scarcely any evidence for that -- they wanted him because of his views. It may be possible to show that a president screwed up the administration of a particular organization, but you'll have to show me the evidence first; the mere fact that he is president is insufficient.

Third, governmental incompetence in response was even more pronounced at the (Democratically-controlled) state and local levels than at the federal level. We all know the stories about buses sitting unusued while people needed to be evacuated. It was appropriate for the federal government to intervene and assist the state, but the blame for problems has to be apportioned appropriately.

Fourth, the time for federal emergency relief is over. I don't know the details of how FEMA aid is administered, but the emergency in New Orleans is long past. It is not the government's business -- certainly not the federal government's business -- to rebuild private houses or even municipal buildings. If people want things rebuilt, they should do it themselves. Moreover, I think the government should make it clear that it will not assist in any future natural disasters in New Orleans, for the same reason that it is probably impossible to get private home insurance there: the risk is just too great. As much as I would hate to lose New Orleans as a national icon, I don't want to pay to keep it from becoming the next Atlantis.

Speaking of time passed, I am amazed and disappointed that New York still hasn't built anything on the site of the twin towers. (This comes to mind because the New Orleans mayor once responded to criticism about the slow rebuilding of his city by pointing to the hole still present in New York City.) This was not a natural disaster, but a foreign attack. And while I wouldn't usually support the government's involvement in rebuilding private structures, in this case I would have made it a point to erect two buildings, as big as if not bigger than the destroyed towers, as soon as possible after they were destroyed. It is a point of pride for the country, and a means of discouraging the attackers. The new buildings would not have to be private; the government could erect two office buildings, and I'm sure it could find some bureaucracy to house there.

Brown

2009-10-14T18:04:00.004-04:00

I maintain a list of vocabulary words that I would like to learn. Among the hardest are words for colours, which are almost impossible to define in words. Sure, you can write "a dark grayish-brown," but will someone really be able to picture it in his mind?

Among my words are three shades of brown: fuscous, taupe (rhymes with "rope") and filemot (fill-mott). Fuscous and taupe both mean "brownish-grey," which gives them the distinction of combining the two most boring colours. If it came down to it, I think I would choose brown as even more boring than grey. It's the colour of dirt, after all, not to mention other natural substances like wood and, frequently, fur. It's also the colour you get when you mix all the other colours together. According to wikipedia, it's actually a mixture of red, orange, or yellow with black, but that's not the way I remember it when I played with fingerpaints, and it's not the colour my kids get when they mix together all colours of Playdoh (which they inevitably do, in spite of my admonitions that it will be more interesting if they keep them separate). Nothing screams "blah" like brown.

Nevertheless, we have many words for different shades of brown. There are common words, like khaki, tan, sandy (for light shades) or russet, chocolate, or auburn (for dark ones); obscure ones, like taupe, filemot, and sepia; and ones that those of us of a certain age remember from Crayola's 64-pack of crayons, like raw umber, burnt umber, and burnt sienna. Does anyone actually distinguish all these different colours? I'm not sure that khaki, tan, and sandy mean anything for me other than "light brown." For the record, here are some shades as defined by Wikipedia:

Auburn	Beige	Bronze	Raw umber	Burnt sienna

Burnt umber	Chocolate	Copper	Desert sand	Khaki

Sandy brown	Sepia	Sienna	Tan	Taupe

Sepia is an interesting one. Portrait studios now offer you the opportunity to turn your beautiful, full-colour photographs into dull brown ones for an extra fee. If that doesn't sound like it makes sense, you understand my point of view. Making a photo sepia, or black and white (i.e., grey), makes it look older, but I'm not sure why that would be desirable outside of some specialist purposes (e.g., you wanted to pass the photo off as older). When you go to pick up your portraits, the studio will often have several extra sheets already made up that they will try to sell you; and, almost invariably, these sheets will be sepia or grey. Of all the nice things they can do with photographs nowadays, getting rid of the colour is not an "upgrade" that I would choose voluntarily.

I once knew a woman named Tawny, which is also shade of brown. I did a Google search for tawny to see what colour came up; unlike the other shades, this one turned up mostly pictures of women, usually showing a lot of skin. I don't know if the name Tawny is associated in the popular imagination with a certain type of woman; even if it isn't, would you want to name your daughter "brown"? It's much like the name Chloë, which means green – another strange thing to call a girl. At least Chloë is a pretty and exotic name, whereas Tawny is ordinary and sounds a little too close to "tawdry" for my tastes.

Brown as a last name is one of the most common in English. I'd bet it's more common than White, Black, or Green, and certainly than Blue. (The only person I've ever heard of named Blue was Oakland A's pitcher Vida Blue, which is certainly one of the most curious names in sports.) I can't recall anyone with the last name of Red, Orange, Purple, Scarlett, Mustard, Plum, or any other colour, although I would be glad to hear of them if they exist. I'm not aware of a college with the name of any of these colours except brown, and there are two shades represented: Brown and Auburn. Surely it's a coincidence, but it is fitting that colleges should be named the same as a stoic colour reminiscent of old portraits and brick buildings.

Incisive analysis

2009-10-13T22:17:00.003-04:00

I listen to sports talk radio when I'm in the car, which means, here in Middle Georgia, that I often hear the Bill Shanks Show. He didn't bother me too much until recently, when he was criticizing Atlanta Braves' manager Bobby Cox for platooning players at a certain position. "Platooning" means playing one player against right-handed pitchers and the other against left-handed pitchers. Shanks hates the idea, explaining, "Hitting is hitting, and pitching is pitching."

That's the kind of serious thinking that he gets paid for. Who can argue that hitting is not hitting? That sounds like the kind of paradox Zeno of Elea would come up with. Of course hitting is hitting. But right-handed hitting is not the same as left-handed hitting, at least not against the same pitcher. Baseball players usually hit significantly better against pitchers who throw from the opposite side of the plate, i.e., right-handed hitters bat better against left-handed pitchers. Often the difference is quite significant: a player might be an All-Star if he only had to bat against pitchers, who throw with one hand but would be back in the minors if he only had to bat against pitchers who throw with the other hand. Therefore, platooning makes a great deal of sense. You can probably raise your team's batting average significantly by platooning at one position. You might well platoon at four or five positions if you had enough players on your roster.

I admit that there might be other reasons against platooning. Perhaps players hit better if they're in the lineup every day, for instance. But "hitting is hitting" is not a reason. It may be that much of the audience agrees with his line of thinking, but I'd like to believe that the radio station could find someone a little more interesting to talk about sports for several hours a day. There may be good reasons why they can't, and I'd like to deal with those in another blog entry.

Proud to be an American

2009-10-11T22:31:00.002-04:00

I am proud that an American has been once again awarded the Nobel Peace prize. And who could be more worthy than Barack Obama, because he has...uh...he has...well, someday he might do something for peace.

Okay, the award is officially meaningless. It has been meaningless for some time now, really. If Al Gore can get the award for fussing about global warming, it pretty clearly has nothing to do with peace. That's not even to consider the granting of the award to crooks and terrorists like Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho.

If you think about it, though, the whole idea of a prize for peace is somewhat problematic. Statesmen only make peace when they think it is in their interests. Unilateral capitulation is not a way to advance peace in the long run, but rather a way to invite war. So it is difficult to give the award to statesmen. On the other hand, people with utopian peace ideas don't really do anything to advance peace, either.

I read an interesting book, Champions of Peace, that discusses the history of the prize and this basic problem. Nobel created the prize partly because he felt guilty about developing a military technology (even though TNT also has plenty of peaceful uses). From the beginning, the committee has waffled concerning what kind of achievements to use as the basis of the prize. Thus, Bertha von Suttner won in 1905 for her radical pacifist (and completely ineffective) ideas, while Theodore Roosevelt won the very next year for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese war. The committee has often given the award to individuals or groups for doing humanitarian work, which has nothing to do with peace, really, but we can all feel good about it -- and those groups can certainly put the prize money to good use.

Up until this year, the prize had always at least gone to someone for alleged accomplishments; Obama is the first to be given the prize exclusively in the hope that it would help him advance his agenda. Some people have said that it will restrict his options as president, but I doubt that. The prize is $1.4 million and an endorsement from a meaningless committee of Norwegian politicians; no one is going to alter his behaviour on that basis. While I don't think it would shock world opinion were Obama to turn it down, as some have suggested, neither do I think it would really help matters. My recommendation would be to accept the prize and say that he hopes to live up to its endorsement, which I'm sure is pretty much what he will do. The money, however, could be better donated to one of the humanitarian groups that were nominated. Obama doesn't need $1.4 million, and those groups definitely do. He might give the money to charity (I have no idea what his plans are), but it would be best if it was a charity relating to the peace prize. He can respect the public honour that he has been given while still putting the money to good use.

ACORN and the government

2009-10-02T22:37:00.002-04:00

ACORN has put itself in a position of public trust by acting as an intermediary between individuals and the government: helping people register to vote, helping them get government funding, helping the government count citizens. Whether it supported pimping or not, it is clearly suggesting ways for people to defraud the government by cheating on taxes. This is criminal, and it would seem to provide an obvious reason for the government to discontinue all public funds to ACORN immediately.

I have read in several places (e.g., here) that it may be unconstitutional for Congress to cut off funding specifically for ACORN because it could count as a "bill of attainder." `This seems more than a little stretch of the concept to me. A bill of attainder "is an act of the legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial." The laws in question would say nothing about whether ACORN was engaged in criminal activity, nor would it apply any form of punishment, but merely cut off government funding. This could only be considered a form of punishment in some twisted socialist worldview. If Congress can grant funding to specific groups, how could it not be allowed to rescind funding for specific groups?

In addition to ACORN's overtly fraudulent activities, its covertly partisal political purpose is also coming to light. One of the arguments in ACORN's favour that I did not mention is yesterday's post is, "Why are the Republicans picking on a group that helps poor people?" But ACORN is not just a group that helps poor people; it is a group that helps poor people organize to support liberal politics. Of course, it is entirely within its right to do so, but not with federal funding.

ACORN cracked

2009-10-01T18:03:00.006-04:00

ACORN's recent embarrassment seems like a redemption to me, as to other conservatives. Like them, I have been very dubious of ACORN's voter registration practices, and appalled at the thought that it was getting millions of dollars of federal funds, some of which was being used for partisan political purposes. The video sting seems like the kind of thing that is too good to be true; and, like anything that seems too good to be true, I am curious to know the downside. To that end, I read a few liberal defenses of ACORN. There is no shortage of arguments in ACORN's favour, but they seem to fall into two broad categories:
(1) The videos don't tell the truth; and
(2) The behaviour documented in the videos can be excused, or at least explained, at an organizational level.

The most fundamental argument of the first category is that all Republicans are liars, therefore the evidence cannot be believed a priori. Obviously, this is not part of a serious argument, but it is often the starting point for an individual's quest for truth -- and I don't disparage it, because I disbelieve a lot of what I hear without further confirmation. Others say that the videos have been edited to make things appear worse than they are. I don't know much about video editing, but I can't see how they can have been fundamentally altered. The clips that I have seen are direct, question-and-response, leaving no room for the kind of dishonest cutting practiced by, say, Michael Moore. Still others argue that the videos amount to entrapment: you can't lead an individual to crime and then convict him of it. This misses a major element of entrapment, however: cui bono? If someone walks up and offers to kill some person that you don't like, you stand to benefit in an obvious way. It's entrapment because the person is tempting you into a crime. The ACORN employees had no personal stake in the advice they were giving; therefore, it seems reasonable to believe that they would give that same advice under other circumstances. I have to admit that I feel a little bad for them in this regard; their willingness to help is part of what got them into trouble. Then again, someone in a position of public trust should recognize the public benefit over private gain when the two come into conflict. A subset of this argument is the idea that the videographer, O'Keefe, violated "journalistic integrity" in the way he approached the issue. The irony of liberals whining about a sting operation seems to have escaped the people who make this argument. I remember distinctly a national network trying to catch Food Lion in a similar sting regarding proper food handling perhaps 20 years ago. The planted employee, who worked in the deli, tried to get her manager to leave out old meat, but the manager insisted that it be thrown away. I don't remember the outcome of the case, but I certainly didn't hear any complaints about journalistic integrity then. Another defense is that the videos were obtained illegally. Whether this is true or not, it does nothing to defend the behaviour of the ACORN employees; it only means that they were caught unfairly, not that they were innocent victims.

The other type of argument is that the videos are accurate, but they record explainable behaviour that does not indicate systemic problems. ACORN itself tried to excuse the videos initially by saying that the employees were not properly trained; I have also seen conflicting claims concerning how many ACORN offices may have turned him away to balance against those who got caught. This argument doesn't carry much weight with me; if someone caught a handful of Walmart stores ripping off customers, I don't think liberals would emphasize how many stores were caught being honest.

Some have claimed that the employees were scared and/or that they turned in O'Keefe after he left. This actually could be a valid excuse. I don't really see how anyone could be scared of O'Keefe -- I have to agree that he looked like a clown in his pimp outfit. But it is reasonable to think that employees might have waited until later to report the activities to the police. No one is claiming that all ACORN offices did this, of course; I would like to know more specifically how many, if any, actually did so.

My favourite argument came from a post on DailyKos.com: since ACORN deals with, and recruits from, the poorest segments of society, it's inevitable that you will get a few scumbags. A pathetic excuse and liberalism's barely-concealed elitism, all at once!

Whether ACORN offices were encouraging prostitution and sex slavery is, to me, a secondary issue. It's a serious charge, but it is not necessary to demonstrate its validity to undermine ACORN's credibility. The fact that no one is denying is that ACORN offices suggested ways for O'Keefe to cheat the government: claming "employees" (sex slaves) as dependents, hiding money in a tin can. I don't see any reason for them to make these suggestions to clients, legitimate or not, and it seems reasonable to suspect that they give the same advice to just about anyone who passes through their doors. Although they might not be trained on how to deal with potentially criminal clients, they certainly are given training on how to help clients deal with the government -- and apparently that training includes lying and cheating.

Audience growing

2009-09-30T20:06:00.002-04:00

I was heartened this week when my wife said she was going to start reading my blog, as this brings my total readership up to 1. That may not sound like a lot, but, in percentage terms, it is enormous.

I used to think people had to be conceited to think that others would want to read their random thoughts on a daily basis. Some people work for years to publish finely-honed books of fact or fiction; bloggers spend thirty minutes or an hour a night writing essays and think they deserve an audience. On the other hand, they are partially justified by the fact that they have an audience. How conceited must I be to publish a blog that no one actually reads? Do I think that what I am writing is so valuable that it needs to be available for the public, as though someone is one day going to discover it and realize its value?

Actually, the truth is that I started this particular blog on my own web server, just because I had things I wanted to say and no obvious place to put them. I didn't think I would use it much, but I found I wrote in it compulsively. When I had to take my server offline, I wanted to continue the blog, so I decided to move it to a public server. Even though I write primarily for myself, though, I have to admit that I am interested in having an audience -- not with the aim of making money, but just because I want to share my thoughts. The irony of writing a public blog with almost no audience is never far from my mind.

Derek Mataratones

2009-09-27T23:16:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking of changing my name to the title of this post. I saw "mata ratones" (=kills mice) on a mousetrap, and I thought it sounded cool. That, and the fact that I have become the scourge of mice recently. In the last week, I set out 4 traps and caught 5 mice. Yes, two in one trap. I don't think I'm done yet.

The choice of mouse-catching devices is interesting. You can buy mouse poison, which is probably very effective because the mice will take it back to the nest and share it with others, so it will kill all of them. On the other hand, do I really want a nest of dead, smelly mice somewhere in my house? With a regular trap, I get to dispose of them, which is preferable. It is unfortunate to have to kill the little things, but it actually seems more humane than the alternative. I tried a glue trap once, and came home to find a mouse struggling frantically to free himself. Who knows how long he had been there? It was really sad to see. I'd rather just break their spines instantly and get it over with. Plus, I freed the mouse in my backyard (the kids convinced me) and he ran immediately back into the house. The only good thing about that was that he helped me identify a hole, but plugging it hasn't kept other mice from getting in. I could take him out in a field somewhere, but would that be any better? Mice are social animals, and he would be cut off from his whole family. Also, house mice are different than field mice, so he wouldn't be equipped to survive. In all likelihood, he would die at the hands of some animal predator, probably more slowly and in greater pain than from a mousetrap. And if he didn't die that way, his only chance of survival would probably be to find another house to enter, in which case I would just have transferred the problem to someone else.

So I stick with old-fashioned mouse traps. The ones I've been using recently are really old-fashioned, like the ones in cartoons: just a wooden foundation, a spring, a pressure plate, and a catch mechanism. I was spoiled by more modern versions, which have two advanced features. First, to set them you just press down a lever. You don't have to try to get the catch to hold, and you don't risk getting your fingers caught in the trap (which has happened to me once already). Sometimes it takes a few tries to get it to set properly, but it's not a big deal. Second, the trap resides in a plastic shell. This means that you don't actually have to see the mouse once it is caught -- just a tail sticking out. You could argue that it is somehow morally better if you actually see what you killed and had to face a cute little creature caught in your trap, but I don't think so. I've seen them, and it hasn't done anything to deter me from catching them. If anything, it has made me less squeamish about it. I don't have anything against the mice; I just don't want them in my house, and I especially don't want them defecating in my house. If they're going to do that, I have to get rid of them, and this seems like the best option available.

I'm just curious about one thing: why haven't I been able to find the fancier traps in stores recently? I'm not aware of any regulations restricting their sale. It's true that the old-fashioned ones are much less expensive, about $1.50 for a pack of four, instead of $5 for a fancier one. But $5 doesn't seem like that much for a trap, and the new ones are easier to re-use, since you just press a lever to drop the dead mouse out; I haven't tried to pry the bar off of one of the cheaper traps to release the mouse, preferring to just throw the whole gadget away.

Van, van, is a used up man

2009-09-17T20:55:00.002-04:00

Now that the Van Jones issue is completely over, I am getting around to commenting on it. There is something in the brazen way he lies about the issue that compels a certain admiration, the same way that I admire Alger Hiss for maintaining his lack of Communist ties until the day he died. Here is Jones's defense: "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me." [Translation: I should get away with my views because everyone should be focussed on the issues.] "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide." [Translation: they are telling the truth about my background, turning respectable Democrats against me.] "I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.'" [Translation: a few left-wing nutjobs have asked me to stay.] In his "apology," Jones also stated, "In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration – some of which were made years ago." [Translation: hey, I would never make those kinds of statements now that I have an important position, even though I still believe them.]

Probably the most blatant single lie concerned his signature of a "truther" petition in 2004, of which he said, "the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever." This is the kind of unbelievable statement you get from someone who has become famous by making outrageous statements. His radical views don't bother many Democrats; a large proportion of Democrats agree with the petition that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. But no one could ever get elected to office running on that sort of platform, and no one can stay in office if he has views like that and they become known to the general public. This is because, thankfully, most citizens -- even Democrats -- are still sane. When someone like Jones gets in a public office behind the scenes and is then outed as a nutcase (a process that he refers to as "a vicious smear campaign"), his only recourse is to pretend that he is someone that he is not. We can at least be grateful that he has that much shame -- when people like him start flaunting their crazy views and getting away with it, our country will have taken one more step down the road to destruction.

Homework

2009-09-16T10:59:00.003-04:00

I may be the only adult in the country who thinks our kids need less homework, not more. I remember when I was a kid back in the 80's, one of the key ideas of education reform was that schools needed to assign more homework so we could keep up with the Europeans and East Asian countries. I hated the idea then, and I'm not too crazy about it now.

My kids spend 7 hours a day in school. I would think that that would be plenty to educate them in whatever they need to know. Maybe older kids who are targeting college need more homework, but I don't see how it could help 8-10 year olds. How much patience for study can they be expected to have? What is so important for them to learn that they need to spend more than 7 hours a day learning it, to the detriment of having a life?

I also don't believe in giving impossible assignments. My 5th-grade son came home last week with an assignment on the Bill of Rights: rephrase them in your own words and draw pictures of them. There is no point in rephrasing them; summarizing, perhaps, but even in a summary I would use exact quotations such as "cruel and unusual punishment," "right to a speedy and fair trial," etc. And how do you summarize or rephrase the 10th amendment? "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Even today, I have trouble understanding that language. I know what it is supposed to mean, but I'm not sure I could get from the text to its meaning. And what about drawing a picture of it?? There is no way, period, to draw a meaningful picture of the 10th amendment, or the 9th, or even the 5th, for that matter. I can see what the teacher is trying to do: he wants the students to think about the amendments in different ways, so that they understand them as more than just words. This works great for the 1st amendment, maybe the 2nd, 7th, and 8th, but it is a disaster for the others. My son was asking me how to draw a picture, and I had no idea. Maybe the teacher didn't expect them to come up with anything good on those amendments, but why assign it, then? Why give students something that baffles them and makes them frustrated? This was just a bad assignment.

You'll not be surprised to learn that I'm contrarian on many other things concerning education. For one, I'm not against "teaching to the test." I'll go further and say that I'm not sure what the argument against teaching to the test would even be. If there are certain facts that we want students to learn, we should teach them those facts, not throw a bunch of facts at them and hope that the right ones stick. Sure, you want them to be able to "think independently," as some people are always harping, but that's a different goal. When you're teaching multiplication tables, you most definitely teach to the test -- you drill on it, over and over. When you're teaching a foreign language, you teach to the test: specific vocabulary words and grammar rules. Why not teach to the test when you're teaching about the causes of the Civil War? You can give reasons on both sides and then ask the students to draw their own conclusions -- supported by the evidence -- on the test, but you need to teach them the reasons. It might be nice if, someday, the student could read historical works, infer the reasons on their own, and make an argument from that, but that is hardly appropriate for elementary-school children. In fact, I would suggest that even adults would normally be taught the basic reasons and then allowed to expand from there.

Here's my problem. In graduate school, I was a teaching assistant for a course in Western Civilization. The instructor would stand up and lecture in a fairly standard narrative way about one civilization after another. Then, on the test, he asked, "Compare and contrast the military organization of three of the following five civilizations." Students were baffled, because he had only made passing remarks about military organization all semester. Their essays were correspondingly bad, and I had to grade them. I went very easy on them, because I felt that it was the teacher, not the students, who deserved a bad grade. He was trying not to teach to the test, but he ended up testing on something he hadn't taught -- and that, to me, is not the point of a course.

There is a well-known sample from an 1890's textbook that has circulated on the web (I can't find it on snopes.com, unfortunately). It is for kids in about 8th grade, I think, and it asks a series of extraordinarily difficult questions -- ones that any adult would be stumped on. It is, of course, a hoax. In fact, if you look at older textbooks, you'll find that they are far simpler than modern ones. They're probably too simple even for me, but I think they had the right idea: teach some basic ideas, and let the students learn from there. Modern schools try to do too much, and end up doing less than they should. Rather than worrying about teaching students independent thinking, they would be better off concentrating on teaching main principles, and have independent thought as a parallel part of the curriculum -- not a replacement for fundamental learning.

Shortcuts

2009-09-15T19:52:00.002-04:00

I am a "software developer." I don't know when or why this title became preferred to "programmer." Probably it sounds less technical and therefore more professional. Perhaps engineering school graduates called themselves "software engineers," and non-engineer programmers wanted a similar title. Whatever it is, I can't get used to being a "developer" instead of a programmer. I write programs; I am a programmer.

If you spend a lot of time on computers, eventually you pick up some shortcuts. The best shortcut I ever learned was how to touch-type, but that's in a different class, because you have to practice it to use it. The kind of shortcuts to which I am referring are the shortcuts that you just learn about once and keep re-using. Many of them involve using the keyboard instead of the mouse, because typing tends to be faster than moving a mouse, even if you aren't able to touch-type. For example, when you go to log into a web site, some people will enter their username, use the mouse to put the cursor in the password box, enter their password, and then use the mouse to click on the "submit" button. This is far slower than using the tab key to move the cursor to the password box and then just hitting the enter key, which you can do on almost any web site. Watching someone do it the slow way is kind of like hearing fingernails being dragged down a chalkboard for me: it is painful to see. I want to tell him the faster way, but I know that 90% of people will never use the shortcut after that one occasion; they are just used to using the mouse, so that's what they will keep on using.

Me, I'm kind of addicted to shortcuts. I like to learn them even if they don't save me time, or only a tiny bit of time. I install extensions for Firefox that allow me to use all kinds of shortcuts: things like LoL, which numbers all the clickable elements in a web page so you can type a number rather than using the mouse; All-in-One Gestures, which creates many kinds of shortcuts for using the mouse (for instance, right-click left-click goes back a page); and Easy Gestures, which pops up a pie menu of options if you click the middle mouse button. My favourite shortcuts, however, are undoubtedly the ones that use the keyboard. For years I have been using the spacebar to page through web pages. Pressing the space bar moves a page down exactly one screen, which suits me perfectly. What I've always lacked was a way of paging up equally easily. Sure, I can use the "Page Up" key, but then I have to take my hands off the keyboard, and I try to avoid that. Only this week I learned that Shift + spacebar will page up, just as Shift + tab will tab backwards through a form.

Usually, shortcuts only save a minuscule amount of time. Sometimes, however, they can be a lifesaver. For instance, on Windows, pressing ctrl-alt-delete used to bring up a task manager, where you could kill a program that was hanging. They seem to have gotten rid of this on certain recent versions (at least, it doesn't work on my Vista box); and, as anyone who has used Windows much knows, programs are bound to hang. Fortunately, I discovered that ctrl-shift-escape accomplishes the same thing, and still works on Vista.

I vividly recall one occasion when my wife had kindly agreed to copy the text out of my individual book chapters and paste them into a single file. It was taking her a long time, which seemed odd to me, so I asked her about it. Not knowing any better way, she was clicking at the start of a document and dragging the cursor throughout the whole thing -- often 30 or 40 pages. This was slow, and if she once let off of the mouse button, she had to start all over again. After I explained to her that ctrl-a automatically selects all the text in a document (or, in most cases, a textbox or other container), she finished the job in a few minutes, which had been taking hours.

Sizes matter

2009-09-08T22:29:00.003-04:00

Curse the person who first decided that it would make a product more appealing to rename product sizes from the logical small, medium, and large to something more catchy. First they got rid of small and started sizes with medium, which was annoying enough. Then they started renaming the "large" size. At Wendy's, you can't get a large order of fries; you have to get a "biggie." (Or at least, that used to be the case; I haven't eaten at Wendy's in a while.) I refuse to say biggie. Once I ordered a large fries and the cashier asked, "You mean a biggie?" "Yeah."

Then they started getting really crazy and just naming the sizes whatever they felt like. Starbucks was an early leader, with the famous "tall" drink being the smallest size on the menu (though I understand you can actually order a "short"). Then comes "grande," Italian for "large," and finally "venti," Italian for "20" (the number of ounces in a cup). Who wants to have to figure out what size drink to order? I saw a movie clip (unfortunately I've forgotten the movie) in which a guy refuses to order using Starbucks's insane sizing system, and it cracked me up. I also laughed at Burger King's coffee ad: "Comes in three easy-to-pronounce sizes."

I thought Starbucks was the worst until I ate at Coldstone's, where the sizes are "like it," "love it," and "gotta have it." Give me a break. I'm starting to think that companies do this, not in the relatively benign attempt to make their product sound more exciting, but simply to confuse the customer. Coldstone's wall menu shows pictures and descriptions for only the most expensive items -- you have to figure out that cheaper items (like normal ice cream, or ice cream with just one mix-in) aren't listed.

Star Wars II

2009-09-07T17:24:00.004-04:00

I watched episodes three and four, "Revenge of the Sith" and "A New Hope," with my family this weekend. I hate the fact that the original movie is now "episode four" and has a new title. I didn't go watch "A New Hope" 30 years ago, and I don't know why Lucas would want to change the name. As for series numbering, if he wanted to be really geeky (and appeal to his primary fan base), he could have used -2, -1, and 0 for the first three. More realistically, he could have done something a little creative and called the first three episodes a, b, and c.

Add Darth Sidious and General Grievous to the list of Lucas's lame names.

Episode 3 was pretty good, but I found 2 to be my favourite of the prequels. Nothing really convinced me that Anakin would go over to the dark side. Saving his wife would have been sufficient cause, but it just wasn't carried out in such a way as to make me believe it. He was, after all, fiercely loyal to the jedi.

The transition from democracy to empire was handled very credibly, I thought. We only see it in the broad outlines, but the principles were there. The good side changes completely between episodes 2 and 4, from the central government to the rebels, and my kids took a little time to get used to that. I like it, because it will help them understand when I explain that the rebels were the good side in the American Civil War. The one problem with the whole transition is that there doesn't seem to be enough time. Luke only looks about 20 years old, but Obi-Wan seems to have aged far more. The Empire Strikes Back has a more serious problem, because it appears that Luke's entire jedi training occurs during a period of a day or two while Han Solo and company are fleeing from Darth Vader.

I still think the original Star Wars is the best movie of the series. I'm sure I'm biased because it was the first one I saw, and I was 8 and impressionable at the time. But I can make a case for it. There is something about beginning the story in medias res, with a hostile boarding, and figuring out the story as you go along. Also, none of the other movies had the talent of Alex Guiness (except for a brief shot in episode 5); he really made an impression in that movie. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher were also excellent. None of the acting in the first three movies approaches their performances. Another winning feature of Star Wars is the attempt to destroy the Death Star. The shots of the rebel pilots as they approach the enemy, alternately determined and scared, are captivating.

My kids commented on the slowness of the light saber fights in Star Wars compared to the three prequels. They are right, but then, they also seem a bit more real -- more fighting and less dancing. The light saber is one of George Lucas's great creations. Here's one where he nailed the name perfectly. How much lamer would it be if it were called "light sword"? It's especially amazing considering the limited special effects Lucas had to work with back in 1975 when he started the first film. The crackling sound from crossed sabers came from magnetic interference that one of his colleagues accidentally discovered and decided to use.

The light sabers in the prequels all seem to be perfectly round, like the toy ones you can buy for kids, but I swear in Star Wars they have an edge. It's not a perfectly sharp edge like a real sword, but there is a distinctively thin side to go with the flat side, and you can see it as they turn. One good thing about light sabers: no blood, presumably because they cauterize the wounds as they create them. At least, no blood in the prequels. When Obi-Wan Kenobi kills the bully in the bar, there is definitely blood visible. I presume that George Lucas made a conscious decision to have no blood with light sabers, but he must have made it after the first movie.

Star Wars I

2009-09-06T19:56:00.000-04:00

I watched Star Wars parts I and II with my family in the last week. I had seen part I years ago -- not too long after it came out -- and it was so bad that I didn't want to waste my time seeing part II. I only picked part II out of a video store because I was having trouble finding a PG-rated movie that the whole family would like. Actually, I was having trouble finding PG-rated movies at all. Browsing the shelves of a video store, anything outside of the "Family" and "Kid" sections seems to have about an 80% chance of being rated at least PG-13. I was actually grateful to come upon Star Wars.

Part II turned out to be better than I had expected -- quite a bit better. Then the kids wanted to watch Part I, which I was happy to do, because I realized how little I had remembered from it. On watching it a second time, I now understand why I thought it was so bad. It's because it actually is really, really bad. Let's start with the acting, which was incredibly wooden and uninspiring. In fairness to the actors, however, the script gave them virtually nothing to work with, and I'm sure George Lucas didn't help things with his directing. The plot was confusing, and I still don't understand why it's called "The Phantom Menace." Of course, there's also Jar Jar Binks, whom even my kids found annoying. In addition to being stupid (his most easily recognizable fault), Jar Jar is also very hard to understand when he is speaking. It's not just him, though; many of the characters in Part I speak indistinctly, which is part of the reason why I had such trouble understanding it the first time.

Jar Jar is also exemplary of George Lucas's utter failure at naming people and places in his fictional universe. Great writers can make up unique names that nevertheless sound appropriate in their setting. J.R.R. Tolkien was a master of this: who wouldn't recognize an elvish name from an orcish one, just from the name? He was a linguist, so perhaps that is an unfair comparison, but almost any writer is better than Lucas. I thought Frank Herbert's names were usually quite good. Lucas had a couple of big hits -- fortunately for him, involving major characters -- with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. And then you have Greedo; I'm sure a lot of thought went into that one. And Lando Calrissian. And Schmi. And Count Dooku, and Darth Tyranus, and of course Jar Jar. Then there are the place names, like Naboo and (my favourite) Tatooine. Don't these names sound silly to him?

The Awful Truth

2009-09-02T22:23:00.006-04:00

Kudos to David Brooks for being honest, even when it is embarrassing. In an interview with the New York Times (cited in this article in The New Republic), he gives this account of one of his first meetings with the president: “'I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,' Brooks says, 'and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.'”

Brooks has fallen victim to sartorial determinism, a famous historical fallacy that holds that the best-dressed men make the best political leaders. Many profound thinkers have fallen to this fallacy in the past: Voltaire, for example, was inspired to write his book "The Age of Louis XIV" based solely on the king's plush robe and tights, and Carl Sandburg wrote his biography of Abraham Lincoln because he was infatuated with stovepipe hats. Most modern political theorists have moved on to more sophisticated forms of analysis, but you have to credit Brooks for owning up to his views, however antiquated.

Brooks also candidly admitted his chauvinism for like-minded intellectuals: “I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us," he reported. I've never had much use for the concept of "the Other," but here Brooks openly acknowledges that people who don't talk like him -- and one would have to think Sarah Palin would fall very distinctly into that category -- are a different class altogether, apparently incomprehensible because they are different. No doubt a lot of other liberal intellectuals feel the same way, which is why Palin got such a harsh response out of all proportion to things she actually said or did. Most of them would not admit it in quite the terms that Brooks did, of course; but then, Brooks has some cover for his intellectual snobbism because he used to be on the other side (and maybe still thinks he is). It's one thing for a dyed-in-the-wool liberal to admit his disdain for non-intellectuals, and quite another for a thoughtful conservative who happens to have become liberal in recent years to do so.

The degree to which Brooks has become one of those knee-jerk liberals, however, is clear from a chart that Obama recently sent him, personally signed by the president with the words “Dear Comrade Brooks.” It's not that striking that the president would refer to Brooks in friendly terms, but that he would use Communist terminology like "comrade" just floors me. No anti-Communist conservative would want to be included among the comrades, but apparently Brooks didn't think anything of it.

Expressions

2009-08-28T21:19:00.001-04:00

Someone at work used the expression "We'll do" yesterday. It's supposed to be "Will do," as in, "Could you open that account for me?" -- "Will do." No big deal, just interesting how people misunderstand things.

Another one, which bothers me a lot more for some reason, is "kitty-corner." It was originally "cater-corner," but is now usually "catty-corner" (http://www.dailywritingtips.com/the-post-office-is-kitty-corner-to-the-court-house/). The expression has nothing to do with cats or kittens of course -- apparently it bears some relation to the French "quatre," four, but I don't know how this led to the sense of "diagonal" -- but some people can't hear "catty" without thinking "kitty."

I think the phrase "can't win for losing" is a Southernism; in any case, my parents both used it, and I don't hear it much elsewhere. The one time that stands out to me was in Ann Arbor, when I heard a University of Michigan student say, "I can't win for trying." That attempt to use an unfamiliar expression fell flat -- it made no sense, and sounded kind of pathetic. "For" means "because" in this sense; you can't win because you're losing -- not you can't win because you're trying! Of course, it's kind of a silly phrase to begin with -- losing is not a reason for failing to win -- but it does express a meaningful sentiment: a sense of hopelessness, with no idea why one can't succeed.

Outbursts

2009-08-26T13:46:00.002-04:00

I found out this week that the ticker symbol for Crocs, Inc. is CROX. I like that, for some reason.

I have to speak out in support of Hilary Clinton, of all people, regarding her "outburst" in the Congo a few weeks ago. I don't actually think what she said was all that much of an outburst, and not a serious problem. I think anybody can understand why she was annoyed at the question -- what a weird question, in any case -- and why she answered it as she did. She could have given a better answer, of course. The best would have been to pass quickly over the reference to Bill and state her opinion, rather than making that the center of her answer (and not answering). But she didn't yell or attack the questioner.

I think similarly about Barbara Boxer's comments to the general who called her "ma'am" instead of "senator." I don't view her comments as favourably, chiefly because there is nothing wrong with being called "ma'am," and nothing in the title "ma'am" that conflicts with the title of senator. The speaker was using a normal form of polite address. I don't know the finer points of etiquette, but I'm not aware that there's anything unusual about calling someone sir or ma'am if they have another title. After all, people in the army frequently call their superiors "sir" rather than using their ranks, and I'm pretty sure I've heard people call the president "sir" instead of "President" or "Mr. President." Her words were not, however, really harsh. In fact, they were quite polite, as written. What I don't know about Boxer's incident is the tone of voice that she spoke in. It's easy to imagine the same words being spoken with bitterness, which would be totally uncalled for in the circumstances. Just reading them, however, they didn't strike me as especially rough.

I wish I had something interesting to add on the Obama as joker posters and all the brouhaha over town halls recently. Most of it seems pretty clear to me. I don't particularly like the poster -- I just don't like images like that -- but liberals have no ground to stand on in criticizing it unless they criticized the image of Bush as joker that came out a few years ago -- and I doubt a single one of them did. Democratic hypocrisy over the town hall protests is rife, obvious, and predictable. Anyone on the right could have guessed that Democrats would suddenly turn against opposition and protests once they controlled the government, and they have. It's galling, because apparently they are completely unaware of what they are doing, or else perhaps they are just unrepentant hypocrites who don't mind changing their values when their interests change. Also, of course, one doesn't read the sort of outraged accounts in the news that one would if it were Republicans talking. I suppose it would bother me even more if the Democrats were only now taking a popular stance that got the American populace behind them. Instead, however, they are railing pointlessly at American citizens and making fools of themselves, so the fact that their comments are also hypocritical does not contribute much additional frustration.

Sour

2009-08-24T23:47:00.000-04:00

Medicine names often come in two parts, the main name and a second word that I suppose indicates the class of chemical, such as hydrochloride (Prozac, for example, is fluoxetine hydrochloride). I recently discovered a medicine with an unusual second word, "malate," which prompted me to look it up. Malate is a form of malic acid, a chemical that gives sour fruits their flavour. The name is derived from the Latin "malum," apple, because of its presence in green apples. Apparently it is an important substance in biochemistry, although I don't understand any of the technical reasons. But it is interesting that food manufacturers often add malate to foods to give them a sour or tart flavour.

Malate is also found in grapes, some of which my wife grew this year in our yard. You don't realize just how tasteless store-bought grapes are until you taste home-grown grapes. Store-bought grapes are also big and juicy, but they hardly have any flavour. My wife's grapes are small and have seeds in them, but they have a strong grape flavour. The seeds are a bit of a pain, as they adhere to the fleshy part of the grape, making it hard to separate them so you can enjoy the flavour. But, what a flavour! You have not tasted grapes until you have tried some like these. I can only assume that wine grapes are more like these, or else wines would taste like water.

Today is St. Bartholmew's Day (St. Bart to his friends), and therefore the anniversary of the massacre of that name that occurred 437 years ago in Paris. It not only led Henry of Navarre, later Henry IV, to convert to Catholicism to save himself, but it was also one of the decisive events in French history. Considering the rate at which Protestantism had been growing to that time, absent some decisive action it might have become the dominant religion; or else France might have been plunged into civil wars even more serious than the ones they actually experienced in the second half of the 16th century.

Medicine

2009-08-20T22:25:00.001-04:00

Medicines almost always have two names: the brand name, and the generic name. Tylenol is the brand name for a medicine containing acetaminophen, and Motrin is a brand name for a medicine containing ibuprofen. I always try to learn the generic name, because the same active ingredient can often be found in different brands, and I like to know what exactly I'm getting. I started learning generic names so I could identify whether store brands contain the same medicine as the more expensive brands, but I have found it useful in other cases as well. For example, there are various kinds of pain medications, most of which contain some combination of acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and aspirin; by looking at the exact contents, I can tell what I am actually getting.

Another type of medication with a confusing variety of choices are antihistamines and decongestants (which are often combined in the same pill). The only one that ever seemed to work for me was Actifed, but one of its active ingredients, pseudophedrine, was placed under restriction a few years ago because people were converting it into methamphetamine. Actifed was unavailable for a while, and then, when it came back, it didn't have the same effect on me. I discovered that, contrary to what one would expect, they had done away not only with the pseudophedrine (the decongestant), but also with the triprolidine (the antihistamine), and were marketing a completely different medicine under the same name. It didn't take long to figure out that pseudophedrine was not the drug that was helping me, but I couldn't find triprolidine anywhere until a kind pharmacist special ordered some. It's marketed under a couple of different names, and it's actually very cheap, but you won't find it in any store that I've seen.

As a side note, I would like to say that this is a perfect example of unwanted government interference. I am ambivalent about the war on drugs, but I am clear on one thing: I don't want my right to an effective medicine to be curtailed because some people are turning a beneficial chemical into something that they can get high on.

“Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” --Barack Obama (link)

Story

2009-08-19T19:03:00.000-04:00

Daisy was out standing in her field. It wasn't actually her field -- it belonged to Farmer Fred -- but she lived in it, and she thought of it as hers. She had risen early, as usual, to do her cowesthenics. Now she was done, and the other cows were starting to wander out onto the field. "Bullcrap!" muttered Elsie as she stepped in something on her way over to Daisy.

"Actually, it's cow crap," Daisy said. "They don't allow bulls in here."

They both turned to look across the field toward where Ferdinand, the farm's bull, stood grazing. "He's quite a stud," Daisy muttered dreamily.

"Well, today's your lucky day," answered Elsie, "although I don't know what you see in him. He's kind of wimpy."

Elsie had come from another farm, and she was always finding things to criticize about Daisy's farm. Daisy just ignored her. She pitied Elsie and her complaining. Not only had it turned all the other cows against her, but Daisy knew that Elsie could not possibly be happy if she had that much to complain about.

Later that afternoon, Daisy waddled jauntily through the gate and into Ferdinand's field. She gave him a big cow-lipped smile and turned away from him, waiting. Ferdinand walked around to face her. Daisy smiled again, a little embarrassed this time, and turned around once more. Ferdinand sidled up next to her and stood there for a time in embarrassed silence. "What's the matter?" asked Daisy, who was beginning to think he no longer found her attractive.

"Nothing, nothing," said Ferdinand dismissively. "I was just wondering..."

"Yes?" asked Daisy anxiously.

"Don't you want to talk a little bit first?"

Daisy stopped chewing her cud and stared at him.

Ferdinand, clearly embarrassed, tried to explain himself. "You know, just sort of get to know each other. Warm up before getting too intimate."

Daisy backed up slowly to check whether Ferdinand had become a steer. No, that wasn't it.

"What exactly do you mean, 'Warm up'?" she asked in a slow, dignified drawl.

"Well, I just meant, you know, there's no need to be too hasty about things. We've got plenty of time."

"Ferdinand," Daisy replied, "I did not come over here to engage you in conversation."

"Well, it doesn't have to be a conversation," Ferdinand answered. "Just some small talk, maybe some nuzzling. Doesn't it seem a little beastly just to jump into the act right away? It makes me feel like an animal."

Daisy was thoroughly disgusted by now. "You are an animal," she spat at him. "And it does not seem in the least beastly to do what comes perfectly naturally. I'm going to leave here now with what little dignity I have left. I will give you one more chance next time, but I will not be humiliated like this again." With that she strutted out of Ferdinand's pen, moving her tail ostentatiously back and forth as she went.

Ferdinand lay down frustrated in the grass. He had never felt so worthless. He had glimpsed that the union of a cow and a bull could be so much more than a simple animal pairing; it could be a trascendent experience, a chance to be more than just a bovine. But what good was that vision when everyone else still thought of it in such base terms?

Peggy Noonan

2009-08-17T21:17:00.004-04:00

Peggy Noonan is a very smart woman. She has figured out that Barack Obama is, in her words, "brilliant at becoming president but not being president." She goes on to add, "Actually a lot of them are like that these days." Here's the thing, Mrs. Noonan. A person running for president can say virtually anything. He can oppose every policy of the man sitting in office, assure the electorate that he will correct every public ill, swear up and down that he will bring a new spirit of bipartisanship to the office. He can do this because he has no record as president to demonstrate what he will actually do. Once he becomes president, it is an entirely different matter. Suddenly, shutting down Guantanamo prison isn't so simple; suddenly, withdrawing our troops from Iraq involves complications. Whether the candidate willfully ignored these problems, or was honestly ignorant of them, doesn't matter. The point is that his promises run up against reality, and he has to change his course. I'll give one example: his promise to go through the budget, "line by line," and eliminate earmarks. This is a noble goal, and, if he actually does it, I will praise Barack Obama as a true visionary. Given, however, that not even members of Congress read the budget all the way through, and given how entrenched earmarks are in our system, I will be astounded if this actually happens. It's easy to say, and everyone likes it, but it is very, very hard to do.

Ideally, no one would get elected running on impossible promises; unfortunately, no one gets elected running on reasonable ones. If you want to know how someone will behave in office, your best guide is not what he says he will do, but what he has done in the past. That's why it's helpful if the person has actually been in politics for awhile, and has a record that one can look at. Peggy Noonan asserts that there are certain "things one always wants people currently rising in government to know deep in their heads and hearts." How is one to judge whether they know these things deeply, or if they are just saying them? Electing a one-term senator whose term isn't half over when he begins running for president deprives you of any way of knowing what he will do as president. Those who, like Peggy Noonan, listen to the rhetoric of presidential candidates over their actual record are doomed to elect people who are brilliant at becoming, rather than being, president. They know all the right buttons to press to get in office, but they don't necessarily know what to do once the hard decisions come up. Some of us already had an idea of this last year, when Noonan was telling us how wonderful Obama was.

I've heard some people advocate changing our current laws so that a president could only serve for one six-year term. Instead of that, I wonder if they shouldn't be limited to one four-year term at a time. They could still run again, just not consecutively. If you were choosing a president among two candidates, both of whom had served before, there would be less of the mystery of what they would do when in office. There truly is nothing like being president; no one knows how someone will handle the job. One supposes that there are certain things that only a president and a few top advisors even know; who can guess what national security secrets constrain a president's actions in ways that he can't tell the electorate? Having two former presidents running for office would have a lot of advantages in giving the electorate more information about what it was voting for. I would even suggest that a two- or three-year term might be better. The Romans made do with one-year terms for their consuls. That might be too little considering the size of the United States (even granted all the communications advantages we have now), but I don't see anything fundamentally implausible about two-year terms. The president would have plenty of time to act, and the people would have an early enough occasion to turn him out of office if it saw fit.

Georgia

2009-08-13T22:19:00.005-04:00

I'm back in Georgia, and adjusting once again to the Deep South. For me, this mostly means getting used to the brutal summer heat -- over 100 degrees and humid on many days. Other people seem to have the idea that the Deep South is a foreign country. One friend of mine, otherwise intelligent, asked me, "Are they all Neanderthals down there?" No, they are human down here, and mostly not that much different from what you'd find in other parts of America; the days of the South being really distinctive are over. Apart from more subtle cultural differences -- attitudes and assumptions -- there are some differences that anyone would notice right away:

the Deep South accent. I never get tired of hearing it, but not everyone is equally receptive.
"Yes, sir." You feel like a gentleman (or lady) down here because everyone says "sir" and "ma'am." It's a good feeling, and easy to get into the habit of speaking the same way to other people. (They are generally nice as well, but that's a more subtle point, unless you come from New Haven or somewhere with especially rude inhabitants.)
You might think they have a lot of country music stations down here, but what they really have are a lot of Christian stations. When I was scanning through the dial to find the stations that I used to listen to, the first four stations I heard were Christian.
Of course, there are some country stations, though not as much as you would think. But you hear more Hank Williams, Jr. on them.
Georgia vehicles only require license plates on the rear. As far as I know, there is no law that pickup trucks have to a plate with the old Georgia flag on the front, but it is amazing how many do. (Mine included.)
Georgia grows a lot of peanuts, but have you ever heard of boiled peanuts? I discovered these at my kids' soccer games being sold at the concession stand. They taste kind of like what you would expect, like mushy peanuts. I didn't particularly like them, but my wife assures me that she has had some that are much better, so I'm looking forward to trying them from a different source.

Everyone associates Georgia with peaches, and for good reason. However, you will not find store-bought peaches to be noticeably cheaper or tastier here than elsewhere; you have to find some sold at a stand. What I did not associate so much with Georgia, before moving here, was pecans. I do now, especially since my neighbourhood was built on a pecan orchard. Most yards still have several pecan trees in them -- thankfully not mine, because they drop enormous numbers of pecans on the ground, which have to be gathered up if they are not to lay there and rot. We can gather all the pecans we want from the common areas in the neighbourhood, then take them up the road to a small operation that has a machine to shell them automatically, for a reasonable fee. I have yet to eat a real Georgia pecan pie, and have not tried to make one, but I love spiced pecans made from a recipe like this one.

I live in Centerville, which is sort of a suburb of Warner Robins, which is sort of a suburb of Macon -- anyway, it's close to Macon, and they kind of run in to each other. Centerville is not much more than a residential community. Warner Robins is where most of the action is. It was called Wellston until it was renamed after Robins Air Force Base, the biggest employer around here. The sucking up didn't stop there: the town's official motto is EDIMGIAFAD, which is an acronym for "Every Day In Middle Georgia Is Armed Forces Appreciation Day." Yes, it's nauseating, but otherwise it's a nice place to live, so I try to pretend it doesn't exist. (It's harder to ignore the name of the town, however.)

We live in Houston County. That's pronounced "How-ston," not like the little town in Texas. Sports are big here and in the surrounding counties. Young kids play soccer, just like they do elsewhere -- in fact, there's a huge youth soccer complex in town. The big sports, however, are baseball and football. Just two years ago, the Warner Robins All-Stars won the Little League World Series. College football coaches frequently visit the area to look at top recruits.

Everyone here is a Georgia Bulldogs fan. Most of them actually attended, but they are all fans. Unlike in Virginia, where there was a big rivalry between UVa and Virginia Tech, I find no such rivalry between Georgia and Georgia Tech. I see maybe one Tech bumper sticker for every 20 Georgia bumper stickers. The big rivals are Auburn and Florida, especially Florida. The football teams play in Jacksonville, a neutral site, at "the world's largest outdoor cocktail party." The rivalry has not been good to Georgia in recent years, but there is reason to believe that is changing. Anyway, Georgia fans are used to suffering: their pro team, the Atlanta Falcons, had only won one division championship prior to 1998, and have never won a Super Bowl. I will close with one of my favourite jokes ever, told to me by a Falcons fan (and native of middle Georgia, not far from where I live now) in 1998, the first (and only, as of this writing) time the Falcons played in the Super Bowl:

A new arrival in Hell was brought before the devil. The devil told his demon to put the man to work on a rock pile with a 20-pound sledge hammer in 95 degree heat with 95% humidity.

At the end of the day, the devil went to see how the man was doing, only to find him smiling and singing as he pounded rocks. The man explained that the heat and hard labor were very similar to those on his beloved farm back in Georgia.

The devil told his demon to turn up the heat to 120 degrees, with 100% humidity. At the end of the next day, the devil again checked on the new man,and found him still happy to be sweating and straining. The man explained that it felt like the old days, when he had to clean out his silo in the middle of August on his beloved farm back in Georgia.

At that, the devil told his demon to lower the temperature for this man to -20 degrees with a 40 mph wind. At the end of the next day, the devil was confident that he would find the man miserable. But, the man was instead singing louder than ever,twirling the sledge hammer like a baton. When the devil asked him why, he was so happy, the man answered,

"Cold day in hell, the Falcons must be in the SuperBowl!"

Y words

2009-08-12T22:21:00.005-04:00

Recently I got to wondering about words with the letter "y" in them. Not words that begin with y -- those are fairly common -- or words that end with y -- those are really common -- but words that have a y somewhere in the middle. Naturally, I excluded multi-part words in which the y was at the beginning or end of one part of the word; thus, "shyness" would not qualify.

The first words that occurred to me were names: Clytemnestra and Odysseus, from Greek myth. That turned out to be a good hint, because almost all of the other words I could think of also derived from Greek. This is a little ironic because, as far as I know, the Greek character for y, upsilon, is pronounced more like "u" than our long "i" sound. I did manage to find 6 English words with y in the middle, but I'll save those for the end of this post (see how many you can get -- I'm sure I missed plenty of others).

Most of the Greek-derived words used prefixes that contained the letter y. Some obvious ones include "hyper-" (above), "hypo-" (below), "sym-" or "sy-" (together), "psycho-" (soul), "physi-" (nature), "cycl-" (circle), and "hydro-" (water). Here are some less common ones that you might see:

Prefix	Meaning	Examples
xylo-	wood	xylophone
cryo-	ice	crystal, cryogenics
phyto-	plant
ctyo-	cell	cytoplasm
pyro-	fire	pyromaniac
myo-	muscle	myocardial infarction (heard attack)
gyro-	ring	gyrate, gyroscope
cyan-	blue	cyan, cyanide

"Thyme," which looks Anglo-Saxon, is actually derived from Greek. But "rhyme," which looks Greek, is genuinely English. It was originally spelled "rime," but apparently adopted its modern spelling in imitation of the Greek word "rhythm."

Another y word not derived from Greek is wyvern, a sort of dragon. The other English words containing y that I was able to come up with all follow the same pattern: dye, lye, rye, and eye.

In addition to my own brainstorming, I found a wonderful site that actually allows one to search on words containing y. I'm sure that anyone who searches that list is bound to discover more y words without Greek origin. Several that I see come to English through Spanish: arroyo, canyon, coyote. Another foreign word that we have come to hear a lot in the past 30 years is ayatollah. Somehow, it doesn't bother me to have missed those words, but I am aghast that I didn't think of crayon.

WEeeePC!

2009-08-11T16:41:00.002-04:00

Some years ago -- nearly 10 by now, I think -- I had a Sony Vaio laptop. It was the thinnest, lightest laptop I had ever seen, and everyone who saw it stopped to gawk. It had one major drawback, which was that it didn't have a cd-rom drive (and we didn't buy the external one), which made it hard to install software. Oh, one other drawback: it broke several times, and eventually BestBuy replaced it with a new one of a different kind.

I always liked that laptop, and now I have one much like it: the Asus EeePC 1000. The 1000 has a 10" screen, which means it is quite a bit bigger than earlier versions of the EeePC. I chose this size not for the screen, however, but for the keyboard: I wanted a computer that I could type at with ease, and those smaller versions just didn't work for me. Although the keyboard on the 1000 is still not 100% the size of a regular keyboard, it is close enough that I can type easily with few mistakes.

The screen came as a bit of a shock to me. I knew it was smaller, but somehow it didn't sink in just how much smaller until I actually started using it. I don't have too much trouble viewing it, but sometimes I wish things were bigger. Unfortunately, changing screen resolutions from the native 1264 x 600 or whatever it is to 800 x 600 makes everything look distorted. You can still zoom in on many applications (web browser, word processor), so it's not that big a deal.

I do have one confession to make. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I bought my EeePC with Windows pre-installed. It's not that I wanted Windows -- I quickly installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it as my standard OS -- but I was concerned that our 3G wireless internet wouldn't work on Linux (it hasn't worked on any of our other Linux computers), and I thought that might be an important feature on such a portable computer. Not only that, but we actually don't have any Windows computers any more, and sometimes we need access to one (for example, for the cheat that my son bought for his DS, which I can't get to work with Linux). I really hate spending my money on a Windows computer -- the last couple I bought have had Linux pre-installed -- but I thought it was the best option on this occasion. But only with a heavy heart.

Ubuntu looks really, really slick on the EeePC. The interface is not only stylish, but also significantly easier to use with a touchpad and small screen that the same old tired interface that Windows provides. Wireless did not work right away, but I didn't have too much trouble installing ndiswrapper and an updated kernel. The hardest part was figuring out where to find the right packages, since the wired NIC also didn't work, so I couldn't use the good old apt-get interface (or Synaptic); I had to download the debs to a usb drive and copy them over manually. Now, however, it is working fine. I haven't had any problems with Adobe Flash, either, as some users apparently do (although I was annoyed to find that my whole Firefox profile was wiped out when I installed it! -- thankfully there wasn't much to wipe out at that early stage). The camera also appears to work fine. The one current issue is the microphone, which none of the fixes I have tried actually works. Linux has always given me a heck of a time with microphones. Normally I wouldn't care so much, but I was hoping to use the Eee for video Skype calls, so I may be restricted to Windows for that.

Battery life is not extraordinary -- 3 to 4 hours -- but the battery seems to outperform the estimated time remaining consistently, which is nice. I can pretty much use it all day, sleeping when I'm not using it, and not have any problems. Interestingly, Windows doesn't provide a hibernate option (suspend to disk, using no power), whereas Ubuntu does -- and it is the only time hibernate has ever worked for me under Linux.

The Eee is light and thin, no doubt about that. It is actually sort of wedge-shaped, with the larger side toward the back. For some reason, this annoys me, but I don't think there's any serious practical disadvantage.

Boot up times are a little faster than for desktops, but nothing super-fast. I'm looking forward to installing a version of Puppy Linux on it to see how snappy that will run.

I managed to stretch the life on my old laptop a little by running Puppy Linux from the cd drive after the hard drive ceased to work, but that only lasted until the cd also broke. I haven't had a really functional laptop in several years, and I'm excited now to have one that is smaller, lighter, and faster than any I have had before. Although Asus makes a point of saying that netbooks are useful for lighter tasks like email and web surfing, in fact the Eee has more ram and as much speed as my current desktop, so I'm not sacrificing anything by using it.

Tappahannock

2009-08-05T20:37:00.001-04:00

My family lived in the metropolis of Tappahannock (pop.: 2068) for the last few months. It may seem an odd place for people looking for work, but there was a good reason. My dad grew up there, and some years ago bought a small house (my wife insists that it is a "cottage") there where we could live rent-free until we get permanent jobs. This gave me a chance to explore Tappahannock in a way that I never did when I was growing up (in spite of our frequent visits).

Tappahannock lies, appropriately, along the Rappahannock River, on Virginia's "Middle Penninsula." There are four major rivers that empty into the Chesapeake Bay through Virginia: from north to south, the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James. They divide tidewater Virginia into three penninsulas: again starting in the north, the Northern Neck, the Middle Penninsula, and the Virginia Penninsula. (Except for the Northern Neck, which is very old, I'm not sure how long these names have been around; my dad did not grow up referring to his region as the "Middle Penninsula.") The Virginia Penninsula is where the action is: Hampton, Newport News, Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg are all on it, and Richmond is just a little upriver.

One phone book (and not an especially thick one) covers the other two penninsulas put together, including 10 counties. The Northern Neck is sparsely populated, but it is noted as the home of gentleman farmers, and as the birthplace of some famous Americans: George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, Robert E. Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, and Richard Henry Lee. The Middle Penninsula, by contrast, is not really noted for much of anything. Tappahannock is a small town in the middle of nowhere. When I went to find a Pokemon league for my kids, the closest three were all one hour away: one in Richmond, one in Fredericksburg, and one down the penninsula in Gloucester. Our house, in the middle of the largest neighbourhood and only a five minute walk from the town hall (pictured here), does not even get mail delivered -- we have to have a P.O. box. That's not too bad, however, as the post office is just a few minutes further away than the town hall. Ditches by the roadside catch runoff water, but it just sits there for days, as no drainage is provided. There is one high school in the county, one middle school, and one elementary school.

It's not exactly true that everyone in Tappahannock knows everyone else, but it's pretty close; I doubt any inhabitants are more than two degrees of separation apart. The people are friendly, even by Southern standards, but you might have trouble understanding them. They speak with a peculiar Southern accent, probably shared with the rest of the penninsula, that even baffles me sometimes. I will always remember the time when I was young, maybe about 12, and my parents left me with my cousin and her dad for a while. We were having a conservation when the question came up whether I liked cone. I was confused, because I had never seen "cone" by itself like that. I though they were referring to an icecream cone, but they emphatically denied that. We went around and around for a few minutes, becoming a little exasperated with one another, before one of them finally hit on a way to explain it: "you know, like cone on the cob." Ah, good old cone on the cob. I joke about the accent, but I really like to listen to them speak this way. Other peculiarities include calling a dog a "duhg,", and the pronunciation of the most noted restaurant in town, Lowery's, which everyone calls "Larry's."

Tappahannock has its own style of naming people, too. The only two people I've ever known with the first name of "Tallie" were from Tappahannock. One of the big entrepreneurs in town for the last 50 years has been a man named June Parker. And these are real names. Then there are what I presume to be nicknames, such as our next-door neighbour, Pinky; my cousin two streets over, Binky; and one of my kids' friends, Dinky.

Given this penchant for nicknames, one might have expected a more flamboyant name for the town. Tappahannock was originally known as Hobbs' Hole, but the inhabitants changed the name to something more palatable. I'm not sure they did much for their reputation by calling it Tappahannock, which is long and yet too similar to the river on which it sits (both Tappahannock and Rappahannock are variants of the same Algonquin word meaning "where the water rises and falls"). It is definitely a river town, heavily dependent on fishing and shipping. In the spring they now have a town festival with the affected name of "Rivahfest." It's true that people in Tappahannock drop their r's (this is called "non-rhotic" speech and is common along the Atlantic seaboard), but I don't like adopting the dialect into the title; "Riverfest" would have done fine.

Tappahannock is an old town, though not quite as old as the 1608 they claim on their seal (the site was visited by John Smith that year, but no town was founded). It is not, as I thought it might be, a time warp to the past. Its population has been growing rapidly (25% in the 1990's) and recent immigrants have brought typical American accents and attitudes. It is not so much different from elsewhere as simply smaller. There is less of everything, but there is a Wal-Mart and a Lowe's and high-speed internet access and a tiny little public library. Still, if you're not in too much of a hurry, you can catch the slower pace of Tappahannock. It's not the same as the town in the stories from my father's youth, but the people still like fishing and having long talks with neighbours (which is very easy with the small back yards and lack of privacy fences). If you're suffering from the rat race, you would do well to spend some time in Tappahannock.

Work

2009-08-04T20:36:00.001-04:00

"If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." I have always lived by these words of wisdom from G.K.Chesterton. You probably think he has it backwards, but I understand exactly what he means: it's better to do a job halfway than not at all. Imagine your car is covered in mud, and you rinse it off with a hose. That would be considered a poor excuse for a wash by most people, but you will have improved the appearance of your car drastically. If you go on to wash it carefully by hand, you will spend much more time and energy -- maybe 30 minutes instead of the 5 minutes to hose it down -- and your car will look only a little better. Some people probably won't notice the difference unless they look closely, but everyone will notice that you got the mud off.

If this seems illogical to you, it might make more sense if you think of the 80/20 rule. This "rule" (more like a rule of thumb) states that 20% of the work on a project accomplishes 80% of the task, and the remaining 80% of the work will go into the final 20% of the job. There is no guarantee that this exact proportion will apply to any specific task, of course, but basic economic theory tells you that the marginal utility will decrease the more work you do.

(I've always wondered if this law of decreasing marginal utility might only apply after a certain point. It's it possible that the first chocolate bar gets you excited for a second, so that the second actually tastes better? Eventually, the utility must go down, but I don't think it always begins at the first unit. Moreover, there must be some cases where the next amount of work completes a unit, and therefore has more value than the rest. Imagine if you are building a car, and in the last stage you attack the drive train and engine. Surely that makes the car worth far more than the prior step? Arguably the car should be worth the final value minus the drive train, engine, and the labour to install it. But could you really get that value for it? You can sell a whole car on a dealer's lot and take advantage of the brand name, warranty, existing networks, and so forth; but a shell of a car would have none of that benefit, and adding them things in later by a third party would decidedly not make it a "Ford car" or whatever manufacturer we're talking about.)

So I never "let the perfect be the enemy of the good": I always like to jump into a project that needs doing, even if I know I'm going to do a lousy job. But there is a limitation to this logic. Having a project 80% done might make it worth a good deal to you, but it would be a disaster to try to sell it as an example of your work. Everyone would think you did a sloppy job, and they would be right; and they wouldn't buy from you again. You would want to get it at least 95% complete (assuming 100% = perfect and therefore not attainable). In fact, if you produce individual works that your reputation rides on -- paintings or symphonies, for example -- it might well be worth your trouble to get it 99.9% complete, even if it means you have to spend years on the final 0.9%. People will remember you as the person who produced a nearly perfect work, and your reputation will benefit you, including in financial terms.

Since I began this blog entry with Chesterton, I thought I would close it with him, as well. If you have not read any of his Father Brown mysteries, you really should. He is an extraordinary writer, one of the most evocative I have ever read. The first 2/3rds of "The Man Who Was Thursday" is brilliant, although by the end it gets a little weird for me. Since he wrote short stories, however, you can easily read one and see if you like him. I'm convinced you will.

Marxism revisited

2009-08-03T20:16:00.001-04:00

I watched "Animal Crackers" this weekend, and I found it a mixed bag. It seemed to have more good lines than "A Night At The Opera," but I still didn't find myself doubled up with laughter. At one point, Harpo dealt cards for pinochle, in what may be the only funny thing I've seen him do. Best line: "One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know."

Did you know that Groucho's moustache was painted on? I never realized that. Now that I know, I can see it, but I'm surprised it's not more obvious. Probably the poor video quality makes it easier to hide; Groucho's blond wig is supposed to be red. Groucho did grow a moustache for his television show, "You Bet Your Life."

And now for that other kind of Marxism, historical materialism. I was attending a history conference once when a professor (Henry Heller) began his paper by pompously declaring that Marxism provides a more "sophisticated" basis for analysis than other theories. Apparently, it didn't strike him as ironic that he was calling a monocausal philosophy "sophisticated." Explaining all of history by reference to man's quest for material goods may be many things, but one thing it cannot be is sophisticated. To the contrary, it is reductionist. I happen to agree with Marxists that people are extraordinarily self-interested actors; I just think they have motivations other than the acquisition of wealth.

The beautiful magnolia tree apparently evolved before bees, so it is adapted to pollination by beetles. I wish I knew what specific adaptations would be conducive to beetle-borne pollination.

Yesterday, I was treated to a tuba accompanying the usual assortment of instruments in the church service. My assessment is that it did not work well. First Baptist: bringing you the sounds of the beer hall in church.

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.
Edmund Burke