The Westboro Baptist Church

You all know these wackos. They're the ones who've gotten an undue amount of press because of their picketing of soldiers' funerals. The membership of the Westboro Baptist Church is under 100 people, and most of those are members of the family of Fred Phelps, the church's founder.

This group of lunatics has absolutely no association with any mainstream church, and the main thrust of their beliefs, or at least what they're choosing to highlight at present, is that God is passing righteous judgment on the United States for being too accepting of homosexuality. That's what the picketing is about. They claim that United States soldiers are being killed in Iraq because their country is too tolerant of homosexuality. These people are disgusting, delusional, and dangerous.

But think about this: but for the focus of their enmity, how do they substantively differ from such influential mainstream nutjobs as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson? Both of those men said, in the wake of September 11, that the terrorist attacks were a righteous judgment from God on a country that was too tolerant of, among other things, what they viewed as sexual lewdness. Same goes for Hurricane Katrina. My point is this: the Westboro Baptist Church's beliefs differ from those of Falwell and Robertson only in degree, not in kind.

Some might take issue with my citation of Falwell and Robertson as mainstream. I'd disagree, but for the sake of argument let's leave them aside. Let's look at the platform of the Republican Party, and in particular, the push for a Federal Marriage Amendment. These are people who believe that allowing homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals will cause society to crumble. In other words, they believe that there will be direct negative consequences visited on America for too much tolerance of homosexuality.

You see where I'm going with this, right?

The Westboro Baptist Church isn't directly dangerous. They number too few, and they're crazy. They have no support for their insane views. The true danger of the Westboro Baptist Church, though, is that it creates a foil for those who fundamentally believe the same things as they do about homosexuals. Republicans get to support troops, get credit for opposing an anti-gay group, and then still turn around and vote to restrict gay rights. The Westboro Baptist Church is nothing but a distraction. They're a group that is so extreme that it allows people to imagine that they're being tolerant while they let themselves turn a blind eye to (and legitimize) their own prejudices.

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Zhong guo

I don't understand why we translate country names. I'm in China, and here they call their country "Zhong guo."



So where did we get China from? And if we are going to get into the business of translating the country's name, couldn't we realize that this one actually means something? It means "Middle Country" or "Middle Kingdom." So whose job was it to come up with "China," and where did he or she (probably he, I guess) get it from?

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PRC, baby

So as many of you know, I'm headed off to China on Thursday for about two and a half weeks. I'm really excited and nervous about it, having never been that far away from home, or for that long.

It should be a lot of fun. Nick arrives the day after we do, and we're meeting him at the base of the big obelisk in the middle of Tiananmen Square. Just thinking about that makes me excited.

And no, not in a Freudian way. Perverts.

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I think...

...that Subway should be forced to change the name of its "Veggie Delight" sandwich, due to the extremely misleading nature of the second part of the name.

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Thank You for Smoking

Last night I went to see Thank You for Smoking with my friends Jason and Dave, and it was amazing. Funny, relevant, well-written, tasteful, all of the above. It's not in wide release, so you've got to search a little bit to find it, but do yourself a favor and seek it out. It's well worth it.

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Tags: Movies, Thank+You+for+Smoking

A Clear Winner

There's not much to say about this:

The Senate Democratic leadership says it has found a wedge issue to strengthen the party’s position on abortion rights, which top strategists think has become a liability in recent years.

The wedge is legislation expanding access to contraceptives and sex education, which polls show a majority of Americans support but which Democrats are betting will be difficult for social conservatives in the Republican base to accept.

Go read the whole thing. It's very interesting, and seems like a clear winner to me. If Democrats start presenting themselves as the party that's serious about women's rights and personal responsibility when it comes to preventing abortions, rather than the supporters of wholesale abortion-on-demand that the Republicans have been trying to portray, then they're bound to pick up ground in the middle.

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Tags: Abortion, Democrats

The Politics of Personal Destruction

This issue is being hammered all over the liberal blogosphere, but I felt compelled to say something about it, because it's so representative of the vile crap that's done in politics all the time.

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) has no shame:

Sitting in the oncology ward at Children’s National Medical Center on Jan. 19, retired Adm. Joe Sestak and his wife, Susan, awaited the doctors’ verdict about the condition of their 5-year-old daughter, Alexandra.

She had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor last summer and given three to nine months to live. The Sestaks lived for four months in the ward. They watched as their daughter survived three surgeries, and as she endured chemotherapy.

[...]

Weldon attacked Sestak’s decision to continue owning a home in Virginia while only renting in Pennsylvania and questioned why Sestak did not move back to Pennsylvania when he was working at the Pentagon. Weldon commutes from Pennsylvania each day.

Weldon also suggested Sestak should have sent his daughter to a hospital in Philadelphia or Delaware, rather than the Washington hospital. Sestak said that as soon as doctors give his daughter the all-clear, he’ll buy in Pennsylvania.

This is maybe the lowest, basest attack I've ever seen from any politician against a political rival. It's as though the fact that Sestak is running against Weldon gives Weldon carte blanche to say whatever the hell he pleases. There have been attacks that were less factually correct, but this one isn't a matter of facts. It's a matter of a slimeball bringing a 5-year-old with brain cancer into his crosshairs in the hopes of scoring some cheap political points. It's disgusting, and it makes me a little disappointed that I've ever set foot in the district that he represents.

Atrios has the whole roundup, and has added Joe Sestak to the Eschaton community list. Sestak's ability to weather this kind of attack with grace and dignity should show us all that he's already twice the candidate than Curt Weldon has ever been.

Of course, this looks all the worse in light of Tom Delay's recent condemnation of his opponents for using the politics of personal destruction, doesn't it?

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Tags: Curt+Weldon, Joe+Sestak, Pennsylvania

Immigration

A lot of things have happened since last I blogged regularly on political issues. I stopped because I got the feel that it was somewhat futile, and like I was just adding my voice to an already unnecessarily large preponderance of blogs. But I've decided to write again for me, so that's that.

Here's my take on illegal immigration: If it didn't benefit the immigrants to come here illegally, they wouldn't do it. There are people making money hand over fist on the backs of illegal immigrants, and they're passing the savings on to us. If we were to build a wall, or kick out all of the illegal immigrants, or both, two things would happen. One, companies that employee illegal immigrants would no longer be able to support the prices they'd been charging for their products. In order to remain profitable, they'd have to raise prices, and that would hit every consumer in the country in the wallet. Two, the amount of money it would take to raise a wall along our whole southern border (because let's face it, when most people say "illegal immigrants," what they really mean is "Mexicans"), as well as to staff an increased border patrol would either force higher taxes upon us, or would force us as a country ever deeper into the already crippling, almost 14-digit debt that we've already accrued.

So what to do? So far as I can tell, what really gets people's goat about the issue (those who aren't closet racists, that is) is the illegal part. So make legal immigration easier and more attractive than illegal immigration. And punish companies that are found to employ illegal immigrants. That'd do it, wouldn't it? I guess it wouldn't address the oft-cited concerns about "preserving our American culture," but we all know what that really means, don't we?

As for the guest worker program, it's not an original thought on my part, but I happen to agree with the line of thinking that it's a horrendous idea, and would create a permanent underclass of resentful non-citizens, and we do not want that in the slightest. It's largely because of that that I applaud the Democrats for sticking up to Frist and the other blustery bullies in the Senate. Aside from the actual provisions of the proposed bill, with which I strenuously disagree, the Democrats' actions show me that they're interested in business, rather than in endless debate that doesn't result in a bill. They've set up a cloture vote on the bill proposed in committee (effectively barring the attachment of amendments until the vote is held), which makes perfect sense, because if the bill won't pass as is, it's unlikely to pass with a bunch of amendments attached to it.

It gets repeated often enough that it means basically nothing by now, but this country was built on the backs of immigrants, and it's being sustained on the backs of immmigrants. To throw that away because of some xenophobic commitment to whatever's meant by "American culture" is not just shortsighted; it's morally reprehensible.

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Tags: Immigration, Bill+Frist, Democrats

Tom DeLay

I'm not a religious man, and that's a subject I'll address in an upcoming "reflection" post. I don't have a reason to take offense to the man co-opting what I feel to be my religion, but for some reason it still turns my stomach to see the man claiming to have been doing God's work, and to get the support of the insanely un-Christian Religious Right.

It's probably just the pomposity, combined with the stubborn insistence that he did nothing wrong, and the slanderous accusations of this all being the result of some liberal conspiracy to take him out of the power structure. I'm not offended on behalf of Christianity. It's just that there's this self-righteous air about him every time he opens his mouth that makes me want to throw my head back and scream.

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Tags: Christianity, Tom+Delay, Religious+Right

Formatting

Anybody know quickly how to fix the IE formatting problem that JP pointed out? I could probably figure it out, but it would take some time, and I don't feel like doing it. I feel like having it done for me.

You know what? I barely even feel like searching the internet for the solution that I could probably find in ten seconds flat. I just felt like writing a post to put up a couple of Technorati tags and see how they work for the first time.

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Tags: formatting, Blogger, Lazy

Readership

This probably isn't the best place to ask about how to get readership up, since not too many people will read this, but I'll ask anyway. What should I do? For a while I was leaving trackback links all over other sites when I'd link to them. Maybe that's something that I should do again, whenever I write posts on political issues, or issues dealing with current events.

But a lot of blogs have stopped using trackbacks, so I don't know if that would work as well. Maybe I can ping all the sites that I reference that do use trackbacks.

Another thing I can do, I guess, is to comment frequently and substantively on other blogs, and leave my own URL. Every time I do that, especially over at Decision '08, I notice a trickle of traffic coming in.

But beyond those two things, does anybody have any idea about what to do? Any ways that anybody knows of that I can whore myself out for traffic will be much appreciated.

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Keep that good news comin'!

I guess this is just another example of the media loving to report on things that make it look like things are going badly in Iraq.

BAGHDAD -- A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.

[...]

In January, Bowen's office calculated the American reconstruction effort would be able to finish only 300 of 425 promised electricity projects and 49 of 136 water and sanitation projects.

No chance that, you know, things might actually be going badly in Iraq, huh?

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A Deepening Resolve

Those of you who know me know that I'm not a huge sports fan. I don't follow any sports religiously, and in general I don't really care much about them, but for the same reasons that Josh Marshall notes, the idea of being a fan of the New York Yankees has never been even remotely appealing to me. Since I was born in the Los Angeles area, I've been a fan of the Dodgers above any other team. I remember watching the 1988 World Series between the Dodgers and the Athletics, and I remember Kirk Gibson's amazing home run finishing Game 1 of the series. That was an amazing moment to be a Dodger fan. Hell, it was an amazing moment to be a doe-eyed little boy in love with the game at all.

But now I live in north Jersey, and allegiance here runs, I'd say, about 90% to the Yankees. That's why, during the 2004 ALCS, I decided that I'd support the Red Sox as well as the Dodgers. When I was in Boston in October, I bought a Red Sox hat that's been my cap of choice, when I wear one. But I wasn't prepared for the depth of feeling that goes along with being a Yankee fan in Jersey. Every time I wear my hat to my second job, I get several comments from several different folks about how it's disgusting that I'd wear it, or that I need to take it off, or just that Boston sucks. Some are in jest, and some have a little bit of sting to them. Yesterday I even got a little bit of water poured on me for wearing a Boston hat on opening day.

So I've decided that I've got to become a total Red Sox fan (unless the Dodgers decide to pick it up and actually, you know, do something). I'm still not that interested in baseball, and I won't go home and watch all the games, but the idea of rankling the Jersey folks appeals to me.

Now I've just got to find the materials to make a Derek Jeter voodoo doll to leave at work this week.

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New Haven, Old Friends

I spent the night in New Haven on Saturday night, visiting with some old friends from high school. It's funny how the conversation can consist about eighty percent of sentences beginning, "Hey, remember when..." but it still doesn't get old.

I had seen a few of these folks a couple of weeks ago, but my best friend from high school was there last night, and I hadn't seen him for about three years. It was really nice to hang with him again, and entertaining in more ways than one. I've told some folks about the conversational highlight of the night, and since it would probably not be appropriate for.....well, for anywhere, I won't write it here. Suffice it to say that it shocked me, and that's not easy to do.

I don't really have a point to this post, per se; I only mean to emphasize that it's a wonderful feeling when you can fall back into stride in five minutes with people you haven't seen for five years.

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Pacific Time

I went out to a bar with some buddies last night to see a band play. The bassist for the band was a friend of my buddy Kevin, so that's how we knew of the gig. The place was...well, it was interesting, let's say. It was called The Rail, and only a chain link fence separated it from the nearby NJ Transit station, and the intermittent roar of the trains.

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was a midget playing video poker. Though it's something you don't see every day, there was nothing wrong with it. It was just a little odd. Right after the midget, though, I saw an old man, with a full head of white hair, desperately making out with a girl who I'd guess was about two-fifths of his age (I'd guess he was in his mid-60s, she was in her mid-20s). Eli was convinced that the girl was a prostitute. It was quite unsettling, and we chose our seats well outside viewing range of those two. But it didn't matter, since throughout the night they decided to reposition themselves all over the bar. It was as if he said to her, "Now that we've made out for 20 minutes at Position A, let's move to Position B." It was awkward and sad and uncomfortable and wet, and I didn't like it at all.

Jon-Paul and I went to order some beers, and a guy sitting at the bar suggested that we try some Heineken Light. We're no slouches, so it became pretty quickly apparent that this guy was an employee of Heineken, paid to sit in the corner and suggest Heineken Light to people as they order drinks. We humored him, and for our trouble he gave us free t-shirts and keychain flashlights. Hell, that woulda been worth the $3.50 even without the beer!

Kevin's friend's band was supposed to play at 10:30, so we made sure to get there in plenty of time. We had had a big dinner at a Costa Rican restaurant earlier, and we got to The Rail right around 10 or so, I'd say. To make a long (and boring) story short, the guys didn't end up going on until about 1:30, by which time most of us were pretty much done being in the mood to sit around, drink beer, and listen to bands we didn't know (at least they weren't cover bands, though).

All in all it was a fun night, though. There was this one guy walking around the bar trying to surreptitiously slip his straw into people's drinks with a very obvious, "Hey, look over there!" line. It was all in good fun, though, and the guy was pretty interesting. He had at least 10 facial piercings, including two-inch long clear plastic spikes straight through each cheek. He told us that he was a fire eater, and that he could have put my arm down his throat, not unlike sword swallowers at carnivals. When Eli remarked that he would have laughed if that happened, the guy said (and I quote), "That's not your friend. Your friend would have got your arm out of my mouth."

Good times.

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Every other Friday

I work two jobs. One of them has very regular hours, and I even am afforded the opportunity to take every other Friday off (today is one of those Fridays). The other job is sporadic, stressful, and sometimes rewarding, and it usually has me working one job or the other every day of the week, but it pays quite well. The combination of these two jobs has taken me to the point, though, where I feel that getting every other Friday off isn't just a perk, it's a necessity. With as much decompression and relaxation as is on my schedule today, I just can't imagine what I would do if I had to work today.

As such, the pure pleasure that I used to take as a child in having a day off of school isn't something that I feel on my SDOs (Scheduled Days Off). It feels more like just a necessary step in refueling for the next two-week cycle, and that's vaguely unsettling to me.

But on the other hand, I can't really complain. My second job has treated me exceedingly well financially. If I hadn't been working the second job, I would still have some bills not paid off, I wouldn't have been able to get my new computer, and I wouldn't be able to go to China in less than two months. At this point, complain though I may, I've got no choice but to conclude that the stress is more than worth it for the financial and material comfort that it's brought. Financial stress is its own beast, and I'd rather be tired and whiny about a job than financially unstable.

Also, below is what I would have looked like if I was in the music video for "Take On Me" by A-Ha.

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Personal Irresponsibility - Blame the Media

Don't like how the war in Iraq is going? Well, there's a simple solution to that! Don't blame the Administration who brought us there. Blame the media for not reporting what you so desperately want to be true!

Snarky and sarcastic, I know. Apologies all around for that. But really, how desperate is the Republican base to absolve Bush of any responsibility in the war that he started? In the war that he was ready to deliberately provoke and mislead in order to start?

"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.

This is a man who, despite his assertions to the contrary, was desperate to have this war, for some reason. He ejected the weapons inspectors that he had pushed the U.N. to let into Iraq, and he was willing to get an Iraqi to publicly testify about weapons he already knew didn't exist. This is a man who, almost three years ago, stood proudly under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished." Meanwhile, troops are still dying, Iraq is mired in a civil war (which is still a civil war, by any other name), and there's no clear exit strategy.

You all know all of this. If you're a liberal, it outrages you. If you're a conservative, you've likely bought into the lie that we went into Iraq to "free the Iraqi people," and not because of the pressing threat that the WMDs posed to the United States. If you're reading this, you've likely got an opinion one way or the other.

Here's my point, though. If you think the war was a shortsighted, ill-advised farce that has undermined our country both domestically and internationally, you probably want Bush to live up to his credo of personal responsibility. That position makes sense. What doesn't make sense is when Bush's followers have to attack everybody but the President for the handling of the mistakes for which he is and should be ultimately responsible.

If we can't trust the media to bring us the truth from Iraq, then who can we trust, if we're to adhere to the conservative talking points about the liberal media trying to undermine the war effort? Do we listen to the Administration, which certainly has a vested interest in selling the war as anything but a failure of epic proportions? Do we listen to right-wing bloggers who've never set foot in Iraq and never will? Do we trust members of Congress, like Howard Kaloogian, who use blatant misinformation to try to pull the wool over our eyes about the nature of the situation in Iraq?

Pardon me, but none of those options seem very personally responsible.

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Maybe not triumphant, but a return all the same

I'm not gonna promise anything, but now that I've got a computer at home that works really well, I'd really like to get back into the blogging game. This will likely involve some kind of overhaul of the layout and such, as well as a rethinking of the overall gist of the subject material.

Last time I stopped blogging regularly, it was because the subject matter got to be stressful enough to me that I just didn't feel like writing about it every day anymore. I've stayed informed over the last six months, and I've kept up conversations on message boards and with my father, mainly, about current events and such, but I just don't have the energy in me to devote this blog solely to such pursuits again.

Here's what I'm thinking, then. I'll toss some movie reviews in here. If something funny occurs to me, I'll try my best to remember to put it up. I'll blog some about current events, and hopefully get some conversation going in the comments in that way. But the biggeest thing that I'd like to add is a semi-regular reflective-type feature. I might muse one week on religion in my life, favorite movies the next, and Futurama the next (everyone who knows me knows that I could go on for days on that topic alone).

Hopefully I haven't alienated everyone, and hopefully I can settle into a format that will keep me adding content regularly.

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My New Computer

I got a new computer today. It's a pretty big departure from my old computer in two important ways.

1) It works quickly and well.
2) It's a Mac.

I know about all the vitriol directed toward Macs by otherwise reasonable people all over the place, and you can all save it. I like it, and I like what it can do. I like the way it looks, and I like the way it feels. I like that everything's built in. I like everything about it so far.

I'm not going to promise some stunning return to blogging, but I just thought I'd let y'all know what was up.

Miami

There's not enough time for me to get into the whole thing right now, even if I wanted to (which I don't). Let it be said, though, that the verdict on my Miami vacation is one thumb way up, one thumb way the hell down.

Abramoff

I wrote this to my dad about 5 minutes ago, and I thought it would make a good blog post:

The fact that everybody feels the irrational need to put a caveat on the Abramoff story is really getting to me. Every time they talk about how all of these Congressional Republicans are in it pretty deep, and that there's tangible proof of their corruption, someone has to pipe up and say something like, "Yeah, well, Democrats do it, too." Totally unsubstantiated, and it's insane to think that that's what people's conception of "fair and balanced" really is. When there's mounting piles of evidence about GOP wrongdoing, it's dishonest and unfair to the viewing public to say things like "Democrats do it, too," because that puts in people's minds that the legitimate evidence that they're seeing against the Republicans exists against the Democrats as well.

Don't get me wrong. If there are Democrats who are complicit in this, they should be tossed out with the rest of the trash. But in a system where folks are supposedly innocent until proven guilty, the truly guilty are getting a lot of leeway while the nominally innocent are forced to shoulder a lot of that burden of guilt.

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Don't get all excited yet

I don't know if I'm going to be able to bring myself to do this more frequently now than I have been over the last couple of months (i.e. not at all), but I'm going to make the effort. I'm still intensely interested in politics, and have probably bored my poor father to tears, since I talk about nothing else, really, when I call him. Well, politics and movies. So I have a feeling that's what my focus will be. Not so tightly on politics as before, because that was untenable. Maybe I'll start putting up movie reviews every now and then.

But for now, a post unrelated to either of those topics:

The Jimmy Buffet

Eli, Steve and I had an idea for a restaurant where everything was named after celebrities. It would be called, of course, the Jimmy Buffet. You could drink Brian Seltzer, or garnish your dish with Elvis Parsley. We came up with a lot, and there's more and more every day. I just get the idea that it would end up being quite an.....eccentric menu, let's say.

Oatmelio Estevez
Chili Bob Thornton
Sloppy Joe Pesci
Quicher Sutherland
Pizza Rose
Robert Brownie, Jr.

We have more, but I figured I'd whet your appetite, so to speak, with those.

Oh, and we also have names for the silverware, for some reason:

Harrison Fork
Burl Knives
George Spooney

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An Uphill Battle

I had heard (along with a few of you readers, probably) that there was a poll that showed that 19% of Americans thought that they were in the top 1% of earners, and that 20% more thought that they would one day be in the top 20%. In looking up some information about it, I found that this was the specific question asked:

As you may know, Al Gore has claimed that George W. Bush’s proposed tax cut will largely benefit those with high incomes, who he claims are the top 1%. Thinking about your own situation, do you think that you are in the top group that would benefit from Bush’s proposed tax cut now, do you think you will be in this group that will benefit in the future, or do you think you will not benefit from Bush’s tax cut?

The question is sloppy at best, but that's not what I'm here to argue. The 19% and 20% figures probably aren't correct, at least in the interpretation given above the quote. Some of that 19% could be folks that didn't agree with Al Gore's interpretation that only the top 1% will benefit. Stanch conservatives would have voted that they would benefit, whether they considered themselves in the top 1% or not.

It seems more likely that the 20% figure is accurate as commonly interpreted. For folks who don't think they'll benefit now but will benefit later, they've got to be either firm believers in trickle-down economics or very optimistic about their future income prospects.

Regardless, though, it seems obvious to me that people are misinformed about the nature of wealth in the United States, and how they personally fall in the grand scheme of things. More people think that they're "rich" than actually are, and more people embrace the increasingly ludicrous notion of the "American dream," that hard work can get you anywhere you want to go. But conservatives have capitalized on this idea, and it's convinced at least a few people to vote against their best economic interests, because they truly believe that those won't be their economic interests forever.

So what are reality-based liberals to do? Tell it like it is? That would be nice, but I don't think that running a successful campaign would be possible based on the "Vote for us because your ideals are unrealistic and you'll more than likely never achieve them" slogan. Conservatives have oversimplified the issue to the point where bringing folks back down to reality isn't a successful vote-getting strategy.

And that makes me sad.

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A Very Long Engagement

I was at a meeting this morning, and it started to drag, so I began to write a sort of stream-of-consciousness to pass the time. Here it is, in all its unvarnished glory (and names have been changed):

At my meeting I got bored, so I wrote the alphabet, in both upper- and lowercase letters. I enjoy my handwriting. Then I wrote the numeral "3" in two different ways. One of the numerals looked mean, and one looked kindly.

Is this keeping me awake right now, writing this? I don't know.

Must remember to look up every once in a while, so they think I'm writing something about work.

I could have sworn that this meeting was over when striped Bill thanked Ted, but short-sleeved Bill just keeps talking. And Lord, is that man ever loud! Everybody keeps interrupting everybody else. Talk louder for long enough and you win, right? Right. But all you are is a winning douchebag.

I come to these meetings and I do nothing. Anything I may have gotten out of it, that may have been valuable to me, ended an hour ago. Naps should be acceptable at that point.

I was a little surprised to see Bob taking notes in a Dragonball-Z notebook. Way to go, Bob.

This table is so much bigger than is necessary for five people. We should get some more people up in here. And a bartender. What if there was a two-drink minimum for these meetings? I souldn't even feel it, since we're a full two hours in.

They say you can't bullshit a bullshitter. That may or may not be the case, but this meeting proves that bullshitters can bullshit with bullshitters. I call it co-bullshittery.

False ending number two and.....go.

Ted has the power to end this. He already said he's late for someplace else. Please, Ted, do what you know in your heart to be right. Do me the kindness of cutting me loose. I can see that striped Bill also wants to go. Let him go, too.

And also, just because you laugh very loud for a long time, that doesn't retroactively make funny whatever it is that you're laughing at.

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Some good news!

Eight Democratic governors are requesting an inquiry into the excessive profits being made by gas companies in the post-Katrina days.

Good for them. There's no reason that, in the wake of a natural disaster, everybody in the country should be a little worse off economically, while Exxon and Shell post record profits.

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Follow-up

Here's what Brownback said, that I was referring to in my last post:

All the members of this body know a young man with Down's Syndrome named Jimmy. Maybe you've met him, even. He runs the elevator that takes the senators up and down on the Senate floors. His warm smile welcomes us every day. We're a better body for him.

He told me the other day -- he frequently gives me a hug in the elevator afterwards. I know he does Senator Hatch often, too, who kindly gives him ties, some of which I question the taste of, Orrin...

(LAUGHTER)

... but he kindly gives ties.

HATCH: It doesn't have to get personal...

(LAUGHTER)

BROWNBACK: And Jimmy said to me the other day after he hugged me; he said "Shhh, don't tell my supervisor. They're telling me I'm hugging too many people."

(LAUGHTER)

BROWNBACK: And, yet, we're ennobled by him and what he does and how he lifts up our humanity and 80 to 90 percent of the kids in this country like Jimmy never get here.

What does that do to us? What does that say about us. And I would just ask you, Judge Roberts, to consider -- and probably you can't answer here today, whether the individuals with disabilities have the same constitutional rights that you and I share while they're in the womb.

Again, what a naked, despicable ploy by Brownback. To surreptitiously claim that all children aborted would be happy, huggy elevator operators is ridiculous.

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Roberts Hearings

I just heard the most ridiculous thing in the world on the television today.

Basically, Senator Brownback made the argument that because of abortion, there are less people to hug people in elevators. There were a lot more words to it, but that was the thrust of it.

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This Makes Me Happy

I don't have much to say about this story, except that it makes me so happy to see.

Boone Pickens, a Texas oil tycoon, has sponsored a flight to go through the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina and pick up the pets that were stranded. They saved about 80 animals, though they had wished to get about 200.

The article concludes by saying that about 200 animals have been reunited with their owners in Houston. In a time of such sadness, I can't think of a thing that would make me happier than to find my dog (hypothetical, since I don't have one).

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Hilary's wedding

I was in Williamsport over the weekend for my cousin's wedding, and it was really nice. Here's a picture that I thought was pretty cute.

Reason vs. Faith

Right off the bat, I'm pretty firmly agnostic. By that, I mean I don't go to church, I don't have pretensions of knowing the hows, whats, and whys of the universe, and the issue of God doesn't have an effect on my daily life. I'm not atheist because as a logical thinker, I realize that I cannot logically disprove His/Her/Its existence, but neither can I logically prove His/Her/Its existence. So I don't really let it weigh on my mind, unless I'm arguing/debating with somebody.

But here's what really gets my goat, so to speak. An argument you might hear from a fundamentalist Christian, against the Big Bang, might go something like this:

It's more likely for a tornado to sweep through a junkyard and leave in its wake a fully assembled 747 than for the Big Bang to have randomly created the universe we all know and love.

Basically, the thrust of the argument is that if the chances of something are slim enough, we can conclusively rule out the probability of its ever having happened. I'd take issue, and say "highly improbable" doesn't equal "impossible," but we'll leave that for now.

Here's another argument you might hear from a fundamentalist Christian, in favor of Jesus' being the Messiah:

There are 456 prophecies that Jesus had to fulfill to conclusively be the Messiah. Scientists have determined that the likelihood of his fulfilling just 48 of those 456 prophecies is 1 in 10^157. The likelihood of this is so small that Jesus must be the Messiah.

Do you see the disconnect here? In one case, they use statistical improbability as proof against something's having happened, and in the other they use statistical improbability as proof positive of something else's having happened. This is the kind of shoddy intellectualism that results when religious folks cling tenaciously to their beliefs in the face of science to the contrary.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

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Guess Who's Back?

OK, so I don't know if this means that I'll be writing furiously like I did there for a while, but I'm here now, and that should count for something.

The big event, which allows me to be writing this right now, from my room, is that after a year and a half, I finally have a working computer again. Being able to write blog entries from home should take some of the strain off, since I keep trying to think of things to write from work and can't really come up with anything.

My posting has waned recently, as y'all have noticed, largely because of my intense interest in politics waning. Er, scratch that. The interest in politics is still there, and the interest in political discussion is still there. It was the interest in the partisan hackery that is the political blogosphere, left and right, that waned. I couldn't take being held accountable for things I never said, or watching otherwise reasonable people be made unreasonable by opinions ascribed to them by dint of their partisan leaning. I've had extensive conversations with my dad about this. He's probably tired of hearing about it.

I gave my first professional briefing at work today, and it went swimmingly. Everybody involved said it was very good, very informative, and I wasn't even too nervous. Hooray for me.

So this is kind of boring, huh? I guess maybe I'll try to think of something more exciting to write next time.

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Gone...

***Post edited due to discretion***

Sorry, I guess it was a limited engagement.

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Abby Woodhall

I haven't been in touch with the school that I used to teach at for a while. I stopped there two years ago, and while I visited in January 2004, the last time I talked to anyone there was almost a year ago.

Today one of my former students IMed me to tell me about Abby Woodhall. Abby was an English teacher at the school, the daughter of the Head and Founder of the school, and my neighbor (we shared a house, though with no communicating doors between apartments). She was in her 30s, and she had a son who is probably about 5 now.

Abby and I had our share of misunderstandings. More than our share, actually. And to call them misunderstandings is putting it nicely. She didn't like me and I didn't like her. She didn't like that I was living in her house, and I didn't like living in her house. No matter how quiet I was being, she always called to tell me to be quieter. She wrote me a scathing faculty review that directly contributed to my wanting to leave.

Well, I found out today that Abby died in April. She had brain cancer, which we all knew even when I was there. And no matter what my feelings were about her, it's a sad thing like crazy. Nobody deserves that, and never at such a young age.

So I'm sorry for all the bad feelings, Abby, and I hope you're at peace.

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Satan's Belly Button

Well, I didn't believe it, but the Washington Post has confirmed for me that Andy Milonakis, star of MTV's The Andy Milonakis Show, is indeed 29 years old.

My bad.

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Math!

According to this poll, math is the most hated subject in school. It's also, however, tied for the most loved subject in school. I'm in the second category, obviously (otherwise I'd be some kind of masochist, right?). I find it all fascinating. And really, the feeling you get when you work on a hard problem for a while and can't find an answer, and then suddenly it comes to you, in a flash of inspiration...nearly indescribable.

In college, my junior year, we had a problem. Let me give you a little background. There is a sequence of numbers called the triangular numbers. These are pretty easy to understand. The first one is 1, the second one is 1+2=3, the third one is 1+2+3=6, the fourth one is 1+2+3+4=10, and so on. The sequence goes 1,3,6,10,15,21,28,36,45,55,66,78,91... and so on, to infinity. It turns out that there's a very easy formula to find the "nth" number in the sequence of triangular numbers. Say you want the fifth number in the sequence. Then you have: 5*(5+1)/2. That's it. 30/2, or 15. Go look in the sequence, if you don't believe me. In general, to find the nth number, you have: n*(n+1)/2. There's a simple way to derive this formula, but I don't have the notation and you don't have the interest.

Anyway, the problem in college was this: We had to come up with a formula for the tetrahedral numbers. Just like the nth triangular number is the sum of all of the integers up to and including n, the nth tetrahedral number is the sum of all the triangular numbers up to and including the nth one. It's just like putting another layer on the problem.

Well, I struggled and struggled, and I played with things, and nothing seemed to work. I was disappointed in myself, and a little dejected. My class was the next day, and I'd have nothing to show for it. I decided to take a shower. But while I was in the shower, my mind was still working on it, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere (that I could tell), it was there! I had it! I thought on the first couple of examples, and it worked! I finished showering, went to my room, and wrote down: n*(n+1)*(n+2)/6. It's really just an extension of the formula for the triangular numbers. Look at the sequence of triangular numbers again: 1,3,6,10,15,21,28,36,45,55,66,78,91... From that, we can get that the sequence of tetrahedral numbers ought to be: 1,4,10,20,35,56,84,120,165,220,286,364,455... So we can use my formula to see if, say, the fifth one is right. It ought to be 35. So 5*6*7/6=35. It worked!

If you didn't understand any of this, that's OK. I just wanted to explain what it was like to have a real moment joy in mathematics. That moment when the formula came to me was just indescribable, it was so neat. Like for just a second, I'd been allowed to tap into some intelligence much bigger than myself, or something. Or into reservoirs of intelligence that I normally don't get to use. Something. Anyway, it was pretty cool.

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Intelligent Falling

I love the Onion. That is all.

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The Aristocrats

So I just went to see The Aristocrats last night.

For those of you who don't know, this is a "documentary" by Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) and Paul Provenza about one of the most famous dirty jokes ever. It goes like this:

A man walks into a talent agent's office and says, "Pardon me, could I have a minute of your time? I've got a family act that you're just going to love." The agent says, "You've got two minutes. Let's hear it."

*unspeakable obscenity, including, but not limited to, bestiality, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, coprophilia, etc.*

The agent says, "That's quite an act. What do you call it?" The man says, "The Aristocrats!"

It's a bad joke. The punchline isn't really funny, except in how inappropriate it is, being attached to such a depraved "family act." But this is showbiz's most famous backstage joke, and the joy is in the middle part. Several comedians in the film (there's over 100) describe it as almost like a free-form jazz thing. You know the beginning, you know the end, and you make up the middle as you go along.

That all having been said, there were several moments in this film that had me clutching my stomach from laughter. From George Carlin's overly detailed opening version of the joke, to Howie Mandel's entirely deadpan telling, to the Smothers Brothers two man routine, to Billy the Mime's version, to the animated South Park version, to Gilbert Gottfried's telling at Hugh Hefner's roast, to the climax (in my opinion) of Bob Saget's hopelessly depraved telling, we see a few things.

One, there are as many variations of this joke as there are people who tell it. There are a couple of "inverted Aristocrats" jokes thrown in (same setup, except the guy describes a completely innocent, happy family act. Agent says, "What's it called?" Guy says, "The Cocksucking Motherfuckers."), and a couple of variations on the theme (a hilarious one told simultaneously by Drew Carey and Robin Williams, and versions told by Andy Richter and Doug Stanhope to their infant children). Each telling is unique unto itself.

Two, more than just the details being different, the joke really plays into what each individual comedian finds funny. Carlin clearly revels in the deadpan revelation of disgusting details, as does Howie Mandel. Saget is right at home with the most disgusting stuff you've ever heard (and can't stop laughing through the telling of it). Drew Carey emphasizes a little flourish at the end, which he feels "makes the joke." With each person, the emphasis is in a different place. Sometimes it's all sex, sometimes it's all violence, sometimes it's all excretory stuff, most of the time it's all three.

If you like a good dirty joke, I'd guess you'd like this film. To me, it's worth it just to hear Saget request a copy of his version to send to the Full House girls.

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Double Murder

I always knew those Power Rangers were up to no good. Evidently this guy, his wife, and a couple of Crips were trying to steal a yacht from a wealthy couple. They tied them up and threw them overboard, where they drowned in the ocean.

Dammit, upon further investigation, it looks like this guy was an extra on Power Rangers. CNN, why have you so misled me? They made it seem like this was the damn Yellow Ranger or something. Skylar Deleon is not even credited on IMDB.

I'm still a little wary of those Power Rangers, though. This does nothing to stop that.

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Television

I don't think I'd ever written anything in here about Six Feet Under, so I'll see where my mind takes me and just write. Sorry I don't have an outline, or anything specific in mind. I'll do my best.

I started watching Six Feet Under while I was teaching high school at The Woodhall School. We didn't have HBO, but I got ahold of the episodes on the recommendation of my father. It was into the third season by the time I started watching, and through the wonders of the internet, I'd caught up by the summer of 2003. I watched the entire fourth season On Demand in a day and a half in September, 2004, and the fifth (and final) season is just wrapping up next week.

I've shared my dad's love for this show ever since I first saw it. I thought it was novel and gritty and real, even in the face of what sometimes seem like absurd plot twists. Basically, I think of it as a soap opera with cursing, occasional nudity, a big budget and amazing acting. I could take you through Nate and Brenda's relationship, and it could have been something out of Guiding Light or As the World Turns, but for the incredible writing and acting.

On Sunday, July 31, I felt like I lost somebody I've known for a long time. It disturbed me a little bit, to see how close I'd gotten to a television show and its characters. I shed more than a few tears the next week, watching an episode that felt as much like a memorial service for the viewers as for the characters. I knew that what happened would happen (or I'd strongly suspected it, anyway), but that didn't make it any easier to accept when it happened.

I'll be sad when the show's done, but it's also nice, at the same time, to see a show's producers quitting when they're ahead. The show was great, and it had a good run, and it's going to end on its own terms this Sunday.

Now for the frustration. With Six Feet Under ending, and Sex and the City gone, you'd think that HBO would have the good sense to hang onto an amazing show like Carnivale. But no, they cancelled it unceremoniously, saying that they thought they'd told the story they wanted to tell. That, my friends, is bull, pure and simple. Watch the show, and you tell me if there's resolution of any sort at the end of the second season. What makes me sad is that there's virtually no chance of it getting picked up again, so we'll never know what happens.

I also have been watching Freaks and Geeks, which my roommate purchased and I'd never seen. This is a great little show, and again, there's no reason why it should have been cancelled. It's clever, it's well-acted, and there's something for people from ages 13 to 60 in it. In a way, I'm glad I never got into it when it was on, because I just would have been disappointed when it was gone. Same with Futurama, to tell you the truth. A show from the creator of The Simpsons, more clever than The Simpsons on its best day (which really is saying something), and with virtually limitless possibilities, killed in its prime by a network that thought Skin and Temptation Island were better bets. Thinking about the fate of Futurama makes me almost as sad as watching the episode "Jurassic Bark," and for those of you who know me, that's saying something as well.

My guilty pleasure, so far as television is concerned, is Smallville. I've always been fascinated by comic book mythology, even though I've never in my life read a comic book. I've read books about comic books, watched movies about comic books, and read websites about histories of comic book characters, but I've never had the stones to get into comic books. For all of its similarities to Dawson's Creek, and all of its cliche "villain-of-the-week" episodes, there's something about Smallville that really shines through. It's great to see the origins of a character like Superman. We all know where the story comes out, but the writers have all sorts of room to play around before they get there.

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Intelligent Design...

...makes me angry. Its proponents pretend it's scientific, but there's nothing to prove or test about it. It's a metaphysical thing, a philosophical thing. They don't demand standards of proof for belief in ID, because you can't prove anything about it. But at the same time, they demand impossibly high standards of proof for belief in evolution, and say that if you can't provide those standards, then the only thing you can logically believe in is ID (which, as I mentioned before has no proof behind it).

I look at it like this. It's like you've got a bunch of data points on a plane, and you want to make a guess at what kind of curve links them all. So you make your best guess, based on what points you have, and you work from there. All of a sudden a data point comes along that doesn't fit on the curve you projected, so you modify your guess. That's science. Flexible and self-critical. That's evolution. It's the best fit they have for the data that they have. Intelligent Design is nothing but a collective throwing up of hands in the air, saying, "It's too complicated!"

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that science, and what should be taught as science, should be subject to the whims of a populace which is terribly uneducated on the subject. We wouldn't go asking John Q. Public about whether he thinks his children should be taught about irrational numbers and functions in class, or whether he believes in them, because that would be junk math. Why do we think that the public should be able to force junk science into the classroom?

Nobody can logically disprove the existence of a Creator, or an Intelligent Designer. The idea cannot be considered by any to be completely dismissed, at least with any logical consistency. There's always the possibility. But science studies what we can measure, what we can observe, and what we can conclude from these measurements and observations. An Intelligent Designer would have to live outside our observable universe (otherwise, he/she/it would necessitate his/her/its own Intelligent Designer), and as such, we cannot ever hope to observe or measure anything about him/her/it.

Philosophy classes are the places for such discussions, and I'd encourage them to take place there. It's an interesting topic, but one that's ultimately not viable as a scientific topic.

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A Random Question, to Some

I was wondering if anybody could help me find a way to get reliable information about the descendants of Louis B. Mayer. Particularly, I'd like to see if he had any children other than the two daughters I've read about in the limited biographies I've been able to find.

See, here's the thing. There's this girl that I know that claims to be the granddaughter of Louis B. Mayer. She has the same last name as he does. That, I guess, is supposed to be part of what makes us believe her. Oh, and she's rich. Rich people don't lie. But on IMDB's biography of Louis B. Mayer (for those of you who don't know, he's a huge movie magnate, one of the three founders of MGM), it says that he was born in 1882 and died in 1957, at the ripe old age of 75. What's more, the Wikipedia biography says that his two children, from his first marriage (which ended in 1947) were both daughters. They were Irene and Edith. Irene was married to David O. Selznick, the legendary producer of Gone With the Wind.

Here's my point. This girl could not have retained the Mayer name directly through Louis B. Mayer. It's not possible, because he had only daughters who married and took the names of their husbands.

Here's the slightest bit of doubt, though. Mayer was married again in 1948, according to IMDB. According to my own research, this girl's father graduated from college in 1970, which would have meant he would have been born in 1947 or 1948. The only possible scenario I can imagine where this man could be the son of Louis B. Mayer is if Mayer had a tryst between his two marriages wherein he impregnated a lady that he did not go on to marry, but who gave the baby Mayer's name anyway.

If anybody can help me get the final details to close this case once and for all, please let me know.

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Nostalgia

Remember when...?

I wish things would go back to how they were when...

Things were so much simpler then...

Nostalgia. It seems to be part of the human condition that we all must necessarily pine for the ease, simplicity and joy of the past. It's in everything. It's in the "retro" phenomenon, where the past is deemed cool. It's in our speech, when things get tough. Most insidiously, in my opinion, it's in the minds of a lot of religious folks who want lawmakers to restrict what we get to see.

You see, folks, the past wasn't this rosy, sunny land of milk and honey. It feels like the religious right wants to drag us back into the 1950s, when language hadn't become so foul, sexuality hadn't become so open, and evolution was just something that those pesky scientists were using to try to get under the skin of the true believers. They watch Leave It to Beaver and Lassie and pine for those simpler times. It's escapism.

But you know what? It was escapism then, too. That world never existed. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were race riots going on, there was a presidential assassination, there was a Cold War, and there was a "red scare" being led by Ann Coulter's "indispensable Joseph McCarthy." Just as those family-friendly shows (and others today, like Seventh Heaven and anything on the PAX Network) offer conservatives shelter from the storm of the perceived immorality of the present, so they offered everyone shelter from the massive problems that were going on in the 1950s and 1960s.

Nostalgia is pointless. It's looking at the past through an unrealistic filter. I look at it this way: When somebody says something like, "They don't make 'em like they used to," in all likelihood, they still do make some of 'em like they used to. It's just that the only ones (of whatever we're talking about, whether it be cars or movies or houses) that we remember, the only ones that have held up over time, are the ones that were made well in the first place. Every era in history has produced its fair share of crap, but that crap has been mostly lost in the mists of time, and we only see what stood tall enough to show past those mists.

My point? Embrace the changes in society. There's nothing better or worse about a particular time period in history. Every one has its problems, and every one has its advances. Trying artificially to push us into a past that never existed can only be harmful.

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Ben Folds!!!

Tonight I'm going to my first concert in over two years. Who's playing? Same guy that I saw a little over two years ago.

The concert's at Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn, NY. I'll be taking the train in from Morristown, NJ, which will be a nice little trip without the unbelievable hassle of driving in the city (if you've never done it, please, never do). I'll let y'all know how it is when I get back.

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Propaganda

I guess we can all be thankful that we're not living in North Korea, at least if we're talking about the media. North Korean propaganda reports that Kim Jong Il scored 11 holes in one in the first round of golf he ever played.

I'd rather go with Mitch Hedberg's assessment, golf-wise:

I played golf... I did not get a hole in one, but I did hit a guy. That's way more satisfying...You're supposed to yell "Fore!" I was too busy mumblin', "There ain't no way that's gonna hit him."

R.I.P., Mitch.

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Of Problems with Cars

Let me run down a little chronological list of problems I've had with my car in the three years that I've had it:

1. In August 2002, a belt snapped and it overheated, blowing the headgasket and warping a lot of stuff. Big repairs.
2. In early 2003 I got a flat tire that they couldn't plug, since it was in the sidewall. Had to buy a new tire instead.
3. In September 2003, I got in an accident wherein my entire front bumper was ripped off. I had to have a rental for a full 30 days.
4. In February 2005, I had to get my catalytic converter replaced, along with my front brakes and rear sway bar bushings (whatever those are).

Yesterday as I was driving home from work, my A/C compressor seized up, so the pulley attached to it stopped turning and caused the belt attached to that pulley (and two others) to smoke like crazy before snapping. I can live without A/C, but those other two pulleys need to work for the car at large to work. It cost an exorbitant amount of money for me to get towed to the garage (I think I'll be investing in AAA when I can), and they told me that it would cost $841 to replace the A/C compressor.

After a bunch of pleading and near-hoplessness, telling the mechanic that I don't have the money to fix that right now, he conceded that he could attach a working pulley to the compressor. The A/C won't work, but I won't have to pay for the whole part, which I simply can't do right now. In the middle of moving, in between pay periods, it couldn't have come at a worse time.

Hey, at least my travails with this car aren't as bad as with my last car (they include getting a clutch replaced, brakes replaced, sway bar bushings replaced (what the hell are those things?), a tire replaced, getting hit by a bus, and having a tree fall on it).

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Frist and Stem Cells

Wow, this is pretty amazing. Bill Frist is citing his experience as a physician in a matter of Congress, and it actually makes sense.

Frist is breaking with Bush to support increased federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. For an attendee of "Justice Sunday," in close association with the radical fundamentalist right, this is a huge development. Frist says that his new position is consistent with his experience as a physician and his opposition to abortion. He says that embryos that would otherwise be discarded ought to be considered for stem cell research, and I wholeheartedly agree.

In the Middle Ages, "respect for the sanctity and dignity of human life" held medical research back like crazy because people did not want to let doctors dissect cadavers which otherwise would merely have rotted in the ground. Such research, though, advanced the field considerably. So if we have a resource which would otherwise be destroyed, why would we not take full advantage of its use?

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Youth and Pornography

This title is probably going to net me some more perverts searching for kids having sex, but whatever. There's a story on MSNBC about how some online pornography sites actually target children. They say, "These companies," says Cowan, "are embedding phrases like ‘Disneyland’ and ‘Pokeman’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ into their Web sites, specifically to lure in children."

Now I know that this isn't a funny story or anything, but I just wanted to point out that "Pokeman" probably does legitimately belong on some pornography site.

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Fascinating

There was recently a study done that shows that cats don't have one of the two necessary proteins to create "sweet" receptors on their taste buds. So cats can't taste sweet things.

I love the stuff that they can do with science. I love that they can boil stuff like this down to proteins, so that they can tell what cats can and can't taste even without being able to ask them in any real way.

The last bit of the article says that this could have some significant effects on the study of how diet affects evolution, and on obesity. They say that indulging a sweet tooth alone is not enough to cause obesity, since there are some very large cats, and they can't taste sweets at all.

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My Obsessions

There are a lot of things I'm interested in, but those interests tend to come and go with time. For instance, right now my interest in politics is waning, though that's largely due to the coarseness of the public debate. But there are a few things in which my interest has only intensified over the years.

1. Minesweeper. Yup, the Windows game. I've been known to play for hours at a stretch, and I can tell you all about strategies, what kind of mouse is best, etc. I can play Minesweeper while talking on the phone and retain full concentration on both the game and the conversation. I've probably done that very thing with several of the readers here. It's much less frequent that I'll beat a high score, but I keep striving, every day.
2. Movies. Can't get enough of 'em. I love going to the theater, even if there's nothing that I particularly want to see. I saw The Island this weekend, just because my buddies were going and it was something to see. I didn't particularly want to see it, but I did. Now that Blockbuster has started its MoviePass deal, and we've got On Demand cable, I've got more movies to watch than ever. Sometimes I'll put one on even when I know I'm going to fall asleep. Sometimes I'll put on a movie that I've already seen a thousand times, and I'll enjoy it as much as the first time (for example, High Fidelity, The Big Lebowski, The Princess Bride, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Fight Club, The Shawshank Redemption, etc.). The more movies I've seen, the more movies I want to see. I've seen about three quarters of AFI's 100 Greatest Films list, and I believe that anyone who claims to be a fan of American cinema would do well to use that list as a starting point.
3. Stephen King. I think the first King book I read was probably sometime in 1991, though I don't remember specifically. I do remember borrowing It from the library while I was in middle school (and needing to renew it twice to finish it), and I remember starting to read the Dark Tower series with the paperback publication of The Waste Lands in 1992. King's books have always been exciting and engaging for me, no matter how many times I've read them. I must have read the first three books of the Dark Tower series about 5 times, if not more, between 1992 and 1997, when the fourth book came out. And I must have read the first four books of the Dark Tower series about 6 or 7 times between 1997 and 2003, when the fifth book came out. And still, over all of those readings, all that familiarity, my ability to recall the most trivial details of the books from memory, they never got old. They're still arresting and urgent and a pleasure to read. I'm sure I'll keep on reading them into old age.

Those are the big ones, the ones that I feel belong at the top of this list. Most of my other interests have faded in and out, some more quickly than others, but these ones have stayed, and will likely continue to do so.

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Movies: A Question

Here's a question I like to pose to people every once in a while: If there were a movie being made about your life, which actor would play you? Age is no consideration, and neither is whether or not the actor is alive or dead. It is, I think, the spirit of the thing that matters with this question.

Sub-question (and this is one I've never asked before): Who would direct the movie? Whose directorial style do you think fits your life the best, at least as you see it? This can be quite different from your favorite director, by the way.

For me? My answer for the first question has always been John Cusack. Whenever I say that, most people say, "Huh, yeah, I can see that." After Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind there's a case to be made for Jim Carrey, but he doesn't have the track record yet, I don't think. So I'm gonna stick with Cusack.

As for a director, I may have stumped myself with that one. The Coen Brothers do some of my favorite movies, but I don't think that their tone quite fits my life, per se. Maybe Spielberg, circa E.T. Again, with Eternal Sunshine (can you tell how much I love this movie?) I'd be tempted to say Michel Gondry, but the track record just isn't there yet. So I guess I'd have to say Spielberg. God, that feels so obvious. I'll think about it.

This is a post where I want you to comment away, so y'all had better.

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The Power Company

Let's try to understand this together, shall we?

Yesterday I got home, right around 5:00, and the power had been out for about an hour and a half. I called the power company, and they told me that it was the first they'd heard of an outage in our area. Then I went out and talked to the neighbors, who had both called the power company already. One was told that we might not get power back until midnight, and one was told that we might have it on in as little as a half hour. And all the while, there was a power truck a few dozen yards up the street working on something.

I think that PSE&G has to do something about its information systems or something, to get all of its operators in line with one another. Unless, that is, the operators were just deciding to screw with everybody who called, and made up a different story for each one. We used to do similar stuff when I was working the drive-thru at McDonald's during high school. But I imagine that they've probably got more rigorous quality control on the customer service lines at PSE&G than they did at McDonald's in dinky little Stafford Springs.

What am I even writing about anymore? Oh yeah, the heat. It was insanely hot yesterday. I sweat a fair amount normally, but yesterday I was dripping as I carried stuff out to my car. It was like I was in the shower, only getting dirtier. That's why it was such a big deal that the power (and thus all means of refrigeration) was out.

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Muslim Condemnation

There are a lot of people out there who keep on trumpeting the talking point that nobody in Islam is doing enough to condemn the attacks by Islamic fundamentalists. They say that they condone by their silence. Maybe this is the silence they're talking about.

It's more than just condemnation. It's a targeted effort by a prominent American Muslim group to make Muslim youth know that violence is not an acceptable means of anything in the name of Islam.

I guess everybody just missed that, huh?

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Tutoring

I recently started tutoring again. I realized, when I thought about it, that I've been teaching or tutoring pretty much solidly since I graduated from college, now a little over three years ago. I taught high school for a year, then I had a teaching assistantship while I attended graduate school for a year, and then I had a side job tutoring for the last year. Now I've got a different side job tutoring, where I'm getting paid quite a bit more than I was at the old one, which is a very good thing.

I was talking to Oliver about it last night, though, and it's something that I just plain like to do. It's fulfilling in a way that a lot of other work isn't. You can see the impact that you're having right there. When you see comprehension blossom in someone's eyes, and it's because of you, you know you've done something good. When a student comes in for another session holding a test on which they scored a B instead of a D, you know you've done well. That's fulfilling in a way that money can't touch.

The money is nice, though.

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Moving

Moving sucks. I mean, it really, really sucks. I can't get myself excited about packing my stuff up just to take it to another place and then have to unpack it. Can't it just go there itself? I mean, that's what I have to do. The least that my bed could do is find its own way to the new place so that I don't have to worry about getting it there.

It's about time furniture started carrying its share of the weight in this relationship.

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Ten Lessons from the Weekend

1. Ocean water has enough sand floating in it to fill up your pockets even if you never touch the ground.
2. A digital camera will still work with sand in it, but only for so long.
3. "Limited warranty" means they don't replace the camera for having sand in it. Dammit.
4. They may be short, but jockeys can play some damn good volleyball.
5. Johan doesn't know how to lob a baseball when we don't all have mitts (reference my aching right hand).
6. Ladies in cowboy hats are generally not to be trusted.
7. Marmite, the British version of vegemite, is disgusting.
8. Durian, a fruit from Malaysia that's considered a delicacy, is also disgusting.
9. The Island has taken product placement to a new low.
10. Vietnamese food is awesome.

If you'd like me to elaborate on any of these, drop me a line or a comment.

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Not Mine, but Damn Funny

My dad recently sent me this link, which has a bunch of screenshots from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. But it's from the Chinese version, with English subtitles that had been translated back from the Chinese translation. Go check it out, it's one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Highlights include inaccurate subtitles over the opening crawl while it's still on screen, and "Jedi Council" being translated to "the Presbyterian Church."

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The Matrix

Here's something that I guess would fall into the "musing" category. A lot of people will have heard this one before, but it's something that always bugs me.

In The Matrix, the names that they adopt outside the Matrix correspond to what would be their screen names in the Matrix. There's Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, Cypher, etc. They're all cool names. But here's what bugs me: there's only so many cool names to go around. So how come, in the sequels to The Matrix, we never meet up with somebody named "pokemonluvr80," or "RedSoxsRool"?

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Toilet Qu'ran

So I got the Harry Potter book on Monday, and I was reading some here and there at work on Tuesday. I brought it along to the bathroom (because I felt like it, that's why!), and I was in the stall reading it when it slipped from my hands and tumbled to the floor. As I was reaching down to pick it up, a voice called to me from two stalls down.

"You readin' the Qu'ran in there?" I paused for a moment, not really knowing what to say.

"No," I replied, continuing to pick up the book. There was a long pause.

"Bad Gitmo joke, huh?" I chuckled nervously, finished up my business and made my way out.

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Shifting Focus

As y'all have no doubt noticed (the three of you that read this blog, anyway), I haven't written anything for a while. The last entry I made was a week ago, and it wasn't very substantial.

To tell you the truth, I've grown weary of the political blogosphere. I've grown weary of writing in and about it, and I've grown weary of reading it. It has a way of turning otherwise-reasonable people into dyed-in-the-wool partisan hacks, and I despise that.

As such, I'm gonna be backing off of the politics in here for a while. If I find something interesting to write about it, I'm gonna write about it. But I don't have anything substantial to add to the discussion about Rove/Plame/Wilson, or about the nomination of John Roberts, and it would appear that nothing else has happened in the world for the last two weeks, London bombings notwithstanding.

Maybe I'll write some movie reviews or something, book reviews, anecdotes, musings, whatever. Maybe I'll let Johan write something every once in a while.

Fair warning.

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Intelligent Design

I don't normally do this (put up posts that are basically nothing but links to another blog post), but I nearly fell out of my chair reading my friend Paul's post about Intelligent Design. Go check it out now. It's funny, but quite serious at the same time.

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Do Yourself a Favor...

...and try to catch last night's Daily Show on reruns today. They play it at 8:00 pm and at 11:30 pm, after tonight's episode. The segment before the first commercial is kind of weak, but the guest is Bernie Goldberg, and Stewart spends two whole segments ripping him and his book (100 People Who Are Screwing Up America) apart. It's glorious, and really spot-on.

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The New Daily Show

I don't know if anybody reading caught The Daily Show last night, but they've moved to a new set, and with the change of locale, it looks like they've had a subtle shift in their focus as well. The guest was the author of a book called God vs. the Gavel, and the interview was considerably more serious than even the serious interviews on The Daily Show have historically been.

It was only one episode, so it'll bear some watching, but I feel like Jon Stewart & co. may be starting to consciously take advantage of their prodigious influence.

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An Important Comment

I can't take credit for this one, because it belonged to my dad:

If you look around, you can find plenty of spokespersons for the Muslim community all around the world condemning the London bombing and all jihadist violence. Even on Aljazeera.

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050708-094452-6293r http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=9140 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3259068

You're just not going to see it on Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC. They're too busy covering Natalee Hollloway.

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Terrorism

The London bombings have got me thinking about global terrorism, and the "war" we're fighting on it. To all my readers, I extend my sincerest apologies if I ramble.

First of all, I hesitate to attach an "-ism" to terror. It's a tactic, not a rigid system of thought or conduct. Communism, fascism, Nazism, those all make sense, but to put "terrorism" in their company seems to liken it to them, when terror has none of the hallmarks of those larger systems of thought. Terrorists merely employ tactics to cause fear and confusion in their target, but that tactic doesn't in any way describe their belief structure. Timothy McVeigh, the IRA, Hamas, all of these have been "terrorists," but they sure haven't all subscribed to the same school of thought. We can talk about Islamic fundamentalist terror, and that's what most people mean when they say "terrorism," but we've got to make sure to keep the distinction clear in our minds.

After seeing that London had been bombed, my initial thought was a question: What have our efforts in the military arm of the war on terror done to stop the people in England who planned that bombing, and people like them who are doubtless setting up all over the world? The answer came depressingly immediately: nothing. Those guys in England (or, pre 3/11/2004, those guys in Madrid) were there with a mission. They had already committed to their courses of action, I'd assume, and the military action in the Middle East wasn't stopping them from operating in England.

The problem is that we're fighting a decentralized enemy when we're fighting Islamic fundamentalist terror. They're not attached to one state or another. They operate where and when it's convenient, and they export willing collaborators to lie in wait and strike when the opportunity presents itself. Military action against a state where terrorists are operating may shake them up, but they don't necessarily depend on the state for the sustenance of their operations. Again, to bring Timothy McVeigh back into the picture (appropriate, as his was the greatest example of domestic terror until 9/11), he was not at all dependent on a state for his operations. His was an ideology taken to the extreme, and he employed the tactic of terror for effect.

My depressing conclusion this weekend is that there's nothing we can do to stop those already committed to the path of terror, short of catching them in the act. Not all Iraqis are terrorists, and not all terrorists are Iraqis. These are, often, citizens of the countries in which they carry out their acts of terror. They're exploiting globalization to full effect, and quite well. We've got to be vigilant, but their very nature makes it impossible to root out all of them.

The war on "terror," though, must be fought in the hearts and minds. We've got to be able to know that an ideology will not be able to override the abhorrence of the concept of killing innocent civilians simply to cause fear. If the tactic is seen as viable and effective, and worth it, they'll keep using it. People in general (and this one includes all of us) need to respect the primacy of human life over their petty political and religious squabbles.

I don't know what the solution is, but I know for sure that it doesn't involve dehumanizing your enemy (again, this applies to either side) or isolating yourself from the rest of the world. Sorry to have rambled so much.

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Watch out...

I won't have it ready this afternoon, but tomorrow morning sometime I'm going to have a post up with various musings on terrorism in general. The London bombings got me thinking, and I've got some things to say about it. It'll be a long-ish post, so for those of you who've been craving content, sit tight.

Also, I found an apartment, and pending a phone call this evening, I'll be all set to move at the end of the month. Load off my mind.

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London Burning

I doubt I'll post today, beyond this one. I'll be pretty tied up keeping track of this London business. Sorry.

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My Response

If you haven't read J.A. Gillmartin's post, then please do. This won't make terribly much sense to you otherwise.

First, I'd like to respond to this:

Moral Equivalency Most egregious is the effort to make "Tom Cruise's bizarre diatribe" morally equivalent with the extremely sensitive efforts of the religious right (not just evangelicals but Mormons, Jews, Catholics, and Muslims) to speak out on a prominent cultural issue of our day. The public rant by an entertainment icon is hardly similar to an organized effort by cultural activists whether they be religious or otherwise; to attempt to make them so is illogical, to attempt to single out a religious conspiracy when none exists is disingenuous and borders on bigotry.

My intention in mentioning Tom Cruise was not to assert moral equivalency. It may seem like a lame attempt at an excuse, but it was really just a lame attempt at a segue into the main body of the post, using an easily recognizable bit of pop culture "news."

But upon retrospect, for Tom Cruise, a man with no formal psychological training, to say that he's done the research and come out with a conclusion that's antithetical to the tenets of mainstream psychology (i.e., "there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance") isn't all that different from religious groups rejecting the conclusions of the American Psychiatric Association on the basis of what they want to believe to be true. Tom Cruise may have done research on psychiatry, but given his beliefs, it's likely that he went into that research looking for an answer. Scientologists don't believe in taking drugs of any sort, and they believe that illnesses, mental and otherwise, are caused by "body thetans." We don't have to get into Scientology in depth right now. Suffice it to say, Cruise went into his "research" with a bias toward what he was going to believe, and he latched onto the fringe groups who agreed with him and used them as a basis for rejecting whatever he liked of mainstream psychiatry.

The religious right (including all of the groups mentioned above by John), sensitive though some of its members may be (though I'd disagree with you about people like Fred Phelps), have gone into the public debate about homosexuality with a conclusion already in their minds. They believe that homosexuality is a sin. A perversion. But you have to be able to make the choice to sin or not sin, so homosexuality, if it's a sin, must be a choice. So those who believe that homosexuality is a sin already come to the table with a bias toward views that are going to claim homosexuality is a choice, regardless of what various psychological outlets say about it.

Next:

Factual Support Another is the failure to support facts claimed: e.g., "Psychology is under assault from all sorts of crazies lately" (who, where, why, when??); a link to Cruise's outburst on "The Today Show" would have been helpful for the reader; and the fact that homosexuality was for years classified as a psychological disorder by the APA itself, should have been mentioned but wasn't.

Again, I addressed the Tom Cruise reference. And here's a link, just for posterity.

But I really have to take issue with the assertion that I should have noted homosexuality's longtime classification as a psychological disorder. The nature of science, as opposed to religion, is that sometimes we realize that we were wrong, and we revise our scientific hypotheses because the old ones were no longer valid. A discussion about the solar system would not require me to mention that for years people thought the sun revolved around the Earth, because that theory was rejected as no longer valid and subsequently revised (though, interestingly enough, there are a number of modern geocentrists, motivated by certain biblical passages).

Third:

Exaggeration "How do they know this? Were they gay, and cured of it? Of course not! Never speak of it!" Fargus, my young friend this simply is not true. For at least a dozen years we've (the "gays can change" crowd) presented case after case of homosexuals who've been cured (we were and are ignored by the secular and gay communities; in this case cases were provided in the MSNBC report cited in your own post). We've written books (ignored), provided testimonies (ignored), and established ministries to support those suffering under gay bondage (ignored). The truth is - it is the homosexual community and its supporters who've not provided evidence of it being a genetic phenomena.

The term "cured" is pretty loaded. It presupposes that homosexuality is a mental disorder, which I think I already covered with the link to the APA page above. But allow me to quote from the APA concerning "conversion therapy":

Some therapists who undertake so-called conversion therapy report that they have been able to change their clients' sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. Close scrutiny of these reports however show several factors that cast doubt on their claims. For example, many of the claims come from organizations with an ideological perspective which condemns homosexuality. Furthermore, their claims are poorly documented. For example, treatment outcome is not followed and reported overtime as would be the standard to test the validity of any mental health intervention.

The reason it's so important that most of these conversion therapy groups come from an ideologically biased perspective is simply that it's antithetical to the scientific method. If one wanted real, unbiased views of whether homosexuals could change orientation, one would not conduct such research in an environment where the test subjects were being told that one outcome was fundamentally wrong. This would inherently bias the subjects, through fear and intimidation.

As for the point about not presenting evidence of homosexuality as a genetic phenomenon, psychologists think that it's a complicated mix of genetic, cognitive and environmental factors (from the APA page linked above). But there have been studies that show there is a fundamental difference in brain chemistry between straight and gay men, at least in how they respond to the pheromones present in male sweat.

Fourth:

Dissimulation "On the foundation of the Bible, Dobson and his cronies are able to dismiss years of mental health science as irrelevant simply because they don't agree with it." Now this is amazing. Fargus, on the basis of "years of mental health science" you dismiss six millenia of biblical science (studies) as irrelevant simply because you "don't agree with it"! Now friends that is known as projection by the APA.

I think I already addressed this point earlier, talking about "research" with the conclusions already in mind, but I guess I'll hit on it again. Science, my friend, makes observations and tries to fit a theory around those observations. If one theory doesn't fit, then it's back to the drawing board. With religion, it's exactly the opposite. You start with a theory (in this case, that homosexuality's a choice, though there are many other examples, most notably creationism, at least lately), and then try to make your observations fit that theory. If the observations don't fit the theory, then it's assumed that the observations must have been wrong, because the theory is infallible. Now I respect your right to believe how you want to believe, and to disagree with me, but let's not go into this thinking that religion in any way resembles science.

Phew. I need a nap.

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A Critical Response

J.A. Gillmartin, author of The Sheep's Crib, has rightly called me out on a somewhat sloppy post of mine about homosexual conversion. Just to be clear, I say that he "rightly called me out" because I was indeed sloppy, in my post, in most of the points that he mentions. I do not say "rightly," though, to imply that I've changed my mind about any of the fundamental issues that I talked about in that post. Expect to see a much better-sourced follow-up tomorrow morning or so.

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A Good One

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