The Voyage of Captain Obvious

On grad school and listlessness

2008-04-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling exceedingly without direction as of late. I have my projects that I work on, and I have my grading and teaching and whatnot, but increasingly, it feels kind of without purpose. I really just want to be done, but it seems like I'm just running on a treadmill, and that stupid light at the end of the tunnel never gets closer.

I just wish I knew the set of things that I had to do to be done with this stupid degree. And I wish I knew what to do once I have it.

This is why we can't have a democracy

2008-04-11T19:12:00.000-07:00

This is the dumbest thing I've ever read. I know it's trite to point shit like this out. But 'we don't know him'? Seriously?

Can we save this shit for stories about Katie Holmes? Please?

Mynamar

2007-09-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

this is why I was leery of Bush using 'the spread of democracy' as a reason to invade Iraq. It was enraging hearing Bush talk in absolute terms about justifying an invasion of Iraq, but never once saying why he was not invading any of a myraid of other nations in order to 'spread democracy.' As an added bonus, the Myanmar government is directly making an assault on freedom of religion:

Some of the monks reportedly carried small banners that summarized the grievances of the public: “Sufficiency in food, clothing and shelter, national reconciliation, freedom for all political prisoners.”

Wouldn't it be nice to have a moral voice to add to theirs?

My rant against the MPAA

2007-09-20T13:01:00.001-07:00

I don't think that the MPAA reflect community values. It tells the masses what is offensive. It creates a set of standards that we expect. The MPAA allows us to know that if we see a nipple during the superbowl, that we should be shocked. When I have seen similar things happen in my life, I have seen maybe some embarassment, maybe some giggling. Never have I seen rage. But the MPAA tells us that nipples are for adults only and therefore, they are bad.*

But it sets a horrible set of standards that are applied with almost no consistency and with almost no attention given to anything logical. The MPAA allows almost any content, so long as you don't use one of George Carlin's seven words to describe that content, or show any nudity. Violence is much, much, much more acceptable than sex, which in turn isn't as bad as female nudity, which is much more acceptable than male nudity. Gay male sex is a horrendous nightmare of disaster. Gay female sex is slightly more acceptable than male nudity.

None of it makes any sense. I would much rateher one of my young nephews accidentally sees a couple having sex than I would that they accidentally witness a murder. I think most people agree with me on that. The MPAA apparently thinks the exact opposite.

That being said, I think that "what about the children!?" is an epithet used most often by the intellectually lazy.

*I realize that the superbowl is a TV incident, but it is the ame general idea, and TV is supervised by a similar, and in fact, tighter, regulatory system ocensorship.

This is the most absurd thing I've ever read

2007-09-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

MSN Encarta: Does the Reverse Glass Ceiling Exist?

In fact, the idea of the glass ceiling is such a phenomenon that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) formed a "Glass Ceiling" commission in 1991. But what about the men who succeed in what tend to be female-dominated careers, including nursing, travel, marketing, and childcare? Is there such a thing as a reverse glass ceiling for men?

Are you fucking kidding me? See, gals, everything's ok! You might not be able to get that management position, but just remember the poor men that are having trouble rising to be the day manager at KinderCare!! Read the whole article. It is an astounding combination of stereotypes, anecdotal evidence, and an inidcaiton that there is in fact no "reverse glass ceiling" in nursing. At one point, the author even says "his may set off your stereotype alarm, but even Kaiser [female counselor to men in female-dominated fields] admits that men tend to be more logical, rather than emotional, thinkers."

But that doesn't even compare to this golden gem:

he admits that in the PR industry, clients often prefer to work with a woman. "People like to talk to women on the phone--men can sometimes be harsh," he says. "Women can be more fun. They have a much softer way of being more forgiving and open."

So, if my clients are sexist jerks, I should just hire a bunch of party girls to cater to their obnoxious sexism. It's just more fun! And this in no way limits the ability of these women to advance in their careers in the pr industry. They certainly won't be impeded from advancing beyond their fun position to upper management, right? I should just stop reading this crap.

Take an effing stand, dems!

2007-07-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

So, apparently, the the Democrats have given up on passing any sort of standards on the nation's voting systems before 2008, thanks to concerns from state and local officials that they won't be able to implement serious reforms before then.

Why is it that the Democrats are unwilling to institute even those reforms that prevent them from getting screwed in elections? Why won't they even fight for empowering individuals, even when it is in their own self interest?

"When I chose to live, there was no joy, it was just a line I crossed"

2007-07-12T23:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not one that traditionally deals with alone time very well. I can be a pretty social person, and I really need to be around other people in order to feel actualized.

But perhaps my latest spate of time with myself has been somewhat good for me. It's given me some time to think about the last year and a half and what it's done to and for me. I'm not really sure that I'm in a better place now than I was back then, but I'm certainly sure that I've at least had some time to think about myself and my place in the world, and more importantly, what I want out of love and life. I've realized, more than ever, that I have a personality type that isn't compatible with everything, and that I et myself up for a lot of the victimization that I bitch about constantly (though I rarely phrase it in terms of victimization).

More than anything, though, it's time that I stopped treating the outside world with the gentle, subtle tone that I wish that it would direct toward me. Obviously, the learning curve on the other side of that equation is too steep, and it just leaves me frustrated and lost.

I don't know where I'd be without my music, though.

Hahahahahaha

2007-06-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the border fence will shut out a bunch of American shit on the border. This understandably has Americans who live on the border truly pissed off.

Thankfully, border security is doing nothing about it. Ah, this fence is better conceived every day.

Hey asshole,

2007-04-20T19:59:00.000-07:00

"He gave them for free what we took torture to avoid saying"

What the fuck would you call My Lai, if not a war crime?

I'm not a superfan by any means

2007-04-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

But I have to respect Alyssa Milano for standing up for herself like this. It's good to call out the gawkers on their own terms.

And now for one of my pet peeves.

2007-04-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

ONe of the things that drives me most crazy about the way that the mainstream media phrases everything is their overuse of the world 'tragedy.' Tragedy, if you look it up in the dictionary, is primarily a literary form--it is a form of drama in which a seemingly strong lead character is destroyed by some sort of hidden (or not so hidden) flaw. Tragic heroes are ones like Oedipus or Hamlet--they have some problem, not directly visible at first, that destroys them. This creates obvious dramatic tension that is heavily dependent on irony.

That is why I am driven absolutely batshit crazy when every fucking newsanchor in the world decides to use 'tragic' as a blanket term whenever even the most minor negative thing happens. Very few things in the real world are actually 'tragic', yet I have to constantly hear how every fucking event from Hurricane Katrina, to the September 11 attacks to these Virginia Tech attacks are 'tragic.'

And ironically, the one major news event that is truly tragic is never described as such. That would be the collapse of the Bush Presidency--his supposed strength in 2002, his aggressive support for invading Iraq and his "strong" anti-terror credentials is the very issue that has pushed his approval ratings into the high thirties or the low twenties. Yet I hear noone describe this collapse as 'tragic.'

That word has no meaning any more. I wish people would stop using it.

Jackassery

2007-04-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Hey, Powerline idiots, if you are going to criticize the times for it's alleged bias, perhaps you shouldn't focus your rants at their fucking opinions section, and instead focus on their news section. You know, the one without the explicit bias.

Also, David Brooks exits.

Because I'm a little bit frustrated with the world...

2007-03-19T11:49:00.001-07:00

Enjoy the GLORY!

Hey computer scientists!

2007-03-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

I love your piece of software. It is very gracious of you to have it available as freeware or as shareware. I like that you are willing to provide this as a public service. Open source is a great movement.

That being said, when I first download a piece of software, my first goal is not to learn how to use the fucking software. It is not to find out the history of the software, and it is especially not to find out the list of features/updates that have been done to the software since the last date. These items are not documentation. Labeling them as such actually makes it more difficult to find the actual documentation (if it exists), and frustrates your users to no end. Rather than writing the above items, it would better serve everyone's time if you would just sit and write down a sheet that tells the user, in plain English, how to use the fucking program. Is that so hard? Why is all documentation centered around updates? Am I missing something?

AAAAAHHHH

2007-03-08T12:37:00.000-08:00

Bush and Condoleezza Rice, apparently don't think that the Congress has the authority to defund the war. (Link via MyDD).

Now, I've always found the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 something more than interesting--the constitution is crazy vague on what the fuck was meant by having the right to issue a 'declaration of war' reserved to the Congress, but also giving the President full authority as Commander in Chief, which, nominally, would include the ability to deploy troops when needed. The overlap of authority is fairly evident here, and it is unclear exactly how it should be resolved. Hence why I think it was a good idea that Congress was willing to sit down and make an explicit set of guidelines under which the President could wage war.

If the President really intends on ignoring the instructions of Congress to end the war, however, then this whole system is thrown into disarray. If Congress passes some sort of resolution that has actual teeth in it (something that I somewhat doubt), and Bush ignores it, then we will be faced with a Constitutional crisis not seen since Nixon used the FBI to harass his enemies. I'm afraid for this country. I have a feeling that something really, really bad is about to happen, and that there is really nothing that anyone can do about it.

But I guess it's just a feeling for now.

President 2008

2007-03-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

I am torn on who to support or what to believe for the 2008 Presidential election. Gen Xers have been burned by the Democrats over and over and over and over. Through my whole memory, you have either had the corrupt inarticulate foils to the conservative nutjobs of the 80s, the too-centrist to understand what they stand for Clinton Democrats of the 90s, or, the absolute worst, the craven cowards of the first half of the aughts.

2006, supposedly was a corner-turning moment--the Democrats ran on an anti-war platform, and dammit, they won! They beat incumbents from Rhode Island to Virginia to Montana. They took back both houses of Congress. Aside from Joe Lieberman winning, the news in November 2006 was sparkling.

But what happened then? The Democrats took power, and they pushed through Nanci Pelosi's first 100 hours agenda. And then, Harry Reid failed to even get a vote on a nonbinding resolution against Bush's war escalation. The entire democratic party is terrified about standing up to Joe Lieberman on the war--amending schedules of meetings so that Joseph will feel comfortable attending Democratic luncheons. No one is talking about Russ Feingold's or John Murtha's resolutions on ending war funding.

And then you have your 2008 Presidential candidates. In this context of Gen X Democrats having endured endless promises to the base (most painfully, Clinton's promise of allowing gays in the military and of universal health care) from candidates who have pretended to be our people. So, colour me less than overjoyed when Hillary Clinton promises to have universal health care by the end of her second term. Colour me skeptical when John Edwards, with a minimum of experience in national office, and a relatively conservative voting record while in office, says that he has now seen the light on the war and is a vociferous proponent of health care. And really, forgive me when Barack Obama alternates between arguing against an imaginary "far left" that apparently consists of the Weathermen and the SLA and a vaguely defined 'Politics of Hope' couched in religious terms, all the while avoiding content. His primary argument seems to be that people on goddamn facebook love him.

And beyond this field, who is there? Bill Richardson, yet another Clintonista? Al Gore? Al fucking Gore? The guy behind the 2000 campaign is the one that's going to save the left, if he contradicts everything that he's been saying and spontaneously decides to run? Really?

I don't know what my point is, exactly, except that I'm kinda cynical these days. There doesn't even seem to be a Bill Bradley to support this time around. I'm probably going to support Obama, who at least hasn't disappointed me with a horrible vote in the past, and find a few Senate primary candidates that I like. Then I can blandly support the Democrat in the general.

Yay life.

So... is grad school ever going to end?

2007-03-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

I am about to finish a paper that I've been working on for over six months. I've been trying to present results on this for a while, but the presentation keeps on getting pushed back. On one level, I just want to finish all of this nonsense and forget that it ever happened. On another level, I almost feel that there is no point to it: I feel like grad school is just going to continue forever, and that I'm going to finally get my degree when I'm fifty, go do five years of postdoc, and finally reach tenure at seventy five, and retire five years later, at which point I will immediately die.

Obviously, this discourages me from doing anything, which continues the horrible, horrible cycle.

My students are already terrifyingly young.

I've got nothing to say but...

2007-03-01T17:35:00.000-08:00

word.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Dying?

2007-02-28T21:34:00.000-08:00

Our new democratic House is now considering a bill introduced by Marty Meehan to repeal don't ask, don't tell. This can only be good. Perhaps this is a sign that the Democrats are ready to move beyond the triangulating Clinton model of government. Perhaps. Next step: abolish all of our outmoded 19^th century laws.

Guess who I don't like

2007-02-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

Joe Lieberman, that's who. I still can't believe that the Senate majority rests on his shoulders, and that he can just keep the entire Senate captive with his vote.

I don't like him

In case you were wondering about my opinion on the issue

2007-02-22T18:06:00.000-08:00

I have a message. See if you can interpret it. The answer to the puzzle is below.

Ithnkthtbblclltrlsmsttlndcmpltttrbllsht
vnfthrwsnsngltbltfrmwhchwgtthntrldtstmntwrtngnddlnggthtcntnsnvwlsspcsrpncttnsdffclttntrprt

Did you understand what I wrote here? Scroll down to find the truth, and what I think of those who would mindlessly condemn someone to hell using words written in a language which they do not understand.

I think that biblical literalism is total and complete bullshit. Even if there was one single tablet from which we get the entire old testament, writing in a dead language that contains no vowels, spaces, or punctuation is difficult to interpret!

Extremely, extremely problematic.

2007-02-20T08:59:00.000-08:00

The D.C. court of appeals has voted to suspend habeus corpus for the Guantanamo detainees. This is a really bad idea for the following reasons:

The decision is based upon the 2006 Military Commissions Act which authorizes these indefinite detentions. But, these detentions happened before 2006. The U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids ex post facto laws. Applying a 2006 law to prevent the trial of people captured in 2002 is about as ex post facto as you can possibly get

Even if this isn't the case, the U.S. Constitution guarantees habeus corpus (the right to a hearing/trial) in all cases, except wartime.

There is no declaration of war. It is not wartime until there is actually a motherfucking declaration of war.

Thus, the 2006 Military Commissions Act is unconstitutional, and should be overturned

What the fuck has happened to my country? Holding people indefinitely without charges is the type of thing that was once labeled as one of the atrocities that the states were fighting against.

Ugh.

Pretty interesting interview with John Kerry

2006-10-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

Bob Woodward interviewed John Kerry. The interview is up in the the Washington Post. I really don't get how anyone can defend Bush at this point.

Double posting.

2006-09-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

And, this September 11^th, I would say something, but Keith Olbermann says it far better than I ever could. Watch that video. It is spectacular.

The first thing in a while that made me proud of my motherfucking institution.

2006-09-11T22:42:00.000-07:00

here ya go. Think about it.

Acceptance of things is good

2006-09-04T18:49:00.000-07:00

I think I've found the trick to working out my damn research problme (though I've certainly said that before). I've come a little closer to dealing with a lot of the nonsense that has happened to me. The past week has been good. Now, I'm just sitting here in my apartment, listening to Janis on vinyl, and brewing myself some nice espresso, and trying to figure out how to actualize the research idea I just came up with.

A lot of the other stuff is still here. I don't want to be in Texas anymore. I don't want to be this kid in college working on a motherfucking degree anymore. I want to be out, with a real job that I'm not getting terrified of getting fired from at any moment. But I can put that aside for the moment. Right now, I'm just adjusting to being myself.

Sometimes, world, I can deal with you.

Regarding that last post,

2006-08-28T10:39:00.000-07:00

perhaps I shouldn't have been so hasty.

I just might be employed after all.

Yay me! That's something

This is huge

2006-08-21T04:14:00.000-07:00

John McCain, you are a grade-A hypocrite

Nice to know ya.

Thank you, AOL-Time Warner. Now I truly understand myself

2006-08-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

I know I shouldn't read stupid dating columns due to their vapidity and stupidity, but I couldn't possibly stay away from this one: Anatomy of a Dinner Date

People were aready getting too non-shallow in their dating life, so AOL helpfully came along and told us exactly what women could infer from the place that they go to eat for a first date (since, of course, women never choose the place to hold the first date. I never had any idea that my psyche could be completely deconstructed by where I end up for dinner. Anyway, we learn such useful lessons about people as shown below:

Pancake House: What It Says About Him

He's a guy who knows what he wants, and exactly where to go to get it. Confident and secure, he always takes the lead so, you never have to worry about whether things are taken care of -- he's got it all under control. Not only does he like to have what he wants when he wants it, he also believes in the more options, the better. This could spill over into his love life, so just keep your eyes open.

First: who the fuck takes a first date out to the goddamn waffle house?

Second: wow. who ever thought that a liking for waffles indicated that someone likes to sleep around? A tip of the hat to you, AOL. You have some true legends working your staff.

All of the other entries are fabulous in thier insanity, but the entry for "mexican" is my personal favorite:

Mexican: What It Says About Him

Ole! This hot and spicy guy is the kind that will dance the night away and he doesn't have to wait for a Friday or Saturday to do it; he's ready to go any night of the week. He likes things fast, so don't be surprised if he starts putting the moves on you on the first date. If you're not ready to go to the next level, just politely put him back in his place. He'll stay there, at least until the next song comes on.

Damn, could that be any more racist? Could we work in a reference toward what type of work he probasbly does, or what type of car he drives? Damn.

Things could be better...

2006-07-31T13:29:00.000-07:00

The world has kinda seemed off-kilter for me in the past few weeks/month. I don't know exactly what it is, but I've been finding myself looking for newer and more odd places to do research as of late. I've also been finding myself doing research at the bar more often than is probably strictly healthy. I don't know exactly what it is, but life hasn't been seeming to "click" in that perfect way as of late. My research seems to be inordinately stagnated, and I'm having trouble forcing it to move in a decent direction. Reading papers seems unusally unrewarding for me right now, as well.

Additionally, I seem to be desperately short on money right now, in particular, I could really use a new laptop right now, but that won't be coming for a few months, provided that the university takes it in it's fucking heart to renew my teaching appointment, which apparently is unalterably stuck in the horrible disaster of a class that I am currently teaching, thanks to the whopping $50-$100 more a month I make than the other assignments (for only twice as much time invested in the class! A steal!).

My friends are around, and they are doing relatively well for me, but it's a kind of a temporary cheer-up, usually.

I've been noticing it with the outside world as well--the international news situation is a lot more fucked up than it has been for a long time in recent memory. I have multiple friends that are going through bad to severe life problems right now.

But more than anything, I'm having a really difficult time percieving what my place in the world is at this moment. I just seem kind of perpetually down, and stuck and at this horrible existential impasse that I don't really know how to get out of. '

Fuck, I sound like a 14 year old. Ugh.

Anyway, those of you still around, thanks for listening to my venting. Sorry about the depressing and childish nature of my writing as of late.

En Mexíco, hubo un disastre, y todavía no está resuelto

2006-07-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

Perhaps, admidst all of the hubhub in Lebanon, you might have missed another major world news story that is happening much closer to home, namely, the disputed election in Mexíco that took place in Mexico. The initial count left a 2.6% margin between the two leading candidates, Felipe Calderón (the, "rightist" candidate), and López Obrador, the leftist candidate. A recount of several close/disputed districts was called for and granted. Most of these districts subsequently swung for Obrador, resulting in a margin of less than a percent between the two candidates. This subsequently led Obrador and his party to make accusations of widespread vote fraud, and collusion between Calderón's PAN party and the PRI*, in order to keep Obrador out of power. The PRI would supposedly gain the advantage of keeping the more radical and anti-corporate/institutional candidate out of power (and thus maintain what is left of their strenght), while PAN would obviously gain from Calderón's presidency.

Upon completion of the recount, Calderón declared victory in the election, but Obrador has continued to dispute the results. Obrador and his party, the CPD, have filed a suit in the Mexican Electoral Court with the expectation of obtaining a full national vote-by-vote recount of the election. An electoral court magistrate has already announced that a ruling for a full recount is unlikely, which has also sparked widespread anger.

Obrador has also been maintiaining pressure on the whole system by holding mass rallies, mobilizing his supporters, who are primarily the poor. There is much specuation that, if the Electoral Court rejects the recount request, that there will be mass unrest in the country, as the lower classes, en masse, reject the election resluts.

Anyway, it is certainly something to keep an eye on, and that the US media seems completely unconcerned with--strange considering that a revolution in a bordering country isn't something that can be completely ruled out--disputed elections can destablize a country as much as anything.

As for my opinion, I have trouble doubting whether at at least some of Obrador's claims are true. There is some evidence that some of his allegations have been false, as the evidence hasn't held up, but in a country with the institutional history that Mexico has, there has been electoral fraud in the past, and if a close result swings in favor of the establishment candidate, there should be more than an eyebrow raised about the validity of the results.#

*The PRI, or the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, was the only party to hold power for the 70 years previous to Viciente Fox of the PAN party winning the Mexicano Presidency six years ago. It is generally socialist in it's ideology, but really is more a party that supports the traditional machine polciies--maintaining power through use of patronage. It was rightly considered extremely corrupt, and has been discredited in recent years--the PRI candidate garnered only about 24% of the vote in the 2006 elections.

#by the way, this isn't to say that the US is any better--one should be heavily suspicious of the results in the 2000 Presidential election in Flordia, and the 2004 election in Ohio, given the extreme partisanship of the people collecting the votes, and the odd manner in which the disputes were handled. Ugh.

And don’t take reality so personally.

2006-07-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

Good advice from Sean Carroll to those of us who are still inanely stubborn about the real reason there are so few women in physics. Go read the whole thing.

Stuck in between

2006-07-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

So, I'm sick of this town, sick of not being graduated, and just generally feeling out of place here. I'm also having rouble finding direction and a map as to how to leave, though. I know that I need to graduate, but I really can't figure out what I'm supposed to be writing on, and I also just seem to be having constant trouble getting any ideas that I have to work out properly. I just feel like I'm in this odd holding pattern, not yet knowing what the next big thing is, but waiting for it--I know that I don't really belong in Texas, but I don't know where I should be.

And it's kinda always been like that--everywhere I am, I'm in the place I'm at, but not of it--I'm never really a part of what's going on around me, I'm just kinda there amongst it, observing, mocking, maybe even interacting, but never belonging.

Meh. Maybe I'm just lonlier and more cynical than I've been in the recent past.

And now for something more serious

2006-06-24T21:38:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking through my place in this country a lot recently as a result of being abroad, and I thought that now might be an appropriate time to quote from a poem:

Let America Be America Again, by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

I absolutely love this poem, and always have, from my first reading of it. In these stanzas is captured quite a bit of what I've always thought about my homeland. I certainly haven't been disadvantaged while I've lived here, but I've always felt quite conflicted about how I feel about the idea of the United States of America, and my homeland's actual past. At times there has been a dynamic tension between the two, and at times, there has been outright contradiction between them.

When I was younger, it always was the idea of America that was the basis of my pride in the country. The United States supposedly was a nation founded not out of a primordial tribalism, nor out of a series of complex treaties and compromises, but rather, out of an ideal--that every person should have the right to determine their own future, that every person should have the equal opportunity to have their own individual voice heard with an equal tenor and with an equal volume, and that there is no natural nobility in this country nor any other. I saw in American history a consistent push toward this ideal, first with the rejection of King's rule, the adoption of an elected government, the abolition of property requriements on voting, the abolition of slavery, the direct election of senators, women's suffrage, and the banning of poll taxes and grandfather clauses and segregation.

But the mere presence of all this progress already indicated the beginnings of an essential truth--America was not true to it's ideals at any point. There was always a dynamic tension between what this country was supposed to be, and what it was. Partially, one can argue that this is the consequence of founding a place on an ideal and stupidly choosing to place it in the physical world. But that is an explanation, not an excuse. And to pretend that this evolution is over is madness.

Further, there have always been elements within this country that oppose the general thrust of this movement. Ever since the first Alien and Sedition acts were passed by the Adams administration*, there have always been very powerful voices within the United States that held beliefs contradictory to the very basis of this country--that we are not all equal, that there are some voices that need to be silenced. Every period of United States history has been poisioned by these characters, who at times even were the dominant forces in the country (i.e., the Mexican-American war of 1848). The Northern leaders during the civil war simultaneously seemed to believe in "Manifest Destiny" and in abolition--the Consitution demanded equality, but it also was completely fine to expand westward and subjugate whoever was there.

And the sitution is no different, whether you have McCarthy paralyzing the country, or you have our current "team of justice" at the helm--those who seek to crush individual liberties, to play off of our differences, to scare us of the other, are the very people who most proudly wrap themselves in the American flag, even though they are the ones that are doing ythe very most to kill the real United States--the ideal one that sits in our head, but isn't... just... actualized... yet.

And so is the evolution that is American history. The Revolution and the Bill of rights tempered with Sedition acts and slavery; abolition with expansion and Presidential power grabs; the Northern victory in the Civil War with a harsh reconstruction that worsened the situation for blacks; the construction of Industrial might with an insane concentration of wealth combined with a vicious stomping of immigrants, esp. Chinese and Catholics; the rise of mass media and it's ability to inform the masses with the rise of demagoguery and the Spanish-American war; the stopping of Hitler with the rise of MNC oppression of brown peoples throughout the world and Japanese internment; through to the willingness of the States to stand up against the USSR, set against the insanity of Vietnam and the support of oppressive, but ostensibly anti-communist regimes, often at the cost of destroying democratically elected pro-Soviet government.

And so, we are left at today. How can an American take stock of their history? The good is significant, but it is always tempered by bad. It is always tinged with something inherently contradictory to what America should stand for. I, for one think that true patriotism lies in showing this contradiction, and demanding that America be America again, that we not accept any of this omnipresent bullshit anymore, and that we take this country 'back.' I have no patience for those who argue that, in order to keep us safe, we need only abandon our liberties and single out a single ethnic, religious or political group for second class treatment. I'll close with another, much more well known piece from the 30s, written by one Woody Gutrie, who I have shown great enthusiasm for elswhere in this space:

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

This land, this country is an idea, that was made for all of us--that we are free, equal individuals with an equal voice, and an equal ability to choose our fate. This basic belief is what colours all of my opinions regarding domestic politics. Perhaps I'll follow this up with some applications to today and our current superhero of a president.

*and really, before--starting with the Framers writing the constitution so that it "permitted" slavery

I have been very lax with the blogging

2006-06-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

But most of the reason has been that I have spent the majority of the past month in Sicily:

A view of the Mediterreanean from Érice, Sicily

My advisor took it in his heart to fund a few of his graduate students to go to Europe to participate in a summer school which he partially organized. I flew into Italy via London, and due to the large distance between Heathrow International and London Stansted, I decided to take 3 or so days in London, be a tourist, and make sure that I made my connexion. Good thing that I did so, as well, as "London" Stansted is hardly built on top of Big Ben or anything.

Anyway, I got the chance to spend a couple of weeks abroad, and to feel the experience of being a foreigner who has, at best, a mediocre grip of the local langauge. I know, I know, hardly a novel experience, but still, an interesting one for this particular priviliged white boy.

So, anyway, I spent about half of my time in Érice at this summer school, which, aside from a day trip to Salierno and Segesta, two ruined ancient Greek cities, we didn't get all that much opportunity to play tourist, as we were pretty much constantly at seminars, which typically ran from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm. We managed to get by on making light of some of the situation, and by realizing where we were, rather than being back in goddamn Texas, with it's 100+ degree days. I spent the rest of my time touristing around Sicily. I got a chance to go up most of Mt. Etna, Europe's largest active volcano:

There was more that I saw, and a LOT more pictures, but I seem to be stalling with this recap, so I think I'll leave it at this for now. More to come

Another policy proposal

2006-05-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

re: pharmaceutical companines.

If you get public funding for your drug, then the length of your patent is reduced proportionately to the amount of funding recieved--if 50% of your funding was public, then your patent is only half as long as it would otherwise be. This clearly won't solve the prescription drug problem, but at least it will prevent so much blatant profiteering off of the public's dollar.

Just for those who would argue that there is not any, and never has been any, mysogony in math and science...

2006-05-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

I gleamed the following peice of wisdom in my (admittedly old) grad-level differential equations book this morning (bold emphasis added):

We will discuss a problem which is purported to have been solved for the first time by Queen Dido of Carthage--of course, in a purely intuitive way, as is characteristic of female reasoning, especially if tricking a man and making considerable gain is the goal

Ah, how damn lovely. Jackass.

In other news, it's a good day, despite my pointing out an example of the jackassery extant in the world. *smile*

on anger and lifestyle

2006-04-26T19:56:00.000-07:00

I came about the closest I've come in a long time to actually just breaking down and screaming at my students today. I don't know what it is, but for some reason, today, I just snapped at the wide variety of stupidity that they made me put up with today, in conjunction with the fucking lab I was working on being completely fucking broken. Anyway, after being asked the insanely self-evident question of whether we are having a final AND a test on the last week of class for approximately the 1,000^th time, I just snapped a little bit and went on a tirade about why I was going through the decisions that I was, and how I was trying to be helpful, and as a result, the students were actually taken aback. I swear, I was about five minutes from a nervous breakdown by the time class ended.

The weird thing is, now I'm sitting at home trying to figure out exactly what sparked this reaction. I've been dealing with similar behavior all semester, and objectively, things in personal lifeland are actually starting to be looking up, after horribly bottomming out in the worst possible way about three or four weeks ago. I think that I have it figured out, though. This last month, with its series of thing after thing after THING after THING has had a twofold effect:

1) It's taken much more time than normal to internalize and comprehend everything that has and is happening to me

2) Just like when you've been punched a hundred times, the hundred and first punch hurts the most, despite being the weakest, I'm more or less emotionally bruised right now, and probably a little excessively sensitive to any nonsense bullshit that comes at me.

And so, when I have a shitty teaching day, normally, I can just shrug it off, maybe go for a run or get a beer at the local cowboy-themed sports bar, and I'm fine. Now, however, It's this horrible crushing blow that I have to analyze and write endless words about. Ugh. Not to mention that I turn on the news, and the only stories are shit like the Duke rape case and Bush's tit and tat with Iran, and it hardly serves to cheer me up.

However, the awesome horribleness of this new Mets theme song always has the power to cheer me up (via Deadspin). The world can only be so bad when I'm reminded that Pedro Martinez will strike me out. Shit I miss the rivarly with the Mets. As fun as it is to talk trash with the cubs, the "Mets are pond scum" era was absolutely fucking fantastic. DAAAAAR--yl DAAAAAAR--yl.

Apologies for the endless rant. Had to talk this out. Real posts shall be forthcoming.

It's one thing when you act like a jerk politically...

2006-04-24T09:26:00.001-07:00

But you really shouldn't fuck with life inside the diamond

Our former Vice President

2006-04-23T22:53:00.000-07:00

So, there's been a lot of talk about whether or not Al Gore is going to run for president in 2008. There's a lot of talk regarding the various speeches that he has been recently giving, and the progressive leaf that he has seemed to turn. My instinct is not to trust him, as he was once considered pretty darn progressive (remember Earth in the Balance?), but serving under Clinton for so long kinda tarnished that image, and then, after serving under the semi-popular Clinton, didn't know what sort of campaign to run.

And that's when it hit me, there is a historical metaphor to draw with Mr. Gore that noone has really made before--Al Gore is Hubert H. Humphrey. Both were senators that made bold strikes for progressive causes when younger (Humphrey most famously for civil rights during the 1948 democratic convention, Gore for the environment), and built their names up to the point that they would become Vice President, and see their running mates seemingly crush their opponents (in 1964 and 1996, respectively). But then, both individuals saw their running mates' presidencies collapse under scandal and despair--Johnson due to Vietnam, and Clinton due to his dumbass impeachment. Forced to stand point for the other guy, both suffered with respect to their public image, and ultimately, had no idea whether or not they wanted to run with or against the image of the outgoing president during their campaigns, which ended up lackluster and uneven, and would ultimately elect scandal ridden, paranoid two term republican successors.

I don't know whether or not this perspective makes me more or less likely to support Gore in the election. Probably not, though I think that he'd probably be my second or third choice after Russ Feingold and John Edwards. I also don't know whether or not he will revert back to the Clinton-era gore the second that pressure is applied to him. I don't know how this can even be determined until after he is in the general, and then that may be too late. With a George Allen or Sam Brownback presiency possibly at stake, I don't think that that is a risk that I, personally, would be willing to take. Who knows whether or not enough dem voters agree with me...

Regardless, this is all academic until after the 2006 elections, which will vastly change the political landscape for president 2008.

Question:

2006-04-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

If you raised your children so that a red horned man with a pitchfork came down the chimney every Christmas to give them presents, and called this horned man 'satan claus', and then also attributed all evil to a red coated bearded man named the 'great santa', would this cause your child to grow up to be mentally distorted and messed up?

I hate teaching. I hate teaching a lot.

2006-04-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

My past involves the humanities. I respect the study of literature and philsophy and art as much as the next person, probably more. But I think a broad, well-rounded mind is necessary for someone who is a college graduate. being a responsible citizen involves knowing about the world outside your own narrow specialty. At medium-sized lib arts school, where I did my undergrad, I thought this perspective was shared by many, and commonly held amonst Americans.

Naive, I know. My life at big state school has certianly shown me that this is certianly not the case. Academics are not at all a priority (or even an interest) of the average undergraduate here, and when they are, if it's not something that has to do with a particular students' major, then their attitude is to say 'fuck it.' So, I get stucke with the underachieving students in a non-major class, and it is a disaster with 60-90% of them.

Normally, I wouldn't care, and would just flunk them in bunches. But, I have explicit instructions to not do this, because big research institution is interested in passing students along in their mediocrity, so that they can grow up to be middle managers that have an open hostility to science because of how much it sucked in college, because they were given a class, that by default, is devoid of content. I teach a class that could only generously be called a high-school level course, and I still get complaints about how haaard it is. Because these students have never been pushed. Because learning isn't a priority so much as pushing the students along so as to not enrage the alumni, harm the 5 year graduation rate, and generally make the school look bad. Which is why it' isn't really the students fault so much as the university that has trained them not to give a fuck.

wonderful life, no?

There's a world of people dying out there

2006-04-11T01:26:00.000-07:00

At least, so says Caroline Herring at least, but I tend to agree. It seems like a fact of life that the more that you get to know people, the more it's the case that they are hanging onto themselves by the skin of their teeth. It's a sad truth that we are shielded from as children and teenagers, when we get exposed to stories of rebellion and angst and love, but never of fundamentally unresolvable issues, of struggles with the self, both in terms of will and understanding.

Most people are fundamentally unhappy, and not due to the "keeping up with the jonses" matrerialism junk that most people promulgate as the main reason (though one could hardly argue that such a trend would be a non-contributor). It seems to be a deeper unhappiness than what mere dissatisfaction could explain. Perhaps it is because we are fundamentally alone. Perhaps it is because we can see too much that goes wrong, and munimize our risks rather than maximize our chance at happiness. Whatever the reason, the reaction inevitably makes things worse. So anyway, I hereby declare march 11th as help your rrened tduring an electin day

In other news

2006-04-06T23:41:00.000-07:00

I just recently found out about this via a friend. There seems to be relatively little talk about it over the internet, despite the fact that scooter has gifted the american left with a gigantic bombshell. Even those on the american right are left with no choice but to accept that either scooter libby is perjuring himself in his own domestic spying trial, or the president lied to the american public (scroll down to find the quote):

THE PRESIDENT: Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.

And again I repeat, you know, Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations. You've heard much of the allegations. And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information -- outside the administration. And we can clarify this thing very quickly if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out. And I would hope they would.

And then we'll get to the bottom of this and move on. But I want to tell you something -- leaks of classified information are a bad thing. And we've had them -- there's too much leaking in Washington. That's just the way it is. And we've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them and I want to know who the leakers are.

So, now it is the case that either libby is lying or the president is lying. Either Libby is lying or Bush should be impeached (particularly considering the standard of impeachment set by the 1998 congress). There is no third option. But I expect to hear nary a peep from the right, the press, or especially from anyone in the administration on this topic. It will quite neatly go away.

Cardinals.

2006-04-06T23:17:00.000-07:00

First, after his magnificent display this first series, I can't believe that noone, anywhere in the Cardinals blogosphere isn't talking about Albert Pujols and his quest for 100 HR. He is totally on pace to hit 162 this year, so I don't see why this much more modest goal isn't possible.

Second, it is always good to open the season with a sweep, particularly against the one team that inexplicibly owned the Cardinals last year. First place is yours to lose, guys. It's great to have baseball back.

I've always hated most sports and loved baseball (as far as following goes--I love to try, unsucessfully, to do stuff with my body--if anyone reading this wants to try to get some people together to play cricket, I'd TOTALLY be up for it). I could never really explain why, but I think I've figured it out, and it realates how annoyed I was, and am, at a lot of the steroids superstars of the current age (even Cardinals--the second McGwire hit his 70th HR, I was screaming that the Cards should trade him away for some ace pitcher while his value was sky-high. Alas, noone could hear me).

The thing is, most sports are a SHOW. I'ts about coming to the field and performing, and showing off and having those around you gawk. Football, especially, fits this mold--focus on the marquee players, and build up a ton of excitement on a couplea key matchups that won't happen again. It makes for drama, but seems pretty artificial.

Baseball, by contrast (and to plagarize a bit from someone I used to hang out with), is your lazy buddy that sits next to you on the roof of your house downing Dr. Peppers. It's a part of life in a way that these other sports can't be--each outcome isn't as exciting and soul-wrenching, but, at the same time, familiarity gives you a much deeper connexion with 'your guys.' The stars are fun, but the non-stars are, in a bizarre way, even more exciting--they're the scrappy little guys that couldn't quite make it, out there proving that they DID deserve a shot.

Also, the sport is egalitarian and built upon a bunch of little things coming together--the best guys out there succeed a third of the time, and the worst guys succeed a fifth of the time. The margin of error in the game is so tiny, and it regularly leaves guys going from boom to bust in the blink of an eye (remember when Frank Thomas was a sure first ballot HOF lock?). The fleeting nature of the players' talent, and the odd coincidences of success are what makes the game great, and why it is so special to see teams build a record and to see players build a career. And why the wild card sucks so much--it tampers with this delicate balance.

Anwyay, I've rambled too much. The summary is, the games are on, the Cards are winning, and my buddy is back, a thousand miles away or no.

UPDATE: Oh, and what the scratcher said. Crush the cubbies!

The phoenix rises from the ashes again.

2006-04-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

I have to think that this weekend was pretty good for me. Although my car got towed, and I still have some annoying medical bullshit to deal with, I feel much cheerier about the world right now. I am closer to having actual results to post to my advisor than I have been in a long time. I still can't quiiite get the idea that I had for publication to work out, but there's always hope, eh?

I also, thanks to the car towing, ironically, had a chance to talk out some of the nastier personal problems that I've run into as of late, so I feel better about that. My stress level is the lowest it's been in a month, I think.

Additionally, it is goddamn opening day. Once I can afford it, I'm thiking I'm getting muyself a mlb.tv subscription. For now, it's nice just to see Carp's mugshot up at Viva el Birdos. Looking forward to this season, even if it is a nightmare of disasters at 2B for most of the year. Whatever, every team is in first place on opening day!

But, in summary, I think that there might actually be reason to believe that the immediate future will be better than the immediate past.

I will leave you with the following cartoon that I saw over at firedoglake (which those of you interested in politics all should be reading). It made me laugh, maybe it'll make you laugh, too:

The joy of research.

2006-03-29T19:23:00.000-08:00

So here I am, after all these years of damn grad school. I've got an idea for a research project of sorts, and I've been working out the details--but nowadays I have this paranoid fear that any idea I get will just backfire in my face and not work out. It weirdly leaves me productive, but also filled with a morbid dread.

I just need to goddamn graduate, methinks.

So....

2006-03-25T00:53:00.000-08:00

This weekend, my parents are in town from the big old hometown. On one level, this is totally great, as I love my parents, and I'm very happy to be seeing them. On another level, however, it is stressful has hell.

I constantly feel like I'm letting them down, and that is the conclusion that most of our yelling matches leave me with. Multiply this with the endless drama between the various families in my general immediate family, and it creates a lot of weirdness.

Regardless, I'd like to wish a happy wedding to my cousin. I hope she finds a life of wedded bliss. And I hope to find the strength to survive this weekend.

Because we all hate nonsense stereotypes

2006-03-22T13:09:00.000-08:00

This week has been declared impromptu blog against strawfeminism week via bitch, phD. So, go out young madams and sirs, and remind the world that, once again, there are very few people that are actually seeking to disenfranchise men and force women into lesbian lifestyles against their wills, etc., etc.

Remember, it all still is about equal pay for equal work and having the same opportunites afforded to you int he world, regarldess of what conditions your birth happened to occur under.

Remember when Condi said that noone could predict a mass hijacking scheme with planes being used as weapons?

2006-03-21T11:55:00.000-08:00

Well, fuck her.

Hi again.

2006-03-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

Well, a weekend of pretty big ups and downs. Had a great Sat and Sun, though. Maybe I'll get into more specifics later. Also, very soon, I will be having more musings about the Cardinals. Life has just really pushed me around recently.

But what interests me right now is this post over at Cosmic Variance. There is a lot to read there that is pretty interesting, but the thing that bothers me about a lot of the tone. It's something that I have noticed quite a bit from the outright, unabashed athiests out there. It's a seeming surety about the world that may or not actually be present. The Planck energy is 10¹⁹ GeV. Currently, we have tested energies up to 1000 GeV, or so (really, nowhere close to that). That means that we have only explored 0.00000000000001% of the energy range that current science purports to describe. Making absolute claims about the way that the universe behaves seems kind of silly in this context.

I am not giving fodder to the Intelligent Design nuts. What they purport to do is reject the mountain of evidence in front of us, and simply make odd sorts of hypotheses that, lo! and behold are completely compatible with the belief system of most mainline Protestants. What an odd congruence!! This entire project essentially results what Science purports to do. IDers make a hypothesis, and attempt to twist the data in front of them to conform to said hypothesis. It is the sort of reasoning that makes Aristotle very difficult for modern readers to take in context. This is even further made rediculous due to the essentialism inherent in observing the universe, and from that, concluding that a designer whose only well-defined trait is the tendency to create a universe just like ours. My favorite questions are always of the form "why not this?" and ID-type reasoning is totally antithetical to this.

Ok, having shown why I really despise the approach that IDers take, now I want to take a closer look at why I think that the absolutist, "athiesm is truth" type arguments end up falling on deaf ears, and end up being abrasive and counterproductive at best, and wrong at worst.

The primary reason that I have to believe this is that science and religion have nothing to say to each other. For the sake of this article, I will define science as a process by which one makes and tests claims. I am going to say nothing about the standards which are required to test claims, except to note that it is essential that claims are testable and disprovable. Religion means different things to different people, but for the sake of brevity, I am going to lump religion into two categories.

First, you have religions that take practice centrally. These are systems by which one practices certain rituals and 'ethical' behavior, but does not concern themselves any more than superficially about the reasons behind these behavior. An example of this type of religion might be, at one level, Confucianism, which has a belief system, but it is a very flexible one, and is very much secondary to the set of rituals which the religion requires*. Catholicism also has some elements of this sort of religion. Ok. So, the point is, that this type of religious practice has little, if nothing to do with science. It makes no external truth claims, and therefore, has noting to verify or disprove. It is overtly agnostic. It's why, in China, so many other religious traditions were able to comingle and integrate themselves without expelling the extant Confucian practice--they didn't conflict with the practices of Confucianism, and therefore, were perfectly fine. Similar things are true for various Pagan religions in the west, as well for the incorporation of some pagan practices into Christianity. Even when the belief system around the religion changed, the practices remained. Consequently, if the religious system of this type, then science has nothing to say, because the practices will simply incorporate themselves into whatever truth claims that the scientific community deems allowable.

Then, you have the revelatory religions. These are based around basic truth claims, that are, in turn, based either in an oral tradition or upon a written scripture. The world is looked at taking these claims as axiomatic, and everthing else as derived. Examples are mainline Protestantism and Islam, amongst many others. Note that although Catholicism has elements of a religion of practice, it also has revelatory elements. Now, this type of belief would seem to be much more contradictory toward the science. And clearly, it's practicioners are the ones that are causing much of the hostility that religion feels toward science. However, this perspective is, I think, wrongheaded and doesn't properly look at what is being really said, on either side. The nature of revelation is that each instance of revelation is a one time, supernatural occurance. One cannot repeat revelation, nor can one really use post-revelation evidence to test whether or not information was revealed. On the other side, the revelatory documents really say nothing direct about the natural world, having often been written by ancient sources that had no definite definitions of the terms that are being interpred oh so literally.# Often, with the mere reading of these texts in their proper historical context, and taking into account the contemporary rhetoric, most of these apparent contradictions can be ignored, since, after all, most religious texts are way, way more concerned with establishing basic ethical principles than they are with establishing that the Earth was flooded for exactly forty days and forty nights. And if you don't buy this, fundamentalists, then why does every Gospel record different contents of the cave after the Ressurection?

On a deeper level, the revelatory religions also have nothing to do with science due to their basic approach. In revelation, everthing starts at universal axiom, and works its way down. Science, really, starts very empirically--looking at things, figuring out how they work, and then trying to come up with an explanation that gives a justifiable reason why these things work this way. It is never truly universal--these claims are only valid over the domain in which they have been tested. This leaves a religious person free to argue that, in a larger context, things work out to be consistent with the religious doctrine, leaving religion impossible to disprove--it's claims are universal (in a very absolute sense--to the religious, God exists everywhere, and affects everything, so using a small part to destroy the means by which one understands the whole is a fool's errand), and centered around one-time, untestable occurances. Since most religions are robust enough to not be truly disproven, then science has nothing to say to religion, and religion has nothing to say to science.

Anyway, I've always found agnosticism a viewpoint far more consistent with the scientific mindset than is outright athiesm. If you've made it this far, thanks for your interest, and my congratulations!

*Note once again, that I am going to be relatively brief about various traits of religions. I am attempting to speak very generally about religions in order to get at this science/religion split. Thus, these sorts of examples are intended more to establish what the hell I am talking about, rather than to give a comprehensive, or even introductory overview of individual religions. If more sourcing is wanted, say so in the comments, and I will go and do it.

#It also should be noted that Biblical literalism, particularly about the time of creation and the unfolding of the events in Genesis, is largely a 19th century event. Before then, it was seen as largely foolish to try and trace back the exact day when the Creation happen. This is a position that Rabbis still hold, from what I hear.

Stressed Out

2006-03-14T21:04:00.000-08:00

I've been feeling stuck in the middle for quite a while recently. Some of it is having a good ol' long term relationship end. Some of it is the seeming endlessness of grad school. Some of it is terror about my future non-job prospects. But the more I think, the more I realize that I need to graduate and get the fuck out of Texas.

Wow.

2006-03-13T12:33:00.000-08:00

Deadspin has introduced me to the glory that is this comprehensive list of sports-related political donations since 1978. Sadly, I discover that Jack Buck was a supporter of none other than Todd Akin, though perhaps there is some local, personal connexion that I am missing. Much more insane is the fact that Don King has given almost a quarter million to political candidates, though 70% of it is to Republicans. But this is where I have to scream something:

Goddamn you, Harry Reid, stop fucking taking money from Don fucking King. It looks really fucking awful. It's Don fucking King!! He had someone killed, for fuck's sake!!

That is all.

And in other news...

2006-03-05T08:35:00.000-08:00

The president has forgotten that the Supreme Court has already ruled on something. Big suprise.

But seriously, they are actually considering prosecuting journalists for leaking information in an atmosphere where the primary leaks that people are talking about are ones that reveal that the administration is violating basic Constitutional Law? Do they even give a fuck how this looks?

In essence, this would be like four year old me getting caught taking a cookie from the counter. One of my parents would come in, notice this, and yell at me. My response would be to claim that they were violating my privacy, and having a right to privacy, I would have to call child protective services on them if there were a similar offense.

The difference, of course, is that everyone is fucking taking Bush at face value here. We'll hear people going on the talking head shows talking about national security, blah blah, espionage act, blabber, blabber. And what you will only hear in one sentence, is that Bush is doing this because leakers have shown him to have violated the US fucking Constitution. This is a tactic used by the President to insulate himelf from the consequences of his actions, but everyone pretends like his abstract general arguments are to be taken at face value.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court has already decided whether or not the press is allowed to say what it wants. They can prosecute all the reporters that they want, but from the smoke and ashes, the fact is that the Constitution and case law protects political speech to an insane degree (to the point that politicians are allowed to essentially lie in campaign commercials), and there is nothing that they can really do.

God I hope so.

A question:

2006-03-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

I got this photo from MLB.com:

And does anyone else agree that the Korean uniform looks really cheap? Like extremely so? Like Chan Ho Park here is getting ready to start warming up as a ringer for the 4077th, with Alan Alda sitting on the sidelines talking about how clever he is, and how the 4058th doesn't know what's coming at them?

Until a villiage gets bombed, and we learn that baseball is, after all only a game, and we can never forget how horrible a war is.

Or perhaps Chan Ho Park is an alcoholic, and he takes the mound drunk, and teaches Alda a lesson about bringing in ringers, and then gambling on the team.

Whatever. That uniform is horrible.

Drunk Driving: a proposal

2006-03-02T19:56:00.000-08:00

Our current drunk driving laws are stupid.

Drunk driving is ubitiquous.

We all agree on these facts. Parts of the population drive drunk regularly, while some guy who is barely over the legal limit is the one who ends up with the $5,000 fine and the massive insurance hit, etc. etc. And the reason is that the current law is set up so that politicians can appear 'tough on crime' while not actually doing anything about crime. If we wanted to reduce drunk driving problems, cities would attempt the following:

1) If you have a liquor liscence, you have a breathalyzer it should be publicly availible, and should display what the legal limit is. Current law makes it impossible to decide whether or not you are actually following the law, because it is a mystery what your blood alchol level is. If it were convenient for people to measure their blood alcohol level, then there would be much, much less excuse for people to ignore the law. This would also give popele a way to help control how drunk they got, independently of the driving issue. How many times have you sat down drinking with your friends, and when it's time to go, youve ended up having more to drink than you thought.

2) Have the buses run late, and offer taxi call services. This is already done at the city I live in, but it could be expanded. It should be expected. Give people an option to be responsible, and there's a much greater chance that they'll be responsible.

3)Consistently apply penalties. Don't run around targeting normal people who had two beers on super bowl sunday. Instead, keep the patrols going at 2:00 AM, consistently. Every night. I almost never see cops out that late. I should.

4)Punish people by taking their driving rights, rather than by exhorbitant fines. First offense, you can only drive to work along a single, court-ordered route. Second offense, no driving for you. That would discourage people far more than insane fines that you have a 1/100 chance of seeing applied. anyway, most people I know don't even know how big these fines are, and thus, they serve as a small dterrant to them.

I think that these things would probably combine to truly reduce the rates at which people drive drunk. Do you have any ideas?

2)

I hate IQ tests more than almost anyone,

2006-03-01T00:46:00.000-08:00

but this is damn funny.

A proposal.

2006-02-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

I know that this is DOA from the start, but why not have a constitutional amendment to require a declaration of war to be recommended by the president, and approved by a national referendum? Give the president X number of days to deploy forces without this approval, and beyond that, pass a referendum, or bring the damn troops home. Require this to be re-approved every two years or something, to prevent long, drawn-out, unpopular wars from continuing. Let's take the damn oversight away from our incopetent Senate and give it back to the damn people.

Probably won't even begin to pass while iraq is still going on, but it's something to think about, I think... and of course, there is the problem of press manipulation, but you know the saying of Abraham Lincoln...

So long, Roe v. Wade

2006-02-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

It was good to know ya. Let's see what the Roberts court does with this. If it gets overturned, then it's time to remind everyone that there is no such thing as a pro-choice republican anymore. Ugh.

Via Bitch, Ph.D.

The X-Men

2006-02-22T09:05:00.000-08:00

Sorry, dear reader(s), for the extended abscence. It won't happen again.

Today I wish to discuss the X-Men, whose third movie premieres this summer. In particular, I want to talk about why I think that, at least during the period when I was an avid comic reader, they are/were the best of the comics out there. If you wish to avoid the mega-super-über-dorkiness that is certain to follow, perhaps this is a post to skip.

Ok, here's my thing with the X-Men. They are truly super-human. Most other superheroes fail in this regard. They are typically presented as near-perfect ideals, definitely superheroes, but not necessarily really human anymore.

Superman, superdickery aside, is a perfect example of this. More often than not, the conflict in a Superman comic results entirely from Superman wishing to teach Jimmy Olsen a lesson, forgetting that he has almost infinite power, or not wishing to reveal his identity. Superman rarely makes a poor judgment or mistake (other than putting on that kryptonite suit). Like bill says, Superman is a real ideal, Clark Kent is a pathetic mockery of what a human is, his take on us. We are supposed to be astounded and awed by Superman, but we don't really, we can't really, identify with him.

Batman does better in this regard. He has a dark past, he grapples with real issues from time to time. But once again, he doesn't really falter, and doesn't really show weakness. A Batman story leaves one more in awe of his wealth and all of his fancy shit than it does make you feel for Batman. Further, there is the contrast between the Batman persona and the Bruce Wayne persona--much of the nuance is reserved for Bruce Wayne, and not for Batman, with his steely exterior. It makes him interesting, but not in the same way that most of the X-Men are--Batman is more a split-personality story than it is a reflection on humanity. Spider-Man has a similar contrast. Most of the internal conflict in those comics dervies from the fact that Spider-Man is so perfect and wonderful, but he's really just an awkward teenager named Peter Parker. This conflict is very well exploited in the Sam Raimi movies, and makes Spider-Man interesting, but once again, Spider-Man ends up deriving most of it's tension from there being two people that are seen from the ground--you can imagine a Peter Parker that gives up slinging web, and a full-time Spider-Man as well.

None of this works with how I see the X-Men. The story of the X-Men is the story for a quest to just be who you are supposed to be. It's why it was so easy to make a parallel between being a mutant in the second movie with being gay in real life. Just as Collosus is inalterably a mutant, some people are unlaterably gay. No matter how much society freaks out at it, whether it is by banning gay marraige or passing the Mutant Registration Act, nothing will change it. Furthermore, the heroes powers are their weakness, are their strengths, and are a key part of how they see themselves. They have alter aliases (except for Rogue), but mostly they serve as covers for them when they go out in the world. Further, every character's power creates gabs of irony.

Wolverine has the power to heal from nearly any injury, but that very power is what caused the Canadian government to run endless experiments on him, causing permanent psychological damage, but also giving him his primary physical weapon. Beast, givfted with extreme physical strength and agility, makes a special effort to be learned and knowledgable in a way that belies his blue fur and muscled appearance. Cyclops, the "visionary" leader, is unable to control his mutant power, and is doomed to never actually see anything. Flirty, feisty Rogue (teenaged Rogue is the main thing that annoyed me about the movies) is never allowed to feel the touch of intimcacy, lest she badly hurt the other person. Jean Gray recieved her powers only when she telepathically experienced the death of her best friend as it occurred right before her eyes. Her powers eventually increae to the point where she has to choose between allowing herself to die or losing control to the point where she destroys everything she knows and loves. And Professor X, despite being the most powerful of all of them (aside from Jean Gray during the Phoenix part of her life, of course), is confined to a wheelchair and the X-Mansion.

Each of them fights demons whose origins derive from their powers. Sometimes, you get the impression that most of them would rather not have their powers at all, and that's barring the fact that, in their world, many humans would rather just see mutants eradicated from the Earth. Their psyche is a lumped up, complicated mess that never really gets resolved, and they are usually stuck defending the humans that hate them from other mutants. The X-Men come off as truly human in a lot of ways that other superheroes don't. Finally, I always loved that, one-on one, most of the villians in these comic books would crush the X-Men, but together, they always ended up winning. I know it's a lame after-school special type idea, but I always liked that, individually, these characters really weren't all that strong. It made stories more interesting than yelling at Superman "HEY ASSHOLE, YOU HAVE EYEBEAMS! USE THEM!!!"

That isn't to say that there isn't a lot of stupid shit in these comic books. Arcade may be about the dumbest idea ever for a supervillian. You have to get past a lot of annoying racial/ethnic stereotypes (Banshee, Gambit, and Rogue can be kinda annoying in this regard) in the characters to get at their interesting parts. Oftentimes, they seem to introduce mutants just for the sake of introducing more mutants. Regardless, they always left me with the impression that they were the best superhero comic, and I still believe that.

Holy. Fucking. God.

2006-01-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

Kevin Drum tells us about a particularly terrifying story about our disaster of a health care system.

I don't have the complete information here (neither does the woman who got all of her limbs amputated), but it certainly seems that the hospital is simply protecting itself from certain liability here. Unless she came in with the flesh-eating bacteria, it infected her, took her limbs, and is refusing to even tell her this. Cases like this are why I think that tort reform is bullshit--if you want to punish frivilous lawyers, fine, but don't tilt the system against people like this.

And penalize the fuck out of the hospital if this poor woman actually ends up having to sue to find out why she can no longer walk or pick up anything.

The Final Countdown

2006-01-19T23:49:00.000-08:00

Harry Reid is getting his ducks in a row. According to the congress watchers at Daily Kos, the dems have approximately 40-45 no votes on Sammy-boy Alito, depending on what goes on with the moderate Republicans (if you are a Rhode Islander, NOW is the time to call Mr. Lincoln Chaffee). Do they have that many votes for a fillibuster against Alito?

I would have to assume that they do. The reason: the only people that object to the very nature of the fillibuster against judicial nominees are Republicans that want to ram through Bush's appointments*. If you are willing to vote no on the nominee, therefore, you are also willing to fillibuster the nomine. What political traction would you lose (assuming you're a democrat) by voting for cloture that you would not lose by voting against the nominee? The answer: none. If Harry Reid has 41 non-democrat votes, I'd have to assume it's fillibuster time.

Which makes the next couple of weeks all the more interesting. perhaps fighting harry can delay the vote past the state of the union address. Perhaps he can even forcer the Republians to invoke the nuclear option. If Alito gets confirmed, this is the only way that I hope it happens. Show the senate republicans changing the rules midstream in order to get their way. Use the debate time to point out all of the problems with mr. alito. Make them pay for all this bullshit in 2006, at least. They should look like the 1994 Rethuglicans.

Because they are the 1994 Rethuglicans. Only worse. You couldn't trade in 10 Bill Frists for one Bob Dole.

*I have not heard anything actual arguments against fillibustering judicial nominees other than "you shouldn't" and "abolishing the fillibuster is consitutional." To this I say, it's also consitutional to mandate the wearing of chicken suits on Thursdays, but that doesn't make it wise. Additionally, I say, for a lifetime appointment, shouldn't some sort of supermajority be necessary?

Oh god.

2006-01-17T21:10:00.000-08:00

This has to be the most painful thing I've ever seen. It starts out typical and boring enough, but tops everything off with this wonderful peice of advice:

Drill Sergeant Sex

He loves it when you take control. But he hates it when you're ordering him around. That infamously frail male ego is easily dinged by your domineering. Be bold, not bossy.

What the fuck? Watch out for that fragile male ego! just passively do what he wants, but be careful to not avoid "not taking control."

ugh.

Your 2006 Cardinals

2006-01-15T11:08:00.000-08:00

I've been very silent on baseball since the horrible end of the NLCS. Partially this was due to a lack of excitement over whether they got Juan Encarnacion or Preston Wilson. Who really cares? In the end, it seemed like the FA outfielders not named 'giles' were basically 8 copies of the same average dude, with some differences at the fringe. Now that something that looks like the new team has been assembled, however, I'm starting to get excited for Spring Training again. So here I go with my fearless prediction for the season, derived with intuition alone:

STL gets 96 wins and the NL central again, by something like 2 games, over the three headed beast of the Astros, Brewers and Cubs (I refuse to predict which one of those teams will be the best... but at least one of them will have their question marks turn out to be positives). If things go right, then they could get as many as 100 again, and if things go wrong... well, we all remember 2003, no?

Since the drawbacks of the 2006 crew are readily apparent by scanning any combination of Cardblogs and Cubblogs, here's why I don't think that the Cardinals will be as much worse next year as some will believe:

1. Scott Rolen = threat to ERAs everywhere (except for Cardinals). Not that this needs explanation, but a full season of Rolen means not only that we get his power, defense and RBI protection, but also that Honest Abe/goddamn Hector "please don't throw" Luna (I have a deep, irrational hatred of the guy--seeing Mabry come in as a defensive replacement for him in Game 5 last year was a very, very happy moment.) will NOT be in the everyday lineup.

2. Spivey-man, spivey-man does all the things that a grudzie can, plus hit. This feeling comes mostly from the fact that my picking him up off of the waiver wire in my 2002 fantasy baseball league saved my season, and then I was able to trade him, straight up for Ken Griffey, Jr (the uninjured version), in the much lauded "Junior for Junior" trade. But I really do like the deal a lot, and it gives us a pretty decent infield.

3. pitching woes don't terrify me so much. Ponson, in my mind, is a good signing. Of the availible dudes, he is likely has the best cost/benefit of any of them. He has something to prove, and likely, if given a spot in the rotation, may actually prove it. I don't mind him splitting time with Anthony Reyes, who will get time to see MLB at bats, but without the major arm strain that would come from being in the rotation. THEN, Dunc can take one of the extra starters + one of the extra outfielders and get a quality outfielder for the playoffs.

4. CHiPs. Though there isn't the major level of outfield talent, this offseason has both provided some players that could be used for trade bait, and to restock Memphis with players that have at least seen the show. Some combination of Bigbie, Miles, Encarnacion, Taguchi, etc. will probably be needed in order to trade Marquis/Suppan/Mulder for a true impact player. Losing them won't hurt so much since we'd just be clearing space out of the logjam in the outfield.

5. Walt's never done. The team that goes to spring training isn't necessarily the team that goes to October. As per 4., the situation is in place to set up a true team of death on the way to the World Series. This could be the year, as much as last year or 2004. How long till pitchers and catchers report, again?

Samuel Alito--the worlds most terrifying man.

2006-01-11T10:26:00.000-08:00

I've been holding off on talking about Alito for a while. Most of it was an attempt to gather an opinion on the guy. Some of it was an attempt to not be bitterly depressed over the fate of my country. After watching a bit of the guy's confirmation hearings, and reading the liveblogging of the whole thing over at firedoglake, I can be silient no more on this matter.

There are several reasons why Alito terrifies me. First is that the Bush adminstration clearly does have a litmus test. Not an abortion litmus test, but a pro-imperial Presidency litmus test. In reality, it should be common knowledge by now that Bush's #1 priority is protecting his own damn ass from any possible accountability that it might need to encounter. This is the common bond that has joined all of his executive and judicial nominees together. The danger inherent in the abortion debate has served partially as a way for Bush to distract from this power grab. The importance of the bill of rights should be readily apparent to anyone who has studied 9th grade civics, so I won't get much into that matter. On this matter, I would like to first cite Alito's previously stated belief in the Unitary Presidency. This is a legal philosophy dating back to Andrew Jackson. Jackson argued that, since the President is the only person in government directly elected by the entire nation, then therefore, the President deserves final say when branches of government have a dispute on legal matters. Under Alito, the Supreme Court will not intervene in the President's attempts to spy on American citizens.

Second, there is the obvious abortion issue. Alito's dissent in the appelate hearing of Planned Parenthood v. Casey should be terrifying to most anyone, particularly with regard to the claim that the state has the right to require spousal notification for an abortion. He has refused to call Roe v. Wade the settled law of the USA, and has similarly refused to reject his 1985 statement that Roe should be overturned, merely trying to explain that he was arguing for an advocate, and that wouldn't necessarily be his current positions, without saying that he still doesn't think that Roe should be overturned. As reddhead implies, this is just a game of dodgeball. But, the clearest indication that this appointment is clearly all about abortion should be the chorus of enthusiastic support that Alito is getting from every conservative nutazoid in the world. They are careful to not mention abortion, but that only makes it weirder, as they talk about abortion virtually nonstop until the nomination that could have more of an effect on the abortion issue than all of the partial birth bans in the world comes up. Certainly not fishy at all. Yeah. sure.

Finally, there is the simple case that Alito is clearly just a liar on the matter of his memebership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Lying to Congress, under oath, should be, in and of itself, reason to not confirm him.

So, the question becomes, what should be done about him. 1) Everyone should call their Senator and ask them to oppose this nomination, and to vote to keep the US Senate's cloture rule as it is. 2)Tell your friends about Alito. 3) Remind them, if they bitch about up-or-down votes, that the Republicans fillibustered LBJ's nomination of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice in 1968

This is a scary moment in the history of our country. I hope the Dems are up to the challenge they now face.

Another one of those enraging things...

2006-01-05T11:48:00.000-08:00

So, despite being a destitute grad student, sometimes I give to charity. Or, when I'm feeling particularly insane, maybe an odd political candidate (though not since college, really). Typically, I'll give to environmental organizations, or to a variety of humanitarian organizations. You would think that you would give money, and end of story.

But no.

They want your personal information. And then...

You get a mountain of goddamn spam and junk mail from said organizations. The thing that pisses me off is that I'll give when I can, and won't when I cant' afford it. But regardless of the situation, I get a mountain of shit pouring in through my mailbox for no particular reason. What is even more enraging is that fucking environmental organizations are amongst those producing this cavalcade of shit pouring in through my mailbox. Hey, assholes, when you produce all this goddamn junk mail, you kinda lose the moral imperative in complaining about the junk mail of others, no? I even lost a bill once in all of the fucking junk mail.

Even funnier, is that the letter always pretends to be from some goddamn celebrity. Every Habitat for Humanity letter comes personally addressed from Jimmy Carter to me. Ha! Who is non-cynical enough to get fooled by these techniques?

I guess it's the same segement of the population that actually fucking responds to the gibberish spam entitled "Lexus p0rN eats computer", thereby encouraging the idiots sending that crap to waste endless hours for the rest of us.

So stop sending the shit junk mail, people. We already have the paper.

Arguing with Republicans

2006-01-02T19:29:00.000-08:00

Sean Carroll has it 100% right.

I'm glad someone else hates PBK

2005-12-30T23:44:00.000-08:00

I'm ovejoyed someone else hates the very idea of Pottery Barn Kids as much as I do. Even barring the hyper-expensiveness of the whole thing, there's the hyper-Yuppie sexism in the store, highlighted above by Vanessa of feministing.

My one joy of my solitary self-immolating trip into the store was witnessing one of the girls there playing with robots in the 'boy' section of the store.

Things getting better, eh?

2005-11-27T19:13:00.000-08:00

former PM Allawi on Iraq:

People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things

We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them...

What is going on? This isn't exactly like it's some rabid anti-US terrorist speaking--this is the former prime minister of the country. If our goal was to prevent terrorist activity, and to prevent the expansion of the rule of Sharia, and to protect the Iraqi people, and we are actually making bacward progress on the first two, and standing still on the third, the how is it possible that nayone still supports the president's stance on the war? We have gone into total Orwell mode these days, I guess.

via This Modern World

To death penalty advocates

2005-11-23T21:59:00.000-08:00

They executed an innocent teenager. You never know, for sure what happened. Our fucking legal system is sure as hell not going to make it come to light 100% of the time. And what they did is irreversible.

Requiring DNA evidence hardly helps things, either. It merely shifts the problem ahead some. You never know exactly where the DNA came from. It can be planted. Just because DNA matches doesn't mean that the DNA was placed there during a murder.

In this case, it was documented that the police fucked with evidence. Why couldn't it happen in other cases? The one standard for applying a wholly irreversible punishment should be absolute certainty. That can never be presented. Thus, there should be no death penalty.

I wonder what this news is doing to the DA. The few quotes in the article certainly don't sound happy.

Additionally, as further evidence that the "get tough" approach to cimre is inneffective, I have spent my whole life listening to politicians spout shit like "three strikes" and advocate more prisions and more aggressive laws, and despite all of it, St. Louis is #3 nationally in violent crime per capita and Kansas City is #26 (scroll to bottom of article). The population figures indicate that neither ranking even takes into accout East STL or KC, Kansas (though, to be fair, it probably doesn't take St. Louis and St. Charles counties into effect, nor Lee's summit and the like). So, all of that 'cracking down on crime' has done a lot of good for Missouri, no?

In memoriam

2005-11-22T16:52:00.000-08:00

John Fitzgerald Kennedy died 42 years ago today. He nobly led us through the brink of worldwide death that was the Cuban missile crisis. His administration's efforts were also what finally began to break the mafia's dominance over all that opposed it. Had he lived, we wouldn't have had the Johnson era decption (though we might not have had the Civil rights and voting rights laws of '64)

And the government is still hiding the truth of who killed him.

Rest in peace, JFK.

Meanwhile,

2005-11-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

Whilst everyone is obsessing about the Murtha debacle, the Japanese government has placed a constitutional amendment on the table. The amendment would give the Japanese military the right to officially call itself an army again, eliminating the tag "self-defence force.

Ostensibly, the cause of this is to enable the Japanese military to participate in peacekeeping missions and the like without special Parliamentary approval of particular efforts. I wonder, however, if the goal isn't partially for the Japanese government to show that Japan is, once again, one of the great nations of the world. On one level, this doesn't really make a ton of sense, as they have clearly been a leading force in the G8 and the WTO and the like for a while.

Perhaps, however, they wish to lead on global security, as well. The wa-po article does cite a growing sense of Japanese nationalism. For now, I can only see another counterbalance to the US as a good thing, that's for sure. Long term, increased militarism everywhere is pretty damn scary. let's hope for the best, I guess.

Tired and depressed.

2005-11-16T14:34:00.000-08:00

[editor's note: warning, incoherent nonsense ahead]

The human heart is a bizarre organ. It's sole purpose, really, is to bleed. All it really does is endlessly gush blood to the rest of the body. It works tirelessly so that the rest of the body can function (and the lazy brain sucks up a majority of the blood that leaks out through the aorta)

That's why I think it's incredilby appropriate that people use the heart as a metaphor for human emotions. Because feeling is simply bleeding and hurting and working because you have no choice in the matter. And just like human blood cells eventually recirculate into the capillairies that feed the heart, eventually all this pain and suffering eventually migh recirculate into positive ends for us. That, however, doesn't change the initial emotional bleeding that we have to put into it all. It just means that, in the end, the energy we put into things might equal out to what we get out.

And that's what keeps us going on, becasue just going on in life isn't really rational. The best end result is watching everyone you ever knew or loved get old and die until you follow them. Reasoning only just sucks more life out of existence, makes it harder and harder to struggle on. It's only by feeling and loving that we survive. And that necessitates hurting.

keep on beating, heart.

We're quite reasonable here...

2005-11-15T16:40:00.000-08:00

Well, it looks like we've found a few more bad apples. Looks like the CIA has been training the Iraqi security forces on a little more than on the proper techniques for patrolling city streets and falsifying news stories.

It's like they're trying to create a government that is maximally likely to collapse upon the departure of the US armed forces. Or one that'll be unstable enough that the USA never leaves.

MVP in your hearts, and now in the record books, too.

2005-11-15T16:31:00.000-08:00

So, Albert is the MVP. The author of several of my favorite baseball memories of the past few years now has the hardware to go with it. This will make waiting till next year a little better.

And the best fucking part is that, for the first time in as long as I can remember, the best player in both leagues won the MVP award.

Ack. What a week.

2005-11-09T14:48:00.000-08:00

If you've been noticing the sparcity of posting recently, it has partially to do with my real life--I have to teach early in the morning, and I am not a morning person. Consequently, I wander around with a fucked up persona for most of the day on my wee hours teaching day. Also, I am on the brink of being done with a research project that I am semi-excited about. I'll have a post up about that when I have acutal results. Third, my interest level in the outside world seems at a relative low. There aren't any exciting shows for me to see, the Cardinals season is nice and over, politics are in kind of a holding pattern (though it's encouraging to see the dems take two governorships yesterday). So, in conclusion, I'm still here, and I'll have interesting things to say soon enough.

Here it comes.

2005-10-31T08:16:00.000-08:00

This is why I was ambivalent of Harriet Miers. Alito is the type of appointment that everyone was terrified Bush would come forward with. This, however, shows that the Demcratic "popcorn strategy" (i.e., sitting back and letting the republicans fight over Miers) may have paid off. Also, it may indicate that the fillibuster compromise was worth it. The Dems may, just yet, block this guy.

But I'm not so sure. His dissent in Planned Parentood v. Casey alone will be enough to get the entire Christian right wing in 100% fired up mode, much more so than they even were about Roberts. Expect endless talk regarding how well-qualified Alito is, and how his experience shows that he is ready to take this task. Also expect endless accusations that the democrats are being obstructionist and pointlessly aggressive on the matter. They will blame the Miers non-appointment on the Dems (hence the talk about the fucking executive privilege bullshit).

I don't buy this smokescreen for one instant. This is about abortion, and will be about abortion only. And if Alito is confirmed, Roe v. Wade is dead. Maybe not immediately, but the Roberts court will chop away at it, gradually, until it is essentially gone.

There is room for strategy in this--I don't really want committee dems getting all agressive on Alito until the hearings. I want the guy to get a fair hearing, and it to be clear that he gets a fair hearing. They should cite their behavior during the Roberts and Miers appts. to support this--they carefully considered both candidates, and Russ Feingold even voted to send Roberts out of committee. But the fucker should be opposed fully when the time comes, up to and including a full fillibuster of his nomination. Everything they've done so far has been to get them in position to oppose this nomination.

Do it.

UPDATE: Fuck. This is looking less and less good. Graham holding probably isn't that big a deal, but if the other 6 republicans give up, and there are no longer 51 pro-filibuster votes... This is scary as hell.

Compromising nat'l security = not fun

2005-10-30T19:46:00.000-08:00

Hunter beat me to it. Go read that essay. I've been thinking similar thoughts for a while, but I'm a much poorer writer.

All this 'fitzmas' crap has been pissing me off for a while. It's vindictive and bitter, and not really becoming to anyone to show such glee. At the minimum, we're talking about someone having their career ruined. But beyond that, we're having a career in national security ruined. It goes beyond Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, and the whole thing is a grim, bitter harvest.

It is not a fucking holiday. Rot in jail, Scooter, but I'm not going to pretend that it is a fucking gift that I was given. It's what had to be done.

Domestic Violence

2005-10-30T17:15:00.000-08:00

Well, it's becoming increasingly evident that violence in our culture starts at home--people who grow up in violent households are disproportionately those who commit violence whilst out in the world. Even when considered independently of the obvious and horrific suffering that the victims of domestic violence must suffer on a daily basis, the continuing presence of hosehold abuse is a malaise on our society.

Yet we do nothing. And yet few even discuss the issue. Everyone would just prefer to let it go away.

So, anyway, I have a somewhat drastic proposal to attempt to adress the problem. In most states, in order to get married, a couple needs to get a blood test and a liscence, at the minimum. Why not require a domestic violence screening? Why not require the couple to sit down with a case worker or a judge or someone, together and seperately, and see if there are any warning signs present, and to inform the couple about what their options are, with respect to contacting the police, shelter infrastructure, and the like? It would require very little of the government, and there would at least be the potential of helping some people out.

I realize that this would hardly be a panacea--it wouldn't do anything to help the unmarried victims of abuse, and it wouldn't do much to help those who bait and switch in their relationships. Fucked up systems of manipulation are hard to break, and limited counseling would probably not empower many people. But we need to do something. An idea like this would be a start.

Why I hate House Republicans Vol XXIX

2005-10-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

Holy god. It isn't like I already didn't hate the goddamn patriot act already, but then they go and add this shit to it:

Under the proposals, 41 crimes would be added to the 20 terrorism-related offenses now eligible for the federal death penalty. Prosecutors would also find it easier to impose a death sentence in cases in which the defendant did not have the intent to kill.

In one example cited by Human Rights Watch, "an individual could be sentenced to death for providing financial support to an organization whose members caused the death of another, even if this individual did not know or in any way intend that the members engage in acts of violence."

So, in six months, you might potentially be eligible for the death penalty for giving moeny to your moron sibling, who, unbeknownst to you, turns out to be a terrorist. Or a drug dealer, or anything illegal that the administration doesn't like, as they already have used anti-terror laws to prosecute non-terror criminals.

Also, the provisions reduce the number of jurors required to get a federal death penalty conviction, with the provision that "the court finds a 'good cause', with or without the agreement of the defense." What the fuck would a "good cause" to fuck around with the goddamn jury system be? Why would someone write a provision like that?

And finally, this new system allows for the federal prosecutor to reconvene a jury if the sentencing jury dadlocks over the issue of executing the prisioner, mirroring the 5 most aggressive states laws on the death penalty, and in contrast to the 38 other death penalty states where a deadlocked jury results in an automatic life sentence.

The Washington Post article refers to these provisions passing the House by voice vote, which probably means that the floor was none too full when the vote was taken, though there is no mention of when this took place. None of this shit is in the Senate version, and here's to hoping that it gets taken out in conference.

So, in summary, I hate you, house republicans.

More advice to Madison Ave.

2005-10-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

We all know that "the generation that made a difference" ended up selling out. a lot. Targeting a bunch of materialistic shit at them, particulary shit that has a natural connexion to their hippie roots is cool.

What is not, however, is pretending that your goddamn financial planning company is directly linked to the free love/political expression of the 60s. It basically insults everyone involved. I'm pretty sure that Abie Hoffman wasn't the prime spokesman for turning money into more money via investment.

Just sayin'

school funding

2005-10-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

I hate the way we fund schools. All the debate we have regarding public schools ends up being completely disingenuous, because this very issue is always completely off of the table from day one. Instead, we talk about "poor schools" and "rich schools" and wonder how we can possibly survive in a world where such a divide exists.

Instead, we should be asking ourselves: Why are we using local property taxes to fund our school system anyway? There is no real good reason for it, and all it does is create some areas where the local government is able to collect large amounts of taxes, and others, where the local authorities can collect virtually none.

We can do better, I say. Our current system spends as much, if not more per capita, and produces poorer results. The central reason comes down to these issues of local dominance and vast funding disparity. If we stopped duplicating efforts between districts, and we stopped starving some schools, while lavishing others, then everyone would be better off.

But then again, that's just my opinion

A note to James Edmonds

2005-10-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

I remember how you hit that awesome home run two years ago.

I also remember how you spent all of this year attempting to recreate that magical moment.

In the future, I'd like to humbly request that you attempt to minimize this behavior, and do what you can with them, rather than trying to crank them.

Additionally, I have to say that this is one of the best post-disaster links that I've seen. Read it if you're still feeling down (I sure am).

If you haven't done so already (something which I find shocking, if you've made it to this corner of the internet), go on down to lboros's place and discuss all sorts of fun stuff. Let the Brian Giles/Reds outfielder/new pitcher sweepstakes begin!

The cards are dead

2005-10-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

Long live the cards.

Any Astros fans here, congragulations. I hope you crush the White Sox.

Myself, I'll be remembering lazy August nights heading up highway 61 with Jack buck and Mike Shannon, sitting up in the terrace lodge at Busch, and the one night where believing in a magical 9th inning comeback wasnt emotionally crushing.

That being said, they are not in all that bad a situation this offseason.

If I were Jocketty (thank god I'm not), I'd make the following moves:

Give Anthony Reyes a chance at the rotation
re sign Sanders
re sign Suppan
go get Brian Giles
and maybe go get a relible reliever.

Rolen will be back. Al Reyes will be back around the All-Star break. Mulder will have another year to justify the loss of Danny haren and daric barton. Pujols will be Pujols. They can get back to where they were a week ago. It'll just be in some new place in a city that is ever so gradually becoming some place different from the town where I grew up.

Game 5: Cardinals 5, Astros 4

2005-10-18T13:08:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how exciting this was. Every second of this day was tense and exasperating and terrifying and magical. I got into Houston at 3:00 and met up with my friends, and had lunch. We got to the juice box around 5:15. The security guards saw my Pujols jersey and my friend's custom jersey w/ birds on bat, and jabbed us a little bit at the gate, but everyone was quite friendly. At least at first.

We made our way down to the good seats by the dugouts to watch bp and warmups. Friendly staidium worker. Some trash talk, but apparently he was working right next to Bill DeWitt the previous night. At this point, the stadium was about 50/50 cards/astros fans, including some girls wearing homemade "go crazy, folks" shirts. We Weinberg gave us a thumbs up about how the guys were feeling. Eck warmed up next to Larry Walker. He looked very small. Reggie hit the shit out of a bunch of bp balls, and then, on the way to the dugout, he saw me and my friend in our cards jerseys, gave us a big smile and threw out a ball to my friend. Right before the team went into the dugout for the start of the game, Tony la Russa did the same to me (well, minus the smile).

I did a lap around the stadium, wanting to check it out a bit and also, hopefully avoid the massive line to the upper deck (turns out there's only one way to the upper deck.), as it was my turn up there--there were four of us, me, my other cardinals fan friend, and two neutral guys who we knew from school. It was my turn with the upper deck seats first. So, up I went, and sat and watched the first bit of the game. I felt every damn pitch that Carp threw up there. The guy sitting next to me was reading his high school lit stuff, though. Often during innings. Odd. His dad was watching, though. Pettitte drove me crazy with his nonstop throwing to first. Though I guess it did eventually work out for him. Some dude in front of me stood up right before grudzie's rbi single. But we all saw the looming pitch count up on Carp.

Several innings pass, and the game starts getting very, very tense. Reggie makes a big catch out in left, and my bosox fan friend calls me to switch down to the good seats, the ones about 6 rows in foul territory by the LF porch. So down I go, me and my cardfan friend sitting in this sea of clemens jerseys. Immediately, I notice an interesting crowd surrounding us. to my left are two friendly guys who kinda rib us a little, but are more just watching. They didn't quite know what to do when they turned around to hi-5 me after a Biggio single, and see the birds on bat. It was a cute moment. To our right is an old, serious Astros fan, who really knows and loves baseball. He spent these middle innings just chatting with us.

Then behind us, is a goddamn CFB and her boyfriend. Both of them are completely drunk. She is screaming about how she wants to sleep with the various Astros at bat, and he is busy screaming at us "You guys are DONE" in the midst of a 2-1 cardinals lead. The crowd at Minute Maid is still asleep, and we are completely tied to the edge of our seats, as both pitchers dribble runners off and on. Then comes Carp's 6th inning, one of the most spectacular things I have seen out at the game. After not really having his full powered fastball (or maybe the juicebox has a slow gun), throwing in the 92-93 range most of the night, he pulls back and powers out the side with 96 mph heaters and a nasty nasty 12-6 curveball. Astros go in order. I say to my friend, with Pettitte at 100 pitches and the top of our order up, this is the time that we need to make things count. Unfortunately, they don't, encouraging the home crowd. During the stretch, they run the kiss cam, and GHWB and Barbara come up, resulting in a lame "fuck you bastards, get this thing off of me" kiss.

Then, out comes Carp for the 7th, against the pinch hitter for Pettitte, Orlando Palmiero. He grounds up, but this is simply the preview for the two out jam that comes up, with Berkman at bat. At this point, Carp is at 110 or so pitches, and I am shocked that he stays in. But he does. The crowd gets on their feet collectively, and begins really yelling. Berkman hits his bloop HR. Crowd fucking explodes. CFB and drunk guy dance around, absolutely covering us in beer. We have some words with them, but things calm down quickly. I heard shannon's call of 7th, 8th and 9th, and broadcast does absolutely no justice to how loud this was. Couldn't hear anything--just a loud overall din of the crowd. Carp stays on. He somehow manages to keep his composure and his stuff enough to get two outs and escape the inning. The blood has left my face, and all I can do is just clench my fist. The drunk lovers begin to talk about nothing but Lidge, Lidge, Lidge.

Out comes the LOOGY to get Walker. Chad Qualls sends the next two down. Crowd gets progressively louder. Friendly joke guys give a pat on the back. Is appreciated. But the same time, I start screaming that it's not over yet, and am enheartened to see TLR send out Izzy to start the 8th. Izzy pitches like a hero. He forgets all about the pointless drama, he just gets his outs, despite how they battle. Crowd doesn't care, drunk dude shouts out "It doesn't matter, this is over."

Lidge comes out to start the 9th. Crowd goes absolutely apeshit. Moreso than they did for the Berkman HR. Jumbotron leads the crowd into a chant of BEE-LIEVE. Which I find completely rediculous. Your team has a goddamn 3-1 series lead, and a 4-2 game lead, in the 9th inning, with the best closer in the game on the mound. If you don't believe, I'd call you a fairweather fan, but that's an insult to fairweather fans. Strike one on Johnny Rod. Screams--two, three. I can't hear anything. Mabry strikes out, same thing. 9th inning, two out, Lidge on the mound. Eck comes up. My friend says, "this is the time for magic to happen." I say, "this is the guy to bring it about." Mighty mouse takes strike one, crowd gets yet louder. Astros fans are covering their ears now. Only rock concerts compare at this point. My knuckles are white. Ball, boos. Strike two, more cheering. Then, Eckstein hits a dribbler to the left infield, the 3b tries, misses, the ss tries, misses, base hit. CFB is passed out, drunk guy reiterates how it doesn't matter. Lidge throws a strike on Jimmy E. cheers. Lidge buzzes one inside on Jim. Drunk guy -- "that's right! plunk him! plunk him! plunk him!" In response, smart old astros fan -- "do you know who's on base? We don't want Pujols hitting again" drunk guy -- "it doesn't matter! Plunk him!" friendly guy -- "we aren't all like that, you know" me -- "I know, I really like most astros fans" (and I do). Jed walks. Crowd starts to get confused, but remembers to cheer again on the Pujols swing and miss. Me and my cardfan friend are absolutely silent--tense as all hell. Ball one, and then...

The crowd absolutely fucking dies, everyone waiting to see what happens. The second it leaves the infield, there is no doubt. I didn't even see it hit the back wall. I just watched the Cards circle the bases, me and my friend the only ones still standing, cheerign and shouting. We then start chanting MVP MVP MVP as loud as we can. I think Albert even looked over at us as he rounded 3B. We sat down. Reggie is retired. Cards up 5-4.

Drunk guy now recovers, and starts screaming at us. In particular, he seems focused on the phrase "where's Izzy now?" "who's gonna hold this up?". After I hear "Where's Izzy now?" for the 200th time, I reply "On the fucking mound, moron." And there is #44. Also, I remember seeing that #7 is not out at 3B and scream in elation, "Mabry's at third! Mabry's at third!" My friend and I look at each other, and he says, "Izzy, if you spare us the pointless drama just this once, I take back everything I've ever said about you." And with two up and two down, and a one run lead to protect, up comes Chris Burke. Crowd gets into it again. Izzy gets to what I think was a 1-2 count, and popup gets thrown in the air, hard play, but So is over. And that is a winner. The fans, in just 20 minutes, moved from counting down strikes to the world series, dancing and holding up signs about Chicago to dejectedly staggering out of the stadium with chins against their necks. Absolutely amazing.

Drunk guy reminds us that we have only beaten Pettite, despite our constant reminder that Lidge took the loss. Then we wished the best to the good fans, as vocally excluding the bastards as possible, and sit in the stands waiting for the staidum to clear out. We take pictures near the field, and of the scoreboard, showing

WP - Isringhausen (1 - 0)

LP - Lidge (0-1)

which we thought was very hilarious. Stadium clears out, we walk down to the bus station, I call everyone that I know. We see my freinds sweet office down at Rice University (he's faculty now), and I drive home, listening to the radio coverage of the game. The coolest thing was hearing a guy from the MO nat'l guard, stationed in New Orleans call up and talk about the game. They replayed Shannon's call of the last part of the game, and I didn't even come down enough to get tired until 3:00 AM, despite having gotten up at 5:00 that morning. Of course, now I can't wash my beer stained Pujols jersey.

I'll have photos up as soon as I have them emailed to me.

UPDATE: edited for readability somewhat. Some minor addiotns.

I. Was. Fucking. There.

2005-10-18T02:02:00.000-07:00

I am back now. That was the most incredible fucking thing that I ever saw. I got a bp ball. Albert and Eck are my herores. Both home runs essentially sailed over my head.

Izzy, I take back anything bad that I ever said about you.

Much more to follow after I get some sleep. Don't worry, my grandchildren will get an identical version 50 years from now.

In the tradition of bellyscratcher...

2005-10-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

Albert won't back down
he will stand his ground
In a world that keeps on grounding others out,
he will stand his ground

Jimmy knows what's right
and he just won't fight
and he'll keep that ump from throwing him out
he will stand his ground
and he won't back down

Hey baby
they've blown the easy way out
hey yeah
they will earn their outs
and they'll work the count

Big Chris won't back down
he will take the mound
and he'll strike all of those motherfuckers out
and he will stand his ground
and he won't back down

Davey Eckstein won't go down
he'll hustle across the town
and he'll show us why i call him mighty mouse
and he'll help us out

Hey baby
Brad Ausmus is an easy out
hey yeah
let's take this back to the home town
and we won't back down

Go Cards! Beat the shit out of fucking Pettitte. I will not post till late tonight.

apologies to Tom Petty, and the hearbreakers, too

It's not fucking over yet!

2005-10-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

Read this

This is all. Go Carpenter! Time to show that you're the best pitcher in the majors.

You can never stop the big tears

2005-10-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

That was a depressing game. There were the mandatory insane tony roster moves, there was the timely Astros hitting, the non-timely cardinals hitting, and the unfortunate injury. In the end, the damn Hector Luna error probably ended up costing the game. let me reiterate from the Viva El Birdos game thread: "Damn you, Hector Luna!!"

Furthermore, I have decided that FOX has managed to have worse announcers than ESPN's Joe Morgan-led crew. A proud and difficult accomplishment. My hat is tipped to you, Rupert Murdoch.

I have little positive to say, but let's try.

So really battled every single at bat he had. He didn't really come up big, but I felt like he was in on every at bat he had. And he played well and aggressively in the outfield. I wouldn't mind him getting a game 4 start, at all.

Tavarez, though being obnoxious while doing it, did get his three out without allowing a run. Marquis is well rested. Pujols got himself a hit, and Walker got himself an RBI, finally. We finally got a run off of goddamn Brad Lidge. Matt Morris pitched well. If a couple of those cardinals flyouts had gone 5 feet further, they would have been home runs, and it would have been a quite different game.

One thing remains to be said:

Dear Cardinals,

beat the living fucking snot out of Brandon Backe tomorrow.

That is all.

Don't have ;much to say

2005-10-13T21:12:00.000-07:00

other than Molina was good, the infield defense was atrocious, Burke was out at third, Mulder pitched a decent, but not spectacular game, and one question:

Why, why, did Tavarez pitch the 8th?

What Izz He?

2005-10-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

I have now officially grown completely immune to Izzy's late inning non-heroics. The pointless drama just bounces off of me, because, I have a sense of assurance that he will get the job done. It kind of makes me sad, 'cause I know it's a sense of false confidence. Just to amuse myself:

Izzy, bases empty

OBA .268 SLGA .315, OPS allowed .583

Izzy, runner on 1st

OBA .293 SLGA .350 OPS allowed .643

Izzy, RISP

OBA .356 SLG .163 OPS allowed .519

Izzy, bases loaded

OBA .182 SLG .100 OPS allowed .282!!!!

This pretty much confirms what we all know--Izzy is lazy in situations where he can afford to be, but when he gets himself in a jam, he turns into the fucking hammer of God, or something. I had no idea just how rediculous the stats would turn out, however. In particular, those disgustingly low slugging percentages in the RISP situations are amazing. This also makes me feel a lot better about the Isringhausen pointless drama. I actually felt bad for the Houston fans I watched the game with, as they got excited during Izzy's late inning heroics.

But then I remembed the psychotic durnk girl that yelled "you suck" at Jimmy when he dropped Berkman's pop fly in the 1st. First, 99 times out of 100, Jed gets that thing. Second, someone cheering for a team starting Willy fucking Tavares has no room to tell anyone elses' CF that they suck.

But other than the group of drunk college kids out at the bar (they didn't really watch the game, anyway, they sat and chatted at each other, and then pretended to notice whenever the Astros got a hit), it was a pretty good day out in enemy territory. I sat next to a group of old Astros fans (guys who remembered the old Colt 45's), and we talked some baseball. One of the guys with me told me about the first game he saw at the Astrodome, where the Cards beat the Astros 1-0, off of a homerun, hit by one Bob Gibson. We compared stories of misery about having the Astrodome/Busch stadium being retired. We both thought that it was a shame that Busch is going by the wayside. They were knowledgable fans, and wouldn't let one guy get away with trying to argue that Pujols and Berkman were interchangable.

The only downfall was that game watching got harder when word got out that I am a physicist, and things degenerated somewhat into talk about the mysteries of the universe. It was fun to talk about, though, and I guess, evidence that science isn't as boring as it's made out to be. Some funny moments occurred when people from the other side of the room heard me cheering (the big double play being a key example of this). They would pass and ask me "You aren't really a cardinals fan, are you" (me, wearing a Pujols jersey)? Or, "were you born in St. Louis?" After I responded yes to this woman, then she was "Ok, I guess I understand--that's the only way I was going to let you off the hook."

As far as the game, it was a good time. I had a psychic moment, as I said "Reggie muders Pettitte", and two pitches later, the ball was deposited in the stands. I liked seeing Mighty Mouse Eck(doesn't he look like a mouse?) have a good game.

Above all else, however, I loved Carp's performance tonight. This is what champion ace pitchers do. He didn't have his best curve today, and seemned to have issues with his command. So, he just started beating the plate with his fastball, mixed it up when he needed to, and was effective. At times, he seemed on the brink of letting the game get out of hands, but then, he just hunkered down, threw his pitches, and did what he had to do. All the while, he didn't do it with the stony, empty face that you see on most premier power pitchers. Instead, his face was a very human flush of emotion. You could see the pressure on him to come out ahead in this game, and you could see his determination to not let his team, and the Cardinal Nation down tonight. Every hit hurt, and every strikeout was ectascy. He is my favorite Cardinal, and I hope he finishes his career with StL. I will relish every start he makes until then.

On to game 2! Let's go to Houston with two wins!

That was a fun game

2005-10-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

A few obserations:

1) I can't believe how long larry Walker stayed in that game. When he took that ball to the knee, I was screaming for So Taguchi to be pinch running for him. When he did a backflip over the wall, these efforts redoubled. Unfortunately, although I am a loudmouth, my voice can't quite carry from the middle of the country to San Diego. Ah well.

2) I'm getting slightly less worried about the 'pen. For the second straight game, Izzy kept the pointless drama to a minimum. Tavarez and Thompson coughed up runs, but kept on truckin' so I guess that's fine

3)Matt's curveball is found! I was also impressed with how he was able to shake off those 5th inning jitters and stay effective.

4) I love how this offense works--someone makes it go, whether or not it is the same dude every day. It's a lot more reassuring

Ha!

2005-10-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

This reminds me of the time that one of my college freinds who was not a missouri native asked me "Have you ever heard of Whitey Herzog? He's my friend's uncle, and he's coming to town." Unfortunately, it was a non-open to the public event, but still...

So, Smoltzie outduels the Rocket. Hope that's good luck for bearded postseason pitchers. (btw, how awesome would it be to have Smoltzie and Morris get into a classic duel in the postseason?). So, who is the champion of the beard-off?

The man on the left, with the coy look in his eyes, or the man on the right, with the wrath of Leo Mazzone in his?

Remember, you can judge this based only upon beard quality. All baseball stats are to be totally ignored. For entertainment value only. Please consult a doctor before attempting to grow an awesome beard.

And for my money, Morris has a way awesomer (it's a word NOW, dammit!) mountain man look than Smoltz's trimmed, controlled look.

That's more like it

2005-10-06T17:12:00.000-07:00

That was a fun game to watch. I saw the event at a local bar. Sat next to a very friendly Astros fan. He was cheering for the padres for the sake of having the Astros play them in the NLCS (no hard feelings for that).

I like watching these type of relative "small ball" games. No huge innings, and simply a couple of mistakes hurting the padres. Astacio looked terrified of Albert. He seemed to alternate weirdly between being quite poised and being rediculously erratic. Both me and my Astros fan stranger agreed that the Padres' catcher was horrendously awful at blocking the plate. Unfortunately for him, and wonderfully for me, this deficiency resulted in two cardinals runs. Eckstein looked better to me than his stats probably indicate. finally, thank fucking god that the bullpen stabilized somewhat. Finally, Mulder lived up to his swamp gas reputation. He scattered those hits like crazy, and got plenty of double plays. Astros fan was amazed at this. I was impressed, but I guess I've been spoiled by recent years watching these cardinals teams.

next: the moment I've been dreading--Cards vs. Woody in the postseason. And of course, it has to be el beardo vs. Woody. I think I just have to hope that woody only goes six, and the cards bats come alive against the pads 'pen.

Izzy!!!

2005-10-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

Seriously, what the hell was that? How the fuck did a 8-2 lead almost get completely coughed up in the 9th. Ah well, it's not like I've not been stressed out about the bullpen in the postseason before. After all, a win is a win, and Carp seems to be doing fine, and TLR is not pushing him too hard. Larry, Reggie and Jimmy are getting in on the hitting fun. Really, all of my concerns are much alleviated by that game, other than my terror of the bullpen. And now the Pads have to win twice in games not started by Peavy.

Please, Please, Tony, put MattyMo in the 'pen, and use him. It will strengthen both the rotation and the bullpen.

Playoffs

2005-10-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

Ah, it is playoff time, the best and worst time for me. People begin to find me truly obnoxious in many ways. I am far away from the center of Cardinal nation, and in fact, am admidst the territory of another playoff team, something that made me less than popular at the local sports viewing establishments last year.

This is the time that I begin to wear almost nothing but Cardinals attire on non-off days, and begin to obsessively learn the names of losers like Dave Miceli and Dan Wheeler. When a game of catch with my dog turns into me imagining that I'm pitching to some streaky batter in late in a close game. This is when tensions begin to flare between me and my red sox loving classmates. A time for joy and misery. It still stings how fast it went from one to the other last year. I sure as hell can't get Uncle Tupelo's "I wanna destroy you" out of my head these days. Teams that I kinda like have now just become mere obstacles in the way of the Cardinals' victory. Teams taht I already didn't like have become goddamn fucking satan.

On a side note, I would like to here implore Tony La Russa to please employ Matt Morris's services in the 8th inning this year. He would be ever so good at it--he has done well in the 1st most of the time, and if he was throwing in relief, there would be much less worries about hitters seeing his pitches multiple times, thus masking the problems with his bad curve, and the reduced repretoire that has ensued due to this unfortunate occurance. He would also be free to throw as hard as he possibly can, without concern for saving himself for later innings that aren't there. Suppan has earned his spot on the postseason rotation, and Marquis has too, both with his bat and his arm. I'm intrigued by the idea of Anthony Reyes on the postseason roster post-Al Reyes' injury. We'll see what Tony comes up with.

All I can say, it's fucking go time.

I say!

2005-10-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

It's time that we demanded a moratorium on the phrase "junk science" from people. I think that the nonstop insulting of everything has grown to the point that it is rediculous and counterproductive.

I am not saying that there are not insane pseudoscientists out there in the world, attempting to do everything from "disprove" evolution and the Big Bang to insane politically motivated nonsense about how oil burning helps the environment. These people clearly exist, and their existence is a problem.

The solution, however, is not to go around insulting these people, and by extension, anyone whose ears they might have. Instead, it is necessary that we, with the patience of saints, calmly go around, showing why their viewpoint doesn't hold up when you think about it at all. This approach will go a lot further in dispelling the "contraversial" nature of their work, and make them look like the shill, obnoxious bastards that they are. Ignoring them, though satisfying, just adds to their already overinflated persecution complex, which enables their movement to grow, and which has put us into our current mess, I say.

In particular, when the ID people go on about the young universe, rather than engaging them on the ground that they want, (talking about how one species changes into another, blah, blah), in terms that they define so that they are intentionally confusing, thus enabling a third party to get confused by their dodgy questioning, why not start questioning them about astronomy? Why not ask them to justify the precession of Mercury's perehilion (or the bending of light by the sun, or gravitational redshift of light) without using General relativity? Ask them to explain how the universe could be 4000 years old when this same General Relativity strongly indicates that is more like 15 billion years old. ID people haven't even thought about these questions, much less come up with the kind of nonsensical non-answers that they have for a lot of the evolution related things. And these sort of questions don't admit the same sort of "common sense" anti-answers that the biological questions do.

And for those of you in the field, who run around doing nothing but insulting other serious researchers in the field, calling names as much as you are actually criticising people's work/offering constructive criticism: fuck off--everyone's trying, and history has shown that the most arrogant person's point of view proves to be incorrect as often as it does not. c.f. the origin of non-classical physics.

Giants and pygmies

2005-09-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to make sense of where we are as a country and a world right now. When one looks back retrospectively on 20th century history, you can't help but see these grand personalities fly out at you--Bismarck, Bryan, Cecil Rhodes, T. Roosevelt, Wilhelm II, Wilson, Lenin, Stalin, FDR, Hitler, Chruchhill, Sun Yat-Sen, Chairman Mao, and so on and so on. Good or evil, right or wrong, I can hardly help but see these people as archetypes of something, imagining a world of bold choices and options--nations led by symbols as much as they are being led by people. Even the faults of these figures seem larger than life--when you read about them, they seem more like the faults of the old Greek Gods than the problems faced by mere mortals.

Something seemed to have happened, however. Today, it seems that our leaders are human, all too human. European leaders face continual and seemingly nonstop parliamentary turmoil. American leaders simply spew endless amounts of out of touch soundbytes and try to say nothing provokative whatsoever. Nonstop ethical issues and complaints dog leaders everywhere (some more justified than others--François Mitterand recieving official government honors from the Vichy government seems to be a particularly nasty skeleton from the closet). And, most importantly of all, it seems that leaders are terrified of any bold, visionary policy. Our current president runs around saying a bunch of nonsense about Social Security, and continuously contradicts himself about Iraq. All the meanwhile, he idly snickers at himself, and moves about with a smug assurance that is never interrputed with consideration for the facts. His predecessor was hardly better. Clinton's bold contriubtion to history is moderating the insane shit the 1994 republicans demanded. You can trace this back quite far in american history, but Reagan's claim that he didn't remember whether or not he ordered the documents showing that he committed an impechable offense is, to me, a shining moment in modern political cowardice.

OK, rant over. My real point is: is all of this just a matter of perspective? The British rid themselves of Churchhill for Richard Atlee in 1945. FDR attempted his own war on the constitution with his court packing plan, and didnt' really beat back the Depression, anyway. Most of the other guys were the victims of severe personality flaws that they could barely overcome. If we were contemporaries of these guys, would this post be talking about how rediculous it is that we are led by lame-o's like TR and Clemenceau, and how the world used to be ruled by real giants like Abe Lincoln and Napolean Bonaparte?

Also, if your answer to the previous question is no... then are things better this way? Is it good that we don't have major changes and clear choices between leaders come election time? Is it good that we don't have major fundamental change on the table, and that we make up for not having FDRs and Churchhills by not having Stalins and Maos running around? In the long run, I'd have to say probably, but living in a sound byte society is getting damn fucking frustrating.

Landlords

2005-09-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

I am so sick of renting. Every five seconds, something (half of the time, our hot water heater) breaks in our apartment. When we call to get said thing fixed, the landlord hems and haws over actually repairing the damn thing. THEN, they find some reason to bitch about how good we are as tenants, and make some rediculous charge upon us. I am getting sick of this bullshit, and if I ever get the time for it, I say it's time to start a local tenant rights organization, and even, get a standardize lease/deposit law passed through city hall. 'Cause I'm sick of this crap.

Plus ça change, plus c'est le meme chose

2005-09-26T21:07:00.000-07:00

I was playing around with my ipod the other day, and good ol' Dust Bowl Ballads came up. I don't think that the United States have has as important an artist as Woody Guthrie ever come along in its history. In particular, it amazes me how these songs about the Depression are able to still remind me of what's going on today. In particualr, this bit, though rediculously classic, seemed pretty precient:

Lots of folks back East, they say, is leavin' home every day,
Beatin' the hot old dusty way to the California line.
'Cross the desert sands they roll, gettin' out of that old dust bowl,
They think they're goin' to a sugar bowl, but here's what they find --
Now, the police at the port of entry say,
"You're number fourteen thousand for today."

Oh, if you ain't got the do re mi, folks, you ain't got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi.

You want to buy you a home or a farm, that can't deal nobody harm,
Or take your vacation by the mountains or sea.
Don't swap your old cow for a car, you better stay right where you are,
Better take this little tip from me.
'Cause I look through the want ads every day
But the headlines on the papers always say:

If you ain't got the do re mi, boys, you ain't got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi."

The scenery is most certainly different. In the 30s, it was more "I understand, and I'd do something if I could, but I've got my own problems" than it was "they deserve it." The commonalities, however, seem too glaring to ignore. In the 30s, they had semi-effectual government programs, while now, we have "government programs" which are a codeword for "handouts to Halliburton." Still, both cases resulted in a giant mess, with no clear solution (since the only obvious solution, that the government employ the victims in the reconstruction effort*, seems to be the complete opposite of what is going to happen). Hell, the migration during the 30s was only stopped when the US lost half a generation in Europe and Japan.

I don't mean to really compare our situation to the Depression. As a whole, the nation is clearly, far better off financially, and, at this instant, we face no threat to the survival of humanity on the scale of Hitler-syle fascism. But my concern is that we are starting to leave people behind, and we are doing it using the smug anthems of "they deserved it," or "they should have known better, living there." As if everywhere but a few choice places was immune to natural disaster. We can do better.

I say, "fuck it, we're all in this together." I'm sick of being wedged off from everyone else by morons who know more about positioning and "message" than substance and emotion**. But fuck it, I'm in it together with them, too. I'm going to pledge to try my best to give everyone an open ear, and my true opinion in rebuttal. This principle does not mean that I'm going to always agree (in reality, it probably means more disagreement than agreement), but it means that I'm going to do my best to realize that we all need to work together.

Because I don't want to live in a world where I tell the helpless and hopeless to go away, 'cause they ain't got that Do-Re-Mi.

*The advantages of this are so obvious to me that it amazes me that noone is talking aobut it--in one fell swoop, you prevent the appearance of impropriety, you employ the people whose places of work were destroyed (since mass unemployment will be one of the big long term problems that this will cause), you give everyone a stake in the New New Orleans, making everyone feel welcome to come back home, and you minimize the money wasted on contractors. In essence, there is no better way to let the people come back home, wtih arms wide open than to offer them a job rebuilding the city better than it was in the first place. But I'm an idealist.

**by this I clearly mean feeling emotion, not manipulating it in others.