Sam/Eagle '08

When I read Republicans seriously entertaining the notion of the nomination of Rudy Giuliani for President in '08, much less the notion of his standing a snowball's chance in hell of winning, this is all I can think of:






















Because that's all Rudy Giuliani is. He's a symbol. A symbol of 9/11, which God's Own Party would love to continue exploiting. And a symbol of...well, come to think of it, that's it. Republicans would not only have to ignore his notoriously liberal stances on such issues as gun control, abortion or gay marriage (not to mention marital fidelity, though it's arguable whether or not those sorts of personal indiscretions should enter into things); they'd also have to convince themselves (as many seem to have already done) that Giuliani's leadership of New York City after 9/11 gives him enough national security credibility to be taken seriously as a candidate.

Honestly, it's laughable. It's laughable to imagine the man getting past the social conservatives, but it's also laughable to imagine his getting passed through as the authority on national security simply because of his (admittedly good) leadership of a city after a terrorist attack.

Uncle Sam has been unwavering in his support of the military since 1812, and the Bald Eagle has endowed the country with its quiet dignity ever since it was co-opted to do so. I think they, together, make just as solid a ticket as Rudy and anyone else.

Fargus...

Congressional Response

I haven't posted in a long time, and I'm sorry for that. Just thought I'd toss this up there. Here's an e-mail I sent to both of my senators, Lautenberg and Menendez, about 2 months ago:

Senator Lautenberg,

I would like to know how you justify, in good conscience, voting in favor of a bill that grants the President the sole power to "interpret" the Geneva Conventions, denies the Courts the rights to consider the Conventions in civil proceedings, and strips prisoners of the rights of habeas corpus so long enshrined as part of our nation's foundation.

This bill is repugnant not just to me, but to the ideals which we profess, as a nation, to hold. I am deeply disappointed that both of the senators that reprsent my state would have voted for this atrocious legislation.

Tim Fargus...

For Senator Menendez, I simply changed the name. Anyway, I recently received an e-mail response from Senator Lautenberg, and I'll reproduce it here in full:

Dear Mr. Fargus :

Thank you for contacting me about the Military Commissions Act (S. 3930). I appreciate hearing your views on this important issue.

The United States has apprehended hundreds of terror suspects, and President Bush has kept them at secret CIA prisons and at a military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay , Cuba . In November of 2001, President Bush unilaterally issued an order setting up a flawed system of military trials for these suspects.

Not surprisingly, in June 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the trial system set up by President Bush in 2001 violated military justice law and the Geneva Conventions, and that any future attempts to authorize these trials will need an Act of Congress. Unless and until that occurred, detainees at Guantanamo Bay would remain without charge and without trial.

In September 2006, President Bush sent Congress another flawed proposal to establish military tribunals. Many Senators, including John McCain (R-AZ), John Warner (R-VA), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), opposed the Administration's proposal, as did I. After weeks of negotiations, a new measure was drafted. While far from perfect, this new version provided a framework that could move these cases to trial and avoid a continuation of the current state of limbo that has kept detainees at Guantanamo without a trial.

The primary objective of the Military Commissions Act is to set up the framework under which detainees can be charged and brought to trial. The military commissions will include elements of the law and rules of evidence used in general courts-martial by the military, in addition to specific requirements laid out in the legislation. I supported several amendments to the bill on the Senate floor. For example, I sought to restore the right of habeus corpus to allow detainees to challenge the factual and legal reasons for their detention. I was disappointed that this amendment failed by a vote of 48-51; however, I anticipate the Supreme Court will review this provision in the bill expeditiously.

The Military Commissions Act also clarifies what interrogation methods can and cannot be used against detainees. In 2005, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act (the "McCain Amendment"), which applies to all detainees under the control of the United States. It prohibits cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, as those terms are defined by our U.S. Constitution.

The Military Commissions Act specifically clarifies what our obligations are under international law. These obligations are governed by the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which set out minimum standards for the treatment of detainees. The Act explicitly bans nine offenses, including torture, cruel or inhuman treatment, and intentionally causing serious bodily injury. These are considered "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions and are punishable in the United States by death or imprisonment for life or a term of years. The President must also publicly declare what the Administration deems to be "non-grave" or lesser offenses under the Geneva Conventions. This mandate will require the President to spell out what interrogation standards are being used at Guantanamo, which will be a major step toward accountability for this Administration.

This legislation is not perfect, and I regret that efforts to amend it on the Senate floor were unsuccessful. But it has been more than five years since 9/11, and hundreds of detainees are being kept at Guantanamo Bay without charge and without trial. It is time to set the rules and move these trials forward. I will vigorously monitor how this and future Administrations apply this legislation and the requirements it sets forth, and I will not hesitate to speak out when the executive branch strays from the requirements of the law. In addition, I intend to work with my colleagues in the 110th Congress, which begins in January, to conduct strong oversight of this program and consider changes to this law to address any deficiencies.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me, and I hope you will continue to do so in the future.

Sincerely, Senator Frank Lautenberg

My thoughts? Well, first off, I appreciate the response. I know it took a while, but I'm sure the volume of requests coming into Congressional offices must be huge, especially since the advent of electronic media.

Now, I can understand the Senator's reasoning here. He's talking about the act being better than nothing, and that taking baby steps is better than doing nothing. I can understand that and could even almost get behind it, if it weren't for the provisions in the bill that give the President the authority to redefine the Geneva Conventions.

I'm a little more hopeful that the Senator's choice will be vindicated in the coming months with the Democratic majority in Congress, but all the same, I would like to have seen this act scuttled, and Senators Warner, Graham and McCain exposed for the political opportunists and showmen that they are.

Fargus...

John Mayer's Blog

I was reading an interview with John Mayer on CNN.com, I believe, and it was a pretty neat article. He's interested in doing stand-up comedy and sneaker design, of all things, but he doesn't want to do it based on his success as a musician. He wants to earn those things, which is extra cool in my book. When asked if he was thinking about acting, he said that if he did, he'd want to do four years of stand-up first, so that he knew he wasn't some ungrateful musician taking the acting job of somebody who'd put himself through the paces.

Anyway, there was a link to his blog, which I've found quite amusing and interesting. It's here, and though there's a lot of technical music stuff there, if you sift through it, there's some neat musings, as well. The music video for his new song, "Waiting for the World to Change," is there, and I like it quite a bit. I like that he's felt comfortable branching out from pop into the worlds of blues and hip-hop, and that he's been willing to grow as an artist.

And for any of you who haven't seen it, go to YouTube and watch this video right now. It's friggin' amazing.

Fargus...

The Validity of Opinion

I often hear two statements bandied about that are taken by most as equivalent. They are:

Everyone has the right to his/her own opinion.

Everyone's opinion is as valid as everyone else's.

The first is something with which I strongly agree. The second is something with which I couldn't disagree more.

Let me explain.

I don't think I have to spend too many words to let you all know why I think that everybody has the right to an opinion, whatever that opinion is, and however repugnant it may be to some. Freedom of expression is fundamental to our ideals as a nation, and to mine as a person. But beneath that freedom of expression is the freedom to hold whatever opinion it is you want to express. For some, maybe that goes without saying. That's probably true. I just wanted to make it explicit.

As for the second claim, though, that everyone's opinion is as valid as everyone else's, I don't just disagree with it. I don't think that anyone agrees with it, regardless of whether or not they say it. Everyone necessarily priveleges certain opinions over others, in their view, by adopting them as theirs.

For instance, it's my opinion that High Fidelity is one of the best movies of the last decade. Now, people certainly have the right to disagree with me, and think that High Fidelity was a big steaming pile of crap, but from my standpoint, I don't have any obligation to consider that opinion as equally valid as my own. I have considered all of the same evidence as the person who despises one of my favorite movies, and I've come out on the opposite side. If I truly think that High Fidelity is one of the best movies of the past decade, it would sure weaken my argument to concede as equally valid an argument that High Fidelity is one of the worst movies of the past decade.

I don't by any means advocate disrespect, or mischaracterization of others' positions. I don't advocate character attacks, or false inferences drawn from opinions of others with which I don't agree. For instance, if I said that somebody who didn't think that High Fidelity is one of the best movies of the past decade is the 21st century equivalent of those Nazis in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s who burned the great books of our past, I would be dead wrong, and I would deserve to be called on it.

What I do advocate, though, is a forceful expression of opinion, without the need for concession to opposing opinions with which you truly don't agree. Every time somebody starts an expression of their opinion with something like, "I understand why some people would think High Fidelity is the worst movie of the past decade, but..." the whole argument is undermined. It may seem like it's a bit thornier with more serious issues than movies, but it's really not. All I'm saying is that we have to have the courage of our convictions, and we have to express them with poise and confidence.

To do any less would be a disservice to ourselves and to those whom we would seek to convince.

Fargus...

Losing [My] Religion

My last post was a setup for this one. I hope you've had time to absorb it a bit.

With this post, I wanted to outline my own religious views, as they've been shaping up for the past few years. It's something that I've been quite up front with myself about, and increasingly so with people outside of the online arena, but because of the associations most people have with the words involved, I've been a bit hesitant to vociferously self-identify in this way. But you know what? I've decided it doesn't really matter what people think of me. I'll go into that a bit more in the next post. For now, though, on to the main event.

I consider myself a weak atheist and a strong agnostic. For those of you who don't feel like scrolling back down to the last post, here's what that means: I lack belief in a God or gods, but I don't make the positive assertion that they don't exist. That's the weak atheist part. As for the strong agnostic part, I think that it's not just unknown whether or not God exists, but that it's fundamentally unknowable, by the very definition of the word.

You may notice that I'm very careful to not say that I'm outlining my beliefs. I don't say that I disbelieve in God, because that would be strong atheism. Lack of belief is not at all the same as active disbelief, and I'd like to be very clear with that distinction.

Some strong atheists would question my weak atheism. That is, they would question why I stop short of asserting that God doesn't exist. For me, it's purely a question of logic. Just as it's illogical to assert without evidence that God exists, it's also illogical to assert without evidence that God doesn't exist. That is, both require at least a small "leap of faith" to jump from the evidence to the conclusion.

That is not to say, though, that because something's existence cannot be disproven, that is reason enough to believe in its existence. I could rattle off, literally until my dying breath, any number of concepts that could not be disproven, each more ridiculous than the last. But there would be no basis for belief in any of them simply based on the fact that they cannot be disproven. In fact, I would have constructed them specifically so that they could not be disproven by logical means, in the same way that the idea of God cannot be disproven by logical means.

This is where I get into the strong agnosticism. In fact, it's completely tied up in that place where weak atheists and strong atheists differ. As soon as you define something whose existence is fundamentally unprovable by any means that would convince somebody else absent a revelation of faith, then we've gone into the realm not just of the unknown, but of the unknowable.

* * * * *

I don't expect this to change anyone's mind or anything. Far from it. I just wanted to get it out there and see what y'all thought of it, if anything. I've been talking about posting about my convictions on the subject of religion for some time now, and I figured that time had come.

Fargus...

A Primer on Atheism and Agnosticism

Most people, when they hear the word "atheist," have a definite picture that forms in their minds. The picture is what more nuanced people would probably call a "militant atheist," and more likely than not, that person is probably tearing up a bible, or maybe spitting on a crucifix.

But atheism is a much more subtle beast than that, and comes in more varieties than most people realize. I'm gonna try to lay out the four major overlapping divisions of atheism here.

Implicit Atheism

Only those who define atheism in the broadest sense (as I tend to do) really recognize implicit atheism as a type of atheism at all. Put simply, implicit atheists are those who lack theistic belief without consciously rejecting it. By this reasoning, somebody who was born, lived his whole life, and died with no exposure to religion, and who didn't formulate religious beliefs on his own, would be an implicit atheist. He quite obviously lacked theistic belief, but he didn't actively reject that belief, since he was never given the opportunity. Those who buy into the concept of implicit atheism then say that everyone on the planet is born as an implicit atheist.

Explicit Atheism

Given the definition of implicit atheism, the definition of explicit atheism is obvious. An explicit atheist is one who consciously rejects theistic belief. This probably sounds closer to that picture that forms in most people's heads when they hear the word "atheist," but we're not quite there yet. There are two more subdivisions of atheism that overlap with those that I've already laid out here.

Weak Atheism

A weak atheist is someone who lacks theistic belief, without the positive assertion that deities do not exist. This may seem the same as implicit atheism, but there's one important difference: A weak atheist can have consciously rejected theism, but not adopted the viewpoint that deities definitively do not exist. Thus, all implicit atheists are weak atheists, but weak atheists can be either implicit or explicit atheists.

Strong Atheism

Again, here's a definition that follows directly from the one before it. A strong atheist is someone who lacks theistic belief and also positively asserts that no deities can exist. As you can see, if you've been paying attention, a strong atheist is necessarily an explicit atheist, since his viewpoint includes a positive assertion, and not just a lack of belief. But again, not all explicit atheists are strong atheists. Truly, it's the vocal fringe of these strong atheists who make up the pictures that pop into most people's heads when they think of atheists.

* * * * *

Astute readers will at this point notice that such a broad definition of atheism doesn't necessarily exclude atheists (weak atheists, anyway) from being agnostics as well. Let's jump into a brief definition of two differing types of agnosticism here, just to be perfectly clear.

Weak Agnosticism

A weak agnostic says simply that the existence or nonexistence of deities is currently unknown. A look at the etymology of the word makes this clear. The prefix "a-" means "without," and in Greek, "gnosis" means "knowledge." Hence, "agnostic" literally means "without knowledge."

Strong Agnosticism

A strong agnostic believes, like the weak agnostic, that the existence or nonexistence of deities is currently unknown. More than that, though, the strong agnostic asserts that not only do we not know whether or not deities exist, but that it is impossible for us to know whether or not deities exist. Whereas the weak agnostic leaves the door open for mitigating evidence at some point down the line, the strong agnostic asserts that the existence of deities is, by their very definitions, unknowable.

* * * * *

So where am I going with this? I'll get to that in my next post. You're welcome to guess in the comments, though.

Fargus...

Die, Die, Die, My Delta

Yesterday afternoon, my roommate Jason came downstairs with a proposition.

"Hey, Fargus, you wanna go to London?"

Without hesitation, I replied, "Yes. When?"

"Um, I was sort of just kidding," Jason replied, a bit taken aback at how quickly I answered. "Delta's running a special deal where tickets from JFK to London-Gatwick are only $99 each way."

"I say again, yes. When are we going?" I stared him down.

"Well, I don't want to go, I was just kidding," Jason said.

At this point I immediately went upstairs to my room and started researching the trip. Sure enough, there on the Delta website, were tickets to London for only $99 each way. The applicable dates were November 15, 2006 through April 20, 2007, excluding the period from December 15, 2006 through January 7, 2007. The only stipulation was that you'd have to stay over a Saturday night.

The other stipulation was that the tickets had to be purchased by Tuesday, September 12, 2006. Tomorrow.

I immediately got on the phone, trying to find out who would go with me. I figured I could probably count on Oliver and Eli, and that we might be able to find another person or two. Sure enough, Dan, Oliver and Eli said that they'd be up for going over the Thanksgiving holiday, maybe sometime like the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to the Sunday afterwards.

I went to the website and went to book tickets, just to double-check the prices, and I was surprised to find that it was giving me prices of $525 or so for the round trip. I called up the online help line, and the only thing they could offer me was that the special fares were sold out. There was nothing on the website about there being a limited number of special fares, or about their having been sold out. It appeared that the offer was still good until tomorrow, and I'd assume that it still appears so right now.

So we're not going to London for Thanksgiving, so far as I know right now. But now I've got the travel bug, and I'd like to go somewhere for Thanksgiving. If anybody's got any suggestions for places that might be cheap and fun to travel, I'm all ears.

Fargus...

Tonight, Tonight

Tonight I'm at Darren's, and I finished the bottle of Captain Morgan's rum that I started last night. Our lives aren't very exciting when they consist of drinking some rum and playing bad video games, but don't judge me. The video games may be bad, but Ryan got them for free.

We spent a little bit of time abusing a service that was instituted for a noble purpose. The concept of internet relay calling is really a noble thing, and allows people who can't otherwise hear people on the phone to carry on conversations, however labored and awkward they may be. Dan and Oliver discovered this service years ago and used it to make operators say terrible things to me. Anyway, I think it makes it better that I feel a little bad about it now.

Fargus...

A Near-Death Experience

It's been a while since I've posted (8 days shy of three months, to be exact). I'm not quite ready to get back to where I was before, where I was posting exclusively about political things, and a couple of times a day. I don't think I'll ever want to go back to exactly that.

Instead, I'd like to have more of a mishmash of topics in here. Anecdotes, stories from my youth, political postings sometimes, religious postings others, etc. This one will be a story from my youth, and though my recall of it is likely a bit fuzzy, I'll tell it as I remember it, and maybe my dad can help me out with the details.

I spent the first eight and a half years of my life in southern California. My mom, dad and I lived in Orange County for a while, and then in various spots around the San Fernando Valley. One thing that my dad and I used to do every weekend was to go to the Sherman Oaks Park (this is one of those details I might be wrong on, Dad).

I don't remember exactly how old I was, but one day the two of us were on the Ventura Freeway, driving home from the park, when a car went to cut us off. My dad swerved to get out of the way, and that was when the car began to go out of control. We started fishtailing down the freeway, and despite my dad's efforts, the car kept going further and further out of control. The fishtails got wider and wider, and as I recall, I think we even spun completely around once or twice.

I was glued to my seat. There was a knot the size of my head lodged in my throat, which made it pretty difficult to even consider breathing or swallowing. My life didn't flash before my eyes, and I didn't have any grand revelations, but I do very clearly remember thinking that I was probably going to die.

Then, THUD!

All of a sudden we were slowing down, and we weren't spinning anymore. We pulled off to the side of the road, along with the car that we'd hit, to inspect the damage. Somehow, neither my dad nor I was hurt at all. The car that we'd hit was white, but I don't remember what make or model. There were two girls in it, and they weren't hurt either. Remarkably, when we looked at the damage on the cars, we found that their bumper had a dent in it, and our bumper had a crack in it. That was it.

I didn't know about all of the details that went on, while my dad talked with the driver of the other car. All I remember was that I didn't have any shoes on, and the girl who was the passenger in the other car gave me piggy back rides by the side of the road so that I didn't have to walk on the hot asphalt.

Anyway, there's probably some details there that are missing, and some that are inaccurate, but that's how that story's stuck in my head for the last 20 years, give or take. Maybe my dad'll come along and offer up some clarification in the comments.

Fargus...

UPDATE (9/14/06): Here's what my dad had to say in the comments, if you don't feel like clicking through:

Wow. I haven't thought about that for a long time. You got it essentially right as I remember it. I learned to drive on rear-wheel-drive cars and drove in snow in the winter for the first 8 years of my driving experience, and the main thing I remembered about driving in the snow and ice was that you steer in the direction of your skid. In other words, if your back end is skidding to the left, you steer to the left to regain control.

Well, I was driving a front-wheel-drive Honda Accord that day, and as my life flashed before my eyes, I remember trying to steer in the direction of the skid but it kept getting worse and worse as we fishtailed down the freeway at 60 mph, and I couldn't understand why (I later figured out that it doesn't work with front wheel drive). I know we eventually did a complete 360-degree turn, and the drivers all around us were trying to stay out of our way and beeping at me as if I was doing this on purpose.

When we finally stopped, I remember it more as a gentle bump rather than a THUD, but nonetheless, we were shaken but alive.

Fargus...

Flock

I'm just trying out the new Flock web browser, that integrates photo uploading and blogging using my existing accounts. Seems pretty badass.

Fargus...

My First Gig

I guess it's not true that the wedding I'm going to in 8 days is my first singing gig, but it certainly feels like it. I sang a lot in high school and college, but those were for audiences made up of Billy and Susie's parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. I didn't know Billy and Susie, let alone their families, so those kinds of engagements weren't very difficult. I only had to worry about family and friends, really, and most of those friends were probably performing with me.

But this upcoming wedding is a little bit different. Half of the audience will be made up of old friends. But not just any old friends. I've had old friends who have seen me embarrass myself in karaoke bars in China, and I didn't give it a second thought. These are old high school friends. I'm 25 years old now, and I haven't seen most of these people for at least 6 or 7 years. The Fargus they knew is gone in most senses of the word, and this is one hell of a nervewracking way to introduce them to the new Fargus.

Do you think it's frowned upon to have a couple of drinks before the wedding to loosen up?

Fargus...

The Great Wall

I don't know what all I want to put up about my recent trip to China on here. Maybe some reflections, maybe a transcription of some of my travel journal, I don't know. But for now, I'll just give you one of my favorite pictures from one of my favorite stops on the trip: The Great Wall (I'm the one furthest to the right).



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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.

Fargus...

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?

Fargus...

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.

Fargus...

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.

Fargus...

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.

Fargus...

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.

Fargus...

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?

Fargus...

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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