I made it.

Books I Read in 2009

I don't just watch movies. I read books too. Asterisk means it was on the MLA's top 100 English-language novels of the 20th century; bold means it was among the ten best I read.

Lilith Saintcrow, Dead Man Rising, 2006
Walter Mosely, Black Betty, 1994
*William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, 1929
James Duplacey, Hockey’s Book of Firsts, 2007
Eric Ambler, Background to Danger, 1937
James Ellroy, Killer on the Road, 1986
Caleb Carr, The Alienist, 1994
John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In, 2004
Joseph Wambaugh, Floaters, 1996
Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Quarry, 1961
DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little, 2003
William Kennedy, The Flaming Corsage, 1996
Lilith Saintcrow, The Devil’s Right Hand, 2007
Bill Willingham et al., Fables 1: Legends in Exile, 2002
Eric Powell, The Goon: Chinatown and the Mystery of Mr. Wicker, 2007
*Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, 1921
Spain Rodriguez & William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley, 1946/2003
Maggie O’Farrell, My Lover’s Lover, 2002
Bill Willingham et al., Fables 2: Animal Farm, 2003
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, 2005
Susan Brownmiller, Femininity, 1984
Bill Willingham et al., Fables 3: Storybook Love, 2004
Lilith Saintcrow, Saint City Sinners, 2007
*Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men, 1946
Iceberg Slim, Mama Black Widow, 1969
S.P. Somtow, Riverrun, 1991
S.P. Somtow, Armorica, 1992
S.P. Somtow, Yestern, 1996
Bill Willingham et al., Fables 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers, 2004
George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman, 1969
Andrew Pyper, The Wildfire Season, 2005
Christopher Hibbert, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, 1974
Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Painter of Battles, 2006 (2008 trans.)
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movie Wars, 2000
Robert Polito, Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, 1995
Richard L. Harris, Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara’s Last Mission, 1970
*Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, 1903
Dennis Lehane, Coronado, 2006
Lilith Saintcrow, To Hell and Back, 2008
Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels, 1966
*John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath, 1939
Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Craig Nova, Trombone, 1992
John Horne Burns, The Gallery, 1947
*Henry Green, Loving, 1945
Aeschylus, The Oresteia, 458 BC
James L. Swanson, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, 2006
Nicola Griffith & Stephen Pagel, eds., Bending the Landscape: Horror, 2001
*Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, 1981
Peter Handke, Short Letter, Long Farewell, 1972
Dorothy Hughes, The Expendable Man, 1963
Mihail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, 1840 (1958 trans.)
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides, 1993
Ariana Franklin, The Mistress of the Art of Death, 2007
Nella Larsen, An Intimation of Things Distant, 1930/1992
Lilli Carre, The Lagoon, 2008
Lilli Carre, Nine Ways to Disappear, 2009
Lilli Carre, The Fir Tree, 2009
Lilli Carre, Tales of Woodsman Pete, 2006
Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987
Colin Cotterill, The Coroner’s Lunch, 2004
Walter Mosley, A Little Yellow Dog, 1996
*Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End, 1924-1928

All the Cool Kids Are Doing It

When Thom sends you instructions, you follow them. Especially since he finally hit 1946.

1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Locate the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Inspired by Self-Styled Siren's recent review of a biography of Joseph Breen, I had Frank Walsh's Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry close at hand. Page 123, starting with the fifth sentence:

When a studio representative told Gorman¹ he couldn't understand the basis of his request in view of the Chicago rating², the priest airily responded that Fall River made its own decisions³. It was becoming apparent to Quigley⁴ that in Fall River, every priest was becoming his own movie critic. He advised Paramount to tell Gorman that although it was willing to listen to his concerns, it could not hand over the power to decide what movies could be shown to every bishop in the country.

Notes: (1) Father Edward Gorman, a member of the Catholic Legion of Decency and a priest in Fall River, Massachusetts; (2) the Chicago chapter of the Legion of Decency had come up with its own list of condemned films, which included some that the Production Code Administration had passed with the blessing of the national Legion of Decency; in this instance, Gorman wanted Paramount to withdraw from circulation a movie (Four Hours to Kill) that even Chicago had passed; (3) Fall River was banning films—in this case, The Scoundrel, on the basis of the Chicago list, not the national-Legion-approved list; (4) Martin Quigley, editor/publisher of the Motion Picture Herald and one of the architects of the Production Code.

Equidistant was Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, one of the best badly-written books I've ever read. If an author with an ounce of poetry in him had rewritten it, it would have been half as long and twice as good. But I still enjoyed it immensely; Dreiser's cataloging style attracts the archivist and listmaker in me. Page 123, fifth sentence:

Jessica was beginning to feel that her affairs were her own. George, Jr., flourished about as if he were a man entirely and must needs have private matters. All this Hurstwood could see, and it left a trace of feeling, for he was used to being considered—in his official position, at least—and felt that his importance should not begin to wane here.

Notes: Hurstwood is starting to neglect his family's affairs, being more interested in his newfound attraction to Carrie.

Now, the five: Shane, who probably has something on 18th-century British politics nearby; Angela, who doesn't post enough; Shawn, who went so long without posting that I didn't notice that he started again; Kris, who's being tortured by terrorists; and Amy, who has really good taste in books. (Not that the others don't.)

Not Dead, Just Nearly So

I had plans for blogging about all the year-end awards, my recent trip to San Francisco, and my giddifying attempts to watch all the 2007 movies I've missed along the way (I'm particularly fond of Black Snake Zoo and Before the Devil Knows You're on Horseback and Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Red Road), but I dot a told. Both my favorite art historian and I have been out of commission; we spent a nice New Year's Eve fitfully attempting to catch a few winks between coughing fits, and we're heading for Maine tomorrow, despite being still under the weather.

But when we get back, I'll plunge into these things I used to write, what are they called... movie reviews! And blog posts! My flight lands at 6:00 on Sunday, and by midnight I'll have a post ready for StinkyLulu's second annual Supporting Actress Blogathon on an unexpectedly moving performance from someone I've spent time dissing on this very blog.

Best Zombie Comic Book

The late-1990s/early-2000s (well, now mid- to late-2000s, and it's still going strong) zombie revival finds one of its best outlets in Robert Kirkman's comic book series The Walking Dead. Following in George Romero's footsteps, it's less interested in the zombie gore than in how people react to extreme situations. We join the main character, a policeman named Rick Grimes, in a painfully obvious 28 Days Later-inspired beginning: after being injured in a shootout, he wakes up in an abandoned hospital and wanders around shouting "hello? hello?" until he encounters his first zombie. After that shaky start, the series finds some original ground to tread; when Rick makes his way to Atlanta to discover the real extent of the horror and then manages to meet up with a small band of survivors including his wife and son, the series recovers from its weak beginning. It turns into an engaging epic devoted to a long-term exploration of the practical and psychological effects of a zombie takeover.

In the best zombie stories, the zombies aren't the focus, and they aren't scariest thing around. They're pretty predictable: they want to eat the main characters, and they can be expected to take the most direct route to achieving that goal. The real unpredictability comes from the humans. How are they going to react to this new world, after everything they came to know has been overturned? Kirkman understands this, and the bulk of the drama in this series comes from the interactions between the survivors. The first six-issue arc deals with Rick's adjustment to the new world order, his assumption of leadership duties, and his growing conflict with his best friend and former partner, who is in love with Rick's wife Lori. In the old world, these relationships would have been the stuff of soap operas, but here, when nothing is the same, they become life-or-death situations. (Of course, going to the bathroom is a life or death situation when there are zombies afoot.) Later, the search for safe lodgings and the unpredictability of the survivors they meet provide the bulk of the tension.

Kirkman wants to touch on social angles, but it's here that he seems the least comfortable. Early issues mention gender roles; later he presents racial profiling and gay marriage. These usually feel perfunctory, or, worse, overblown, like when Rick insists on his new rule "you kill, you die"—yeah, it's about capital punishment, but he could have found a less strident way of dealing with it. Kirkman is better at the subtler issues, like the general dehumanization the characters experience. It wasn't until one scene where they're figuring out a method of killing the zombies by stabbing them in the head through a wire fence that I realized how blasé they'd gotten, how accepting of death they'd become. Most of the characters have a moment when the dehumanization of the zombies hits home, and each of them is moving in that direction. Midway through the series, we begin to wonder whether the title "Walking Dead" might apply to the living and nonliving alike.

One of the best arcs occurs when the wandering survivors find a gated community and think they've found a permanent stronghold against the zombie hordes. It's here that Kirkman comes closest to George Romero's level of social critique. The community was a sort of paradise before the plague, a place where rich white people fled to escape the world's problems, but those very gates turned into death row for most of them. Their next stop, a prison, completes the overturning of the old order, as the walls that were intended to keep prisoners in become the only thing that can keep the zombies out. Other storylines don't work as well: the various jealousies that arise among the survivors sometimes turn into soap-opera stuff, and a serial-killer subplot that takes up much of the third volume seems like an effort to pad the storyline—but it does lead to the series's single best two-page spread, a nearly wordless nightmare in which Rick seems to crack.

The story plays out in convenient six-issue arcs, and Icon has been releasing a new trade paperback for each arc. They're nice because they're a little bit cheaper, but you miss out on one of the best things about the series: Tony Moore's astounding covers, the best of which is #9. There's a distinct change in the art after issue #6, when Moore left for other projects (but stayed on to do the covers, as he continues to do) and the team of Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn took over. It's looser, with more of a reliance on gray tones than on the contrasts that Moore favored. It took a while to get used to: characters suddenly looked different, like Glenn, who looked vaguely Asian under Moore's pen and less so under Adlard and Rathburn. Moore was more given to dazzling full-page spreads, while Adlard and Rathburn's style is more claustrophobic, but it fits the direction of the story. The change in tones mirrors the change in the book: Rick's initial optimism has faded; his best friend flipped out; and he's now in charge in a situation where none of the rules he knows apply anymore.

The series has hit its early 30s by now (I wrote this a while ago to submit to a now-dormant site), and Kirkman has kept the level of quality pretty high; there are some dips into subplots that don't quite work, and I'm not wild about a particularly gruesome recent issue dealing with torture (the zombie gore doesn't bug me, but that did). But given Kirkman's generally great efforts, I'm sure the series will recover from this misstep. I just read issue #34, which ends with a jaw-dropping surprise, the kind of thing that makes you love and hate the monthly format—I want to know what happens now now now!—and it looks like he's back to his old form.

Legal Goatbeagle

When I used to edit astrophysics articles, I picked up an odd and likely useless assortment of facts and factoids about astrophysics. Now, in my new job as a proofreader of court decisions, I'm picking up some interesting things about the law:

1. I learned the following words or phrases: cicerone (n: a guide for sightseers), ambit (n: sphere of influence), parol (n: something stated, adj: given by word of mouth), laches (n: negligence in observation of duty, specifically undue delay in asserting a legal right or privilege), contumacious (a: stubbornly disobedient), and in medias res (adv: thrown into the middle of a sequence, as in a narrative).

2. I learned that I unwittingly demonstrated an understanding of statutory interpretation when I was a kid: "Expressio unius est exclusio alterius" means "expression of one thing is the exclusion of another." My mom would say "Don't set the house on fire while I'm away," and I'd follow the letter of the law and dutifully not set the house on fire. Of course, she didn't say I couldn't do back-flips on her bed or jump off the roof like Superman, which means they must have been acceptable because they weren't on the banned list.

3. I learned that watches can be enemies of the people. In 2004, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard an unusual case. The plaintiff was the United States of America. The defendants were 2,164 watches, more or less. Really. The case was United States v. 2,164 Watches, More or Less, Bearing a Registered Trademark of Guess?, Inc. 366 F.3d 767 (9th Cir. 2004). What on earth could it have been about? Why "more or less"? Were they moving too fast to count? I have no idea. I could look it up, but I'd rather not. Instead, I relish comedy routines in my head of the courtroom scenes.

4. I learned that under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i), an alien can be deported for any admission or conviction for a violation of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. § 802), other than, specifically, a single offense involving possession for one's own use of 30 grams or less of marijuana. Now, in some states, possession of drug paraphernalia is a felony, and as such, is considered a "crime of moral turpitude" under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(i), and is grounds for deportation. In summary, an alien cannot be deported for possessing marijuana for personal use, but can possibly be deported for possessing a pipe to smoke it in.

Update: Apparently the Supreme Court read my blog, because today they decided that minor drug offenses that are felonies under state law but misdemeanors under federal law are not grounds for deportation.

5. Can a police officer stop you on the street and demand to see your identification? Well, it depends. Terry v. Ohio (1968) says that a police officer can stop people on the street and search them if he or she can "point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant an intrusion." Michigan v. Long (1983) clarifies, saying that such a search is acceptable if "a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger." Then Hiibel v. 6th District Court of Nevada (2004) says that states can statutorially authorize the demand for identification during a so-called Terry stop (after Terry v. Ohio) and can also require compliance with that demand. It's up to the states to decide if there will be penalties for refusing such a "reasonable" and "prudent" demand by an officer. In Illinois, you can be arrested for obstructing an officer for refusing to present ID, under 725 ILCS 5/107-14 (2006). So the answer is, it depends on where you live.

6. Finally, I learned that during jury selection, if a prosecutor strikes a potential juror for reasons the defense suspects are race-related, the defense can challenge the strike. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), outlines the process of the challenge. (1) The defense must establish a prima facie (apparent, on the face of things) case that the strike was race-related. (2) The prosecutor must present a race-neutral reason for the strike. (3) The judge assesses the credibility of the prosecutor's assertion. As summarized in United States v. Montgomery, 210 F.3d 446 (5th Cir. 2000): "The ultimate inquiry is not whether the counsel's reason is suspect, or weak, or irrational, but whether counsel is telling the truth in his or her assertion that the challenge is not race-based." Meaning, even if the judge thinks the strike was in fact race-based, he or she can only judge whether the person doing the striking thinks it was race-based.

Warning: This should not be considered legal advice. Goatdog is not a lawyer, barrister, counsel, soliciter, advocate, attorney-at-law, jurist, jurisprudent, legal adviser, legist, counsellor, or procurator; he is not licensed to practice law or give legal advice in Illinois, Florida, New York, Ohio, or any of the rest of the 50 United States, including the District of Columbia. This is presented in a "hey, isn't this neat?" manner, not a "you'll hear from my lawyer" manner. If you get arrested and begin a sentence with "But Goatdog said," they will laugh at you and throw you in the chokey.

Redesign

I decided to redesign my blog to make it look more like my movie site. I'm still working on it. What do you think? (Aside from the obvious—I need a new banner.)

Seven Things

1. The "turn your head" part of the legendary "turn your head and cough" is simply so that the patient doesn't cough into the doctor's face or hair.

2. I don't like "Imagine the Swan" or "Road Runner" by The Zombies.

3. Little Women, published in 1868, ends just before Meg gets married. The rest of what is usually considered "Little Women" is in fact its sequel, Good Wives, published in 1869. They're often—usually, even—published together, which is why people think of them as a single book. I had to write a paper on Little Women in college, and I got a D on it; the professor wrote, "Try reading the whole book next time." I pointed out, with supporting evidence, that he was thinking of the Little Women/Good Wives mashup, and I ended up with a B.

4. I do, however, like the following songs by The Zombies: "Walking in the Sun," "I Must Move," "She's Not There," "I Remember When I Loved Her," "Can't Nobody Love You," "Don't Go Away," and "Smokey Day." This list is not exhaustive.

5. Till is not short for until, so there's no need to write 'til.

6. I'm down to 42 Best Picture nominees left to watch: 5845 minutes, 97.5 hours, just over four days of Oscar's elite.

7. Other good songs, not by The Zombies, are "Girlfriend" by The Bathers, "Our Swords" by Band of Horses, and "Into My Arms" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. This list is by no means exhaustive.

Somewhere, Jack Bauer Is Smiling

From the "compromise" between Bush and the wayward Republicans over torture, the Geneva Conventions, and the trials of the hostages at Guantanamo:

IN GENERAL. No person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or any protocols thereto in any habeas or civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States, is a party as a source of rights, in any court of the United States or its States or territories.

That's one way to take care of allegations of violations of the Geneva Conventions: make it illegal for the prisoners to make those allegations. And in case you were wondering who gets to decide what the Geneva Conventions really mean:

(3) INTERPRETATION BY THE PRESIDENT. (A) As provided by the Constitution and by this section, the President has the authority for the United States to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and to promulgate higher standards and administrative regulations for violations of treaty obligations which are not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

The weird thing is that this is being spun in the news like Bush backed down, when in reality the compromise protects US personnel from being punished for violating this international agreement, and also officially strips the detainees' habeas corpus rights. Maybe the Democrats will filibuster it.

Nimby

Mayor Daley wants to put the Olympics in my backyard. All I can think about is trying to drive to work, and how people will definitely steal our parking spot, "resident parking only" sign be damned. Yeah, yeah. I know it's ten years away, and it probably won't happen anyway.

I do like this one: "Designed by renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Washington Park would further benefit from two Astroturf fields for hockey and football..." I wonder what Olmsted would say to that.

Thailand and Hyde Park

Today my favorite country to visit had its government overthrown by a military coup. This is the 18th coup Thailand has experienced since 1932, when it became a constitutional monarchy. The coup is reportedly "to resolve a nearly year-long political deadlock and stop 'rampant corruption.'" I know Thaksin, their now-ex-prime minister, is a corrupt bastard, but it seems like a military coup is a little extreme. Maybe if I had been paying closer attention to their political situation I'd understand better. But this statement, from a Reuters article, is sobering:

Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party was expected to win a re-run tentatively scheduled for late November, increasing pressure on his opponents in the military and the old establishment to resort to removing him by force.

The military says they're protecting Thailand, but Thailand was prepared to re-elect their corrupt leader. They say they want to protect democracy, but pointing guns at your opponents isn't a very good way to achieve that.

And Closer to Home...

Without consulting community leaders, and with absolutely no sense of irony, the city of Chicago whitewashed several murals on the walls of the 47th Street viaduct. Here's some information on the murals and their destruction, from a letter written by one of the painters, and images of what the murals used to look like. The city has admitted that it was a mistake (but how can you accidentally paint that much?), and the murals will be repainted, so at least there's some good news.

My Pretty Website

From Websites as Graphs.

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Literally Virtually

Webster's now accepts that "literally" is synonymous with "virtually." So the statement "his head literally exploded," even outside of the film Scanners, is acceptable: "literally" has come to mean its antonym. Lovers of proper usage, join me in mourning.

My Theater

For those of you who haven't seen it, here are some photos of my theater.

Metafilter

Metafilter.com is a link-trading and discussion site I frequent. Sometimes I attempt to make posts that will elicit admiring comments because, well, I want these people I've never met to like me.

This one is about the Detroit Riot of 1863, which nobody ever hears of because of the much larger riot that took place in New York City a few months later. I wrote an award-winning paper about it in grad school.

This one is about the Toledo War of 1835, when Michigan decided to invade Toledo to keep Ohio from stealing it from them. (The area was given to Michigan Territory by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.) My friend Duncan wrote a paper about it in grad school.

This one is about the guy who invented the equals sign. Yep.

This one is about the theft of "the Mona Lisa of sculpture," Benvenuto Cellini's salt cellar, which was recently recovered. I learned about this in a book written by my favorite art historian.

And this one is about the Brasher Doubloon, the most valuable American coin ever minted. I learned about it while researching a writeup for the 1947 film of the same name, which we were going to show at my theater.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled interesting reading.

Poor Horace Greeley

We take a break from the regularly scheduled work I'm supposed to be doing to present you with the sad tale of Horace Greeley's campaign for president in 1872. Greeley, a prominent newspaper editor who spent most of the Civil War denouncing Democrats as traitors and secessionists, was chosen by a splinter group of Republicans to run against Republican President Ulysses S. Grant. Surprisingly, the Democrats backed Greeley too, as their main objective was to get Grant out of office.

Grant didn't take part in much stump-speaking (politicians at the time still thought it degrading to beg for votes), but his campaign managers and other Republicans systematically destroyed the aging curmudgeon Greeley. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast lampooned Greeley as a hopeless incompetent, a pumpkin-headed and nearsighted clown. His cartoons depicted Greeley shaking hands with a rebel who has just shot a Union soldier, shaking hands with John Wilkes Booth across Lincoln's grave, and turning over weeping black children to KKK riders after a lynching.

Even Livingston, of Stanley and Livingston fame, got in on the action. Stanley, filling Livingston in on what he had missed while wandering in Africa, told him about Greeley's Democratic support, to which Livingston replied, "You have told me stupendous things, and with a confiding simplicity I was swallowing them peacefully down; but there is a limit to all things, and when you tell me that Horace Greeley is become a Democratic candidate I will be hanged if I believe it."

At first Greeley kept up his good spirits, saying "While there are doubts as to my fitness for president, nobody seems to deny that I would make a capital beaten candidate." But his wife died just before the election, and Greeley said "I am not dead, but I wish I were." When he lost in a landslide, he said "I was the worst beaten man who ever ran for high office."

"Utterly ruined beyond hope, I desire, before the night closes its jaws on me forever, to say that, though my running for president has placed me where I am, it is not the cause for my ruin."

(Source: Paul S. Boller, Presidential Campaigns, 1985.)

Intelligent Design Rejected

The federal court in the Kitzmiller et al. vs. Dover Area School District has come to a predictable decision (pdf): Intelligent Design is creationism in disguise, and as such cannot be taught in public schools. The link is to the entire decision, which is really long but worth reading. It debunks the idea that Intelligent Design is science, along with ID's criticisms of evolutionary theory.

Specific to the Dover case:

In summary, the disclaimer singles out the theory of evolution for special treatment, misrepresents its status in the scientific community, causes students to doubt its validity without scientific justification, presents students with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory, directs them to consult a creationist text as though it were a science resource, and instructs students to forego scientific inquiry in the public school classroom and instead to seek out religious instruction elsewhere.

And:

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

The Discovery Institute, which is the nation's leading think-tank supporting ID, responds. I hope someone appeals this to the Supreme Court, so we can get a final word on this nonsense. (Of course, perhaps we don't want this going before a Bush-appointed Supreme Court.)

Of note: Judge John Jones III was appointed by Dubya. Damned activist judges.

Oh, Obama!

My favorite senator, Barack Obama, recently made a speech threatening federal regulation of the television industry because there's too much sex on TV. A Kaiser Family Foundation study says that the number of sexual scenes on TV has nearly doubled since 1998.

Of course, the study is a crock of shit. According to this Washington Post article, "the Kaiser study includes a first good-night kiss at the door in its definition of 'sexual behavior.' And 'sexual content' includes any discussion about sex."

Also, it looked at pay channels like HBO, but not MTV, which teens are more likely to actually watch. It looked at channels like Lifetime and USA Network, both of which boast less than 5% teen viewers.

If parents want their children's television viewing regulated, they could probably start by not buying them TVs for their rooms (70% of kids have them). This is yet another entry in the endless debate over who is responsible for raising kids, the parents or the government. I'm all for an honest appraisal of what kids are actually watching. But this study isn't it, and I'm sad that Obama chose the side he did.

My Blog Is Worth Peanuts

More Things

Remember my "101 Things" list, the one that I was going to dole out a little at a time? It's been too long.

8. Sometimes when my favorite art historian is going to have her colleagues over, I artfully arrange my clutter of books and movies so that they can be impressed by the breadth of my interests. When the rock-star English prof with an interest in movies is coming, I "accidentally" lay out film books and interesting DVDs so they might catch her eye.

9. I just put all of my CDs on my new hard drive. I possess 6070 songs, which is approximately 15.5 days of music. Now I'm selling the CDs on ebay so that I can buy a good video camera.

10. I was caught shoplifting at a local five-and-dime when I was around 12. My punishment was a lecture by a police officer and one Saturday of working in the store. While I was working (mostly sweeping), my friends came in and asked what I was doing. I told them I had been given a job, and they were impressed. At the end of my "shift," the manager bought me lunch and ice cream. Who says crime doesn't pay?

11. Speaking of crime, I was once tracked home by police dogs. I was around 13, and my friend Duane and I walked through the woods in back of my house and came upon what looked like abandoned warehouses. We broke 97 windows in those warehouses. The following Monday, when I came home from school, my mother was waiting for me at the door. She informed me that the police had used dogs to track us back through the woods. The warehouses were apparently very much in use. I ended up with community service.

12. My community service was at the laundry in an elderly care facility. On my first day on the job, the smell and heat were so bad that I got sick, and the nice lady in charge sent me home. The following day, and each day that I had to be there, she let me sit in her office, watching television and folding sheets. She even brought me fast food for lunch. Then she would send me home early. She let me skip my last day. Who says crime doesn't pay?

J'Accuse! The Congress Edition

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have released a list of the 13 most corrupt members of Congress (aside from DeLay, of course). It's interesting reading. I'm happy that none of the congresspeople representing either of my states are on the list; I'm curious about whether the inclusion of 11 Republicans and only two Democrats means that Republicans are actually more corrupt or that the report-makers were biased. (I'm leaning toward the former, but it's good to be a little skeptical.)

Highlights:

Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-CA) sold his $1 million house to a defense contractor for $1.7 million. Federal agents investigating Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) found wads of cash in his freezer. Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) got legislation passed that benefited his dad's company to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. There's evidence that Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) was personally involved in fraud and money laundering at a savings and loan he chairs, including firing an employee who was cooperating with investigators.

The real point of interest is in the names: three of them are named Rick or Richard. Need I point out that our nation's most famous corrupt politician was Richard Nixon? What is it about this name that causes our elected leaders to go bad? (There's a joke there, but I'm not gonna make it.)

Four Things

Cab Whistlers

I hate it when people whistle for cabs. During half of the year, the cabbies have their windows rolled up because it's hot outside and the AC is inside. During the other half of the year, the cabbies have their windows rolled up because it's cold outside and the heat is inside. In normal city traffic, it's too loud to hear a whistle anyway, and the outstretched hand (with optional snapping fingers) is enough of a signal. I have decided that cab-whistlers fall into four categories.

1. The newbies. These people have seen other people whistling for cabs, so they think that's how you do it.

2. The poseurs. These people want you to know they're calling a cab. Hey, look at me! I'm calling a cab. I'm important. I'm going somewhere. Enjoy your bus ride, loser. I'll be in air-conditioned cab comfort.

3. The employees. Outside of hotels, men with loud whistles summon cabs with annoying blasts. They're paid to call cabs, and the hotel knows that their patrons want to see a guy in a uniform with a loud whistle. It means service: he's whistling, and he's doing it for me.

If I know and like you, and you whistle for cabs, none of this applies to you. If you're thinking that there are better things to get annoyed about, you're probably right.

My Crane Movie

The shoot a couple of Sundays ago went really well. The actors hit it off; the crew worked well together. We got through most of the scenes featuring my costar, but we have three more to shoot before he moves to Arizona. Then I have to shoot the Evil Crane Woman scenes, and then it's down to chasing Shawn around town with a video camera.

Firefly

If you're a fan of Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), a fan of sci-fi, or just a fan of good television, you should check out Firefly, his short-lived TV show (it lasted 14 episodes, only 11 of which aired). The movie Serenity, which is opening this Friday, is an outgrowth of the series. I started watching the show yesterday, because I want to have seen it before I see the movie. The show, set 500 years in the future, is about a transport spaceship crew that exists on the fringes of the law, taking questionable jobs and generally trying to stay under the galaxy-ruling Alliance's radar. Many of the crew members were part of an uprising against the Alliance a few years earlier. They take aboard a fugitive brother and sister, the latter of whom the Alliance desperately wants back because they've been doing some kind of experiments on her.

It's a mix of Western (meaning Wild West) and Eastern (meaning Chinese) themes, with a strong nautical feel. It's hard to describe, really. It's just really wonderful.

Mountolive

I started reading The Alexandria Quartet because it was on that MLA list of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century. Lawrence Durrell was a British functionary stationed in Alexandria, Egypt, in the years leading up to WW2, and he transformed his experiences into one of the greatest sustained pieces of painfully beautiful writing that I've ever encountered. I'm on the third volume, Mountolive, now, and he just let slip a zinger about characters described in the first volume, Justine, that actually prompted me to say "Oh my god!" out loud on the bus this morning. I heartily recommend it, but you probably already know if it's the kind of thing you'd read or not.

This Will Be My Only Katrina Post

I came across this story (from MetaChat) about some paramedics who were trapped in New Orleans by the hurricane. It recounts their horrifying efforts to flee; notable is the fact that they faced the most danger not from looters or snipers, but from the police.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads....

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.

The Other Goatdog

There's another goatdog, and he's a big asshole.

I was googling myself, as I am wont to do—in the privacy of my own home, so don't judge me!—and I decided to look into the other goatdog who shows up rather high in a google search.

He's a regular commentor on the Lawrence (KS) Journal-World's website. We have some things in common: both of us are anti-Bush and anti-war. But there's a difference (at least, I hope there's a difference): he's got an obnoxious one-track mind about it, and he manages to insert it into every conversation.

In a 2004 poll about Lawrence residents' favorite cheeses, after posting a recipe, he said, "Bush is a war criminal and I hope to see him hang." When asked about what's on his 2004 Christmas list, he said, "To see Bush hang for his war crimes."

He's diverse, though: when asked about his tips for beating the heat, he turned to poetry: "You're going to lose your war! / You're greedy christian war! / You're going to lose your war! / Your greasy christian war!" Same went for a poll about what kind of return graduates get from their education investment.

How should we celebrate Earth Day? "Remove the greedy fat christian pigs from the planet." What's worse, potholes or road construction zones? Let's compare Bush to Hitler instead. Will the smoking ban in Lawrence reduce the number of heart attack victims? "Dead Kansans - Boohoo."

To the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, and to googlers worldwide: I am not that goatdog. I'm a kinder, gentler goatdog.

Play the Word Count Game!

This site claims to list the 86,800 English words used most often. I don't know about their methods, and I don't know how accurate it is. I don't really care! What's best about it is the word count game! Here's how to play: type in a random word, and try to find the best four or five words in a row. How about some examples?

Words 2629–2633 are "bush admit specifically agent smell." Obviously about the Valerie Plame leak.

Words 21,110–21,113 are "Shane vacated Sinatra extravagance." This is about when my good friend Shane gave up his dreams of being a famous crooner.

Words 1367–1370 are "eat foot opinions decisions." Obviously a contorted way of expressing the old "open mouth, insert foot" phrase.

Words 2316–2320 are "Steve stick kids stayed unique," which, although it doesn't make a lot of sense, seems to fit anyway.

Or keep it short: words 2246 and 2247 are "Brian funny." When he wants to be.

Words 9493–9495 are "Rebecca impaired retailer," which is an obvious reference to her anticapitalist tendencies.

And, of course, we end with me: words 1073–1075 are "Michael campaign understanding," which is a reference to my vocation of convenience—editing—and words 2303–2306 are "Mike manufacturing nation channel," about my growing media empire.

Getting Political Again

I haven't been doing political posts lately because politics depresses me and makes me anxious. But hey, when I saw the Downing Street Memo, I felt encouraged. Surely this is enough evidence to bring down Dubya: evidence that he lied to Congress and the American people, enough evidence to perhaps get him impeached. And there's support in Congress, too: John Conyers, of my home state of Michigan, is demanding answers from Bush. Could this be the thing that gets him? Could this be the beginning of the end for Bush?

Um, yeah. Sure. I'll believe it when I see it.

I'm Alive! I'm Dead! I'm the Stranger...

Apparently, I am an existentialist. No, really. I don't have a beret, and I've never hung out in the sewers of Paris plotting the downfall of the fascist overlords, but I'm officially pals with Sartre. Here are my quiz results:

Two Things

Today on my way in to work, I was crossing Michigan Ave., looking at my feet or at passersby. I slowly noticed something weird: the closer I got to my building, the more isolated I was. This is because there were thousands of twins standing around: short ones, tall ones, white ones, black ones, old ones, young ones (but not The Young Ones), all of them in pairs. Because that's how twins work, you see. There are usually two of them. Anyway, they were gathered in the plaza outside my building for a DoubleMint contest to find the next spokestwins for that fine chewing gum flavor (although I prefer spearmint). Twins on their own are interesting; gangs of twins are weird, almost grotesque. They made me feel strange: by the time I made it to the building, I felt like there was something wrong with me, that I was deficient because I didn't have a duplicate standing next to me.

And this from an instant message conversation with an old friend from college: "Dude, it is sick of you to sing a Tesla song at me, even if I used to like Tesla." Make of it what you will.

Meet the New Pope

He was a member of the Hitler Youth, manned an antiaircraft battery for the German army, and spent time as a POW after the fall of the Nazis. He said that he had no option but to be a Nazi, but a hell of a lot of Germans managed just fine. But, he was just 14, and youthful indiscretions can be forgiven, although the last guy managed to be anti-Nazi. (More info on the Hitler Youth thing that makes him sound better.)

But this guy helped stamp out liberation theology and spearheaded the Catholic Church's whitewashing of the priestly pedophilia scandal. This sounds like a step backward for the church.

Good News!

I thought I'd do a post full of good news! Except that I couldn't find any.

Iran and North Korea are reacting badly to what our current president believes is "diplomacy." Condoleeza Rice said that the US may need new ways of dealing with North Korea. "She did not elaborate." Did she need to?

Michigan local governments have to stop giving domestic partner benefits, according to the Attorney General's interpretation of the gay-marriage ban Michigan voters passed last year. Is anyone surprised?

The Senate recently voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to drilling. In related news, the ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya melted for the first time in 11,000 years. Why is this timing lost on our elected officials?

Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war and Bush's invade-all-y'all policies, has been chosen to head the World Bank. The World Bank is bad enough; does it really need him in charge?

And then there's the whole Terry Schiavo mess. I don't even want to get into it. Have a nice day.

101 Things

I read a blog where the blogger did a massive list of interesting trivia about himself: 101 Things about Me. I thought it was a neat idea, so I thought I'd steal it, except that I don't have the energy or the patience to do 101 things at once. Plus, I wouldn't expect you to have that much patience either. So I decided to do a list in small chunks of between five and ten items at a time. Here's the first.

1. My first date was when I was in first grade. I had a crush on this girl named Alison Girard, and my mom convinced me to ask her out to lunch one Saturday with my family. I picked her up at her house and everything (my dad drove). She gave me a card with cartoon bear stickers on the outside of the envelope. After lunch, we went to the public swimming pool for the rest of the afternoon.

2. My first second concert was REO Speedwagon, .38 Special, and Survivor at Val-du-Lakes, an outdoor concert venue near Manistee, Michigan. I went with my friend Dana and one of her friends. I was sort of interested in her, and I think she was interested in me, but nothing ever came of it. At the concert, I saw this burnout guy named Bobby, whom I thought hated me, but he came over to hang out with us, and later he let me take a hit off his joint. Music brings people together.

3. I can make myself cry almost instantly if I think about the death of my cat Wibble.

4. Speaking of crying, in college, I lied my way into extensions on two assignments by summoning up tears and a good story. In both situations, I used my difficult history with my father to my advantage. I told the professors that I hadn't talked to my father for years, and he called out of the blue to tell me that he had a brain tumor that might be inoperable, so I had to ditch class to go spend time with him. This story is entirely true, except that it happened three years earlier.

5. The first album I ever bought was Richard Marx's self-titled album. I bought it from the local Family Dollar, and I borrowed the money from my mother. I realized quite soon how lame this purchase was. But I still sing along when "Don't Mean Nothing" or "Should've Known Better" or "Endless Summer Nights" come on the radio. And I know that you do too.

6. My first car accident happened when I was 17. I was driving down the street, on my way home from work. It was cold, but there was no ice on the road. I noticed that I was drifting toward the curb, and I turned the wheel. Suddenly, I woke up with my head bouncing off the steering wheel. I had hit a car parked on the side of the road, and my seatbelt hadn't locked. When the police arrived, I told them that I must have skidded on some ice, but there was clearly no ice. I sort of blacked out, I guess. I still don't understand what happened. They gave me a ticket for careless driving, but I got it reduced to driving too fast for conditions. The story I always tell people, which has become almost like the truth in my mind, is that I was easing over to the side to let an oncoming car through when my car hit a patch of ice. But there was no other car, aside from the one that I hit.

7. When I was young and we were really poor, I hated wearing clothes from the Salvation Army. There was one pair of shoes that I particularly hated, and I spent one summer picking away at the sole until I could tell my mom that they were "worn out." She knew what I had done, and she was really pissed at me and made me wear them anyway. Now, of course, well over half of my clothes are from resale shops, something that amuses my mother to no end.

Stay tuned for more things.

Radio WREZ

My favorite art historian is going to be on the radio tomorrow morning! She'll be on Chicago Public Radio's "Eight Forty-Eight" show, talking about the exhibition she recently curated. It will air sometime between 9:35 and 11:00 am tomorrow. If you can't catch it live, you will probably be able to hear it archived on their site.

Update: They didn't play the segment. I'll let you know when/if they are planning to reschedule it.

Update update: She's on right now!!!!

Canadian PM Speech

Paul Martin, prime minister of Canada, spoke in favor of Bill C-38, the Canadian Civil Marriage Act, which will allow homosexuals to marry across Canada. It's one of the most eloquent defenses of equal rights for homosexuals—for anyone—I've seen.

Some highlights:

"We will be influenced by our faith but we also have an obligation to take the widest perspective -- to recognize that one of the great strengths of Canada is its respect for the rights of each and every individual, to understand that we must not shrink from the need to reaffirm the rights and responsibilities of Canadians in an evolving society."

"Some have counseled the government to extend to gays and lesbians the right to 'civil union.' This would give same-sex couples many of the rights of a wedded couple, but their relationships would not legally be considered marriage. In other words, they would be equal, but not quite as equal as the rest of Canadians."

"This question does not demand rhetoric. It demands clarity. There are only two legitimate answers –- yes or no. Not the demagoguery we have heard, not the dodging, the flawed reasoning, the false options. Just yes or no. Will you take away a right as guaranteed under the Charter? I, for one, will answer that question, Mr. Speaker. I will answer it clearly. I will say no."

"The people of Canada have worked hard to build a country that opens its doors to include all, regardless of their differences; a country that respects all, regardless of their differences; a country that demands equality for all, regardless of their differences. If we do not step forward, then we step back. If we do not protect a right, then we deny it. Mr. Speaker, together as a nation, together as Canadians: Let us step forward."

We will never, ever, ever hear an American president saying words like this, and that makes me terribly sad.

NHL Cancels Season

Fucking fuckers. I have nothing else to say.

Desert Island Books

Here are a few books that, if stranded on a desert island, I would want with me. Because, you know, I'd have books with me, but not an inflatable raft or food or anything.

A Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson. Film is my life, but I think this is the only film book I'd need with me. Thomson is an opinionated jerk sometimes, a dazzlingly insightful critic at others, and always a great writer. I could play the "what does he think about X" game until the rescue boats arrived.

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. I've only read it once, but I think I'd need to read it a few dozen more times to process everything it has to offer.

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite. My favorite horror novel. I'd need a fun read, and I can't think of anything more fun than this goth-punk vampire novel. I just realized that I don't even own a copy of this. Shame on me.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, volume one: 1929-1964. The greatest short story collection of all time. Well, for sci-fi nerds. Includes two of my favoritest stories in the world, "Microcosmic God" by Theodore Sturgeon and "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin. I'm re-reading it now. Shane, do you remember the story "Twilight"? Always makes me sad.

Speaking of sci-fi nerds, I'd need The Essential Ellison, an omnibus collection of Harlan Ellison's best stories. Is it cheating to put a best-of book on the list, sort of like putting a greatest hits album on your top ten music list?

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It's about a Nigerian village just before and just after first contact with white explorers. I think everyone should read this. When I get off my island, you can borrow my copy.

And the inevitable question: what are your desert island books?

New Pet Peeve

As many of you know, I am an atheist. However, I recently became very sick of hearing atheists and suchlike quote the Bible at Christians to "prove" how evil Christianity is. It struck me that it is completely unhelpful. There's a lot of horrific stuff advocated in the Bible, most of it in the Old Testament. This is not news.

It's quite likely that they already know that Leviticus tells us to kill homosexuals, that Exodus tells us to kill someone if they strike their parents, that Zechariah advocates the murder of false prophets. The only way you are truly scoring any points is if the Christian you are talking to happens to advocate those things, and the odds are that they don't. For example, not many Christians think it is acceptable for bears to maul children who tease prophets with inherited male pattern baldness. You aren't proving anything by informing them that 2 Kings 2:23-24 advocates that very punishment. Most likely, they've processed that knowledge (maybe they've even read it), and moved on from that. They're good people.

I realize that it is often (but not always) a reaction to another big annoyance, which is Christians quoting the Bible as approval for certain kinds of behavior. But to retaliate with Isaiah 14:21 isn't really adding anything to the conversation.

(This post was prompted by a message board discussion of a rural Virginia school that lets some kids out early to go to Bible class. While I oppose what the school is doing, I don't see the point in quoting Leviticus to "prove" that Bible classes are evil.)

Johnny, Rose Mary, and Uncle Sam

Johnny Carson and Rose Mary Woods died a day apart. One was one of America's greatest entertainers, longtime host of The Tonight Show and fixture on the Oscars telecast. The other was Richard Nixon's secretary, the woman who "accidentally" erased much of the Watergate tapes and stonewalled the investigation.

Your assignment: Write a 2000 word essay drawing parallels between these two. Extra points for linking Woods to Carson's success or linking Carson to the Watergate scandal. You have one hour. Go!

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It's nearly tax time again! For some, it means not seeing their accountant husbands for several months. For others, it means tax evasion and flights to unnamed South American countries. For me, it means a little extra bit of chaos this year.

I am getting W2s from two full-time employers, neither of which has my current address. That means waiting for them to be forwarded, but in Chicago, it likely means that they'll get lost in the mail. In addition, I have an unknown number of freelance gigs who will submit 1099-misc forms for work I did. People with freelance experience know what that means: the self-employment tax! Yay! I get to pay around a 40% tax on the income I earned through freelancing.

There are several ways of making this more bearable:
1. File quarterly returns so you're not hit with a huge bill once a year.
2. Put a set amount of your income into an interest-bearing account, so you can actually make a little bit of change on it before you have to give it to the government.
3. Sit around and do nothing until the tax bill comes and kills you.

Guess which one I picked.

I think the self-employment tax is one of the most un-American of taxes. Isn't it the American Dream to go out on your own, do your own thing, entrepreneurial spirit and all that? Go west, young man, and be your own boss? Then why does the taxman put on his heavy boots to stomp on your fingers as you reach for your divine right as an American?

Meeting Mr. R / Kickstart My Heart

So I met Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic for the Chicago Reader, yesterday. He wanted to preview one of the movies we're showing at my theater. I was nervous: what do you say to one of your idols (or at least someone you greatly respect despite thinking that they are nuts some of the time)? This wasn't like seeing Timothy Hutton on the subway; I would have to interact with him, right? After the movie, what if he asked me what I thought of it? To shake hands or not to shake hands?

The experience was less than exciting. He showed up at 5:30 sharp. We walked up to the theater, and he asked how it was that we picked the movie in question (it wasn't me, it was the other Mike). I got him a Diet Coke. I went upstairs and played the movie. He sat 2/3 of the way back, on the right-hand side of the main section of seats. "What was he wearing?" I hear all his breathless fans asking; he was wearing a big furry hat with ear flaps and a gray tweed coat.

During the screening, I worried about what I would say about the movie when he asked me what I thought. I made mental notes: the fight scene in the hotel, where the two men's faces were pressed together at the end; the aerial shots of the plane crash and aftermath; the tacked-on ending. Would that be enough? Would he think I was an idiot? Should I mention my website?

When the movie was over, I went downstairs. He remarked that the print was in pretty good shape. He said that he would contact me about the screening in April, when we're showing another film that he wants to see. He left. The end.

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Philips is selling the first over-the-counter Heart Defibrillator. I have two words for them: bank robberies. You heard it here first—it's only a matter of time that these dangerous things are used for criminal purposes.

Get Your Gay On

In a 1994 brainstorming session, Air Force personnel at the Wright Air Force Base proposed a chemical weapon that would cause opposing forces to become sexually irresistable to each other, thus causing "distasteful but completely non-lethal blow" to morale. Reports that the plan was called "Queer Eye for an Enemy Guy" are unconfirmed. Other suggestions included a spray that would cause bees and mosquitoes to attack troops, or a drug that would cause "severe and lasting halitosis" so our forces could sniff out insurgents.

A Thing, a Thing, a Marvelous Thing

My favorite art historian had an article published in the Boston Globe on Sunday about the "thing studies" craze—scholarly and popular histories of mundane things: glass, salt, cod, cotton, paperclips. I read one of the things books, the one about cod. It was surprisingly informative and entertaining, for a book about cod.

Foreign Relations Disaster

An entry in the Salon War Room points out that after Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998 and killed 9,000 people, the Clinton administration gave $988 million in aid to the affected countries. So far, Bush has promised $35 million to the countries hit by the recent earthquake and tsunamis. This after an initial paltry sum of $15 million. Embarrassing enough. But then yesterday, at a briefing on US aid efforts, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman said this:

So our expectation is, is that the European Union, the United Nations, other countries will also join in this. This is not something, although as Andrew said, we make a substantial contribution, more than anyone else in these emergencies, this is certainly not for us to do alone.

Keep in mind that Spain has promised twice as much as we have, and the World Bank has promised $250 million. And, typical for the Bush administration, we aren't coordinating our efforts with the UN; instead, we have another "coalition of the willing" (this one actually has some other countries in it). Sigh.

(This is basically a summary of what was in Salon, but I know a lot of you don't have subscriptions there.)

Update: Bush upped it to $350 million. That's a little better. Did you know that the US spends less than a quarter of a percent of its budget on foreign aid?

Oh, wait. The government shouldn't give any money because it's not theirs to give. They extorted it from taxpayers. So sayeth The Ayn Rand Institute. Giving aid to tsunami victims is as bad as the Marshall Plan. (Stupid fuckers.)

Throw the Book at Grandma

A Cook County circuit judge has just given a three-year prison sentence to a 76-year-old grandmother, who wrote $200,000 worth of bad checks to local auto dealers. She "has heart problems, cancer and renal failure and requires kidney dialysis three times a week. An ear infection that started when she was taken into custody has caused a hole in her ear, her attorney said." She's freaking 76 years old, and they're throwing her in prison for writing bad checks. I don't care how much those checks were for. They're throwing a 76-year-old grandma with a bad heart, bad kidneys, and cancer in prison, likely until she dies. What the hell kind of legal system is this? What about house arrest, probation, a tether? God, I hope she wins a lighter sentence on appeal.

Book of the Bushwatch

This prayer, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, was originally called "The Negative Confession"; in Bush's version, circa 1240 BCE, it is a positive confession.

Hail, Usekh-nemmt, who comest forth from Anu, I have not committed sin.
Hail, Hept-khet, who comest forth from Kher-aha, I have not committed robbery with violence.
Hail, Fenti, who comest forth from Khemenu, I have not stolen.
Hail, Am-khaibit, who comest forth from Qernet, I have not slain men and women.
Hail, Neha-her, who comest forth from Rasta, I have not stolen grain.
Hail, Ruruti, who comest forth from heaven, I have not purloined offerings.
Hail, Arfi-em-khet, who comest forth from Suat, I have not stolen the property of God.
Hail, Neba, who comest and goest, I have not uttered lies.
Hail, Set-qesu, who comest forth from Hensu, I have not carried away food.
Hail, Utu-nesert, who comest forth from Het-ka-Ptah, I have not uttered curses.
Hail, Her-f-ha-f, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have made none [many] to weep.
Hail, Basti, who comest forth from Bast, I have not eaten the heart.
Hail, Ta-retiu, who comest forth from the night, I have not attacked [m]any m[e]n.
Hail, Unem-snef, who comest forth from the execution chamber, I am not a man of deceit.
Hail, Unem-besek, who comest forth from Mabit, I have not stolen cultivated land.
Hail, Neb-Maat, who comest forth from Maati, I have not been an eavesdropper.
Hail, Tenemiu, who comest forth from Bast, I have not slandered.
Hail, Sertiu, who comest forth from Anu, I have not been angry without just cause.
Hail, Her-uru, who comest forth from Nehatu, I have terrorized none [many].
Hail, Khemiu, who comest forth from Kaui, I have not transgressed.
Hail, Shet-kheru, who comest forth from Urit, I have not been wroth.
Hail, Nekhenu, who comest forth from Heqat, I have not shut my ears to the words of truth.
Hail, Kenemti, who comest forth from Kenmet, I have not blasphemed.
Hail, An-hetep-f, who comest forth from Sau, I am not a man of violence.
Hail, Sera-kheru, who comest forth from Unaset, I have not been a stirrer up of strife.
Hail, Neb-heru, who comest forth from Netchfet, I have not acted with undue haste.
Hail, Sekhriu, who comest forth from Uten, I have not pried into matters.
Hail, Neb-abui, who comest forth from Sauti, I have not multiplied my words in speaking.
Hail, Nefer-Tem, who comest forth from Het-ka-Ptah, I have wronged none [many], I have done no evil.
Hail, Ahi, who comest forth from Nu, I have never raised my voice.
Hail, Neheb-ka, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have not acted with arrogance.
Hail, Tcheser-tep, who comest forth from the shrine, I have not carried away the khenfu cakes from the Spirits of the dead.
Hail, An-af, who comest forth from Maati, I have not snatched away the bread of the child.

Miscellany

Sweet Home Alabama: An Alabama lawmaker wants to ban books featuring gay characters from the state's public libraries, including university libraries. "I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he said.

In similar news, the Valparaiso student who slashed five of his classmates with a machete and a saw blade says God told him to do it.

This shouldn't make me happy: one of the Wal Mart heiresses is accused of paying her roommate $20,000 to do all of her college coursework for her. It shouldn't make me happy, but it does.

Another great article from Mark Morford of SFGate.com, this one about what he sees as the inevitable backlash against the right-wing backlash against sex and gay people and freedom. "America Loves Kinky Sex."

And the further the petrified fundamentalists now squeezing the testicles of our born-again administration cram us down the bleak hole of 1950s-style sexual ignorance and misogyny and homophobia and silly whining to the FCC about bare breasts and curse words and heavily Botoxed white women daring to expose themselves to black NFL stars, the more potent and delicious and the backlash will be.

Don't know if I agree with him, but it's a nice vision.

Guess that's it today. I stole the first three links from Obscure Store and Reading Room, and the last one from my coworker Brenda. Thanks Brenda!

The First Bushippic

From Demosthenes's First Philippic, 351 BCE. I didn't have to change this one very much. It's too close to real life.

For observe, [Americans], the height to which [Bush]'s insolence has soared; he leaves you no choice of action or inaction; he blusters and talks big, according to all accounts; he cannot rest content with what he has conquered; he is always taking in more, everywhere casting his net round us, while we sit idle and do nothing.

When, [Americans], will you take the necessary action? What are you waiting for? Until you are compelled, I presume. But what are we to think of what is happening now? For my own part I think that for a free people there can be no greater compulsion than shame for their position. Or tell me, are you content to run round and ask one another, "Is there any news today?" Could there be any news more startling than that a [criminal] is triumphing over [the Constitution] and settling the destiny of [democracy]?

"[Did Kerry win]?" you ask. "No, indeed; [Bush got re-elected]." And what is that to you? Even [in 2008], you will soon raise up a second [neocon], if that is the way you attend to your affairs; for even this [neocon] has not grown great through his own unaided strength so much as through our carelessness.

Randomizer

From the "I'm from the government, and I'm here to feed your kids rat poison" files. It's not a new story; why hadn't I heard of it before?

OK. Fine. I'm done being polite. It's not really fair. There are probably more than a few mistakes in it. But it just feels good to vent. Even when it's someone else doing the venting. Fuck the south.

Go watch Eminem's "Mosh" video. It's the most daring political statement to come out of this election year.

Fun with flash news alert: neocons are dangerous.

My friend Gaia on being a citizen of the world.

Tee hee. An ASCII war. I wonder if the LOLcity is red or blue?

Here There Be Neocons

From the 1486 Malleus Maleficarum, the Inquisition's guide on how to identify and destroy witches. We now know how Bush answered when Glinda the Good Witch asked, "Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?"

"And [neocons are] the most powerful class of witches, who practise innumerable other harms also. For they raise hailstorms and hurtful tempests and lightnings; cause sterility in men and animals; offer to devils, or otherwise kill, the children whom they do not devour... They can also, before the eyes of their [constituents], and when no one is in sight, throw into the water [civil rights]; ...they can transport themselves from place to place through the air, either in body or in imagination [or in Air Force One]; they can [stack the courts with reactionaries] so that they cannot hurt them; they can cause themselves and other to keep silence [about authorizing] torture; they can bring about a great trembling in the hands and horror in the minds of those who would [uphold the Constitution]; ...they can at times strike whom they will with [smart bombs], and even kill some [innocent civilians]; ...they can at times bewitch men and animals with a mere [Fox News broadcast], without touching them, and cause death; they dedicate their own children to devils; and in short, as has been said, they can cause all the plagues which other [Republicans] can only cause in part, that is, when the [half-asleep American populace] permits such things to be."

While most people know that the Inquisition was a tad overzealous, we can see here that they had nothing on the neocons.

Swords Drawn against Democracy

In Marcus Tullius Cicero's famous second Philippic (published around 49 BCE), he discusses how Bush and the neocons have wanted to destroy this nation for over 2000 years; of particular interest is the attempted murder of democracy in a bookstore.

"[Bush and the neocons], being compelled by the revelations of the accomplices, by their own handwriting, and by what I may almost call the voices of their letters, were confessing that they had planned the parricidal destruction of their country, and that they had agreed to burn the city, to massacre the citizens, to devastate [the United States], to destroy the republic... You have said that [democracy] was slain by my contrivance. What would men have thought if [it] had been slain at the time when you pursued [it] in the forum with a drawn sword, in the sight of all the Roman people; and when you would have settled [its] business if [it] had not thrown [it]self up the stairs of a bookseller's shop, and, shutting them against you, checked your attack by that means?"

Bush and his neocon dogs will stop at nothing to destroy this country. When was the last time you felt at risk in a bookstore? The illusion of safety in the climate-controlled palaces where learning and commerce coexist peacefully has now been destroyed, and it's all Bush's fault.

Inaugural Bushwatch

In this new blog category, I will show, by examples gleaned from historical documents, that Bush's evil has spanned the entire history of human civilization. My first example is taken from the forthcoming Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance by my favorite art historian. The quote dates from the late 16th century.

"[Bush] fattens his breasts with the people's blood to nourish leeches, that is that he fills his coffers with his subjects' money to keep unworthy favorites who suck on him continually and commit him to the most foolish expenditures. The wings and the dragon's tail show that, having made a pact with Satan through his sorcery and magical practices, he took the devil's form from the moment he gave himself to him."

It's clear that this was really about Bush. Raising taxes on the poor and giving cuts to the rich, leeches (neocons) who convince him to commit to the most foolish expenditures (like illegal wars), wings and a dragon's tail... I don't need to spell this out for you people. Stay tuned for future installments. I hope to do them at least once a month.

Cautiously Good News

A federal judge ruled that a military tribunal at Guantanamo is unlawful, bringing the tribunals to a halt, at least for now. The judge said that the accused in the case deserves to see the evidence against him.

I needed this. After the crushing disappointment of the election and Bush's confidence that he can continue his dismantling of the social safety net, I needed to hear some good news.

Hiding

I'm going to have to stay away from the news for a while. Everything I read just increases the panicky tightness in my chest that started at around 9:00 on election night. I just read a couple of articles about Michigan's Proposition 2, which outlawed gay marriage, and I'm scared of what it could mean. It reads "The union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose." It's those last six words, "or similar union for any purpose," that scare me. (The rest of the useless, unnecessary amendment just pisses me off.) Some opponents think that this will mean that public universities and municipalities that offer domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples are now violating Michigan's constitution. I wonder when the lawsuits are going to start, as the conservative fucks who pushed this amendment gleefully go about stripping away the rest of gay people's rights? A coworker of a loyal reader put it succinctly: "Americans aren't against gay marriage, they're against gay people." I'm ashamed of my home state and of my country.

Election

I'm having an out-of-body-politic experience. I'm hovering above the body politic, looking down in wonder as it appears that Bush is heading toward a victory. I wonder who these people are who vote for him... no, that's not it. I know who they are. What I wonder about is why more people haven't become convinced that he's bad for this country, that all he's proven in four years in office is that he's not qualified or capable of being president.

In 2000, I went to bed on election night, saying "maybe I'll wake up in the morning and find out that this was all a dream." Of course, I woke up to a worse dream, of five weeks of uncertainty, followed by four years of anger and sadness. I'm going to bed now. I'll crawl out of bed in a few days, when the smoke clears.

Voting Shenanigans

Are you as distressed as I am about the controversies that have already cropped up for the 2004 elections? In Michigan, an unknown group has been calling people to tell them that the deadline to apply for absentee ballots has already passed, when in fact the deadline is the day before the election. Michigan already, in a 2000 law, made it more difficult for college students to get absentee ballots. There are similar issues in at least a half-dozen other states.

In a conversation with my favorite art historian, she pointed out that you never hear about Democrats attempting to keep people from voting or registering. (Democratic voter fraud usually consists of fraudulent votes or fraudulent registrations.) This is because there is a correlation between increased registration and increased Democratic votes. Does anyone think the unnamed callers who were telling people that the absentee deadline has passed were Democrats? Of course not, because absentee ballots are cast mostly by college students, who tend to lean Democratic.

I'm convinced that we're going to have an even longer period between the election and the determination of the winner than we did in 2000. I'm told that the two sides already have their lawsuits written up. What happens if it goes past January 20?

Native American Awareness Day

Happy Native American Awareness Day, known in some parts (like downtown Chicago, so don't try to drive through there this afternoon) as Columbus Day. I'm pretty torn about the whole thing, when I think about it at all. Columbus was sort of a mass murderer, sort of a heroic explorer, sort of a plundering invader. He wasn't the first white guy to end up in North America, but he certainly popularized it, for all the good and bad that resulted (including Columbus Day parades, which we can't really blame on him anyway). It would be nice if Columbus Day inspired a thoughtful discussion of the legacy of Columbus, but all it seems to inspire is parades and days off, and bad episodes of good shows (today provided the subject matter for my least favorite episode of one of my favorite television shows, The Sopranos).

I did learn a valuable (if unrelated) lesson today: don't try to eat while reading stories about zombies.

Crazy in Michigan

A woman in Benton Harbor pled no contest to selling rocks to rioters, who then tossed them at police and through windows. This seems like pure capitalism at work. It's all about supply and demand. The defendant had a supply of rocks; the rioters demanded them. I don't see, on a purely logical-capitalist level, a problem with this kind of commerce. Lots of businesses sell products that they know will be used to break laws. Instead of being punished, they're rewarded with tax breaks and attempts to pass laws that protect them from lawsuits. The defendant should use the same argument that the gun lobby uses: rocks don't break windows and hurt cops, rioters break windows and hurt cops. (Link from Obscure Store and Reading Room)

Randomizer!

Random links, because I can't complete a thought today. Still recovering from the marathon at the studio. I'll tell you about it later. But first, these important messages.

Bitch Ph.D. talks about trying to be a professional with kids. I don't really like most kids, but this was interesting reading.

If you haven't been to Overease lately, you might have missed Magical Trevor. Ha! Now you'll get it stuck in your damn head too.

From Omokage, how the debates aren't debates at all.

Also from Omokage, hard-boiled slang. "I have the droppers ribbed up to get the electric cure."

Also from Omokage (you'd think I didn't talk to anyone else today), that Chipotle stuff is terrible for you.

From the book The Well-Tempered Sentence by grammar artist Karen Elizabeth Gordon, this beautiful illustration of how to punctuate parenthetical sentences: "We had finished our Irish coffee. (We had plenty of time, we thought, to get to the theater.) We wanted to prolong that moment past fulfillment, bedtime, and death."

End Times?

Four hurricanes have attempted to wipe Florida off the map in the past few months.

Mount St. Helens is set to erupt at any time.

A federal judge ruled against portions of the Patriot Act.

I'm just waiting for the plagues of locusts.

The Most Evil Site I've Ever Encountered

http://christianparty.net/christianparty.htm

This is the most hateful, misogynist, racist, antisemitic, awful site I have ever seen. I feel like someone who opened a rotten container of food and wants you to smell it, but I really think you should look at it. Apparently, everything that is wrong with the world is the fault of women and Jews. It's all the fault of "feminist jurisprudence," and you will know this after you look at their handy graphs. It's all supported by Bad Statistics. I'm sputtering. I have to stop reading it. You should go read it instead.

I Know Famous People

My friend Gaia has been asked to speak at a press conference tomorrow in Washington DC about the death of the 1000th soldier in Iraq. She's been an outspoken critic of the war, and she will bring her perspective as the mother of a soldier and an organizer of other moms against the war. I don't know exactly where or when, or whether it will be televised. If I find out, I'll post details in the comments. This is one of those moments when I would feel proud to elbow total strangers and say, "You see her there on the tee-vee? She's a good friend of mine."

City Center

Yesterday after work I had nowhere to go, so I took the opportunity to walk through Chicago's new Millenium park, which is finally open after years of construction and a final budget of $475 million, some $325 million over its initial budget. It is a perfect example of my love-hate relationship with Mayor Daley. I think he is a sleazeball autocrat who's used to getting what he wants, but I think that he does some really great things. I felt the same way about Clinton.

My favorite feature of the park is the bean (which is actually called "Cloud Gate," a name that will never stick), where you can see the skyline of the city distortedly reflected as you walk past. There's also the Pritzker Pavillion, which, from the side, looks like a galleon with its sails just beginning to billow out in the wind. Finally, there's the interactive Crown Fountain, where 50-foot-tall glass sculptures projecting images of regular Chicagoans spray water into a shallow (less than an inch deep) wading pool where people are encouraged to walk.

And people were walking there. When I passed through at around 7:00 p.m., there were hundreds of people wandering around, staring at the bean, splashing in the pool, and lining the edge of the Pritzker Pavillion, where a Frank Sinatra tribute band was warming up for Von Freeman, a local jazz legend.

Before this, Chicago lacked a distinctive city center, a place where people from all over would congregate just for the sake of congregating. A coworker who thinks the new park is hideous argues that everything I like about the park was already available a few blocks away at Grant Park, but I think she's wrong. Grant Park is a sprawling, open space that's either clogged up by festivals and events or completely barren; when there's nothing going on there, there's really nothing going on. It's all or nothing, while Millenium Park is more of an attraction in and of itself, and it's not intended to be co-opted by festivals.

A few days ago, I finished reading Erik Larson's book about the 1893 Columbian Exposition, The Devil in the White City, on the bus as it passed the new park. I couldn't help but see some similarities: the grossly overbudget public installation, driven by the will of a megalomaniac, that sought to establish Chicago as the premier city of the United States, and also to create something that would bring the city's disparate populations together. I think that, in both cases, the megalomaniacs in charge were correct in saying that cost was not an object. (We can only hope that Millenium Park doesn't attract any prolific serial killers, as the Columbian Exposition did.)

Random Links

The Top 100 Albums of the 1970s. Marvin Gaye's What's Going On should be a lot higher.

Eurobad '74, a gallery of horrific interior decorating tips.

Three hundred years of Scottish broadsides. Poetry, crime, religion, the selling of children and spouses. And other things.

The Stockstock Film Festival. Wow, this looks cool. After working with stock footage at Bulletproof, I really want to play around with it some more.

For the "oddly unsettling use of a baby to become famous" files, Who Is That with Jeremy? And where are Child Protective Services when you need them?

If you get as bored as I got today, you too can go to Yahoo picks and browse through their archives.

A Cat Above All Others

Fame has finally come to the Hockins. Their cat, Zora, was recently selected as the Cat of the Day by the site of the same name. An outpouring of adulation followed. Presidential hopeful John Kerry called for a day of national healing: "We must follow the example of this brave cat, a true survivor in the American mold, who was plucked from the adversity of her own metaphorical Vietnam!" President Bush, under attack for never actually reporting for duty at the Animal Rescue while he was in the Texas Air National Guard, conceded the election to Kerry and admitted that his presidency was just "a fraternity prank gone horribly awry." Osama bin Laden, seeing the quality of pets arrayed against him, gave up his fight against the devil Americans and surrendered to Pakistani officials. Zora was elected president of the Teamsters, and Jimmy Hoffa came out of hiding.

Congratulations, Shane and Angela, and especially Zora.

Rock, Paper, Saddam

http://www.rockpapersaddam.com/index.html

Tee hee. Thanks to Amy for the link.

Marlon Brando, 1924-2004

A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Wild One, The Godfather, The Last Tango in Paris, Apocalypse Now. There were few more memorable actors in film history. Where's his freaking parade?

Supreme Court Gets One Right

The Supreme Court ruled today that captives of the Bush administration's war on terror can have their day in court. Guantanamo detainees can sue to challenge their detention, and Yaser Hamdi, a US citizens held as an enemy combatant, has the right to rebut the government's case against him. They've also agreed to hear a medical marijuana case, and they upheld arrestees' Miranda rights. It's about time there was some good news on this blog.

The Private Lives of Politicians

Illinois Republican senate candidate Jack Ryan recently dropped out of the race after his divorce records were unsealed and revealed that he took his ex-wife to sex clubs and pressured her to have sex with him in front of other people. Months earlier, Illinois Democratic senate candidate Blair Hull lost the primary to Barak Obama after his divorce records were unsealed and revealed that he struck his wife and threatened to kill her.

I believe that the first bit of news doesn't have a bit of effect on a candidate's ability to govern. People are into weird sex things, and he didn't force her to do anything. Also, she ended up saying that the allegations she made were untrue. I believe, however, that the second bit of news has a huge effect on a candidate's ability to govern. I don't want some guy who beats his wife and threatens murder representing me. I guess it comes down to this, for me at least: Hull committed a crime, and he could have spent time in prison for it. Ryan didn't.

This post is inspired by a conversation I had with Shawn (forgive me if I misrepresent you, Shawn); we agreed that Ryan's sex life wasn't anyone's business but his and his wife's, and we agreed that Hull's temper and penchant for violence were the business of voters. What I've been wondering since, though, is what the difference is. Both divorce files were opened under the same legal arguments. It shouldn't matter what the effect is, right? If I think the public has a right to know a, then I should think they have the right to know b, especially if the information in both cases is hidden in the same types of files. But I feel like Hull got what he deserved, while Ryan was railroaded.

I suppose I don't know what to think. Ryan's case reminds me too much of the Republican witch hunt over Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. So where's the limit? How much do we have a right to know about the private lives of politicians? Does it make sense that one situation seems more acceptable than the other, or is my moral relativism getting in my way? There's a whole nother question of why Ryan thought he could run for public office as a Republican with that skeleton in his closet, but that's for another day.

Protect Us from the Press

This article in the Guardian illustrates yet another Bush administration plan to keep us safe: torment and humiliate foreign reporters, lock them up overnight, and then send them packing. The Department of Homeland Security claims that it's just enforcing the law—a law that's been ignored since 1952, and that groups reporters in with slave traders, terrorists, criminals, Nazis, and people with communicable diseases. Here's a background story in Salon.

The foreign press has often been the only reliable source of news on what's going on in the world, and even in the United States. It seems that, post-9/11 and post-Iraq, our fine government wants that to stop.

Gipper, the Musical!

Did you hear that Reagan died?

I think now's the perfect time to write a Broadway musical about his presidency. His theme song would include the refrain, "I can't remember, I don't recall, I am not responsible." Every once in a while, he'd float a few feet offstage (he'd be on wires the whole time, visible like puppet strings), and Nancy would have to scramble to pull him back down to earth. We'd dramatize the Iran/Contra scandal as a musical bucket parade to put out a fire (maybe it's the Constitution that's burning), but instead of buckets of water, they'd be passing weapons, cash, drugs, and hostages down the line. AIDS would be a guy in rags who keeps knocking on the White House door, but nobody answers. Homeless people would dance in the streets in formation, happily singing about being homeless by choice.

Any suggestions for other numbers?

Justifying Torture

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/military_0604.pdf

If you haven't read this yet, I encourage you to read it. It's the Pentagon memo that authorizes torture as long as inflicting pain is not the primary reason for the torture, and it provides an exhaustive, and incredibly sick, defense of the legality of torture, up to and including the assertion that the President is not bound by the Constitution or federal law when he is acting as the commander in chief of the armed forces (see page 19 of the pdf). It's long and difficult, but I think it's important to read it, or at least skim it, so you can understand the depths of depravity that the current administration is capable of.

I wonder about the members of this "working group on detainee interrogations." Who are the people who put this memo together? How do they go home to their husbands or wives at night, and sleep without nightmares? How do they do such evil work for such evil people without quitting or killing themselves out of despair? I can already hear them, and everyone else who obeys Bush and company, saying "I was just following orders." I have to believe that things will be better under a different president. How could they be worse?

Reagan

I'm having a hard time mourning Ronald Reagan. I'm sorry he's dead, because I don't want to see anyone die. But I rank him on my list of the great unpunished criminals of US history, and he's one of my top three worst presidents, along with Andrew Jackson and Dubya. Record defecits, Iran/Contra and his other adventures with right-wing murderous regimes in Latin America, nuclear brinksmanship with the Soviet Union, the colossal waste of money that was "Star Wars," union-busting activities from which unions will never recover, the birth of mandatory minimum sentencing... and let's not forget his administration's support for Saddam Hussein in Iraq. I realize that he didn't have direct control over all of these things, but he was complicit, much more than he wanted you to believe, despite his loveable and befuddled old codger appearance. Here's a list of things to hate or mock him for. His followers have managed to enshrine him in popular memory as the president everyone loved, but I can only remember him as the best embodiment of the soulless wasteland of the 1980s.

And the sad thing is that I would still vote for him over our current president.

Is the Noose Tightening?

Bush has sought the services of an outside lawyer in the investigation of who outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. There's documentary evidence that Cheney helped his old company Halliburton get their contracts to rebuild Iraq. CIA chief George Tenet has resigned "for personal reasons"; I wonder if he's working on his tell-all book yet? The main source for the US case on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, Amhad Chalabi, just might be an Iranian spy.

I'd like to see Bush and Cheney voted out of office. I'd prefer to see them in handcuffs.

First They Came for the "Terrorists"

In an amazing collision between stupidity and the abuse of power authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act, four members of the Critical Art Ensemble have been subpoenaed and ordered to appear before a grand jury on possible bioterrorism charges. Their crime? Possession of a mobile biological weapons laboratory. Oh, wait—it's a mobile DNA extraction laboratory used in an art installation where people can test store-bought foods for genetically modified ingredients. Still think the PATRIOT Act only applies to terrorists?

I suppose that, under the ridiculously wide range of definitions of "terror" that have been put forth since 9/11, their art project might qualify. They want to let people know how impossible it is to avoid GM foods, even if you shop at health food stores. This could lead people to get angry and call their elected officials, or even (gasp) stop buying anything that tests positive. This could be construed as an act of economic terrorism, by some definitions.

Or maybe it's just more evidence that the PATRIOT Act gives the government carte blanche to harrass anyone they want to harrass. Lots of people say "if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about." The problem is that this Act lets the government redefine "wrong" whenever it suits them.

A Special Kind of Sovereignty

The US government has put forth a radical new definition of "sovereignty" today. Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that Iraq's new government will have no veto power over future military actions by the United States. He then said that the new government will be fully sovereign. He then gazed forcefully into the camera and, using the hypnotic power of suggestion, convinced American voters that there was no inherent contradiction in those two statements. After all, what would veto power actually mean anyway, in the era of the Bush doctrine of preemption?

I have a question, though: wasn't it just last week that the Bushies were saying that if the interim government asked us to leave, we would leave? Perhaps they meant that when we tell them it is OK to ask, they can ask, and we will comply.

Fun with Fundies

In the absence of a new, coherent post, I share some stuff I came across in my research for my review of the movie Saved!, which I saw last Saturday.

A review of the film by Terry Watkins of Dial-the-Truth Ministries. Notice how many times he points out that the producers of the film are either homosexuals or supporters of gay rights.

The folks at Christian Exodus want fundamentalist Christians to pack up and move to the same state, thereby taking it over; they will then set up an independant Christian nation. What I want to know is this: where do I send my check? Do you need help packing? I admire them for following through on the "if you don't like it, leave" rhetoric many of them shout at people who oppose the current administration.

Finally, from Shane, a regular commentator on my comments:

Hey! That would be an AWESOME candy bar. NUTTY CHRISTS! When you can't live by bread alone, have a bite of our tasty NUTTY CHRISTS candy bar. A cookie to represent the wood of the cross, with the strawberry sweetness of the blood of Christ, covered in milk chocolate, 'cause face it folks, Christ was more black than white. It is so good, people will raise from the dead to have one! NUTTY CHRISTS!!

It should be known that I don't hate Christians, even of the fundamentalist variety. Some of my family members bear that title proudly. I just dislike holier-than-thou bigots who cheerfully damn me, and everyone else, to hell for not believing the same thing they do.

At Least We Won't Be Surprised

This Miami Herald article says that only 33 of 67 Florida counties have bothered to verify that people dropped from the voting rolls after being identified as felons really deserved to be dropped. I don't think felons deserve to lose their right to vote—it continues to punish someone who has already paid his or her debt to society—but that's irrelevant here. As we all know, thousands of voters were illegally dropped from the voter rolls before the 2000 election because their names were erroneously on lists of felons; almost 700 of them have been reinstated so far. Now, six months before the presidential election, over half of the counties in question—including some of the most populous counties in the state—have failed to check their lists. In addition, counties are being asked to examine another list of 47,000 voters identified as "possible felons." Any guesses about which task they'll complete first?

Wow. Pictures.

http://www.soosed.com/lj/

This site displays the last 30 images uploaded to LiveJournal blogs. There are well over a million active LiveJournal users. There are 15,000 posts per hour and 250 posts per minute. I don't know the stats on how many images are uploaded, but reloading this page after even a minute will get you 30 brand-new images.

It's both an incredible time-waster and an interesting found-art project. Something about the pictures, devoid of any context, makes them fascinating. Clicking on the images will take you to the blog that gave birth to them, but after a few times, I got bored with the minutia of people's lives. I just like the pictures. Be careful, though, especially if you work in a cubicle hell: once in a while a not-safe-for-work image will pop up.

More Big Brother...?

Apparently KBR, a subsidiary of Dick Cheney's favorite war profiteer, Halliburton, is selectively cutting off soldiers' access to "non-essential email." I can't find any news stories about it, but it's making the blog rounds, including some from soldiers in Iraq. Here's a handy Google search.

The conspiracy theorist and the trusting citizen in me are both shaking their heads at this. It's pretty apparent that they're trying to keep soldiers from finding out what the big picture in Iraq is, and trying to prevent those soldiers from getting any more harmful information back to the United States...

Oh, wait. It might not be true. All of the reports trace back to a blogger named ginmar, and her situation might be unique.

This could prompt an interesting discussion on blogs as news sources. Any comments?

Things We Didn't See

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/421014.html

This editorial, from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, talks about what the US media did not (or, more accurately, were not allowed to) show American viewers. In response to the much-publicized killing and maiming of four American contractors in Falluja, US forces killed some 600 people, including a reported 450 elderly, women, and children. According to Doctors Without Borders, US forces prevented the wounded from receiving medical treatment. These are war crimes, and they will go unpunished because the US reacts only when there are incriminating pictures published worldwide (like the torture of Iraqi prisoners). The US made sure there wouldn't be any such pictures from the campaign of revenge at Falluja.

Bush Hates Women

...but you already knew that.

http://news.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4977467

The Bush administration has altered or removed information from dozens of government websites relating to women's issues. Government offices addressing the needs of women have been disbanded. Political pressure is being used to block the dissemination of scientific findings. The Justice Department is neglecting to fulfill its duties under the 2000 Violence Against Women Act. Etc.

Register to vote, dear readers.

McEvilly

One of the authors of the article I am working on right now is named M.M. McEvilly. If anyone was born to be a supervillain, M.M. McEvilly was. He or she must be just wandering through life in search of a comic book universe to threaten.

Irrational Fears

Aside from the usual fears of being humiliated in public or physically abused, while I was in high school I developed an irrational fear of those big double doors you see in public places. My fear was that I would reach out to grab the handles to pull them open, and someone would push from the other side while my hand was outstretched, smashing the door into my fingers and spraining, jamming, or breaking them. This never happened to me, of course—if it had happened, the fear would not be irrational. Nevertheless, I approached doors with caution, extending a closed fist until I was sure that I was safe. This fear is still more or less with me, which is one reason I appreciate the architects who built Chicago: all the revolving doors.

What are some of my loyal readers' irrational fears?

GI Joe PSAs

http://www.fenslerfilm.com/?sec=video

Why oh why oh why didn't I come up with this myself?

After every episode of the "GI Joe" cartoon, some stupid kids would get themselves into trouble and a Joe team member would arrive to give them helpful advice. The kids would say "Well now we know," and the Joe would respond "And knowing is half the battle." A group of geniuses called Fenslerfilm got ahold of those PSAs and modified them to suit their own nefarious and hysterical goals.

I came across them at Version Fest, a Chicago area art, music, and activism festival. The festival is going on until May 1.

Inside Bush's Head

http://slate.msn.com/id/2098810

Slate's William Saletan goes into exhaustive detail about how things work inside of Bush's head, using his recent press conference as evidence.

tautology:
   1. a. Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy. b. An instance of such repetition.
   2. Logic. An empty or vacuous statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it logically true whether the simpler statements are factually true or false; for example, the statement Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow.

Or, since we sat on our butts and didn't do anything until it was too late, there must not have been anything we could do.

Trickle-Down Effect

Here's an article on Slate about how Condi Rice's testimony to the 9/11 panel reveals her as an incompetent buffoon of a National Security Adviser: http://slate.msn.com/id/2098499/

I have a theory about a trickle-down effect that describes how the general public gets ideas into its collective head. It usually involves media complicity in spreading, if not lies, statements of questionable veracity. It usually works in favor of the conservative agenda, because it's supported by their media connections. Examples are the idea that Al Gore was a liar who claimed to have invented the Internet, and that Iraq was responsible for the September 11 attacks. Neither of these statements is true, but the majority of Americans believe them both.

In the case of whether Bush either knew about the impending September 11 attacks, or bungled things so badly that he allowed them to happen, or couldn't have prevented them, I pray that the trickle-down effect works. I do care about the difference: I don't have a lot of faith in the government, but my cynicism doesn't extend to thinking that our elected leaders are mass murderers (at least of Americans). However, for the purposes of getting rid of Bush in the coming election, I don't care which one is true. I want the general public to believe that Bush let it happen.

I also pray that they catch him screwing an intern in the Oval Office, on a desk covered in crack pipes and dirty needles, but I'm not holding out much hope for that.

My Hero

http://news.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=4701134

Lynne Truss, the author of the punctuation guide Eats, Shoots and Leaves, talks about her war on the enemies of clear writing.

Truss insists that punctuation vigilantes are not nerds who should really get out more. "We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation," she said.

Amen.

A-Marching We Did Go

I attended an anti-war protest on Saturday. It was a beautiful, if windy, day, and I went with Rebecca to Water Tower Place for a rally and a march against the invasion and occupation of Iraq, among other Bush policies. We ended up walking nearly two miles, down Chicago to Clark, and south from there, across the river and to Federal plaza.

I was decked out in my "Re-elect Roosevelt" t-shirt, a "No War" pin, and a "Congress for Peace.com" sticker. By the end of the march, I was carrying three signs: "Defend Our Courts--Stop Bush," "Defend Our Schools--Stop Bush," and "Defend Our Rights--Stop Bush." Rebecca had on one of her FeelTank Chicago t-shirts that read "Depressed? It Might Be Political," and she had a matching sign.

Police in full riot gear lined the route, looking like lacrosse goalies in search of a net to defend. I wanted to ask one of them if it was hot underneath all that gear, but frankly I was terrified of pissing them off. At times it seemed like there were more police than protestors, but that was because we were toward the back of the march, and the police closed ranks directly behind us. They seemed tense, but some of them looked like they were enjoying the march. One guy was tapping his shield merrily in time with the chanting and drumming. When I made eye contact with them, I smiled and showed one of the signs I was carrying. Some of the cops even smiled back.

I saw my first protest violence on the way. A short distance ahead of us, some anarchists got into a shoving match with some police. We didn't see how it started, but a cop fell with a crash to the ground (the plastice gear he wore sounding like a plastic bucket thrown down the stairs) and a protestor fell next to him. I think two people were arrested, but we were too busy trying to get the hell out of the way to notice. We ran toward the sidewalk, but a cop told us we had to rejoin the march. I said "We don't want to get beat up," and he sighed and said "You're not going to get beat up" and rolled his eyes. I considered mentioning the 1968 police riot, but I'm glad I was too frazzled to actually say anything. These were Chicago cops, after all. Their wooden batons looked well-worn.

Along the march route, I counted a total of four pro-Bush protestors. They looked really lonely, behind the wall of black and pale blue-clad cops. One guy followed us for most of the route, holding aloft a sign that said something like "Support Our Troops, Support Our President." The protestors chanted "Bush Lied" at him enthusiastically, but perhaps a better message would have been "Support our troops, bring them home." Toward the end of the march were three people from the Free Republicans, a happily conservative group that thinks Bush and company are too liberal. They had a few signs, from "Welcome Al Qaeda Groupies" to things like "Remember 9/11," apparently still oblivious to the fact that Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9/11.

At the end, there was a rally featuring Jesse Jackson. However, by this time we were both so tired and hungry that we simply had to leave to find somewhere to sit down and eat. I've been to two protest marches, and I still have not ever heard anything said at the actual rallies associated with them. At the first one, I was too far away to hear; that was the case at the short rally at the beginning of this march too.

I'm really glad I went. I don't think it is actually going to convince Bush to resign and stop being such a reactionary lunatic. I think people who look at rallies and say they're useless because they don't accomplish actual policy changes are missing the point. Rallies are to show solidarity with other people, to tell the world and each other that we aren't just a few malcontents who can be ignored. They're for networking, to figure out what other groups are doing (I collected dozens of fliers and websites that I have to look through). Finally, they're a way of exorcising the feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness that come from watching your country's leaders drag you merrily into hell. You come away feeling like maybe, just maybe, there's hope for the future. It's better than sitting at home in despair.

Quote

"He acted as though everything he did were to be repeated endlessly, to return eternally, without the slightest doubt about his actions. He was convinced he was right, and for him that was a sign not of narrowmindedness but of virtue. Yes, that man lived in a history different from Tomas’s: a history that was not (or did not realize it was) a sketch."

from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Death of a Perfectly Fine Fallacy

Begging the question (petitio principii) is a logical fallacy in which the truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises. In this fallacy, there's a debatable point that's being presented as if it were fact. Some examples include "You should believe me because I always tell the truth" (it's arguable whether you always tell the truth) and "Since all liberals want to destroy our country, they don't deserve Constitutional protection" (I'm a liberal, and I don't want to destroy the country). It's very useful to understand this fallacy, because it's so common, but I'm afraid that we've lost its name to misuse.

Most people who use "begging the question" actually mean "prompting the question." They say "this begs the question," and then they ask a question. An example is this: "Clay Aiken was originally a wild-card selection on American Idol, which begs the question: Were fans right to overlook Aiken the first time around, or did they get it right only after a second try?" That's not correct. A Google News search returned over 300 instances of "begs the question," and of the first 50 or so, only two used it correctly.

According to my sources, this might stem from an archaic translation of the Latin petitio principii. A modern, and less misleading, translation would be "appealing to the underlying principles or assumptions." But it's too late. It's entered "the parlance," and there's no possibility that people will stop misusing it now. I do my part: if I find an article that misuses it more than once, I email the author, but that's a pretty useless gesture. Maybe that author will change his or her ways, but not likely.

While I've given up on begging the question, I won't lie down and let our remaining fallacies die. I will protect post hoc, ergo propter hoc until my dying breath.

Kerry and Conformity

http://slate.msn.com/id/2095993

This article by Duncan Watts analyzes the weird John Kerry triumph from the perspective of 1950s social psychologist Solomon Asch, who studied conformity in a series of really interesting studies. In one study, he showed subjects lines of varying length and asked which pair of lines were the same length. The trick was that everyone in the study group was a plant except one person, who was the real subject. The assistants were instructed to give incorrect answers, and in 1/3 of the cases, the subject agreed with them despite the evidence before his own eyes. Asch said "The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black."

This helps explain a lot of things, like fads, mass suicide, and Democratic primaries. Your mother always asked "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" The answer is apparently yes, at least a third of the time.

It makes me wonder about a lot of things, like juries. In 1935, Muzafir Sherif devised an experiment about how people reach consensus. He put subjects in a dark room and shined a pinpoint of light on the wall. He asked the subjects individually how far the light moved, and then he asked them collectively to come to a consensus answer. They quickly came up with an answer, but in reality the light didn't move at all. If you can get a lone dissenter to agree that the evidence provided by his senses is in fact incorrect (Asch's studies), and you can get a group of people to agree that something that didn't happen in fact happened, what does a "fair trial" mean?

This has made me think a lot about my own life. How often do I cave in to things I wouldn't do if not surrounded by people already doing them? I like to think of myself as fiercely independent; we all do, don't we? I wonder how true that is. We are social creatures, and we aren't aware of a lot of the pressures to make us conform. Like me: I'm sitting at my desk at work, being rebellious by writing this instead of working... but I'm still here at my desk, and in a minute I'll go back to work. I guess you have to pick your battles.

Universe Not Dying

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/dark_energy_040220.html

This Space.com article explains how astronomers think that the universe is not in fact in danger of being ripped apart anytime soon. Whew. I was worried. The esteemed doctors at the Space Telescope Science Institute predict that everyone's favorite universe has about 30 billion years left. Since it's only 13.7 billion years old now, it's akin to a 25-year-old human being—and we don't worry much about 25-year-old humans being ripped apart by their own internal forces, although they may feel like it sometimes.

The article explains some interesting things about the universe that I didn't understand when I was being paid to edit astronomy articles: dark energy, dark matter, and cosmological constants. Reports from the White House tell us that President Bush has instructed the CIA and FBI to investigate this "dark energy," which he suspects may have ties to Al Qaeda. "We must be vigilant in our efforts to protect our universe of the worst energy in the world," Bush said.

Christians vs. Jews

This isn't so much a Deep Question as it is something that I've been wondering about for a long time. I'm too lazy to look into it, so I thought I'd let my learned colleagues fill me in. This is prompted by the flap surrounding Mel Gibson's upcoming film The Passion of the Christ, which is destined to be the highest-grossing film whose dialog is entirely in dead or mostly dead languages.

The question: why would Christians be angry at Jews about the whole death of Christ thing? If God sent Jesus down to die for all our sins, why would anybody be angry at Jews for helping him out? It's not like he was going to trip on a chicken and hit his head on a sharp stone for all our sins. Martyrdom requires action by groups of people. If it was all God's plan, then that plan included the supposed pressure from Jews to put Jesus to death. Christians should thank them for moving the process along. Right?

This may sound naive and satirical. It's a little of both, but I am genuinely curious, but not curious enough to figure it out for myself. Happy commenting. Shane, you go first.

Closed-Captioning Provided by Right Wing Cabal

Last October, a right-wing cabal—er, an advisory board—advised the Department of Education to limit their free closed-captioning of television shows. On the cut list were 200 shows that will no longer be captioned for free by the DOE's Technology and Media Services for Individuals with Disabilities program. In many markets, these shows will still have captioning, because the grant program was mostly used by affiliates in markets that couldn't find corporate sponsorship of captioning. However, this incident provides a good example of how the Bush administration works.

Program guidelines say that shows wanting captioning should be "educational, news, or informational." You may have noticed that these guidelines have been mostly ignored. Jerry Springer, anyone? However, in this recent purge, initiated by a cabal of "five unnamed individuals," those guidelines were ignored. Almost all sports porgramming has been axed, as well as such standbys as Bewitched, Pokemon, an unnamed series of AMC documentaries, an unnamed series of five classic films on BET, I Dream of Jeannie, Jimmy Neutron, Sanford and Son, and the wonderful documentary Visions of Light. Documentaries aren't educational or informational? That's news to me. And no classic films that BET can round up are good enough for the DOE? Hmm. Approved shows are listed too. (See the whole list here.) You'll notice that there's no rhyme or reason to the lists: shows on the banned list are very similar to shows on the OK list.

Basically, it looks like a conservative group of parents, similar to the nipple-counters at the MPAA, were asked for their advice, which consisted of captioning the things they approve of politically, and their list was made law. Documentaries on gays in Hollywood, Hollywood and the Holocaust, and black cinema are out. Independent films are out. Popular television shows are out.

I can't believe that this issue didn't get any press at all. I only learned about it yesterday, when Travis (thanks!) told me about it on the train. I couldn't find any news articles on it; I had to settle for opinion pieces and advocacy groups. Here are a few, for your reading pleasure: Palm Beach Post, Carlisle Sentinel, National Association for the Deaf.

Secret advisory panels dictating policy. No notice given to the public. Arbitrary and nonsensical rulings. This is getting to be a pattern.

Ben and J.Lo Split

In a move that is already producing repercussions throughout the entertainment journalism industry, Jennifer Lopez broke off her engagement to Ben Affleck. Celebrity magazines such as People, Us, and Star were predicting massive layoffs due to the sudden dropoff in gossip.

"This is going to send the industry reeling," said an unnamed source at People. "It could get as bad as the dot-com bust."

Cheryl Rostack, the managing editor of Us, said that pink slips were already being inserted in employee paychecks. "They thought they were getting bonuses because the on-again, off-again engagement was providing so much fodder," she said. "I don't know what to tell them."

One angry reporter at The Star vented her anger at Bennifer while she waited in line at a Brooklyn soup kitchen. "How dare they?" she demanded. "Celebrities are so selfish. Sure, they weren't happy, blah blah blah. Tell that to my kids," she said, pointing at her two children, their bellies already distended from malnutrition brought about by the whims of Hollywood superstars.

A source at Entertainment Weekly said that he wasn't sure the magazine, popular at supermarket checkouts, would survive the Bennifer bustup, but he was holding out hope. "Thank God for Michael Jackson," he sighed. "He's always good for cover stories, and it should get better with his trial coming up."

I hope The Onion didn't beat me to this.

The smell of unemployment

http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-story/localnews/current/bg/01-15-04-200188.html

Chicago-area candy makers Fannie May (not the student loan people) are closing up shop, closing 242 stores in the Chicago area and laying off 625 workers from their west-side factory. Fannie May's owners, Archibald, have sold the company to Alpine Confections. Maybe they'll follow the lead of Brachs, who moved production to Mexico after laying off 3500 employees.

I love the smell of cooking chocolate that fills the air in the west loop in downtown Chicago. That smell will be gone forever soon. I'm sure that's not the foremost worry of the newly unemployed, some of whom have worked there all their adult lives. I suppose this is what some would call progress. Tell that to the workers.

I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/
chi-0401020271jan02,1,3891847.story?coll=chi-news-hed

This article from the Chicago Tribune looks at some of the tricky ways scientists studying obesity and eating patterns use to figure out how and why we eat so much. My favorite was the stale popcorn experiment, where people ate 33% more stale popcorn because it was available, even though they complained about it.

A lot of it has to do with portion sizes. I know I eat too much when presented with ginormous portions at restaurants. A study we are publishing in March says that portion sizes are a lot bigger in the US than in France, for example, where they eat foods that are higher in fat but they are less overweight than Americans. This is interesting to me, both because I work for the American Dietetic Association and because I can't fit into my old pants.

Atheism Is Irrational

http://hauns.com/~DCQu4E5g/Atheism.htm

For my inaugural entry in my Cool Site category, I had to include this "logical" explanation of why atheism is the most irrational belief system. I'm not endorsing or condemning any religion or creed here. I'm just bringing this to everyone's attention.

The writer's argument is that atheism is illogical because it is impossible to prove that God does not exist. He dismisses atheists' argument that it is equally impossible to prove that God does exist, calling it a "lie." How is it a lie? Well, the author provides some false analogies comparing God to pencils and people driving cars to the zoo. His entire argument is begging the question: he assumes that God exists (which is the original point of contention), and then makes his arguments flow from that as if it were undisputed.

The atheists I know don't give a hoot about "proving" that God does not exist. I certainly don't, because it would be impossible. I heartily endorse believing what works for you, and staying out of people's faces about their beliefs.

Carol Green, ?-2003

I found out over Christmas that one of my professors died of cancer. She had some rare form in the muscles of her back, and it spread really quickly. Not two weeks ago, I was told that she probably wouldn't make it, but I didn't expect her to go so soon.

Carol Green basically taught me how to write and research professionally. In a large part, she's responsible for pointing me in the direction I took in life. She's the one who whipped my scholarly work into shape. She's the one who guided my interest in Native American history. She's the one who talked me into going to graduate school. I was working for her when I realized that I didn't want to get my PhD. She encouraged me to go into editing. She was always there to give me The Eye when I was being cocky or feeling precocious.

I didn't always like her—in fact, I spent a lot of the time despising her for being mean and unpredictable—but I always respected her as a scholar and appreciated the guidance she gave me. When I found out she probably wouldn't recover, I wanted to write a letter to her thanking her for everything she had done for me, but what do you say to someone who is dying? Now I can't say anything.

To Draft or Not to Draft?

http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2003/poyforum.html?cnn=yes

This Time forum asks a bunch of interested parties whether or not the United States should reinstitute a draft to deal with troop shortages. I certainly don't know everything about it, and I have never served in the military, but these are my preliminary thoughts.

I like how the first guy says "Increasingly we will be a nation in which the poor fight our wars while the affluent stay home." Increasingly? It's been that way since the beginning. In the Civil War in the North, if you paid a $300 fee, you didn't have to go. That's about as plain as you can get.

The next proponent of a draft says "this would stop the unprecedented activation of reservists." Hello!?!? They know that when they sign up for the army, they will serve active duty and then later be on reserve duty. They know that there's the possibility that they will be called up again. It might be unprecedented, but it's not like they didn't know it was a possibility.

The Armed Forces are often one of the only places where minorities get a shot at equality. The fact that minorities are overrepresented in our VOLUNTEER armed forces is a lot easier to stomach than the fact that they were even more grossly overrepresented in the DRAFT armed forces. They join because there are opportunities to get college money, sure, but a lot stay because they are treated like human beings. This might not be the case, though. Any comments from military people?

I don't know if a draft would ever work (although isn't that what Selective Service is all about?). There are so many people who would refuse to support it because of Vietnam. You'd have to have compulsory service of some kind for EVERYONE, so you couldn't have exemptions for college or whatever. So where would they get the money to pay everyone? If you didn't make everyone serve, then you would have all the problems with the draft during Vietnam all over again.

I know that lots of countries have compulsory military service because they need it, but why does Finland have it? I guess during the Cold War they needed it. But Switzerland has it too, and I can't figure out a necessity for it. South Korea has it, probably for good reason—they trained my roommate to be a dental hygenist, because it was completely random where they put you. Had he drawn a different number, he could have been on the front lines.

There's another problem with a draft: tracking tendencies in school would just be continued. They would point all the smart rich kids from good schools into officer training or the posh jobs, and people who didn't have the same opportunities would be stuck in menial or more dangerous jobs, thus perpetuating the unequal class structure. With the volunteer army, you have a chance to go into something that will teach you life skills, where you might not have had the opportunity outside of the army. Any compulsory military service that wasn't completely random would be inherently unfair. But what Senator would support a draft that gave the possibility that his own son could end up toting an M16 in the desert?

So as you see, I'm not in favor of a draft. We wouldn't have the problems with troop strength if we hadn't decided to invade two countries in less than a year.

Thanks to Shane for the link.

I Want Less Realism

http://slate.msn.com/id/2092798/

This Slate article attempts to explain the explosion of popularity of old-style games like Pac-Man, Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Joust.

I think they hit the nail on the head, at least for me: I like the game, not the realism. My favorite game of all time is NHL 96 for Sega Genesis. The graphics weren't all that great, and it got too easy, but I had lots of fun with it. Later hockey games became so realistic and complicated that I lost interest. I don't want eight buttons and two joysticks, and I don't care if Mike Ricci is as ugly in the game as he is in real life. I don't need little movies showing the players lining up for the faceoff. I don't want the commentators cracking jokes—I tend to turn them off anyway. I surely don't want the view to change when I go in for a breakaway, which always messes me up. I like to play the new games once in a while, but they are never as much fun as that Sega game.

Uncle Sam Wants You to Coach

http://slate.msn.com/id/2092472/

Former Lions and Chargers head coach Bobby Ross signed on to coach the US Military Academy's football team for a reported $600,000 a year. This makes him the highest-paid federal employee. If you split hairs, he's not really a federal employee, he's an independent contractor, and only $210,000 of his salary is being paid by taxpayers. Yep, that's you and me. Bill Clinton didn't make that much when he was President.

I'm not one of those people who complains that professional athletes get paid too much. They bring in the cash because people pay to see them, so they deserve a chunk of that money. However, this is a very different situation. This isn't divvying up TV revenues and ticket sales. This is giving him my tax money to coach football, and paying him more than we paid the President until recently.

Next season, Ross will whip the team into shape, and maybe they'll win two or three games, instead of losing all 13 like last season. Great. Good for them. He shouldn't get my tax dollars to do it.

When I Grow Up and I Am Rich

I like it so much when everybody talks to each other in my comments that I thought I'd encourage it with a new category: Deep Questions. I will ask an important question, and you guys can chat about it.

The question: When you were young and dreamed about being rich and famous, what silly things did you plan for yourself?

I was going to have fountains in my house that delivered Mountain Dew instead of water. I was going to have an arcade with Galaga as the prime attraction. I think I wanted a hovercraft to get from building to building. The only thing I planned that I still want and consider feasible was an in-house screening room for movies.

Commence the discussion!

Hollywood's Stupid New Anti-Piracy Plan

I hate Hollywood. In their efforts to reduce the amount of movie piracy (not to be confused with pirate movies), they have done all kinds of stupid things that affect my movie experience. I have to endure ads before the movie, in which a carpenter asks me not to pirate movies because it will affect him, not the bigshot producers. I am going to have to endure an Oscars stacked against independent films: the MPAA banned "screeners" from being sent out, which is often the only way independent films with limited theater appearances get seen by potential voters. Now I have to endure actual diminishing of the quality of the film.

The studios are adding patterns of brown dots to the film surface. They blink on for a second, then they disappear. They appear all over the screen, at a rate of about once every 20 seconds. They appear in threes, fours, and once as a group of six. They show up on the sky, on the wall, and sometimes even on someone's face.

I noticed it during The Matrix Revolutions, but it was much more apparent in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. It was so apparent that, as you can see already, I was distracted from my movie-watching experience wondering what they were, then counting them, then timing them.

Roger Ebert featured a letter from a film projectionist about it here. It's called the Cap Code, or better as the Crap Code. It's another panicky attempt by the studios to punish all of us for the sins of those studio insiders who are likely responsible for 90% of movie piracy. Thanks a lot, Hollywood. You suck.

Amazon's Stupid New Function

I hate Amazon.com's stupid new search function. Now, when you type a keyword into the search field, it looks in the text of books instead of just the titles. So if you search for something like "inconspicuous," you get results like a book called Flipping Properties: Generate Instant Cash Profits from Real Estate, where the word "inconspicuous" shows up on page 128. You get A Mind at a Time, where the word shows up on page 60. You get a novel called The Eight, where the word shows up on page 83. But I'm not looking for those. What I'm looking for doesn't show up until #7 on the list: Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, from the Everyday to the Obscure by Paul Lukas.

What kind of stupid people are in charge at Amazon? I like the idea of an engine that searches text, but only as an option. This is not how we expect search engines to work. We type in keywords that we want to appear in the title, not words we hope to find somewhere in the text. I realize that they're doing this as a marketing ploy, using the search results to push certain books. Try "conspicuous": the first result with that word in the title is #20, but above it are a guide to setting up an Ebay business, a Philip Roth novel recently made into a movie, a popular nonfiction book by Eric Larson. Other results are just weird, like a potboiler published in 1983. How are any of these results helpful? How are they not merely annoying impediments?

Again, I would be all for this function, if it were an option instead of being automatic, or if it separated the results into title matches and text matches. But it doesn't. I admit that it's fun to find out that Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections is the most popular novel featuring the phrase "eat a peach." However, when I am looking for a book, I want to find that book as quickly and easily as possible. I'm assured that buy.com's search engine doesn't have this newfangled and ill-advised automatic function. Too bad they don't have as many products.

Whack-a-pol

http://slate.msn.com/id/2090855/

It's the fun new game that helps you choose which presidential candidate to vote for in 2004! It's easy: you just answer the questions, and it eliminates the candidates who don't agree with you.

Sigh. It's depressing as hell. I kept getting the response "Get Real!" after all of the candidates were gone. What do I compromise on? Which values do I ignore to find the right person for the job? Is it the lesser of several evils, or the evil of several lessers? Where have you gone, super candidate? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you...

Dead Letter Office

http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2003/11/03/dead_sites/index.html

A study of over 3000 blogs says that 2/3 have not been updated for two months, and a quarter of them have not been updated since day 1.

I will not falter! I will not give up! I will continue to peddle my drivel until the end of time!

Free Speech Cages

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/10/16/secret_service/index.html

The Secret Service has been ordering local law enforcement officials to remove protestors from Bush's sight and pen them up in so-called free speech zones. In the example cited in the article, this was a remote fenced-in baseball diamond. Protestors who refused to be put in the paddock were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. There are photos of one such area in an ACLU article here.

That sounds like a contradiction in terms: free speech zone. I thought that everywhere was a free speech zone, as long as it's public property and your speech is not threatening toward anyone. Apparently, though, in the US under the current administration (which looks more and more like a proto-police state), free speech can be caged up and hidden from view.

If you value your remaining freedoms, please give to the ACLU, write your representatives and senators, sign petitions, anything that gets your voice heard.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Ben Franklin

Appearing for the Defense

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/18/defendant.lawyer.ap/

This story has been making the rounds; it appeared recently in the Chicago Reader, where I noticed it. Over three months earlier this summer, a 34 year old Philadelphia ex-convict and high-school dropout named Johnathan Harris was acquitted on a capital murder charge and several unrelated charges—while representing himself in court. He compiled a record that some established DAs might envy. When the prosecutor said that he would retry Harris for some charges related to the murder, Harris taunted him, saying "Are you sure you don't want to quit while you're ahead?" You have to admire the noive. Does anyone know what happened on the other charges?

Open Mouth, Insert Ditto

Have you been following this? Rush Limbaugh, the conservative blowhard radio commentator, was hired by ESPN to give the "layman's" commentary on its Sunday morning NFL pregame show. Limbaugh, who recently didn't go deaf, actually boosted the show's ratings. However, Rush will be Rush, and he said something stupid and potentially offensive. Here's a timeline:

9/28: Rush opens his big stupid mouth and says Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb is being hyped because he's black.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/football/nfl/09/30/bc.fbn.mcnabb.limbaugh.ap/index.html

9/30: McNabb responds, saying he doesn't want an apology, but we should be past all of this.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/football/nfl/10/01/mcnabb.reax.ap/index.html

10/1: Limbaugh resigns after luminaries including Howard Dean and Al Sharpton call on ESPN to fire him.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/football/nfl/10/02/limbaugh.resigns.ap/index.html

10/2: Peter King of Sports Illustrated describes Rush as stupid, not evil.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/writers/peter_king/09/30/mcnabb_limbaugh/index.html

10/2: King Kaufmann of Salon says that Rush sucked at his job of football commentator anyway, and ESPN should be ashamed of hiring him in the first place. They got exactly what they should have expected.
http://www.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2003/10/02/thursday2/index.html

So Rush lasted just over a month without offending anyone. That's pretty good for him. I personally think that he is both stupid and evil, and I'm glad he resigned, not because I watch the show, but just because I think he should stick to radio.

With this firing and the recent allegations of drug use, it will be interesting how the king of loudmouths will recover.

Vacillating on Wesley Clark

At this point, I would accept any Democratic candidate who seems to have a shot at beating Bush. I would even vote for Lieberman or Gephardt, although I wouldn't like it. After reading Michael Moore's impassioned appeal to General Wesley Clark to run for president, I immediately seized on him as yet another possibility to get Resident Bush out of the White House in 2004. I like Howard Dean, mostly, and now I like Wesley Clark, mostly. However, there have been some allegations made about him that make me wonder if he's the right guy for the job. Anybody but Bush, of course, but it would be nice to not have to settle for just a lesser evil.

Specifically, the allegations revolve around his handling of a certain situation that occurred during the NATO operations in Bosnia in the mid-1990s. Apparently, Clark, who was the head of the NATO operation there, ordered British troops to block Russian troops from landing at Kosovo's Pristina Airport, a move that, in the words of the British commander who refused the order, might have started World War III. Here are some links that mention this story:

http://www.muslimwakeup.com/mainarchive/000202.html
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/967823.asp?0sl=-22
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3110020.stm

I don't know if this means Clark is a two-faced liar. I doubt it, actually. But it should serve as a word of caution, especially with Clark's much-publicized criticism of Bush's eagerness to use force to settle all international disputes. I'd like to hear more from Clark on the subject. I'm assuming that a long campaign will give him ample opportunities to explain this.

Grammar Lesson

homophone. noun. One of two or more words, such as night and knight, that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, origin, and sometimes spelling.

I am an editor. One of the things that really pisses me off in everyday life is the misuse of homophones. Here are the ones that really get me steamed:

you're: contraction of "you are." "I hear that you're an editor."
your: possessive, means belonging to you. "Take your bad grammar and leave me alone!"

they're: contraction of "they are." "Mom said they're going to repossess the trailer."
their: possessive, meaning belonging to them. "They can take their stupid trailer if they want it."
there: adverb, meaning at a certain location. "They left the trailer over there by the gas station."

site: a location, like a Web site. "Did you visit The Rock's new fan site?"
cite: to quote or mention a source. "The Rock cites John Keats as a major influence."
sight: the ability to see. "His sight was a lot worse after the incident with the broom."

Ice Capades

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/writers/darren_eliot/09/23/rules/index.html

Former goalie and current brilliant hockey analyst Darren Eliot examines NHL rule changes that would actually benefit the game.

Every year, fans and sportswriters bemoan the current state of the NHL. Scoring is down, attendance is down, TV ratings are down. Every year, the NHL runs around telling us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, because everything is actually fine. Despite this, they fiddle around with rules in an attempt to increase scoring.

Every year, they say "This year, officials will be cracking down on obstruction, and this time we really mean it!" Every December, things are back to normal, with the neutral zone resembling an NFL line of scrimmage more than a hockey game. This year, they have limited the size of goaltenders' equipment; this is not likely to do any good, since even the goalies with the largest pads (Jean-Sebastian Guigere's monstrosities spring to mind like bloated whales surfacing) claim that they're within the new limits.

In Eliot's article, he takes on five current NHL rules that he thinks could use revision, and I agree with all but his suggestion that players stay in the box on minor penalties. One that I've been complaining about since they changed it is the old "tag up" offsides rule, where a player who doesn't have the puck used to be able to step out of the offensive zone and then rejoin the play. Sure, it makes things harder on the linesmen, but that's their job. Would it increase scoring? I don't know, but it would help the flow of the game and limit the number of times that a player has to hang around the blue line waiting for his teammate to sprint back.

There's no cure for the real problem, which is the over-expansion of the league in the early 1990s. Thirty teams is just too many. There are too many mediocre players out there who clutch and grab because they don't have the skill to do anything else. But there's no way to reduce the number of teams, so the league has to work with what it has. We're still waiting, Mr. Bettman...

Thanks to Shane H. for the link.

In Space, NASA Can See You Scream

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_030922.html

Space.com clears up the misconception that sound doesn't travel in space. It does: we just can't hear it because sound needs a medium to travel through, and there's not enough of a medium in space for the sound to reach our ears (even if we could take those pesky helmets off and give a listen). But there is a medium nonetheless, and it can carry sound.

To be technical about it, NASA didn't hear the B-flat emanating from a black hole; they saw it, or its effects, with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. It was pointed out to me that the sound was at an octave much too low for human ears to hear anyway, so it's good we have things like Chandra floating around doing the work for us.

I edit astrophysics papers all day, but the only interesting astronomy things I read I find on the Internet.

Sigh. I wanted to find a classical music piece in B-flat so I could make some smart comment about, I don't know, Mozart listening to the universe or something, but I couldn't find anything I knew.

Fat Football Players

http://slate.msn.com/id/2088644/

Is it PC to laugh at fat football players? I hope so, because they're funny. One of my favorite parts of watching football (a sport I rarely watch) is seeing a 300-plus man running down the field with his gut flopping out of his jersey. This is an entertaining article about that very phenomenon. Any article that drops Voltron as a cultural reference ("like a fat Voltron") is OK in my book.

I'm a hockey-centric snob, so I can't help but mention that you rarely see a fat hockey player, although there have been a couple of fat goalies.

Maybe Just a Few Children Left Behind

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5374-2003Aug30.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0338/schanberg.php

Bush's No Child Left Behind program was one of the keystones of his campaign. He pointed to the miraculous recovery of Texas schools (Houston being the area cited as the model for the Federal program) while he was governor and said that he would do the same for the US. Well, after some digging, the truth seems to be coming out: it was a big hoax. The 30–40% dropout rates that existed before Texas implemented its program disappeared not because the students starting coming to class and passing their mandated exams, but because the districts simply stopped reporting them as dropouts. Voila! The poorest schools in the city reported dropout rates under 1%, and Bush gets to crow about being the king of education.

These articles detail the would-be scandal (it would be a scandal if the media were really interested in getting at the truth). The first one talks about punishments being meted out to school officials who underreported the dropout rates. The second deals with the scandal more generally, and talks about the problems that plague Bush's national education program.

Worst Jobs in Science

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,12543,484153-1,00.html

If I had some of these jobs, I think I'd kill myself. Or at least I'd be stuck in an existential funk from which I could never escape.

My favorite one is #17, the Planetary Protection Officer: "Should the life he can't detect escape and wreak a plague upon humanity, we'll blame him."

What I want to know is why astronomy journals editor was left off the list. There just might be more job satisfaction in smelling farts or advocating the metric system.

My Bodyguard

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/6752227.htm

Kid gets beaten up by schoolyard bullies; school district hires bodyguard.

I have never seen Tony Bill's 1980 directing debut My Bodyguard. Should I? It starred Chris Makepeace (ironic name, given the subject of the film) as the new kid, Matt Dillon as the thug extorting lunch money, and Adam Baldwin (no relation to the Famous Baldwins) as the titular bodyguard. Matt Dillon, for one, seems perfectly cast. He might still steal lunch money, for all we know.

Slow Walkers

I hate Slow Walkers. You know the people I mean. I'm walking down the sidewalk on the way to catch the train home. Ahead of me are the Slow Walkers. They walk two, maybe three abreast, and they are walking entirely too slowly.

Some people walk slowly because they have short legs or they had surgery recently or they are old. But not the Slow Walkers. They walk slowly out of some sense of entitlement, some feeling that they deserve to take up as much space as everybody else——but for a longer period of time.

They weave in front of me like football safetys. I try to get around them by making a dash around a parking meter, but they anticipate the move, and they're there when I attempt to merge back onto the sidewalk. I see an opening on the left side of the sidewalk where there's no oncoming foot traffic, but as soon as I speed up, the Slow Walkers spread out to fill up the space. Do they hear my footsteps? Do they have some Spidey sense that enables them to anticipate my every move? Can they manipulate time and space in order to seem like they're everywhere at once?

Would it be wrong to shoulder them out of the way?

But eventually I accept my fate. After all, it is only a half-block to the subway entrance, and they will continue on their sluggish, plodding way, leaving me to dash down the stairs in time to catch a train, in order that I don't have to wait three or four minutes until the next one. I am at peace.

Until they turn, agonizingly slowly, to walk down those same stairs. I cannot get around them because of the crowd of people recently disgorged from the last train. Time slows down. I extend my hand in an exaggerated attempt to fend off the inevitable. It is all I can do to keep from kicking them down the stairs.

Of course they walk two abreast down the stairs. Of course they reach the machine where you put money on your transit card before me, and of course they have trouble smoothing out the crumpled dollar bills so the machine accepts them. Of course they clog up the entire final staircase before the train platform. And of course the train doors slam in my face as I sprint the last few feet.

I know you, Slow Walkers. I know you feed on the chorus exhasperated sighs and groans emanating from the poor people stuck behind you on the moving walkway at the airport, where you've plunked your carry-on luggage (which is too big to fit in the overhead compartment anyway) in the middle so nobody can get past. I know your legs are fine; you could walk faster if you wanted to.

Is there a moral of this story? I can't think of one. If I hate the Slow Walkers so much, I could just drive to work. But there are so many Slow Drivers...