My Spleen and Welcome to It

Fun With Lists: Most Talented Sports Families

2012-01-30T20:13:00.002-05:00

During my daily peregrinations through teh intertooooooobz, I came across this list of all-time great sports families, which I thought would amuse a buddy of mine at work. While I was in the process of laying out my own opinion of the choices for him, it occurred to me that they might also amuse my readers here (if any). So, without further ado...

A few thoughts of my own:

I object to the inclusion of fictional characters in this list, even if some of them were played by real-life hockey players.

I object to the inclusion of professional wrestlers… oh, wait, I already objected to the inclusion of fictional characters, didn’t I?

If we are going to have professional wrestlers, where are the Von Erichs? The Funks? Hell, where’s the McMahon family? (Don’t ask me how I knew about all those folks!)

I object to the inclusion of racehorses on this list, not for the usual “they’re not human, so it’s unfair to compare them to human athletes” reason that’s usually given for griping about horses on these sorts of lists (valid though that is), but because horse racing is all about bloodlines, so the whole notion of a “talented family” is kind of moot: With very few exceptions, every champion racehorse is part of a “talented family.”

If we are going to have racehorses, where’s the Man ‘o War/War Admiral/Affirmed lineage?

I object to the presence of MMA fighters: ~~Human cockfighting~~… er, I mean MMA… is not a sport.

Including the Yao family is kind of a cheat: We only know about them because Yao Ming was an NBA star; how many other families in China… or all over the world… would also be on this list if it weren’t U.S.-centric. No doubt there’s some 5- or 6-generation family of cricketers who would be No. 1 on this list with a bullet, if only anyone in ‘Murrica had ever heard of them. I don’t object to the U.S. centrism, but it makes the Yaos a poor choice for inclusion, since only one of them has any presence in U.S. sports. (The Bulgarian soccer goalies probably don’t belong, either.)

Bob and Mike Bryan probably belong on the list, and Venus and Serena Williams certainly do, but where are John and Patrick McEnroe? John may be mostly remembered for his mercurial singles play and his volcanic temper, but he was also arguably the greatest doubles player of his era (and one of the greatest of all time), winning 9 Grand Slam titles in men's doubles and one in mixed doubles, and he was also possibly the greatest American Davis Cup player. Patrick was much less successful as a player (though he did win a Grand Slam title in doubles), but he's been a major contributor to tennis as a team captain (Davis Cup for 10 years, and the 2004 Olympics), a team owner (World Team Tennis), and a TV commentator/analyst.

How cool is the name Ignatius Gronkowski (great grandfather of Rob and his brothers)? And how cool is it that he was an Olympic cyclist in 1924 (aka the Chariots of Fire games)?

Leon Spinks has a grandson who’s a boxer? Dog, I feel old now!

Who knew that Jackie Robinson’s brother finished second to Jesse Owens in the Olympic 200m? Cool, eh?

Muhammad and Laila Ali? SRSLY? Muhammad Ali by himself belongs near the top of anyone’s list of all-time athletes, but are we really taking women’s boxing seriously enough for this to count as a top-ten sports family?¹

I actually saw the three Howes play together for the Houston Aeros (the old WHA ones, not the current minor-league ones).

I know there’s not much space above No. 5, but shouldn’t the Andrettis be higher on this list?

No. 2 is a pair of identical-twin lacrosse players? Lacrosse?? I don’t care if they are the greatest players in the sport’s history… it’s frickin’ lacrosse. Yeah, Jim Brown yadda, yadda… it’s LACROSSE! Wilt Chamberlain played volleyball; that didn’t get a pair of volleyball twins on the list, never mind at No. 2! Dump these guys and move the Andrettis to their spot.

¹ Anyone tempted to read this as me dissing women's sports would be wrong; this is me dissing boxing. I only just barely take men's boxing seriously, and only then because its long history means it's "grandfathered in." Starting up a whole new branch of the sport in the late 20th century was just silly... and the more we learn about the effects of head trauma in sports, the sillier it seems.

If Only It Weren't Newt

2012-01-26T18:15:00.004-05:00

The first thing you have to know is that I’m a huge space cadet myself. Born in the dawning years of the Space Age, I was a starry-eyed 9 year old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, watching every second of the televised EVA, and then immediately watching every second of the replay. I remember my dad — a NASA engineer — bringing home vacuum-formed relief maps of the Apollo landing sites, on which we would trace out moonwalkers’ progress in mechanical pencil. So you should know that there’s nothing I’d rather see than the achievement of the visionary space goals Newt Gingrich laid out in Florida on Wednesday: A permanent presence on the moon, accelerated human missions to Mars, breakthrough interplanetary propulsion technology….

Nothing, that is, except a well-functioning, just, humane, and prosperous American society here on Earth, and that’s where I fall off Newt’s high-tech sled.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of Newt’s interest in this area: As Mother Jones reminds us, Newt’s fascination with “grandiose”¹ space ideas isn’t new: As early as 1984 he sponsored a bill that would have “offered a path to statehood for future space colonies,” and the first of his many books, Window of Opportunity, focused in part on space exploration as a key to building a Gingrich-approved future. And I don’t doubt that the goals he sets out are possible: Notwithstanding the quixotically negative comments from space advocates on blogs and news stories, there’s no doubt in my mind that, given the political will and national commitment we displayed during Kennedy’s moon quest, we could, in fact, plant an initial permanent lunar base by 2020: We haven’t gotten stupider since the days of Apollo, and now we have a half century of spaceflight-related technology that wasn’t available to engineers and program managers in 1961, when JFK established an 8 ½ year deadline for the first lunar landing by humans.

What we don’t have is a world in which humans on the moon or Mars is — or should be — anywhere near anyone’s first priority. At the philosophical level, I’ve never bought the “why spend money in space when we have problems here on Earth” line of opposition to space exploration: A great nation has to be able to do more than one thing at once, and the life of a whole society shouldn’t be reduced to nothing but problem solving. But I do believe in establishing reasonable priorities, and I believe that committing large chunks of our shared resources to a project requires the project to be somehow integrated with the nation’s larger priorities. In the 50s and 60s, our priorities were, for good or ill, focused on the geopolitics of superpower competition, and the Apollo effort neatly served that priority.

But today our top priorities should… indeed, must… be focused on building a ethically and economically just society, and on rebuilding our beleaguered middle- and working-class economy… and I’m pretty sure that’s not what Gingrich has in mind. It’s possible to imagine an Apollo-level space exploration program structured in ways that would be relevant to those goals, but the very things that would make it relevant — public investment in dual-use technologies, multipurpose infrastructure, related job creation, and public education at all levels — are anathema to today’s Republicans. Gingrich might be a technocrat, but he’s a Tea-Party technocrat.

And even if Gingrich’s space proposals struck me as perfect, the fact is that everything else he stands for, and that the party he would lead into Washington stands for, would be disastrous, from my point of view. I can’t hope for a bad president just because he might be good on my one pet issue. In my previous (online) life, I used to be a regular reader/contributor at several space policy forums, and I recall my fellow regulars discussing whether Bush or Kerry would be better for advocates of space exploration. I couldn’t believe it was even a question: With war, terrorism, fundamental tax policy, and basic questions of civil liberties in the balance, I couldn’t believe that anyone, on either side, would even think of basing their vote on space policy. Show me a candidate who proposes the same space goals as Gingrich has within the framework of a humane, truly progressive agenda, and I’ll instantly vote for that candidate… but odds are good I’d’ve been voting for the humane, truly progressive agenda in any case.

And so should you.

¹ Since he styles himself as an intellectual, Gingrich should know that grandiose isn’t really a compliment. Many of Gingrich’s pronouncements may in fact be grandiose, in the sense of “affectedly grand or important; pompous,” and many of his plans may be grandiose, in the sense of “more complicated or elaborate than necessary; overblown,” but… ”You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” And don’t even get me started on people who say simplistic when they mean simple!

A Bad Week for Sex in the News

2012-01-21T17:18:00.003-05:00

So does it surprise anybody that the Republican presidential nomination contest is focused on sex? Beyond the "guilt-by-association," slut-shaming stories about Karen Santorum's youthful affair with an abortion-friendly obstetrician (which I've already addressed), we've heard Newt Gingrich's third (and current) wife attacked as a "mistress" while his second wife is quoted as claiming Newt asked her for an "open marriage."

The problem with all this is not that it gives Republican candidates a bad name — they're pushing hateful, evil policy ideas based on a hateful, evil ideology, and they deserve as bad a name as they can get — nor that they are false: AFAIK, Karen Santorum did shack up with a much older doctor for years, and Callista Gingrich manifestly was Newt's long-time mistress, and while characterizing what Newt was asking for as open marriage is deeply problematical (just ask Dan Savage or JT Eberhard's co-blogger Christina), I have no doubt that conversation took place, no matter how vigorously Newt whines at being asked about it.

No, the problem is that all this Republican sex obsession is that it gives sex a bad name... and that really is undeserved. It's also indicative of something deeply troubled about our politics: The fact that they choose sexuality as the weapon with which they shame and attack each other reflects the sense — false, IMHO, but woven deeply into the fabric of our culture — that pleasure, and sexual pleasure in particular, is corrupt and immoral. This ultimately religious commitment to the idea of the innate depravity of the flesh contributes to the right's attacks on gay rights, women's reproductive right, and general freedom of sexual expression. More indirectly, I think it contributes to the broad meanness of right-wing policies.

But it's not just politics: Yesterday I read a sad little story about a woman who offered sex in return for a McDonalds drive-thru customer's order of Chicken McNuggets. The woman, Khadijah Baseer, described in reports as being "known as a local panhandler [emphasis added]," apparently was opening customers' car doors, I assume seeking food or cash. One man called the police and complained that she'd offered him sex (some sources say oral sex) in return for his chicken bits.

So the most parsimonious interpretation of a woman offering sex in return for a couple dollars worth of food is that she's desperately poor, right? Or starving, or mentally ill, or strung out on drugs, or perhaps some combination of all of the above? Certainly she requires some sort of assistance, right?

So what did the cops do? They arrested her on suspicion of prostitution. Because it seems so likely that an actual prostitute would take payment in processed chicken. And because this woman is so much more likely to be a threat to society than someone who needs society's help.

Or maybe it's just because any story that has sex in it has to have a slut. It makes me sad that we think this way.

The Fact That I Despise Rick Santorum Doesn't Justify This

2012-01-17T17:53:00.003-05:00

I think Rick Santorum is wrong — dangerously wrong — about almost everything. I think his ideas are authoritarian, reactionary, and deeply inhumane (to the point of being hateful), and I’m tempted to cheer anything that harms his ability to assert political or social power… but even so, I can’t help thinking this story, from Newsweek by way of The Daily Beast, is unfair, on several levels.

First, as eager as I am to catch Santorum out as a hypocrite, that he was (according to the details embedded in the text) less devout, and less committed to Catholic social doctrine, as a young man than he is now doesn’t automatically make him one, anymore than the fact that I voted for Reagan as a callow youth makes my current commitment to liberalism hypocritical. People change their minds, particularly over the span of decades, and there’s nothing wrong with, nor intellectually dishonest about, that. In general, the ability to modify one’s ideas and beliefs over time is a good thing… though it’s unfortunate (to put it mildly) that Santorum has apparently been busily changing his mind in the wrong direction.

But this story goes much further, into the realm of ~~guilt~~hypocrisy by association… by double association, actually: It seems that when Santorum’s wife Karen was a young, single woman, she dated a doctor who, among other things, provided abortions. Really? The fact that a politician’s wife’s ex-boyfriend from decades past had an occupation the politician now vehemently opposes is supposed to add something to the current debate? It’s sufficient that Santorum’s positions on reproductive rights are dangerous and hateful; who his wife used to sleep with is immaterial to the debate.

Ahh, who she used to sleep with; there’s the rub. Because even beyond the issue of hypocrisy by association, this story is troubling on a much deeper level: It’s red-letter slut shaming.

Even if you thought the old boyfriend’s abortion history was relevant to current politics, why would we need to know that this was a case of a young nursing student not just dating, but living with a much older doctor? Why add the vague whiff of symbolic incest by mentioning that he had actually delivered her as a baby? Why repeat his (likely self-congratulatory) memory that she came on to him, inventing (as he imagined it) a fear of the dark in order to move herself from a chaste basement apartment to his bedroom? Would any of this have been a story worth telling if it were the much-less-titillating tale of going on a couple dates with an obstetrician near her own age whom she met at school?

None of these details has a single thing to do with evaluating or criticizing Santorum’s stand on abortion; they have everything to do with the smug glee of tagging a sanctimonious moralist with a “slutty” wife. Much as I like to see sanctimonious moralists tagged as sexual hypocrites, this is unfair to him, and viciously unfair to his wife. Worse, shaming Karen Santorum for her past sexual activity partakes of the very same obsessive sexism and sex-negativity that is at the root of what’s hateful and awful about her husband’s politics, and that haunts our society.

We can’t fight this shit — and we must fight it — by indulging in it ourselves.

Gay Marriage Kills Jobs? SRSLY??

2012-01-12T20:51:00.002-05:00

Recently one of the Republican presidential candidates (Rick Santorum? They don’t pay me enough to keep up with which wacky idea goes with which awful candidate…) suggested that same-sex marriage was a job killer. Not that a position that ludicrous really requires any response, but I couldn’t help thinking of it when I read this story about a gay wedding expo in Brooklyn. Last I heard, holding a frickin’ trade show was not a sign that a particular activity is bad for business!

As Event Director Daniel Brooks explains, “It's a new niche for businesses [emphasis added] .” And would Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz sound like this…

I am thrilled that Brooklyn — proud home of everyone from everywhere, including one of the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered populations and certainly the biggest lesbian community in the country — will be the location of the first ever major expo of its kind in New York City.

…if he thought same-sex marriage was killing jobs in his community?

It’s one thing if people on the right have what they believe to be principled objections to same-sex activities, based on their religious or philosophical beliefs… but anyone relying on desperate, transparently false arguments like this “job killing” business is not principled, but is either hateful enough to resort to any means to damage their enemies, or is willing to blatantly lie to grab political power (by, it must be said, pandering to hateful people).

Rollercoaster News Reading

2012-01-06T19:01:00.003-05:00

My first reaction to this Huffington Post story, the front-page headline of which referenced only sex-shop purchases and not the issue of misspent taxpayer funds (at least it did when I first saw it; it's apparently not linked from the front page at all anymoree), was “so what if he bought something at a sex shop? People have sex, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” Then I saw that the story was about a mayor improperly taking about $154 thousand in improper expense payments (he owes the town about $170 thousand, but that includes interest and investigative costs), and I thought, “well, there’s certainly something wrong with that.” Then I noticed that the sex-shop complaint only accounted for a relatively trivial $67 of the total (about 0.04 percent, if my cypherin’ is correct), but… OMG! It was at a gay sex shop, and, setting aside the misappropriation of public funds, there’s nothing wrong with shopping at a gay sex shop, per se.

Now, my own town is in the midst of a controversy regarding a former mayor who paid himself — improperly, many of us believe — a big chunk of self-determined extra compensation, so I’m far from sympathetic to mayors who dip into the public till. And while Jackson, Miss., mayor Greg Davis doesn’t need to apologize to anyone for being gay, he does need to apologize for hypocritically hiding behind the façade of a straight (married) “conservative” lifestyle for purposes of getting elected (and, in 2008, running for Congress). He probably should resign, as it appears Jackson’s Board of Aldermen may ask him to do today. All that said, though, highlighting a $67 purchase at Priape (even briefly) as the headline, instead of the tiny, relatively unimportant detail is actually is, strikes me as pandering to both sex-negative and homophobic impulses.

Shame on you, HuffPo!

Quick Take: Odd Radio Jokes

2012-01-06T00:33:00.004-05:00

Listening this morning to the podcast of last week's Car Talk, a stray thought occurred to me: The list of joke "staff" names they close the show with is really a very odd, inverted joke for radio, because it's essentially a visual trick.

How each name sounds is actually the punchline of the joke; how it looks is the setup. That is, their Customer Service Specialist has what looks like a perfectly cromulent name: Begonia Payne-Diaz. It's only when it's said aloud that you realize it's begone, you pain in the ass.

Except, of course, that the radio (and podcast) audience never sees the name, but only hears it. In effect, we get the punchline of the joke first, and then have to infer the setup. It's upside down.

And yet, somehow, it's hilarious (at least to me). The fact that this bit totally works on radio, even though it totally shouldn't, is almost as weird as the fact that Edgar Bergen became a star on radio... er, what's that? Who's Edgar Bergen? A great ventriloquist... y'all might know him as Candice Bergen's father... um, who's Candice Bergen?

Oy, it's hell getting old! Oh well, here... and here. ;^)

Who Knew Matt Lauer Was So Shockable?

2012-01-04T22:54:00.004-05:00

I'm a bit bemused at Matt Lauer's reaction to this story about private "suites" in First Class on Singapore Air's A380 jumbo jets. If the compartments are truly private, as both the headline and the story describes them, why shouldn't couples do what couples do? And why would they need "chaperones"?

Geez, Matt, you have "don' it wif' a lady" haven't you?

Call Off the Dogs!

2012-01-04T19:55:00.005-05:00

Despite my somewhat dire expectations, my upgrades — from 1 to 3 Gb RAM and from Mac OSX 10.4.latest to 10.6.latest — went very smoothly; it's just Daily Life™ that seems to be tripping me up. Not that anything has gone off the rails in that regard, either, really; I'm just readapting to the post-holiday routine less efficiently than I'd hoped. Sad when it's only 4 January, and you're already a week behind on New Year's resolutions, eh?

Well, one way I hope to meet my goal of posting more often is relying on short postings and links instead of tl;dr essays¹, so let me start by adding to my New Year's "intentions" a reboot of my long-dormant hobby astronomy, starting with observing as many of these events as I can.

I've already missed the Quantarid meteor shower (I did go outside last night at about the right time, but it was wicked cold, so I didn't stay long or see anything), and most of the eclipses are outside my geographic range (unless I win the lottery), but I'm going to shoot for as many of the others as I can, and I'm determined not to miss the transit of Venus.

And while I'm on space stuff, how cool is this?

¹ Don't worry; I'm sure there'll be plenty of those, too!

If You Don't Hear From Me by Monday...

2011-12-30T18:03:00.000-05:00

...send a St. Bernard with a cask of brandy to look for me! I'm getting ready to do a memory/system software upgrade on my computer, and I can only hope I'll find my way back. Wish me luck!

New Years... er, Intentions

2011-12-30T08:31:00.002-05:00

OK, so I'm getting a couple days' jump on the whole New Years resolution thing, but I just wanted to drop in a placeholder to say that I'm reanimating the shambling corpse that is this blog. I know better than to make promises, but my hope for the coming year is to post here at least twice a week, and to do the same at my other blog, Emerging Foodie. In addition, I hope to...

Go to the gym at least 4 times a week
Read more fiction
Listen to more music
Get back into model rocketry

What I'm going not do to make space in my busy schedule for all of this is yet to be determined, of course! ;^)

For now, I'll leave you with this: For reasons that don't bear mentioning, I ended up listening to an hour of right-wing radio this morning, and it seemed that about half the airtime was taken up with ads for get-rich-quick schemes and debt consolidation... which leads me to wonder: If right-wing listeners are so hard up for cash, why do they keep voting for candidates and policies that slam their very own middle-class lives in favor of the already wealthy?

It's Not About How Much The Bullets Cost

2011-03-28T22:24:00.004-04:00

Since the President committed U.S. military forces to participation in the international effort to prevent the slaughter of rebels in Libya, much of the criticism, from all points of the political spectrum, has focused on the cost of the action, and its impact on the federal budget... and a good percentage of that discourse has been frustrating to me.

I don’t propose to take a position here for or against the military action per se — it’s not that I don’t have a position, of course; it’s just that I want to focus on one specific issue, and not distract from my own point — but I do want to take on the notion that our current budget woes are a good reason to either support or oppose the Libya involvement. I think they are not, for two reasons:

First, I may be mistaken, but I believe that by far the largest percentage of the cost estimates to date is made up of the cost of the munitions expended. To be sure, there must be some incremental cost from the logistics of moving troops and equipment around... but so far, there hasn’t really been time for much of that. And there’s also no doubt been some additional personnel costs, from reservists and National Guard troops called up, and from combat pay increments as well. But I’m pretty sure that most of the cost to date has been the cost of the “bullets” we’ve fired. I used those quotation marks because we’re not talking about actual bullets, but complex, expensive weapon systems like cruise missiles, air-to-ground missiles, and smart bombs. Unlike actual bullets, you don’t pay for these things as you use them, and you don’t run down to Cabela’s with cash in your pocket to replace them right after using them, either. These expensive weapons have long production lead times, and are (AFAIK¹) purchased in production lots that are contracted for years in advance.

So the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars these weapons represent has already been spent, years ago, at the time they were produced, and the cost of replacing them will be spent — if they are, in fact, replaced — years from now. That’s not to suggest that there’s no cost to using these weapons, of course, but the suggestion, implicit in so much of what I’ve been reading, that they compete directly with current federal spending is way too simple: If a particular missile in our inventory cost a million dollars to acquire, it does not mean that we’ll have a million dollars more in the federal coffers tomorrow if we just don’t fire that missile today. The “we could’ve spent these hundreds of millions on education and infrastructure instead” argument is... not exactly wrong, but too simplistic to be truly meaningful. And this comes from someone who’s desperately eager to see more spending on education and infrastructure.

My second objection to the cost-based criticism is more philosophical: Military action is immensely consequential in moral² terms, and to base the decision to employ deadly force — or not to, in the face of a compelling moral imperative — on mere affordability strikes me as horrific. Nations should base the use of military force on clear national interests (which, literalists and isolationists notwithstanding, often include humanitarian and multinational goals), and the choice should be made in a moral context. I don't imagine anyone would advocate that we embark on military actions simply because we can afford them, without regard to what's right; by the same token, holding back because of cost when action is morally required is also unthinkable.

There is surely an important choice to be made — and regularly revisited — regarding what share of our common resources ought to be devoted to military preparedness. But this guns versus butter debate is at the macro level and over an extended timeline. When deciding, in the immediate historical moment, whether or not to put the military force we possess to use, cost should be the least of our concerns.

¹ Personally, I have more awareness of the production cycle for durable weapon systems like fighter planes, but I believe what I say holds true for expendable munitions, too, at this level of complexity. Cruise missiles, at least, are essentially self-piloting kamikaze aircraft, not substantially less complex than many piloted craft.

² Please understand that I use moral in a strictly secular sense; nothing here should be construed as recommending any sort of religious test for military action.

How Easily We Forget

2011-03-23T19:08:00.003-04:00

This morning when I noticed the online headlines announcing Elizabeth Taylor's passing, I was too busy with work to read a celebrity obit. It took a tweet from my daughter to remind me that Taylor was more than just a much-married Hollywood star, she was a pioneering AIDS activist. The Founding International Chair of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and creator of her own personal foundation, with on the order of $50 million of personal fundraising to her credit, Taylor was one of the first celebrities to speak out about AIDS in the 80s (at nontrivial personal and professional risk)... and decades later she was still working, bringing equipment and care to the HIV/AIDS community of New Orleans in the wake of the Katrina disaster.

In the wake of a glittering, sometimes apparently tawdry and superficial life, it's easy to forget this other dimension¹... but Taylor knew her celebrity came with responsibilities, which she discharged with courage and commitment. Requiescat in pace.

¹ Of course, the execrable Fred Phelps and his so-called church hadn't forgotten. I wonder if the time hasn't come when being picketed by these Westboro thugs shouldn't be seen as a badge of honor.

Thoughts on Wrestling Girls

2011-02-23T00:08:00.006-05:00

Last week I commented on Facebook about the story of Joel Northrup, opining that while he probably thought he was being noble and moral when he chose to forfeit his shot at a likely state championship in wrestling rather than wrestle female opponent Cassy Herkelman, I thought he was "just being a sexist jerk." I got pushback from some of my Facebook friends, who said it was his choice to make, and that I was being harsh.

Well, I've been thinking about it. Of course, in the sense that nobody has the right to force a kid to wrestle if he doesn't want to, I agree that it was his choice to make. And I probably was too harsh in using the word jerk: He almost certainly intended to be acting honorably, according to the values he's been raised with. But "intentions aren't magic," and the more I think about it, the less I'm inclined to back off from calling this move sexist. Here's the thing: I believe it's poor sportsmanship, at least, to forfeit a sporting event without a truly compelling reason. Doing so disrespects the opponent and deprives her (or him, but in this case…) all the positive aspects of competing. Some of my commenters seemed to think he was the one who suffered, since she got the win… but I strongly disagree. I was never an athlete in high school, but I was involved in other sorts of interscholastic competitions, both as an individual and a team member. In my experience, what's truly important is not winning, per se, but competing. "Winning" by virtue of an opponent's default is a bitter, potentially humiliating, pill; losing after competing well, as you've trained for, is vastly preferable.

So I stand by my assertion that forfeiting without a good reason is bad sportsmanship, and the question is whether there's anything here that constitutes a good reason, and that is defensible against a charge of sexism. Northrup is quoted in several stories as being concerned about the fact wrestling is a "combat sport," and that he doesn't think it's appropriate to touch a girl in "that way." I'm guessing this really boils down to two issues: The societal taboo related to males doing violence to females, and the worry that wrestling, in particular, involves touching parts of the body generally considered private, in ways that superficially resemble sexual touching. It's easy to see how this boy might have felt discomfited by the prospect of wrestling a girl. But lots of sexist opinion comes under the heading of discomfiture; can we unpack this situation and find some non-gender driven moral imperatives that justify the forfeit?

I don't think so. First, let's take the reluctance to do "combat" against a girl. Leaving aside the progress we've made as a society toward gender equality in actual combat, it's worth remembering that wrestling¹ isn't combat, even if it mimics a form of fighting. The social taboo Northrup is responding to — essentially the admonition to not hit girls — is valid as far as it goes, but it's based primarily on the fact that human males are, broadly speaking, bigger and stronger than human females. Strip gender out of the equation, and it amounts to "pick on somebody your own size." This falls down as an excuse in this case for two independent reasons: Wrestling adheres strictly to narrow weight classes that guarantee your opponent is, for all practical purposes, somebody your own size. And, once again, wresting isn't combat: As a sport, it's a fully consensual experience, and regardless of superficial appearances, it doesn't constitute picking on anybody. If it did, that would be a good reason to abandon the sport altogether… but it's not a reason to default against a female opponent.

So that leaves the concern that wrestling a girl might feel too much like groping her sexually. Certainly a desire not to be guilty of unwanted sexual touching is admirable in a young man, but is that really what's at issue here? IMHO, wrestling is no more sex than it is combat. Incidental (or even deliberate) contact with breasts, buttocks, and genital areas isn't automatically sexual (just ask your gynecologist or mammographer²). This is one area where intent is, if not magic, at least relevant. Besides, whatever touching occurred would not have been unwanted: Herkelman entered the sport, and the tournament, voluntarily, so however she was touched (so long as it was within the normal realm of wrestling) would be entirely with her consent and, this being a high school sport, that of her parents. So it's reasonable to suggest that anything within the normal bounds of wrestling would have been neither unwanted nor sexual.

At least, not sexual from her point of view. Perhaps (and I'm admittedly speculating in what follows; Northrup has not, AFAIK, said this) the real concern is that he might have sexual feelings in the course of wrestling a girl. That seems plausible to me — I'm not so old that I can't remember what it feels like to be a high school boy — but is that… should it be… her problem? That's the logic of the burqua: Because we men can't control our lust, women must give up their freedom, self-expression, and range of activities. I reject that notion utterly; if it's his problem, it's his problem!

And if he had a problem with his ability to behave himself while wrestling a girl, he should have considered the likelihood he'd be faced with that situation, and opted out of the whole sport³. Even after pondering it for a week, it still seems to me that showing up for a tournament and then defaulting when you find out who your opponent will be is a punk move… especially when what bothers you about your opponent is her gender. In the final analysis, I can't think of any way to view Joel Northrup's treatment of Cassy Herkelman other than that he, for whatever reason, systematically treats women differently from men... and I can't think of any word for that other than sexism.

As I said at the beginning, I agree it was harsh of me to call this young man a jerk. His attitude is a product of his culture, and no doubt is in perfect accord with how his parents have raised him. But in this instance, I think his culture and his parents have failed him; he'll grow up to be a better man if he gets something other than unanimous applause for his "principled" stand.

Afterword: In checking name spellings and such before posting, I happened upon this defense of Northrup, penned by a woman who reports having played a variety of sports as a girl. After making many of the same points I have about disrespect and denial of the opportunity to compete, the blogger turns around and gives Northrup a pass, apparently because she's awed by his stalwart religious faith:

...Northrup holds a belief that obviously transcends any event or opponent. He will never wrestle a girl. According to the pastor at the Northrup family’s church, the “elevation and respect of woman” forbids any contact between the two genders in a “familiar way” — the way a contact sport demands.

I'm sorry, but how is that not a textbook description of sexism? Despite the word "respect," the "elevation" of women in a way that in fact restricts their freedom of action is, in my book, the polar opposite of admirable. I'm reminded of my mother's tales of being disappointed, in a male-dominated workplace half a century ago, that the men would hastily stop telling their racy jokes when she walked up. No matter how noble their motives, when men "elevate" women in this way, they're invariably really holding them down.

And BTW, since when is "well, that's what his church teaches" a refutation of sexism? Churches are famously promoters of sexism; couching behavior in terms of faith in no way means that behavior is not sexist.

¹ Keep in mind that we're talking about the real sport of wrestling here, not the torture porn peddled by Vince and Linda McMahon!

² For that matter, ask all the male wrestlers if touching their male opponents' buttocks and groins constitutes homosexual activity.

³ Apparently he did consider it, and said all along he wouldn't wrestle a girl, and even forfeited an earlier, pre-tournament match rather than face a girl. All this, IMHO, makes his case worse, not better: If you have a genuinely principled objection to the rules of a sport, don't play that sport! Showing up to play with your fingers crossed, hoping your principles won't get scraped, is just selfish and cowardly. I really don't understand why people are using words like "classy" and "mature" to describe this young man's behavior.

Love on the 50 Yard Line?

2011-02-09T18:38:00.005-05:00

Amid the resignation of a married Republican congressman who got caught trolling Craigslist for dates and tabloid rumors about House Speaker John Boehner, the media "sex scandal" I'm most fascinated with is the story of New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez and the 17 year old woman he may have wooed and (if only temporarily) won.

Here's the thing: I was surprised to be reminded it, but Sanchez is only 24 himself, and 17 is over the age of consent in both New York and New Jersey. It's hard to be sure what the actual facts here are, but assuming the story reported by Deadspin is accurate, it's not a sordid tale of illicit hookups, and certainly not a case of child abuse; instead, it's an arguably sweet, if peculiarly modern, story of young love. The NBC Sports ProFootballTalk website, even as it's pointing out that Sanchez has broken no law (nor, it seems, NFL or team policy), opines that Sanchez displayed "bad judgment," but why? The young woman's own story, as she originally told it to Deadspin, doesn't make him out as a creepy predator; quite the contrary, he seems to have backed off initially when she told him her age, and only resumed courting her when she assured him she was of legal age. After which he appears to have treated her decently and impressed her as a "genuine" person.

Apparently the main reason PFT thinks Sanchez showed bad judgment is that he should have known that bad behavior and media hogging by other members of the Jets family would put this story in the spotlight. Huh? Say that again? Mrs. Rex Ryan's (possible) foot fetish video ought to constrain Sanchez's love life? Sal Alosi's sideline cheating means the quarterback has to sit home alone? Seriously?

By all accounts, Mark Sanchez is a decent, well-spoken young man. And while we may wish that young women would wait 'til they're older than 17 to become sexually active, we know many do not. If this girl were having a romance with a 24 year old waiter at the local TGIFriday's, it wouldn't be a scandal in anybody's book; why does it become scandalous when her boyfriend is a college-educated millionaire instead? Because he's famous? Because other famous people have behaved badly? That doesn't seem quite right to me.

Of course, it's almost impossible to know the whole, unvarnished truth in a situation like this, and it's possible that details are yet to come that will put this story in a darker light. But the idea of a young woman in her late teens dating a young man in his early twenties does not, on its face, horrify me. I've just been listening to Joseph Ellis' First Family: Abigail & John Adams, a chronicle of one of history's most successful marriages, and I note that John began courting Abigail when she was only 17 and he more than 9 years older, and they were married when she was still shy of 20. That was then and this is now, of course, and I'm certainly not suggesting Mark Sanchez and "E.K." are any John and Abigail Adams. But don't we all know longstanding, happy couples with an age difference on the order of 7 to 9 years? Don't we all know old married folk who met the love of their life while still teens? Is his fame (and the infamy of some of his colleagues) really a good reason to deny a young man (or, for that matter, his young companion) a chance at romance?

Arizona Blues, Part 3

2011-01-11T01:39:00.004-05:00

One last bit of Pharyngula cross-posting in response to the Arizona shooting (actually, these have been responses to the responses to the shooting):

This just in: Rand Paul is still a jerk!

Actually, I recall from his appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show during the campaign that he's a pleasant, polite fellow... but his ideology is jerkish, and his comments on this shooting are no exception. First a perfunctory expression of concern for the victims, then an immediate pivot to right-wing anti-regulatory talking points:

Paul was quick to condemn the act of violence and to offer his prayers and thoughts for the shooting victims during a "Fox News Sunday" interview. That said, he argued, the shooting was an outlier that does not necessarily reflect systemic regulatory problems. [emphasis added]

...followed by a bit of remote diagnosis (and as a physician, shouldn't Paul know better?)...

"It's probably about a very sick individual and what should have been done for that person," he said.

[and later]

Paul, an ophthalmologist, went on to offer a psychological analysis of the suspect. "I looked at some of the writings of this young man," he said. "And from a medical point of view, there is a lot to suggest paranoid schizophrenia, that this man was a really sick individual." [again, my emphasis]

SRSLY? Frist much??

And, of course, what would a right-wing response to a shooting be without that hoariest of anti-gun-control cliches?

"But the weapons don't kill people. It's the individual that killed these people."

Say, edit that just a bit, and it'd make a great bumper sticker, wouldn't it? <sigh>

Arizona Blues, Part 2

2011-01-10T23:43:00.003-05:00

Another post cribbed from my comments at Pharyngula:

Hmmm... I want to comment on some of the conversations I've seen around the web about violent imagery:

I have problems with the many "Democrats do it too" and "everybody does it" rejoinders I've heard, on a couple counts —

First, many of these arguments are based on the preponderance of military metaphors and similes in ads, speeches, and political commentary, but I think there's a material difference between standard military imagery and the very particular, personal, and specifically gun-oriented rhetoric we've been seeing from the right recently. We have a long tradition of using war and military operations metaphorically in English, not only to describe political campaigns¹, but in all walks of life. Frequently these metaphors get mashed up with sports metaphors (many of which are themselves military metaphors). Perhaps the pervasive use of military metaphors doesn't say anything too complimentary about our culture, but it's hard to argue that such commonplace, everyday usages amount to incitement: Nobody's going to shoot up a crowd because Chuck Todd says Democrats are focusing on battleground states, where they're raising armies of volunteers, using these troops (among whom I myself have occasionally been a footsoldier) in tactical assaults on key swing districts. Nor will Rachel Maddow saying that House Republicans "have chosen Health Care repeal as the hill they want to die on" likely drive the gunmen into the streets. These bits of common, well accepted figurative language are not the same as the much more indivdualized rhetoric we've observed recently, which names names, implicitly suggests specific sorts of assaults on specific people, and features not the broad conglomerative language of armies, but the particularized language of individual hunters, killers, and their very personal weapons. Even the word targeted has a very different resonance when it's used in a strategic analysis of a campaign than when it's paired with a gunsight image and the name of a targeted individual. Context matters!

And that's my second objection: Many of these "y'all do it, too" arguments neglect context. At the surface level first: I've seen clips of a Democratic campaign spot that briefly uses what many claim is a gunsight superimposed over the opponent's photograph... but the context (the ad copy, the other images in the ad, the theme of the ad) makes it abundantly clear that it's really intended to be a focusing reticle on a surveillance camera, a visual representation of the Justice Department investigation the ad references. Even though some may think it looks like a gunsight, a gunsight would be a total non sequitur in this context. Conversely, many try to exonerate Sarah Palin's website target map by claiming the symbols there aren't really gunsights but surveyors' map symbols... and it may, in fact, be true that that's what those specific markers were published as. But in the context of Palin's website, and the general themes of her discourse, it's clear they were intended to be seen as gunsights. They were understood as gunsight symbols at the time (including, chillingly, by Rep. Giffords herself), and AFAIK neither Palin nor any of her associates disavowed that interpretation (though they may have by now, IMHO disingenuously if so, in the wake of the shootings). Surveyors' marks in that context would've been as much a non sequitur as a gunsight would've been in the previous example.

But I'm not naive enough to assume that people on "my side" of the political aisle are all innocent, and I'm sure some Democrats have crossed the line into inappropriately violent campaign rhetoric. But here again, context matters: A Democrat whose ads seemed to be soliciting violence against an opponent would be an outlier (and, I hope, would be condemned, or at least corrected, by his/her fellow Democrats), because there has been no general tendency on the left² to promote gun culture or images of personal violence as part of its electoral strategy. There has been such a tendency on the right³: There has not been just one appeal to "Second Amendment solutions" or "the blood of patriots and tyrants," nor just one candidate featured in ads with a gun in his hands, nor just one campaign event involving shooting, nor just one person showing up at a rally with a gun strapped to his leg. Instead, gun rights, gun ownership, and the relevance of guns to political action have been broad themes of political discourse on the right.

And in that context, putting a gunsight on a map or exhorting your followers to "take out" your opponent is vastly more toxic and risky than the same communications would be without such a violence-oriented rhetorical backdrop.

More censorhip is not — must not be — the answer. Instead, the answer must be for all of us to be more conscious of the rhetorical context our own metaphors create, to be more openly critical (and consistently so) of our fellows who cross the line, and, as voters, to absolutely stop rewarding this sort of campaigning with our votes. I think that's what Keith Olbermann was getting at in his special commentary Saturday, and many others have echoed.

I said I wasn't naive about my fellow Democrats; I am naive enough to hope this horrific tragedy will serve as a wakeup call. I don't want political discourse that's more "civil," in the sense of backing down from an honest contest of ideas and ideologies, but I do want a political discourse that's less reliant (preferably not at all) on images of personal violence. It may be that only crazy people would act on those violent images, but even if that's so, it's incumbent upon the vast majority of us who aren't crazy to stop giving them ideas.

¹ As an aside, while I haven't looked up its etymology, I suspect the word campaign itself, in its political context, is a military metaphor.

² Yes, yes, I know what passes for the left in the U.S. isn't so leftish by international standards.

³ No, I don't mean to be tarring all Republicans with this assertion. I imagine moderate Republicans (if they're not extinct in the wild) and even mainstream conservative Republicans are chagrined by the naked appeal to violence adopted by many of their more radical colleagues.

Reverse Blogwhoring: Arizona Blues, Part 1

2011-01-10T23:16:00.007-05:00

I've been spending a lot of time on Pharyngula since the shootings in Arizona Saturday, and I thought I might post versions of a couple of my longer comments there as blog posts here... which is a turnaround on the usual blogwhoring practice of commenting at some other blog for no reason other than to redirect traffic to your own. So here's the first comment, in response to another commenter who had objected to a plan from Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA) to criminalize "language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a Member of Congress or federal official," in part on the grounds that it was cowardly of a congressman to attempt to safeguard himself and his federal colleagues when others had been injured and killed. I said...

I agree that Brady's proposal may be wrongheaded — credible threats of violence against public officials are (AFAIK) already illegal, and Brady's proposed change would put protected political speech at risk of prior restraint on the basis of what is effectively subjective literary analysis — but to suggest his motivation for making it is cowardly personal self-protection is, you'll pardon me for saying so, foolish on your part.

The security of our elected representatives is an important issue not because they're too cowardly to face the risk, but because they're our elected representatives! They deserve extra protection under the law not because they're more valuable as individuals than "regular people," but because, in addition to their value as individuals, they represent the rest of us. When the gunman fired a bullet into the brain of Gabby Giffords, he was not only attacking a daughter, a wife, a sister-in-law, a respected colleague, and no doubt a friend to legions; he was also attacking every citizen in her district by proxy, and attacking the very concept of representative government¹. When you target a public figure for violence, you're doing violence not only to a person, but also to everything the office that person holds stands for... and thus to everyone that office represents.

The tragic price paid by others in that crowd should make us more determined, rather than less, to stand up for the personal inviolability of those individuals willing to take on the grave responsibility of public service.

My own congressman is also a friend; in fact, I was talking to him at a local event Saturday morning, perhaps at the time this was happening in Arizona. When I got home and saw this news, my blood ran cold. I don't need to think my congressman is a coward — in fact, he is the polar opposite of that — to be desperately concerned for his safety. If some deranged right-wing gun nut comes for him at a public event, there's a chance I'll be there, and at risk... but it's certain he'll be there. I need him to stay safe, and we all need an environment in which it's safe for our leaders to lead.

¹ Please note: I'm not making wild suppositions about his motivations here; I'm making observations about the impact of his actual acts.

My Letter to Senator Mark Warner

2010-11-10T18:51:00.003-05:00

It's been a long time since I've posted here, and I really wasn't sure I'd ever return to this blog, but I had something I wanted to get off my chest, and it didn't fit in my newer foodie blog: Yesterday I noticed a Huffington Post story in which Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is quoted as equating the "super left" of the Democratic Party and the "MoveOn.org crowd" with the extremists of the Tea Party movement.

As it happens, Sen. Warner spent part of his young life in my home town of Vernon, CT, and graduated from the local high school. I've met him on a couple occasions at fundraisers for Vernon resident, Congressman Joe Courtney, and I cheered as loudly as anyone when Warner was elected to the Senate in 2008, replacing the retiring Republican John Warner (no relation). I knew he was more conservative than I am, and that Virginia is more conservative than Connecticut, but his attack on Democratic progressives saddened me, and I felt I had to respond. Here is the text of the letter I just posted to his Senate website:

Dear Senator Warner:

I am not a Virginia constituent, but I am a proud resident of your old home town of Vernon, Connecticut. I’ve met you on a couple occasions when you’ve been gracious enough to lend your presence to fundraisers for my congressman, Joe Courtney, and I had a brief friendly chat with your father at the polls this year on primary day. Vernon and Rockville High School are proud to call you our own.

So it was with more than a little dismay that I read your recent comments equating the “super left” of the Democratic Party and the “MoveOn crowd” with the Tea Party movement on the right. Obviously I don’t have the inside knowledge you do, but to a relatively well informed, engaged layperson like myself, this comparison smacks of the very same sort of false equivalency that has folks claiming Rachel Maddow is a mirror image of Glenn Beck, and that leads the media to treat paranoia about “death panels” and birth certificates (or, more recently, assertions that the president is spending $200 million per day to travel to India) as if they were legitimate news stories, on the same level as stories based on actual facts.

I recognize that both your state and you personally are relatively conservative, and there are surely factions of the Democratic Party that are well to your left. I don’t think MoveOn is really as far to the left, ideologically, as the Tea Party seems to be to the right, but even if we stipulate that it is, there’s a world of difference between rational, principled advocacy of an ideological position, on the one hand, and the sort of inchoate rage and fact-free fearmongering I have personally witnessed from the Tea Party.

Last summer I attended several of Congressman Courtney’s Town Hall meetings on the topic of health care reform, at which the crowds were dominated by self-identified Tea Party activists. I’m quite sure you would have been shocked to see the rage and personal insult directed at your friend Joe Courtney, who is as thoughtful and principled a man as I have yet met in public life. These remain the only political events I’ve ever attended at which I have been nervous about my physical safety; these crowds were much ruder – and much less rational or well informed – than anything I’ve ever witnessed on the left… including several passionate anti-war rallies hosted by MoveOn and similar groups during the Bush administration. And based on what we witnessed during the run-up to the recently completed elections, the Tea Party has gotten worse rather than better since those angry summer days.

Clearly you have philosophical differences with some Democrats to your left (including, no doubt, me), and more power to you for speaking out. But please refrain from making sweeping equations between our party’s left and the craziest elements of the American right; such comments can’t possibly add anything useful to our already severely challenged political discourse.

Thank you for your attention…

I actually agree with Sen. Warner that extremism in our political discourse can be toxic, but I think we far too frequently mistake strong ideological differences with extremism, and we too quickly judge the worth of ideas by their distance from the ideological center rather than by their rationality, humanity, and basis in fact.

No doubt there are thoughtful people in the Tea Party movement, but that doesn't mean it and MoveOn (for example) are comparable: The most "extreme" progressives and liberals I know are by no stretch of the imagination equivalent to the hateful, rude, and stubbornly ignorant people I have personally met and experienced among self-proclaimed Tea Partiers. I respect Sen. Warner's opinion, but there really aren't always two equal sides to every contest.

Call Your Representatives To Support Healthcare

2010-03-14T14:36:00.002-04:00

I've been meaning to resuscitate this blog for a while, now, and as before, it's a political imperative that's gotten me off the dime. This coming week, the U.S. House of Representatives may finally take the crucial step in getting healthcare reform passed. While you may have already registered your support with your members of Congress, it's important that you do so again: The opponents of reform are more active and vocal than ever, and your representatives need to know not only what your opinion is, but that their constituents have their backs on this. It's personal for me, but it's also an important step forward in this nation's public policy.

At the risk of repeating myself a bit, here's the text of an e-mail I've just sent to my local political friends and associates:

It looks like the U.S. House of Representatives may take the crucial votes on passing healthcare reform sometime in the coming week. I've just called Joe Courtney's district office in Enfield (860-741-6011) to register my support for passage, and I'm writing to urge you all to do the same.

Many, if not most, of you know Joe and have spoken to him on this issue, but while Joe already knows where we stand (and we know where he does), he's mentioned to me in the past that numbers of phone calls, letters, and e-mails -- for and against -- matter, because his office gets requests for the tallies. So even though this is something that ought to "go without saying," it's important that we call and actually say it. And please pass this reminder along to your other friends within the 2nd CD, post it to your Facebook page or blog, or do whatever else you can to get the word out. It's important that our representatives hear from all of us.

You can call the Enfield office any time -- no need to wait for business hours -- and leave a voicemail. And while the action this coming week will be in the House, it wouldn't be a bad idea to also call our senators (Sen. Dodd's CT office phone number is 860-258-6940 and Sen. Lieberman's is 860-549-8463), and to remind the White House that it's crucial the President continue to lead on this issue.

Healthcare reform is a vital issue for all Americans; we need to be sure the voices of the naysayers don't drown ours out.

If you're reading this from somewhere other than the 2nd Congressional District of Connecticut, here's a tool to help you contact your own congressperson and senators. Please do it today!

My Letter to the President

2010-01-27T01:52:00.003-05:00

Well, I've been meaning to reanimate this blog (again), and today's news that Barack Obama plans to announce a multiyear freeze on much of the discretionary federal budget has sufficiently pissed me off to finally prompt a new entry. Actually, it prompted me to write a letter to the White House, already delivered through the online system, with a signed paper copy going in Wednesday's mail. Rather than reinvent the wheel, let me just tell you what I told the president:

Dear Mr. President:

My name is Bill Dauphin, and I’m proud to be your constituent and your supporter. You called the nation to hope, and I responded with time and treasure, phonebanking and canvassing for you in the Hartford, Connecticut, area during both the primary and general election campaigns. When I stood on the Mall, just over a year ago, and watched you sworn into office, it was one of the proudest moments of my nearly 50 years of life.

In today’s news comes word that you plan to announce a long-term freeze on discretionary nondefense federal spending. As I write this, of course, you have not yet given your State of the Union Address or announced the details of your proposal; perhaps the final plan will not terrify and disappoint me as much as what I have heard today does. But for today, I am both disappointed and terrified: At a time when we desperately need a robust government, acting in meaningful and sustained ways to reform our healthcare system, create new jobs, develop new green energy technologies, address climate change, rebuild our infrastructure, reform public education, end our wars and bring our troops home, and rebuild the shattered trust of the world… at a time when we so urgently need to move forward on all of that, an a priori promise to freeze the budget seems instead like a retreat into the pernicious Reagan-era falsehood that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

I beg you, sir: don’t give in. I know the American people seem angry, but surely you realize much of that anger is born of manufactured fear, the result of deliberate and cynical manipulation on the part of the enemies of progress. You must not let your policies mirror the people’s fear: This is a moment instead for leadership. Where federal programs are truly ineffective or wasteful, by all means you must cut them. But you also know that much of what the government does, it does better, and more efficiently, than the private sector can, and much more of what government does is that which the free market would never provide at any price. To accomplish the things you dared us all to hope for will require investment, not parsimony. Raise taxes if you must – raise my taxes – but do not abandon our nation’s future, my daughter’s future, for the sake of a superficial veneer of “fiscal responsibility” and a brief moment of political calm.

You called your book The Audacity of Hope. Well, we’ve had the hope; it’s time for the audacity.

As I say in the letter, maybe it'll all look better after the big speech... but frankly, I ain't waitin' underwater. For all that some have been frustrated with him, Obama represents the best combination of intelligence, progressive ideals, and political pragmatism we've had since the 60s; if he can't outwit, outlast, or outplay the lies and fearmongering of the nattering antigoverenment mob, we are well and truly hosed.

Anybody know if they sell a Rosetta Stone program for New Zealandish?

Oh, No You Don't

2009-03-16T00:45:00.002-04:00

I know lots of folks on the left are somewhere between disappointed in and royally pissed off at Chris Dodd, but we Democrats here in the 2nd CD of Connecticut worked too hard, too recently, to get rid of Rob Simmons to let this happen.

My first real active involvement in politics began in 2006, and one of the key elements in waking me up was a (then) high school kid who put up a blog called Bye Bye, Rob, devoted to helping Joe Courtney take Simmons' place in the House. Having successfully said bye bye, I'm not inclined to say howdy to Simmons in 2010.

This is just the beginning, of course, but unless someone can show me a Democrat who can beat Dodd, and beat Simmons, and deliver more for progressives than Dodd has over the years, I know who I'll be supporting for Senate in 2010.

First Drugs, Now Sex; Can Rock and Roll Be Far Behind?

2009-03-03T18:54:00.002-05:00

After yesterday's revelation that federal agents would no longer raid medical marijuana distributors that are operating legally under state law, now comes word that talks have begun on ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy regarding gays in the military.

It's like I said: Quietly, without fanfare, we're seeing the basic attitudes of our government change for the better. Republicans may fear an activist government; I cheer one that increasingly treats me like an adult.

Is It Polite To Say "No Shit, Sherlock!" to the SecDef?

2009-03-02T22:29:00.002-05:00

Because that's the only response I can think of to this headline:

Gates: Obama is ‘more analytical’ than Bush.

Nice to have a master of understatement leading our forces, eh? Actually, now that I think about it, it is nice to have a master of understatement leading our forces.

Not With a Bong, But a Whimper

2009-03-02T20:43:00.003-05:00

The Michael Phelps/bong hit story broke during my recent blogging interregnum, so I haven't had a chance to favor you with my thoughts on the matter. I don't actually have a dog in this fight: I don't smoke pot, and with the exception of a tiny handful of furtive, youthful experiments, I never have. That said, I thought all the hoohaw over the picture of Phelps with a bong was ridiculous.

Understand: Pot is not a performance-enhancing drug (maybe for archers or biathletes, but not swimmers!), nor (by all accounts) is it banned by FINA outside of competition... so there was no issue of "cheating," a la the steroid and human growth hormone revelations in baseball or the blood doping and erythropoietin (EPO) scandals in cycling. Further, while I doubt anybody would claim with a straight face that the infamous picture doesn't show Phelps actually smoking pot, it certainly doesn't constitute clear evidence that he was: There's no way to prove, from the photo alone, that there was pot (or anything, for that matter) in the bong. So it's not surprising that authorities declined to prosecute him.

In fact, it's shocking that they would even think about it: Under South Carolina law, possession of an ounce or less is a misdemeanor. I would never argue that Phelps should get special favors because of his fame, but he shouldn't be harassed because of it, either... and when was the last time you heard of a "regular person" being prosecuted because a photo of him possibly committing a simple misdemeanor showed up on teh intertoobz months after the fact? Let's be serious, shall we?

Ahh, but the Richland Country sheriff apparently has a rep to maintain as a Miami Vice-style crusader against "drug crime." Not for nothin', but haven't we had about enough of law enforcement from the Carolinas trying to make a name for itself on the backs of prominent athletes? And isn't calling this a "drug crime" a bit hyperbolic anyway? What Phelps did was partake of a mild intoxicant while enjoying himself at a party. If it had been a beer or a glass of wine (or a Sardonic Buddha), nobody would've thought a thing of it. And if we had halfway rational laws on this point, the law would treat it just as if it were a beer or a glass of wine.

Well maybe, just maybe, we're getting a little more rational. In the wake of the Phelps story, Rob Kall of the Huffington Post suggested that it might hint at a turning point in drug policy; today, relatively quietly amid the continuing cacophony of economic woes and the gathering budget battle, comes word that the federal government will no longer raid distributors of medical marijuana in states where it is legal. It's not legalization, nor is it exactly an earthshattering shift in policy... but I think it represents a shift in attitude, a move away from the stern-daddy disapproval of conservative rule, that will eventually lead to liberalization of social policy on many fronts. Every journey begins with but a single step, after all.

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, "this is the way a policy ends."

Funny How Time Slips Away

2009-03-01T01:50:00.002-05:00

I really don't have much to say about the passing of Paul Harvey... but it was a shock, when I heard the news tonight, to realize how long it's been since I last actually heard that iconic voice. I still hear it in my head, and have often imitated it, when promising to tell someone the rest... of the story.

Calhoun Agonistes

2009-02-28T23:09:00.002-05:00

Today the UConn men's basketball team won its last home game of the regular season, ensuring that it will be ranked No.1 in the next national rankings and leaving only the season's final game between the team and its 11th Big East championship. Three seniors were honored, and a banner was unfurled celebrating Jim Calhoun's 800th career victory as an NCAA Division I head coach, achieved in the previous game at Marquette.

Calhoun, already enshrined in basketball's Hall of Fame, is only the 7th men's basketball coach in NCAA history to reach the 800 wins milestone. He's won 2 national championships at UConn, and this year's team, which Calhoun has said he loves coaching, appears well positioned to make a serious run at another title. So everything in Jim Calhoun's life must be just great, right?

Not so much.

You see, a week ago, at a postgame press conference, Calhoun had a testy exchange with local blogger, photojournalist, and political activist Ken Krayeske, who asked Calhoun how much of his $1.6 million state salary he planned to give back to help ease Connecticut's budget crisis. "Not one dime" was Calhoun's emphatic response, and the circus was on. A week later we've heard from everyone and his half-brother, up to and including members of the Connecticut legislature and even our Grandma Governor herself... and it doesn't look like the story is going away any time soon.

So here are my thoughts, for whatever they're worth:

Even before this incident I knew, from various news coverage and sports columnists, that Calhoun had the potential to, on occasion, Not Be a Very Nice Man™. But if you only listened to the reactions, and didn't see the video, you'd think he'd thrown a Bobby Knight-style tantrum. In fact, he doesn't say anything obscene or abusive or threatening; he doesn't throw anything or make any threatening gestures or leave the podium; and while he raises his voice, it would hardly qualify (at least on the video I've seen) as screaming or even really yelling. He gives a combative, rude answer to what was frankly a combative, rude question; as Hartford Courant "On the Fly" sports columnist Don Amore said in Friday's paper, "Reporters do get yelled at once in a while." (Print only, apparently; sorry for the lack of link.) It's part of the job.

There may be a serious conversation to be had about why we pay coaches so much money in this society, but ambushing Calhoun in public about his salary probably hasn't started that conversation, or really shed any light on the underlying issue, as the Courant's Jeff Jacobs (no Calhoun lapdog) pointed out recently. $1.6 million in salary (and much more in ancillary income) may seem like a lot of money for teaching kids to play ball, but by the standards of his profession, Calhoun is not overpaid... especially when you consider he's arguably one of the 7 best ever to do what he does.

It bothers me to single out folks and ask them to give back money they've legitimately earned just because they earned it working for the public. It seems reasonable when we're talking about highly paid public employees like Calhoun, who could seem to spare a dime or two... but it's all too easy to apply the same logic to rank-and-file public employees, who are already underpaid and underappreciated even in the best of times. Indeed, by some accounts, it was Krayeske's concern over proposed cuts to lower-level state employees. I salute that concern, but I fear that telling Calhoun "your money comes from the state, and the state needs it back" risks setting a precedent that will ultimately harm all public employees, rather than helping the less fortunate ones.

More broadly, it doesn't strike me as fair to single out individuals for systemic social problems. I'm a progressive: I support more progressive taxation, and I believe that the huge disparity between the poorest and wealthiest among us is a problem that urgency requires solutions. But it requires systemic solutions; just singling out wealthy individuals for demonization takes us farther from, not closer to, sustainable answers to this issue.

Finally, many of us think the UConn basketball program is a good investment. Not only does it create countless jobs far beyond the borders of the Storrs campus, but it makes countless Connecticut citizens happy. Not just the coaches and players, and the players' fellow students, but also people like me, who have no personal connection to the university but cheer its teams as our own. At UConn, due in large part to the personal efforts of Jim Calhoun and his fellow Hall of Famer, women's coach Geno Auriemma, basketball is a source of pride throughout the state. It's easy to say that times are hard, and some luxuries need to be discarded... but its just as true that in hard times, people need even more desperately to have things to cheer for, and to help them stave off the despair they can too easily fall into. Entertainment — including sports — has a long history of helping see us through dark times; we should remember that when we're tempted to demonize it as wasteful or frivolous.

Zounds!

2009-02-28T22:47:00.002-05:00

Wow. Get a little busy at work, have a couple weeks of inexplicable sore neck, and somehow, before you know it, your $100 tennis racket needs to be restrung. And I haven't just been neglecting this blog, I've also been ignoring my Facebook page and commenting less than usual at Pharyngula. The truth is, I just haven't been spending much time at my home keyboard; the scary thing is how quickly a temporary lull can turn into weeks.

It's not that I haven't had things to say; I've just lacked the energy, or maybe the presence of mind, to say them. Starting this evening, I'm going to try and turn that around. More ~~later~~soon.

A Bit Early for Cherry Blossoms

2009-01-29T02:21:00.005-05:00

A while back I mentioned that I was interested in experimenting with a martini-like cocktail using kirschwasser in place of the dry vermouth.

A couple days ago, I gave it a whirl. Starting with the extra-dry (8-to-1) martini recipe from Mr. Boston Platinum, I simply replaced the 1/4 oz of vermouth with an equal quantity of kirsch, and then added a dash of orange bitters, per the classic original martini recipe described in the guide's introduction. In this first try, the cherry flavor of the kirsch was virtually undetectable, so I tried again, doubling the amount of kirsch and leaving everything else the same.

Honestly, this drink still tastes mostly like gin (I used Hendricks), but that's the way of all martinis, isn't it (and hardly a bad thing, I might add)? It does have a somewhat brighter flavor than a martini made with vermouth; while I wouldn't encourage anyone to run out and buy kirsch for this purpose, it might make an amusing variation if you have some at hand:

Martini Blossom

2 oz gin
1/2 oz kirschwasser
dash orange bitters
garnish w/twist of lime

BTW, if you don't already have orange bitters in your liquor cabinet, it can be hard to find in stores, but you can buy it online.

A President I Can Get Behind

2009-01-28T16:14:00.004-05:00

Noted without comment:

Last Dance in DC

2009-01-28T01:33:00.004-05:00

I realize the shelf-life of "what I did at the inauguration" posts is just about expired, but I did promise I'd post my pictures from Monday. I started out by volunteering at the MLK Day of Service event at RFK Stadium, assembling care packages for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (does anyone else recall that "CARE package" used to mean something more specific?). Also helping us pack goodie bags were (during my shift) incoming Attorney General Eric Holder, incoming VA Secretary Gen. Eric Shinseki, incoming Homeland Security Secretary Gov. Janet Napolitano, and Senator Chris Dodd (with his kids). Plus, I gather, my group just missed seeing Michelle Obama. As far as I could see, these worthies were actually taking turns working; not just gladhanding and talking to the press.

After my shift was up, I headed over to the Cannon House Office Building to visit the office of Joe Courtney. I didn't have tickets to pick up, but I thought it would be fun to see the office, and to say hello to some Courtney staffers I'd met in the course of a couple campaigns (including John Hollay, the first person I met who knew not only that Obama would be president someday, but that 2008 would be the time). I should've thought harder about this: It turned out that the very many people who did have inauguration tickets to pick up accounted for lines, at each of the public entrances, stretching halfway around the building. I decided it would be the better part of valor to leave the congressional offices to those with actual business there.

So I wandered over to the Capitol, to look at the preparations underway for Tuesday's ceremony, and then down the Mall, checking out street vendors' wares (don't let anyone tell you Obama is bad for entrepreneurship!) and stopping in to visit several museums. The U.S. Botanic Garden was a particularly welcome island of warmth on a frigid day, and I also stopped in at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (as it turned out, my spot on the Mall Tuesday would be adjacent to the Hirshhorn). And, of course, the space cadet in me finds it impossible to visit DC without at least poking my nose into the National Air & Space Museum.

Frozen but well satisfied, I headed back to the Metro, and out to the friends I was staying with in Virginia. As for Tuesday's event, until I'm able to upload my handful of cellphone images, all I can offer are my handsome commemorative tickets from the very excellent Virginia Railway Express commuter train. VRE is selling the leftover tickets to collectors, but mine are legitimately "game used":

The Department of Unintended Truth

2009-01-27T17:50:00.003-05:00

Is is just me, or does the masthead/logo for Sarah Palin's new political action committee betray her true intention: to blow an Alaska-sized hole in the country:

Jus' sayin'...

(h/t HuffPo)

Has It Really Been a Week?

2009-01-27T00:15:00.004-05:00

OK, I stupidly lost most of my pictures from DC, and the ones I managed to salvage weren't great, but I've finally got what I do have sorted out. Here I am on Sunday, at the We Are One event at the Lincoln Memorial (click here to go to my album from Sunday):

And if my bad photos aren't enough, here's my bad, handheld, movie-clip video of a wonderful moment from Sunday's concert:

Oh, and by the way, in case you missed it amid all the excitement about Tuesday's swearing in, the (then) President-elect gave a great speech on Sunday:

As I noted, I've lost all my pictures from Tuesday's event (except for a few in my cellphone, if I can ever figure out how to download them), but I did get some from my wandering around town on Monday. I'll post those tomorrow.

My Letter to the White House

2009-01-23T17:49:00.004-05:00

PZ Myers, Cephalopod Overlord of Pharyngula, noticed a certain lightness of being in the air yesterday, and I couldn't agree more.

In fact, I was moved — for the first time in my life — to actually write a letter to a sitting president:

Mr. President: I want to thank you for moving quickly on closing Guantanamo and CIA black sites, on lifting the global gag order and endorsing stem cell research, and on committing your administration to transparency and openness. I knew these were your values and goals when I was knocking on doors and making phonecalls, but it's gratifying to see them so decisively reaffirmed in your first days in office. I know there will inevitably be setbacks, but I look forward to great things ahead.

I could've gone on at greater, more effusive length (no big surprise to those who know me), but the contact form at the White House website has a 500 character limit.

Oh, well... suffice it to say that Obama's first 50-some hours in office show him to be a man who knows there's work to be done.

An Epic Celebration... and an EPIC FAIL!

2009-01-23T00:43:00.006-05:00

The absence of posts for almost a week isn't a sign that I've fallen back into my previous bloglazy habits, it's just that I've been ramblin'. I traveled to our nation's capitol for the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama II as the 44th President of the United States (FSM, that sounds great!). The whole thing was wonderful, from the Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial to the inaugural ceremony itself.

Now for the EPIC FAIL part: I'd post pictures, but somehow I managed to either hash or accidentally delete about half of my digital photos, including all of what I shot on inauguration day. Of what's left, about half are still stuck in the camera (don't ask how electrons can get stuck, either... just know that I can see them on the camera's screen, but I can't get them to my computer). I am, as they say,"working the problem," and I'll have some pictures to post soon, I hope. In the meantime, here's a transcendent (and unexpected) moment from Sunday:

...and another moment of blinding beauty from Tuesday:

Watch Yo-Yo Ma's face as he plays: The joy you see there is some hint at what I was feeling, standing proudly with my fellow citizens at the third Jumbo-Tron back from the platform.

More later...

Update, 5:33 pm: Apparently the quartet employed a prerecorded hedge against the cold. Doesn't diminish my admiration at all: They were really playing, and what we in the crowd heard was really them... even if it was an earlier "take."

I Won't Be Doing Field Research... I Promise!

2009-01-17T03:27:00.002-05:00

I'm getting ready for my trip to Washington, DC, to party like it's 2009, so imagine my bemusement when I saw this story in the Huffington Post!

Establishing a Prostitution-Free Zone (PFZ) strikes me as somewhat strange in a city (and nation) where prostitution is already illegal. Are they saying that in the Zone it's "not only merely illegal; it's really most sincerely illegal"? Will they set up Prostitution Benignly Neglected Zones (PBNZs) in other parts of the city, far from the tremulous gaze of the gathered multitude?

Enquiring minds want to know!

Ahh, but this enquiring mind intends to stay out of trouble. I expect to post plenty of interesting tales and pictures when I return, but none of them will be about this topic. Honest. ;^)

Have A Cocktail!

2009-01-14T02:40:00.004-05:00

I may have mentioned it here before, but my devotion to Air America's Rachel Maddow Show has driven me to drink!

Actually, it's just that Rachel is a cocktail enthusiast... and since I've been listening to her, I've become one, too. Last year I got a couple bartender's guides for Christmas, and this year my daughter gave me a cool cocktail chemistry set.

So I figured it was time to go into the lab and cook something up. Flipping through my books, I hit upon a drink called Everybody's Irish, made with Irish whiskey, green creme de menthe, and green Chartreuse. It was a good drink but the creme de menthe made it too sweet for my taste (ironically, since I love mint, and it was the creme de menthe that initially drew me to the recipe), so I tried a version replacing the creme de menthe with Zen green tea liqueur, which tasted much better.

That version, which I called an Irish Buddha, turned out to be a transitional form, though: No sooner had I finished the first one than I started to think it might be even better if I made it with rye (I like Michter's Single Barrel), and finally the Sardonic Buddha was born:

2 oz Rye Whiskey
2 tsp Zen Green Tea Liqueur
1 tsp Green Chartreuse

The mossy green color of the final drink may take some getting used to, but the earthy rye blends exceedingly well with the green tea liqueur, and the herbal Chartreuse adds just the right amount of complexity and bite. I didn't think the green olive garnish specified in the original Everybody's Irish recipe would match, so I omit it. I think the right garnish will turn out to be a bit of sushi-style pickled ginger, but I haven't had a chance to try that yet.

Enjoy!

Next Up: I had the kirschwasser out over the holidays, because we were making fondue... and the odd thought hit me of trying some sort of martini, using kirsch in place of vermouth. It might be horrible, but if it turns out OK, you'll read about it here.

Who Says Government Can't Get Anything Right?

2009-01-12T19:48:00.006-05:00

I'm planning to travel to Washington, DC, for the inauguration, and I've been getting my travel ducks in a row. In the process of researching Metro schedules and costs, I discovered that they're selling commemorative farecards. Well, I fired off an online order, somewhat worried that it wouldn't reach me before I had to leave, but thinking it would be a nice souvenir in any case. This was late Thursday evening.

Well, my card...
...arrived in Saturday's mail! I confess to being flabbergasted that the order was filled so quickly. OK, so a metropolitan transit authority is only quasi-governmental, but still, you gotta be at least a little bit impressed, no?

In other inauguration-trip news.... I'm planning to travel on Sunday, and I had been debating with myself over whether it was worth trying to get there in time for the free Sunday evening kickoff event at the Lincoln Memorial. Well, if the entertainment roster hadn't already made up my mind for me, I think this would have: I had tired of the kerfuffle over Rick Warren's participation in the swearing in, but surely a gay Episcopal bishop is as close to a Warren antidote as you can get!

A Reason To Spend Thursday Evening Bowling

2009-01-12T18:37:00.002-05:00

This is about as far as I can imagine from being Must See TV! I can only wonder whether the networks will give this lamest of lame ducks the time he requests. If this were The West Wing, probably not, but in the real world I suspect they'll acquiesce out of "respect for the office"... as if its current occupant had shown any!

Normally a president's farewell address is something I wouldn't miss, but in this case I hope someone will fill me in if he happens to say something interesting. Unless he's promising to fly directly to the Hague to turn himself in, I don't want to hear it.

Welcome to My $100 Tennis Racket

2009-01-12T01:53:00.005-05:00

OK, it's my main New Year's resolution to resurrected this blog (again), and keep it alive this time. To that end, I'm revisiting a little mind trick I played on myself when I was much younger.

As a college student, I took up tennis... but with one thing and another, I found I was rarely making time to actually play. I didn't want to give up — not only did I enjoy the game, but I needed the exercise it provided — but willpower alone didn't seem to be driving me to the court. So I bribed myself: I went out and purchased a $100 racket (at a time when that was a huge sum for me), knowing that I wouldn't be able to ignore that level of (to lean on an overworked phrase) skin in the game.

And it worked, at least for a while: For several years (and through a couple additional, better rackets), I continued to play tennis.

So recently, I've announced to my Facebook friends, and to the commenter community at Pharyngula, that I'm back in business. Of course, unlike with the tennis racket, it doesn't cost me any money to invite people here to read my plastic dimestore pearls of wisdom, but it will cost me a nontrivial portion of my self-respect if I fail to hold up my end of the bargain.

So maybe this time I'm blackmailing myself instead of bribing. Either way, welcome, one and all. I don't promise to post several times a day like the big-deal bloggers (I do have a day job, after all), but I'm going to shoot for 4 to 5 updates per week, and we'll see how it goes from there. In the coming days, I'm going to review and update my links, and see what else I can do to dress the place up.

Enjoy!

Things That Make You Wonder Why

2009-01-11T02:23:00.006-05:00

There's absolutely nothing surprising about this story of a conservative effort to overturn perfectly reasonable and — from any reasonable point of view — inoffensive provision of Gainesville, Florida's, antidiscrimination ordinance (h/t HuffPo). The fact that there's nothing surprising about it is what makes it so damn depressing.

Being reminded that the world is full of people who would rather punish difference than understand it or have compassion for it is one of those thing that always shocks me, even though it no longer ever surprises me. I'm broadly hopeful about the future these days, but it makes me sad to be reminded that there are still so many of my neighbors who are so unneighborly.

Just what's so terrible about allowing public restroom choice for transgendered citizens? Well, apparently it's very scary:

"Cain Davis, chairman of Citizens for Good Public Policy, said the issue is about regulating a "government gone wild" and ensuring public safety, charging that sexual predators could now simply enter a women's restroom claiming to be a transgender individual.

"We know when men go into women's restrooms, bad things can happen," Davis said.

Leaving aside the chilling fact that Davis apparently thinks taking away rights from strangers who've done no harm counts as Good Public Policy, that last statement is bizarre. Of course, when traditionally gendered men go into women's restrooms, they're probably there specifically with "bad things" in mind (at least if they've gone in there on purpose)... but when transgendered people go into whatever restroom best fits their identity, they're probably there just to pee!

Not for nothin', but aren't all the Bad Things™ that might happen in a public restroom illegal in their own right, regardless of whether or not everyone's in the "right" restroom?

In actual fact, these bad things seem to be limited to Davis's perverse nightmares:

Since the ordinance took effect [last year], police have reported no problems in public restrooms stemming from the law.

Ahh, but why let the facts stand in the way of perfectly good intolerance, eh?

In practice, I'm sure transgendered folk regularly use public restrooms without anyone else ever suspecting that they're anything other than what they appear to be... but for people who are just trying to get on with their lives in a sensible, law-abiding way, the uncertainty around this issue has real consquences:

Computer programmer Clare Holman, who was born male but now lives as a female, said she simply stays away from public toilets.

"I don't want to run afoul of the law by using the wrong restroom," Holman said.

I'm crossing my legs just thinking about it.

Separated At Birth?

2008-12-25T18:24:00.005-05:00

OK, one of my New Year's resolutions is to revive this blog, but that comes in the next day or two; this is just a quickie post. This afternoon, we were watching Singin' in the Rain, which was one of Brilliant Daughter's Christmas gifts, and I had a nagging feeling that one of the characters looked familiar. You be the judge:

Donald O'Conner (aka Cosmo Brown):

Kent Jones (aka Kent Jones), of the Rachel Maddow Show:

I'm jus' sayin'... Vigilance!

Our Generation's Tom Lehrer

2008-06-28T01:32:00.000-04:00

'Nuff said:

Are You as Smart as an 8th Grader?

2008-06-09T21:39:00.001-04:00

Oh, yeah? Prove it! Take the quiz:

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

Off To Meet the Mysterions

2008-04-21T01:57:00.002-04:00

I'm intensely proud to note that my daughter has been accepted to Yale, and will enroll there in the fall. Tomorrow, she, her mother, and I will be heading to New Haven for Bulldog Days, a 3-day "preview" for admitted students and their families.

I have no doubt that my daughter will have a wonderful time at Yale, and I don't doubt for a second that she deserves to be there. There's another question, though, that hadn't occurred to me 'til just the last couple days: Is my little 'ol middle-class, middle-brow self up to the role of Yale Parent???

Guess I'll start finding out tomorrow; I'll let y'all know...

But Will They Know It's a Joke?

2008-04-20T19:25:00.002-04:00

I just saw this posted on MyLeftNutmeg and couldn't stop laughing.

My only concern is that some folks might miss the irony and take the faux argument seriously!

I Write Letters

2008-04-16T01:08:00.004-04:00

So I got a letter "printed" here, at Altercation, in response to Eric Alterman's comments about the Randi Rhodes/Air America Radio dustup.

The thing is, Altercation cut the letter for length, which I completely understand... but in doing so, they put more emphasis on my comments about Rhodes and less on my appreciation of Rachel Maddow, which was my main point in writing, and completely eliminated my shout-out to former Air America host and (FSM willing) future U.S. Senator Al Franken.

Happily, I never seem to throw away my own words, so here's the rest of the letter as originally posted:

When Rhodes moved to Air America, I tried to listen, but eventually just couldn't take her anymore. Dr. Maddow (she was, amusingly enough, a Rhodes Scholar) is the perfect antidote: No less passionate about liberal ideals, she's brilliant, and tireless in her studies of issues, and brings a focus and rationality to her commentary that's the polar opposite of Rhodes' messy rants.

Oh yeah, she's really funny, too.

IMHO, the best thing that could happen to Air America is something I can't root for: The return of Al Franken. His show was the highlight of my day, and I miss it constantly... but I fervently hope Al will be busy with a much more important job for some multiple of 6 years.

Never let it be said that I don't love to hear myself talk, eh?

And Soon No Drinking and No Talking

2008-01-10T01:12:00.000-05:00

I thought Eddie Izzard was joking in his Dress to Kill show when he teased San Franciscans about smoking bans in bars. "No smoking in bars now, and soon," he said, "no drinking and no talking!" (see ~5:02)

As always, the real world turns out to be stranger than comedy, at least in St. Charles, MO, a St. Louis area town where a proposed bill would ban "indecent, profane or obscene language, songs, entertainment and literature" in bars. And table dancing and drinking contests!

I'm imagining taverns full of people eating air-popped popcorn and drinking distilled water, while listening to children's choirs sing hymns.

At least they apparently haven't banned darts. Say, how many points is that boy soprano over there worth?

New Year's Resolution

2008-01-09T23:01:00.000-05:00

Aside from yet another promise to keep up with this lonely blog, there's at least one resolution that will be easy to keep: I really need to drink more!

Yet another new study touts the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption. This study found that people who drink 1 to 2 drinks a day (i.e., up to 14 drinks a week!) and put in moderate exercise can reduce their risk of heart disease by 30 to 49 percent compared to couch-bound tea-totalers... but even better, it found that drinking alone provides more risk reduction than exercising alone.

I knew I put that Mr. Boston Bartender's Guide on my holiday wishlist for a reason. I wonder if Bombay Sapphire is included on my drug insurance?

Cephalopoetics

2007-11-12T17:31:00.000-05:00

Often enough I've used this space to discuss ideas and opinions I've encountered while reading the wonderful science blog Pharyngula. The founder of the Pharyngula feast, PZ Myers (don't spell it Meyers!), shares with many of his readers a fascination with cephalopods: Squids, octopi, and all things tentacly.

Well, recently an anonymous bard, using the nom-de-pixels "Cuttlefish," has taken to contributing his (or her?) comments in verse. At first it seemed just a novelty, but it's grown to a full-fledged poetry blog, touching on the themes found at Pharyngula and like-minded blogs: Promoting science, attacking anti-science, and always celebrating cephalopods. I'm adding the Digital Cuttlefish to my blogroll, and I encourage you to check it out on a regular basis. For starters, I particularly enjoyed this ditty, while my daughter (an aspiring poet herself) is partial to the double-dactyl at the end of this entry.

Enjoy!

Back Again Again

2007-11-09T19:15:00.000-05:00

Well, the elections are over, and between that and some other changes in my personal schedule, I feel both ready to start blogging again and somewhat freer to post my own opinions about Vernon politics without fear of diluting the campaign's message.

The fact that my side lost matters to me, not mainly because of competitive pride or partisanship, but because I genuinely think Democratic government would've been better for the town. Ellen Marmer has accomplished wonderful things here, despite dealing with a majority Republican town council and a determined anti-budget (which is to say, anti-government) advocacy group. At a time in her life when she really didn't have to, Ellen put herself squarely in the path of a whole lot of tsuris, solely because she cared about making Vernon a better place to live.

Community First was Ellen's motto, and it's instructive that new mayor Jason McCoy's first act was reportedly to remove a sign in Town Hall proclaiming that noble sentiment. As a political matter, it would be easy to hope McCoy and his new council would fail miserably, so we could beat them in the next election... but I can't indulge myself in hoping for that, because I believe in Community First, too, and I can't hope for anything that would harm my community.

I'll have more to say about my hopes (and fears) for our town's future in the coming days and weeks; in the meantime, I urge any Vernonites (or Rockvillians) reading this to keep a weather eye on the new administration: If they can keep their "free lunch" promises, so be it... but let's not let them get away with mortgaging the town's future to do so!

Wicked Awesome Bread Upon the Waters

2007-10-21T02:34:00.000-04:00

I've been helping out a friend I met through town politics, who occasionally needs rides and other favors because he's disabled and has recently lost his longstanding support network. I'm not always able to help, but it's been a privilege to do so whenever possible.

Today I was rewarded for this very modest casting of bread upon the waters in a way I can only describe as wicked awesome:

That's right: I got to attend ALCS Game 6 in Fenway Park! I just got home and I'm fried and wired and tired, but the short version of the story is... Sox Win!

I took a bunch of pictures, which I'll post when I get a chance, but now I'm going to bed. If the Sox win tomorrow, and if the World Series goes at least six games, I'll have an even more ecstatic post in a week and a half... because the same friend has tickets reserved for Game 6!

Long, Long Ago...

2007-10-17T23:12:00.000-04:00

...well, a couple weeks ago, actually. I wasn't going to post the X-wing rocket video, because everyone else in the blue-eyed world had. But then I found out [PaulHarvey]the rest... of the story[/PaulHarvey]:

What Might Have Been...

2007-10-12T21:11:00.000-04:00

h/t to Maura @ MyLeftNutmeg:

Daily Chuckle

2007-10-06T17:37:00.000-04:00

In another context on another blog, my online acquaintance (I would say "friend" if I weren't afraid it would be presumptuous) Saramerica asserted that nothing informative rhymes with Harvard. Ironic if true, eh? But I had Tom Lehrer's The Elements to offer as refutation. When I went looking for a suitable YouTube version to post, I found this, which made me smile:

Why the President Wants Children To Sicken and Die

2007-10-03T20:04:00.000-04:00

I've been more or less sputtering incoherently at the president's veto of the bill to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program. It's one thing to send criminals to the death house by the carload, but I would've thought, despite his veto threats, that even this craven, heartless man couldn't really look the country in the eye and condemn large numbers of innocent children to sickness and death.

Even large numbers of Republicans (though, sadly, apparently not quite enough to override the veto) saw the human necessity of this measure, and in any case, I wouldn't have thought the lives of our children (actual children, that is, as opposed to the just-barely-not-children we're sending to die in Iraq) would be beyond political posturing. But Eric Alterman saw the issue more clearly than I did. He understands that "Bush's argument is explicitly ideological. He wants children to get sick and die in order to prevent what he believes will be a slide toward what he calls 'socialized medicine.'" At some level, I know the right is all about ideology, but it's hard for me to hold in my head just how important ideological purity is to them. It's because I'm a liberal, I suppose, and somewhere in my heart is the ineradicable notion that my counterparts on the other side are more or less like me, and have merely somehow (innocently, no doubt) ended up believing differently than I about public policy. I think I fall into this trap &mdash and other liberals and progressives do, too &mdash because, as Alterman points out, liberalism itself is not "self-consciously ideological" in the way conservatism is:

Liberals are often understood to be "pro-government" or even "pro-taxation" but this reflects a fundamental confusion between ends and means. Liberals believe in "government" only insofar as it is necessary to achieve necessary goals, including public welfare, investment, redistribution, defense etc. Conservatives, on the other hand, argue against government as a matter of principle: the less government involved, the better, period.

Even, it seems, when less government translates directly into less health care for children who need it.

Of course, even a cursory look at the Bush (or Reagan or Bush 41) budgets will instantly reveals that the right doesn't really want less government; they just want less of the parts of government that actually help people. That stuff is socialism, don't you know? But when government spends untold billions in support of policies that kill people or rape the environment, that's just good old-fashioned American capitalism.

Please, if you're reading this and you're represented by a Republican member of the House, call them and ask them to vote to override the president's veto. Surely some of them still have some shame.

Rocket Geek Stuff

2007-09-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

OK, I promised I'd post about my return to model rocketry, in a contest held a week ago Sunday at my local rocket club, CATO. Well, I was waiting for the contest results to become official, but they still haven't been posted, so I'll go ahead and report what I think the results were. I competed in four competition events sanctioned by the National Association of Rocketry (NAR): Open Spot Landing, in which you try to land your rocket as close as possible to a predetermined spot in the field; 1/4A Parachute Duration, in which you try for the longest timed flight with a rocket launched on a 1/4A power motor and recovered using a parachute; 1/2A Streamer Duration, in which you try for the longest timed flight with a rocket launched on a 1/2A power motor and recovered using a streamer; and A Rocket Glider, in which you try for the longest timed flight with a rocket launched on an A power motor and recovered intact by gliding.

I competed representing my NAR team, The Tappet Brothers (yes, named after the Car Talk guys!), which consists of me and my buddy Andy Jackson, who runs his own small rocket kit company, Aerospace Speciality Products... but since we were the only team represented, we were (which is to say I was) combined into the division for individual adult competitors. Here's what I think our results were:

Open Spot Landing: Last I checked, I was in second place... but there were other flights after that point, so who knows. Interestingly, the target spot was marked by a life-size cutout of Austin Powers, which randomly blurted out digitized Powers-isms like "Do I make you horny, baby?" Too cool!
1/4A Parachute Duration: These models are very small, and the trick is to get the parachute to open after having been jammed into such a tight space. I didn't master that trick: Both flight attempts came down with partially wadded up 'chutes. Even so, I think my total time was good enough for second place, or at least third.
1/2A Streamer Duration: I had two solid flights here, and I'm pretty sure I won this event.
A Rocket Glider: The trick here is that what makes a rocket stable during boost is not the same as what makes a glider fly well... so the model has to change inflight to transition from stable rocket boost to good gliding flight. I used a model called the Xebec IIIA, designed by long-time competitor George Gassaway, in which an elevator tab pops up after the rocket motor burns out. I had one good flight (little over a minute) with this model, and needed only the shortest possible qualified flight on my second attempt to win the event. The second flight was great -- it disappeared out of sight after flying for over 5 minutes, and it was still up in a thermal (rising warm air), not coming down. But there was a problem: Because the second flight behaved differently in flight than the first, observers on the ground thought the motor might have been ejected from the model, which is grounds to disqualify the flight. In such cases, procedure is that contest officials request the model be returned to the judges for inspection. Since my model flew away (otherwise perfectly legal), I couldn't return it for inspection, and the flight was disqualified. I had to settle for second place.

All in all a great day. There's something really satisfying about returning to a cherished hobby after a long absence. I can't wait to go flying again!

Oh, Nooooo!!!

2007-09-24T22:27:00.000-04:00

Say it ain't so! Today comes a Newsweek article (via MSNBC.com) about Democratic presidential candidates sucking up to evangelical Christian leaders. The very notion &mdash embodied in the accompanying photo of Barack Obama chatting with Rick Warren &mdash chills my blood.

I understand the tactical politics involved: Evangelicals are quite correctly disenchanted with the Republican frontrunners such as Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mit Romney, none of whom truly embodies evangelical values. Even the folksy Fred Thompson has a racy history, and is none to reliable (from the evangelical point of view) on abortion. So perhaps, with the right approach, Democrats can, if not win over evangelicals outright, at least persuade them to stay home in November. I get it.

But at what price is this tactical advantage gained? The alliance forged between evangelical Christians and secular conservatives since the Reagan administration is arguably what got us into the mess we're in... the mess some of us hope to at least begin reversing by sending a Democrat to the White House. However disaffected they may be with their erstwhile secular partners, it seems unlikely that evangelicals will suddenly align themselves with the public policies favored by most Democrats. Almost as an inherent consequence of their beliefs, it seems to me that evangelicals lean toward authoritarianism and away from personal liberty.

I understand that America is a religious country; I'm not suggesting it's possible (even if it were desirable) to run a completely secular political campaign. But if we must appeal to people of faith, let's appeal to those whose doctrines emphasize charity and social justice &mdash values that harmonize with those of liberals and progressives &mdash rather than people whose religious beliefs deemphasize "good works" in favor of biblical inerrancy, divine authority, and enforcement of Old Testament mores.

Noted Without Further Comment...

2007-09-19T03:05:00.000-04:00

...because this speaks (or sings) for itself:

Update: Someone who read this post asked me if the singer was me. Would t'were I was that talented! No, that's Roy Zimmerman, whose work I've posted here before, and who I learned of through Pharyngula. I should've included a hat-tip in when I first posted this.

Rainy Day Thoughts

2007-09-15T23:27:00.000-04:00

Well, the rocket contest I mentioned in Wednesday's post, which was scheduled for today, has been postponed due to iffy weather. With luck, it will happen tomorrow instead, and I'll surely post about it... but in the meantime I'm stuck at my computer desk, with a dreary view out the window.

I guess since I'm referencing Wednesday's posting, this is probably a good time to make a bit of a disclaimer: I mentioned that I'm involved in the ongoing municipal election campaign in Vernon. Well, I want to make it clear that this is my personal blog, and is in no way connected to the campaign. I'm going to generally avoid talking about the Vernon elections here directly, but in any case I want to make it clear that whatever I do say here is strictly my own thoughts and words. You won't find campaign announcements here, or press releases, and I will never use this space to speak for the campaign or the Democratic Town Committee. (I will, however, add some links to the DTC website, Mayor Marmer's site, and any candidates' blogs to my blogroll, or the convenience of any readers who might be interested.)

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I'm going to get ready for tomorrow's rocket contest!

Watch This Space

2007-09-12T00:04:00.000-04:00

A couple days ago I got notification that someone had actually posted a comment to this months-dormant blog, and it remind me that I've been meaning to restart my postings here. Or re-restart, I should say: This isn't the first time my online wordfield has lain fallow.

I'm going to have some things to write about: After laying off model rockets for a year or two, I plan to make my return next week at a contest being held my old club, CATO. This is in preparation for going to NARAM-50 next year, the national competition that marks the half-century anniversary of model rocketry as an organized hobby.

In addition, I've gotten involved in local politics in my hometown of Vernon, CT, trying to re-elect our excellent mayor and elect a Democratic Town Council and Board of Education... which should provide me with one or two things to say.

That's all for tonight... this time 'round I'm going to try again to master the art of the frequent short posting, as opposed to waiting until I have the time (and inspiration) to write long essays.

What I Did Over the Weekend

2007-03-19T00:06:00.000-04:00

Connecticut Opposes the War Rally, Saturday, 17 March 2007.
Old State House, Hartford, CT:

Part 1...

...and Part 2:

It was, in a word, cool:

More pix here.

FlyingTubes

2007-03-14T23:18:00.000-04:00

Way back when I started this blog, I mentioned (and stated in my profile) that I was into model rocketry. Well, I've been on a bit of a break from rocketry, but one of my goals for this year is to get back into the hobby. Soooo... I'll likely be adding some rocketry sites to my blogroll, and posting on rocketry topics, including my projects.

As an icebreaker, here's my "music video" iMovie from the 2004 National Finals of the Team America Rocketry Challenge:

Cosponsored by the Aerospace Industry Association (AIA) and the National Association of Rocketry (NAR), TARC is an annual contest intended to get students excited about careers in aerospace. It's also a heck of a lot of fun. I volunteered for the range crew in 2004 and 2005 (I couldn't make it last year), and I'm going back in May of this year. Maybe I'll bring back another movie.

And Now for Something Completely... Irrational

2007-03-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

Pi Day... or should I say π Day?... is almost over. What's that? You've never heard of π Day? Neither had I until I read Alan Boyle's MSNBC.com CosmicLog science blog for today.

Strictly speaking, you should celebrate π Day at exactly 1 minute before 2:00 (am or pm will do, unless you're on a 24-hour clock).

3/14 1:59

Get it?

Do check out the link to CosmicLog; in addition to linking the official Pi Day site, there are a plethora of interesting π-related links to dig through. One I found especially interesting was this one (though linking it from a π Day post rather gives away the puzzle).

Anyone want to help me organize a π-mile run next year (see #5 here)?

Unanimous Consent To Revise and Extend?

2007-03-14T21:27:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's riff on the Nixonian resonances of Alberto Gonzales' statements about the political purge of U.S. Attorneys was a quick blast that barely scratched the surface. This probably won't get much deeper, but I can't let the subject go so easily. This is not just about the current scandal; it's about an administration that has consistently put its own interests above those of the nation and the people. It's about the unitary executive and the intimidation of U.S. citizens in the service of not only a so-called New American Century but a permanent Republican majority. It's about rewarding ~~friends~~cronies and punishing political enemies and, in this case apparently, about turning the nation's "legal department" into a personal political dirty tricks unit the likes of which we haven't seen since Tricky Dick climbed aboard that helicopter.

In the stories and discussion over the last few days, much has been made over the fact that U.S. Attorneys "serve at the pleasure of the president." Well, a West Wing fan like me can't help but have a soft spot for that phraseology...

"At the end of another episode, the young staffers sipped beer on the stoop of a D.C. brownstone and marveled at the honor of working in the White House. One by one they repeated, with hushed reverence, their swearing-in pledge: 'I serve at the pleasure of the president.'"

...and I do understand that when the people vote for the president, they are, in part, voting for the people they expect him to appoint. Any president must, of course, have the ability to bring in his (or, someday, her) "own people." But staffing up at the beginning of an administration or a term with people dedicated to supporting administation policies is a whole 'nother kettle of horses of another color from purging your "own people" either because you want to open up resume' buffing slots for unqualified cronies (the marginally least awful of the various reasons suggested) or because they've prosecuted members of your own party or because they've (in your view) failed to prosecute members of the opposition party vigorously enough.

I'm not naive: I know that the executive branch is political, and that even the position of U.S. Attorney is a political one. Using the tools of office to vigorously pursue the policies on which he campaigned is not only a president's right; it is his duty. But there's a difference between pursuing legitimate policies and turning the nation's law enforcement agencies into political enforcers for the party in (executive) power. So far, the president has been happy to let Gonzales and Sen. Pete Domenici (who, along with Rep. Heather Wilson, made pressuring phone calls to former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias regarding prosecutions of Democrats) take the heat for the purge scandal, and FBI Director Robert Mueller has taken responsibility for the Patriot Act abuse (not that the Patriot Act itself isn't abuse), but anyone who doesn't believe this stuff is coming right from the White House just hasn't been paying attention for the last 6 years.

20 January 2009 can't some soon enough!

Testing, Testing... Is This On?

2007-03-13T22:23:00.000-04:00

"Mistakes were made" was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' comment today on the brewing scandal over the "Justice" Department's apparently political purge of U.S. Attorneys. If you're of a certain age, that particular passive-voice clause can't help but evoke chilling memories of the Nixon administration; it's a tactic straight out of their playbook.

Of course, you didn't need to wait to hear Gonzales to know that Bush is the new Nixon: The president himself sounded the same note in his January speech on the Iraq surge, and the U.S. Attorney purge is just one more piece of evidence -- on top of the Plame case, the NSA spying, FBI abuses under the Patriot Act... Hell, the Patriot Act itself -- that this president and his minions have no shame when it comes to using the instrumentalities of government to reward cronies, punish enemies, and spank those insufficiently vigilant in the pursuit of the administration's political aims.

Nixon famously said "when the president does it that means that it is not illegal," and no president since -- maybe not all the presidents since, combined -- has done as much to convert that bit of arrogance into actual policy than George W. Bush.

I wonder if those Nixon-era tape recorders are still in the Oval Office? But no... surely W has his own Rose Mary Woods.

Secular Humor! Arr Arr!

2007-03-09T20:33:00.000-05:00

(h/t to Pharyngula... I steal from PZ shamelessly!)

Shake It Like a Polaroid, Scooter!

2007-03-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

Just a little happy dance to celebrate a tiny shred of justice being done:

How Many Years Does This Teacher Get?

2007-03-06T17:36:00.000-05:00

Well, middle school was never like this when I was a student! (h/t to the Education Wonks via Pharyngula)

My mind immediately flashed to the Julie Amero case when I read this story of 10 Indiana sixth-graders watching as two of their classmates performed a live sex show ("completed the act of intercourse," in the quaint language of a "disturbed resident" who reported the case to a local TV station) while their teacher was in the room!

If Amero's students were so terrifyingly endangered by a mere glimpse of digital porn that their unfortunate teacher is guilty of multiple felony counts, surely this teacher is ticketed for lethal injection, right? Well, not so much: Apparently "Warren Township School Police were not aware of the incident and say no report was made even though the children were recommended for expulsion." Hmmm... expel the preteens, but as for the teacher... no harm, no foul, I suppose. No need to even bother the cops with a report. Move along, folks; nothing to see here.

Mind you, I'm not after the teacher's scalp: Apparently the students conspired to hide this illicit activity, and the teacher took action as soon as he (or she; the news story studiously avoids "outing" the teacher's identity in any way) discovered something inappropriate was going on. But what kind of upside-down, inside-out world is it when Amero sits branded a sex offender and waiting to learn how much time she'll spend in prison while this teacher is happily making up next week's lesson plans?

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign...

2007-02-19T13:14:00.000-05:00

OK, maybe this isn't "blockin' out the scenery," but it sure is "breakin' my mind"! [1] I was just sitting here peacefully listening to Rachel Maddow's Air America Radio show from last Friday (I listen by podcast, so I'm always one weekday behind). In the course of discussing who did and didn't vote against the recent anti-Iraq War resolution in the House, Rachel mentioned that the Washington Post website, which she uses to check congressional vote roll calls, offers readers the ability to display votes sorted by astrological sign! Huh?!? Well, I had to see it for myself, and sure 'nuff:

Alright, I don't know whether to be more discouraged by the idea that people who care enough about politics to look up vote totals actually want to know about legislators' signs, or by the fact that WaPo would cater to their bizarre superstition. Either way, I think I have to make this a short post, so I can go pour cool water over my steaming brain....

[1] If this reference is too ancient/obscure for you, look here.

UPDATE: I e-mailed PZ Myers, Rationalist-in-Chief at Pharyngula, about this and he very flatteringly linked to this entry. A couple of commenters noted that the intention was just to have some lighthearted fun and attract readers to the (admittedly very cool) Votes Database. Well, that makes me feel better... but only a little bit better. I used to be firmly in the it's-harmless-fun-as-long-as-you-don't-believe-it camp regarding astrology and such, but I'm increasingly concerned that even such benign bemusement gives aid and comfort to the all-too-numerous inhabitants of the demon-haunted world we live in.

Besides, are astrology believers really the voters we want to be enabling?

Al Franken For Senate!

2007-02-14T19:54:00.000-05:00

Former (sadly, as of today) Air America radio host Al Franken has announced his run for the Minnesota U.S. Senate seat now held by Norm Coleman (and before that, by Franken's political hero, Paul Wellstone). I don't live in Minnesota, of course, but Franken has been a tireless voice for progressive issues and in opposition to the current right-wing regime, so his run is of interest to us all. Besides, his Midwest Values PAC supported Democratic candidates all around the country in 2006, including our very own Joe Courtney and Diane Farrell... so I, for one, plan to return the favor. Here's Al's announcement video:

Here is Franken's campaign website, where you can contact the campaign, read Al's bio, or contribute.

I have contacted the campaign to find out what out-of-staters can do to help; I'll let y'all know what I find out.

When I posted an earlier version of the above as a diary at the Connecticut progressive blog My Left Nutmeg, a commenter quickly replied that Al Franken "is pro-war," and that progressives should hope for a better Democratic candidate, linking to two articles (here and here) by one John Walsh, posting at CounterPunch, a self-described "bi-weekly muckraking newsletter."

I admit I'm not familiar with John Walsh, but a quick scan of the articles to reveals an extreme POV: Anyone who thinks Sam Seder, Janeane Garafalo, Randi Rhodes, and Rachel Maddow are insufficiently antiwar, or that the network that put them all on the air is "little more than a mouthpiece for the DNC" is just not going to be satisfied with any feasible candidate!

I've listened to virtually every Franken show for more than 2 years, and I can say without hesitation that Al is the polar opposite of pro-war! I defy anyone to listen to the show (at least some of the podcasts are still archived, though you may need to join Air America Premium to get them) with anything even vaguely approaching an open mind and conclude that Franken can be fairly called "pro-war."

John Murtha, whom Walsh claims Franken doesn't support, is actually something of a hero to Franken... so much so that he almost had an on-air falling out with regular guest Melanie Sloan when she called Murtha on his ethics issues. I've never heard him say anything bad about Murtha. Al supports the "soft partition"/redeployment-to-Kurdistan plan advanced by Peter Galbraith, et al., which may not be identical to what Murtha proposes, but it's similar in spirit... and certainly not a stay-the-course position. One thing about Franken is that he's willing to listen to other people's ideas (are we to believe this is a bad trait in a legislator??)... but I've never heard him agree with, or express support for, anything that could be called pro-war or pro-escalation.

It's also true, as Walsh notes, that Franken has covered corruption, fraud, and incompetence in Iraq contracting: Tom Ricks' Fiasco, which Franken calls "indispensible" is something of a bible for the show. Does this make him pro-war? Because the war itself is immoral and evil, we're supposed to give crooks and war profiteers a free pass? The mind boggles!

Franken has also covered veterans' issues and troop equipment issues (e.g., the founder of Operation Helmet has been a frequent guest), and every year he goes on USO tour in the Iraq and Afghanistan theatres. Do these things make him "pro-war"? Many, if not most, liberals and progressives have taken the position that they oppose the war but support the troops; few... perhaps none... have honored both ends of that proposition as completely as Al Franken.

And the Al Franken show has also covered issues not related (or at least not directly related) to the war (e.g., the DeLay, Cunningham, et al., scandals). Does this make him an unacceptable candidate for Senate in 2008? think about it for a moment: If elected, Franken won't finish his first term until 2014. I pray to all that's holy that the Iraq war won't still be the primary issue of the day by then; if it is, we're doomed in any case. Among all the other tragedies of this war, one is that it's distracting us from all the other ways in which the right-wing regime has hosed up our government. While the war is clearly the most critical moral challenge of our time, it is not the only challenge facing our government; we elect representatives who focus on the war to the exclusion of all else at our peril.

You may be able to think of reasons (though personally I cannot) not to support Al Franken... but the notion that he's pro-war is not one of them.

IMHO, of course... ;)

Click Your Congresscritter

2007-02-08T20:57:00.000-05:00

OK, I've already posted this on blogs that people actually read, but I thought I'd put it up here, too, just in case:

In the Fall of 2001, my daughter was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. Through the miracle of modern medicine -- including 14 hours of surgery and more than a year of chemo and radiotherapy -- the wonderful doctors and nurses at Connecticut Children's Medical Center saved her life, and today she's happy and healthy.

I can't say exactly how directly federally funded research contributed to her recovery, but I'm sure it was instrumental. One organization that was a tireless advocate for children with cancer was the National Childhood Cancer Foundation, now called CureSearch.

CureSearch has put out an alert regarding threats to federal cancer research funding. If you feel so moved, I urge you to use their online tool to send letters to our members of Congress, and then follow up with a personal e-mail to your representative.

We're all concerned with the war, of course, but even in the midst of crisis, life -- and the hard work of saving lives -- goes on.

Fly Me to the Moon

2007-02-06T01:48:00.000-05:00

A quick post tonight. I have recently purchased an "electronic eyepiece" for astrophotography (astrovideography, really). It's essentially a webcam packaged to be used with a telescope in place of the normal visual eyepiece. I'm not very good with it yet (and I need to build a new mount for my scope), but I did manage to get this shot of the moon last Monday:

...and this one just tonight:

My $100 Tennis Racquet

2007-02-04T15:39:00.000-05:00

Well, obviously I've been neglecting this blog for more than half a year, during which time I've worked on the successful Joe Courtney campaign for the Connecticut 2nd District seat in Congress, going on a Thanksgiving weekend tour of New England college campuses with my daughter, having a (quite unexpected) case of whooping cough, taking my daughter and her friend to a Harry Potter themed Yule Ball concert, visiting family in Florida for Christmas. In all that time, somehow, I fell out of the habit of updating this chronicle. Oh, during the election season I contributed to other blogs (mostly My Left Nutmeg), but nothing here.

I apologize for the silence.

When I was (much) younger, I played tennis... but I found that, owing to the busy life of a young college student, sometimes weeks or even months would go by without me finding time to hit the courts. This frustrated me because I really wanted to play regularly. One summer I went out and spent $100 dollars -- a lot of money in those days, for me at least -- on a top-quality racquet. It wasn't so much that I needed a fancy racquet -- I was never that good anyway -- but that I wanted to make some act -- in this case a nontrivial monetary investment -- that would force me to take the activity more seriously. Now I've done something similar: I've started including a link to this page in my profile at other online sites, including my Facebook page, my My Left Nutmeg profile, and, most recently, on the newly refurbished 2nd Congressional District blog.

I hesitate to promise any set frequency of posts. I'm going to try to post something short fairly often, even when I don't have a full-length rant in me (or don't have time to do it justice). In any case, I won't abandon this blog again, so please keep checking back!

(BTW, the Unit of the Day will no longer be a feature of every post... but I'll still post one whenever I see a unit that strikes me as engagingly peculiar.)

Lamont v. The Enabler

2006-08-01T00:10:00.000-04:00

Well, I didn't exactly get around to discussing the Connecticut Democratic primary for U.S. Senate "tomorrow" as I promised, but the serendipitous advantage of that I've now seen Ned Lamont's appearance on The Colbert Report (no video up yet as I write this, but My Left Nutmeg has a comments thread here).

Despite lots of talk in the local press (e.g., this) that going on Colbert's show was a risky move, I thought Lamont did very well. As several Left Nutmeggers pointed out, he wasn't terribly funny, but trying to outfunny Colbert is usually a losing strategy anyway, I gather. He was composed and straightforward, and most important to me, he used the word I've been waiting to hear: He said Joe Lieberman enables the president.

Look, at some level I have no business blogging on this. I'm not the world's greatest expert on the campaign... heck, I'm not even my household's greatest expert on it! But I am an expert on why I support Lamont and oppose Lieberman, and I get tired of the way the campaign's being characterized. Even when superficially complimentary to Lamont and critical of Lieberman, many commentaries (e.g., here) persist in characterizing the race as a single-issue contest, or as being all about "netroots" versus old-line pols, or as a struggle between ideology and electability, or (e.g., here) as an "elitist insurgency." Why is it so hard for the punditocracy to believe that, at least for some of us, this is not some "inside baseball" political game, but in fact a simple matter of principle? For me, it's not just about the war, as important an issue as that is. It's not about the 90 percent of the time Lieberman has voted with the Democratic leadership, nor the several very important times he has not: Iraq, Alito cloture, the energy bill, etc. Instead, it's about the tone and tenor of Lieberman's relationship with the Bush administration. It's about saving the republic.

Lieberman brags about having the courage of his convictions, and about his commitment to bipartisanship... and in other times, those might be good things to brag about, indeed. But this is a unique moment in history: For the first time in my lifetime -- a lifetime that spans Watergate and most of the Vietnam War, BTW -- I think we're on not only the wrong track, but so disastrously wrong a track that I fear for the future of our national enterprise. The war, our generally belligerent foreign policy, the economy, the assaults on civil liberties at home and human rights abroad, the contempt for science and learning, the dismantling of the infrastructure of public culture, and the attempts to render these things permanent through the courts and the law.... these tea leaves do not bode well for our children, never mind our grandchildren. When the leadership of the party in power is so dangerously wrong about so many things, "bipartisanship" is nothing to brag about. These are times in which the opposition party has a moral duty to oppose, and that's where Lieberman has failed.

I don't mean we must never agree with them: People of good will can disagree on issues even as important as the war, and "even a blind pig finds a truffle now and then." But it does mean that we must never give aid and comfort to their larger agenda, even when we do agree with them on an individual issue. Lieberman's real problem is not the times he's voted with the administration (regrettable as those votes have been); it's that he's too often done so with an unearned smile and unwarranted kind words... and sometimes sealed with a kiss.

That's why I was so happy tonight to hear Lamont say, in so many words, that the war is just the most visible example of the wrong track we're on, and that the problem with Lieberman is that he "enables the president." Now on 8 August I can vote for Ned Lamont not simply because Joe Lieberman must be replaced, but also with confidence that Ned understands why Joe must go... even while much of the press is missing the point.

Unit of the Day: The emu is not a giant butt-ugly flightless bird native to Australia (well, it's that, too, actually, but...), it's an abbreviation for electromagnetic unit. Not properly a unit in itself, it's a notation that indicates a unit is part of the CGS (as opposed to SI) absolute electromagnetic system. For example, 1 volt emu (CGS) = 10^-8 volt (SI).

I'm Baaaaack... Again!

2006-07-26T23:34:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been almost a month, so I guess I can't get away with claiming I've only just now recovered from my road trip to South Carolina, can I? Amazing how weeks or even months can slip away from you before you even notice (and that effect seems ever more pronounced with each passing year!).

But I'm back now, ready to re(re,re,re)dedicate myself to getting this blog back on something like a regular schedule. I also have another project on which I'm way behind schedule, and I've fallen out of the habit of going to the gym regularly... so my life in general is in need of a dose of structure. Oddly, I think trying to get three (or more) different aspects of my life squared away will be easier than dealing with just one. At any rate, that's what I keep telling myself; we'll see how big a piece of self-deception that turns out to be! ;)

To help keep the blog on schedule, I'm going to try (try!) to train myself to write shorter entries more often. Again, we'll see....

Tonight, I'll just point you at a couple of my poor attempts at iMovie production: this one about the SCIPower06 launch in general and this one documenting my old friend Rocket Rick's flight. (While you're at it, you can browse my online collection of pix and vids of stuff that flies.)

Then, too, you could check out Peter Alway's description of his current road trip, which puts my recent one to shame. Peter is a scale model rocketry wizard and author/publisher who has commented here at the Spleen a couple times (which is a couple more times than most of you).

Finally, this just made me laugh out loud!

Tomorrow, a rant on the Ned Lamont vs. Joe Lieberman primary race...

Unit of the Day: The gutenberg, named after Johannes Gutenberg, is a unit of distance used in typography, equal to 1/7200 in. A gutenberg is thus 0.01 point, roughly (according to Adobe, at least!), leaving open the question of whether anyone in Gutenberg's time (he died in 1468) could cast metal type to anything approaching that tolerance! [Geeky Editor Trivia: The term gutenberg is an example of the general principle that unit names derived from the name of a person is nevertheless lowercased (but unit symbols so derived are uppercased: 100 watts, but 100W).]

Road Trip

2006-06-28T23:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I'll be on the road for the long 4th of July weekend (I'm taking Monday off to make it a 4-day break), heading for South Carolina to reacquaint myself with my once-and-future hobby of sport rocketry, and to visit with my best buddy, who runs a small rocket kit company (Aerospace Speciality Products). We'll be attending SCIPower 2006, a 3-day event combining high-power sport rocketry and experimental rocketry (the distinction is, loosely speaking, whether you buy manufactured rocket motors or make your own). Notwithstanding the date, sport rockets are not fireworks, and this weekend will not be about wild-eyed pyros. Hobby rocketry is a well organized hobby, and launches are conducted under the rules (including strict safety codes) of two national organizations: the Tripoli Rocketry Association (which is sanctioning SCIPower) or the National Association of Rocketry.

In the last couple days, I've been seeing stories about the 50th anniversary of the interstate highways, and about how they've changed the country. Naturally, with my road trip coming up, I've been thinking about highways myself (today, I've been thinking about whether my route, which passes through Pennsylvania, will be open and dry). While all the commentary correctly praises the scope and vision of the interstate highway project, much of it bemoans the sameness of interstates and their disconnectedness from the country the pass through. This notion is not new: In 1983, author William Least Heat-Moon published Blue Highways, a paean to all the homey, intimate roads that were not interstates.

Well, I must raise my voice in dissent: It's certainly true that driving on the interstates is a different experience from poking around the back roads... but it's an experience that has its own rhythm and seductive charms. I've always loved long-distance driving (sometimes I'm surprised I didn't end up a trucker)... traveling huge distances at once, as if striding across the land in ten-league boots, and watching the landscape transmute before my very eyes. I find it exhilarating, enthralling... not at all the sterile, utilitarian pursuit the critics claim.

Then again, there's the fact that the interstate highway project is a great example of how well government can do things, big things, despite the conventional wisdom that government is inherently incompetent and inefficient. I think I have a longer riff on that subject in me, but it'll have to wait: I have a date with the open road in a little more than a day, and I have maps to read and coolers to pack, and "miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep."

Unit of the Day: The Walrus and the Carpenter might have made a more scientific estimate of whether seven maids with seven mops could sweep a beach clean if they'd known about the phi unit, a logarithmic unit used to measure grain sizes for sand (and grit and gravel, as well). Starting at 0=1 millimeter grain size, each step on the phi number scale corresponds to a factor of 1/2 in grain size. Thus, 1 phi unit = 0.5 mm; 2 phi units = 0.25 mm; etc. In the opposite direction, -1 phi unit = 2 mm; -2 phi units = 4 mm; etc.

Smoking... The Old Global Warming?

2006-06-27T22:31:00.000-04:00

There's a new Surgeon General's report out about the effects of secondhand smoke, and there's -- as is so often the case -- good news and bad news.

The bad news is that the health risks of secondhand smoke are even more profound than previously thought. There is no risk-free level of exposure, and children and people in poor health are especially at risk. Not only that, but 126 million of us are still exposed to secondhand smoke, despite the growing number of states and cities that fairly comprehensively ban smoking in public places and workplaces.

The good news is that there are all those states and localities that have acted to curb exposure, and there is, according to this report, little evidence that sweeping bans in places like Boston and New York have produced the economic damage to the hospitality industry that critics had feared.

But there's more good news, and it's related to another (you should pardon the expression) burning issue of the day: Nobody's trying to quash this report. As Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids puts it, "There is no longer a scientific controversy that secondhand smoke is a killer." Unlike with global warming, the Bush administration is not trying to silence or suppress this science; instead, the Government itself is the author of this report.

Last week my wife and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore documentary about global warming. It's an important film with a vital message (and it's also very entertaining; Gore's rep as a boring guy is undeserved), essentially a film treatment of Gore's dynamic and shocking climate change "slide show" (actually a very well done, high-tech presentation). Interspersed with the presentation are vignettes of Gore's life, focusing on the events that shaped his awareness of, and passion for, the issue of global climate change. One such event was the death of Gore's sister from lung cancer, after a lifetime of smoking. The Gore family had been tobacco farmers, and this loss opened their eyes; they were out of the tobacco business within a year.

Unfortunately, the tobacco industry at large wasn't quite as ready as the Gores to recognize their own state of denial. In ways eerily similar to the current climate change discussion, tobacco companies denied the clear scientific consensus on the dangers of smoking, and promoted the idea of scientific "controversy" where none actually existed. Sound familiar?

It took the good offices of federally funded researchers and the Surgeon General, along with the muscle of dozens of state attorneys general, to beat back challenges to smoking science; the really bad news is, this time around, with global warming, the Government is fighting against the science, not for it. Just ask James Hansen (or George Deutsch, if you can find him). The even worse news is that once the shackles were off, scientific research into the health effects of smoking (including this new report on secondhand smoke) showed us things were far worse than we had imagined. If the same thing happens when we win the fight (as we must) to free global climate change science, we're sunk.

Or at least, those of us within 20 feet of sea-level are. Think about it. Think hard.

Unit of the Day: The mgon is not a Klingon word; it's used to measure very small angles. The symbol for milligon, 1 mgon = 10^-3 gon (gee, that's helpful, right?). The gon is another name for the grad, a measure equal to 0.01 right angle, or 0.9 degrees. Thus, the mgon = 0.0009 degrees, or 3.24 seconds of arc. Surveyors' instruments are often marked in mgons, but you're unlikely to see it on your kid's protractor.

Flotsam and Jetsam

2006-06-22T19:02:00.000-04:00

No big theme today, just random thoughts to get me back on the blogging "horse":

The Vernon budget referendum failed again Tuesday, and I was sincerely bummed. But yesterday I went a picnic thrown by the Vernon Democratic Town Committee (the website is under construction), and attended by the mayor and several Democrats from the Town Council, and I ended up feeling hopeful. We face frustrating opposition fed by the culture of selfishness the national Republican Party fosters, but it's good to know that some people in town are committed to fighting back. In addition, a representative of Joe Courtney's campaign was there, and he had encouraging information about the fight to replace Republican Rob Simmons in the Congress.
The Reminder, a weekly community/shopper newspaper, finally printed its story on the citizens' budget forum, quoting both me and Mara... but the article didn't appear 'til the day of the next referendum vote, so it can't have had much impact on the outcome.
Steven Berlin Johnson told us that Everything Bad Is Good For You, but who knew that included porn?
This afternoon we learned that Joe Lieberman will be visiting Pratt & Whitney tomorrow, and he's going to be in our area. Sadly, I'm afraid it would be a career-limiting move to wear my Ned Lamont button.
Hey, I like hot girls on skates as well as the next guy, but do we really need a resurgence of roller derby?
Finally, one of my fondest culinary fantasies was destroyed last week when, while participating in a comments thread on Pharyngula, I learned that giant squid is inedible. I'd been dreaming of fried calamari rings the size of hula hoops!

Unit of the Day: The microflick has nothing to do with how you get a tiny piece of schmutz off your fingers; instead, it's a unit of spectral radiance used in optical and communications engineering. It's equal to 10^-6 flick (what else, eh?). Radiance is the power radiated per unit solid angle per unit of emitting surface. To measure radiance's variation with wavelength, spectral radiance is defined as the radiance per unit of wavelength span. In practice, spectral radiance is typically in microflicks, which are mathematically equivalent to 10 milliwatts per steradian per cubic meter. Now try to work that into a conversation!

We're Famous!

2006-06-10T01:11:00.000-04:00

Just a quickie tonight. Thursday night we attended the town budget meeting I mentioned in Wednesday's entry, and we seem to have made the papers. My daughter is quoted in this Hartford Courant article, and my own comments are mentioned toward the end of the article in the other local paper, the Journal Inquirer. A third paper, the weekly community/shopper Reminder, also had a reporter at the meeting, but we haven't seen that story yet. Sadly, none of the reporters seems to have taken pictures of us with our posters!

ATalbot was at the meeting too, fresh from the gubernatorial debate at Rockville High and dressed in full Ned Lamont for U.S. Senate regalia, and he spoke passionately in support of the education budget, which supports his attendance at the Connecticut International Baccalaureate Academy in East Hartford. He and Mara were the only students who spoke, and I was very proud of them both.

No Unit of the Day today; it's late.

What I Did On My Spring Vacation

2006-06-08T00:01:00.000-04:00

Well, I may not have been writing in my own blog much recently, but I have been writing on other folks'... at least in the comments sections:

I actually got a "letter" published at MSNBC.com's Altercation blog here (scroll down to Correspondence Corner), in response to this piece by regular Altercation contributor LTC Bob Bateman.
I've been contributing to several comments threads at Pharyngula, including this one on whether the 2000 and/or 2004 election was stolen (my first comment here); this one on the disappearing chemistry set (me here); this one on the "Motie" baby born in China (me here); and, most recently, this one on George Will's prudishness about AIDS (me here).
I've commented in a couple places (esp. at HobbySpace, here) about X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis winning the Heinlein Prize, and about his evocation of Robert Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon as an influence in his space-related entrepreneurship.

Now that I'm back in business here, of course, I'll try to save some of these pearls of wisdom for y'all... but I encourage you to check out the blogs I link to (more coming soon); they, and their commenting communities, never fail to amuse and enlighten.

Unit of the Day: The perch, introduced in the 12th century by the Norman conquerors, is an alternate name for the rod (16.5 feet or 5.0292 meters) of England. Amusingly enough, the same term also denotes both a unit of area (equal to a square perch!) and one of volume (of masonry, a stone wall one perch long by 18 inches high by 12 inches thick). Perch also serves as a traditional unit of distance in Ireland, and (as an alternate spelling of perche) a unit of both distance and area in French North America. Or it might just be a fish President Bush claimed to have caught!

Self Flagellation

2006-06-07T20:06:00.000-04:00

OK, it isn’t only the crazed albino monk from The DaVinci Code who occasionally needs to scourge himself to atone for his sins. I have some sins of my own to address, sins of omission and neglect:

First, this blog. Not that I think my pearls of wisdom represent any particular gift to the world, but opening this spot and inviting you all to read it represents a commitment, and it’s one I’ve failed to honor. If there are still any of you out there, please forgive me. If you’ve just joined (or rejoined) this merry ride, I promise to be more diligent in the future: At least 3 posts per week, without fail. Really. I promise.

But the real sin is something bigger: Yesterday, my town voted down its budget referendum... for the second time, and I helped let it happen through my complacency and inaction!

From the mayor's original budget through this second referendum, over three quarters of a million dollars have already been cut, including over $370,000 from the capital improvements budget and over $330,000 from the education budget. And now, with this second rejection, more cuts will be forthcoming. There's speculation that freshman athletics at Rockville High School will have to go, and an anti-tax group is seriously suggesting that the high school delete AP classes and replace full-time teachers with part-timers.

Based on the press reports, even the Republican town council members seem frustrated with the obstinate electorate, wondering how it will be possible to satisfy anti-tax voters without resorting to even more draconian cuts than the potentially crippling reductions they've already approved... but those Republicans should look in the mirror. Tip O'Neill famously declared that "all politics is local," but sometimes all local politics is national, too: Since the days of Reagan, Republican leaders and their allies in the punditocracy have been preaching the gospel of endless tax cuts and total disrespect for the value of government. Now local Republican officials are reaping what their national leaders have sown: Their constituents will not vote for even the most modest additional taxation, no matter how badly it's needed or how essential the services it would fund.

My personal sin is that I've stood by and watched it happen. When my family moved to Connecticut almost 6 years ago, I was very pleased to note that my new neighbors seemed so much more willing to invest in schools and local services than my former neighbors in Florida had been. Vernon was a great place to live: Affordable home ownership, very good public schools, timely and efficient town services (I didn't know how important snow plowing and leaf removal could be before I moved here!), a great parks and recreation system... basically lots to be proud of. Gradually, though, it started to get harder to pass a budget... not only for Vernon, but for other similar towns in the Hartford area (and probably throughout Connecticut, for all I know). Each year the upcoming budget referendum was greated by a growing crop of anti-budget yard signs, expressing not reasoned criticism of the budget proposal itself, but only an uncritical no-new-taxes message: What's in Your Wallet? Vote No!; Are You Broke? Vote No!; and on and on. Each year I fumed at the reactionary selfishness of this position, at the foolishness of people who refused to see the value we were getting for our money. I fumed... but I did nothing. After each of the last two annual budget fights, I swore to myself that next year I'd get involved... and then each year budget season came before I realized and I ended up just fuming again.

No more! Tomorrow my wife and teenage daughter and I will attend the scheduled meeting to help draft this year's third attempt at a budget. We'll be there with posters and passion, and I, at least, will be there ready to speak out in advocacy for responsible budgets and the value of community. And next year I'll be at the first budget meeting, and I'll put out my own signs and organize my own advocacy group. I might not end up changing much, but I damn sure won't be sitting on the sidelines griping about other people.

It's presumptuous of me to say so, because I've neglected my duties in this area for so long, but I urge all of you to do the same. Let your town council, your school board, your state representatives, your congressmen and senators know that you want good government, that you value the shared community work that functional government represents, and that you're willing to pay your fair share to achieve those goals. And even more important than telling your elected representatives, tell your neighbors. It's not enough, I now realize, just to vote; you must speak out, and influence the voters around you!

Unit of the Day: Geeks among you probably already know that tera- is a metric prefix meaning 10¹², or one trillion, as in teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second) or terabytes, but you may not know that it was derived from the Greek word for monster, teras. (Our words terrible and terrific have this same root.) The three prefixes mega-, giga-, and tera- thus mean something like huge, gigantic, and monstrous. (Adapted, as always, from How Many?)

Ancient History... 3 Weeks Ago

2006-03-20T22:26:00.000-05:00

OK, I started writing this immediately after the Olympics closing ceremonies, but got Overcome By Events and never finished it. I know it's ridiculously out of date by now, but I can't bear to throw out my golden words , and anyway, I was put right back in the Olympic mood by something I did this weekend. More about that in a minute, but first my dusty old Olympic opinions:

Well, the Torino Winter Olympics have come and gone, and we've heard all the predictable naysaying: Ratings were down, Americans behaved badly, we didn't win enough medals, nobody cares about these so-called sports anyway, blah, blah, blah....

I have a slightly different take on a lot of this. I love the Olympics, and I particularly love the Winter Games, sometimes because of the same things the critics carp about. A few thoughts about the just-completed Torino games, in no particular order:

Obscure Sports: OK, admittedly most Americans don't care about most Winter Olympics sports other than hockey, figure skating, maybe alpine skiing, and the new darling, snowboarding. For most of us, these two weeks every four years are not only the only time we see, but the only time we even think about, sports like ski jumping, cross-country skiing, and speedskating... never mind even more obscure sports like short-track speedskating, biathlon, or curling. Do we care that short-track is the national sport of South Korea, or that biathlon is huge in northern Europe, or that curling is more popular than hockey in Canada? We do not, anymore than we care about how much the rest of the world loves soccer.

But friends, this is a feature, not a bug! If you're any sort of sports fan at all -- or any sort of TV fan -- it should delight you to have spread before you a buffet of something different, in the same way that a literal buffet of new and different foods would. Like exotic foods, some of the Winter Games sports may not be to your taste, and others may be interesting only as an occasional diversion... but their very unusualness is a gift all its own. I probably would never watch most of the Winter Games sports regularly, the way I do baseball or college basketball, but for 2 weeks every 4 years, what's not to love? I'm old enough to remember the early days of ESPN, when it was primarily a sports news network and didn't yet have broadcast rights to many (if any) major sporting events. To fill the time between SportsCenters, they televised a variety of weird and wonderful sports, from hurling and Australian rules football to competitive aerobatics. Even earlier, ABC's Wide World of Sports used to "span the globe" to bring to U.S. TV the "constant variety of sport"... including many of the same "obscure" sports (like skeleton) that now grace the Olympic Winter Games. Sure, it's not steak-and-potatoes sports... but isn't it fun to at least sample some reindeer meat every now and then?

Medal Counts: Much was made of the U.S. team's poor medal performance, and to be sure there were many U.S. medal hopefuls who failed to reach their potentials... but the key words here are "hopeful" and "potential." In fact, while the popular press was trumpeting hopes of record medal hauls, the more analytical sports press was more realistic: Historically nations experience a significant drop in medal count (on the order of 40 percent) in the Games immediately after they host an Olympiad, and while many U.S. athletes were capable of threatening for medals, fewer were actually predicted to finish on the podium. Take Bode Miller (please!): All the buzz going into the Games was that he might medal in all 5 alpine skiing events... but Sports Illustrated's pre-Games analysis actually only predicted a medal in one event, the alpine combined. Viewed that way, his undeniable collapse seems somewhat less epic.

As it happened, the U.S. finished second in overall medals (with 25, 1 behind Germany's total) and tied for second in gold medals (with 9). It was our second-best performance ever, behind only the home-field Salt Lake City games, and actually better than most countries do right after hosting their own games. The public's perception of a disastrous performance by the U.S. team has much more to do with pre-Games expectations -- which the U.S. Olympic Committee has admitted it mismanaged -- than with objective reality.

"Ugly American" Athletes: OK, so Bode Miller partied, Lindsay Jacobellis showboated, and Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis spent the whole fortnight glaring at each other. Get over it: Part of the package with world-class athletes is a certain degree of arrogance and self-focus... it's an inherent ingredient of what drives them to be the best. It's extraodinarily rare to find the fierce competitiveness of a world-class champion living side-by-side with selfless altruism in the same human body.

Rare, but not unheard of: For every story like the ones mentioned above, there's a Joey Cheek, who turned over his medal bonuses to charity without even thinking twice... or an Apolo Anton Ohno, who, after seeming somewhat selfish himself in Salt Lake City, apeared to have an almost spiritual appreciation of pure sport this time 'round... or a Lindsay Kildow, who grittily continued to compete despite injuries that made it impossible for her to win... or an Evan Lysacek, who shook off the disappointment of a disastrous short program in men's figure skating to give the performance of his life in the long program and nearly claim a medal... or a Shaun White, whose sheer boyish charm and joy in what he does must have won over even the most curmudgeonly despiser of snowboarding.

In short, I think we Americans have far more to be proud of than to apologize for.

OK, that was my post-Olympic take. Now as to why I was feeling Olympic again this weekend... I attended an open house at the Norfolk Curling Club this weekend. When I first saw it during the Salt Lake City games, I thought curling was the coolest imaginable sport, not least because it seemed like middle-age fat guys like me could actually make the Olympics in this game. Well, this time 'round the guys all seemed disappointingly young and buff, but the game was every bit as fascinating as I remembered it. I'm hooked.

Apparently I'm not alone: The open house drew somewhere between 150 and 200 people, vastly more than the 20 to 40 they expected. The club is planning a 4-session workshop for new curlers, and I can't wait. In the meantime, here I am doing the newbie drills:

Unit of the Day: The mease (scroll down after clicking) is a unit of quantity formerly used by fishermen, equal to the number of herring in a basket (roughly 620). Try working that into a conversation!

News from Other Blogs

2006-03-16T14:58:00.000-05:00

First, a quick assist to ATalbot, friend of the Spleen and proprietor of the Bye Bye Rob blog. Blogger's comment feature wouldn't let him post the following flyer for this weekend's anti-war rally in Hartford, but I can post in a main entry, so here it is:

ATalbot (I have to ask him if he minds whether I use his real name) also attended Ned Lamont's announcement that he will challenge Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate from Connecticut (maybe he'll give us a report in a comment to this post). He is one of a group of teens -- friends of my daughter's -- who continue to give me hope for the future, because they are so much more involved in serious thought about real issues (politics, the arts, etc.) than I remember being at that age.

Next, I found myself compelled yesterday to comment in a thread at the blog of Steven Berlin Johnson, the author of Everything Bad Is Good for You. Taking off on the recent reports about Barry Bonds' alleged steroid use, Johnson ponders whether "performance enhancing" substances are really all that different from other performance enhancements, such as laser eye surgery that enhances already good vision. After I added my comment, it dawned on me that I shouldn't have wasted my perfectly good words (OK, that's a matter of opinion, admittedly) on somebody else's blog... so I'm shamelessly plagiarizing myself by repeating my comments here:

The conversation about "performance enhancing" substances/practices reminds me strangely of the controversy over genetically modified animals/crops: They're both based on the same false dichotomy between "artificial" and "natural."

Just as all domesticated plants and animals are really genetically modified, whether through the slow and tedious "natural" methods of selective breeding and culling or the "artificial" methods of the laboratory, so too are all elite athletes "performance enhanced" compared to non-athletes. At first glance, it might seem easy to differentiate between "natural" performance-enhancing measure (i.e., special diets, exercise regimes, training, physical therapy, sports psychology) and "artificial" ones such as drugs and surgical body modification... but on closer inspection, such distinctions can seem pretty arbitrary. During the recent Winter Olympics, several cross-country skiers were temporarily suspended because of elevated hemoglobin levels. My understanding is that these levels might result from illegal doping... but they might also result from "natural" causes, including high-altitude training.

Because the raison d'etre of sports is competition, and some basic standard of fairness is essential to competitive integrity, I think there is a basis for discriminating between performance enhancing measures... but based on equal access, rather than on the imagined moral superiority of "natural" methods: An athlete shouldn't feel compelled to become a criminal in order to have a fair chance of winning, so it's reasonable to ban illegal drugs; an athlete shouldn't feel compelled to risk his/her life for sport, so it's reasonable to ban life-threatening practices. (Note that the latter does not imply that merely unhealthy practices should be banned: By the standards of "normal life," much of what elite athletes do with regard to training and diet could be called unhealthy.)

Under my model, illegal steroids should be banned, NOT because they're "performance enhancing," but because allowing their use would put athletes unwilling to engage in criminal behavior at an unfair disadvantage, and thereby damage the basic competitive equity of the sport. Substances that are legal (e.g., anything you can buy at a GNC store) should NOT be banned, regardless of their "performance enhancing" characteristics, and substances that are illegal but not performance enhancing should not be specifically banned by sporting organizations. (That is, Ricky Williams' fondness for the ganja is between him and the cops, but to my mind no business of the NFL's, unless you can convince me that smoking dope makes him a better football player.)

As for eye surgery and other "artificial" enhancements, I say as long as they're freely available to all and don't present any extreme risks, there's no reason to restrict them.

Of course, I'm the commissioner of exactly nothing! ;^)

If you're interested in the original thread this appeared in, it's here.

Unit of the Day: The newton (yes, named after that Newton) is the metric (SI) unit of force, equal to the force required to accelerate one kilogram at one meter per second per second. This one is familiar to space cadets, because rocket engine thrust is given in multiples of newtons (everywhere but the U.S., where we still use pounds).

A Manor of Thy Friend's or of Thine Own

2006-03-14T18:20:00.000-05:00

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Not merely the source for well known titles of war movies and novels, this excerpt from John Donne's Meditation XVII is a penetrating insight into the human condition.

That is, it's a penetrating insight into how some of us view the human condition. In ruminating on my noontime political chautauquas with my CCLB and my Fellow Liberal Lunch Buddy (FLLB) [they know who they are, and they'll likely be recurring characters here at the Spleen], I've been trying sort something out: How is it that decent, well-meaning people with similar backgrounds, education, and current lifestyles can hold such diametrically opposed opinions. I like to think I'm a rational person, but I don't flatter myself that I'm noticeably smarter than my CCLB (for instance), so how does his exercise of reason lead him to conclusions that seem so unreasonable to me?

I've decided that the only explanation is that he and I -- and conservatives and liberals generally -- start reasoning from fundamentally different beginning assumptions. Before you say "Duh! That's pretty obvious!", bear with me: I don't think it really is all that obvious to most people, and I think much of the acrimony in our current political discourse springs from the failure to understand this basic principle.

Here's what I think I now understand: Conservatives are fundamentally anti-social. Now wait... I don't mean that word in its typical pejorative sense; rather, I mean that at some level they don't believe in society, at least not in the same way liberals do. An old antagonist of mine on a space bulletin board used to argue whenever I would use the word "we" in talking about the space program (e.g., "we went to the Moon"; "we've sent spacecraft to every planet but Pluto"; etc.), on the grounds that I hadn't personally participated in those activities. For a long time, I thought he was being deliberately obtuse, for no other reason than to pick fights. Actually, I still think he was doing that, but I eventually figured out there was more to it: I was saying "we" meaning humankind, or in some cases the United States, with the understanding that as a human and an American, I did participate in those activities. He was having none of it: To him, there was no such thing as society, and if you hadn't done something in your own person, you hadn't done it at all. He did not believe that "every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main," and he certainly didn't believe that "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."

To him... and I suspect to conservatives in general... society, as an integrated whole, does not exist, and what goes under that name is really just a collection of individuals, each ultimately responsible to (and for) him/herself alone. This is, I've come to believe, at the root of many political arguments about such issues as tax policy, public education, and government programs in general. It also may explain why conservatives consider socialism such a dirty word!

With this philosophical chasm in mind, it's easier to understand why the health care/health insurance issue has been so intractable in U.S. politics. To understand why it's so important, and get a good (if somewhat disheartening) overview of what we should -- but probably can't -- do about it, check out this article from the New York Review of Books (thanks to the Altercation blog for highlighting this). It's a long read, but well worth it if you're at all interested in public health care policy.

Unit of the Day: The sabin has nothing to do with the discoverer of the oral polio vaccine; it's a measure of sound absorption used by acoustical engineers, equal to the absorption of one square foot of a perfectly absorbing surface. Now a perfectly sound-absorbing surface sounds like a pretty useful thing, doesn't it?

A Peppering of Birdshot

2006-03-08T20:07:00.000-05:00

Once again I've let too much time go by between posts, what with one thing and another. I've got a few longer posts in the works, but in the meantime here's a 28-gauge blast of random thoughts:

Sweet Home, South Dakota... As a follow-up to my thoughts on South Dakota's abortion ban, which Governor Mike Rounds has now signed into law (to less than rave reviews at home and abroad), I note the following from a CBS News web report: "Lawmakers said an anonymous donor has pledged $1 million to defend the ban, and the Legislature set up a special account to accept donations for legal fees." I suppose I just never thought about it, but I didn't realize states could accept private donations to defend laws against legal challenges. Now that I have thought about it, I think it's a bad idea: I can't come up with a legal theory for banning the process, but in principle I'm concerned that it has the effect of isolating legislators from responsibility for the laws they pass. If the state's taxpayers were footing the bill for all those millions of dollars in legal costs, their representatives might think twice before passing a patently unconstitutional law whose real purpose is to advance a national political agenda. As it is, the South Dakota legislature is now a regiment of mercenaries, fighting someone else's battle in the pay of outside money. If it were my state's legislature, I'd be pissed... regardless of how I felt about the issue at hand.

Blogstyles of the New and Clueless... I finally got caught up reading my daughter's blog (with her permission; I'm not snooping), and I see she initially took offense at my previous comments about high-schoolers' blogs. She quickly figured out I didn't mean to insult her and her friends -- she's a very smart kid -- but I wanted to say publicly that my comment about kids being interested in the minutiae of each other's lives was in no way intended as a putdown. It's one of the special magics of that age that your life should be so intimately connected with those of your friends; revel in it while you can. In any case, I'm new (and clueless!) at this whole deal, while she has just celebrated the second anniversary of her blog. If there were any conflict between our blogging styles, you'd have to give her way precedence!

These Dadgum Newfangled Computers... Along the same lines, at work today my Cranky Conservative Lunch Buddy (CCLB) was holding forth about how modern communication technologies like voicemail and e-mail have caused people to stop talking to one another. Me, I don't buy it. No doubt new technologies can present challenges to social behavior, but since we're stuck with them it's useless to wring our hands about how awful they are. In any case, I think computer-based communication enhances rather than degrades sociability. My CCLB was talking about how careful he and his wife are to police their kids' computer usage, so they will go out and play with other kids face-to-face instead. My perception, though, is that my daughter and her friends use blogging, e-mail, IM, and the web to add to, not replace, their face-to-face interaction. They spend plenty of time together in "meat-space"; the computer just helps them arrange it. And IM makes for great virtual study groups, too. I say bring on the pixels!

Do (Hungry) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?... If they make a sequel to Splash, do you suppose Daryl Hannah will play this part?

Unit of the Day: The mickey, used by computer programmers, is the length of the smallest detectable movement of a computer mouse (mouse... mickey... get it?) or similar input device. Its absolute size depends on the specific equipment, but roughly 0.1 millimeter would be a typical value.

An Abortion of a Law

2006-02-25T16:15:00.000-05:00

The last thing I want is for this blog to become another battlefield in the abortion wars. While I recognize the critical importance of the issue to many on both sides of the debate, the issue itself doesn't resonate deeply with this particular middle-aged male. I don't intend to even declare my position here. Some folks who know me may think they have reasons to guess one way; others may guess the other way; I ain't saying either way. I find that the mere mention of the issue tends to banish clear thinking from the conversation.

And that's exactly why even though I don't want to talk about abortion, I do want to talk about South Dakota's new abortion law, which passed the state's senate last Wednesday and appears on its way to full passage and signature.

The emotion that surrounds abortion has long distorted politics and governance in this country in ways that extend far beyond the boundaries of this one issue. It polarizes the both the electorate and our leaders (and office-seekers), leading to votes and appointments and decisions that are driven by the abortion issue but whose impact is much broader. For instance, how many religious folk who fundamentally agree with Democrats on issues of social justice nevertheless feel morally compelled to vote against the pro-choice party? And given the closeness of the last two presidential elections, how difficult is it to imagine that people voting against their own broader principles because of this one issue swayed the outcome? How many times has the selection of judges and high-level officials been colored by the abortion "litmus test"? (I believe that metaphor is now mandated by federal law.) How often has our national debate about important public policy issues such as medical research, health care, education, public hygiene, etc., been hijacked by abortion concerns, often things that are trivial and peripheral to the real issue.

This is not just a rant about the current Republican administration, either: For the more than 3 decades since Roe v Wade (and no doubt for years before that), abortion has provided the axis around which American politics has rotated... too often, to the detriment of the other legitimate business of the people.

The thing is, the most committed people on both sides might think it's right and just that this issue dominates our politics, because fundamental principles involved are so important. But this new law, and the arguments around it, hint that neither side is truly committed to their ostensible principles. Here's what I mean:

The principle on which the anti-abortion position stands is the assertion that a fetus is a human person, and that each abortion is a homicide, and that a public policy of legal abortion constitutes a horrifying holocaust. OK, let's follow that logic.

South Dakota law defines first-degree murder -- a Class A felony -- in part this way: "Homicide is murder in the first degree when perpetrated without authority of law and with a premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed or of any other human being...."

...and an abortion is clearly a "premeditated design" to terminate the life of a fetus. If we stipulate that a fetus is in fact a person, and remove from abortion the "authority of law," it follows as night follows day that an abortion is an instance of first-degree murder as defined by South Dakota's existing law. Further, in South Dakota a Class A felony is punishable by death, if certain aggravating circumstances obtain:

"Pursuant to §§ 23A-27A-2 to 23A-27A-6, inclusive, in all cases for which the death penalty may be authorized, the judge shall consider, or shall include in instructions to the jury for it to consider, any mitigating circumstances and any of the following aggravating circumstances which may be supported by the evidence:
. . . .
(5) The defendant caused or directed another to commit murder or committed murder as an agent or employee of another person;"

That is, as either the instigator or the so-called triggerman in a murder for hire... which, if you stipulate that the fetus is a person, means both the mother and the doctor in an abortion scenario, not to mention possibly any third party who knowingly paid for the abortion. Another aggravating circumstance is if...

"(6) The offense was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim. Any murder is wantonly vile, horrible, and inhuman if the victim is less than thirteen years of age;" [emphasis added]

...and a fetus is certainly less than 13 years old. Once you declare, as a matter of law, that a fetus is a person, it's logically impossible to view in abortion as anything other than a murder-for-hire conspiracy... a serious crime punishable by serious sanctions, up to and including death, against all members of the conspiracy. So what does the proposed South Dakota law provide? Well, it provides for a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison for the doctor... and no punishment at all for the mother.

Excuse me? 5 years max for a hit man?!? Hired to kill a baby?!? And the person who hired him walks?!? The anti-abortion movement wants us to believe that a baby has the same fundamental rights 5 months before it's born as it does 5 months after, but the sponsors of this law clearly don't believe that: Try to imagine the outcry if anyone suggested a mother could hire a hit man to kill her 5-month-old infant and get off scott free. And that even the hit man could get no more than 5 years in prison. No, this law fundamentally fails to do justice to the very principle that is its ostensible justification... and in so doing, it casts doubt on whether its supporters actually believe what they claim to believe. Are anti-abortion activists, their opponents might wonder, really all that concerned about defending life, or is it all just a hook on which they hang their attempts to enforce a conservative public policy regarding sexuality?

But before the abortion-rights folks start feeling smug, let me note that there's plenty of sauce for both the goose and the gander here. Consider that the arguments against the South Dakota law began with complaints that the law lacked exceptions for rape or incest, and that it lacked a sufficiently broad exception to protect the mother's health. I confess I've never understood the rape-or-incest issue: If the fetus is not a person, all talk of exceptions is moot, but if it is a person, well... at what point did we decide it was alright to kill a child as long as you can show that the child's father is a rapist? The very idea that the sins of the father should be visited on the child even unto death seems positively medieval. Yet abortion rights activists often base their attack against proposed restrictions on the technical question of exceptions, and in the process risk implicitly conceding the underlying proposition. In effect, they're arguing for a law that defines abortion as killing but includes sufficient loopholes that anyone who wants to can get away with murder.

I'm sorry, but on the question of exceptions, the South Dakota law has it right, at least in terms of internal logic: Once you stipulate that the fetus is legally equivalent to a born child, you logically can't allow any exceptions other than to save the life of the mother. As a society, we recognize individuals' right to kill to save their own lives, but not to save themselves from embarrassment or inconvenience or even non-life-threatening illness. Can you imagine anyone saying it was OK for a mother to kill her 5-month-old sick infant to avoid catching the flu? Or to avoid the psychological pain of being constantly reminded of the man who raped her? Surely not... yet these are precisely the sort of mother's health exceptions that invariably come up in these debates.

Look, I understand that politics is the art of the possible, and at some level these are positions of political pragmatism. Abortion foes know people won't stand for a law that treats friendly small-town OB/Gyns like mob hitters and sweet college girls-next-door like stone killers. Abortion rights activists similarly realize that large segments of the country can't reconcile themselves to a totally permissive legal regime. So both sides make compromises, working for the future, and for a law that embodies as much of what they believe in as they can get.

The problem is that when your position is grounded in absolute principle, any compromise at all invalidates your whole argument. At the core of this debate, a fetus either is or is not a person. To say, on the one hand, that it is a person but you're willing to negotiate away a big chunk of its personal value to get your way or, on the other hand, that it's not a person but you're willing to pretend it's sort of one to mollify your opponents... well, either way, it's as ridiculous and unjustified as counting slaves as 3/5 person was. (Note that I do think it's logically and morally possible to assert that we can't know for sure whether/when a fetus is a person, and then argue about what sort of notice, if any, the law should take of that uncertainty. But in my experience, neither side ever takes this tack.) For some issues -- and this is one of them, I think -- the politics of "whatever works" just doesn't work.

Aside from the failure of either the law or its opponents to honor their ostensible underlying principles, there's another thing about this story that should concern even people who aren't deeply concerned about abortion: It's happening in South Dakota, and it's happening now.

The abortion ban law passed the South Dakota senate with just 23 "ayes." Earlier, there were 47 yes votes for the house version. Presuming the bill makes it through conference and the governor signs it, that'll be a total of 71 people -- just 71 citizens of a sparsely populated state (ranked 46th in population, with only one city of more than 100,000 people) -- who will have put their names to a measure that might well change the lives of nearly 300 million Americans. Why South Dakota? I can't prove it, but it's not hard to imagine that an out-of-the-way (and not incidentally, out-of-the-media-glare) state with a small, accessible legislature makes a perfect launching point for a stealth-bomber mission against "settled law."

I'm no constitutional lawyer, but even a layman can see that the South Dakota law, as written, is unconstitutional under Roe and a raft of supporting decisions, including some recent ones. So why bother? And why now? Did South Dakotans experience a wave of fervor around the issue? Maybe so, but it's equally probable that somebody noticed the membership of the U.S. Supreme has changed just a skosh recently. Most of the press accounts about this legislation frankly admit that its purpose is to provoke a showdown over Roe.

Now, there's an honorable tradition of creating test laws or test cases to effect change in the legal landscape... but in this case, we're talking about a tiny number of legislators representing a (relatively) tiny number of voters tipping over the first domino, and all the other dominos will fall within the courts, out of reach of voters in the rest of the country. I'm not sure there's fundamentally anything wrong with that, but it makes me distinctly uneasy. I would think other concerned non-South Dakotans -- on both sides of the issue -- would feel similarly queasy.

I guess we'll learn earlier rather than later what to expect from our remade Supreme Court. That's one thing....

Unit of the Day: galileo, the CGS unit of acceleration, is used primarily by geologists to measure tiny local variations in surface gravity due to geologic formations. Abbreviated Gal, the galileo (yes, it's named after that Galileo) is equal to an acceleration of 1 centimeter per second per second. As small a quantity as that is (approximately 0.0010197 g), it's still large compared to the variations geologists are trying to measure; they typically work in milliGals.

Almost a Custom

2006-02-23T00:47:00.000-05:00

I had so much fun last night posting about How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement that I've decided to institute a recurring feature here at the Spleen: the Unit of the Day. Each time I post (not necessarily every day, as you've guessed by now), I'll pick out a unit of measure that strikes me as interestingly obscure or otherwise amusing and post it, along with its definition and whatever pithy comment I might have to add. Unless I say otherwise, all the Units of the Day will be based on information from How Many? (and be linked to it, though in some cases you may need to scroll to find the unit).

To get things started...

Unit of the Day: snit, a U.S. unit of volume equal to 2 jiggers (3 U.S. fluid ounces) of liquor. Of course, it might also signify what you'd be in if a bartender refused to serve you 2 jiggers of liquor!

The Big Unit(s)

2006-02-22T00:57:00.000-05:00

I was looking something up today at work, and it occurred to me to share with y'all one of my favorite online resources: How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement. Now, for some of you, this might seem like a pretty geeky site to list among my favorites... but if you are (as I am) one of those people who can look up a word in a common dictionary and get sucked into browsing for hours, you'll find this site every bit as dangerously compelling as your Funk and Wagnalls. It's full not only of ordinary, everyday units of measure like inches and amperes and footcandles, but also of the arcane and obscure: units from ancient times (ever wonder what a cubit really is?) or foreign lands (bet you didn't know that in Central America a manzana is unit of land equal in area to a square 100 varas on a side), and units for things you never knew anyone bothered to measure (lunar eclipse brightness? the hardness of tablets [i.e., pills]? the darkness of beer or honey?)

As a technical writer, I often use this site to confirm the proper usage, abbreviation, symbol, etc., of units that appear in the documents I edit... but sometimes the information is of more, umm, topical use. If, for instance, you're thinking of going hunting with Dick Cheney, you might be interested in how they measure birdshot pellet sizes or shotgun gauges, and your next of kin might want to bone up on the Glasgow Coma Scale. And if you've been following the Winter Olympics in Italy, you might be interested to learn that the Torino Impact Hazard Scale measures not the force with which an ice dancer's hip hits the rink, but rather the risk of devastating impact posed by a near-Earth asteroid or comet.

Fascinating, eh? This is all the brainchild of one Russ Rowlett, director of the University of North Carolina's Center for Mathematics and Science Education. Check it out... but when you find you've wasted way too many hours learning (for instance) that a butt is generally defined as two hogsheads, don't blame me; blame Dr. Rowlett.

Enjoy!

Space Sports Follow-Up

2006-02-17T01:27:00.000-05:00

Hey, I got an e-mail from Rocky Persaud, president of IPX Entertainment, about my earlier posting on their space sports proposals. He tells me they're now casting for a space-sports reality show related to their zero-gee game. I had actually already seen the press release, and planned to post the news here, but it was fascinating to hear from him. When I told him I'd try out myself if I weren't a middle-aged fat guy, he replied that they have other contests in development that would be open to regular, non-athlete type folks like myself. Cool, eh?

It's also cool that somebody outside my small circle of acquaintances has stumbled across this blog. If there's anyone else out there listening, besides atalbot and Mara, I'd love to hear from you.

Update (21 February 2006): Here's an interview with Rocky Persaud about Space Champions and the future plans of IPX Entertainment.

Science Fiction Double Feature

2006-02-10T19:40:00.000-05:00

First a correction: In my earlier post on the State of the Union human-animal hybrid issue, I made a reference to "...as if anyone outside a Jules Verne novel were even contemplating the creation of human-animal hybrids!" Well, on further review, I believe I was actually thinking of The Island of Dr. Moreau, which is not by Verne but by the other giant of pre-20th century science fiction, H.G. Wells. Either I was remembering the French name in the title of Wells' work and therefore incorrectly attributing it to Verne... or more likely, I was confusing Moreau with Verne's The Mysterious Island, which actually continues the story of Captain Nemo and has (as far as I know) nothing to do with bizarre man-beasts. Oh, well... c'est la guerre, eh?

While on the subject of science fiction, though, I'm fascinated -- and more than moderately delighted -- to note that my daughter's high-school book club is soon to read Robert Heinlein's seminal 1961 novel A Stranger in a Strange Land. Why delighted? Well, aside from the fact that I've been a rabid Heinlein fan since discovering Red Planet in junior high shool, and the fact that the Heinlein Forum was my earliest online "home," I guess I'm pleased with the selection because the book's just so dangerous!

Stranger, which famously added the word "grok" to the language (and inspired an actual neopagan church that still exists), is sometimes credited as the original prototype for communal, free-love ideals of 1960s hippies. I think that's a bit of a stretch, but there's no denying that the novel (which I've just finished rereading) presents... shall we say challenging?... ideas about some cherished social values, especially including sexuality and religion. Through the story of a human raised from infancy by Martians and then returned to Earth as a young adult, Heinlein offers a unique perspective on human social, sexual, and religious practices, mercilessly testing our underlying assumptions about sexual morality and the nature of God. Though some of it seems slightly dated now, as a whole, it's just as threatening to today's orthodoxy as it was to 1961's... perhaps more so. In short, it's just the sort of book that parents and pastors and "family values" advocates agitate to have removed from public schools.

And that's exactly why I'm delighted that my daughter's school is encouraging her to read it (admittedly in an extracurricular club rather than a class, but still...). In an era that is, for my tastes, all too prudish, prissy, and protective about the ideas we're willing for our children (or ourselves, for that matter) to be exposed to, such a fearless choice pleases me immensely. And it's not just this book: the RHS Book Club regularly draws its material not from the "safe ground" of the Young Adult section of the library, but from the best contemporary literary fiction, even when that means confronting adult themes. That the Book Club's faculty sponsors take this approach, that they (apparently) meet little opposition from the community, and -- it must be said -- that there's a ready audience of teenagers mature and thoughtful and inquisitive enough for these works... these facts help give me hope that our society is not quite so close to a new Dark Ages as I sometimes fear.

Good God, Y'all! What Is it Good For?

2006-02-03T00:11:00.000-05:00

War, that is.

One more bit about the SotU; I promise my next post won't be political (or at least not obviously so; I'm beginning to believe that, at some level, everything is politics).

All the commentary I listened to and read after the SotU reminded me of something that's been bugging me since... oh, maybe about September 25, 2001. You see, I keep hearing folks who oppose the Bush administration's Iraq policy falling all over themselves to say that of course we have to win the "War on Terror"; we just disagree on strategy... and tactics... and how much of our civil liberty we're willing to give up for the cause, and.... Well, here's the thing (my favorite Bill Bryson line): There is no "War on Terror"!

Mind you, I understand that as a matter of political reality, Democrats and liberals who hold or seek elective office have to protect themselves against the charge that they're weak on national defense; too soft to perform the cardinal function of government. And I don't mean to minimize the gravity of the struggle against terrorism, nor the evil of the terrorists. But "war" as a specific term has significant and unavoidable implications, and it's extraordinarily dangerous to use the word carelessly.

Cynical people will say this administration does everything carelessly; really cynical people may suspect there's more care -- of a Machiavellian sort -- than we might like in the administration's use of the word "war." You see, we historically have been willing to surrender rights and make other sacrifices in time of war, for the sake of ensuring the survival of the nation. We're willing to tolerate these temporary sacrifices in large part because they are presumed to be temporary. Notwithstanding the existence in world history of a Thirty Years' War and a Hundred Years' War, wars are always understood to be finite: Each side expects to win, lose, or reach a negotiated peace. In the World Wars of the 20th Century, folks happily accepted rationing, censorship of the mail, blackouts, air-raid drills, and a variety of other sacrifices "for the duration," and expression that survives in common usage to this day. That very phrase implies the expectation of an END.

We (justifiably) fought a war in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks; we (unjustifiably, it seems to me) fought a war in Iraq. Both either are over, or will be over at some point in the foreseeable future (depending on how you view the ongoing operations in both places). We have defeated the Taliban and Iraqi armies and overturned the governments that fielded them. But however successful we are in thwarting terrorist plots and capturing or killing individual terrorists, we can, almost by definition, never win a broader "War on Terror."

Friends, the good news is that we as a nation are vastly, literally incredibly, blessed... blessed with material, spiritual, intellectual, and cultural riches most of the people of the world can only dream about. In addition, we are hugely powerful, able to act on the global stage essentially unchallenged. The bad news is that as long as we are this rich, this enviable, there will be people who envy us... and some of them will seek to channel their envy into unspeakably evil acts. And as long as we're powerful, there will be people who fear and mistrust our power... and some of them, too, will manifest their fear as violence.

This is NOT an apology for terrorism: In most cases, the terrorists' envy and fear and hatred are misplaced, and even when our opponents have arguably valid reasons for opposing us, no grievance can ever justify indiscriminate violence against innocent noncombatants. Murder is murder, no matter how good a reason the murderer thinks he has for being angry. There's no doubt that terrorists are our enemies... the enemies of decent people everywhere. We must struggle against them, diligently, earnestly, aggressively, bravely... but they are not nations, with armies and territory and governments that we can defeat or with which we can negotiate peace. Even terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda have no standing to surrender on behalf of global terrorism as a whole, nor will defeating them militarily end all terrorism.

No, terrorists are our foreign enemies more in the sense that criminals are our domestic enemies, and we have about as much chance of ever really "defeating" terrorism as we do of defeating crime. Until there's no more wealth, people will try to steal; until there's no more personal conflict, people will try to maim and kill. Similarly, until we are no longer enviable or powerful (an outcome you could hardly think of as "victory"), people in the world will try to steal our freedom, kill our peace.

We must, of course, keep up the struggle... but we can't fool ourselves into thinking there's an end to it. If we must, we can call the struggle against global terrorism the "moral equivalent of war," as Jimmy Carter called the energy crisis of the late 1970s, but if we actually call it "war" -- if we in the opposition acquiesce to the administration calling it "war" -- well, a permanent state of war leads to permanent war powers. (Can you say "Patriot Act"? I knew you could.) And permanent war powers have long been a stepping stone to totalitarianism, in history and in cautionary fiction.

Just ask George Orwell.

Say it again!

The State of the Union is... Wicked!

2006-01-31T22:52:00.000-05:00

OK, I swear this won't always be a political blog, but on SoU night, it's hard to resist.

A while back, I posted an entry about Wicked, the musical. Since then, I've been reading the novel that inspired the show, and I'll no doubt have something about that when I'm done... but tonight, after listening to the president's State of the Union Address, the word "strawman" means something to me other than a denizen of Oz.

Throughout the first, foreign "policy" related, section of the speech, the president consistently contrasted his administration's policies to "isolationism," as if his political critics were isolationists. (I was hoping to quote directly from the speech, but the text is apparently not online yet. It's "coming soon" here.) Really? The opposition that urged him to pay more heed to the United Nations is isolationist? The folks who begged him to give Hans Blix, Mohammad al-Barradei, et al., more time (and credence) are isolationists? Those of us who were ridiculed by our own leaders because we refused to expunge from our junk food's names those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," the French... we're isolationists? It is to laugh!

This is a classic strawman argument. The president wants us to understand that his policies are infinitely superior to isolationism... never mind that none of us is actually advocating isolationism. Among those of us who oppose Mr. Bush's adventure into Iraq, there's a wide range of diverse opinions about what we should do instead... but even those pushing for immediate withdrawal of our troops there are not, as the president would have it, advocating "retreat to within our borders." The president's liberal and Democratic opponents are generally more internationalist than the president has ever even dreamed of being (not for nothing does the classic bumpersticker begin "Think Globally..."). We want to engage the global community; we just would prefer to engage it in a somewhat less brutal and useless way than we currently are in Iraq. I think we can all agree to oppose "isolationism"; I just wish we could get the president to agree that the opposite of isolationism needn't necessarily be imperialism.

Later in the speech, the president invoked the examples of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and (IIRC) FDR, praising them for persevering... for not giving up. Well and good, as far as that goes, but these icons' greatness lay not merely in their perseverance, but in the nobility of the causes in which they persevered. For not giving up to be a virtue, it is a necessary precondition that what you are not giving up not be evil. A lesson, sadly, our leaders don't seem to have learned.

PS: On the subject of strawman arguments, at one point the president called for strong legal prohibitions against the horrors of human cloning and its related technologies, including "the creation of human-animal hybrids." As if anyone outside a Jules Verne novel were even contemplating the creation of human-animal hybrids! Those of you brewing up centaurs and mermaids in your basements... well you just go straight to bed without your supper! Shame on you! ;^)

Belated "Hello" and Housekeeping

2006-01-31T01:18:00.000-05:00

Well, the holidays have come and gone (long gone, actually... I started this entry in early January, but got sidetracked by the predictable post-holiday cold), and it's about time I got back to this. I realize I sort of backed into this blogging business, so I suppose I should take a moment to introduce myself, and define (to the extent I can) just what in the heck this is going to be.

My name is Bill Dauphin; I'm 45 years old; I live in Vernon, Connecticut (in the Hartford area, more or less); and I work as a technical writer (proposals and reports, not manuals) for a major aerospace company. My wife teaches English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) at the University of Connecticut American English Language Institute.

The son of a NASA engineer, I was born in Florida and raised in the Houston, Texas, area. I graduated from Friendswood High School, received a BA in English from University of Houston in 1981, completed an MA in English/Creative Writing from Binghamton University in 1984 (we called it "SUNY-Binghamton" in those days), and finally, just for the fun of it (really!), picked up an MS in Space Studies from University of North Dakota's Space Studies Distance Learning program in 2003.

So why blog? Well, at first, it was because my 15 year-old daughter was blogging, and I figured I'd better get with the program. Then too, a favorite online haunt of mine, the Space Arena BBS, stopped taking new postings (you can still read the archives, if you're brave ), and I ended up reading some of the regulars' individual blogs to try to keep up. One day I wanted to post a comment at Jon Goff's Selenian Boondocks blog, and somehow managed to convince myself I had to have a Blogger account to do so. I was wrong, of course, but by the time I figured that out, I had the account, and it just seemed natural to use it.

When I told Andy, my best buddy and model rocketry teammate, that I'd started a blog, his response was succinct: "I detest blogs!" If y'all buy some rocket kits from him, he'll probably forgive me, but the comment did start me thinking about what the devil I'm up to here. This is not any sort of attempt at "citizen journalism" like the pro bloggers (my current favorite of whom is Eric Alterman at MSNBC.com): I don't have the facts, skill, or authority to do that well, and I'd really hate to do it badly. It's also not intended to be a public diary like my daughter and her LiveJournal friends have: High-school students really do care about the minutiae of each other's days, but can't imagine anyone cares about mine. And I'm certainly not interested in the kind of bottom-feeding stuff that must have prompted this cartoon.

So why waste the electrons, eh? Well, it turns out -- and this'll hardly be any surprise to folks who know me -- that I do have an opinion or two. I don't pretend that they're necessarily any better than anyone else's, but they're there, rattling around inside my head. I find that putting my thoughts into words helps me understand more clearly what I actually think... and this is a way to wring out those words without inflicting them (or at least, not all of them) on my poor family. Call it letters to the editor, without the pesky editor. Better yet, call it a cheap alternative to therapy.

If you stop by here and find me yelling, be of good cheer: I'm not yelling at you (well, probably not... depends on whether your name is Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld... but I digress ). And if perchance some bits of my self-therapy happen to enlighten or entertain (or just bemuse) you, great!

Something Wicked

2005-12-21T01:27:00.000-05:00

Throughout my days in high school and undergraduate school, my mother was a freelance arts critic, covering theatre, dance, and music in the Houston area (mostly theatre; she even wrote a book on local theatre history). I tagged along with her to more than a few performances, and one I recall in particular was Houston Ballet's Caliban, created in collaboration with local rock group St. Elmo's Fire (which evolved from the earlier Wheatfield and featured one half of the future Trout Fishing in America). The notion that the monstrous slave from The Tempest was a misunderstood character was common in literary criticism, but this work reimagined Shakespeare's story from Caliban's point of view. The actual details of the show (which I remember enjoying) didn't really stay with me, but the concept did.

I thought of this last Sunday as I was watching the touring Broadway musical Wicked. The musical is based on the novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire, who has recently made something of a career out of this trick of reimagining beloved stories. In case you've been too busy hiding from the NSA to notice, this award-winning show and the best selling novel that inspired it recasts The Wizard of Oz, telling the story not of Dorothy and her traveling companions, but of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good.

OK, so I'm sitting in Hartford's Bushnell Performing Arts Center, expecting a big theatrical spectacle based on a clever twist; a sort of literary joke. Well, spectacular it was, and clever as well... but I was surprised -- pleasantly astounded, in fact -- by the literary depth of the piece. Beginning with Elphaba and Glinda as schoolmates, reluctant roommates, and neophyte sorcerers, Wicked is in turns a multigenerational family tragedy, a rumination on the nature of friendship, a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of good intentions, and an exploration of the sometimes blurry boundaries between good and... well, wickedness.

But wait; there's more! This confection of light and sound is also intensely political, examining the uses of propaganda and exposing its power to obliterate criticism, demonize opponents, and unite an unsuspecting people behind a leader who, as Elphaba immediately perceives, has no real powers of his own except for the art of flim flam.

The New York Times review of the original Broadway show (excerpted on the show's website) comments that "[t]he contrast between the young women, who wind up as reluctant roommates at sorcery school, is used to examine a society that values surface over substance, the illusion of doing good over the genuinely noble act. It goes without saying that you don't have to squint to find parallels with a certain contemporary Western nation in which artful presidential photo ops win more votes than legislative change." And Time cuts to the more chilling political center of the piece: "As the Wizard ... puts it, 'The best way to bring folks together is to give them a really good enemy.'"

The Wizard does give his people enemies, in the form of the anthropomorphic Animals who live among them. Hounded out of teaching jobs and other professions in which they use human speech, the Animals systematically lose their ability to speak. Elphaba comes to the Wizard believing he is noble, kind, and wise, and that he will help her defend Animal rights. When she discovers the truth and turns against him, the Wizard has an even more compelling "enemy" through which to frighten his subjects into compliance. Using faulty intelligence, exaggerated claims, overzealous police forces, and domestic spying (the flying monkeys are, it turns out, unfortunate slaves whom the Wizard has tricked Elphaba into giving wings specifically so he can use them as "scouts" within the Land of Oz) to brand Elphaba as the Wicked Witch and mobilize the people of Oz to track her down.

Hmmm... anything sounding the teensiest bit familiar?

Time calls Wicked "a family musical that might make the Bush Administration squirm." Indeed. And that's (to borrow a phrase) a Very Good Thing.

Airing of Grievances

2005-12-20T10:22:00.000-05:00

I was in Home Depot yesterday buying replacement fuses and other mundane household items when it hit me: There was no special seasonal display of aluminum poles. And when I thought about it, I realized I'd been shopping in Target, Kmart, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, and Borders over the last several days, and in not one of those stores was I wished a Happy Festivus! Could it be that there's a War on Festivus? Where is the Bill O'Reilly who will rally to the defense of Costanzians everywhere? Really, I ask you, does this seem moral? At long last, have we no values??

Notwithstanding the fact that holiday shopping often turns into Feats of Strength, it seems that traditional Festivus observances are largely disregarded by our crass, all-too-busy consumerist culture...

...or so I thought. On a whim, I Googled "Festivus" and discovered that Seinfeld's fictional (or should I say, formerly fictional) secular alternative to Christmas refuses to go away. To complement a variety of quirky celebrations around the world, it has its own website, two new books, even its own song. One of the editorial reviews at Amazon refers to Festivus as a "bare-bones celebration of second-rate miracles and hopeless regrets," and really, what could be a more relevant holiday for these benighted times?

This Thursday you can see how it started -- the Festivus equivalent of It's a Wonderful Life, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas all rolled into one -- on TBS. Check your local listings!

BTW, in case I don't talk to you tomorrow... Happy Solstice!

Luna City Olympic Organizing Committee

2005-12-14T18:07:00.000-05:00

Just to prove this blog won't always be crusty and full of political angst... how cool is this discussion of space sports? Now that Richard Branson is preparing to open the first commercial spaceline and Peter Diamandis' Zero-Gravity Corporation is flying private customers, the idea of of sports in microgravity or lunar gravity is edging out of the realm of science fiction and into reality. Because Zero-G's microgravity parabolas last only 25 to 30 seconds each, it's hard to see how the Paraball game IPX Entertainment is developing could be anything other than an exhibition sport, but eventually there will be hotels in space (at least, there will be if Robert Bigelow has anything to say about it), and as surely as night follows day, there will be sports.

Probably the "killer app" of space sports will be a totally new game that we've never heard of, but it's fun to speculate about how existing games would work in space. Some sports -- soccer, lacrosse, team handball (or water polo without the water) -- seem like they'd translate pretty easily to 3-D, zero-g versions; others -- basketball, volleyball, tennis -- seem like they'd be pretty hard to shake loose from gravity: How do you dribble, spike, or serve a ball when there's no up-and-down? And individual sports, especially so-called extreme sports, are surprisingly tied to gravity: It's no coincidence that NBC's X-Game competitor is called the Gravity Games.

But what about space environments where there is gravity? The most famous moment in space sports history (admittedly practically the only moment in space sports history!) is Alan Shepard's lunar golf shot. But lunar golf as a sport rather than a stunt will probably be played indoors. On the Moon, low gravity may be a plus for games, but the lack of air outside is probably a minus: In golf, no slices or hooks... but no deliberate shot shaping, either. In baseball, no curveballs, sliders, knuckleballs, or "rising" fastballs, and no waiting to see if that deep fly ball hooks foul, either. Where's the fun in that? Of course, all these quibbles would be answered by moving the games indoors: Standard air pressure and lunar gravity (1/6g) would give you crazy hooks and slices, and perhaps fastballs that really rise! Of course, given how far the balls would travel, the venues would have to be huge. Try to imagine how big a sheet of ice you'd need for lunar curling!

One thing you could do on the Moon is... fly! Immortalized in Robert Heinlein's story "The Menace from Earth" (in the collection of the same name) and described in Neil P. Ruzic's 1970 speculative nonfiction work Where the Winds Sleep (unfortunately out of print), the coolest imaginable lunar sport is to strap on a pair of wings and fly like a bird, taking advantage of Earth-born strength, Earth-standard pressure, and lunar weight.

So what do you think? Looking forward to the Luna City Olympics? I know I am.

Essential Math: D>R!

2005-12-11T17:12:00.000-05:00

"Atalbot," a friend of my daughter's, is blogging the effort to defeat Rep. Rob Simmons of Connecticut. His introductory post makes a number of very good points about the fact that Simmons, who represents a relatively liberal district, poses as a moderate while in fact serving as a loyal footsoldier in the Republican Congress. The same entry includes a pointer to a site for Connecticut progressives that includes, among other things a great deal of unhappiness about Joe Lieberman, Connecticut Senator and former candidate for vice president, who increasingly seems to be a Democrat in name only.

Points well taken, all. Simmons is a winger in moderate's clothing and Lieberman is to the right of more than a few of his Republican colleagues... but I don't think it matters: Simmons could in fact be everything he claims to be, and I would still oppose him, because of that pesky R next to his name; Lieberman couldn't possibly disappoint me more, yet I will continue to support him, because of that D (until, that is, I'm certain he would be replaced by another D).

Here's the thing: At the beginning of my "career" as a voter, I was very much an issue-oriented, vote-for-the-person-not-the-party sort of guy. I still think that's a good strategy for a thoughtful voter in a perfect world. But our political world is far from perfect, and much farther from perfect than it was when I first started voting. Beginning with the Reagan administration, the Republicans have steadily driven U.S. politics to an increasingly stark ideological division. Now I find it impossible to vote for a "good" Republican (or against a "bad" Democrat) because no matter how much I might respect and agree with the individual candidate, one more R (or one fewer D) inevitably strengthens a governing ideology that I find as intolerable as it is intolerant.

In the run-up to my town's recently completed elections, a candidate for town council knocked on my door. This was a man I knew of and respected, a police officer who works with the DARE program in the local schools and who, as far as I can tell, is a decent, thoughtful citizen. But when he started to tell me his positions on the issues, I had to stop him:

"You're running as a Republican, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm afraid I can't vote for you under any circumstances. You're probably a wonderful person, and you might even be right on town issues, but I can't vote for any member of your party for any office for any reason. I disagree that strongly with the direction your party is leading us."

He tried to tell me how little town politics had to do with the national party; I didn't care. These days, I can't escape the notion that every elected Republican, at any level of government, inherently supports and strengthens a philosophy of government that is, IMHO, ruining our country.

Maybe someday we'll be less polarized, and it will once again be safe to focus on individual candidates and issues. In the meantime.... Well, in the last presidential election cycle, we heard (as always) a lot about "electoral math." As the 2006 election season gets underway, there's only one expression of electoral math that matters: (D>R)X2!

A Very Taliban Christmas

2005-12-07T09:31:00.000-05:00

Until this year, I've been blissfully unaware that the "War on Christmas" has joined Charlie Brown, Rudolph, and the Grinch in the pantheon of seasonal media perennials... guess I need to pay more attention, eh? Imagine my surprise (dismay, actually) to discover that this was not just some News of the Weird item, but a somewhat serious issue in some allegedly mainstream media outlets.

Well, beating up on retailers (Wal-Mart, Target, Land's End, et al.) during the "overcommercialized" holiday shopping season (there's some irony there, about which more in a bit) is always easy, but today I'm reading reports (e.g., here) that even the Bush White House has run afoul of this self-appointed Christmas Inquisition. It seems that the White House has, like the aforementioned retailers and many others, opted for an inclusive, nonsectarian holiday greeting, sending a "Christmas" card that wishes recipients a happy holiday season. Horrors!

Now, the "overcommercialization" of Christmas has been a theme of public comment for as long as I can remember. In fact, I believe that's one of the major themes in the 40-year-old A Charlie Brown Christmas. Viewed from that perspective, you'd think that retailers "taking the Christ out of Christmas" by using generic non-Christian holiday greetings would be a feature, not a bug... a welcome separation between the allegedly crass commercialism of the season and serious religious observances. Apparently not, according to the "War on Christmas" crowd (and there's that irony I mentioned above).

But never mind commerce, what about the President... our President... a professed Christian? Shouldn't he send out "real" Christmas cards? In a word, no. Let's be clear about something: "Happy Holidays," "Season's Greetings," and such do not insult, demean, or exclude Christians; what such greetings do is not exclude non-Christians. Given that he is, in fact, our President, it's entirely appropriate that Mr. Bush include all of his constituents in his holiday greetings, whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Druids, Wiccans, agnostics, atheists, or whatever. Even secular humanists!

People who reject these efforts at inclusiveness, no matter what they may say, are not "defending Christmas." They are, in fact, attacking all expressions of holiday cheer that are not explicitly Christian. This is the Taliban attitude: It is not sufficient that you tolerate and respect my faith; you must respect my faith above all others. Ideally, you must practice my faith, in the way I consider correct. If you do not practice my faith, you must shut up about the existence of any other faiths, or about the notion that some people practice no faith. It is this attitude that led the original Taliban to destroy all signs of other faiths, even at the cost of denying the world historic treasures, and it is this attitude that motivates these American Taliban to shout down all expressions of winter holiday joy that are not their own.

Now, on the grand stage of world events, arguing over holiday greetings might seem trivial... and it would be, if that were all that was going on. But already the "War on Christmas" has been tied to Supreme Court nominations, and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Consider: The Bush White House represents the most overtly religious, Christian-friendly administration of my lifetime. If they don't satisfy the "War on Christmas" faction, it's hard to imagine anything short of outright theocracy will. People, I don't care whether you're religious or secular; right or left; Republican, Democrat, or other... you must not vote for these theocrats or anyone who supports them, or enable them in any way. If you think you're safe because you're Christian, think again: If the President isn't Christian enough to suit them, how do you know you are? And if you are today, how do you know you will be tomorrow? Don't forget that under the original Taliban, the people who suffered the most were Muslims.

That's about enough for my first real blog entry, eh? So I'll just say... Happy Holidays!!

-Bill

PS: This may be the only time I ever defend the Bush White House, so enjoy it while you can. ;^)

Howdy!

2005-12-02T14:34:00.000-05:00

I guess having a blog is mandatory these days, eh? You could say I'm just trying to keep up with my 15-year-old daughter... but the truth is, my favorite online forum (The Space Arena Board) has just stopped accepting new posts, and I need a new place to rant, rave, and pontificate. I don't know how often I'll post here, or whether anyone will care... it is what it is (or rather, it will be what it will be).

-Bill