Today, the Connecticut Supreme Court interpreted its Constitution to require same-sex marriage. It is now the third state to do so, joining Massachusetts and California.
Watch carefully as Connecticut’s crime rate remains functionally the same into the foreseeable future, Connecticut’s ratio of live births to deaths remains the same, heterosexual marriages and divorce continue to occur in Connecticut at the same rate (or at least along the same declining trends) as happened before today, the ratio of gay to straight people remains the same in Connecticut, and generally as hundreds of gay Connecticutters get married, the lives of other Connecticutters remain unchanged in every objectively-measurable way.
Is “Connecticutter” the proper term for someone from Connecticut? I should have learned this when my parents lived there. They called such people “Nutmeggers”.
October 10, 2008
Mormons May Not Be Protestants But Judges Are Certainly Not Theologians
Separation of church and state runs both ways. But these days, it's not too often that I come across stories in which the government interferes in religious affairs. This divorce case from Arkansas (H/T to the fascinating Howard Friedman blog dedicated to the subject of the religion clauses) comes pretty close.
The essence of the story is largely as Prof. Friedman describes: Mom and Dad get a divorce and reach an agreement concerning the terms of the split. A clause in their divorce agreement, which then becomes part of the court's decree upon stipulation, reads:
So here's the interesting thing. The trial court took evidence on the issue of whether the LDS church is a Protestant faith: "Based upon testimony by appellant’s wife, a statement by the president of LDS that was publicized on the church’s website, and testimony by appellant, the court found the LDS church not to be a Protestant faith... ." Nowhere, it seems, did anyone attempt to define what characterizes the "Protestant faith." It's not clear to me whether Dad even claimed that Mormons* were Protestants; the opinion suggests but does not come out and say that Dad admitted that the LDS church is something other than a Protestant faith.
Now, from my perspective, it seems a good question as to whether Mormons are Protestant or not. They worship Jesus, like all Christians, and they have their own, decidedly mystical and transcendent take on cosmology and the afterlife. Their beliefs and actions don't strike me as any more or less bizarre than other sorts of concepts Protestants find acceptable, like the Rapture, exorcisms, speaking in tongues, or faith healing. Mormons certainly aren't Catholics and they're also certainly not Orthodox. But when it comes to parsing out what kinds of beliefs fall into what categories, I'm not exactly an expert because I find the exercise to be of only limited value.
But law is a different matter, an arena in which I do feel comfortable offering some more sophisticated sorts of analysis. The law -- in the form of rules of evidence, civil procedure, and standards of judicial conduct -- creates a framework why which courts can learn about and make decisions on matters beyond the expertise of the finder of fact. We sort out questions of law from questions of fact. We take evidence on questions of fact. We get expert witnesses to sort out and interpret those questions of fact to help determine the ultimate issues in a case, upon which the resolution of the legal questions turns. This case gives a good example of that: divorce decree prohibits the teaching of a non-protestant faith to the children; Dad teaches LDS faith to children. Has he violated the decree? The answer turns on whether or not the LDS faith is a Protestant faith.
So this is where I think there's a problem. Unless there is an admission or a stipulation that LDS is not Protestant, a Court is not a theological forum. Your typical judge is not a theologian. Even if he were, the judge would be relying on facts learned outside of the proceedings at bar and probably acquired by way of unsworn fact-gathering that took place in a fashion unregulated by the rules of evidence and therefore completely inadmissible. Which means that in order to reach the conclusion that LDS is not Protestant, the Court needed someone with some degree of theological expertise to reach its conclusion.
Instead, the trial court and the appellate court seemed quite satisfied that the trial court was within its sphere of competence to make that decision unassisted, based only on something from an LDS website and unspeficied testimony of the parties. I don't have the benefit of the record of the trial court's proceedings the way the appellate court did. So maybe the admission that would satisfy me was there. But in its absence, we are left without a definition of what it is to be "Protestant," no understanding of what it is about the LDS faith that is not Protestant, and instead only the apparent consensus of a small group of bench officers in Arkansas that it is just so. This seems to me to be an insufficient foundation upon which to base a judicial decision. Without an evidentiary showing (or in the alternative, a stipulation or admission) that LDS is not Protestant, I would not have made the order that the court did here.
As for the propriety of having a religion-restrictive clause in the divorce decree in the first place, yes, I'd prefer it not be in there. But at the time Mom and Dad split up, this was apparently important to them and they agreed to it. I agree entirely with the proposition that parents have the Constitutional right to raise their children as they see fit and that includes indoctrinating their children in the religion that they deem appropriate. Even if it's not one I agree with. So if it's a material term to the division of parental authority, and something the parents agree on and intend to bind themselves to as part of their larger deal, I don't have a real problem with considering in part of the contract and therefore part of a stipulated court order. I don't see that there would be any other alternative to the court but to adopt and later enforce the stipulated decree.
Dad's argument on appeal was that, having converted to Mormonism, he now was under a religious obligation to teach the doctrines of that faith to his children. He contended that enforcement of the order therefore restricted his ability to freely practice his new religion. Which would be correct, except for one small flaw in his argument -- he had previously contracted away his right to do that by entering into the stipulated decree. My view of the right is that it's his to do with as he pleases. What he did here was to contract that right away. He did not contract away his right to change his own faith, rather, he contracted away his right to raise his children in anything but a particular manner. That was a material inducement for Mom to enter into the contract.
If he had contracted away his right to convert personally, I might be a little more skeptical, a little bit more willing to find the term unconscionable. But that's not an issue raised by this case so the question need not be addressed now.
I say, he could contract away his right to teach non-Protestant faiths to his children and the court can and should enforce that contract. But I also say, it's not entirely clear from the record that he violated that provision of his contract and the opinion leaves me with a substantial suspicion that the judges, at all levels, relied upon their own religious faith and knowledge to reach the conclusion they did. In that sense, I think the opinion was improper.
UPDATE: I'm always gratified when one of my intellectual heroes looks at an issue and comes up with, more or less, the same take as me.
* It occurs to me that members of the LDS church don't use the word "Mormons" to describe themselves all that often. I know the word comes from the title of one of their holy books. But it may not be technically right to refer to a member of the LDS church as a Mormon, and if so, I apologize for using the terms interchangably here, that use of those words is not intended to give insult. If I'm using these words and phrases imprecisely or improperly, I invite a member of the LDS faith to comment on the preferred nomenclature.
The essence of the story is largely as Prof. Friedman describes: Mom and Dad get a divorce and reach an agreement concerning the terms of the split. A clause in their divorce agreement, which then becomes part of the court's decree upon stipulation, reads:
Based upon the express agreement of the parties that the minor children be raised in the Protestant faith, the Court orders that each party hereto is enjoined from promoting another religious belief system/faith to the minor children unless both parties should consent.The decree is entered by stipulation of the parties in 2005. Dad converts to the LDS church in 2006. In 2007, Mom files for a contempt citation against Dad for teaching Mormonism* to the kids. She didn't get a contempt citation but the trial court did slap an injunction on Dad to prevent him from teaching the LDS faith to his kids. Dad didn't appeal but instead filed what amounts to a motion for reconsideration, which he lost. Then he appealed that decision, and loses again in the published opinion linked above.
So here's the interesting thing. The trial court took evidence on the issue of whether the LDS church is a Protestant faith: "Based upon testimony by appellant’s wife, a statement by the president of LDS that was publicized on the church’s website, and testimony by appellant, the court found the LDS church not to be a Protestant faith... ." Nowhere, it seems, did anyone attempt to define what characterizes the "Protestant faith." It's not clear to me whether Dad even claimed that Mormons* were Protestants; the opinion suggests but does not come out and say that Dad admitted that the LDS church is something other than a Protestant faith.
Now, from my perspective, it seems a good question as to whether Mormons are Protestant or not. They worship Jesus, like all Christians, and they have their own, decidedly mystical and transcendent take on cosmology and the afterlife. Their beliefs and actions don't strike me as any more or less bizarre than other sorts of concepts Protestants find acceptable, like the Rapture, exorcisms, speaking in tongues, or faith healing. Mormons certainly aren't Catholics and they're also certainly not Orthodox. But when it comes to parsing out what kinds of beliefs fall into what categories, I'm not exactly an expert because I find the exercise to be of only limited value.
But law is a different matter, an arena in which I do feel comfortable offering some more sophisticated sorts of analysis. The law -- in the form of rules of evidence, civil procedure, and standards of judicial conduct -- creates a framework why which courts can learn about and make decisions on matters beyond the expertise of the finder of fact. We sort out questions of law from questions of fact. We take evidence on questions of fact. We get expert witnesses to sort out and interpret those questions of fact to help determine the ultimate issues in a case, upon which the resolution of the legal questions turns. This case gives a good example of that: divorce decree prohibits the teaching of a non-protestant faith to the children; Dad teaches LDS faith to children. Has he violated the decree? The answer turns on whether or not the LDS faith is a Protestant faith.
So this is where I think there's a problem. Unless there is an admission or a stipulation that LDS is not Protestant, a Court is not a theological forum. Your typical judge is not a theologian. Even if he were, the judge would be relying on facts learned outside of the proceedings at bar and probably acquired by way of unsworn fact-gathering that took place in a fashion unregulated by the rules of evidence and therefore completely inadmissible. Which means that in order to reach the conclusion that LDS is not Protestant, the Court needed someone with some degree of theological expertise to reach its conclusion.
Instead, the trial court and the appellate court seemed quite satisfied that the trial court was within its sphere of competence to make that decision unassisted, based only on something from an LDS website and unspeficied testimony of the parties. I don't have the benefit of the record of the trial court's proceedings the way the appellate court did. So maybe the admission that would satisfy me was there. But in its absence, we are left without a definition of what it is to be "Protestant," no understanding of what it is about the LDS faith that is not Protestant, and instead only the apparent consensus of a small group of bench officers in Arkansas that it is just so. This seems to me to be an insufficient foundation upon which to base a judicial decision. Without an evidentiary showing (or in the alternative, a stipulation or admission) that LDS is not Protestant, I would not have made the order that the court did here.
As for the propriety of having a religion-restrictive clause in the divorce decree in the first place, yes, I'd prefer it not be in there. But at the time Mom and Dad split up, this was apparently important to them and they agreed to it. I agree entirely with the proposition that parents have the Constitutional right to raise their children as they see fit and that includes indoctrinating their children in the religion that they deem appropriate. Even if it's not one I agree with. So if it's a material term to the division of parental authority, and something the parents agree on and intend to bind themselves to as part of their larger deal, I don't have a real problem with considering in part of the contract and therefore part of a stipulated court order. I don't see that there would be any other alternative to the court but to adopt and later enforce the stipulated decree.
Dad's argument on appeal was that, having converted to Mormonism, he now was under a religious obligation to teach the doctrines of that faith to his children. He contended that enforcement of the order therefore restricted his ability to freely practice his new religion. Which would be correct, except for one small flaw in his argument -- he had previously contracted away his right to do that by entering into the stipulated decree. My view of the right is that it's his to do with as he pleases. What he did here was to contract that right away. He did not contract away his right to change his own faith, rather, he contracted away his right to raise his children in anything but a particular manner. That was a material inducement for Mom to enter into the contract.
If he had contracted away his right to convert personally, I might be a little more skeptical, a little bit more willing to find the term unconscionable. But that's not an issue raised by this case so the question need not be addressed now.
I say, he could contract away his right to teach non-Protestant faiths to his children and the court can and should enforce that contract. But I also say, it's not entirely clear from the record that he violated that provision of his contract and the opinion leaves me with a substantial suspicion that the judges, at all levels, relied upon their own religious faith and knowledge to reach the conclusion they did. In that sense, I think the opinion was improper.
UPDATE: I'm always gratified when one of my intellectual heroes looks at an issue and comes up with, more or less, the same take as me.
* It occurs to me that members of the LDS church don't use the word "Mormons" to describe themselves all that often. I know the word comes from the title of one of their holy books. But it may not be technically right to refer to a member of the LDS church as a Mormon, and if so, I apologize for using the terms interchangably here, that use of those words is not intended to give insult. If I'm using these words and phrases imprecisely or improperly, I invite a member of the LDS faith to comment on the preferred nomenclature.
Labels:
Constitutional Law,
Law,
Religion
October 9, 2008
Newly Evolved Earthworms Eat Heavy Metal
Your basic earthworm, you plop him down in a bunch of soil laced with particulate arsenic, lead, and copper, well, he dies. Why? Because he can't digest those things. But these little babies eat up the heavy metals and like 'em just fine. They make it easier for plants to harmlessly leach up the metals, and help purify the soil.
Question -- if evolution is not something that occurs in nature, from where did these visibly different earthworms come from?
Question -- if evolution is not something that occurs in nature, from where did these visibly different earthworms come from?
Oh Yeah? At Least We Can Spell!
...Oh, and I'm not liberal, either and I don't appreciate being called one just because I happen to think that gay people deserve the same rights as everyone else and the government should stay out of people's sex lives and medical decisions. I like a big, well-funded military, I disapprove of affirmative action, and I think most social welfare programs do more harm than good. And I'm deeply suspicious of government intervention in the marketplace and deeply fearful of mounting governmental debt.
Oh, wait, those last two things don't count as being "conservative" anymore thanks to George W. Bush.
Labels:
Atheism,
Domestic Politics,
Religion
October 8, 2008
Follow The Hypocrite's Advice, Not His Example
I stumbled across this site today, and because it contains good tips for both increasing your fuel efficiency and for reducing the environmental impact of your car, I pass it along to you.
Of course, I’ve been driving around with my “Check Engine Light” on for about two weeks now without getting the car in for service. It’s come on and off many times over the past several months and every time I did take the car in for servicing, the problem was always a minor issue with the exhaust emissions control system that the mechanic assured me would clear itself up quickly. What exactly this means, I don’t know. But every time, they’ve been right.
So even though tip #14 says to get the car serviced whenever that light comes on, I haven’t done it. And The Wife complains I make jerky stops even though I try to make smooth ones – it’s often because I try and go too smoothly that I get too close to another vehicle and have to stop quickly. You’d think after twenty-two years of driving I’d have figured that one out but my technique seems to still need work.
Of course, I’ve been driving around with my “Check Engine Light” on for about two weeks now without getting the car in for service. It’s come on and off many times over the past several months and every time I did take the car in for servicing, the problem was always a minor issue with the exhaust emissions control system that the mechanic assured me would clear itself up quickly. What exactly this means, I don’t know. But every time, they’ve been right.
So even though tip #14 says to get the car serviced whenever that light comes on, I haven’t done it. And The Wife complains I make jerky stops even though I try to make smooth ones – it’s often because I try and go too smoothly that I get too close to another vehicle and have to stop quickly. You’d think after twenty-two years of driving I’d have figured that one out but my technique seems to still need work.
Labels:
Cars,
Link Love,
Technology
Something You May Not Have Noticed
And I didn’t either, when I first read the transcript of the debate. But some people did.
The debate took place in Nashville, which was called “The place where the Bible Belt has its buckle” by many Tennesseans. But not once, in the entire debate, did anyone – not John McCain, not Barack Obama, not Tom Brokaw, not any of the people in the audience – mention any of the following words:
And yet, Candidate McCain and Candidate Obama both somehow managed to talk about how they were going to take action on the economy, foreign affairs, terrorist, Israel, and even abstract moral duties of individuals and the nation as a whole. All without any reference whatsoever to religion. The answers to the various questions and statements of the candidates apply with equal validity to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Wiccans, new agers, pagans, and atheists and no one was excluded from participation in the debate or elevated to a superior plane on the basis of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
This is as it should be.
The debate took place in Nashville, which was called “The place where the Bible Belt has its buckle” by many Tennesseans. But not once, in the entire debate, did anyone – not John McCain, not Barack Obama, not Tom Brokaw, not any of the people in the audience – mention any of the following words:
And yet, Candidate McCain and Candidate Obama both somehow managed to talk about how they were going to take action on the economy, foreign affairs, terrorist, Israel, and even abstract moral duties of individuals and the nation as a whole. All without any reference whatsoever to religion. The answers to the various questions and statements of the candidates apply with equal validity to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Wiccans, new agers, pagans, and atheists and no one was excluded from participation in the debate or elevated to a superior plane on the basis of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
This is as it should be.
Labels:
2008 Election,
Atheism,
Barack Obama,
Domestic Politics,
John McCain,
Religion
Why The Decalogue Is Bad Judicial Ethics
I don't know about you, but if I went to court and I saw this poster up on the wall, I would be very, very intimidated -- even if I were a Christian. The message it sends to me is that the judge considers himself the moral guardian of society and that he has no problem at all stepping into the shoes of God to condemn whatever he thinks is offensive. There is only one way of looking at things, and that's the judge's, and he's going to justify his way of looking at things by reference to the 10 C's.
As a nonbeliever, of course, I would be especially intimidated. Aside from the deliberate perversion of moral principles underlying humanism that the judge seems to think serves as the moral guide to nonbelievers' behavior, there is also his reference to a "conflict of legal and moral philosophies raging in the United States," and the judge's apparent eagerness to take sides in that conflict. Now, the judge may not consider himself a modern humanist, so maybe he doesn't really understand what the ethics of humanism are. That's fine, he's well within his rights to be a religious man and base his ethics on the teachings of his religion if he wishes. But like anyone else, he should withhold moral judgment on matters of which he is ignorant -- especially because he is a judge and in a position of some power to act on those moral judgments.
After all, a judge holds a tremendous amount of power, at least in his own court. The bulk of the cases appearing before that judge will never be appealed, and courts are (by design) not democratic institutions. That does not mean that they are above the law themselves, though, which is why hanging that poster has earned this judge a lawsuit challenging the poster on Establishment Clause grounds. H/T to Prof. Howard Friedman. To me, the glorification of the 10 C's and the diminishment of non-theistic morality in the poster is more than enough proof that the court is encouraging people to believe in the 10 C's -- but the threat of non-favorable judicial action by those who do not avow to side with God on questions of morality is, I should hope, clearly over the top from anyone's perspective.
But I don't think it's appropriate from a judicial ethics standpoint to have such a poster, either. Let's leave aside the question of whether the poster violates the Constitution. Good judicial ethics requires the judge to create an atmosphere where all who come before him are treated as equals. Everyone should get a fair chance to say what they have to say and have it evaluated neutrally and on its merits, and judged by the yardstick of the law. A poster that glorifies the 10 C's indicates that people who do not subscribe to them are going to be looked upon with askance by the Court.
Now, in some cases, it's pretty easy to say that a violator of one or more of the 10 C's is indeed both morally and legally deficient -- murderers, liars, and thieves, for instance. In other cases, certain kinds of conduct prohibited by the 10 C's would seem to be pretty clearly morally blameworthy -- adultery, for instance, or in some cases, demonstrating disrespect for one's parents. And I'm not suggesting that a court need ignore morality -- far from it, I think a court needs to be constantly consider moral issues. But in some cases, the 10 C"s require a level of moral conduct that is simply inhuman.
Take, for instance, their injunction against coveting a neighbor's goods. If my neighbor gets a big plasma-screen TV, and I don't have one, it's only natural for me to think, "I'd like to have one of those myself." The sin (according to the tenth commandment) is wanting the TV at all. I don't have to steal the TV in order to have sinned -- the sin, the moral fault, lies entirely within my mind. To use the terminology of the law, there is no actus reus to this crime -- my moral fault lies entirely within my mind.
Same thing if my neighbor's wife is attractive. I can look at her and think, "She's very good-looking." I'm not cheating on my wife if I do that. If I go ahead and actually seduce and have sex with her, then yes, that's a morally blameworthy thing to do. But the 10 C's (and an explicit teaching of Jesus about this very subject) says that the feeling of attraction is, itself, a sin and something worhy of moral condemnation.
I have another problem with the 10 C's. In the version posted in this judge's courtroom, four of them deal with a person's relationship to God. I have seen versions of the 10 C's in which there are only three commandments dealing with worship, and the injunction against coveting is broken down into two commandments, one against desiring another's material goods and the other against sexual attraction to someone not one's own spouse. But the point is, the first commandments, the ones that are important enough to come first, even before the injunction against murder, deal with God. the 10 C's tell me that I must worship one and only one God (specifically Jehovah), that I must do so weekly and devote an entire day every week to worship, and that I must not invoke God's name in vain. Some strict interpretations would say that this post, by simply mentioning the name Jehovah, violates that Commandment. And the 10 C's place violation of these rules on a moral level equivalent to that of murder.
Well, frankly, I don't think it's of any particular moral moment if I go to church or not. And it is obviously not for a judge to tell me that I have to do that. In a court of law, if I see the 10 C's posted on a wall, I know that my failure to go to church on Sunday will be looked upon by the judge as rendering me morally deficient. The fact that I don't go to church means I'm just as bad as if I were a liar. And being a liar is a very bad thing to be in court.
So in that court, either as a lawyer or as a litigant, that tells me that I am not on an equal footing with a Christian or a Jew. As a non-theist, I am worse off, I am starting from a position of a moral deficit and my veracity will be subject to greater scrutiny than that of a religious person. Consequently, posting the 10 C's is an explicit statement by the court that not everyone who comes in to that court will be treated equally.
Finally, the 10 C's are not the law of the United States of America or of the state in which the court is located (in the case of this lawsuit, that would be Ohio, but it could be any of the 50 states or six non-state territories* in which U.S. courts can be found). Seeing these posted, and especially seeing them given moral glorification as this poster does, tells me that my conduct (or my client's conduct) will be judged accoridng to something other than the law.
I fully understand that there are people who think that the 10 C's are the foundation for all law in the western world, and/or the foundation for our system of ethics and morality. But they are also explicitly religious. Our system of ethics and morality needs to stand on its own, because it is supposed to be universal. Our system of laws is supposed to have universal application.
Which is another way of saying that the courts should be for everyone. Posting the 10 C's says that the court is there more for the benefit of Christians and Jews, and less so for people who have other kinds of beliefs. So for all those reasons, I think it's bad judicial ethics for a court to post the 10 C's.
* Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, or the District of Columbia, to be precise.
As a nonbeliever, of course, I would be especially intimidated. Aside from the deliberate perversion of moral principles underlying humanism that the judge seems to think serves as the moral guide to nonbelievers' behavior, there is also his reference to a "conflict of legal and moral philosophies raging in the United States," and the judge's apparent eagerness to take sides in that conflict. Now, the judge may not consider himself a modern humanist, so maybe he doesn't really understand what the ethics of humanism are. That's fine, he's well within his rights to be a religious man and base his ethics on the teachings of his religion if he wishes. But like anyone else, he should withhold moral judgment on matters of which he is ignorant -- especially because he is a judge and in a position of some power to act on those moral judgments.
After all, a judge holds a tremendous amount of power, at least in his own court. The bulk of the cases appearing before that judge will never be appealed, and courts are (by design) not democratic institutions. That does not mean that they are above the law themselves, though, which is why hanging that poster has earned this judge a lawsuit challenging the poster on Establishment Clause grounds. H/T to Prof. Howard Friedman. To me, the glorification of the 10 C's and the diminishment of non-theistic morality in the poster is more than enough proof that the court is encouraging people to believe in the 10 C's -- but the threat of non-favorable judicial action by those who do not avow to side with God on questions of morality is, I should hope, clearly over the top from anyone's perspective.
But I don't think it's appropriate from a judicial ethics standpoint to have such a poster, either. Let's leave aside the question of whether the poster violates the Constitution. Good judicial ethics requires the judge to create an atmosphere where all who come before him are treated as equals. Everyone should get a fair chance to say what they have to say and have it evaluated neutrally and on its merits, and judged by the yardstick of the law. A poster that glorifies the 10 C's indicates that people who do not subscribe to them are going to be looked upon with askance by the Court.
Now, in some cases, it's pretty easy to say that a violator of one or more of the 10 C's is indeed both morally and legally deficient -- murderers, liars, and thieves, for instance. In other cases, certain kinds of conduct prohibited by the 10 C's would seem to be pretty clearly morally blameworthy -- adultery, for instance, or in some cases, demonstrating disrespect for one's parents. And I'm not suggesting that a court need ignore morality -- far from it, I think a court needs to be constantly consider moral issues. But in some cases, the 10 C"s require a level of moral conduct that is simply inhuman.
Take, for instance, their injunction against coveting a neighbor's goods. If my neighbor gets a big plasma-screen TV, and I don't have one, it's only natural for me to think, "I'd like to have one of those myself." The sin (according to the tenth commandment) is wanting the TV at all. I don't have to steal the TV in order to have sinned -- the sin, the moral fault, lies entirely within my mind. To use the terminology of the law, there is no actus reus to this crime -- my moral fault lies entirely within my mind.
Same thing if my neighbor's wife is attractive. I can look at her and think, "She's very good-looking." I'm not cheating on my wife if I do that. If I go ahead and actually seduce and have sex with her, then yes, that's a morally blameworthy thing to do. But the 10 C's (and an explicit teaching of Jesus about this very subject) says that the feeling of attraction is, itself, a sin and something worhy of moral condemnation.
I have another problem with the 10 C's. In the version posted in this judge's courtroom, four of them deal with a person's relationship to God. I have seen versions of the 10 C's in which there are only three commandments dealing with worship, and the injunction against coveting is broken down into two commandments, one against desiring another's material goods and the other against sexual attraction to someone not one's own spouse. But the point is, the first commandments, the ones that are important enough to come first, even before the injunction against murder, deal with God. the 10 C's tell me that I must worship one and only one God (specifically Jehovah), that I must do so weekly and devote an entire day every week to worship, and that I must not invoke God's name in vain. Some strict interpretations would say that this post, by simply mentioning the name Jehovah, violates that Commandment. And the 10 C's place violation of these rules on a moral level equivalent to that of murder.
Well, frankly, I don't think it's of any particular moral moment if I go to church or not. And it is obviously not for a judge to tell me that I have to do that. In a court of law, if I see the 10 C's posted on a wall, I know that my failure to go to church on Sunday will be looked upon by the judge as rendering me morally deficient. The fact that I don't go to church means I'm just as bad as if I were a liar. And being a liar is a very bad thing to be in court.
So in that court, either as a lawyer or as a litigant, that tells me that I am not on an equal footing with a Christian or a Jew. As a non-theist, I am worse off, I am starting from a position of a moral deficit and my veracity will be subject to greater scrutiny than that of a religious person. Consequently, posting the 10 C's is an explicit statement by the court that not everyone who comes in to that court will be treated equally.
Finally, the 10 C's are not the law of the United States of America or of the state in which the court is located (in the case of this lawsuit, that would be Ohio, but it could be any of the 50 states or six non-state territories* in which U.S. courts can be found). Seeing these posted, and especially seeing them given moral glorification as this poster does, tells me that my conduct (or my client's conduct) will be judged accoridng to something other than the law.
I fully understand that there are people who think that the 10 C's are the foundation for all law in the western world, and/or the foundation for our system of ethics and morality. But they are also explicitly religious. Our system of ethics and morality needs to stand on its own, because it is supposed to be universal. Our system of laws is supposed to have universal application.
Which is another way of saying that the courts should be for everyone. Posting the 10 C's says that the court is there more for the benefit of Christians and Jews, and less so for people who have other kinds of beliefs. So for all those reasons, I think it's bad judicial ethics for a court to post the 10 C's.
* Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, or the District of Columbia, to be precise.
Labels:
Atheism,
Constitutional Law,
Courts,
Ethics and Morality,
Law,
Religion
October 7, 2008
Did Obama Wear An Earpiece In The Debate Tonight?
You decide. I think I'm with Ann Althouse with a "no" answer, but a commenter on Volokh gets the win right out of the starting gate with his comment:
he can't manage to clean his ears! how will he manage our country!?!
Labels:
Barack Obama,
Link Love
Icon Question: Your Response Needed
If I could get some help from Readers -- how many of you can see the new "Not A Potted Plant" mini-icon on your web browsers? It shows up when I use Firefox, but not when I use IE. It should appear on the tab for the screen, and on your bookmarks. In your response, please indicate whether you see it or not, and the kind of browser (like IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome) you are using. If you know the version number, that may help, too. TIA!
Labels:
Blog
No Trade
The offer:
J.P. Losman, Joe Flacco, and Torry Holt, in exchange for Philip Rivers.
My response:
Thanks but no thanks.
Some of you may remind me that Flacco has somehow managed to accumulate a Sarah Palin-like excess of expectations by producing a cumulative QB rating of 61.9 for the season, which is, after all, the 29th best QB rating in the entire NFL. But, remember that it's a scoring only league. Trent Edwards has two weeks to recover from his concussion, and then J.P. Losman is going to be relegated to clipboard duty again, producing zero touchdowns every week. Meanwhile, Joe Flacco has two (2) touchdowns in four games. And Torry Holt has half that many.
In a scoring-only lague, Philip Rivers is worth more than all three of them combined, and he only takes up one spot on the roster. A value-for-value exchange I'd consider. McCain's Folly is up to its armpits in decent B-list starting running backs. But the only quarterback with more scoring under his belt is Brett Favre, and he did half of that in a single game against a truly wretched secondary. Not that I wouldn't mind having Favre on my team to go along with Romo, but Brett will not be offered in a trade, under any even remotely reasonable circumstances.
And this is why there isn't a whole lot of trading going on in my league.
J.P. Losman, Joe Flacco, and Torry Holt, in exchange for Philip Rivers.
My response:
Thanks but no thanks.
Some of you may remind me that Flacco has somehow managed to accumulate a Sarah Palin-like excess of expectations by producing a cumulative QB rating of 61.9 for the season, which is, after all, the 29th best QB rating in the entire NFL. But, remember that it's a scoring only league. Trent Edwards has two weeks to recover from his concussion, and then J.P. Losman is going to be relegated to clipboard duty again, producing zero touchdowns every week. Meanwhile, Joe Flacco has two (2) touchdowns in four games. And Torry Holt has half that many.
In a scoring-only lague, Philip Rivers is worth more than all three of them combined, and he only takes up one spot on the roster. A value-for-value exchange I'd consider. McCain's Folly is up to its armpits in decent B-list starting running backs. But the only quarterback with more scoring under his belt is Brett Favre, and he did half of that in a single game against a truly wretched secondary. Not that I wouldn't mind having Favre on my team to go along with Romo, but Brett will not be offered in a trade, under any even remotely reasonable circumstances.
And this is why there isn't a whole lot of trading going on in my league.
Labels:
Sports
LoJack For Laptops
Got a notebook or laptop computer? Then you'll want to know about this. Free from the University of Washington* is a program called Adeona, which allows you to track where your computer is being used to track the internet. So if your computer is stolen, you'll be able to easily find it. If your computer has a built-in camera, then it will even send you pictures of the thief using it. The thief has no idea that the computer is squealing on him.
* Go You Huskies!
* Go You Huskies!
Labels:
Technology
Bride And Groom Are Back
I was quite astonished a while back to find someone who actually thought that taking the words "bride" and "groom" off a marriage license application meant that there was no long any such thing as marriage in California. (What about Spanish speakers? Because they use words like "novia" and "novio" or "marito" and "mujer", does that mean they're not married?) It seemed a hypertechnical obsession with semantics and form over substance to me.
Well, he and his ilk have nothing to complain about anymore. "Bride" and "Groom" are back on the California marriage certificate. See for yourself: it looks like this. You can check off if you want to be called the "bride" and if you want to be called the "groom." I suppose you could technically have two brides or two grooms. And you don't have to use those phrases if you don't want to, but if you think those phrases are important to being actually married, then you can. I suppose you can even say to yourself that if someone has a license in which those boxes aren't checked off, they're not really married if that makes you feel better (although you still can't deny that they are the joint holders of the license, with the legal rights and responsibilities that the license brings).
Point is, a mixed-gender couple getting married can now have the state call them "brides" and "grooms" if they want that (as if that ever mattered in the first place). So if being a "bride" and a "groom" is what it means to be married, then you can still get married in California. (Although you always could.) And if you think your earlier license was incorrect in some way, you can file another form and get those terms included retroactively.
Heterosexual marriages do not need protection. They are in no danger at all and never have been.
Well, he and his ilk have nothing to complain about anymore. "Bride" and "Groom" are back on the California marriage certificate. See for yourself: it looks like this. You can check off if you want to be called the "bride" and if you want to be called the "groom." I suppose you could technically have two brides or two grooms. And you don't have to use those phrases if you don't want to, but if you think those phrases are important to being actually married, then you can. I suppose you can even say to yourself that if someone has a license in which those boxes aren't checked off, they're not really married if that makes you feel better (although you still can't deny that they are the joint holders of the license, with the legal rights and responsibilities that the license brings).
Point is, a mixed-gender couple getting married can now have the state call them "brides" and "grooms" if they want that (as if that ever mattered in the first place). So if being a "bride" and a "groom" is what it means to be married, then you can still get married in California. (Although you always could.) And if you think your earlier license was incorrect in some way, you can file another form and get those terms included retroactively.
Heterosexual marriages do not need protection. They are in no danger at all and never have been.
Labels:
Domestic Politics,
Law,
News,
Same-Sex Marriage
Chart Adjustment
Today's charts on fivethirtyeight.com look like this. That's Obama winning somewhere close to 9 in 10 of the random simulations, and functionally all of the realistic ones. It's hard to not be disheartened when numbers like this are out there. And that means that tonight's debate (starting more or less as I post this) won't make a whole hell of a lot of difference.I'm resigned to an Obama Presidency now. Where before I thought McCain had a chance, now I don't think it matters. Tell it to your mama: Obama’s got no more drama. He looks strong as a Brahama. and his VP's hair looks like it came from a llama. Even if they catch Osama, it’ll still be Obama. So said my lama while he was wearing a pajama, and he could see the whole panorama. It's gonna be Obama.
...Look, I didn't really get a lot of sleep last night.
Proposition 8 Polling
Eugene Volokh posts a reminder that polling on Proposition 8 is still volatile. A recent Survey USA poll shows Prop. 8 ahead; the Field Poll still says otherwise. Prof. Volokh wonders if the recent advertisement featuring Gavin Newsom making provocative statements has anything to do with it. I know I've seen some activism on the pro-Prop. 8 side -- two doors down from my house, a neighbor has put up two large "Yes on 8" signs exhorting me to "Protect Marriage." (My marriage doesn't need protection, thank you very much.)
This makes me want to buy and post some yard signs urging my neighbors to vote "No on 8" to counteract it. I'll ask The Wife about that before I do it because ther are a number of people in the neighborhood who have anti-SSM propaganda.
This makes me want to buy and post some yard signs urging my neighbors to vote "No on 8" to counteract it. I'll ask The Wife about that before I do it because ther are a number of people in the neighborhood who have anti-SSM propaganda.
Why I'm Ignoring The Dead Cat
Yesterday, the stock market took a huge nose dive. Again. This morning, the big news on CNN.com ("I Can't Believe This Is News!") is that the bulls were out in force for pre-opening trading. (If there is trading going on before the market opens, what exactly does it mean for the market to open in the first place?) I'm thinking, though, that what's going on today is what my retirement advisor cautioned me is called a "dead cat bounce." When you toss a cat out an twelve-story window, it dies. The fact that the cat's body bounces a little bit immediately after impact should not be mistaken for a sign of life. So too with the market.It seems to me that when it looks like things are finally bottomed out, that's the time to switch to more aggressive kinds of investments. Now is the time to either switch to low-risk, non-volatile kinds of instruments, or if the transaction costs are significant, just stand pat. But leaving the market completely would simply lock in the losses you've just sustained.
What it takes to start driving prices up again will be earnings. Right now, everybody's losing money. So investors don't see a reason to start paying good money for bad stocks. When the stocks start generating dividends again, the prices will rise. This will happen. Eventually, people will figure out how to make money again in our new economic environment. And then stocks will rise. That's the point when you want to get aggressive, and ride the upward wave. We're not there yet.
Labels:
Money
October 6, 2008
Strategy
Paul Campos brings up a good point at LGM: With about a minute left on the clock and a tie score, if the other team is in a strong position to score, time is more important than points. A loss by 3 counts the same as a loss by 7. The odds are against you either way, but would you rather get the ball back at your own 20 with a) a 7-point disadvantage and 60 seconds on the clock, or b) a 3-point disadvantage and 3 seconds on the clock? What exactly is wrong with doing what you need to do to get the ball back so you can take your shot?
Case in point: November 3, 2003. The New England Patriots are down by one point, 23-24, against the Denver Broncos, with 2:49 left on the game clock. It's fourth and long and the Pats are looking at having to hike the ball into their own end zone. Coach Bill Belichick calls for his center to intentionally snap the ball high and out of the back of the end zone, with no one catching it. That is a safety -- the Broncos get two points; the score is now 23-26. The Broncos get the ball after a regular, not a goal-line, kickoff. They went three-and-out, and New England got the ball back at the Denver 42. Brady chews up all but thirty seconds and thenn pops an eighteen-yarder to David Givens for a TD (extra point is good) making the score 30-27. New England wins. The whole world says Belichick is an absolute F-ing genius for the intentional safety.
What made people pop their hands on their foreheads was that the conventional wisdom was to just plow straight ahead and not concede a single point. But it's not that hard. The insight that makes it work is to understand that the margin of defeat didn't matter. If you lose, you lose, and that's a loss, period. The quantum -- winning or losing -- is what mattered.
Belichick realized that time and field position was more important than two points. If he needed to, he'd have called for a field goal and sent the game into overtime. Winning was better, of course, and it helped that the Patriots had both a strong defense and an explosive offense. The point is, the intentional safety traded two points that didn't matter for an opportunity to win outright. That seems like good strategy to me. It would have been good strategy had it failed. A chance to win is always better than a near-certain defeat. So sometimes you go all in.
Anyone listening at Camp McCain?
Case in point: November 3, 2003. The New England Patriots are down by one point, 23-24, against the Denver Broncos, with 2:49 left on the game clock. It's fourth and long and the Pats are looking at having to hike the ball into their own end zone. Coach Bill Belichick calls for his center to intentionally snap the ball high and out of the back of the end zone, with no one catching it. That is a safety -- the Broncos get two points; the score is now 23-26. The Broncos get the ball after a regular, not a goal-line, kickoff. They went three-and-out, and New England got the ball back at the Denver 42. Brady chews up all but thirty seconds and thenn pops an eighteen-yarder to David Givens for a TD (extra point is good) making the score 30-27. New England wins. The whole world says Belichick is an absolute F-ing genius for the intentional safety.
What made people pop their hands on their foreheads was that the conventional wisdom was to just plow straight ahead and not concede a single point. But it's not that hard. The insight that makes it work is to understand that the margin of defeat didn't matter. If you lose, you lose, and that's a loss, period. The quantum -- winning or losing -- is what mattered.
Belichick realized that time and field position was more important than two points. If he needed to, he'd have called for a field goal and sent the game into overtime. Winning was better, of course, and it helped that the Patriots had both a strong defense and an explosive offense. The point is, the intentional safety traded two points that didn't matter for an opportunity to win outright. That seems like good strategy to me. It would have been good strategy had it failed. A chance to win is always better than a near-certain defeat. So sometimes you go all in.
Anyone listening at Camp McCain?
Labels:
Sports
Too Much Awfulness For One Deposition
Now, nobody should get the wrong idea. I like my job and I'm happy to help out when we're busy (like we are right now) even if it's not within my comfort zone. But damn, what a depressing deposition I took today.
The deposition was to help out in a probate case in which the appointment of the estate's administrator is disputed. The decedent's adult daughter does not like the decedent's wife being the administrator. So that's pretty much what we're arguing about now -- who gets to control the estate and decide how its assets, mainly a small house in Los Angeles, are to be administered before distributing the assets to the heirs, which is not a point we've reached yet.
But oy! Hours and hours of talking with this woman, who represents herself, about her family life today was such a drain. Endless drama. Much of it scarcely believable. I mean, I know some people have really shitty lives. But it's difficult to imagine people putting up with stuff like what I had to hear today. The decedent apparently had two hobbies -- running with a sketchy motorcycle gang, and wife-beating. He pretty much beat my deponent's mother to death, then nearly did the same thing with his second wife, and according to the deponent, he did the same thing with my client, who was his third wife. And according to her, the third wife (my client) said that unless he married her, she'd be compelled to testify about the wife-beating. Which is, aside from the utter legal incorrectness of the contention, something that just plain doesn't make sense. "Oh, you beat me up, so now you'd better marry me or else I'll testify against you!"
Oh, and there were the drugs. And the other crimes. My client allegedly allowed her many spawn to be raised by wolves and they're all a bunch of little hoodlums. All of which may be true and none of which has jack to do with how the assets of the estate, such as they are, are to be distributed. Given the collapse of the real estate market, we'll be lucky if there's $250,000 in this estate to distribute at all.
There's all sorts of other stories, things that fit in to the mythic archetypes you already know in your head about Disputed Probates. There was the Good Stepmother who got edged out by the Evil Stepmother. There was the Scene At The Funeral. There was the Grand Reconciliation between the abusive father and his daughter (yes, God was involved). There was the Secret Marriage. Dark Allegations Of Incest And Child Molestation. There was the Concealment Of Objects Of Immense Sentimental Value, which of course was perpetrated by the Officious Intermeddlers suddenly and without any kind of warning whatsoever so as to disadvantage the Morally Upright And Rightful Heirs. And drugs, lots and lots of drugs.
You can fill in all of the details yourself, the exact details don't matter and I didn't believe a quarter of what I was told. Not that I think my deponent was lying; I think she was viewing reality through a particular emotional lens than renders her reportage of these events unreliable. And I can kind of believe that she loved her father even though he seems by her own account to have been a vicious, brutal, violent, ignorant, unpleasant, unreliable, and unloving man. For forty-one years, it seems he said not one loving word to his daughter but she says he never hit her, and maybe they both understood that as an expression of love. Still, I walked out of the deposition saying to myself, "I'm glad that dude's gone, and not just because the probate generates fees for us." (I used much stronger language than "dude" in my mind, but I'm trying to limit the profanity here other than for comic or dramatic effect.)
The point is that listening to hours and hours and hours of this stuff was initially shocking, then laborious, and ultimately dull. It was like listening to a lengthy treatment for the script of What's Love Got To Do With It meets Mommie Dearest. I must be a terrible, terrible human being to not feel sympathy for someone telling me this kind of story. (Granted, the tats on the deponent's neck most assuredly did not help her credibility when she claimed to have no criminal background.) The tears she cried were real enough. But what am I supposed to do? My client is, according to her, the Evil Stepmother and Officious Intermeddler, so I need to help her do that.
Because in my client's version of the myth, she is the Wronged Widow, spurned by her beloved dead husband's children. Her husband wanted her to have the estate because he loved her; they spent thirteen years together experiencing a Fire And Ice Kind Of Love. And the deponent, not she, is the Officious Intermeddler, one who knows nothing of which she speaks and likely it is she, not my client, who is the one constantly strung-out on drugs and surrounded by people of questionable criminal and moral character.
Parts of the story were credible. I don't doubt that the decedent did have a propensity towards domestic violence. Other descriptions of his character traits seem consistent with that personality -- a compulsive desire to control the women in his life, including his adult daughter; a reaction of nearly uncontrollable rage when presented with situations beyond his understanding. The friction between Adult Daughter and Dad's New Wife is understandable enough, and at the end of the day I would pretty much discredit all of the nasty accusations going back and forth between them. They don't matter anyway -- there are only two questions to work out here. The first is who gets to manage the assets right now, and the second is who gets to own the assets later. The answer to both questions is presumptively the widow and very little that I heard about today is even relevant to the altering that presumtion.
But at the end of the day, it was simply overwhelming. The whole story, as described to me, was simply too awful to think about. You know, you can read a book like Les Misérables and one really awful thing after another happens to the characters, and it inspires pathos, sympathy, and ultimately inspiration and hope. But this was real, or at least it was supposed to be. And my reaction was indifference and disregard. What does it say about me that, when confronted with a tale of such misery, woe, suffering, and some actual human pain, that I should find it insipid?
The deposition was to help out in a probate case in which the appointment of the estate's administrator is disputed. The decedent's adult daughter does not like the decedent's wife being the administrator. So that's pretty much what we're arguing about now -- who gets to control the estate and decide how its assets, mainly a small house in Los Angeles, are to be administered before distributing the assets to the heirs, which is not a point we've reached yet.
But oy! Hours and hours of talking with this woman, who represents herself, about her family life today was such a drain. Endless drama. Much of it scarcely believable. I mean, I know some people have really shitty lives. But it's difficult to imagine people putting up with stuff like what I had to hear today. The decedent apparently had two hobbies -- running with a sketchy motorcycle gang, and wife-beating. He pretty much beat my deponent's mother to death, then nearly did the same thing with his second wife, and according to the deponent, he did the same thing with my client, who was his third wife. And according to her, the third wife (my client) said that unless he married her, she'd be compelled to testify about the wife-beating. Which is, aside from the utter legal incorrectness of the contention, something that just plain doesn't make sense. "Oh, you beat me up, so now you'd better marry me or else I'll testify against you!"
Oh, and there were the drugs. And the other crimes. My client allegedly allowed her many spawn to be raised by wolves and they're all a bunch of little hoodlums. All of which may be true and none of which has jack to do with how the assets of the estate, such as they are, are to be distributed. Given the collapse of the real estate market, we'll be lucky if there's $250,000 in this estate to distribute at all.
There's all sorts of other stories, things that fit in to the mythic archetypes you already know in your head about Disputed Probates. There was the Good Stepmother who got edged out by the Evil Stepmother. There was the Scene At The Funeral. There was the Grand Reconciliation between the abusive father and his daughter (yes, God was involved). There was the Secret Marriage. Dark Allegations Of Incest And Child Molestation. There was the Concealment Of Objects Of Immense Sentimental Value, which of course was perpetrated by the Officious Intermeddlers suddenly and without any kind of warning whatsoever so as to disadvantage the Morally Upright And Rightful Heirs. And drugs, lots and lots of drugs.
You can fill in all of the details yourself, the exact details don't matter and I didn't believe a quarter of what I was told. Not that I think my deponent was lying; I think she was viewing reality through a particular emotional lens than renders her reportage of these events unreliable. And I can kind of believe that she loved her father even though he seems by her own account to have been a vicious, brutal, violent, ignorant, unpleasant, unreliable, and unloving man. For forty-one years, it seems he said not one loving word to his daughter but she says he never hit her, and maybe they both understood that as an expression of love. Still, I walked out of the deposition saying to myself, "I'm glad that dude's gone, and not just because the probate generates fees for us." (I used much stronger language than "dude" in my mind, but I'm trying to limit the profanity here other than for comic or dramatic effect.)
The point is that listening to hours and hours and hours of this stuff was initially shocking, then laborious, and ultimately dull. It was like listening to a lengthy treatment for the script of What's Love Got To Do With It meets Mommie Dearest. I must be a terrible, terrible human being to not feel sympathy for someone telling me this kind of story. (Granted, the tats on the deponent's neck most assuredly did not help her credibility when she claimed to have no criminal background.) The tears she cried were real enough. But what am I supposed to do? My client is, according to her, the Evil Stepmother and Officious Intermeddler, so I need to help her do that.
Because in my client's version of the myth, she is the Wronged Widow, spurned by her beloved dead husband's children. Her husband wanted her to have the estate because he loved her; they spent thirteen years together experiencing a Fire And Ice Kind Of Love. And the deponent, not she, is the Officious Intermeddler, one who knows nothing of which she speaks and likely it is she, not my client, who is the one constantly strung-out on drugs and surrounded by people of questionable criminal and moral character.
Parts of the story were credible. I don't doubt that the decedent did have a propensity towards domestic violence. Other descriptions of his character traits seem consistent with that personality -- a compulsive desire to control the women in his life, including his adult daughter; a reaction of nearly uncontrollable rage when presented with situations beyond his understanding. The friction between Adult Daughter and Dad's New Wife is understandable enough, and at the end of the day I would pretty much discredit all of the nasty accusations going back and forth between them. They don't matter anyway -- there are only two questions to work out here. The first is who gets to manage the assets right now, and the second is who gets to own the assets later. The answer to both questions is presumptively the widow and very little that I heard about today is even relevant to the altering that presumtion.
But at the end of the day, it was simply overwhelming. The whole story, as described to me, was simply too awful to think about. You know, you can read a book like Les Misérables and one really awful thing after another happens to the characters, and it inspires pathos, sympathy, and ultimately inspiration and hope. But this was real, or at least it was supposed to be. And my reaction was indifference and disregard. What does it say about me that, when confronted with a tale of such misery, woe, suffering, and some actual human pain, that I should find it insipid?
Labels:
Crime and Punishment,
Death,
Law
Kirsty Hawkshaw
Now, perhaps I'm a little bit out of step for people my age, but I enjoy trance music and popular music with trance elements. I was intrigued to learn, while listening to Pandora tonight, that Kirsty Hawkshaw has a solo album. I've kind of followed her since I first heard her crystal-clear soprano voice on a few albums by Delerium. Another trance singer named Kristy Thirsk, the vocalist who sang on Delerium's brilliant Flowers Become Screens, is apparently about to release a solo album also, and she too has a hypnotic voice.
To the Wife: This is something of an Afghan. The rest of you Readers need not know what that means. I write about it because it interests me and because maybe you'll be inspired to seek out some of the music yourself and find you enjoy it.
To the Wife: This is something of an Afghan. The rest of you Readers need not know what that means. I write about it because it interests me and because maybe you'll be inspired to seek out some of the music yourself and find you enjoy it.
Labels:
Music
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