Interesting Times

Silliness at the Times

2006-01-28T01:50:00.000-05:00

I read the New York Times online just about everyday. They have various readers' forums. I noticed the other day that they have a science forum with questions that are just ridiculous for an online forum. For instance, the question right now is "How predominant do you think rock-ice planets are in the cosmos?"

There are only a handful of people in the world who can actually offer anything resembling an intelligent response to that question. Why are they posing this to the general public?

Happy Holidays

2005-12-17T00:36:00.000-05:00

I want to talk a bit about the question of whether it's an attack on Christianity when stores have "Holiday Sales" instead of "Christmas Sales" and in the process to address funky dung's response to my statemetn that "never in my life have I read the headline "man battered after wishing someone a 'merry christmas." To which he responded "Niether have I, but I have heard of people being threatened by employers, particularly in retail."

As I see it this is not a question of people trying to be PC, it's a question of concepts of politeness. My personal standard of politeness makes me not wish a Merry Christmas someone I know to not be a Christian. And while others might not agree with that standard for themselves I don't think anyone can really argue that it is an unreasonable standard.

Correspondingly, a store which is hanging banners, which are by their nature indiscriminate in their targets, is reasonable to deem it impolite to not put up a "Merry Christmas" banner, when s/he knows that many of his customers may not be Christian. This is no different than me not wishing a Merry Christmas to my Jewish friends. It is not caving to some vast secular conspiracy, but rather simply adhering to a particular sense of etiquette.

Lastly, as it applies to employees, it is standard practice for employers, and especially retail employers, to set standards of conduct for their employees, and the core of such standards is what constitutes polite and impolite behavior. Is entirely reasonable for an employer to tell his employees not to wish customers a Merry Christmas while they're on the clock.

Seasonal Idiocy

2005-12-11T14:06:00.000-05:00

Well, we've reached that time of year again when the inevitable debate over what exactly is the reason for this particular season rages.

There's a new wrinkle this year that's been well repoted on: the push to demand that stores and other establishments say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays". If you haven't seen anything about it yet here's a bbc article: Line Drawn in Battle Over Christmas. This raises a whole host of theological historical and political questions, which I'll probably write about soon. But there's a particularly aggravating aspect of it which I want to look at first. There is a quote from one of the groups that sums up the basic argument they make very well

"We just wanted to encourage Christians to have the courage to say 'merry Christmas' instead of 'happy holidays'"-Jennifer Giroux

How on Earth does it take courage to say that? I have heard of people being attacked for being gay, for being Jewish, for being Muslims, for being black, and for a myriad of other reasons, but never in my life have I read the headline "man battered after wishing someone a 'merry christmas'"

It is part of an underlying cult of the oppressed majority that is developing within our country. This should be bothering to Americans a variety of levels:

Firstly, that your countrymen should be so intellectually vapid as to believe such garbage. That Christians living in an overwhelming Christian nation that is the most openly religious country in the first world AND is in one of the more religious fervent periods of its history should think that they are being oppressed is simply ridiculous. A cursory glance shows that this is not the case.

But this is more than just silliness. This cult is potential dangerous. Mythologies of oppression have always been dangerous. As it stands now it's just a collection of fringe people making ridiculous comments, but there is always the potential for a political group to seize on that mythology and take it to the natural extension of demanding action against the "oppressors".

We must remember that in 1920 there were fringe groups saying that the German army had been triumphant in the field and that their loss in the Great War was the result of being "stabbed in the back" by the leadership, and it was a patently absurd statement. But that only made it more dangerous.

I'm back

2005-12-11T14:01:00.000-05:00

This has been a crazy semester so I kinda trailed off on my blogging. And then I forgot my username and password. But I'm back now.

So keep on rocking!

Virtue

2005-08-07T12:32:00.000-04:00

David Brooks, one of the prime pieces of evidence that the New York Times needs to get better conservative editorialist (Safire was their last non-hack, and wasn't even that great, but at least not a hack), wrote an article saying that the drop in statistics such as teen pregnancy, drunk driving and such is the result of a "moral revival" in the country. The Virtue of Virtue

It strikes me that, while applying the word Virtue in a broad sense to these developments, it's innaccurate to cite this as evidence of a "moral revival". Teenage pregnancy has dropped because teenagers have realized that if they have unprotected sex, they'll get pregnant, and that's a bad thing.

People have realized that if they drive while drunk, they'll kill themselves or others.

These are good realizations and good developments, but they are grounded in awareness and sound judgement not any system of morality in a conventionaly theological sense. This fact is underscored by the fact that the Bible belt states are the states in which most of these indicies are highest.

Moving with Graebel

2005-08-04T13:29:00.000-04:00

Various things have been making me move towards a more dynamic conception of unions that is grounded less in Marxist analysis. One of these influences has been moving to New York.

My family has moved many times and we've always had reasonably good experiences with moving companies.
This time we used Graebel because that's the service that my father's new company contracted with. This was the first Non-union moving company we'd ever used.

They destroyed several walls in the place we were moving otu of, and broke a tremendous amount of stuff, including my computer, which is a source of rage.

But this brought to mind one aspect of union labor which is often true, but should really be universally true. Unions should really do all they can to gaurantee the quality of their laborers.
For one thing, it's the moral thing to do. If you're an organization that exists to demand a fair day's pay for its members, you should also ensure a fair day's work from your members.
It would also be helpful to the union movement because it can solidify a branding for the Union labor as being a quality good.

Again, this is already often the case. For instance, my brother is a project manager for construction companies and has been on union sites and non-union sites and the union employees tend to be more competent. Also, Unions are very often intertwined with accrediting bodies.
But it should be expanded to being a core principal of the Organized Labor movement.

Fair pay for superior work.

Baltimore silliness

2005-08-02T19:33:00.000-04:00

I visited my brother in Baltimore a couple weekends back and got to see a "family friendly atmosphere" run amok at a ball game.

My brother was wearing a Red Sox T-shirt which on the back for the player's name had "Yankees Suck" written.

They made him turn his shirt inside out. This is taking "family friendly" entirely too far.

Live From New York

2005-08-02T19:31:00.000-04:00

My family has just finished moving to New York, so that's why I've been out of commission for so long. But now I'm back.

So to the three of you who read this. Sorry for the delay.

"Man Dog" Santorum

2005-07-12T12:33:00.000-04:00

Brian McGrory wrote an article in the Boston Globe that aptly responds to the dishonorable Senator from Pennsylvania's comment about boston:

In sanctum Santorum

Also, it's a clever article title.

Angry Clothing

2005-07-11T17:48:00.000-04:00

I spent my last day working at a museum yesterday, and nearly had an incident because of a man's t-shirt.

It said "JESUS" in block letters, set in an American Flag pattern, and underneath it said "True Liberty". Fortunately I was working the admission booth so there was an inch of glass between me and him; if I'd encountered him in the house I may have broken his snide little face.

First off, intertwining Jesus and America like that is obnoxious, offensive and unpatriotic.

Secondly, while invoking the name of our nation, to put forth the contrite nonsense that only those with Jesus are free immeasurably compounds how terrible that shirt was.

That may be his notion of liberty, but it is certainly not the notion of liberty enshrined in the institutions of our nation.

Gonzales

2005-07-08T13:46:00.000-04:00

As as nation, we have reached a peculiar point.

There is discussion of nominating a man to our highest court who sees no Constitutional iffiness in stripping a man naked, chaining him, putting a bag over his head, and attaching a car battery to his nipples and testicles.

And conservative groups throughout the country are rallying to fight a potential nomination because he's too liberal.

Friedman

2005-07-08T13:43:00.000-04:00

An interesting quote from editorialist Thomas Friedman:

"When jihadist-style bombings happen in Riyadh, that is a Muslim-Muslim problem.[...]But when Al-Qaeda-like bombings come to the London Underground, that becomes a civilizational problem."

It would seem that Islam is not part of civilization.

story at: A Muslim Problem

Scalia II

2005-07-03T13:44:00.000-04:00

While the news cycle is pressing on to more urgent things, I would like to take a little time to continue to note Scalia's judicial ineptitude.

The first post I wrote talking about his rampant abuse of history. But his abude of law is probably more troubling. He merges right wing wing talking points and legitimate attempts at legal arguments in a manner that runs the danger of legitimizing the talking points.

First off, he begins his legal argument with "On September 11, 2001". Which goes to show that there are very few limits to what powers the right wingers will try to give the government via the arguement, "um, er... 9/11".
He then goes on to explain that the notion of a secular state is purely a French invention. A Justice on the Supreme Court is attacking his peers by calling their opinions French. That's where we're at as a nation.

A bit of more dangerous demagoguery comes in his comment: "Nothing stand behind the Court's assertion that Government affirmation of the society's belief in God is unconsitutional except the court's own say-so, citing as suport only the unsubstantiated say-so of earlier Courts going back no farther than the mid-twentieth century."
First off, you could substitute in "assertion that segregated schooling is unconstitutional" and the statement would be just as true.
Secondly, if you remove the time clause, it can be said of any Court decision. The Court must arbitrarily decide what the Constitution means. It's an arbiter, that's what it does. He would seek to immasculate the Court, and remove it's power as an independent branch of government. This would remove a key check in our system.

Then comes the big papa of rhetoric. The talking point that everyone will quote:
"What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle."
Firstly, "absolutely indispenable" is not a valid phrase. Can something be "somewhat indispensable"?

Also, this is a thinly veiled (if that) rehashing of the "judicial activism" line. It is clear that whether or not they believe that something is "grounded in consistently applied principle" is defined purely by whether or not they agree with the outcome. It's a rhetorical trick, not a substanitive statement of belief.

It's also a darkly ironic statement since his argument is built entirely around what he presumes the Founder's meant. This is not a "consistent principle". Furthermore, various statements made by the Founders do not have standing in the court. Even their acts of legislation have no bearing in gauging something's Constitutionality. We cannot say that the fact that Congress enacted a law means that the law is Constitutional. We cannot do that if Congress passes a law today, and we cannot do that if the law was passed two hundred years ago. To do so is to remove the Court from the process.

What underlies all of that is the abuse of the Founders' statements. It does not make sense to pour over the statements of the Founders and cherry pick quotes that you light. If we want to gain from their wisdom we need to explore their reasoning. If we explore that, then we can follow so far as it was sound in reason and has retained its relevance; and avoid potential folly.

Scalia

2005-06-27T23:42:00.000-04:00

This will be the first installment of what I imagine will be a frequent theme for me: Justice Scalia is a morally bankrupt individual of dubious intellectual and legal merit.

I've been reading his dissenting opinion in the case of McCreary County, Kentucky et al v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky et al. A case regarding a display of the Ten Commandments in several Kentucky courthouses. (The document is available at supremecourtus.gov)

I was going to fisk the whole thing, but that'd be a very long entry so I've decided to space my criticisms out over several entries, and to try just to focus on faulty lines of argument that I hear faily often; but are far more objectionable out of a man whose position indicates that he should be a knowledgable person. This will, unfortunately, mean that I devote less space to questions such as "How did man with such little basic writing ability aquire a college degree, let alone a seat on the highest court in the land?"

Here is his description of the desplay:

"Titled 'The Foundations of American Law and Government Display,' each display consisted of nine equally sized documents: the original verson of the Magna Carta, the Declaraion of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Star Spangled Banner, the Mayflower Compact of 1620, a picture of Lady Justice, the National Motto of the United States ("In God We Trust"), the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, and the Ten Commandments. The displays did not emphasize any of the documents in any way:"
He goes on to explain that "the context communicates the the Ten Commandments are included, not to teach their binding nature as religious texts, but to show their unique contribution to the development of the legal system."

Let's look at the documents involved and play my favorite childhood game of "Which one doesn't fit?" Of the documents (we'll not focus on the non-documents such as the picture of Lady Justice), the Ten Commandments stand out as the only document that has no connection at all to our legal system. It is one of only two that were not written in this country or the one of the colonies that came to be part of this country. The other is the Magna Carta. There is a critical difference though: the Magna Carta is part of the Common Law which, under the Seventh Amendment, is incorporated into our legal system. Although most of its provisions are now arcane, it is still part of our legal system. In contrast, the Ten Commandments have no standing whatsoever before a court.

The Ten Commandments have made no unique contributin to the development of our legal system. They have not played a part in the manner that the other documents listed have. If it was a display on the development of the notion of law featuring the Ten Commandments, Hammurabi's Code, the Justinian Code and the Code Napoleon (or any such general collection of seminal legal documents), then it would fit. However, by giving the Ten Commandments equal emphasis with these other documents, they are in fact giving them special emphasis since they have no place in that display.

There are a lot more glaring failures of reason in Scalia's argument, but I think that'll do it for tonight.

Recent absurdity for "Man-Dog" Santorum

2005-06-27T13:36:00.000-04:00

Speaking of the repeated anal rape of children and the subsequent cover up by the Catholic Church, Senator Santorum said:

"When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

This man is a disgrace to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and to the United States Senate.

He has the unmitigated gall to blame the systematic anal rape of of children on some kind of seeping culture of liberalism. Nevermind the fact that he dramatically oversimplifies the political composition of Massachusetts. Nevermind that fact that the groups of people that this happened to are the people who fought like hell to keep the bars closed on Sundays and are fighting to amend the state Constitution to prohibit same sex marriage. Even if this was happening to people attending Kerry's church over on Beacon Hill, Santorum's comments would be abominable.

What part of liberal philosophy advocates the anal rape of children?

Also, if a Democrat says that maybe we should be sympathetic to a kid who lives in poverty and vandalizes a building the Republicans say we're soft on crime. But Republicans are allowed to say that people whom violate young boys are just the victims of liberal culture?

This man is morally reprehensible wretch, and we have an obligation to drive him out of office.

Pride and Practicality

2005-06-27T12:56:00.000-04:00

My father offered a very cogent point on the issue of research. Although it was actually in response to the Department of Energy cutting research funding.

As a nation, we cannot out manufacture people. We ultimately cannot be competitive with the Chinas of the world because we do not have a mass of people prepared to work for a pittance. In order to maintain our economic supremacy, we must continue to out innovate the rest of the world.

This is a pressing matter of economic security for our country, and we should treat it as seriously as we treat military security.

Pride and Particles

2005-06-27T01:36:00.000-04:00

Within the next few years, the Cern particle accelerator will come online. Positioned on the French-Swiss border, the 27 km long colider will be the largest in the world. There is strong reason to believe that it will revolutionize our understanding of the structure of matter. If the theoretical models prove accurate, it will likely allow us to understand the nature and origin of mass.

The ITER project is working building a functioning fusion reactor. They have overcome the problems of containing a micro-star and are ready to build a full fledged reactor. They estimate that they can complete it by 2015. It is currently stalled because the US is refusing to provide funding for the project if, as is currently planned, it is built in France. It is petty vindictiveness. We're angry at them for doubting statements we made about Iraq which subsequently proved to be untrue. The most likely outcome is that the project will simply go on without our help.

The sum of this and other developments is that within five years Europe will likely become the leading area for research in physical science.

By every indication I have (and if anyone out their knows different please let me know) this would seem to be a source of pride to Europeans. My question then becomes, why is it not a source of embarrassment to us? Where is our pride? Where is the spirit that motivates us to seek out new frontiers not because they are easy, but because they are hard?

My parents generation saw mankind journey to the moon. My generation will see mankind journy to the center of the atom. This journey is every bit as remarkable and glorious. Unfortunately, we as a nation our prepared to sit and watch other nations take that giant leap for mankind.

Entertainment Trusts

2005-06-27T01:28:00.000-04:00

There is an interesting lawsuit going on between the director of the Lord of the Rings and Newline Cinema.

He had a contract whereby he recieved a certain percentage of the gross revenue from the film. Newline then pulled a clever little trick. It sold the rights to produce the DVDs to Warner Brothers. By the Contract the director gets his cut as a percentage of the revenue from the sale to Warner Brothers. The trick comes from the fact that Newline and Warner Brothers are owned by the same company, so Newline sold the rights well below market value and the parent company still gets the same profit out of the product. By shifting money between two different companies that they own, they're able to sidestep their contractual obligations.

This seems like it really should be a clear violation of anti-trust laws. Also, it highlights the questionable nature of such massive vertically integrated corporations.

The article I got this information from can be found at Lawsuit of the Rings

Today Show

2005-06-26T17:52:00.000-04:00

This post has been delayed by chronic computer problems.

I watch the Today Show while I eat my breakfast in the morning. On Friday I got to see Tom Cruise go spastic and one part of that was denouncing the idea that psychological imbalances exist, and claiming that psychology is just a conspiracy to create "A Brave New World". This was amusing. Also, Matt Lauer handled himself very well.

Saturday they had a segment to discuss whether psychological medications actually are a good way to treat depression. The person they had arguing for the use of antidepresents was Marie Osmond. They were having a debate about psychiatric medicine, and nobody involved had a PhD or MD after her or his name.

I really feel that they had an opportunity to do a service to their audience and opted to put on celebrities instead. There is no reason that they could not have actually taught people about mental illness. It would be nice to see a station have the guts to force their audiences to think a little.

Darwin and other such confusing controversies

2005-06-23T23:56:00.000-04:00

I've had a few thoughts buzzing around my head, and since funkydung just promoted me on his site, I figured now would be a good time to try to write something worth reading.

What initially propmpted this line of thought was reading various articles about the hearing that the Kansas School board had on the teaching of evolution. It was a solid political show trial to decide whether to give "Intelligent design" a larger role in the school curriculum. First off, I want to be clear that I am ashamed that such a debate is being held in my own country. It is as ludicrous as saying that we should give equal time in physics classes to Aristotelean mechanics as Newtonian mechanics (or, if you'll pardon me be a tad hackneyed, giving equal time to the study of geocentric models of the solar system as to heliocentric models). However, while I could certainly sputter in rage at great length over this, that's not what I want to talk about (maybe when I'm short on material I'll fill an entry with that bit of rage).

The thing that really struck me about the hearings was that the scientific organizations that were asked to supply experts refused to send any. The general consensus seems to have been that all sending scientists to the hearing would have done is legitimize the creationists. They weren't going to listen, they made their conclusions before the hearing began, so the various scientific groups asked saw no cause to hang any veneer of scientific integrity on the proceedings.

I tend to agree with their assessment of the situation. But in agreeing I have to admit that there is a deeper unresolved problem which needs to at least be acknowledged, if we cannot hope to address it. There is an intractable difference between those people in this country whom are committed to the principle of reason and those who view it merely as a medium for heresy. How are those of use whom have faith in the application of reason to understand observed phenomina supposed to deal with people such as creationists?

The part of me that was raised on Enlightenment principles tells me that this is a matter of ignorance, and that education can drive out superstition (which is what this kind of mumbo-jumbo is, it bears little similarity to actual religion). If we simply explain the facts of the case adequately, then people will come to understand. But it's a deeper problem than that, and the fact that it is deeper is what makese the situation so troublesome (whether kids in Kansas understand natural selection is really not the kind of thing that normally keeps me up at night). The problem with that Enlightenment notion of education driving out superstition is that it fairly well presumes that all parties involved consider knowledge to be a desirable thing. In this instance we have people whom are presented with knowledge, it is fully explained to them, and they knowingly choose ignorance. Ignorance is elevated to a moral virtue. To seek to understand the world through the application of observation and reason is rejected as being immoral.

This seems to leave only the option of detachment. This is the option that various scientific groups made in the Kansas case. It would seem that the only option left is to turn our backs on the portion of society that is self-righteously ignorant. But this is a horribly depressing option. It entails having people spew foolishness at you, and opt not to correct them. That's a sad position to take.

It is made all the more depressing by the venue which this conflict went on in. These were not whackos holed up in their compound. This was the government of a state engaging in this kind of nonsense.

I just don't see what to do with this situation.

Something really cool

2005-06-20T17:47:00.000-04:00

BBC news currently has an article about the launch of Cosmos-1 tomorrow. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4110912.stm. There are some very cool things about this.

Firstly, it's being launched by a private organization, and that's always neat to see.

Secondly, it's being launched from a submarine on top of an old ICBM.

But the really cool thing about it is that it will be powered by a solar sail. The principle behind a solar sail (no doubt familiar to many science fiction readers) is that you spread out big metalic sheets, and light from the sun reflects off of it and propels the ship forward. This is, for one thing, really neat. Also, it's exciting because it takes what initially seems like an academic point: that light, while massless, has momentum, and puts it to practical use.

This is one of those exciting moments when something developed as pure science moces on to practical application.

A policy worthy of Joseph Heller

2005-06-20T14:33:00.000-04:00

I saw an interesting moment on CNN yesterday (although I generally try to avoid cable news, I had a momentary lapse in judgement). There was a Democrat and a Republican from the house intelligence committee on together. The Republican was saying that Osama Bin Laden has regularly been in Iran and has close ties with the Iranian government. It was somewhat reassuring to see the Democrats at least have the wherewithall to say that there is absolutely no evidence to support that claim. It was though, quite unsettling to see that the Republicans are trying to keep their options for war open.

On a broader level though, this underscored one of the innate problems in our approach to Islamic counties and especially to Syria and Iran. We constantly make statements to suggest that once we're done in Iraq, they're going to be next. Then the next day we act shocked that they aren't doing all they can to seal their borders and help us defeat the insurgency in Iraq. There is an innate contradiction here. While I hate to see more enemy soldiers pouring into the country, we've put them in situation where the rational thing to do is to do everything they can to prolong the conflict in Iraq. By taking a bellicose stance, we've taken what was already going to be an ugly irregular war and added to it elements of a proxy conflict with two major regional powers.

A beginning

2005-06-20T05:19:00.000-04:00

This blog is the product of me yielding to year's of pressure from my friend Eric to create my own blog. You can see his at alesrarus.funkydung.com. It's certainly worth a visit, he's more conservative and religious than I am, but generally strives to construct reasoned arguments; which are fun to read.

My name is John. I'm studying History and Physics at the University of Pittsburgh. So that's where my tendency towards historical analysis and secular humanism come from. I'm a fairly loyal Democrat, but I am at the same time often frustrated with them.

I think that's adequate prefacing. Now on to the innane ramblings.