August 2010
“In the brief period between the bombing and the emergence of McVeigh,...”
– Stanley Fish
War is over*
So…that’s a pretty big asterisk after that statement. We’ve still got about 50,000 troups in Iraq. Although the “combat mission” is ended, it sounds like much of the remaining mission will be sort of … combatty. But …
…the end of a war is still worth celebration, even when it’s not as clear and as clean as we’d like it to be. Fifty...
“The purpose of the system is to stratify - to put the wealth in the best...”
– CorrelationsToOne, who goes on to add that the problem with our social and economic system is not that it rewards and punishes people based on factors outside of their control—but that it too frequently uses the wrong factors.
I agree with Correlationstonone, to the extent that our supposedly...
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Civil and Criminal Law
I’m particularly annoyed by the “copying is stealing” advertisements because they blur the line between civil and criminal law. Violation of civil copyright law is not criminal. Theft is criminal. (There are criminal penalties under the copyright act—but generally not for something like copying a CD or even pirating a massive music collection.)
When you violate a civil...
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If somebody in uniform wakes you up on the train,...
And you may well be in the backwards and repressive state of … New York.
Yes, New York. (Or maybe Ohio, where the same things happen.) The Border Patrol opened a small station to inspect a ferry from Toronto. The ferry closed. Rather than closing, the station ballooned to ten times its previous size. And, since there isn’t a border-crossing to monitor, it simply profiles and arrests...
I missed out on an entire week's news...
…and the 24 hour news cycle considers news from two or three days back dated and uninteresting. Could you fill me in on what I missed?
Backpacking means card games—and I found a new way to win a euchre game unethically. I call it the Fox News strategy. Confidently and repeatedly announce that trump is whatever suit you want it to be, regardless of what it actually is. If you repeat it enough, people will become confused. Then you in your confidence, will be there to guide them out of their confusion.
It wasn’t...
I think John Bolton’s moustache is divine retribution for his war-mongerring. I bet he tries to shave it off every morning an it instantly grows back as a message to the world: You will regret trusting this man.
“This flood has taken everything away from me, including one of my girls. She...”
– Nizam Ali, a displaced person in Pakistan.
Read Full Article. (via doctorswithoutborders)
I’ll be backpacking in the Green Mountains for a week. If I post anything, it probably means I’m desecrating a beautiful place by fiddling with an iPhone.
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“I’ve invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority...”
– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as quoted by Ben Smith in “A Year to Peace in the Middle East?”
An agreement with Abbas doesn’t solve the problem with Hamas and Gaza, but … whoa. A year? If Clinton can pull this one off, I’ll vote for her in 2016. I’ll also...
The path from fiscal conservativism to overt...
I have a certain respect for libertarians. I’m glad that somebody is vigilently watching out for what they percieve as liberty, even if I prioritize things significantly differently than they do. But a lot of people have used claims of libertarianism to cloak something a lot more sinister. Unfortunately for everybody (particularly the real libertarians), it’s sometimes hard to tell who...
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“[President Obama] grew up more as a globalist than an American. To deny American...”
– Mike Huckabee, quoted in “The new battle: What it means to be American.”
American exceptionalism is a troubling sort of civic religion. Its proponents really take it as a matter of faith. They don’t feel compelled to defend it with evidence. The sole defense is discrediting any...
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N.Y. Times: Zombie Apocalypse is Imminent →
The New York Times didn’t phrase it that way, but I know how to cut through their liberal media spin and see the real headline behind the story.
This is the first time, geneticists say, that they have seen a dead gene come back to life and cause a disease.
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How to Disable Facebook Places →
vruz:
vruz: we interrupt this tumblr break momentarily with this public service post by Wil Wheaton. I shall now resume my short tumblrless stinct in peace.
—via wilwheaton:
Facebook now has “places” - it “checks you in” when you go somewhere. This means home too. It goes out and grabs the location from Google Maps. It is turned on by default, and Facebook isn’t making an effort to let its...
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Answers to all your burning questions.
An anonymous dude sent me (and, presumably, a lot of others) a lengthy political political survey. Also, a few WhileYouWereGone asked whether I believe in Heaven and Hell. In a classic, Give-Us-Barabus move, I’m going to go with the lengthy political survey because the answers are simpler and require a lot less thought. (I’ll probably get to Heaven/Hell in a while—but it’s...
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“There’s been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there’s one kind of...”
– Chief Judge Kozinski, U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (dissenting)
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Don't do it, Politico!
Heckling Politico, SoupSoup wrote, “Come down from your ivory towers, reblog and interact with us, your unwashed masses.”
Politico responded:
“The view from our ivory tower? Freaking beautiful! And we didn’t realize that 3 years as a mostly online publication made us the Established Print Media, but, um that’s cool too.”
Matt Langer, who started the whole thing, points...
correlationstonone-deactivated2 asked: What are we afraid of? Taxes, mostly.
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New Report Shows Graduation Chasm for Black Males →
abbyjean posted an excerpt from a linked article at The American Prospect by Jamelle Bouie:
The situation is too complicated — and the achievement chasm too vast — to hold a single thing responsible for this crisis, but it suffices to say that this is a massive failure of our educational infrastructure;
Followign some disclaimers, correlationstonone writes:
What if the schools are fine, and...
“The magnitude of Pakistan’s current tragedy is almost more than the mind can...”
– Pakistan: An Urgent Call for Aid - N.Y. Times
“It’s all kind of junk.”
– A bank representative, describing the dozens of foreclosed houses being auctioned at a sheriff’s sale. I might have chosen the phrase “people’s homes,” but “junk” is a less emotionally loaded phrase. If I were in the business of kicking people out of their homes,...
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“36%”
– The average 2009 loan repayment rate at for-profit colleges
“If the purpose of this mosque, as we are lead to believe, is to create this...”
– Sarah Palin - politico (via brooklynmutt, liberalsarecool, robot-heart-politics)
Yes, Sarah, you do have to ask that. Despite those 100 existing mosques and who knows how many existing churches, you seem to insist on fostering an intolerant environment. Why?
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"Limited Government" is not a coherent political...
We all want to “limit government.” We just want to limit the parts of government we don’t like. “I believe in limited government” is sort of like saying “I’m against things I don’t think are important.”
Of course, this sort of tautology is a lot more palatable than the alternative where you need to make actual statements about what you value....
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Christianity and Islam
I hear that as a Christian I’m supposed to harbor some extreme animosity toward Islam. I hear this both from atheist friends and from certain Christians. I don’t understand it. While I disagree with my Muslim friends on some critical theological points, we have some important areas of agreement. And there is a lot we can work together on.
Physicists disagree on important issues like...
“The best college in America isn’t in Cambridge or Princeton, West Point or...”
– Forbes
The whole concept of college rankings is … problematic. While it’s true that not all colleges are equal, the claim that determining that one school is definitively #1 and another school is #3 is the sort of thing people only do when they’re trying to sell magazines.
Of...
“[T]hey have no desire to emulate their heroes. They want lives that are free...”
– Running Chicken: Heroics, Please
Does it matter that we want to desire to emulate our heroes? Don’t we label those who suffer for something important heroes because we hope to persuade people—including ourselves—to act as we think we should act? I may not want to dive into...
In a victory for common sense regulation...
The Federal Reserve has banned banks from paying illegal kickbacks to mortgage broker’s who persuade their clients to accept a worse-than-market mortgage rate. Better late than never. Bit by bit, we’re laying the groundwork to prevent the next housing crisis.
9th Circuit appeals court halts Calif. marriage... →
savingpaper:
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals appeals ruled Monday that same-sex couples cannot marry in California while the court considers the constitutionality of the state’s gay marriage ban.
The court ordered lawyers to produce a series of briefs between September 17 and November 1.
The appellate court’s decision reverses a ruling last week by U.S. District Court Chief Judge...
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Senator gets hit in the face by a pie! →
Before reading the article, please answer:
Which Senator got hit in the face by a pie?
Who threw the pie and why?
Did the Senator deserve it?
“I am amused with their comments about obstructionism … I wish we had been able...”
– Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), on complaints from Democrats about Republican obstructionism.
(via officialssay)
Mitch has half a point. The Republicans have been trying to obstruct a lot more than they’ve been able to obstruct.
But obstructing legislation by any means necessary isn’t...
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On ‘Sensitivity'
Saving Paper has written about the role calls for “sensitivity” play in the uproar over teh Cordoba Initiative. He writes, in part:
If you want to talk about “sensitivity” at play in the debate of the Cordoba Initiative, you have to be willing to acknowledge how inherently insensitive it is to equate an entire religion with terrorism, to tell people they should feel it incumbent upon...
OMG! Sharia is creeping into our country!
The essence of contract law is that consenting adults can form whatever kind of legally binding private law they want. Courts will enforce it—but only against the people who consented to it. It’s elegant. You’re free from all laws and obligations—except those you agree to be bound by. At least, that’s the idea.
It gets tricky around the edges. What constitutes...
“What are you doing now … except for looking at Tumblrs that look so garish...”
– Carolyn heckles my new followers’ blogs.
“The very concept of liberty is being tested by tri-corner-hatted morons who...”
– correlations to none
GOP takes harsher stance toward Islam -... →
So … this is happening. The policy initiatives of George W. Bush are looking increasingly moderate next to what we’re seeing recently from the Republicans.
“While the stealth war began in the Bush administration, it has expanded under...”
– Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents - NYTimes.com
Guys, we’ve got to stop doing this stuff. Wherever you stand on whether this is something we should be doing, we can hopefully agree that we need more accountability for military or covert actions.
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“Democrats don’t know how to celebrate.”
– Sen. Chris Dodd
He’s right. The opposition from the right has been intense. Despite that, we have a solid (but not perfect) healthcare bill. We have an excellent financial reform bill. We have regulatory agencies who are back on the job. We have an economy that is slowly turning around....
“This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The...”
– President Barack Obama
Charlie Rangel is having an ethics trial.
Pay attention to what he’s accused of. Tax evasion, misuse of letterhead, and a few comparable things. If he dud what he’s been accused of, he acted unethically. The trial is appropriate. Still, it’s worth noting how high our standards ate for our politicians. There’s no accusation of embezzling millions or politically motivated prosecutions. Relative to other countries or...
“Sir, you’re just being a demagague. You’re just yelling....”
– Anderson Cooper to Rep. Louie “terror babies” Gohmert.
He’s so polite about it…
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“In this regard, a customer who faithfully uses a register to track items would...”
– William Alsup, United States District Judge in Gutierrez v. Wells Fargo
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“In terms of future expectations, we have seen continued strong electronic [tax]...”
– excerpt from an email from Wells Fargo VP Ken Zimmerman to his boss, as quoted in the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law after Bench Trial in Gutierrez v. Wells Fargo (N.D. California Case No. C 07-05923 WHA)
I post this in case anybody still hasn’t figured out what the game is....
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“Internal bank memos and emails leave no doubt that, overdraft revenue being a...”
– William Alsup, United States District Judge in Gutierrez v. Wells Fargo
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“It appeared that [the terrorists] would have young women, who became pregnant,...”
– Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).
Well. The terror of a terrorist plot like this will keep me up at night for the next twenty, thirty years. Or maybe that’s the terror at the thought that somebody actually elected Gohmert. 