Writers Blues

Talking with a friend who is a writer last night reminded me that both my dilletantish efforts at composing fiction, or my ill-formed dreams of putting together something useful to offer as a nonfiction text, are up against an astonishingly intimidating system. To become a professional writer appears to have as many barriers to entry as any other kind of profession -- and like other professions, it would be difficult and expensive to switch. I suppose I can press on with my current (non-blogged) project or not, but the consolation I took from the conversation was that the reason to write is for love, not for money -- if the money comes, that's great, and you need a strong stomach to take all the bullshit that comes after or at least partway through the writing is done. My friend didn't mean or intend or want to discourage me and I'm glad for the realistic insight into the business side of things. But the result was discouraging.

Social Networking Research

So I'm opening up a new file and one of the things involved is a background check on the plaintiff. This includes checking the plaintiff out on Facebook. I farm this out to my young assistant. She reports that the plaintiff has no Facebook profile. Damn. My assistant says, "You want dirt on the plaintiff? Let's check out Myspace."

I ask her, "Does anyone even use Myspace anymore?"

She says, "Yeah, sluts use it all the time. The only reason anyone gets on Myspace anymore is to hook up with a stranger for random sex." She logged on. "Okay, no, your plaintiff doesn't have a Myspace account either, but see? In the fifteen seconds I've been logged on, I've got three friend requests from guys twice my age. Ugh, they all think I'm pretty. Eeeeww, yuck!"

As You Might Expect I Have A Better Idea

Senator Jay Rockefeller admits that there's a little bug in him that wants to shut down both Fox News and MSNBC. He's right that the partisanized press has been a detriment rather than a help to political discourse. But obviously his impulse is wrong, and he is quick to say that he knows full well that such a thing could not actually happen consistent with the Constitution.

But there is another way. Turn those channels off and don't turn them back on again. Get your news from sources that are not so overtly partisan. The good  reporters, the good commentators, the good producers, will all find work elsewhere. The bad ones will get weeded out.

Won't happen, of course.

The Bible In 410 Words

Since I'm enjoying the role of officious editor of long documents, here's my take on the Bible, reduced to its essential elements and leaving in all the "good stuff":

In the beginning, the universe was created, the earth was formed, and humans and all the other animals and all the plants came to exist. Then, humans formed societies and found they have to live together. This proved more difficult than it seems, so here are the basic rules to follow:

Above all, be good to each other. This includes not murdering one another, avoiding war when possible, not stealing, not breaking promises, and not lying, or engaging in other activities which you know or should know will cause unnecessary pain to others especially when those activities involve sex. Do not buy, sell, or own slaves; one human being cannot own another like property and to act otherwise is an abomination. Parents, be particularly good to your children and this includes taking good care of the earth, because they will have to live in it when you are gone. Children, be particularly good to your parents and this includes taking care of them when they are very old, because they took care of you when you were very young. Envy is the source of much unhappiness, so make a good faith effort to be content with what you have and to acquire wealth only through honest means. Mind your own business and do not be overly concerned with what others do if it does not cause you harm.

You will need to make more rules than these with your fellow humans, and those other rules should be consistent with these ideas.

Bad things are going to happen to you in life, and life is not fair. It may not be obvious all the time, but everyone suffers at least some time. Nevertheless, life is worth living and you should take joy from the love offered by your friends and your family. There are no guarantees, but if you get an education, act in harmony with the basic rules of ethics outlined above, and work hard, you are much more likely to grow prosperous than if you do not do these things.

The purpose of your existence is to live a good life, and living a good life includes both behaving morally as well as enjoying pleasure. You have intelligence; use it. No matter what your station in life, if you devote the effort needed to make the world around you a better place, this will bring you a powerful measure of happiness. Go now into the world, and be happy.

Notice the absence of anything relating to the supernatural; no gods or prophets, no fake history, no attempts to freeze society into antiquated culture, no zombies or zombie-worship, no hallucinatory visions, no demons or bogeymen or cosmic protection rackets. What gets left behind when you trim out all the nonsense is a relatively short, sensible, and worthwhile code of ethics.

Irish Coffee Banned In White House

I don't need the White House to tell me whether or not I am legally permitted to drink a Four Loko. Or a Red Bull and vodka.* Or a rum and Coke. Yes, it sucks if some kids binge drink the stuff. The problem was the binge, not the drink.

The mixing of caffeine and alcohol is just fine and an adult should be able to decide whether to have one of these things or not. I put a little Bailey's Irish Cream, or its South African counterpart Amarula, in my coffee on weekend mornings. Is that going to be on the "banned" list too, Mr. President?

Get your damn government hands out of my liquor cabinet.


* I've tried Red Bull and vodka, and concluded that it tastes nasty. YMMV.

Life Of A Professional Writer -- Of Sorts

I know very well that if I were willing to, I could totally be this guy. It would involve a short-circuit of my ethics, of course. It wouldn't be all that different than being a lawyer, really, right on down to the primary source of annoyance with the work, which is of course interaction with clients. The essayist also has some interesting, and deeply cynical, points to make about higher education, as do commenters on this thread. It's well worth a read.

How To Edit Out Invective

Earlier today, I was e-mailed a link to an article that someone found interesting. Another person on the e-mail link said that he too found the article interesting, but was taken aback by the partisan rhetoric, ad hominem attacks, and emotional invective. So I took a stab at editing the essay, and wound up chopping out nearly four-fifths of it. The original can be read here; it is 2,787 words long. My edited version of it follows, it is 614 words long. I'm sure that the author, Professor David Michael Green of Hofstra University, loved every one of the 2,173 words that I cut out, because a lot of them were liberal-to-progressive red meat. But I think I've kept the intellectual content of his essay intact. Here's how I edited of Prof. Green's essay:

The most important problem America faces is the inability of its citizenry to make thoughtful decisions. We are fast losing the “Enlightenment-era” ability to engage in dispassionate empirical observation and rational analysis. Many prefer instead a “religious approach” to the world in which knowledge is given as true by an authority, and deviations therefrom are sanctionable heresy. “Enlightenment” and “religious” thinking is ultimately irreconcilable, and the second approach has dangerously gained popularity.

An illustration: while doing a radio show earlier this month, I spoke with a man who believed Barack Obama to be a “liberal.” I said, “I can name ten examples of right-wing policy from this White House. Can you name three examples of liberalism? … Okay, how about one?” He could not, and uncomfortably laughed, “You know, you’re never going to get me to believe that!” He adhered to the “Obama is a liberal” idea despite my demonstration of its falsity, showing a mentality defined by an incapacity for rational thought. In place of reason, he held a tribal world view in which “our” team is always good and right, and “facts” are accepted dogma, rejected out of hand, or manufactured to support a predetermined conclusion. This is characterized by fear and discomfort when the ambiguities of reality contradict given assumptions.

Religious people claim that there are no atheists in foxholes. That may be true, but it does not mean that religion is true. Rather, it demonstrates that faith is a palliative for frightening realities. Religious thought thus appears when political discourse meets difficult problems.

Consider fiscal policy. Our government promises radical tax cuts for the wealthy and a balanced budget at the same time. Similar promises were made during the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and they resulted in increased deficits. Tax cuts cannot be delivered at the same time as a balanced budget. President Reagan’s OMB director, David Stockman, has admitted this. But the myth persists; a new generation of tax and fiscal policy based upon it will surely increase rather than diminish our national debt.

Consider foreign policy. Former Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz has admitted, and the Downing Street Memos proved, that the argument in favor of invading Iraq so as to prevent its creation and use of WMDs was not based upon substantial evidence. World leaders likely knew this truth but nevertheless sold the myth, even as they prepared for and fought a long, bloody, and expensive war.

Consider patriotism. We claim that the United States is an exceptional, thriving society, despite the fact that many economic indicators suggest that ours is an empire in decline. President Obama was taken to task recently for saying something that suggested America was falliable. His critics ignored other things he said, which were unambiguous praise of America; they were irritated by the suggestion of even the slightest imperfection in America. For deviating even minutely from the a priori Truth of American exceptionalism, Obama was castigated unjustly.

Consider science. When scientists say that global warming will effect deleterious climactic changes over the next half century, uneducated pundits claim this is not true because fifty years from now is very different than fifty hours from now, and the science upon which the conclusions are based is hard to understand, so the cause-and-effect relationship is obscure. But if that climactic change were predicted to take place in fifty days, serious scientific and technological effort would surely be mobilized to address it.

The root of all of these problems is our increasing reliance upon faith rather than reason. We should consciously return to the values of the Enlightenment culture, which places a premium on thoughtfulness, logic, and a scientific approach to reality.

My goal in editing the essay was to keep its intellectual argument intact, not necessarily to endorse or adopt all of its content. I'm not sure, for instance, that tax cuts were the direct or even primary cause of bloated deficits in the past -- I think spending increases, in both defense and in entitlements -- were probably bigger culprits. I still have doubts about the justifiability of the Iraq war when viewed from a prospective rather than a retrospective basis, and additional moralizing about it now strikes me as not a particularly useful thing to do. And I remain unopinionated as to global warming because the science is hard and complex and I have made a choice to deal with other kinds of issues because there's lots of other commentary about global warming available elsewhere. So I'm not 100% with Prof. Green on his content. I don't think I need to be, in order to either understand or distill and fairly restate his points. I don't think there's any doubt, even edited, that the essayist comes from a liberal perspective.

I'm also not claiming to be a superior writer to him. Prof. Green was blogging, and that's an indulgent, unattended, generally unassisted theater in which one writes. My own writing and blogging here is overlong, sometimes over-emotional, and quite often would benefit immensely from third-party editing. So I'm not saying I'm any better than Prof. Green here because I'm guilty of indulging my political and emotional passions when I blog too, instead of stepping back, cooling down, and trimming out the fat as I probably should more often than I do. Emotional arguments have a valid and appropriate place in persuasive discourse, after all, so the last thing I'm saying is that he should trim out all of the emotional impact of his essay because in places, I think his appeals to emotion contribute to the larger point.

What I am saying is that if Prof. Green wants to change the minds of people who think like he says Republicans do (and he's right that they think this way), then he's cutting himself off at the knees when eight of every ten words he writes contribute to a theme of "Rethuglicans R teh SUXor!!1! hehe" because the partisan bashing really does get in the way of the argument. I'd ask him, "Who is the target audience for this essay? What is this essay intended to produce in the mind of its readers?" If the target is conservatives he wants to persuade to abandon what he calls "faith-based" thinking, mixing in insults is hardly the way to appeal to them to do so. If it's a piece written by a liberal to other liberals, why did he write it in the first place, seeing as his audience agrees with him already? What intellectual bridge does this cross? If it's intended to make liberals look more "rational" and thereby appeal to persuadeable moderates, then why does he work so hard to bend a criticism which obviously can apply to both sides of the aisle in a partisan fashion?

At the end of the day, Prof. Green does have an interesting point to make. Too many people -- he singles out political conservatives but liberals are presumptively just as susceptible to this sort of thing as conservatives -- do not engage in critical thought when approaching difficult problems, and exchanging competing slogans is not the same thing as political discourse. Making this point may not be as much fun as calling the other side a pack of lying weasels, but in my opinion making that point without all of the partisan baggage makes the point more effectively and to a broader audience.

You Need To Let Us See Your Ass Crack Because Of 9/11

Hat tip to Doug Mataconis.

Dear TSA: Please Dispense With The "Freedom Feel-Up"

I've been thinking more and more about the nudity scanners and genital gropes that airline passengers are being asked instructed by the government to endure if they want to travel by airplane.

First of all, let's start with the law.  In the case of United States v. Aukai (9th Cir. 2007) 497 F.3d 955 we get from an ideologically balanced panel of judge a detailed examination of exactly how far the TSA can go in requiring all passengers to submit to an "administrative search" before more intrusive searches can be implemented. In Aukai, the defendant went through the same sort of screening that we've all been used to for quite some time -- he walked through a "magnetometer" or metal detector and put his bags through an x-ray screening machine. The metal detector indicated the presence of metal, and the defendant denied having anything metal on his person. The TSA screener then ran a wand over the defendant, and it registered metal in the defendant's front pocket three times. A supervisor ran the back of his hand on the outside of the defendant's pocket, felt something, and asked the defendant to empty that pocket. When the defendant did so, it was revealed to be a meth pipe.* The critical passage:

Although the constitutionality of airport screening searches is not dependent on consent, the scope of such searches is not limitless. A particular airport security screening search is constitutionally reasonable provided that it “is no more extensive nor intensive than necessary, in the light of current technology, to detect the presence of weapons or explosives [ ][and] that it is confined in good faith to that purpose.”

So it was okay to require Aukai to go through a metal detector and run his bags through an X-ray machine; these are "reasonable" searches permitted under the Fourth Amendment. But the wanding, pat-down, and command to empty pockets was not justified until those less intrusive search methods raised a suspicion that there might be something dangerous in Aukai's pocket. It turned out to be evidence of Aukai's criminal stupidity, but of course the TSA officers would have had no way of knowing that from the metal detector devices.

Second, consider  Ken at Popehat's nice little thought experiment. Most people think they can distinguish packaging from content; is it true here? If something feels as though it's imposed on us from outside, would we resist it? But if it comes from the government, swaddled in a pretty assurance that "It's For Your Own Safety," why do we turn in to sheeple and quietly consent? I'm not out of line to say that most people have and will consent -- alarmingly, roughly four in five Americans polled support these screens although, as Nate Silver points out in the link, it's easier to support someone else's loss of dignity than your own.

Third, a look at how the Israelis do airport security. Notice how it is person-specific, not object-specific. Kevin Drum points out in that article that the Israelis make no bones about racially profiling airport users (not just passengers), and that we would be required to omit that portion of our own security screens because our Constitution is written differently than Israel's. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there are rather important lessons the Israelis could teach us which we are ignoring.

Fourth, speaking of Israelis, here's a gem from an Israeli security expert, which is to say, someone who has training in how to bomb airplanes: "I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747." Further evidence supporting the proposition that this is all a big, expensive, inconvenient act designed to make people feel better but which does not also materially enhance the reality of safety.

Fifth, a statement from a TSA official that the public must learn to tolerate Fourth Amendment violations in order to travel in the air. Perhaps the guy spoke inartfully, perhaps he knows full well what he was saying (admission between 2:30 and 2:40 in linked video).

Sixth, a few reasons why we should care about this. Most prominently, the government lies when it says that the images of naked people aren't stored and kept for later use and/or amusement of bored TSA workers looking to mock citizens at the airport. Let me quote a little bit more from Ken at Popehat, because he's done a better job than I of finding good links for good reasons not to trust the government with this sort of power over people whom it has no probable cause to think are committing any crime:

the TSA can’t distinguish between a thing and a picture of a thing, thinks that it has authority to investigate illicit cash (and believes that telling them it’s none of their business represents suspicious behavior), relies on junk science to “detect” danger, feels entitled to your unquestioning obedience (and tries to earn it not with competence but with, in effect, a also-ran muppet), and is vigilant against pressing dangers like Decepticons. Of course, if you recruit on pizza boxes, you’re not going to wind up with Elliot Ness. You’re going to get people who use the body scanners to make fun of people’s genitals, pretend to find cocaine in passengers’ luggage as a prank, steal from carry-ons, and generally act like badged choads. Oh, and sex offenders. Don’t forget the sex offenders. A security checkpoint is Walt Disney World for them.

* * *

Consider this story from a groped rape survivor: ... Think she’s alone at being treated like that? Think she’s being over-sensitive? Think again. Oh, think again.

* * *

Another addition: “Heads up, got a cutie for you.”

* * *

And Another: Hate kids? Love kids more than currently legal? Either way, a career at TSA has you covered!
And still more: Really, who am I to criticize the brave men and women of the TSA, who are all that stands between us and the menacing terrorist snowglobes?

* * *

More: Sure sounds like sexual assault to me.

How much is enough before people will say, "Enough!" So to conclude this festival of links demonstrating just how far the TSA has gone, seventh let's recall the guy who refused to submit to one of these searches, gave up his flight, was released by the TSA into a crowd of people, and went home causing no security risk at all. Yeah, sure enough, for daring to defy the TSA's authoritaii, he's now subject to a civil suit from the government, and they're seriously considering actually going through with it. The fact that this is the guy who actually publicized the TSA's tactics and exposed them for the petty martinets that they are has nothing to do with the fact that they're suing him out of the thousands of people they could have sued. No, nothing at all.

The Founding Fathers wouldn't have put up with this. They'd have recognized it for what it was: the government abusing and exceeding its authority; they wouldn't have put up with what is, in effect, a General Warrant. At most, these kinds of scans and searches should be reserved for people whose behavior and the results of other kinds of appropriate and Constitutional searches raise specific flags and concerns. At best, maybe we ought to take a few lessons from our friends in Israel. El Al painfully learned its security lessons in the 1960's and hasn't experienced Major Asset Loss since then -- so how do they do it? One thing's for sure -- they don't worry about peoples' feelings or ameliorating commercial pressures on donors to political campaigns. They do what needs to be done, and they do it without looking at or feeling peoples' sexual organs.


* I thought meth pipes were made of glass, not metal, but I don't smoke meth so I'm probably not the best person to opine on such matters.

Yobs

England and the United States are nations separated by a common language and this is nowhere more evident than in differing slang words. That, and I guess the Sun isn't exactly the Times when it comes to enforcement of staid journalistic standards. So although the article is certainly amusing, I don't know that I'm entirely certain what a "yob" is. "Stupid drunken assholes now resembling smears of raspberry jelly in St. James Park" is the meaning I derive from context.

Picking Painful Policies

From a macro-level perspective, it's not that difficult to balance the budget in both the short and mid-range terms. Using an online toy at the New York Times, I was able to get not a balanced budget but modest surpluses. Specifically, I got a $1 billion dollar surplus in 2015 and a $158 billion dollar surplus in 2030, by doing the following:

• Cut foreign aid in half
• Eliminate farm subsidies
• Eliminate earmarks
• Reduce federal workforce by 10% (through attrition)
• Reduce nuclear arsenal and space-based spending
• Reduce military to pre-Iraq war size, reduce presence in Europe and Asia
• Reduce Navy and Air Force fleets
• Delay or reduce new weapons programs
• Reduce troops in Afghanistan to 30,000 by 2013
• Enact medical malpractice reform
• Raise Medicare eligibility to 68
• Cap Medicare spending growth to GDP+1% per year in 2013
• Raise Social Security eligibility age to 70
• Reduce SSI payouts to high-income earners
• Tighten eligibility for disability
• Use alternative measures for inflation to index SSI increases
• Return estate tax to Clinton-era levels
• Subject some incomes over $106,000 to SSI tax

This gave a balanced budget in FY 2015 and a healthy surplus in FY 2030, with only 15% tax increases (the last two levels) and 85% spending cuts.  Notably, I did not enact a Federal pay cut for either civilian or military employees, reduce payments to Federal contractors, or enact a carbon tax or a national sales tax. What I did do was, mainly, reduce entitlement spending and military spending. Which, of course, sucks. But meaningful attempts to tackle government overspending require that these sacred cows be placed upon the altar.

I would anticipate in my scenario that the surpluses would be used to retire outstanding debt. This would result in eliminating the long-term debt of the United States by about 2050, leaving only the sort of short-term debt financed by short-term instruments necessary to work through week-to-week shortfalls in revenue.

Precautionary Fondling

I'm not fond of the idea of a TSA agent feeling me up the next time I try to board a plane. Not that I think that the agent is really looking forward to it, either. But is the threat of having a stranger grabbing your genitals enough to get Americans to finally address, in a serious way, the extent to which we're willing to sacrifice our dignity, privacy, and liberty, in exchange for the promise -- sure to be broken eventually -- of enhanced security.

But it should never come to something like this.

We fear terrorists on airplanes, and rightly so. But the response to ever-tightening and ever-more intrusive security measures is for terrorists to become ever smarter and more clever in the way they conceal weapons. And if we are looking at air travel security from the macro-level, the level of making policy, the truth of the matter is that some level of criminal activity cannot be prevented at all. At least one airline pilot is concerned that our response is one of panic and short-sightedness rather than resolve and intelligence, which he fears will not only result in a drag on air transport services, but less security in the services that are provided. He provides a very interesting historical perspective along the way.

This brings me also to an article linked in a comment here, a short thought experiment by the late, great David Foster Wallace. I have taken it as an article of faith that a nation as technologically advanced and wealthy as the United States does not need to choose between security and liberty; we ought to be smart and capable enough to have one without diminishing the other. Wallace asked, in effect, what if that is not ultimately true? What if in order to have safety we must diminish our own freedoms to the point that we no longer have the liberty that makes life in our society worth living? Would we choose to tolerate a certain level of terrorist and/or criminal-induced violence in order to preserve our liberties -- does this mean that there is a calculus of liberty versus life upon which we need to find an ideal balance point?

A disturbing thought indeed. A life enslaved is a life not worth living, for the most part, unless there is a possibility of liberation at some point in the future. But liberty obviously cannot be enjoyed if it is accompanied by fear, or more basically, if one is dead. Nor is the idea that other people are free much consolation to those who mourn the victims of a criminal (or terrorist, if you prefer) act.

But as I stated in a response to that comment, here I look to our Founding Fathers for inspiration. It's our choice to make, but this is what heroes and myths are for -- to help guide us make decisions in real life by providing role models. The United States' Founders were men who made a conscious decision to expend blood in the pursuit of liberty. They knew they were going to war, and that had they opted for peace, they would have continued to have life and (at least for most of them) economic prosperity. They chose a more risky path, one in which not only their livelihoods and wealth, but their safety and lives and those of their families and countrymen, were sufficiently at risk that they knew some lives would be lost. The chose to pay the price of blood in order to have freedom.

I'm pretty confident that none of them would have willingly submitted to a uniformed member of King George's government grabbing their wieners prior to boarding transport vessels so as to check for unauthorized satchels of gunpowder. I linked above to a guy who refused to submit to a genital grope or nude scan of his body and invited civil claims against him by the government for his doing so, and I have to think that George Washington would have admired him.

Do we today choose to pay the price of freedom in order to have -- what? A marginally increased level of protection against criminals? Worse, the illusion of a marginally increased level of protection against criminals? I don't want to pretend that there aren't security risks out there nor would I suggest that we abandon security screening entirely. But I also don't want to permit the security apparatus of the government to reach an unreasonable level of intrusiveness. There has to be an appropriate and effective middle ground, and by the time we've got passengers submitting to full frontal nudity views and genital pat-downs, we've crossed the line.

(Image from boingboing.net; hat tip to James Fallows)

Raising A Red Flag About Heckler's Vetoes

What is it with all the stories about hecklers' vetoes? After I felt moved enough by Pat Condell yesterday to praise a culture of free speech, I turn around and see this -- someone's offended by a kid putting an American flag on his bike, on Veteran's Day, and a public school official decides to censor it. The question is whether the display of the flag (or a corresponding counter-display of, say, a Mexican flag) would reasonably be seen to incite violence. Which seems very strange in this case because doesn't the school fly the American flag every day?

You don't have a right to not be offended. The fact that your child is learning about bad things that really did happen in history does not mean you can sue the school district for failing to sugar-coat things. You don't get to use the power of the government to silence speech you don't like simply for the reason that you don't like it.

What I suggest you do if you feel emotionally offended by someone expressing an opinion or discussing an issue in a way with which you disagree is to get over it and add to the debate rather than trying to subtract from it. This is the case even if the people who are exercising their rights of free speech are, by any objective or reasonable standard, best regarded as flaming asshats; flaming asshats have free speech rights, too.

The remedy to hearing really stupid, offensive things is not to censor them. It's to point out that they are stupid and offensive, and to offer one's own take on the topic under discussion. This is true even if the stupid, offensive statements you're calling on the carpet were articulated by your own husband who happens to be a United States Senator and a former major party candidate for President of the United States. The remedy for unpleasant speech is more speech.

You would think that would be obvious. Apparently, though, it isn't. Regardless, censoring the American flag on Veteran's Day not only makes for terrible politics, but it also crosses the line into a First Amendment violation. Absent a particularized, articulatable threat of violence or disruption of school activities, the student can fly a U.S. flag, a Mexican flag, can wear a pro-gay-rights T-shirt or an anti-gay-rights T-shirt, or any other kind of expressive display she wishes.

For the record, referring to each of the linked stories, my immediate reaction is:

1. The kid in Monterey ought to be able to put an American flag on his bike if he wants. The school district was wrong to tell him to take it down. What the school district needs to do is teach the students that it's okay to be proud to be an American, and it's also okay to be proud to be of Mexican heritage, so it's not worth fistfights over racial tensions.
2. The father in Michigan doesn't have the right to tell the school district not to use a particular textbook. If he doesn't like his daughter being taught from that textbook, maybe he ought to be an effing parent and talk with his daughter about what she's learning at school, rather than generating another stupid lawsuit I'll have to apologize for in another forum.
3. The kids wearing the "straight pride" T-shirts have a right to do so. The fact that their actions are within the scope of their First Amendment rights does not ameliorate the fact that they are flaming asshats for choosing to use their rights in this fashion -- and worse for attempting to cloak their bigotry in religion, because by doing so, they make their coreligionists look bad too. The right response to bigotry is to criticize the bigots.
4. I agree with the sentiments in the anti-bullying video, provided that the celebrities (and Cindy McCain, rather boldly subverting her own husband) are advocating that bullies should be ostracized by their peers, rather than punished by the authorities, for things like taunting and teasing. Violence or threats of violence should be punished, regardless of the motivation for the violence or threatened violence.

The big picture is that free expression is the paramount value here; no one has a right to silence people who say offensive things.

Constitutional Convention: The Board Game

I am enough of a history geek that this game sounds like a whole lot of fun. "Boom! I've got Franklin on this one!" I don't think I could get The Wife to play it very often, though.

Ca' di Gladiatori Crumbles

A sad day in Pompeii, as the House of the Gladiators collapses. Italy has been suffering heavy autumn rains, and the unearthed ancient ruins of the world's most unique and miraculous archeological site are not up to it.

Italy, like much of the rest of the world, suffers from a crunch in money and its government feels the pinch too. It is obviously not directly essential to the welfare of the Italian people that they keep the ruins at Pompeii in good shape -- although they are a tourist attraction that brings a lot of money in to the Campanian economy so one would think that there is a financial calculus going on somewhere. Private funding or funding from research institutions outside of Italy is also drying up. It's very easy to look at something like this and fault the government for allowing the nation's patrimony to degrade to this point. At the same time, it's easy to anticipate the government's rebuttal -- we only have so much money; how many ambulances and hospitals should we not have bought, how many soldiers should we have not paid, how much election fraud should we have tolerated or crimes left unprosecuted, to free up the money that was needed to preserve la Ca'di Gladiatori?

So the larger issue is that Pompeii is one of the ways that Italy can distinguish itself as a nation -- trading in part on its rich history and in part on its good fortune to have such an asset and in part on its commitment to maintaining, studying, and making available its unique culture. Every nation has such cultural assets, unique to itself. If we take the point of view that culture is not a job for the government, then something like Pompeii has to be handled at least in part by private enterprise (perhaps in the form of a private charity), or vanish entirely. Sometimes that private money is there and sometimes it isn't. And some things are of great cultural value and some are of more moderate importance.

To say that the degree of state involvement and the financial commitment of a community and a government must be addressed on a case-by-case basis is not a very satisfying or principled way of looking at the issue. But it is probably the only realistic result.

Fainting In A Movie?

Last weekend, I saw 127 Hours at what I suppose must have been one of the only four screens in America showing it. It's in wider release this weekend. Apparently, the rumors going around are that the "arm scene" is so gruesome people are fainting. I didn't faint. It was tough going, but I made it through, so did The Wife, so did our friends. The "arm scene" was actually shorter than I feared it would be and its toughest part was not what I was expecting.

No full movie review here. Suffice to say that the movie was actually quite good. Short (it is a movie based on a single event, after all), bombastic (score by A.R. Rahman who rejoins Danny Boyle after their success in Slumdog Millionaire) and visually powerful (does not deter me from wanting to visit the Canyonlands). But the biggest winner has to be James Franco, who unflinchingly portrays a cocky young hiker, rendering him sympathetic while still illustrating the flaws that got him into his awful predicament. And it's all the more interesting because, of course, it's based on a real event.

I wonder if I would have done what the guy did. I can handle low levels of pain for a while and if the pain creeps up on me, gradually escalating, I can deal with it. But a sudden, sharp pain such as a dentist's tool coming near a tooth nerve makes me recoil quickly and profoundly; every trip I take to the dentist for anything more than a routine cleaning leaves me feeling like a pain wimp. To inflict such pain on myself would be a great challenge -- even if it came down to a choice between that and death. Hopefully I (and all of you) never have to find out and when the end does come, it will be swift, painless, and only arrive after a long and happy life.

Somehow I Don't See This In My Crystal Ball

President Lyndon Johnson famously responded to overwhelming public criticism of his handling of Vietnam by announcing that he would not serve as President for a second full term -- he channeled the long-dead General William Tecumseh Sherman, who said "If nominated, I will not accept; if drafted, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve."

This created chaos for the Democratic party in 1968, and paved the way for Richard Nixon to explore entirely new and different ways to get into political trouble concerning Vietnam.

Today, it is easy to see that President Barack Obama has run in to strong -- I'm not sure "overwhelming" is accurate, but "strong" certainly is -- public criticism of his handling of the economy. Is the solution a Polk-like "one and done" for Barack Obama? 

Survey says: irrelevant, because it's not gonna happen. It's fundamentally contrary to the President's personality not to seek re-election, just as it was fundamentally contrary to his personality to decline a Nobel Peace Prize he demonstrably had not earned.

There Is No Part Of This Story That Is Not Surreal

Dick Van Dyke, yes that Dick Van Dyke, is 84 years old and still surfing.

Except he maybe ought to not be surfing because paddling out past the breakers apparently exhausts him so much that while surfing he falls asleep.

And wakes up out of sight of land.

Whereupon he is pushed back to shore by a pod of friendly porpoises.

The porpoises were unavailable for comment.

Now you know why I like to read the British newspaper websites. You can't get this sort of thing on CNN. Instead, you get it on the Scottish equivalent of David Letterman (porpoise story at the 9:00 mark). Hat tip to Rufus F.

The Real Villains

Sometimes I wonder why exactly I can't find it in my heart to condemn Islam so starkly, clearly, and powerfully as Pat Condell:

Then I remember the answer: what Condell is describing here isn't congruent with my own personal experience with Muslims. I've had Muslim clients, I've had Muslim friends, I've had Muslim attorneys as adversaries in cases I've handled, I've hired Muslims as expert witnesses in cases I've handled. In all those experiences, some of them have been friendly and nice, some of them have been kind of jerks and seemed untrustworthy, and some of them have been basically unremarkable. Many of them are immigrants from other parts of the world to the United States and of these, some have adapted better to the culture here than others. Some of them are smart, others not so much.

Put another way: in my own firsthand experience, the Muslims I have dealt with have acted pretty much like any other group of people one might care to identify. Demonization of them is not congruent with my own experience.

Like any other group of people, some of them are going to be assholes. Some of these assholes are going to be assholish about their religion and if one focuses on the media (particularly a partisan press) one might get the impression that there are a lot of assholish fundamentalist Muslims out there. And indeed, there are fanatics and some of those fanatics are dangerous and willing to use violence to achieve their ends. The word that comes most readily to mind when describing people within a society who use violence to achieve their ends is "criminals." I believe criminals should be treated like criminals and their religion is not the primary reason why I condemn criminals -- their harmful, lawless behavior is.

Now, bear in mind that Condell's soliloquy here addresses an issue of what kind of behavior should and should not be criminalized. The root of what Condell is talking about in the video above is not criminal behavior by Muslims, nor should it be. It is assholish behavior by them. It is beyond rude and arrogant for a Muslim to think that he or she can live in and enjoy the benefits of a free society and still make use of the power of the government to prevent themselves from being offended by something someone else has to say. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion does not mean freedom from criticism. Freedom of speech means that the government tolerates the offensive things that people say.

Pat Condell is and ought to be free to condemn Islam without fear of governmental reprisal. That is what freedom of speech means. He also ought to be free from the fear of violent reprisal for his statements. That is what it means to be part of a peaceful, law-abiding society. If something in Condell's speech offends you, you have two primary options which are acceptable in a free society: you may either 1) ignore him, or 2) rebut him.

Same as the Muslims who don't like hearing their backwards religion criticized.

What I fear gets lost in a polemic like the one above is the proper focus of Condell's diatribe. The real villains in the situation he's describing in Austria are not the Muslims. They are the governmental officials who are punishing free speech, who invoke the judicial power of their nation to prosecute someone for the "crime" of criticizing someone else's religion. In a nation that purports to respect freedom and individual rights, there is no other option to the government but to tolerate someone criticizing Islam. The Muslims are availing themselves of a governmental remedy that ought not to exist. It ought to be very obvious that the remedy for speech they dislike is more speech.

I do not think all of the criticisms and condemnations of Islam are valid. I think critics of Islam paint with too broad a brush -- as though a critic of Christianity were to claim that every Christian is, wants to be, or at least admires and supports, people who assassinate abortion doctors. A Christian can condemn both abortion and the people who murder doctors who perform abortions; the vast majority of Christians condemn both.

Is this a logical and consistent position for them to take? I don't much care, because real human behavior with respect to religion is that people pick and choose what commands of their holy books and clerical leaders they will follow and which ones they will ignore. The overwhelming amount of the time, they opt for morally good behavior.

So are there violent, awful, morally indefensible passages in the Koran. Damn skippy there are. Are there Muslims who nevertheless believe in an act upon these morally indefensible passages? Sadly, yes. Those people are, as I mentioned above, "criminals." They should be treated like criminals. Their coreligionists, however, do not deserve to be treated like criminals until and unless they too commit criminal acts. And those in charge of the governmental powers need to be careful about the kinds of acts that they criminalize.

If I believed in God, I would thank Her that I am blessed to be a citizen of a country with a strong Constitutional guarantee of free speech. A prosecution against someone for speaking their mind about a social issue of the day here would quickly run up against a First Amendment challenge and the prosecuting authorities would be scrambling, hard, to justify their actions. If they pressed on, they would earn the rightful condemnation not only of those who agreed with the defendant's political point of view, but others who would see creeping totalitarianism. Witness how Ezra Levant is a hero -- not for criticizing Muslims, but for criticizing and standing up to his own government:

So. Why don't I take on the evils of the Muslim faith? Because it is the abuse of government power which most offends me. Frankly, I expect that a manual of social mores come out of the late Bronze Age Middle East is going to contain all manner of utterly morally indefensible things, and that people who insist on taking those obsolete visions of society literally are going to act in morally indefensible ways.

Those sorts of evildoers can best be kept on the fringes of society where they belong is not through making sure that "their side" always loses in a political fight. The best and most enduring way to keep them out of power, keep them out of positions where they can do real harm to our society, keep them from actually imposing their views on those who do not wish to subscribe them, is to consistently and with principle insist that the government honor as inviolable, and to safeguard as the highest objective of its existence, the civil liberties of the individual.

Those liberties, our best and most enduring protections against the evil theocracy that a small number of fanatic, literalist Muslims would impose on the rest of us, will not be toppled through military conquest. Those liberties can, however, erode. The forces that erode them will not be forces that are obviously and apparently trying to subvert and transform American society. Rather, they will and can only be those forces that claim to be protecting, defending, and conserving that society.

To claim that this is a "Christian nation" and therefore that Christianity is entitled to special, favorable treatment by the government takes away the bulwark of separation of church and state. What will the Christian nation advocates claim if and when Muslims outnumber them at the ballot box and suddenly America is proclaimed to be a "Muslim nation?" They will have already established that the government may favor the majority's religion -- and should they then find themselves in the minority, there will not be the Constitutional guarantee against Establishment of a religion to protect their rights.

The real villains in Pat Condell's diatribe are not the Muslims who complained loudly about being offended that someone in Austria publicly explains why they dislike Islam. The real villains in Ezra Levant's videotaped discovery are not the imams who filed complains with the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The real villains are those who would involve the government in those kinds of issues in the first place. We protect the rights of unpopular minorities not because we like what the minorities do, not because we would make them elites, not because we desire to see democracy subverted or overturned. We protect them because we must limit the power of the government, whether that power is used to an unpopular end or a popular one.

Why don't I condemn Muslims more stridently than I do? Because as awful as 9/11 was, our nation is much too resilient and powerful to collapse because a few buildings were destroyed and some innocent people were murdered. Only we have the power to really destroy ourselves, and such destruction will not be an overt attack but rather a metamorphosis. The real threat is in our own city halls and statehouses, in Congress and the White House, at our own ballot boxes -- a short-sightedness about the expediency of government action to address that which is unpleasant today, without regard for the future disasters that we invite by setting aside the safeguards to our liberties. An intelligent respect for everyone's Constitutional rights, and an independent judiciary to safeguard them, are the best defenses we have available.

5 Questions From 2 Christians 4 Atheists

This one seems to be making the rounds on the Intertubes. It may not be particularly philosophically deep, but it is seemingly popular. I'm not about to make a video response as the authors solicit, although this guy's video response ends on a charming note. So I'll do a written response instead.


1.  What kind of evidence would it take for you to believe in God?  Not what would be a good start, but what evidence would actually convince you?  And when we say "God," we're talking about a mind which is all-loving, all-powerful (meaning he can do everything but what is logically contradictory), all-knowing, and eternal.

Notice the rhetorical twist in the question: "We Christians can't seem to convince you atheists of the existence of God. So instead, please try to convince yourselves." Sorry; it doesn't work that way; this isn't Moot Court. As proponents of the claim that God exists, you bear the burden of proof. What that proof might be, I haven't a clue. Maybe such evidence exists; I haven't seen any after forty years of life but then again, I don't know what you've got to offer. So hit me with your best shot.

2.  Is there anything I can do that would convince you that God exists?  Like, could any argument we could make have the potential to sway you?

See my answer to question #1, above. One thing I'd suggest you do before trying is to see if your new, wonderful argument is really new and wonderful. And sorry, chances are that it isn't. In fact, chances are good that your argument is some variant of either the ontological argument or the cosmological argument, and I find neither to be convincing.

3.  If you realized that an all-loving God existed, would you desire to have a relationship with Him?  If you said "yes" to that question, would you want to have a relationship with Him just to get into heaven or for some other reason?

An all-loving God would be a nice friend to have for all sorts of reasons, the best reason being to enjoy and reciprocate the love and friendship offered. Now, note that according to your definition, God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. As such, an all-loving, omnibenevolent God would put everyone into eternal paradise and bliss in the afterlife, regardless of whether they were sinners, apostates, or whatnot. So if an all-loving God existed (as you've defined Him), I wouldn't be worried about getting in to heaven at all; that God would put me in Heaven no matter what because He loves me the same way He loves you.


4.  Have you ever met a Christian that lives their life in such a way that it is clear that they believe in an all-loving God?  (Onscreen disclaimer: "I am not insinuating that only Christians can be moral")  Meaning they live a life that is impressively kind, loving, and selfless.

Yes, I have met and known and in some cases formed warm friendships with many Christians whose kindness, capacity for love, and selflessness have impressed me and touched me deeply on an emotional level. Those friendships have deeply enriched my life. Similarly, I've met and been morally impressed by people who identify as Jewish, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or in the case of my favorite roommate from college, Zoroastrian. I do not think one's religiosity has any more relationship with one's moral worth than does one's shoe size.

5.  Has the presence or lack of presence of such a person had any impact on your atheism?

None whatsoever. My love for my friends, and their love for me, does not change the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever to justify or even inspire belief in the supernatural, any more than such love (or the lack of such love) would change the speed of light or the force of gravity. The universe is utterly and absolutely indifferent to your feelings about it. God either exists or does not exist, regardless of whether Christians are good people or bad people.