An Inconvenient Sunday

The Ninja is in the shop, because the "service engine" light is on and the car keeps on stalling out for no apparent reason. So we're down to one car until at least some time tomorrow.

This means The Wife has to drive me around everywhere in the Blue Bullet. That included the sports bar to see the game while she went back to work on the home improvement project, although I accompanied her to Wal-Mart after breakfast to help out with the shopping and dealing with all of the agonies that are inherent in a trip to Wal-Mart first.

After the Packers game was pulled from broadcast for lack of competitiveness (not that I'm complaining) I had to go to the office to meet with another attorney here and brief him on a case he's going to take to trial for me on Tuesday. My hands are full with other imminent deadlines, so it's a big relief to not have to try the case.

So The Wife dropped me off here and went away to do her own thing. After my colleague got here, we found the office's computer network down, which handicapped our ability to assess any of the preparation that I'd previously done when I first readied the case for trial in June. We talked for about an hour and a half, and then lacking any ability to access any other information, he went home to pore over the exhibits, and I wrote a little bit and called The Wife to fetch me.

I suppose there could be worse problems to have than these.

Kitchen Progress

The island is complete. We finished major construction on it last night; today while I watched the Packers-Vikings game The Wife put the finishing touches on it (a towel rack, handles, and an interior pot rack) and got it into the kitchen.

Along the way, we've had to replace a missing corded drill, a broken electric brad gun -- we almost bought a pneumatic gun at Lowe's last night, and would have been very upset because we don't have an air compressor to power it -- and bought a mitred chop saw and a handheld circular saw. Five hundred dollars worth of material, plus about five hundred dollars worth of tools, made this an expensive piece of hand-built furniture.

This is the best damn island since Bermuda.

We've also gone through something like twenty-five cans of paint and stain for the island and the cabinets. Only at the end of the day do we find handy-dandy work-saving tools, and do we think to replace the old, worn-out sandpaper (turns out, fresh sandpaper works much better) and the vagaries of building this thing got both of us good and ticked off at each other along the way.

Now, we can finally put away all of our dishes, pots, pans, spices, and other kitchen implements. And now, our bland early-nineties builder-standard white-and-golden-oak kitchen has been replaced with caramel colors and ebony cabinetry and beautiful bamboo shades on the windows. It looks richer, warmer, and everything accents the granite-tiled counter very nicely.

For our next tricks, we will be trying to install a ceiling-mounted lamp in the dining room and motion-activated lights on the driveway. The Wife also wants to get a security system for peace of mind, although I think the benefit of such a system is not outweighed by the cost.

Schrödinger's Secret

So The Wife and I are getting ready to take the cats in to be shaved again on Saturday. Jordan is easy; she's easily lured by treats and generally pretty passive once you pick her up. Ginger, the prima donna, is much more wily and scared of things -- including the cat carrier, which absolutely terrifies her.

Now, we've been down this road many times before, which is why The Wife restrains her and I bring the carrier into a room that we close all of the doors to, so as to limit her ability to get away. Saturday, we have selected the spare bedroom, which is where the cats sleep at night anyway.

So when Ginger the cat figures out that something's up that involves the cat carrier, she freaks. She twists out of The Wife's grip, and starting running around everywhere. She hides under the dresser. We reach in and she scurries under a bedside table. We pull the cloth away from the table, and she runs under the bed itself, scrunched down as low to the ground as she can, and situated as close to exactly in the middle of the bed as she can, so as to be out of the reach of both people, on either side of the bed.

I've gotten a roll of wrapping paper to prod her out of her location, hopefully to get her moving towards The Wife so she can be the goalie and catch the cat. I get down on my belly, and reach in with the paper to poke at the panicked cat, and she moves just a bit. I poke again, and she darts down to the foot of the bed. I see her turn around and jump up. "She's on top of the bed!" I say, to alert The Wife where the cat has got to. We both stand up.

The cat is not on top of the bed. She isn't underneath any of the covers. She isn't in the pillows. She's not under the bed table. She's not under the bed. She's not in the closet. She's not under the dresser. She's not anywhere. Jordan, in her cat carrier, starts making little cat-grunt noises, which I'm sure means that she's laughing at us.

The Wife and I both start laughing, too -- where could the little prima donna have gone? Cat's don't just go into boxes and vanish into some ambiguous existential state. We've looked everywhere that's cat-accessible, and she hasn't teleported away or become invisible. I get back down underneath the bed, and I notice that there is a tear at the fabric underneath the box spring.

"She's in the box spring, sweetie," I say, before I know for sure that I'm right, and I start poking at the depressions in the fabric with my wrapping paper "stick." Sure enough, one of them weighs and lot and meows. The cat jumped inside the box spring, and she's retreated to the far back end of it.

If you've never before looked inside a box spring to find a panicked cat, you might be surprised to find that it looks really scary in there. The inside of one of those things is filled with what look like thin steel spikes, and aside from that, the whole thing is made up of one-by-two and two-by-three pieces of lumber forming a skeleton, around which the gauze and cushioning are wrapped. It's no place for a scared kitty, and certainly no place you'd want to stick your arms into to get the scared kitty.

So this means we have to take the bed apart and pull up the box spring, to tilt it vertically and dump out the cat inside. This is familiar territory for getting a scared Ginger into a carrier. Ginger gave up after that. We re-assembled the bed after collecting and securing Ginger, putting the torn section underneath one of the supports so that it will be difficult for her to get inside.

Now we know the cat's ultra-secret hiding spot. Hopefully, we've restrained access to it such that she can never again get in there. The lesson is that cats are pretty clever when they want to be.

Fun With Dick And Jane

I had my reservations about sharing this story. But a partner in the firm assured me that the story was just too good to pass up. Names and addresses and other identifying information have, of course, been altered.

My client began this adventure by owning one acre of land. He built a house on it, and got a street address, which we'll call "123 Main Street," located on the northern half of the lot. Then, he began building another house on the southern half of the lot, got a subdivision, and the southern parcel was assigned a street address of "125 Main Street." Then, he sold 123 Main Street to a woman, who we'll call Jane for purposes of the story. Jane is married to Dick, and they are African-American. I include this fact for a reason which will become apparent shortly. Remember, though, that the property was sold only to Jane, as her separate property.

So now, the acre of land looks something like this:


The house at 123 Main Street is complete, and Dick and Jane move in and start living there. My client continues working on the incomplete house at 125 Main Street, living on the lot in his trailer. This situation persists for seven months. At the end of the seven months, Dick begins to verbally harass my client. (At least, according to my client he does.) Then, my client obtains a certificate of occupancy from the county, which means that the house at 125 Main Street can now be lived in, and more importantly, sold. Within a few days of that certificate being issued, Dick calls the sheriff and produces a grant deed conveying the entire one-acre parcel to Jane, and the sheriff then throws my guy off the property. My client moves in with his girlfriend, a few miles away.

My client says that he only intended to sell the north parcel and someone (maybe the title company, maybe the escrow company) screwed up because the documents do not reflect the transaction; Dick and Jane say that no, the transaction was to sell the whole acre and that's what the documents say. We file a quiet title action, to get the issue resolved, and bring in the title company and the escrow company to figure out who wrote the wrong legal description of the property on the grant deed. The title company and the escrow company point fingers at each other, there are some motions about whether they should be in the case or not.

So far, this is working out to be a pretty ordinary sort of case. Trust me, it doesn't work out that way. This is a long post, but by the end of it you'll be as stunned as I am.

Dick and Jane's attorney lets slip in a phoned-in appearance that his clients are having financial troubles and the property may be moving to foreclosure. Wisely, the judge presiding over the dispute says, "Aha! There is financial distress and the property is at risk. Everyone, go to an early neutral evaluation* right now!" So a few weeks later, we go to do that.

That's when I meet Dick and Jane's lawyer for the first time. He, ah, fails to impress. He looks, acts, and talks like Columbo. He's got the bumbling, distracted, absent-minded part down pat, except he's obviously not as clever as the TV detective. All the other lawyers are wearing business suits which is what you wear to things like this; but this guy shows up with a short-sleeved shirt, a tie with a soup stain on it that must be at least twenty years old, and no jacket. And untied shoelaces that, for three and a half hours, he never once makes any move to tie, even after my client points out that he's in danger of tripping over them as he shuffles down the hallway.

Dick and Jane arrive nearly an hour late. Jane makes an elaborate show of gently easing herself into her chair at the conference table, and Dick loudly and proudly announces that they have a baby on the way. There are general expressions of congratulations, although to me it looks like if she's pregnant, she isn't showing at all. After this, Jane doesn't say a word to anyone.

So, we get down to business. I say my bit, the title company lawyer says his bit, the escrow company lawyer says his bit. We all explain what the general facts are, why we think we're going to win, and what we think we're entitled to. Then, it gets to be Dick and Jane's turn. Columbo lets Dick do all the talking. He begins by saying that the transaction was for the whole acre of land. But when the evaluator asks him, "So why did TL's client live on the south parcel for seven months and keep on building a house there, without asking for any money from you?" Dick says that of course he did, because he was the contractor.

Huh?

Everyone, including Columbo, looks blankly at Dick. The evaluator says, "Well, most contractors don't live on the property they're developing, and they usually sell property they've subdivided at a profit. What were comparable houses in the neighborhood selling for?" Logical enough points, but Dick says instead that he thinks my client should "just walk away." The evaluator points out that there's no reason for him to do that, at least not until the dispute is sorted out.

In response, Dick talks about how anxious he and Jane were to get into the property because it was a real deal and he figured that my client must have been in some financial distress to offer so much property for just under half what other houses in the market were going for. I start to think, aha! Here is my opportunity to explain why the transaction was really for only one of the two parcels!

But before I can jump in and start steering things my way, Dick's story devolves into a diatribe of unfiltered Male Black Rage. He explains, calmly at first but with building emotion that eventually brings up tears of anger, that my client is the evil, racist mastermind behind a plot to steal money from him and his wife because he couldn't stand to see Black people making money. (Dick apparently doesn't know that my client is dating an African-American woman.) He deliberately stayed on the other half of the property and finished building that house so that he could steal it all back from Jane.

My client is absolutely beside himself and I need to physically pat him on the shoulder to keep him in his seat. Can you blame him?

The evaluator tries to explain that this isn't about black or white, it's about green, but by now Dick is worked up into a frenzy and he won't be stopped until everyone has heard him explain how nearly all of the while folks in the Antelope Valley think it's perfectly okay to lie, cheat, and steal from the Black man.

Obviously, we're not going to be getting anywhere, so we break up the meeting as Dick storms out of the room, Jane elaborately pushes her body out of the chair with her arms and grunts wit the effort of walking, and Columbo meanders away. My client and I pack up our stuff to leave. That's when Columbo shuffles back in the room and mentions, "Oh, by the way, my clients filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago."

Huh. Do you think that might have made a little bit of difference in the case? Let's classify this little bit of trivia under the heading "Things That TL Could Have Been Told About Before Driving Half A Day Through Heavy Traffic Into Los Angeles And Making His Client Sit Through An Hour Of Insulting Racial Paranoia!"

Thus, the early neutral evaluation ends, in what I would charitably describe as a fiasco.

But now is the part where it gets weird.

Yesterday, my client drops by my office while I'm eyebrow-deep in opposing a motion in a different case. "Is TL in? I got some papers today and I want to talk to him about them." I step up and say, "Hey, Client! How's it going? You look upset, what happened?" He hands me a packet of papers and says a Sheriff served him with those papers at six o'clock that morning.

The papers are a temporary restraining order and an application for an injunction. Dick has filed a civil harassment action against my client and we need to show up in a few weeks for a hearing on the injunction. In the civil harassment action, he alleges that my client:

• "beat him down" (a phrase Dick had used in his diatribe to describe the financial pressures of the litigation, which I charitably must allow that a judge would have interpreted as a report of physical violence that did not, in fact, happen),
• "Had them having sex in front of home," (ew!)
  
• "But [put?] unbearable assaults unimaginable stalking,"
• "Murder,"
• "harassing my family with civil brute force. Which resulted in the death of our first child financially devastating plaintiff."
• "Pay $3,000 per day his Les Pendence stay on our Family estate, also the proper disposal of my unborn child. Not cause any other deaths directly or indirectly."
• "Coming on our property Invoking fear and stress at his presence. Casting evil spells witchcraft and Rite's Candles penny's in our driveway, to bring us misfortune. Stay away go away."

Witchcraft?

So now I'm supposed to believe that my client is a witch? No, not a witch, a warlock? A wizard, a magician? What kind? A conjurer, perhaps? An illusionist, an alchemist, a predigistator, a seer, a shaman, a sorcerer? A necromancer? We're supposed to believe that he's induced a miscarriage with candles and cursed pennies?

Look, I understand that being sued isn't any fun and it probably is inhibiting their ability to sell the property if they need the money. I also understand that if Jane really did miscarry, it was a traumatic and painful event for both of them. But accusing my client of witchcraft is just plain deranged.

Perhaps even more outrageous, a court actually granted a temporary restraining order based on an affidavit with this in it?

That's where the situation is right now. The hearing will be in a couple of weeks, when I would hope to ask the judge my big question:

W T F ?

I don't know how the case will resolve yet, but I know one thing for sure. Dick and Jane didn't do themselves any favors with this ill-advised trick, which ought to be obvious even to the non-lawyers out there.


* Early neutral evaluations are something kind of new in the world of litigation. In a mediation, the parties sit down together and a neutral party facilitates settlement discussions. This is basically the same thing, but done very early in the process, and usually before anyone has done any discovery (so that attorney's fees have not yet been run up into the troposphere). The evaluator listens to what each party thinks they will be able to prove, and offers an opinion about each side's case and what is likely to happen in the case. Often, she then gives the parties advice about to proceed with settlement discussions.

Economic Dating

In a post that belongs on favorite relationship-analysis website Bobvis, the Freakonomics Blog at NYT presents a remarkably shallow exchange of remarkably clear economic thought: The Gold-Digger versus the Heartless Hedge Fund Veep.

Parliament Opens

I absolutely love the pomp and circumstance the British put into their government. We have nothing remotely like it in the United States. It's silly and doesn't really affect anything, but it's fun to watch. No one does ceremony as well as the British.

Today, the Queen fulfilled one of her very few official duties, and opened the new session of Parliament. She went into the House of Lords and read a speech that had been written for her by the new Prime Minister and his minions. We have no real way of knowing if Her Majesty agreed with a word of the speech, nor any particular reason to care.

But the details from the story are great:

Lawmakers are summoned from the Commons by an official known as Black Rod — but only after they slam the door in his face to symbolize their independence.

In another symbol of the traditional hostility between Commons and crown, a lawmaker is held at Buckingham Palace as a "hostage" during the ceremony to ensure the monarch's safe return.

That's awesome beyond description. Oy! Well done, m'lords!

Being the "hostage" in Buckingham Palace probably wouldn't be so bad, at least these days. I imagine the tea service and snacks are pretty good. You know, a step up from those cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. You get to hang out with Prince Phil or maybe with Chuck and Camilla, who I'm sure are brilliant conversationalists. While on its exterior, Buckingham Palace looks like a prison, I'll bet the interior decorations are posh. So you can count on a decent meal in some nice digs. Maybe you can bring the wife and kids with you, give them a special tour, take some photos for the album. And, added bonus, you don't have to sit through a dull speech.

Then, the whole opening of Parliament thing includes a ceremonial insult. Super, super cool. The American equivalent, the State of the Union address, involves nothing so much as a sycophantic and elaborately-scripted hour of what seems like nearly nonstop applause. You know, we like our President and all that (well, not this one, so much, whose polling numbers are now lower than Nixon's were the week before he resigned) but it just isn't natural and it certainly doesn't buttress the idea of separation of powers. Now, if the President showed up to give his speech, and the Speaker directed that he not be allowed on the floor until the Congress voted to let him in, that would be akin to what the Brits have going on every time a new Parliament meets.

Best of all, some guy has the job of being "the Black Rod." How awesome does that look on your resume? The current "Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod" is named Michael Willcocks, a former Lieutenant General in Her Majesty's armed forces; the Black Rod has been a military man continuously since 1920. The potential for gay porn titles is endless. Summoned by the Black Rod. How the Black Rod Got in the East End. The Black Rod Does Manchester United. I could go on, but that's what the comments section is for.

ENDA: The First Act Ends

Should a religious bookstore have to hire people who are gay?  In the debate on passage of ENDA, the anti-homosexual discrimination law that the House of Representatives passed today, this seems to have been the strongest argument offered against the proposal.  Nevertheless, passage in the Senate is uncertain and apparently, the Administration has threatened a veto.  The 235-184 vote is not, on its face, enough to override the veto.  So, should a religious bookstore have to hire people who are gay?  “We’re all sinners” when they want to overlook someone’s misdeeds – or to change the focus of a conversation from someone’s misdeeds to the central idea of Christianity, which (correct me if I’m wrong here, Christians) is forgiveness through the redemption granted by God through Jesus Christ.  But “That’s against God’s teachings” is what they say about someone’s misdeeds when they want to be judgmental about them. 

 

Again, correct me if I’m wrong here, Christians, but isn’t everyone a sinner?  Why is the sin of being gay qualitatively different than the sins of blasphemy, adultery, lying, or theft – to the point that it prevents someone from being able to put a book on a shelf or cashier out a customer’s order?  It doesn’t, of course; a gay person can do the job of working in a bookstore as well as a straight person or an asexual one.  The opposition to the bill is based on the idea that it’s okay to use religion as a smokescreen for prejudice against gay people.  That, in my view, cheapens the potential of religions to guide their adherents to behave in a moral fashion, and it is one of the reasons I have become so very critical of the way religion is being used in public life these days. 

 

Religious folks:  you don’t have to back down from saying gay sex is a sin.  This law would make you distinguish between a person’s private life and their ability to do a job.  That’s something that you probably already do on a selective basis anyway.

 

ENDA probably will pass the Senate, but all that we* can do is hope that Bush doesn’t have the balls to actually veto it.  Although frankly, I don’t see what he has to lose by doing exactly that.  Are gay people going to like him even less?  This general defender of Republican ideas would, but for the most part, Bush would lose support if he didn’t veto ENDA.  And the Democrats do not (yet) have enough support to override the veto – they will have to wait until (um, I mean “if”) Hillary Clinton becomes President to get the bill passed into law.

 

*  By “we,” of course, I mean people who think that there is no good reason to treat gays any differently than straights.

Not Just An Excuse To Post A Picture Of Nicole Kidman

Is The Golden Compass an atheist counterpoint to The Chronicles of Narnia? Is it trying to "peddle atheism to kids"?

The author says "no," now, but according to some Christian media, he sang a different tune a few years ago. Asked about his intent in a press junket for the movie, he said "My point is that religion is at its best – it does most good – when it is farthest away from political power, and that when it gets hold of the power to send armies to war or to condemn people to death, or to rule every aspect of our lives, it rapidly goes bad." Apparently, there is a character in the movie who calls himself "God" and is killed in the end, after being exposed as a fake. Religionists who have read the book, particularly Catholics, have said there are a lot of anti-Church elements to it, and not having read it myself, I really can't comment any further. But, I do now have an excuse to post a picture of Nicole Kidman on my blog, which is pretty much always a good thing.

Question: If Christianity (or Islam, or any other kind of theism) is true, why should it fear a fantasy story with atheist elements to it?

Second Question: If Christianity gets all kinds of chances to be peddled to kids, why doesn't atheism get equal treatment? Shouldn't kids be at least made aware that there are people who don't believe in God and get to make up their own minds?

Counterpoint on Pakistan

In Slate, Lee Smith argues for an ideologically cohesive foreign policy strategy which sounds suspiciously like "nation-building." He takes the Bush Administration, and particularly Secretary Rice, to task for sending mixed messages to the world about what we want them to do and how we want them to do it; and for failing to define "democracy."

His argument is that democracy in Pakistan, as in any other nation-state, requires that there be the rule of law and strong enough governmental institutions so as to allow a democracy to function. No one but Musharraf has the strength to build such a society, and in order to do that, he must use his military power. What's more, the military in Pakistan is the most secular of all the segments of that society, and the last thing we want is a less secular Pakistan (good point, that last one). In other words, "democracy" (however that term is defined) is an end result of a stabilized society, and not really our goal for foreign policy.

I'd agree with that to some extent. Whether our allies abroad are democratically-governed or not, our foreign policy objectives are first and foremost, that they support our strategic and military efforts; second, that they develop economically and become good trade partners, and (a very distant) third, that they generally respect human rights, or at least keep their human rights abuses discreet and moderately defensible. The development of European-style democracy as a form of government is simply one attribute of the third, and least important, of those foreign policy objectives. Smith correctly points out that Musharraf is providing us with the first and most important objective, namely, he is cooperating to a significant degree with U.S. military and strategic objectives for that region of the world by 1) not nuking India, 2) tolerating U.S. efforts to root out al-Qaeda and even doing some of that work himself, and 3) not permitting radical Islamists to take over the government there. Trade and human rights are insignificant in comparison to these concerns.

And democracy is only a good thing in our allies if the result of a democratic election there is a leadership that is more or less congruent to these other, more important interests. In other words, letting people in other countries choose their own leaders is a good thing, if they make the right choices.

Oddly, though, this is a "realist" analysis of the situation, but it winds up being critical of a lack of ideological coherence, which is the sort of thing one would expect from a neocon. But I think the real criticism is that the Bush administration, taking its cue from its leader, has failed to articulate things clearly.

The real problem is that by stomping down on the institutions that can foster the development of the rule of law (the judiciary), Musharraf may well be playing into the hands of the Islamists. By taking control of the courts and suspending Pakistan's constitution in order to squelch militant Islamic extremists, he has driven the pro-democracy reformers (personified now in Benizar Bhutto) against him and forced them to stand side-by-side with the very religious fanatics he is trying to keep in check. The result may be that if and when there are elections, the result will be something like what happened with Palestine -- a bungling of domestic policy by the allies of the U.S. will result in the people making a bad choice.

It is now more likely than ever that Pakistan will suffer an attempted revolution by Islamic extremists. This might be aimed directly at Musharraf and his junta; it might be the result of an alliance with Bhutto and her supporters, and a subsequent unwillingness by the religious extremists to share power with her once Musharraf has been set aside. But either way, that revolution looks like it's coming, and its success would be a huge blow to U.S. interests in central Asia. Sadly, with the military already over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with talk of military activity against Iran, it does not seem there are any military assets left over for use in Pakistan should that become necessary.

Noble Pakistani Lawyers

The headline reads (or at least it used to read):  “Lawyers Battle Police In Pakistan.”  I’ve had to “do battle” with police officers before.  When you have to cross-examine someone to get certain facts out to the jury, that’s what you do, even if it means impeaching a police officer’s credibility.  (Especially if it means impeaching a police officer’s credibility, for some kinds of cases.)  In a war of words, the lawyer is almost always going to be better-armed than the police.

 

But I’ve never had to literally battle police in order to be a lawyer.  In a battle of guns, tear gas, and nightsticks, the police are going to win every time.  I’m particularly disturbed by the note in the story that the police were paid “cash bonuses” for beating up and then rounding up the protesting lawyers, who have been called “terrorists” for supporting the existence of an independent judiciary.

 

This, President Musharraf, is not the way to protect democracy.  Nor is it a way to make yourself (or your protégé, should you ever select one) look better than Benazir Bhutto, who has managed to do what seems to be an excellent job of positioning herself as the savior of moderate, secular democracy in the critically dangerous nation of Pakistan.

 

It occurs to me that it’s likely that these lawyers are out there, getting arrested and beaten up and maybe even killed, because they want to have a democratic government that respects the rule of law.  That makes them heroes in my book.  That’s what our Founding Fathers fought the British for six years to get.  I wonder if Americans today are made of the same kind of stuff that motivates these Pakistani lawyers, and that motivated our ancestors, to step up to the plate and fight for this stuff.

 

Now, it also occurs to me that some elements of Pakistan’s society wants to see the government in Pakistan destabilized so that a theocracy can take its place.  Certainly that’s a problem, because if the Musharraf government falls, what replaces it?  Who gets to control those nuclear weapons aimed at the world’s most populous democracy?  Who gets to decide whether American troops are welcome to operate or support operations to find the real bad guys hanging out somewhere with a line of sight to the Khyber Pass?

 

It’s hard to imagine, though, religious extremists backing up lawyers and courts, and so far I’ve not heard of any overtly religious rhetoric – or even anti-American propaganda – associated with the protests against the deposition of the Pakistani courts.  So while the situation in Karachi and Islamabad looks very dangerous and violent, that’s not the same thing as a breeding ground for a new Islamic revolution to take place. 

 

Pervez Musharraf is a military man, and he seems to have a secular bent towards the government and society in general.  He seems to enjoy power and does not understand why holding two different kinds of leadership positions within both the military and political structures of his country is a problem.  He has no time for the kinds of people who threaten America (in this case, Al-Qaeda and militant Muslim extremists) and therefore is a useful ally in our efforts to wipe out our enemies.  In all of this, he sounds a little bit like someone else in the Muslim world that the U.S. held its nose and quietly supported in the past; ultimately, that didn’t work out too well for anyone involved.

 

Let’s hope that the Pakistanis find a way to make the flower of democracy bloom without reverting to either religious primitivism or military dictatorship, either of which could easily hamstring an otherwise critical player on the world stage.  If I’m right about the kind of people these lawyers protesting in the streets really are, there is a hard core of people who are really dedicated to the ideas of liberty which are at the core of our own set of national ideals.  After all, as a politician who I used to admire once said, “Freedom is contagious”.

Best Hit Ad In The Race So Far

Does Hillary Clinton waffle on issues? John Edwards sure thinks so, and there's some pretty good evidence to that effect:

Cut Lip

Shaving in a hurry is a bad idea. I cut my lower lip yesterday while shaving in a hurry; it was exquisitely painful (on par with the kidney stone) and the wound bled for more than an hour and there's still an unsightly dark spot where the clot rests. Maybe it's time to switch to an electric razor?

By the way, judging from the poll results, there is no consensus whatsoever about how to deal with insomnia. Thanks for nothing, Readers.

More Shamless Pandering

In Kentucky, the incumbent Republican governor is trailing in the polls by more than ten points.

Is it a coincidence, then, that the day before the election (which is today) he should have ordered that a display of the Ten Commandments be erected within the state capitol building? Seriously, isn't pandering for votes at this level insultingly obvious?

According to the article, the Ten C's are going up alongside the Magna Charta, the Mayflower Compact, and a variety of other "great historical laws." Many reason that this somehow diminishes the religious element of the Decalogue and therefore makes the display Constitutional, since the Supreme Court used that reasoning to justify its own artwork, which includes Moses and the Ten C's. I might be wiling to go along with that logic if the words on the tablets are not clearly discernable -- because the First Commandment is not something that the government should be telling people, and if the contents of that Commandment are only referred to in an most oblique fashion (for instance, with a single Roman numeral or Hebrew character) then the message of the sculpture is likely to be more focused on the act of Moses serving as a lawgiver rather than the explicitly religious content of the law itself.

But I'd really prefer it if courts weren't asked to make those kinds of artistic judgments at all. Judges are no more art critics than they are engineers or doctors, and it seems silly indeed to have to rely upon experts to interpret art and weigh their competing -- and in the case of art, highly subjective -- evaluations of such things. It's also slightly disgraceful to see the kind of intellectual convolutions that backers of government-funded displays of religion will go to in order to dodge the obvious conclusion that they are using public money and public prestige to support a religion. I continue to be irritated that the Supreme Court felt it necessary to be led down that intellectual rabbit hole rather than commission a new frieze and give the old one to the Smithsonian.

Maybe I'm just upset because no one is pandering to me for my vote.

Remember, Remember

To the right is a portrait of a religious fanatic and a terrorist. Sure, he looks like a pilgrim ready to make nice with the Indians over some turkey and cranberries, but this was not a nice man. 402 years ago today, Guy Fawkes was caught in the act of attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament, in the famous Gunpowder Plot. Here's the famous poem about that even still recited today:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow.
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Huzzah boys, huzzah boys, let the bells ring.
Huzzah boys, huzzah boys, God save the King!
A penny loaf to feed the Pope,
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down,
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar,
Burn him like a blazing star,
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah! Hip hip hoorah, hoorah!

Starts out good, but it gets kind of ugly fast, doesn't it? Remember, this is Christian-on-Christian violence we're talking about here, and only a few years after Queen Elizabeth died. The King who was the target of the assassination attempt was James I (of England), an outspoken Protestant; Fawkes and his co-conspirators hoped to engineer a Catholic restoration of the throne.

Today, we would call Fawkes a terrorist, and a religious fanatic at that. His enemies were no better. The Protestant-versus-Catholic wars that trace their roots back to a German nailing a demand for religious reform on a church door on Halloween of 1517 and the bizarre doctrines of extreme Calvinists writ large upon the body politic of Europe today seem very odd to us. We tend to smooth over the theological differences between Catholics and Protestants today.

To me it seems particularly pointless. It seems a lot like Star Wars fans arguing over whether Han or Greedo shot first. (Han did, but the movie is still enjoyable if Greedo shot first and missed. Remember the best line from the MST3K song: "You should really just relax.") It's a work of fiction; it's not worth it to kill someone who has a different take on The Scarlet Letter than you, so why would it be worth it to kill someone who interprets the Book of Jeremiah differently than you?

But there is a more or less direct modern counterpart in Shi'ite-versus-Sunni violence in the Muslim world. So it's not as though this is a dead letter. Quite the opposite. And while it's not violent, there is a fair amount of intolerance going on still in American Christian circles -- there are questions about whether Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, or Mitt Romney are "Christian enough" (or in Romney's case, whether he is a Christian at all) to be acceptable to Christian evangelicals.

It seems like such an astonishing waste of brainpower, effort, emotion, and blood to have theological disputes. Guy Fawkes was willing to kill his King in order to have a Catholic rule the country, and plenty of Iraqis are willing to each other (and us) so that their sect can enjoy greater political power to oppress the other sect. I challenge any Christian reading this to explain to me why a debate between Catholics and Protestants over Christian theology is any different than a debate between Sunnis and Shi'ites, or why either Guy Fawkes or his Protestant executioners who wrote that charming poem above were any better than the Muslims keeping Iraq in anarchy today.

A Collection of Random Thoughts

1. The Wife "quit" Toastmasters last week. I'm only four speeches towards getting the basic certification, and I think I'd like to finish it, if only to have actually finished it rather than stopping going because The Wife did. She got burnt out, I think, because she did way too much, too fast, and got way too frustrated with others in the club who did not approach their tasks in a fashion which she thought was professional. So somewhere along the way, she stopped having fun with it. As for me, I have to admit I get an ego stroke when I win a blue "best speech" ribbon, which I've done three out of the four times I've spoken -- I get the ego stroke even though sometimes it seems as though the level of competition is not high enough to justify it.

2. Pakistan is a country that scares the hell out of me. It seems to be packed full of Muslim fundamentalists hell-bent on forcibly converting the world to their religion (and their style of that religion) and its Northwest Frontier Province is functionally an anarchy. This weekend, the President -- who is also the active-duty head of the armed forces -- suspended the Constitution there. It's also a place where lawyers protesting in the streets over an independent judiciary were able to foment such a serious threat to the stability of the government that the President of the country took that step. And it's a place where somebody was so threatened by the former President -- a woman -- returning to her home country from a years-long exile that there was a spectacular assassination attempt on her. So I know that there is a substantial secular segment of that society; that there are people there who strongly desire and respect the rule of law, in addition to the crazed fanatics who so rightly inspire fear in the West. Oh, and the country has nuclear weapons, and a three-generations-old grudge with a similarly nuclear-armed India that includes a live territorial dispute over Kashmir. Why isn't America working harder to constructively stabilize Pakistan?

3. Furniture is expensive. Replacing the sectional couch we've inherited from my parents (which looks great but is difficult to attach and too low to get into and out of comfortably) is looking to be a more costly task than I'd hoped it would be.

4. The Green Bay Packers are 7-1, and so are the Dallas Cowboys. The Packers play at Dallas on Thanksgiving Day. Especially if both teams continue to do well, it should be a very good game; at least as good as the Patriots-Colts game today. I note, though, that the Packers have only a four-day turnaround before playing Carolina the Thursday before Thanksgiving. The short week left over from Monday night's game really showed up in some poor play-calling decisions at the end of the first half today. Brett Favre joins Peyton Manning and Tom Brady as the only quarterbacks to ever beat all 31 other NFL teams; Manning and Brady only reached those milestones last week. So it's a good year to be a Packer fan so far.

5. I haven't written for Oval Office 2008 in more than a month. I don't miss it. I have more time on my hands to write about politics there now, but I've less interest in doing so. It seemed all I ever got by way of feedback was criticism, if not outright trolling. I don't need the abuse, and I'll take my time before writing there again. Does this mean I'm not cut out to be a pundit after all?

6. Was Buddha an atheist? It's hard to say.

7. NASA insists there's a comet visible from even urban environments, and it should be about a third the size of the full moon since the coma and the tail are visible head-on right now. I went outside to look for it tonight and all I saw were bright stars. Maybe I'm too close to urban street lighting after all. I'll try to remember to look again tomorrow night after class.

8. Sometimes I really like litigation. Sometimes I really dislike it. Part of it has to do with whether I'm winning or at least feel like I've got a good chance at winning; then I really enjoy it. Part of it has to do with whether I feel like I'm working with people (clients and adversaries, not my colleagues at work who are great) who are reasonable and honorable, which also contributes to my enjoyment of it. When those things are not present, it's harder for me to get pleasure out of the job -- and it seems that the quality of the people I work with, and the merits of the positions I get to take, are factors completely out of my control.

9. The water treatment plant, which draws the bulk of the Antelope Valley's drinking water from the aqueduct, was shut down for most of last week. I was being very careful about our water use; I avoided washing my clothes and otherwise limited personal use of water. The agency in charge of such things turned on the spigots again Saturday. Now we can return to our
wasteful ways and pour buckets of clean, potable water directly into storm drains by the gallon, just like people who have health insurance can intentionally jump on rusty nails and used syringes.

10. Once again, I have to drive to Los Angeles tomorrow. I should have called my old tailor to meet up with him and have him take my measurements so I can get a new suit. Two of my old suits, alas, suffered irreversible waistband shrinkage not at all unrelated to my diet and exercise habits. I'd like a suit that has braces, so I can wear suspenders again. Suspenders can look very sharp when done with a nicely-pressed monochromatic shirt and the right tie.

11. Why did you think this list would be limited to ten posts? Down with the tyranny of decimal thinking!

12. I'd like it if we had more social friends who did things like hung out on the weekends, or came over for dinner, or things like that. But I see so little of The Wife as it is -- Monday nights I teach, Wednesday nights I have my dinner meeting, Thursday nights is the Toastmasters club that I joined in no small part to do something with my wife. We seem to spend so much of the weekend doing projects that we don't get a lot of time to just hang out together. Tonight we did for a while, and I enjoyed that even if we didn't have to do a lot of chattering. We have many friends in Los Angeles but that's just far enough away that it makes a spontaneous visit ("Hey, you guys want to get together for dinner tonight?") very difficult.

13. Henry VII is England's most underrated monarch. Overshadowed by his charismatic son, no doubt. But Hank 7 pulled off a significant trick by balancing the various claims to the throne and to power behind it, and restoring both peace and financial stability to England after a century of civil war, as well as proving his ability to lead armies during the closing acts of that same war.

14. William of Normandy, in 1066, was not the last successful invader of England. William of Orange was. Hitler would have done it too, if England hadn't been smart enough to pick Winston Churchill and to follow his lead during the dark days of 1939.

15. Almonds are good to eat. So are grapefruit. They're not really good together, although pears are good with either.

16. When you have to drink a lot of water all the time, you have to go to the bathroom all the time. This is not good for someone who craves the prospect of eight continuous hours of sleep. I don't think I've had eight continuous hours of sleep for several months now -- I did pretty good when The Wife and I were on vacation in Colorado and we didn't have to attend to animals. Maybe replacing our mattress should take a higher priority to replacing our couch; but I don't think the mattress (or the constantly deflating pillows) are the substantial factor in my periodic bouts of insomnia.

17. How much money would it take to solve all your problems? Pay off your mortgage, replace your cars, pay off your debts, fix up things around your house, get the computer you want, all of that. Call that amount of money "X" dollars. Add 40% to it because you'd need to pay taxes on it once you got all that money and, let's face it, you probably didn't take taxes into consideration when you figured out what "X" would be. So let's assume you acquired $1.4"X" somehow. Would that make you happy? Yes, I think it would -- at least for a while, because you'd be able to resolve a lot of your stresses. But I think $1.5"X" would not make you happy, because the extra money would get spent on something, and then new problems would arise from that.

18. How many links would you have to click to get from the wikipedia entry on Kerguelen Cabbage to the wikipedia entry for Kyra Sedgewick? And how much money do you think a tony restaurant in London or Paris or New York would charge for a Kerguelen Cabbage salad? Are we ever going to see "Battle Kerguelen Cabbage" on Iron Chef?

19. The Wife did a good job setting up our bookcase, which is the focus of the living room. She's got the books stacked vertically and horizontally (piled atop one another) but there are plenty of interesting decorations -- wine bottles, little sculptures, my 2,000-year-old Roman reading lamp, and some pictures -- so that each rack of the bookcase is visually interesting and the whole thing gives a great impression of an intellectually interesting and artistic household. She really did a fine job of that. I'll post a picture one day.

Vicodin

I don't like it.

It dulls the pain, which is nice because then I don't have to feel it. And the pain can be distracting, at best. But I also don't know very well whether I actually still have a problem or not. I haven't seen or felt any stones pass. I still feel pressure from time to time but I can't be sure if that's just me psyching myself out or if it's the real thing.

Friday, after I took the Vike for the first time, I slept a long time and I had some really trippy dreams. Tonight, I took another one and I can't fall asleep. The Wife went to bed nearly two hours ago and I was tossing and turning and wide awake. Granted, it's still only quarter to ten and I don't have to be up for another eight hours, so I shouldn't be too frustrated.

Maybe the dosage isn't enough to induce sleep. Of course, it's not intended to be a sleep aid; it's supposed to be a painkiller with drowsiness as a prominent side-effect. But I'm certainly not experiencing any euphoria or deriving any pleasure from the drug; at best, like I said above, it dulls the pain from the kidney stone (assuming I still even have it, which as of right now I have no good idea one way or the other).

Now That I'm Teaching Again...

...I can look forward to more student complaints when they don't get "A" grades, as if it's somehow my fault.

A complaint like this, though, is extraordinary: the student complains that the professor fails to give sufficient direction, but also that he was too critical of the student's writing; the professor failed to tell his students what was being asked of them, yet he also taught students how to read things in too much detail. He claims to be a good writer, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. (He's a generally competent writer, but one who does not understand that repetition does not equal quality.) And to make it that much worse, the professor's obvious efforts to be objective and respectful of differing points of view nevertheless caused the student to be offended and uncomfortable, so very uncomfortable that the student never once spoke up in class about his thoughts or even took time to visit the professor in his office hours.

My guess is that the student was disappointed in his grade, and chose to blame the professor rather than himself. There doesn't seem to be any specific thing that the professor did wrong that I can discern from the lengthy complaint. It's a lengthy, passive-aggressive beg for a higher grade.

This sort of thing is why I've abandoned asking my students to write much of anything when I teach. Objective testing has its drawbacks, to be sure, but at the end of the day the objective test answer is either right or it's wrong. Students complain that they were confused and they blame the way the question is written for why they got the question wrong. But it's so much easier for me to hide behind the textbook -- this is the question in the textbook, this is the answer in the textbook, this is where you could have found the answer in the textbook, and I let you take the test with your textbook right in front of you. It's not my fault if you don't know what's in the textbook.

Son of Kidney Stone

After another day of pain, this time accompanied by a lengthy navigation through a medical bureaucracy and a CAT scan, it has been confirmed that I have another kidney stone in me. This week's pain is localized in a somewhat more... masculine area. Los huevos started aching early this morning, bad enough to wake me up and again to drive me away from work.

So, only now do I get home with some drugs for the pain. Indeed, at 75 pills, it seems that the doctor was particularly generous with the candy, but hey, it was Halloween not too long ago so maybe that explains it. So until further notice, I get to pee through a strainer and hope that this two millimeter calcium crystal is smoothed rather than jagged. (If so, that makes me Beowulf, taking on the Mother of Kidney Stone as a second and greater challenge than the first.) And enjoy the gentle charms of Vicodin.

To make it worse, my buddy has an extra ticket for USC's homecoming tomorrow, which would be Big Fun, but there's no way I could have fun there like this. Here's hoping the little bugger passes soon -- and while I'm stoned on the Vike!

The Best Of All Possible Worlds

On November 1, 1755, a powerful earthquake rocked Lisbon, Portugal.  Tens of thousands died in building collapses, fires, and general rioting.  This inspired Voltaire to write Candide, one of the snarkiest and most powerful novels ever written.  In the first part of his novel, Voltaire suggested that both the world and human nature were unchangeable, with devastating effect.  In the second part, he sends his characters to “Utopia,” (literally “no-place”) and suggests that the kinds of perfected worlds we might long for, without war or greed, we might not be happy anyway.  Finally, he returns his characters to Europe and attempts to demonstrate why all of this does not make human endeavor futile – we can nevertheless do our best, and we can achieve happiness and love even in the face of a brutal world and even after having had made bad personal choices in our pasts.  If you haven’t read Candide, I recommend it to you wholeheartedly.

New Manager

The Los Angeles Dodgers have hired a new GM.  Now, we’ll get to see how good he really is – the Dodgers don’t have quite the same depth of raw athletic talent as he’s become accustomed to coaching.  And who knows?  He might just get to coach A-Rod again (although I think A-Rod will become an Angel, not a Dodger).  And it’s appropriate, I think, for the Dodgers to have a manager with a considerable level of personal celebrity.