Dream Theater: 2005 A Change Of Seasons

Every time Dream Theater releases a new album it usually takes between three and five listens before I'm really able to wrap my mind around the music and decide if I like it or not. Of course, I always end up loving it and can't imagine them making any new albums that don't sound like this. Then after a couple years they release another album that sounds very different from the last and the whole process starts over again.

Now that I've finally fallen in love with the newest release, Octavarium, and have been listening to it non-stop for well over a week I thought I'd post my personal ranking of Dream Theater's studio albums. I’ll post my thoughts on one album per day, starting with the lowest ranked and moving upward. Here we go!

(Ed. note: I sort of forgot to finish posting these reviews, so here's the first of the last three, which I hope to get out this weekend)

3. A Change Of Seasons

This song only has one studio song on it, but it’s possibly the greatest single song Dream Theater has ever made and it also happens to be the first Dream Theater album I ever bought, which gave it a few extra points. This is everything that an epic length song should be, a single whole tied together by distinct but related movements that run the gamut from slow to fast, rocking to mellow. Each piece sounds great on its own when it’s playing, but there’s no doubt that it’s one song and not several songs simply laid next to each other. Fill out the rest of the album with some great live cover tunes and this one still gets frequent play. I know, it seems lame to be giving what’s really a half studio album such a high ranking, but the title track earns it by be so fantastically good. The cover tunes are the candy pieces on an already baked and frosted cake. For the record, here's a quick run down of the cover tunes:

"Funeral For A Friend/Loves Lies Bleeding" (Originally by Elton John, I actually like this version better)
"Perfect Strangers" (Originally by Deep Purple)
"The Rover/Achilles/The Song Remains the Same" (Originally by Led Zeplin)
"The Big Medley" (Includes pieces of "In The Flesh" by Pink Floyd, "Carry On My Wayward Son" by Kansas, "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'" by Journey, "Cruise Control" by Steve Morse, and "Turn It On Again" by Genesis)

"And then you disappeared. Your gambling arrears, the only thing you left behind."

The iFriday iRandom e-10

Quick recap of the rules: You choose whatever program or device you use to listen to mp3s on and set to thing to random. Then you post the first ten songs it chooses for you here. It must be totally random, so no changing it to avoid embarrassing songs or homogenous lists.

Song - Artist

1. 54 Buck Per Minute - Maker
2. Evolution - Cat Power
3. You're All I Need To Get By - Marvin Gaye
4. Piano Concerto #5 in E-flat minor, Op. 73 - Beethoven
5. Dragonfly - The Grouch
6. Upgrade (A Brymar College Course) - Deltron
7. Darkside of Aquarius - Bruce Dickenson
8. Clever Use Of Shadows - Nathan Mahl
9. The Sounds Of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel
10. Scene Five: Through Her Eyes - Dream Theater

"This world is spinning around me. This world is spinning without me. Every day sends future to past. Every breath leaves me one less to my last."

A Scary Situation

It doesn't sound like this is happening all over, but it's still crazy that people are being penned in like this.

"He hears the silence howling -- catches angels as they fall. And the all-time winner has got him by the balls."

Nerd News

This is one of the funnier bits of news I've read in a while. It took me a while to get it, so don't be frustrated if you don't. I'll explain in the comments. I know, jokes that need explaination usually aren't as funny, but I still got a chuckle out of it.

Could there be a Halo 3 announcement later this month? It's starting to look like there might be.

Any Sonic: The Hedgehog fans in the house? It's been a while since a good Sonic game came out, but I like the looks of these next-generation screen shots.

Thanks to Evil Avatar for the links.

"And respect you'll give me, Ludacris, I live loud like Timmy! Fuck, have to clear these rumors, I got a headache and it's not a tumor!"

Tennis On TV

Wow, just wow. I watched Andre Agasi beat James Blake in the US Open, and it was one of the most brilliant and tense games I've seen. Just perfect.

"Making mention of my DJ CPU, nerd core hip-hop is the style that he use. Step to my DJ, you better step prepared. He got 28 n 22/50ths squared."

Let's get fisky!

I just have to copy my comment on this post. Sorry if it's not terribly clear what's going on based on this; go read, then come back here.

More fascinating—in one of those it takes modern social studies to affirm the obvious—is that the whole "reproductive health" information has been skewered in favor of the girls and that boys have been completely marginalized. Gee, sounds like an awful lot like schools with their anti-boy attitudes, doesn't it?

Historically and globally, birth control and maternal health have been an almost strictly female affair. The movement to disseminate reliable information on sex and reproductive health really in this country was really started by feminist activists. Since their primary concern was women's health, and they were predominantly women teaching women, yes, they didn't care too much about making sure men were fully educated. But by no means does it follow that they were anti-male! Like many antifeminists, your conflation of feminism with misandry does nothing more than display your ignorance of feminism.

So contraception inadventently shields boys from the consequences of impregnating their girlfriends

Inadvertently? Preventing pregnancy is precisely the point of contraception. Hence the name 'contraception'.

thus, further entrenching the teen boys' total indifference to fatherhood and other forms of responsibility.

/snark
Yes, using contraception to do what they can to keep from being fathers before they're ready is a textbook example of irresponsibility.
/snark
Huh? This is completely incoherent.

nowhere does the article ever raise another option—abstinence

It's a study of sexually active teenagers. It's rather hard to use abstinence as your birth control method, given that you're sexually active, without giving up the sex part.

after all, why should society encourage self-control and patience with respect to sex? That would put Planned Parenthood out of business as it could no longer justify the exorbitant tax subsidies the American federal government grants for sexual "health advice," abortions, and contraception.

Here is PPUSA's page on Birth Control. It's one level under the front page. Abstinence is TWO of the first four methods of birth control listed on this page.

Another social-scientist-states-the-obvious paragraph is when it highlights how a boy's attitudes towards sex and whether or not he favors pregnancy influences the girls' attitudes towards birth and abortion.

What paragraph is this? Could you provide at least a quoted phrase that we could search? I'm not seeing it. It certainly seems an odd conclusion to draw from a study in which only boys were interviewed, so I'd want to see their reasoning in more detail.

Worse, the boys would reimpose patriarchial authority and that's far more horrifying! Imagine! Stable loving families with loving parents who dote on their kids.

What does patriarchal authority have to do with stable, loving families and parents who love their kids? Plenty of straight, 'father knows best' families are dysfunctional -- conservative Christian marriages break up as often as any others, after all -- and plenty of egalitarian straight and gay families are filled with love and raise awesome kids.

Even better is the gratuitious class snobbery: boys most likely to be positive towards pregnancy are from 'less-educated' mothers. Nice subtle potshot at moms who adhere to traditional values or typical views of sex, pregnancy and birth.

I assume you're talking about this paragraph: "Teens who actively planned on impregnating - or thought they might do so accidentally - tended to be less negative about pregnancy in general, and came from families with relatively less-educated mothers, the researchers added." Why are you making the classist assumption that less-educated mothers hold 'traditional' values of sex, pregnancy, and birth? This article just reports a correlation, it offers no explanation whatsoever -- perhaps these young men have seen how hard it is to raise children on the limited income someone who didn't go to college is liable to have.

[I would point out that very few people ever respond to the comments I make on that blog.]

And From The Right We Have...

Here's an interesting post from a conservative relating to the charges of racism coming from the left. I don't agree with all the statements and I don't think it totally covers the Right's ass for some of the shit that's been said in the post-Katrina coverage, but it does make some valid points and I think it's certainly worth reading. Also, I think it's worth reading what the other side is thinking.

Edit: This comes courtesy of this post at Pandagon.

Edit 2: Forgot this...

"When you see me again, I hope that you have been, the kind of person you really are now."

Skyscrapers in downtown Chicago, December 2003. This was taken with my old camera, which had 'light leaks' on all the pictures I took with it.  

Dick Cheney Get's A Taste Of His Own Medicine

And it's from America, so we know it's not fake medicine! Over at Crooks & Liars they've got the video, which you all should check out, of a guy telling Cheney go bugger himself. Made ups to my dogg Joy for this one.

"He drifting in and out of sanity, but in every way he was fine."

Feminism, From Ben!

Since all the feminist stuff that gets posted on this ol' blog here usually gets posted by my esteemed co-blogger, I thought it might be fun for me to do one. Anyway, I'll just do some highlights:

1. "[Cancer] is an apt metaphor for radical feminism, which seduces intelligent, caring young women; plies them with warmed-over Marxist slogans; and turns them into gender crusaders who seemingly have lost all semblance of reason and compassion."

Well, we're getting off to a pretty good start here! He starts off well enough, admitting that intelligent and caring women are more likely to embrace the tenets of feminism and become gender crusaders while idiotic and uncaring women are, sadly, more likely to be brainwashed by backward cro-mag philosophies.

2. "By its own admission, radical feminism seeks to curtail or destroy the most cherished values of democratic free market societies: the traditional family, limited government, and the culture of life itself."

I think at this point my lack of knowledge might be a hinderance to my project. While I know a bit here and there about feminism, he seems much more of an expert in "radical feminism" which sounds dreadfully violent and scary to me. Why, they're so hateful that these "radical feminists" are willing to bring about their own end by completely ending procreation! That's pretty hardcore. Of course, the vanilla brand of feminism that I'm more familiar with is more concerned with equal wages and giving women options in various areas of their lives in which they had none, but then that's not very radical. Or tubular even.

3. "The Academy. Women's studies programs serve as the base camp for feminists to recruit a new crop of well-educated women... The cure? Students need to file lawsuits demanding that these universities establish men's studies programs to serve the dwindling male student body. After all, Title IX of the Civil Rights Act was intended to benefit men and women alike."

I think this guy likes feminism more than he thinks, unless he's saying that being well-educated is a bad thing. Also, as a man that attended a university with a 60:40 female to male ratio I'd say that I benefitted plenty from schools reaching out to women. You're saying you want to bring in more dudes? Are you quite mad?!

4. "The Media. Our feminized society is seemingly addicted to stories that serve up a daily diet of victimization and gender grievance. Recently I came across this 72-point headline in USA Today: "Abuse Found in Military Schools." The article goes on to recite this shocking statistic: "The report cited 2004 Pentagon data showing 50% of women at all three academies were harassed, mostly verbally but dozens suffering physical abuse." [ed: Then he posits several questions about the Pentagon report that the article doesn't answer.]And come to think of it, how many male cadets experienced any form of abuse? The answer to these important questions is left to the reader's imagination.

This is like wondering why Highlights Magazine doesn't explain the complex series of events that led to so many objects being lost in the forrest. USA Today isn't a feminist publication, it's a crappy publication. And to answer his questions, I went to the Air Force Academy Gazette, where I learned that more men than women were surveyed and yet women reported verbal and physical abuse (mostly from other cadets and midshipmen) almost five times more than the men. Evidently abuse is on the decline, but still, it's not so much a question of the "MSM" (mainstream media for those of you that don't think it's fun to cruise conservative sites) making things up as it is one of subpar reporting. But really, if he expected different from USA Today, there's something wrong with him.

Hat tip: Pandagon

David Brooks Doing His Best

I know, David Brooks usually writes thinly veiled conservative talking points as a stand in for a real editorial, but I think he's been doing a pretty decent job with his articles about Katrina and the aftermath. Well, at least I think he's trying. Sure, there are certainly weaknesses, but I think the spirit of the articles is well intentioned. Like Brooksie says, if there's anything that we could call a silver lining coming out of the tragedy in New Orleans it's that attention has been drawn to the horrific poverty problem in America today.

It looks like the Dems are finally coming correct a bit, so maybe there's hope for some real social action.

What is the state of nature?

Allow me to wax philosophy grad student and expand on Amanda's observation:

Two narratives appear to be emerging about what happened in the aftermath of Katrina when a state of virtual anarchy reigned and mob rule essentially took over where there was a leadership vaccum. I think that basic background is universally agreed on, but what's interesting is that two competing ideas of what 'mob rule' really means are out there. Or, the word 'mob' is needlessly inflammatory, so it would be better to say crowd rule.

In Anglophone social/political philosophy (I'm not going back any further just because I haven't read enough to speak knowledgeably), this division goes back to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Both were prominent philosphers in the late 17th century; Hobbes is probably best well known for Leviathan, while (depending on your undergrad major) Locke is equally famous for his Essay Concerning Human Understanding or Two Treatises of Government. Both drew heavily on 'state of nature' arguments, to get to two very different conclusions.

For Hobbes, the state of nature is a 'war of all against all', where life is 'nasty, brutish, and short'. His description of the SoN in Leviathan makes one picture roving bands of thugs, raping and taking whatever they can. Communities and states form as people band together to better consolidate power: one guy with an axe can't keep five guys with rocks from his apple trees.

For Locke, by contrast, the SoN is a much more tranquil scene, where people naturally come together into families and do the work God has put us on Earth to do -- enjoy life, liberty, health, and work the land (thereby making it our property). This is no Eden, however; without a state, violations of the natural order must be punished by the victims; but they are not likely to be fair and impartial in pursuing justice. Thus, for Locke, the SoN ends and we enter civil society in pursuit of truly objective arbiters of justice.

Note that, in neither case do we band together to achieve common ends, eg, guarantee the food supply or raise children. Civil society has its beginnings not in the extended family or clan and its interests and difficulties, but, for these thinkers, in the selfish interests of a solitary man and his ability to pursue these in the face of adversity from other men (the word choice here is VERY deliberate). Locke's comes closer to this than Hobbes, but he still starts with the individual, not the family.

Amanda's two narratives track fairly well onto the different visions of the state of nature: the Hobbesian is focussed on the riots, looting, and rapine, while the Lockean has a more optimistic picture of people helping each other get through a perilous situation and abandoning 'might makes right' in favour of justice. Now, I want to ask the following question: what do the conclusions each philosopher draws from his conception of the SoN tell us about the political inclinations of the people who (at least implicitly) ascribe to their views?

Hobbes is, in modern parlance, a totalitarian: once individuals enter into a civil society by the formation of a social contrast (Hobbes is one of the first, if not THE first, social contrast theorist), the sovereign, whether a congress of elected representatives or a monarch, has absolute authority to determine every aspect of life in the society. Indeed, Hobbes argues that, when we enter civil society, our individual interests become subordinate to the interests of society as a whole, and as determined by the sovereign. That is, the person becomes no more than a tool to be used by the state for determining the ends it has determined to be in the interest of society as a whole. The specific model -- the people form the body of society, the sovereign its mind -- should be quite chilling to anyone familiar with the rhetoric of past totalitarian regimes, especially the fascist governments of the middle of the last century and the South American juntas of the '70s and '80s. Hence, to the extent that they are the intellectual heirs of Hobbes, we should expect those who focus on the looting to support authoritarian government that favours the interests of the elite -- as I believe to be the case.

Locke's SoN, by contrast, critically involves our equality before God. As we leave the state of nature and enter into civil society, we retain that equality, and the true justice which is the telos of civil society reflects this. The authoritarianism of Hobbes is anathema to Locke's view of a justice society, and his call for limited government made him influential enough to be paraphrased a century later by Thomas Jefferson -- the idea that government exists to facilitate the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness clearly comes from Locke's assertion that government exists to secure life, health, liberty and property. Thus, to the extent that they are Locke's intellectual heirs, we should expect those who focus on the logistical crisis of Katrina's aftermath -- the problems getting people out of the Superdome and into clean shelters, getting people food, water, medicine, and clean clothes, and so on -- to have broadly egalitarian values and concerns with justice for all members of society, not just those at the top. I think this speculation also has empirical support.

When is an activist judge not an activist judge?

When they're agreeing with conservatives, of course.

A bill to legalize same-sex marriages passed the California legislature today, and Ahnold has threatened it with a veto:

The legislation could be vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has expressed an acceptance of gay marriages but said it's an issue that should be decided by voters or the courts.

"He will uphold whatever the court decides," spokeswoman Margita Thompson said Tuesday after the state Assembly approved the same-sex marriage measure, 41-35. The Senate had approved it last week.

Pace all those conservatives who forget the courts are part of our government, and insist that state legislatures should be the ones approving or denying gay people the right to legal recognition of their families, of course. Follow the link for a nice little survey of these.

Frankly, I'm not even sure what the hell 'the court' is supposed to rule on here. The appellate court is considering an earlier ruling that overturned the law banning gay marriage, but isn't the legislature allowed to enact new laws that run the exact opposite of old laws?

In Defense Of Price Gouging

You know, this is where I get frustrated and start having that internal inclination to think that conservatism is just an idiot's game. Then I remember that there are perfectly intelligent people that hold conservative ideologies and I just disagree with their fundamental principles. Still John Stossel isn't exactly a nobody with a blog. He's not exactly the front line of the modern conservative movement but he's big enough to have name recognition, yet he writes an article defending price gouging. Jesse tears it down plenty well enough so that I don't really need to explain why Stossel's argument is absolute crap, but I will add one thing. Here's the definition of price gouging for the people that don't seem to know what it is:

price gouging

n : pricing above the market when no alternative retailer is available

The definition presupposes that the product is being artificially priced above the market as a means of screwing people that have no alternative. Honestly, this argument is just stupid and that's that. If this truly is what modern conservatism is all about, then modern conservatism is stupid as well.

A Bunch Of DKos Links

Posters at DKos have started to collect the Katrina "Hall of Shame", which includes various disgusting quotes from people about the hurricane and its fallout. One of my favorites: "Out of the rubbles (sic) of Trent Lott's house---he's lost his entire house---there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch" -- President Bush.

Here's another Katrina related link, which coincidentally is another disgustingly cynical thing Bush has done. The shorter version: Hurricane hits, destroys city. Firefighters from around the country heroically volunteer to help. The government sends a lot of them to some bullshit training in community relations and sexual harrassment in Atlanta. Others are assigned to walk next to Bush as he tours the disaster areas. Seriously, look at some of those pictures. As kos says, this isn't the most costly thing he's done by any measure, but to take guys that volunteered to help the sick and injured and use them as human props for the cameras is just sick.

And on one up note; so close, so very very close.

What place religion?

An announcement was forwarded to us grad students about this competition, a 2,000-word essay on the following prompt, sponsored by a research institute that specializes in religion and political economy from a 'classical liberal' (not exactly libertarian) perspective:

The human person, by virtue of being created imago Dei, is an independent being, individually unique, rational, the subject of moral agency, a co-creator, and inherently social. Accordingly, human persons possess intrinsic value and dignity, implying certain rights and duties with respect to the recognition and protection of the dignity of themselves and other persons. These truths about the human person's dignity are known through divine revelation, but are also discernible through reason.

Officially, the competition is open to graduate students of any religious affiliation; but I imagine a secularist argument disagreeing with the prompt wouldn't be especially well-received, and I don't want to spend a whole day writing when I can be pretty confident of a negative reaction.

I agree with the second sentence, except for the word 'accordingly': humans possess intrinsic value and dignity, but, I would argue, not by virtue of our relationship with God. Rather, we possess intrinsic value and dignity simply by virtue of being rational agents. The third sentence is similarly flawed: reason provides the only objective grounds for respect for persons; while, by definition, revealed religion provides only subjectively sufficient grounds for any claim. Here I'm heavily influenced by Kant, especially his work in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Metaphysics of Morals.

Purely theological grounds for public policies would violate the principle of separation of church and state, a principle intended to protect both faith and the secular common grounds of civil society. So I would make the following three claims concerning a Kantian approach to practical philosophy: (1) the Categorical Imperative provides an objective foundation for civil and moral principles of respect; (2) this foundation is inherently secular, ie, does not depend upon any particular religious beliefs (and thereby offers the protections to the state of the church/state separation); and (3) is completely compatible with the idea of revelatory knowledge which might provide subjective foundations for additional moral (but not civil) duties (thereby also protecting faith).

I think a discussion of Kierkegaard's notion of a teleological suspension of the ethical would be appropriate here as well, though it's certainly not directly related to the Kantian line. As I read Kierkegaard, his analysis of Abraham leads to serious concerns about the ability of faith to provide any laws beyond devotion to God.

Why abortion?

I spent a bit of time at a thread on abortion at a conservative site this weekend. While the discussion was nominally centred on rape, implicit behind many of the posts attacking abortion was the idea that feminists/women who choose to have abortions hate children and just want to escape 'responsibility for their actions'. Not only is this completely incoherent and assumes a sexual morality antithetical to most Americans, but it doesn't hold up empirically.

Via feministing.

Reading blogging -- Boethius on the problem of evil

The (Classical) Problem of Evil is a recurrent topic in the philosophy of religion/theology. I like to summarize it as the following dilemma: On the one hand, moral judgements (praising and blaming) require ascriptions of free will -- without free will, we cannot legitimately be considered responsible for our actions. On the other hand, basic Christian doctrine is that God knows the entire history of the world, including the future; but if God knows what decisions we make before we make them, it doesn't seem as if we are genuinely free in making decisions.

The early Medieval philosopher Boethius addresses this dilemma in part V of his Consolations of Philosophy. His solution is to distinguish between 'necessity with reference to a knower' and 'necessity in the thing itself'. The latter is 'simple like the necessity of all men being mortal', and the other 'condition'. An example of the former is the necessity of a man walking if some observer truly knows him to be walking. An example of the latter is the necessity of a sunset.

No necessity compels the steps of the voluntary walker, but when he walks he has to take steps. So too if Providence sees something present, it is necessary that it e, even though it may not be of a necessary nature. But those future things which result fromf ree will God sees as present. With reference to the divine sight they become necessary on condition of divine knowledge, whereas considered in themselves they lose nothing of the absolute freedom of their nature.

However, this does not seem to address the question of the Problem, ie, whether or not we are free: if we believe Boethius' scheme, all it can show is that if we are free, then there is no contradiction with divine foreknowledge. Even worse, it does not address the ultimate concern of the Problem, a conflict between divine responsibility for creation and the existence of moral evil: on Boethius' account, God has chosen to create beings which He knows will commit evil acts, and hence is responsible for that evil. That those creatures have, in some formal sense, 'freely chosen' evil does not abdicate God's responsibility for knowingly creating evil beings.

Collected links!

Just a list of links before I head off to bed, since the discussion threads on Katrina are starting to slip down the page.

First, there was some doubt expressed on the Red Cross being allowed into NO.
dKos
more dKos, and
The Red Cross itself

Also, the question of preventability and federal funding issues is discussed here.

An anonymous poster gives us this from the Post and this conservative site's timeline. The Post article supposed shows the governor of Louisiana has not requested federal assistance, but I didn't see anything like that as I scanned. I stand by my earlier critiques of the timeline: it doesn't cover a critical period of time in detail, and uses language which make the veracity of a few of its assertions somewhat questionable.

MosBen posted a link to Josh Marshall's take on things.

Busy day tomorrow, but the plan is to blog outlines of a couple papers I'd like to start writing soon.

Atrios Speaks

Atrios as posted an editorial piece which mirrors a lot of my frustrations with the response to Katrina. Someting Atrios mentioned stuck with me; the commonly held feeling that even if we didn't vote for the President he's still our President. I know I spend a lot of time here ripping on Bush, but I want to be clear that I don't want him to screw up, particularly on something as important as the response to a major hurricane. Like him or not Bush is the head of the government and as such holds the reigns for some really important decisions like this. The buck is supposed to stop with him. I don't hate Bush, and I don't hate Republicans, not really. I want government to act like I think it should, doesn't everybody? It just so happens that I disagree with Republicans more than I agree with them on what should be done, and it just so happens that this particular administration keeps making move after move that, to my mind is the wrong move, but which seems to flaunt their complete disconnection from what has happened to people.

The word "opportunistic" gets thrown around a lot when people start discussing things like this, but I think it's important to draw a distinction. People using the existence of looting as support for racist ideology is opportunistic. I know that the mayor of New Orleans probably made mistakes and I know that the governor of Louisiana probably made mistakes, but they're not *my* government, they're the government of their respective areas. The government of the United States is *my* government, and I'm just frustrated that my government isn't better than it apparently is.

Guests

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Ma dogs (well, my mom's), playing last July. That's Bo on the left and Buddy on the right. This is pretty much what they do all day.  

Fun Facts

Courtesy of Jack Chick!

1. It's physically impossible to say the word 'Thanksgiving' in a public school!
   
2. The Puritans were evangelical Christians, who 'wanted to worship God and reach the lost', not strict Calvinists who believed a harsh, ascetic lifestyle denoted the predestined elect. This is why they want to America -- to proselytize, not to escape what they considered the corrupting influences of bourgeois life in England.
   
3. The area around Plymouth Rock contained 'nothing but rocks, trees and wild animals'.
   
4. But not really. It also contained Indians, including one who magically spoke English.
   
5. The Pilgrims were shocked by the appearance of Squanto. Possibly because he was not one of the rocks, trees and wild animals which were the only other things besides the Pilgrims near Plymouth Rock. Or possibly because he magically spoke English, and was therefore capable of actually being convinced into giving up his hedonistic, pagan lifestyle of growing corn and fishing in favour of the Puritan lifestyle of quietly praying while starving to death.
   
6. Rather than a periodic celebration of some specific event until Abraham Lincoln declared it a regular holiday in 1863, and ignoring that whole church/state thing, Thanksgiving has always been a celebration of God's intervention to save the Pilgrims. This is why God is offended that we no longer celebrate Thanksgiving.
   
7. Stopping Thanksgiving dinner to tell your relatives that they are damned and going to hell for not celebrating Thanksgiving is neither rude nor illogical; rather, despite their gaping jaws and spontaneous assertions of atheism, you should start going on and on about Jesus, including graphic descriptions of the crucifiction between bites of turkey. Impromptu public declarations of faith go great with pumpkin pie!
   
8. There are no parties in hell. They have all been cancelled due to fire. Also, there are no clothes; they get in the way of the tortureorgies.

More Racism

Like I've been suspecting, the racist element is starting to bear its head a little more freely in the wake of the tragedy in New Orleans. Orcinus, a blog out of Seattle, has a nice rundown. It's seriously shameful that this sort of thing still exists.

Saw This When It Aired, Just About Made Me Cry

This guy really tried to put a strong face on, but broke down about halfway through. The only people supporting the government's actions in this are wildly out of touch with reality and shilling for the Republican party.

Edit: Also, another great post on Eschaton. Seriously, does anyone believe government aid can't get into the city? Wal-Mart got aid into the city. CNN had reporters there on Day 2. Harry Freaking Connick Jr. got into the city with aid. And as to the predictability of the level of disaster, I've been hearing a lot of people, including my friend Keith last night, arguing that based on news reports on Day 2 people thought it wasn't going to be very bad and that this explains why the government's response was so bad. Well, firstly that doesn't really explain why aid didn't start trickling in until this weekend, but let's set that aside for now. I don't want the government relying on CNN's reporting when they're deciding what they should be doing. I mean, you're a government agency in charge of disaster relief and you hear the phrase, "Hey a hurricane hit New Orleans." Should your reaction be, "I'll turn on CNN to see how bad it was." ? I certainly don't think so. I'd lean more towards, "I should send some of my staff down there to assess what we need to be doing. In fact, they should probably use one of those government helicopters so they can do it fast. We should also start gearing up for major relief just in case. After all, we're freaking FEMA." I mean, say what you will about how good CNN is at covering news, they're not the Army Core of Engineers. They're not the first line of defense against disaster. Sometimes they get things wrong. If people's lives are on the line and it's your job to protect them, you check for your damn self.

The Sky Rarely, If Ever, Completely Falls

Well, as Dan said, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has died. He was the second longest sitting Supreme Court Justice behind William O. Douglas, a Yakima, Washington man which gives me no small amount of pride. Rehnquist sat on the Court through a lot of major decisions, and though he was pretty consistently conservative, his opinions often indicated a commitment to the law and his legal reasoning that was often frustrating but always worthy of respect, especially in time when some of the justices seemed to contort their reasoning to match their ideology. I'm not saying he was perfect, but if I'm going to have a conservative on the Court I'd pick Rehnquist over most others.

But he is gone now, and people are looking forward. Like I would expect, many on the left are already declaring Doomsday. Ok, first things first, the world is not going to end. I know as well as anyone that a Court that has bad justices is a bad thing and can cause plenty of trouble for people. At the same time, the history of our court system is a history of things moving forward. Sure, at times we move a bit backward, but the trend is always forward. Nobody fears that the new Court will overrule Plessy v. Fergussen (recognizing the constitutionality of Jim Crow) because cognitively we've just moved beyond that sort of reasoning. We're not going back to slavery or any other idea that we would now consider rediculous but which at some point was hotly contested because we've moved forward beyond it. Roe is what, thirty years old? Yes, I know that it's an extremely important issue and I understand why people are afraid of the possibility of it being overturned, but we're still early in our development of this issue. I'm confident that in sixty years we'll think about Roe in the same way that we think about Plessy, as an outdated controversy from an ignorant time.

I don't mean to say that the appointment of bad justices doesn't have bad consequences. Certainly, in the short run there are going to be people injured by bad rulings, probably a sizable group of people, but the world isn't going to end. We're not "fucked" in the way some of the chicken littles of the internet are wont to tell us every time something bad happens. Eleven years is a long time for there to be no Supreme Court seats opening up, and historically the average is two per president (I'm pretty sure that's right). Any radical departure from progress will be righted as the Court roster turns over. Yes, again, I know that in the meantime people will be hurt and this is not much consolation to them, but the proclamations that we're on the edge of the abyss are just overly sensational.

As to the actual cases, Rehnquist dissented in both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (the case that re-affirmed Roe in the early 90s). Certainly, Roberts' nomination should affect the way we think about Rehnquist's replacement, but on its face losing a Roe opponent isn't going to lead to an overturning of Roe. If anything, having two appointments at the same time means there's a good possibility, assuming the Democrats show some spine, that Bush will be forced to moderate his appointments.

I'm also not entirely convinced that Scalia will be put into the Chief chair. For one, thing, it's historically not typical. Usually the Chief seat is filled by new nomination and not promotion from within and Rehnquist's rise to that position was the exception, not the rule. Secondly, to go from Associate Justice to Chief Justice isn't a simple matter of moving chairs, it requires another whole confirmation process, so we'd have three confirmations going on at nearly the same time if Bush wants to elevate Scalia. I'm just not convinced he can afford to do this politically. Bush's approval rating is in the low 40s now, which is ten points behind Clinton's approval at the height of his impeachment, and combined with the failures in Iraq (polls are shifting sharply against him in his handling of the war) and the his newly botched handling of the Katrina fallout I don't think he can afford to look like he's stacking the Court.

I mean, it's one thing to accuse your opponents of requiring a litmus test when you're filling a moderate's seat with a likely conservative that refuses to take any stances on anything up to and including the age old "less filler/tastes great" debate. It's another thing entirely when you're nominating said probable conservative, another conservative, and elevating the most divisive sitting Justice to Chief. Again, this is all incumbant on the Democrats to do something about, but I do have some faith that given a mountain of ammo even the most innept party can make a decent case for seriously questioning the administration. Bush has been getting nothing but failures lately. He needs a win like Tim Allen's career needs a third Toy Story movie and nothing's going to tarnish filling two seats than a confirmation process that shows that your party is beholden to radicals. Like Drew said last night, the Republican party is begining, possibly slowly, to trend back towards the moderates and I'm not convinced that they're going to piss off moderates by obviously trying to stack the Court like we might fear.

"If you ever plan to motor west / Travel my way / Take the highway that's the best"

William Rehnquist has died

According to the Times. Chief Justice Antonin Scalia, here we come. Sigh.

My friend Annie is awesome. She kicks so much ass it blows my mind. She's going to be an incredible physician and humanitarian some day; I only wish I could feel like my life is going to matter half as much as hers will.  

How Cool? Pretty Cool, If You Ask Me

So in my searching for cool pen spinning websites I ran across the Book of Cool, which purports to be a collection of just random cool things that people can do. I'm sure I've seen cooler stuff in the more mainstream things like skateboarding, but they've got a guy doing rope and whip tricks! I don't know if it's $40 worth of cool, at least on my current budget, but it does come with three dvds of content, which is pretty good I guess for most videos like that. They also have some samples on the site which look pretty good if you wanna check 'em out.

On that note I'd like to add a message to Andy. Mind posting in the comments a site where I can find those cool vids you showed me, or is it something not postable? Anywell, that'd be helpful in my search of cool stuff.

"End of passion play, crumbling away
I'm your source of self-destruction"

John Tierney is teh MASTAR!

Mastar of that logical argument form 'pulling things out of his ass'. Apparently, people lived in New Orleans because they enjoyed having oceanfront villas, and didn't have to worry about floods or hurricanes because they knew FEMA would pick up the tab. Hence, if we abolish FEMA, and force one of the poorest states of the nation to maintain an expensive system of dikes and levees to maintain one of our busiest ports, Louisiana taxes will shoot way up as the quality of life drops further and further, and eventually the only ones left will be poor people. Then, since poor people suck, we don't even have to waste time and money rescuing them during subsequent floods, which will no doubt occur far more often now that Louisiana is being forced to rely on the taxes is can gather from its most destitute residents to maintain the levees. Libertarianism rocks!

Spiced Meat, No Ham

I'm sure most of you have noticed that the comments have started to be inundated with spam. I like to think it's because we're growing, but whatever the reason it's starting to be less funny and more annoying. Well evidently Blogger lets you have those crazy screwy letters, "word identification" it's called, so though it's going to be slightly annoying to have to type that stuff in when you post a comment but it should drastically cut down on spam.

"Came a last night of sadness / And it was clear she couldn't go on"

Holy shit!

How does a wingnut preacher react to the destruction of New Orleans?

First, with a spectacular display of cognitive dissonance:

"Imagine what would have happened if [New Orleans] had taken a direct hit," he tells BP. "The levee did not break until after the storm was clear and the winds had died down and the rescue workers were able to get out." Had the levee given way during the hurricane, he says, "untold thousands of people" would have been killed.

"It's a terrible tragedy," Kelley says of the devastation in and around New Orleans, "and we still don't know the scope of it -- but the evidences of God's mercy are there. We rejoice in the fact that He has got the whole world in His hands, including the city of New Orleans and [the seminary]."

Gee, God, thanks for destroying a major city and only killing about a thousand people, instead of tens of thousands! You're the greatest!

Another strategy: it's The Flood II! Hooray for Jeebus, Destroyer of Worlds!

The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as "Southern Decadence" -- an annual six-day "gay pride" event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week -- God's judgment would be felt.

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says. "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."

And here I would've thought the pagans would be the ones to start sacrificing people to calm the wrathful god. It reminds me of a certain prayer and hymn.

A Ten Of Truly Random Qualities

(Title - Artist)

1. For My People - Large Professor
2. A Piece of Liquid - Joe Satriani
3. Stompin' At The Savoy - Glenn Miller
4. Surrounded - Dream Theater
5. Takin' It To The Streets - Doobie Brothers
6. Tempo Di Menuetto. Sehr Massig - Gustav Mahler
7. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - Santa Esmeralda
8. I'm Willing - Ben Lee
9. Die Die My Darling - Metallica
10. Castles Burning - Savatage

"The trouble with the maples,
(And they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light."

A Link From A Friend

My friend Lee set me up with this link. You should all scroll down to "Lenlow - J-Lo vs K-Co vs S-Wo" on the left, and download that song. It's the mad beats.

"Back to the fact I'm the mack and I know that/ The way I kick the rhymes, some would call me a poet"

I'm Waiting For Robertson To Blame Katrina On Teh Gays

Drew told me about this yesterday, but check this out. FEMA's website listing aid groups for Katrina is overwhelmingly populated by religious groups. Now, this isn't to say that religious groups don't mean well nor that they can't contribute a lot, but really, look at that list. Evidently there are several secular groups that have been involved with relief efforts for over twenty years that have been excluded, while Pat Robertson's group is listed right after the Red Cross. It sounds distasteful to bring this sort of thing up in a time of tragedy, but when you look it definitely seems like there's something odd going on.

Money Sucks

I owe the following people money:
$1200 to my new school
$500 to my old school
$100 to my old roommate
$1200 to my new roommate's parents qua my landlords
$2500 on my credit card (complications on buying the car meant I had to make a down payment on it; fortunately, 0% APR for the first year)

Within the next month, I will also have to make car payments, pay an insurance premium for same, and my phone and cable bill.

I have $750 in my old bank account. Due to their stupid minimum balance requirements, I can't do anything with this money until the credit card is paid off and I can close the account entirely. I got paid $750 today, with another $750 in two weeks. I'm getting $3,000 from my mutual fund (hooray for my mom planning ahead, at least), but potentially not for another three weeks.

Here's the game: How should I prioritize these bills? Keep in mind that I need at least $50 a week for food.

How the hell do you future doctors and lawyers live off of loans?

iTunes Fun

Manda sends us a link to A Fun Music Game:

x put your media player on random.
x write brief lyrics from the first 25 songs that play that don't include the title.
x post and let everyone you know guess what song the lines come from.
x star the songs when someone guesses correctly

And you can even play right there!

Another Fun Post

For all you video gamers out there, here's a list of the interesting bits gleaned from an interview with a big Microsoft muckety muck about the Xbox 360. Lots of good stuff here.

Wowzers

Most of the time I can't stand Jack Cafferty, but wow, check this out. I mean sure, this isn't really news to anyone that's been reading the blogs in the last week, but finally somebody in the mainstream media is telling it like it is.

It appears we missed Brandon's anniversary somehow. Possibly because we are horrible monsters and deserve to die. Anyway, here's a shot of the moon rising over Yakima on that happy night two years ago.  

A Nice Break From The Seriousness

Some guy was spinning his pen in class, which was pissing me off because I've never been able to do it. So a quick Google search found me this site. They've got lots of figures and even videos to show you how it's done.

Edit: Evidently that's the old site. Here is the new one, though I actually like the old one better.

The Pundits Are Getting Started

Would they really be calling for looters in New Orleans to be shot on sight if the population stuck in the drowned city weren't so overwhelmingly poor and black?

Links from here, hat tip here.

Update for a choice quote:

I imagine it would be difficult to point a gun at someone carrying a bag of food, water, diapers, and a crying baby in his arms. I know that people are hungry, thirsty, frustrated and desperate. Some survivors might be stealing guns to protect their families from other looters, but someone has to draw a line somewhere.

There's A Party In Our Blog, And Everyone's Invited

Well, time for a meta post. Last month was yet another record breaking month for the ol' Site o' Love with over 1,300 people hiting up the main page, breaking the previous high set in July at just over 1,250. This may not seem like much when compared with internet juggernauts like Kos, TPM, or Terminus X-treme, but considering that for the first half of this blog's life we peaked out around 650 in September of '04, so we're growing at a pretty good clip.

The biggest day of the month was around 100 hits on the 29th, which is a really good sign because July had a 200 hit day and we still managed to beat it because we're averaging much higher hits per day. Also, the bigger days tend to coincide with days in which we had bigger posts or posts relating to some breaking story, so it seems our work is influencing the hits instead of just getting random hits from Blogger. The best piece of news for me though is that the lowest period of days for hits was the period where I was on vacation and Dan was moving, which also seems to support the idea that people are coming to read our stuff and not just getting here on accident. Even then, the lowest number of hits during that period, and the month overall, was the 20th with about 23 hits, which not too long ago was our daily average.

Anyway, thanks guys for coming. We appreciate it. Please feel free to use the comments section for this post, or any other post for that matter, to give us feedback. Is the stuff we're posting interesting? Does anyone read the rather long posts we sometimes right or do you all mainly stick to the quick link posts? Also, I would like to take this opportunity to encourage you all to utilize the comments section for posting reactions to things we've written or to simply post your take on an issue. I know sometimes people get too busy to post comments, but if you get the chance we'd like more than anything to have some real debates start up. I've been told that sometimes people don't feel like they're expert enough to post in the comments, so I think I should make it clear that most of the time all the information I'm working off is the article I've linked to with maybe a little prior knowledge thrown in there.

Also, remember that there are Ra points out there to be had. Sometimes, though rarely lately, I post trivia to be guessed, sometimes I dole 'em out simply for posting comments or Random 10s, and more frequently I try to end a post with a quote to be identified. So far it's all been music quotes, but a movie quote might jump in there, so just be the first to post the name of the song or movie the quote comes from to get some of those points and don't forget that you can use *any* source to help you in these identifications.

"So you, thought you might like to/ Go to the show"

Something To Watch For

Watch the news stories about New Orleans in the next couple days. Dave Brooks, in one of the few moments where I agree with him even if it's because he's mostly just reciting history, points out that disasters often bring social inequalities to the surface. Remember my post from the other day about the difference in reporting of white "finders" and black "looters"? Keep that in mind as stories, and police, start turning from aid and relief to cracking down on crime. I'm betting some racist no-so-undertones start coming out.

I Hope There's A Corner To Turn Soon

950 dead in stampede on Baghdad bridge. I imagine most of the news we'll be hearing for the next couple weeks will be dealing with New Orleans, and I certainly don't mean to detract from the destruction that's happened there. At the same time, yesterday was the most deadly day in Iraq since the US invasion and most people probably aren't going to hear anything about it. Seriously, does anyone believe these groups are going to be able to settle on a Constitution when they're clearly in the middle of a civil war?

So New Orleans is kinda gone

Governor: Everyone Must Leave New Orleans

A full day after the Big Easy thought it had escaped Katrina's full fury, two levees broke and spilled water into the streets on Tuesday, swamping an estimated 80 percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city, inundating miles and miles of homes and rendering much of New Orleans uninhabitable for weeks or months.

'We are looking at 12 to 16 weeks before people can come in,' Mayor Ray Nagin said on ABC's 'Good Morning America, 'and the other issue that's concerning me is have dead bodies in the water. At some point in time the dead bodies are going to start to create a serious disease issue.'

I have a friend who just moved to New Orleans; he was supposed to start at Tulane last week. I'm sure he's fine, physically, but he had a spectacularly shitty summer, and really was due for a break.

But I Thought Racism Was Over?!

Evidently white people "find", but black people "loot".

Keeping It Real

Saw this over on Fark.com, and I knew I had to post it for my boyz, the Stunaz. You know who you are.

" And instead of college they got us slangin after highschool /For the love of the money and everything that it will buy you"

Fun With Hits

It's that time again, where I go through Site Meter's stats and find all the fun hits that we got from random Google searches. By posting them here, of course, I'm raising the likelihood that we'll get more hits from them, but whatever. We only had a couple variations (though since I don't pay for Site Meter they don't give me all the info) lately. By far, the biggest hitter for us in Google searches is "Thundercats the Movie", though searches relating to the Penny Arcade Expo and it's "Omegathon" competition also got quite a few. In the Weird Department, we have "sex, no" and "how to log a picture of my house from satilites", which I'm quite fond of.

"And nothing fuels a good a good flirtation/ like need and anger and desperation"

More Gas

John Tierney has an editorial in the Times today that relates to the gas consumption issue I touched on yesterday. I'm not going to address the sarcastic tone of the editorial because, let's be honest, editorials live on sarcasm like Cheney lives on tiny human babies. Let's get into it:

I rented a Toyota Prius for the pleasure of cruising the car pool lanes and parking free at meters, another perk available here in Los Angeles...But even if these new privileges put more fuel-efficient cars on the road, I'm afraid the net effect will be dirtier air and more gasoline consumption...In Virginia, where they've been allowed for years in the car pool lanes, the lanes have become so clogged that an advisory committee has repeatedly recommended their banishment. The same problem will occur in California, where some of the car pool lanes were congested even without hybrids....As traffic slows down, there will be more idling cars burning more gas and emitting more pollution, but politicians will be reluctant to offend hybrid owners by revoking their privilege.

Ok, Tierney's main argument here seems to be that by allowing hybrids into carpool lanes traffic will slow down and more pollution will be created. To address the latter part first, let's look at how hybrids work. Firstly, many hybrids, including the Prius he rented, are what are know as "parallel hybrids", meaning that the gas and electric systems can separately power the vehicle. In parallel hybrids like the Prius, the electric system runs the car during times when gas systems are least efficient, low speeds and idling, but then the gas system takes over the brunt of the work as the car reaches higher speeds in which the gas system is more efficient. When the gas system takes over it also recharges the electrical system, which is why you don't need to plug hybrids into an outlet at the end of the day. So even if people make the sudden switch from honkin' big SUV to hybrid and traffic is slow, which Tierney admits it already is, the hybrids will be at their peak efficiency while SUVs are at their peak inefficiency, so I don't see how this is going to result in a net gain in pollution.

As to the traffic argument, I don't see how this could be the case. Presumably we're talking about rush hour as the time when traffic gets clogged up, therefore most of the cars on the road are people commuting, so there shouldn't be any influx of new drivers because of this; the number of drivers will remain constant or decrease if more people carpool. That being the case, I can't see how opening up the HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes to more drivers slows traffic down. Certainly, it will slow down the pace of the HOV lane, but on the whole road efficiency is increased because more drivers are spread to more lanes. If traffic is already slow across the board, even in the carpool lanes, then what that tells me is that the roads simply don't have the capacity needed. Whatever incentive the the HOV lane represented to carpooling is largely negated because of this and any impact opening up the lanes to hybrids has seems to be minimal.

With HOT lanes, everyone would come out ahead, drivers as well as environmentalists. As more drivers paid for a guaranteed speedy commute in the left lane, they would leave the regular lanes less clogged, so there would be fewer cars stuck in traffic jams, wasting gas and spewing fumes.

Again, the only two ways I can see to actually reduce traffice here are to increase the number of people carpooling and/or build a mass transit system that takes people off the road. Since it seems like HOV lanes were already busy enough already that they likely weren't serving as much of an incentive for people to carpool, opening them up shouldn't really impact that much. Tierney's solution, if I'm reading him right, would actually make things worse from his perspective. If the problem with allowing hybrids into the HOV lane is that it slows down the HOV lane, how is it going to help to allow single SUV drivers to buy their way into that lane also? If more cars moving over to the HOV lane "leave(s) the regular lanes less clogged", how is that different from what allowing hybrids into the HOV lanes in anything other than scope? And does he really think that toll booths don't cause traffic backups?

Instead of arbitrarily rewarding a few cars for having a certain kind of engine, set tolls for all vehicles according to their weight.

It seems to me that this is going to lead to a situation where reletively light sports cars with bigger engines reletive to their size, and which are generally not made with economy in mind, might be paying less than a larger car with a more efficient engine, but which weighs more. Now, I'm not an engineer, so I can't claim to know if that sort of thing would actually happen, so it's not a major point, but still. On the other hand, going by weight is indeed likely to produce mostly the incentive we want, which is for smaller, more efficient cars, and it's also probably a lot easier to administer than pricing by engine type or any other specific trait.

Ultimately, however, the problem remains that there are just too many cars on the road, and there *is* going to be an upper limit on the ratio of carpool cars to individual drivers. Once that limit is reached most cities with similar traffic problems, I'm intimitely familiar with Seattle's, you're not going to be able to simply build more roads to accomodate the increased traffic. American cities are loathe to admit it, because these projects are always more expensive than initially projected, take forever to get up and running, and cost a lot in upkeep, but mass transit is the only long term solution.

As I've long believed, everyone should be required to play Sim City for an extended period of time when they're growing up. Try making a city without public transit and have it continue to grow. Sim City would also help us prepare for alien attacks, which I will cover in a subsequent piece.

"Sole survivor/ witness to the crime/ I must act fast to cover up/ I think that there's still time."

Higher learning and the real world

No, not that real world. I can't remember the last time I watched that mess.

Hugo said something that I think is just awesome.

Most folks are familiar with the oft-repeated notion that school at any level is not the 'real world.' For years, I've held the opposite to be true. Indeed, I find the community college in particular to be a lot more 'real' an environment in which to teach and learn than most places. Where else will you regularly encounter such an extraordinary cross section of American society? A high-rise corporate office, filled with the well-groomed and the comfortable, is surely far less 'real' than a classroom filled with recent immigrants, recovering alcoholics looking for a thirty-ninth chance, ambitious high schoolers anxious to get ahead, and more than a dozen different native languages! If what we mean by the 'real world' is a place where one encounters an authentic representation of who populates this country, I'm not clear that many places are more 'real' than an urban community college!

Absolutely brilliant. The single biggest cultural difference between UIC and Notre Dame has been the overwhelming whiteness of the latter. The one night I week I drive down to the community college to teach my math class is like a breath of fresh air -- yes, there is actual diversity in northeast Indiana!

Man, How 'Bout This Gas?!

What purpose does the internet have if not allowing people to argue?! Right now we have Ezra Klein and Brad Plumer disagreeing about whether we should use gas taxes or raise CAFE standards as a means to lower fuel consumption. Personally, I find Ezra more convincing, but to be fair Brad really had much opportunity to reply yet.

There is a certain degree to which people can cut down on fuel consumption by avoiding extraneous car trips, but the majority of driving that people do (and this is all anecdotal, so we're clear) isn't something they can readily do away with. Most families can't carry their groceries back on their bikes, and outside of the major metropolitan areas public transit isn't really in a position to accomodate a massive shift away from commuting by car to commuting by public transit.

Brad's hypothetical rebate program does seem to me to be a fairly effective way to make gas taxes less regressive, it seems to me that poorer people are simultaneously the group least likely to do a ton of unnecessary driving in SUVs as well as being the group most likely to use public transit already. On the other hand, I do think Brad does have a valid point when he says that raising CAFE standards is a pretty long term goal considering how long it will likely be until those new efficient cars into most households.

"The mistake me as happy-go-lucky/Just another base-head bobbin' nobody"

Sympathy For The Devil

Evil Avatar alerted me to this article, which discusses whether it's a good thing for players to play as "evil" characters in video games. The article contains several good quotes from game developers on the issue, and I found it interesting to see the divergence in whether they themselves enjoyed, or not as the case may be, playing the darker path. Personally, I almost always end up playing the purely good side in fantasy based games (RPGs and that sort of thing), but almost always end up taking the low road in more realistic games where I have the option. Weird, eh? How about you?

"Everybody's got a little light under the sun" (I've been forgetting to do this, but remember to identify song lyrics for Ra points)

One less radical cleric ...

Via Echidne of the Snakes, we learn about Hugo Chavez' response to our own radical cleric, Pat Robertson, calling for his assassination:

"I announce that my government is going to take legal action in the United States ... to call for the assassination of a head of state is an act of terrorism." Chavez said in a televised speech.

The fiery left-wing critic of Bush's foreign policy who frequently charges the U.S. government is plotting to kill him, called Robertson "crazy" and a "public menace."

He said Venezuela could seek Robertson's extradition under international treaties and take its claim to the United Nations if the Bush administration did not act.

Brilliant!

Mr. Atheist Goes to Christian Academia

Classes started last Tuesday here at Notre Dame, and four days before that I got to meet my fellow graduate students for the first time. I knew that some of them had gone to Christian colleges before (two each from Calvin and Biola). I also knew that Notre Dame was the only Christian university (it's owned and run, at the highest levels of administration, by the Catholic church) considered quite prestigious by mainstream academia -- there's no way in hell I would've gone here if there was any possibility that a mainstream university would laugh in the face of my degree (pun intended). Still, I was quite unprepared for the degree of religiosity among my peers here.

There are about fifteen of us first-years (depending on whether you count the visitors, here on one-year stints), and only two who are openly non-religious. This doesn't mean the other thirteen go to church three times a week and talk about nothing but teh J33BU5x00r, but they do all identify as Christian, and I suspect almost all of them will consider themselves Christian intellectuals or Christian academics, whatever their specialization in philosophy. Several conversations at parties have wandered onto esoteric Christian issues that I neither cared about nor could follow anyways.

This should make for an interesting four or five years, before I return to the world of mainstream, atheist-dominated philosophy.

Lazy Sunday Posting

Alright, I'm going to be honest here, all these links are going to be Salon.com links because it's Sunday and I'm busy/lazy.

Firstly, looks like the BBC will be releasing tv shows for download a week after they air. Upon hearing the news Drew kissed his moniter for not the first time.

The University of California is being sued for "discriminating against high schools that teach crationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints." Seems they don't accept science courses that teach Creationism as an alternative to evolution.

Following right up on that one we have this:"SMYRNA, Tenn. -- Members of a church say God is punishing American soldiers for defending a country that harbors gays, and they brought their anti-gay message to the funerals Saturday of two Tennessee soldiers killed in Iraq." Wow. Just wow.

Finally in the religious trifecta we have an article explaining that there are perfectly understandable reasons why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given around $10 million to the Discovery Institute, one of the main groups behind the recent rash of attempts to get intelligent design into schools specifically and the public conciousness generally.

Brothers Grimm Grim

Hey, look, I made a Variety-style pun! Go me!

Anyway, The Brothers Grimm is the latest film from Terry Gilliam, he of the Monty Python and Brazil and Time Bandits. It sounds promising: Terry Gilliam building an horror/comedy out of classic fairy tale elements. And, stylistically, the end result is pleasantly reminiscent of Sleepy Hollow. Unfortunately, Brothers Grimm falls far short of Sleepy Hollow's high benchmark.

In the first act, continuity and character development take a back seat to sketching the basics of the plot and some preliminary spookiness. But, starting with the second act, the film becomes much more character driven. So, for example, a fair amount of the second act and denounement are driven by the differences between the "scientific" (or something, it's never quite clear) and the romantic, story-obsessed brother; differences which are never really portrayed until we actually get to the second act, and don't seem connected to their characters in any other way. Similar problems happen with the plot: people run away from the scary woods, then come back to fight the evil for ... reasons. Of some kind. We're not exactly sure why, beyond 'so we can see some neat special effects'.

But those are problems that could be fixed if maybe twenty minutes of film hadn't been cut to bring it in under two hours/save some of the Weinsteins' production cash. There are some far, far deeper problems, in the form of the cast and crew: Heath Ledger is the best actor in the film, next to the nameless Czech villagers. Someone somewhere is obsessed with frustrating, tight frames during tense moments when, presumably, a whole lot is going on. And so on. Apparently, Gilliam initially had high hopes: Nicole Kidman, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Williams, and Johnny Depp are listed in IMDb's Trivia as framing the original cast, along with a different female lead and cinematographer who were cut by the Weinstein brothers.

When I saw the poster for this film in a theater in Chicago five months ago, I thought it looked like a crappy action/fantasy Matt Damon/Heath Ledger vehicle. Then I learned it was Terry Gilliam's latest project, and I really started to get my hopes up. Sadly, it appears to be his newest Baron Munchausen, not his newest Time Bandits. If you enjoyed Sleepy Hollow, or Gilliam's other films, I would recommend this for a matinee: it's entertaining enough to fill a couple of hours, and audience support now will help Gilliam secure studio support for his future projects.

Whoops!

It turns out smart women don't get laid. So much for that gender equality thing!

Make It So!

Not since "You're the man now dog.com". Good stuff here. Hat tip to Czar, who should have just posted this himself.

Today

is the 85th anniversary of the 19th, "Susan B. Anthony", Amendment, granting women the right to vote. It took the first wave of the feminist movement in the US 72 years to get the Amendment ratified; sadly, the ERA has been waiting for more than 80 years.

This is entirely accurate

Profgrrrrl writes to the new grad students in her social science department:

Greetings. You're about to embark on a journey that will suck away your life as you know it. You won't be left with a void. Quite the contrary -- your life will be filled with ideas, projects, and pressures. You'll sink or swim, learning skills that you previously thought were just for MBA types (oh, project management is critical; negotiation skills are useful; strategic partnerships often essential).

So sleep well these next few days, and enjoy the end of your freedom. You likely won't have a guilt-free day off/holiday/vacation/etc. for several years. Some folks who walk down this path never see one of those days again.

Things are a little different in the humanities -- philosophers work in collaborative teams much less often than social scientists do -- but the second sentence and second paragraph really struck home. This guilt is especially bad during Spring Break: I will get to sleep in, but I can't shake the feeling that I should be doing research for a paper, or at least working on my latest 'extracurricular' philosophy book. Since I'd rather do something that's both fun and relaxing, I end up bored and watching too much teevee all week.

It isn't really a bad career, and, in fact, the feeling of always having more to think about is part of what attracts me to academia. It's just that -- and I suspect this is the same with doctors -- the pressure to constantly be highly productive, to always actively engage that stuff you haven't thought about yet, makes it extremely difficult to enjoy not being productive during your vacations.

Friday Random Ten

(Song - Artist)

1. Riders On The Storm - The Doors
2. One - Metallica
3. Proof 101 - Qwel
4. Numb - Linkin Park
5. Workshop Of The Telescopes - Blue Oyster Cult
6. Riding On The Wings Of Eternity - Rhapsody
7. Day For Night - Spock's Beard
8. Hawii Five-O - TV Theme
9. Livin' Thing - Electric Light Orchestra
10. Maple Leaf Rag - Scott Joplin

I make

the best fucking pizza. Seriously. The two keys: herbs in the dough and baking on an unglazing ceramic potting dish.

Answers Are Something I Don't Have

Man, people like to poke fun at Big Media Matt for being basically a kid, or for going corporate, or what have you, but he writes some damn good stuff. Take this from Tapped. So though the tide seems to be beginning to turn, conservatives pretty much paint a rosey picture of what's happening in Iraq, the more conservative Democrats say that we could do the job properly if we had more troops there. Slightly less conservative Democrats think we shouldn't have gotten into Iraq in the first place, but that now that we're there we should put more troops in to do the job correctly, and then you've got the people that think we shouldn't have gone in in the first place and should pull out as soon as we can.

I've always been in the second to last camp. I didn't support the war when it was being sold to the country, but I have always thought that since we had already destabilized the country we should get ready for a full on occupation that would last something like fifty years so that we could stabilize the country enough to be a fairly Western-ized democrazy. Yglesias, however, seems to make a fairly strong argument for the proposition that we don't have nearly enough troops to truly stabilize the country even if we wanted to.

At the same time, I can't help but think that however bad it is there now, it's not going to get any better if we leave. Sure, a good bit of the non-native fighters would leave/stop coming across the border, but the country would surely collapse into complete annarchy. Whatever building blocks of a really crappy democracy they're got now would give way to full scale civil war between the various ethnic groups living there, and whatever government took shape after the war was over couldn't possibly be anything good.

Like I said in the title, I don't have any good answers for how to solve this problem. It's a lose/lose senario in the truest sense. All I can do is channel Drew: To all you people that voted Republican in the last several elections, this is your fault. Thanks a bunch.

Another Wonder Of The Internet

One of the things I love most about the internet is when well known celebrities get involved. This time it's Pat Boone, and he's tearing into Cindy Sheehan, mother of deceased soldier Casey Sheehan and lightning rod in the anti-war argument. Sadly, No! has a good take down, as well as including this gem actually written by Boone back in 2004. Also, I learned here that Pat Boone is releasing a NASCAR-theme rock album. Who here isn't the least bit interested in what that's going to sound like?

The Internet: Everyone gets a chance to be stupid, even famous people.

Ok, He Deserves It, But Not For This

So Atrios tipped me off to a post over at DC Media Girl where she really rips into Jon Klein, president of CNN's domestic operations, for saying that CNN isn't going to cover the Holloway story. True, under his leadership CNN has become increasinly FOX-ified in the way the cover stories, and DC Media Girl is right to remind us of the horrid coverage of the runaway bride. Still, he right here, isn't he? Sure, his job is to make CNN get FOX level ratings and he hasn't been able to do it, even when aping FOX's style, but it seems odd to me to smack someone for doing the right thing after doing the wrong thing for a long time. So I don't really disagree with DC Girl's points, per se, but it just seems like an odd time to bring them up because, at least this, he's right; the Holloway story isn't newsworthy and a network devoted to providing news shouldn't cover it. Good for him.

Knee Deep In The Dead

Ok, so the full trailer for the Doom movie is out. I'm not going to say it looks good, because I don't know that it's really going for what I generally look for in movies, but it certainly doesn't look like the total failure committed to celuloid that I thought it might be. I mean really, look at the game. Does it scream, "Major Motion Picture" to you? I hope not, because there's really not much there. Anyway, I think it looks pretty typical of the genre which, given what I was expecting, is a monumental success. Also, for some reason those first person scenes appeal to me, but then, you know, the nerdiness.

Here's a mirror for the trailer if the main site is getting too much traffic.

American Apparel

American Apparel is a tough call for thoughs of us on the left side of the fence. On the one hand, they're an American company that produces all of their apparel, which are evidently considered "hip" by people that would know that sort of thing, in L.A. and payes their workers a fair wage. They also use models of varying body types in their product photos, unlike the sickeningly hot people used by stores like Abercrombie & Fitch. On the other hand, the founder and C.E.O. is evidently a sex crazed maniac that masturbates in front of reporters and has sex with employees.

I know, I know, the idea of a sexified workplace *sounds* pretty sweet at first glance, but there are reasons why it's generally not an accepted practice, starting with the fact that you never want employees, especially a particular subset of the employees, say women, to feel like their job might be on the line if they don't screw the boss. And I'm not exactly in a position to be preaching about attractiveness, but I will say that Dov Charney may not be every lady's type.

So anyway, you've got your problem; support a really progressive business model that comes along with the baggage of some unsavory business practices, or denounce the company and go back to Wal-mart where we know all about the many and varied worker abuses, but the bosses don't have sex with any of them. In fact, the Wal-mart corporate honchos probably never have sex at all, on account of it being, as the kids say, teh sin.

Personally I'm willing to accept A.A. with its flaws, as long as we recognize them as definite flaws, as long as they are able to stand up to the gross abuses of their competitors, but not everyone agrees. To some femenist bloggers he's too much, and I can understand why they come to that conclusion, and wrote as much, but then encountered quite a backlash of A.A. supporting trolls. Are these independent trolls that just love hot and steamy sex along with reasonably priced garments made by well paid labor or are they working for the company itself? I suppose we could ask the Shadow. He'd probably know.

For those wondering, there are two American Apparel stores coming soon; one in North Jersey and another on the shore somewhere.

Skillet-Roasted Potatoes

I love potatoes. Steamed, baked, mashed, au gratin, whatever, they're filling and make a fantastic foundation for complex flavours (I put all kinds of stuff into my mashed potatoes). Today we're frying them in a little oil, and just using a few seasonings; 'roasting' can mean either 'cooking with dry heat' or 'browning', and since we're using oil, this would be the second definition. I had them by themselves for lunch, but obviously they'd work nicely as a side dish.

This recipe comes from Cook's Illustrated, which is probably the best cooking magazine around. Sadly, it only comes out bimonthly. The potatoes take less than half an hour, are ridiculously simple, and the portions below are enough for a side dish for 3 or 4 or a main dish for 2.

Software

1. 1 1/2 pounds small or medium Red Bliss potatoes -- I used Yukon Golds because that's what I had on hand, but CI recommends Red Bliss because they won't dry out as much (and mine were a bit on the dry side). Scrub the potatoes before and after cutting to get off the dirt and then surface starch, then pat dry thoroughly with a clean towel. Do not peel.
   
2. 2 tbsp olive oil -- vegetable oil will work, but olive oil adds flavour
   
3. salt, pepper, rosemary, garlic -- I used dried rosemary and garlic powder, but fresh will give you more flavour

Hardware

1. Large nonstick skillet -- about 12 inches across, though I managed okay with a little less skillet and a little less potato.
   
2. Lid that fits large skillet -- I used the lid from the pot I cook pasta in
   
3. Tongs -- Preferably silicone-tipped so you don't scratch the skillet, but if you're careful you'll be fine
   
4. Paring knife

Slice the potatoes into pieces fairly close in size. For small potatoes, slice in half; for medium (lemon-sized) potatoes, quarter so you have two cut sides and a third rounded side. Heat the oil in the skillet over medium heat until shimmering (makes a ripple effect when you tilt the pan). Add the potatoes in a single layer with one of the cut sides down and cook without stirring until GBD (golden brown and delicious) on that side, about 5 minutes. Just let them sit there. Oil will sizzle and probably jump a bit, but not smoke.

Use tongs to turn potatoes onto the other cut side (medium potatoes) or skin side (small potatoes). Be careful to avoid hot oil splashes. Cook another 5 minutes until the second side is GBD.

Turn the heat down to medium-low. Sprinkle seasonings onto potatoes and stir to coat -- in place of the garlic and rosemary, CI also recommends lemon and chives, and chili powder, paprika, and cumin. (If using fresh herbs, wait to add them after the potatoes are done cooking.) Cover and let cook another 6 to 9 minutes until the potatoes are tender and a paring knife slides in easily -- it's okay if the potatoes absorb all the oil in this process, so long as they don't get burnt to the skillet. Serve immediately; starchy foods get very soggy and mushy if they cool down after being fried.

I'm Back

Well, now that I'm back in New Jersey, I suppose I should get back in the habit of posting things. Today, however, I have several errands to run and I probably won't have time for anything serious. Here's the most recent Photoshop Phriday, which is pretty good.

A pod of jellies in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. December 2004.  

A large section of the Sierra Nevada mountains near the town where I grew up has very few trees -- there's little to no topsoil, just bare granite. This area is called the Desolation Wilderness. In the Wilderness, cairns (small rock piles) are used to mark the trail -- and, on dayhikes, I've still ended up lost for as much as half an hour before happening to see the next cairn.  

I am so doing this with "Atlas Shrugged"

The Ministry of Reshelving. Via a guest poster at Bitch, Ph.D.

My Vacation

Is great. It's sunny and warm here, without a trace of humidity, hence there's not likely to be any posting 'till I get back to Jersey on Monday. Peace!

Near Mt. Diablo, CA. December 2003.  

Neither here nor there

One thing I have yet to learn about academia: the school year starts before the school year starts. I've spent the last two days prepping for the course I'm going to be teaching at a community college: picking up one set of books and a model syllabus, returning them and getting a new set of books and course outline when I was given something else, and of course turning the extremely rough course outline into a syllabus with reading and homework assignments. And I have another half day's worth of work, easily. But I'm still in the summer vacation frame of mind, and I can't bring myself to belief that my class meets for the first time Monday night, and my grad school seminars start on Tuesday morning.

It wouldn't be too bad if either (a) I'd had the course materials a week ago, or (b) I had an actual syllabus to start with. In theory, with (a) I could space this out over a couple weeks instead of a couple days, and with (b) I could just change the dates and recycle the syllabus (it's what I did with my Linear Algebra class last spring). Really, though, I would have procrastinated until now if I'd had the course materials for the past three months.

So, yeah, no interesting posts from me, probably until next week or so. I have a couple ... interesting ideas for new blogging projects, but until I can get those off the ground I'll try to put up photos a little more regularly.

My mom's backyard. December 2003.