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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