The Idea of Obama

The above comic so well illustrates my problem with Obama getting the Nobel or any of the other accolades (or detractions, for that matter) that have been lumped on him since taking office.

From the left, people have had visions of him as some sort of progressive messiah who would end the wars, make everyone drive electric cars, grant full gay marriage rights, and make the sun shine brighter than it ever had. Of course, just because Obama had never said he was going to do any of this, and in many cases actually said the opposite of this (*ahem* put more troops in Afghanistan *ahem*), has not stopped the true believers from thinking all of the contradictory evidence is just...I don't know. A screen he was putting up to confuse his opponents?

From the right, of course, Obama is worse than Hitler. And again, he's never given any indication of doing all of the things the Right is so sure he'll do. Take socialized medicine -- in addition to explicitly saying he would not endorse socialized medicine multiple times, I think it's pretty obvious that a guy who bends over backwards to make sure the insurance giants don't feel the slightest threat of insult or competition isn't going to suddenly launch a public takeover of the healthcare industry.

But I suppose, like always, the actual truth of that matter is far less interesting than the idea of either a savior who will cure all world problems or a harbinger of the apocalypse. But then again, the Mayan calendar does say the world will end in 2012, which also happens to be the end of Obama's term: could this be the rapture? Maybe the crazy fanatics are right after all...

There's Always Next Year

As usual, the Twins gave us just enough to believe before they dashed our hopes and dreams. While I saw that coming, what I didn't see coming was that the dreams would be dashed by Nicki Punto, beloved fan-favorite and noted hustling-pixie, when he missed the stop sign at third and got thrown out, taking away what would have been the tying run at third with no outs in the 8th inning. But at least he, unlike the unrepentant steroid users who beat us, owned up to it and apologized for his mistake, not blaming anyone else or claiming the "pressure" got to him.

At least the Vikings are 5-0...

But in some at least hopeful sports news, multiple black players in the NFL have publicly announced they would refuse to play for the St. Louis Rams if a proposed deal to make Rush Limbaugh a minority owner of the team goes through. This is great because it not only shows at least a little burgeoning political consciousness amongst the usually apolitical NFL, but also makes Rush Limbaugh an oppressed minority, which I think he could use a healthy taste of.

So with the baseball season over (to me, at least), I'm pretty much done talking sports for the year. Tune back in tomorrow for the regularly scheduled political rantings.

Things That Just Won't Die (For Good or Bad)

Last night my beloved Twinkies pulled out some late-inning drama to finally win the game and division it seems nobody wanted to win. After a failed tag-up which would have won the game, Alexi Cassilla came through later on to get the winning RBI and send the building that was already supposed to be closed into a frenzy (and at least one more game).

So now the team that was counted out months ago and the building that was to be closed last weekend will keep on going, well past what anyone thought either would. It's a great example of the inspiring nature of sports, teaching us to never quit, always give 100%, etc., etc.

But in all actuality, sometimes it's not only ok to quit, it's by the best choice. As we come up on the 8th (yes, the 8th) anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, what have we accomplished? What are we accomplishing currently? Unlike a certain plucky, over-achieving local baseball team, there's not going to be a miracle comeback that suddenly makes us the victors in Afghanistan (or Iraq, for that same matter). Besides, what would victory actually look like? A 6-5 score at the end of the 12th inning? I only ask because I'm not sure anybody really has any idea what the victory we've spent 8 years working on would even entail.

On top of that, check out the chart below outlining the time it took to finish America's major conflicts. We've now spent more time in Afghanistan than it took us to win both World Wars. Let me repeat that to drive home the point: we have spent more time fighting in Afghanistan than the time it took us to win both World Wars combined. And it goes without saying, we're not even close to a victory in Afghanistan, whatever that would look like.

So while I enjoy a great game and a good effort, I think even Gardy would tell you good managers have to know when it's time to throw in the towel...

Never Count 'Em Out

As I so often do, please allow me to step on my small-market-sports soapbox for a second. The Twins are the archetypical example of a small-market team that gets no respect -- despite either going to the playoffs or being into contention well into September every year this decade, they're continually written of as non-contenders as early as possible.

Case in point: watching ESPN's resident baseball bloviator Tim Kurkjian predict the playoff races two weeks ago, he acknowledged that he's always wrong about predicting the Twins have no chance, yet went on to say they have no chance. I believe his exact words were "While history shows you can never count out the Minnesota Twins, I have to say they're not going to make the postseason."

Well, asshole, they just did. And they're playing in game 163 to determine if they get even more postseason, despite the fact that no team ever down 3 games in the standings with only 4 games left to play has reached the postseason. So while, yes, it did look rather improbable, once again they've come back to be in contention, as recent history suggested they would.

So once again I shirk my much more important life duties to go cheer on the hometown team this afternoon in what could once again be the final game in the Dome. And while I'm aware that winning this game means they would immediately get on a plane and face the heavily-favored Yankees, unlike Mr. Kurkjian and the rest of his East Coast-centric ilk, I've learned never to count out the Minnesota Twins...

R.I.P. Peg Mullen

I'm a little bit late on this, but wanted to take a quick moment to remember Peg Mullen, who died a few weeks ago at the age of 92.

Peg was a long-time peace activist in Iowa, and a real fire brand right up until her last days. Her story is dynamic, though unfortunately none too unusual. Her son was killed in Vietnam by friendly fire (possibly the worst euphemism of all time) and that was all the explanation she was given. Not the type to give up, she started a tireless journey to find out what exactly happened to Michael, which included multiple trips to the Pentagon, Congressional hearings, and thousands of midnight phone calls from friends and enemies alike. Eventually, she chronicled her quest in the book "Unfriendly Fire," which Time magazine named the best nonfiction book of 1976 and was made into an Emmy-winning television movie.

I had the good fortune of meeting Peg several years ago when I was a young activist. And though she was well into her 80s at the time and couldn't really get around much, she was still full of piss and vinegar. Of all the many stories I had the fortune of hearing her tell, probably the most memorable is how, through repeated harassing phone calls, she was able to get Paul Harvey to finally give up on the war in Vietnam and apologize for his disparaging remarks about peace protestors. It may not be quite as big a moment as Cronkite giving up on the war, but it's none too shabby for a housewife on a small farm in Iowa.

A Bit More Republican Hypocrisy

Republicans are foaming at the mouth for an apology from Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida, after he said that the Republican health care plan was that the sick should die quickly. They say he should have to apologize, just like the guy who interrupted Obama's speech was made to apologize (because those are very comparable events, apparently). But my favorite bit of ridiculousness comes from them saying that this will taint the healthcare debate with wild and unfair accusations.

So just in case you're confused, saying the President's healthcare plan will appoint death panels to kill you is enlightened debate, whereas saying that denying people healthcare will maker them die faster is a juvenile and harmful remark.

Those conservatives, so good with rhetoric. Might be why Sarah Palin is having an incredibly difficult time booking lectures as, according to an industry insider, too many people view her as "a blithering idiot."

But I'm sure she was right about the death panels...

Do As We Say, Not As We Do

I've often thought U.S. saber-rattling over nuclear arms was easily the height of our hypocrisy (which is saying quite a bit for a nation that so loves the hypocrisy). There is only one nation in the world to ever use nuclear weapons, and they used them on a nation that was already preparing to surrender (well, according to some radical named Eisenhower, but like he'd know anything about that...). This same nation, of course, has the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, housing more than most other nations combined and enough to destroy our world multiple times over.

And yet this nation goes around deciding who is morally upstanding enough to also possess the ability to end all human life in a matter of minutes. Well, for those of you confused as to how the only people to ever use a weapon (and use it very irresponsibly) get to decide who else even gets to have said weapon, Glenn Greenwald has put together a handy glossary to help you understand.

For example: what's the difference between two countries defying international law and developing long-range ballistics with possible nuclear capability? One is our friend! Duh!

The act of dangerous, threatening Hitlers -- NYT, today:

Iran was reported Monday to have test-fired long-range missiles capable of striking Israel and American bases in the Persian Gulf in what seemed a show of force.

The acts of a peace-loving democracy - Telegraph, January 18, 2008:

Israel has carried out the successful test launch of a long-range, ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, in what was intended as a clear show of strength to Iran.

Read the rest here.

You're Never Too Far From a Big Mac

Growing up in a town of about 20,000, it was big deal when the second McDonald's in town opened up. Yes, no longer would you have to drive upwards of 10 minutes across town to get your flavorless-meat-product burger©. Nope, now we were a real town, with the ability to drive past one McDonald's and say "No, that one's no good; let's go to the other McDonald's."

And truly that did make it a real city, because if there's anything that defines a real American city, it is the ubiquity of McDonald's. The map below shows the saturation of McDonald's throughout the nation. Only the desserts and mountains out West can even begin to interrupt the blanket coverage.

Oh, and incase you're curious, the furthest you can possibly be from a McDonald's is 107 miles in the no man's land of the Dakotas. 107 miles. That's it. Meaning if you wanted to, you would have to put a great deal of effort into getting triple-digit miles away from a McDonald's.

At the risk of sounding too radical, I might argue this has a bit to do with our nation's obesity epidemic, but I don't want to pick on a morally-upstanding corporate citizen like McD's...

Please, Help Protect Insurance Executive's Profits

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Good Thing We Don't Have Socialized Medicine...

...or this might happen: a man who suffered a stroke died while waiting 90 minutes to see a doctor in the ER waiting room.

I know I said I was getting off the healthcare stuff for awhile, but this just happened to come out today. And you know, in this instance, it may have been an honest mistake -- the nurse who screened him didn't diagnose it as a stroke for whatever reason so it wasn't classified as an urgent matter. Or maybe it was because he had a history of problem drinking, so his condition wasn't taken seriously. Obviously, they're still figured out what exactly happened.

But even if it turns out to just be a mistake, albeit a tragic mistake, the point remains: you can't criticize a socialized system for forcing patients into dangerously long waiting times for medical attention (which doesn't actually happen anyway) when that's something that routinely happens in our current system.

steps off soapbox

Good Ol' For-Profit Healthcare Defends America Against The Scourge of Abused Women

The funniest thing about the healthcare debate going on right now has to be the idea of death panels. Or more specifically, that death panels will be instituted. You see, we already have death panels. The one I belong to is called Health Partners, though my death panel used to be Blue Cross/Blue Shield. And I'm one of the few Americans lucky enough to get to pay a significant chunk of my income for a death panel to decide I don't deserve coverage.

And decided people don't need coverage they do, and do with a vengeance. For it makes no sense to pay out money if you're a for-profit business. So you go about finding clever and morally repugnant ways to prevent people from getting the healthcare they pay for. Because if you go around letting people use their health insurance to get healthcare, your profits are going to go down pretty quickly.

The most egregious example of this? Well, there are millions of great examples, but this is the best I've found lately: 8 states and D.C. allow insurance companies to regard victims of domestic abuse as having "pre-existing" conditions.

And I say good for them. After all, in a capitalist society you should be aware of the choices you make. If you choose to be beaten so badly by your husband that it requires extensive medical procedures, you should know you're not going to be able to get healthcare in the future. You should be smart enough to not marry an abusive husband.

Now if we have a government take-over of healthcare, all of a sudden there's going to be a giant drain on our economy as abused women suddenly start receiving care for their injuries. And that alone is far worse than a death panel...

Once More To Make It Clear...

Been harping on this point pretty hard lately, but I can't get over how ridiculous this hypocritical double-standard is, even for an extreme cynic...

Remember how people were constantly. getting. arrested. at Bush speeches simply for wearing shirts that said stop the war? Seriously, google it and you'll find dozens of examples. Hell, one guy was even arrested for wearing a peace t-shirt at a mall where he had bought the shirt.

But yet with Obama in the White House, it's apparently a-ok to bring guns to hear his speeches, because after all, that's your constitutional freedom. Constitution says nothing about wearing whatever t-shirt you want, but good God damn, it sure as hell says you can bring your gun anywhere you want, even to a speech by the president.

Take this good local example from today's strib. This fellow brought his gun to Obama's healthcare stump speech last weekend and got into no trouble at all. And why should the police be suspicious of him? After all, he had just gotten out of jail after serving time for an assault charge. Certainly not someone who should be viewed as dangerous or barred from carrying a gun within sight of the President. Even the state lawmaker responsible for the conceal & carry legislation, while not agreeing with the guy's decision to do so, defended his right to bear arms in front of the President.

Anyway, I'll try to quit writing about this for awhile, but just to recap:

T-shirt: Dangerous weapon. If found, wearer should be arrested immediately.

Gun: Perfectly harmless. Make sure to give them a good sight line to the President in case they need to exercise their constitutional right to commit grand felonies.

Hitler Made The Trains Run On Time...

While I've always liked Weird Al, I gained a lot of respect for him while reading an interview he did over at the AV Club. They used to have a segment called "Random Rules" in which they would have a musician put their iPod on shuffle and justify the first 5 tracks that came up. When it was Weird Al's turn, a song from Hole came up, and after a short defense of their music he ended with "What can you say about Courtney Love...Hitler made the trains run on time, after all," which I think pretty much sums up any defense of Hole or Courtney Love in general.

Well, it turns out she's making the trains run on time again as she prepares to sue Activision, makers of Guitar Hero, over their use of a Kurt Cobain avatar in the game.

I'm glad to see someone finally stepping up to stop all of this "cashing in on the dead who would never have allowed you to cash in on them when alive" crap going on. Seeing as Cobain killed himself rather than continue having his music turned into yet another money-making cog for giant soulless corporations, he probably would not be too keen to have his image rendered in a colossal money-grubbing video game series.

Of course, I also had the same thought when first seeing the incredibly regrettable Rock Band commercial with the digitally-raped corpse of John Lennon standing on Abby Road made to look so excited about the release of his very first video game. The only problem is, I don't think Yoko is going to put up any fuss.

Not being as good to your dead partner's legacy as Courtney Love? Forget breaking up the Beatles, that is truly the worst thing anyone can ever say about you...

A Short Guide to Socialist Indoctrinaition

1) Stay in School

2) Work Hard

3) Don't Do Drugs

Phew! Good thing I'm too old to be stuck in a schoolhouse being force-fed this socialist nonsense. Hopefully America's children will be able to resist this brainwashing and realize that only socialists want to do well by working hard and living sober. Real Americans neither work hard nor remain sober, thank you very much.

Horrifying, Interesting, and Trivial: A News Roundup

1) Over a Randball this morning, a good, snarky dissection of why Derek Jeter doesn't deserve the MVP more than Mauer, even though he seems to be a genuinely good guy who's been lucky enough to play decent baseball for a team that can purchase every player in baseball.

2) So remember how a bunch of people compared Bush to Hitler and were called crazy for it (though attempting to give public healthcare does apparently qualify someone as worse than Hitler)? Well, now news is coming out that CIA doctors likely performed illegal human experiments on detainees. Or in other words, the exact same thing Nazi doctors did that lead to their execution at Nuremburg. So not to go all crazy and say some of the Bush-Hitler comparison may be apt, but...

3) Jason Frank, best known as the Green Power Ranger (and then the white Power Ranger after Lord Zedd destroyed his Green Power coin while Rita Repulsa had control of his powers), is know making a comeback in the world of Mixed Martial Arts. Even though I feel my Gopher loyalty should make Brock Lesnar my favorite almost-real-sport fighter, it's hard not to root for the sworn protector of Angel Grove...

Finally, People Are Starting To Get Serious

The BBC recently ran a report on the work done by a group of Canadian researchers who study unfamiliar infectious diseases and how to combat them. How did they model a debilitating, unknown contagion and its possible effects? Easily, and in the only way that makes sense: they modeled a zombie attack.

The conclusion? Well, I think the article summary speaks for itself:

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

While the "if" in that sentence is just more clear proof that we're truly not prepared for said attack, it's at least a good first step in the right direction for the inevitable day when undead hordes descend upon our towns and cities hungering for our flesh..

And in fact, that day may be sooner than we think. Inevitablezombieapocalypse.com has unearthed the following footage from a Russian military envoy. I'm not saying you should panic, but if you don't have a survival kit packed and ready by the door, I'd suggest you have some work to do...

Wrapping Up The Regular Season

The regular season of the TCAMBL (twin cities adult men's baseball league, for those not in the know) wrapped up the past weekend. While my season end stats don't look good by any means at .176/.235/.300 (avg/slg/obp), it was my first time playing any form of organized baseball in well over a decade. Plus, being understandably a back up, I didn't get many opportunities at the start of the season, and hitting's a funny rhythm thing. If you knock out the first games where I got one late-game at bat and inevitably struck out looking at better pitches than I ever saw when I played little league/early highschool ball and instead look at just the second half of the season the numbers go up to .273/.363/.313. Of course, those still aren't good, but they are far less embarrassing, and I believe they qualify me to hit second for the Twins. Plus I had one fly out that was about two feet from being a home run, which again means nothing, but I think it makes the shitty numbers seem at least a little less bad...

So on the plus side, I'm peaking at just the right time for the playoffs. Finishing up at a respectable 6-7 drew my Wobblies team a tough playoff assignment in the bracket. While we're got a very good chance of winning our first game, the second game will almost invariably be against the team that twice beat us by margains of 15-2 and then 14-4. (But if we do pull off some sort of miracle, Bad News Bears-esque run at the championship, we get to play that in the Dome, so keep your fingers crossed.)

Anyway, given that the last time I played baseball was my freshman year in high school and I'm pretty confident I didn't get a single hit the whole season, I'm at least seeing some upward progression. And given that I've never demonstrated prowess in any type of physical competition, I have to say I'm extremely satisfied with my mediocre-at-best play...

Why Some Protests Are Taken Seriously

An interesting article on AlterNet this morning raises the question of why right-wing protests over health care are being taken seriously by the mainstream media while left-wing protests throughout the war have either been dismissed as the grumbling of crazed lunatics or (more often) not even offered coverage. While there is the obvious reason -- that major media outlets are owned by multination corporations that have a great deal invested in promoting conservative ideology -- I think another, less obvious answer lies in the way that being a "real" American has come to de facto mean being conservative.

Think about it: during the last presidential cycle (and still today in this whole "birther" movement), the lily-white right-wing candidates project themselves as "real" Americans, while progressives (and their evil henchmen The Minorities) represent all that is wrong with the world. Being a progressive is just simply un-American, and thus progressive protests could never represent the mood of America, even though the number of nutcases showing up to these health care town halls, who supposedly demonstrate the will of "real" Americans, are not even close to a fraction of the numbers of people who showed up to demonstrate against the war.

I think about this a lot in connection to my own life and political views -- I'm a white guy who grew up in small town Iowa in a working-class household, went to public schools, church every weekend, played baseball, and ate copious amounts of red meat. It couldn't be any more All American, according to the criteria set forth by the right-wing.Yet because I believe we shouldn't invade other countries for no reason, I'm now a radical outside of the mainstream. As I prep to teach classes, I often have people ask me if I think I'm alienating my students with my crazed left-wing theories, since after all, they're usually from small rural towns. The fact that I grew up in pretty much the exact same environment as most of those students means nothing; now that my political views have made me no longer a "real" American, there's simply no way I could connect with these salt-of-the-earth types who populate my classes.

Though, of course, if any of the students start to agree with me, I guess they're not real Americans anymore, so the whole point is moot...

Kill one, got to prison. Kill thousands...

Glenn Greenwald has a great piece this morning on why every American should read the IG torture report detailing the abuses suffered by detainees at the hands of American "interrogators." Not surprisingly, some pretty bad stuff is revealed (such as the fact that interrogators repeatedly threatened to bring in suspect's wives and daughters to rape them in front of them). More surprising, however, is that many of the interrogators apparently openly and often wondered aloud at the legality of what they were doing and feared that they would be soon prosecuted for what they were doing. Not exactly the actions of people who are just asking some questions of suspects...

But as Greenwald points out, the biggest problem with the limited investigation being proposed is that, like usual, it will only focus on the low-level people involved and completely ignore those who came up with these sick ideas, authorized them, and then wrote extensive legal documents arguing why they should be allowed to do this. And lets not forget that over 40 detainees have now died in custody, with at least a dozen of them classified homicides by the Army itself, meaning that by not prosecuting those responsible we are quite literally leting them get away with murder...

How I Think (Apparently I Was Never A College Student)

I got an e-mail from a colleague today touting the new "mindset" list as a way of understanding how those damn kids think these days. Essentially, it's just a big list of things that these kids have supposedly never experienced and how that must influence the way they think about things. Of course, I say supposedly because according to whoever comes up with these stupid things thinks that if something happened a year before someone was born they will never know what it was. But really, I hate lists like this because they're so glib and essentializing and really are just another attempt of out-of-touch middle age people trying to feel smugly secure about their life experiences based on the fatally-flawed logic that because they experienced things the world has long outgrown they're somehow smarter than those who haven't.

But to illuminate my complaints, here's some selections from the 2002 mindset list, which is the closest to when I entered college available (I entered in 2000, so it's not too far off):

1. The people starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1980.

They're starting college at the age of 22? Apparently this generation is really behind or had a bunch of stuff to get done after high school...

2. They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan era, and did not know he had ever been shot.

I was well aware of both of these events, and I was born 2 years after these people were supposedly born

6. They were 11 when the Soviet Union broke apart, and do not remember the Cold War.

Trust me, you remember nuclear paranoia no matter how old you were when it stopped. Also, I would consider 11 old enough to have memories of that period...

11. Bottle caps have not always been screw off, but have always been plastic.

To this day glass bottles and non-screw off tops made of metal still exist and can be found quite readily.

13. The expression "you sound like a broken record" means nothing to them.

Just because a medium has fallen out of favor does not mean people have no conception of it. I also know what a horse is even though cars are far more popular...

14. They have never owned a record player.

By the time I got to college, I owned two record players.

15. They have likely never played Pac Man, and have never heard of "Pong."

I had played both of these multiple times before I got to college

20. As far as they know, stamps have always cost about 32 cents.

Again, being young does not make you mentally retarded. I'm pretty sure by the time people go to college they have a basic grasp of inflation and the fluctuation of prices.

21. They have always had an answering machine.

I never had an answering machine.

22. Most have never seen a TV set with only 13 channels, nor have they seen a black & white TV.

I had a black and white tv well into my teens.

23. They have always had cable.

I never had cable.

25. They cannot fathom what it was like not having a remote control.

I didn't have a tv with remote control until I was about 7 or 8.

27. Roller-skating has always meant in-line for them.

Didn't get a pair of in-line skates until I was a teenager.

32. They never took a swim and thought about Jaws.

I was afraid to take baths alone as a child because of the high likelihood of a Jaws attack. Movies do get replayed after they leave the theaters...

35. They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.

I am wearing hard contacts as I write this

42. McDonald's never came in Styrofoam containers.

McDonald's stopped using styrofoam in 1990. By the author's own logic, these kids would have been 10 at that time. Pretty sure people remember things that happened before they were 10...



...And that is why I hate these lists. Even if they were true, they would still be completely meaningless (oh, no! my students don't know what an 8-track is! How can I even begin to teach them about our criminal justice system?!?), but even that doesn't matter because they're never true! It turns out that in a nation of roughly 300 million people there seems to be a diversity of experiences. Shockingly, not every child grows up with the exact same electronics, parents, history books, schools, income levels, etc., etc., and that it just might be a little worthless to speak of an entire generation as if they were one person who had a generic slate of experiences.

And yet highly educated people (these are developed by collegiate professors after all) not only make these lists, but actually take them seriously as if they give some sort of insight into today's youngsters...sigh. Fortunately, I don't trust anyone over 30. Did you know that people over 30 grew up without twitter? And to them, the blue M&M is a recent phenomenon? And the internet still confuses and scares them? It's true! Hopefully these facts will help you communicate with old and out-of-touch people...

Your Fall Semester Plans

From the man who brought you TPP posters galore comes the announcement for my fall course:



You wanna learn about the police? Oh, I'll learn you good...

Not To Argue the Left Wing is a Little Disadvantaged, But...

By now everyone is familiar with the right-wing craziness going on in these town hall meetings (with only Barney Frank so far having the guts to call these people out), but it's really reaching a fever pitch as of late. For the other day, at least a dozen people showed up to an Obama town hall meeting armed with shotguns. Not crazy posters depicting Obama as Hitler, not mean-spirited t-shirts, but fucking shotguns.

Now, for 8 years of a Bush presidency if someone was holding a flimsy paperboard sign asking the president why he was slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people for no reason, they were not only automatically ejected but were usually charged with some sort of crime. And of curse this was justified because once, about 40 years ago, a lefty protestor used violence, so they must all be violent nut cases.

Contrast this with conservative protestors who show up to a presidential speech with fucking shotguns. In a nation where it's pretty much illegal to even imply you want to harm the president, apparently it's ok for conservatives to directly confront him with shotguns.

So just to clarify, if you're keeping score of which ideology is allowed to do what, here' a quick cheat sheet to be your guide for political actions:

Left-wing protestors: Carrying signs is far too dangerous and will be dealt with swiftly and harshly, for everyone's safety.

Right-wing protestors: Feel free to confront the president with a gun. After all, he is (meekly) trying to get poor people health care coverage.

FBI Investigates Mpls PD...again

So you're a MPLS cop and you pull over a hefty black guy who doesn't immediately do what you say -- what do you do? Do you ask him again, or do you claim he punched you despite video evidence to the contrary and then call in 8 of your buddies to beat him so badly he needs to be hospitalized?

Well, I can tell you what the training manual says, or you can watch the video yourself.

What's most interesting about this incident is how the back-up officers fly into the scene and immediately start punching and kicking the poor guy without any knowledge of the situation. In fact, all they know is there was a call for help and when they got there, they saw a man face down in a snow bank with a cop sitting on top of him. Not exactly a scenario that calls you to get down on your knees and start punching him directly in the crotch, as you can clearly see one officer do.

Of course, all charges were dropped against Mr. Jenkins (the victim); not necessarily because he was innocent of the charges, but probably more because he had just been severely beaten for no reason while it was caught on camera.

You can argue that Mr. Jenkins was being uncooperative (though explaining why a Black man in Minneapolis would be justifiably wary of any police contact is an entirely different post), but the force used on him was still clearly inappropriate. For starters, there was no reason he needed to be pulled out of the car at all. But even if you grant that was necessary for some unknown reason, there's simply no defense for the actions of the back up. All that was needed was for one officer to grab his legs and then he was fully subdued. Put some cuffs on him and leave. What makes this so bad is not that he was beaten so severely (though that is really, really bad), but it's the fact that a single punch never needed to be thrown and the situation could have been resolved faster, easier, and far less illegally.

Now there may be some disciplinary action taken (the FBI has agreed to investigate), but seeing as how this seems to happen pretty much once or twice a year here, I doubt much will actually change. I just hope the MPLS PD remembers this the next time they wonder so loudly why the public distrusts police officers...

And Another Piece of Our Collective Soul Dies...

...by which I mean the ephemeral quality of basic goodness we all share, not the shitty 90s band...

Perusing the fine journalistic list-making of Cracked the other day, I stumbled upon their list of the most questionable charities and fundraisers. Nestled right after a discussion of a Guliani fundraiser in which he charged every guest $9.11 for admission (you cannot make this stuff up), was the wesbite MyFreeImplants.com (borderline NSFW).

It's probably a bit more complicated than this, but essentially the site allows women who would like larger breasts (women only...sorry fellas, your boobs will have to stay the same size) to post pictures of themselves and argue why they should be given the money for plastic surgery. Philanthropic minded gents (or ladies, I guess) can then donate to the cause, and in exchange, they get pictures (possibly nude, I couldn't determine) and "contact info" (again, not sure what all that entails). So basically it's like an expensive online strip club where women with low self-confidence who have been raised to believe they are nothing more than sex objects attempt to bilk money out of sad and lonely men who otherwise would receive no interaction at all with women.

I'll save the righteous rantings about how disgustingly misogynistic such a site is and how both the men and women who use it are desperately in need of a swift kick in the ass, mostly only because I think it speaks for itself. Again, this is a website where you can go to donate toward a woman's breast augmentation and/or solicit donations for your own new breasts. And it's clearly working, because the site keeps a little running tally of many of the women's donation levels, and some are into the thousands of dollars.

But really, that's what makes America beautiful, isn't it? Over half the world lives on less than $1 dollar a day, and even within the most wealthy and powerful nation on earth we have millions living in poverty and dying of easily cured illness, and yet plenty of people are apparently willing to give away thousands of dollars just to know that there are now a bigger pair of breasts somewhere in this crazy world of ours. Kind of warms the heart, doesn't it?

When It Is and Isn't Ok to Use Your Mentally Retarded Child As A Political Prop

All politician's are hypocrites -- it's such a truism that it doesn't even really need to be said. Part of it is the very nature of the job; with 535 senators and representatives, a president, a supreme court, and on and on, it's impossible for one person to deliver on any specific promise they make. And of course, the people masochistic enough to endure months of nationally televised attacks on themselves, their ideas, and their past are obviously a special sub-set of humanity that need attention really bad and are willing to do pretty much anything to get it.

Yet some push hypocrisy to beautiful new heights. Take Sarah Palin, for instance (no, please take her! buh-dum-ching!). We all know she's an incredible idiot and I don't need to pile on more examples of how she's not even fit for managing a Denny's let alone some sort of national office. But beyond her stupefying idiocy, she has truly become a master of hypocrisy, especially concerning her own family.

Leaving aside the whole "abstinence only education and only bad parents have pregnant teenage daughters except for me because this is actually an example of being a good parent" thing, her son Trig takes up most of her hypocritical rantings.

We were all introduced to Trig's Down-Syndrome cuteness during her vice-presidential acceptance speech when he was continually used as a prop to show what an amazing mother she was. Then when the whole drunken-redneck-knocks-up-her-daughter-and-leaves story broke and she started drawing heat it suddenly became out-of-bounds to talk about the family she kept constantly referencing.

And then came her "I'm quitting but I'm not a quitter" resignation speech, when she once again talked about all those big, bad journalists who keep talking about the family she won't stop talking about. So the subject's buried, right? She told us to quit talking about/looking at/being aware of the existence of her family and slunk away from the national spotlight. Certainly we're done with discussions of Mz. Palin and her special needs baby, right?

No! Of course not! For shortly after her "only a monster uses a Downs Syndrome child to further their political causes" speech, she once again used her Down Syndrome baby to further her political agenda, claiming Obama's (unfortunately) not-at-all socialized medicine would murder her baby. (The fact that she did this over Facebook is an entirely different post...)

So what does she follow up her totally level-headed claim of government death panels that murder babies with? A call for "civil discourse" that doesn't get "sidetracked by tactics that can be accused of leading to intimidation or harassment."

Yeah, because when we're discussing government-controlled baby-murder squads we certainly don't want people to get all hyperbolic and start making wild accusations, do we?

More Re-posting

So summer's theoretically a time when life gets less hectic and you get to slow down a little bit, but this has definitely not panned out for me. Being so far behind, I've had precious little time to devote to my poor, neglected blog (although it should be getting better soon).

In the meantime, while you're contemplating getting up to 4,500 bucks for your inefficient car so you can upgrade to a slightly less inefficient car, remember that the Bush administration made it so that it's virtually free to buy giant, gas-wasting SUVs.

In 30 years when all the fossil fuels have been used up and we're living in a dystopic, Mad Max-esque charred hellscape, at least there will be some cool (albeit inert) old cars to look at...

Shocking News That Shouldn't Shock You At All

It turns out that when you give a shadowy company which remains shrouded in secrecy billions of dollars to enter a warzone and provide "security" and then place absolutely no oversights on what they're doing, they kill people indiscriminately and then kill the people who try to blow the whistle on them.

But then again, who could have seen this coming? I would have figured giving billions of dollars and carte blanche to kill whomever they please to a bunch of radical right-wing steroidal miscreants would have turned out great. Shame on you, Blackwater. You've given the word "mercenary" a bad name.

The Only Living Boy in Jonestown

On the night Obama was elected, the misses dragged me and some friends down to the orgiastic celebration going on at the temporary DFL headquarters in downtown St. Paul. And even though throughout the city people were quite literally dancing in the streets, I just couldn't get too hyped up about it all. I remember very distinctly running into a Professor in my department at the DFL party who was working on a project examining the Obama campaign and racial issues. That night she was carrying around a little digital recorder asking people to share their thoughts on Obama's election. My thoughts? I believe they went (verbatim): "I just wish it meant something."

And at the risk of congratulating myself too early, it seems the election hasn't meant much at all. Obama has already supported the "defense" of marriage act, refused to do anything about don't ask/don't tell, backpedalled on his plan to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, definitively said single-payer healthcare is off the table, and now Obama has adopted Bush's state secrets policy, meaning his administration can shut down any lawsuit it wants in the name of "national security."

But I guess we shouldn't be too surprised. After all, remember his campaign promises?

Why Poor People Are So Lazy (A Market Analysis)

Far be it form me to make the wild accusation that conservatives are sometimes hypocritical (like we all are, blah, blah, blah), but when discussing poverty, they take the cake. For you see, conservatives love to explain how the market solves everything -- from deciding who gets nice houses (rich people) to who gets nice cars (rich people) to who can afford to eat well (rich people) to who gets to go to the doctor and live through illnesses (rich people), the market is the force that solves all and explains everything.

Except when it comes to explaining what poor people do. For instance, they certainly don't sell drugs because they've had no educational opportunities and subsequently have no job prospects. No, they do it because they're bad people.

Or take welfare -- again, the reason poor people go on welfare is not because they've been shut out of our exclusive economic system, it's because they're lazy and don't want to work. Yet ironically, this is one of the few times market logic actually explains human behavior. Checkout the graph below:



The red line is what our government defines as the poverty line (which actually still leaves someone deeply in poverty because it's set way too low, but that's another post for another day) and the bars below represent how much someone would earn working full time at a minimum wage job (adjusted for inflation) throughout the past 70 years. Note that only once does one of those bars even come close to meeting the poverty line.

So you tell me, from a market logic standpoint, which makes more sense -- working your ass off 40 hours a week and not even earning enough to meet the poverty line, or collecting welfare and not even earning enough to meet the poverty line? Any good economist will tell you the better choice is to take the free inadequate money rather than the hard-earned inadequate money...

Understanding Palin's Quitter Speech

Apparently the key to understanding what Sarah Palin's ramblings were about as she quit the only job it appears she's ever had, it's because you heard them in the wrong context. The speech was actually a brilliant beat poem, it was just delivered poorly. William Shatner fixes the presentation:

Blog Stealing

I'm running very short on time today, so I'm merely stealing an interesting post from elsewhere. Johnathon Schwarz (via thismodernworld) reminds us that in the game of international politics, whoever lies first is most likely to be believed. A pretty handy lesson for all facets of life, I suppose...

Some Catching Up

I don't have time to write out a full blog post today, so I'm going to just throw some links at you.

It turns out that on pretty much every issue, Iowa seems to be the outlier. We're such iconoclastic people, us Iowegians. Though, I would also note, one way in which Iowa really stands out is in the legal recognition of same-sex marriage...

Norm Coleman, who is finally out of the Senate after switching parties and stealing a dead man's seat, feels the GOP needs to be able to compete on the "ethernet". Say what you will about Franken, but at least I'm pretty sure he understands what the internet is.

Not to be too radical, but I would go so far as to say I think racists are stupid. Here's a great example -- Pat Buchanan thinks America should be for people who butcher English as their first language.

And last, but oh-so-certainly not least, the Pentagon is furious with Fox News for suggesting the Taliban should murder captured soldier Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, going so far as to say Fox is aiding and giving comfort to the enemy. I believe the correct term is "poetic justice."

Saying Goodbye to Uncle Walter

I'm not of a generation that ever really saw Walter Cronkite do his thing, but given his reputation, it's hard not to know who the man was and what he did. And as tribute after tribute fades from the air, we've probably all by now memorized the speech he gave that President Johnson credits as finally swaying the public against the Vietnam war.

What you might now know is that Cronkite was just as much against the Iraq war. It's not surprising, but a still a little odd, that we so celebrate his integrity and fearless reporting yet ignore his more "inconvenient" arguments. You know, arguments such as the Iraq war was "illegal from the start" and a "terrible disaster" serving "no purpose" that has "probably made us less safe."

I don't think Uncle Walter has quite the same pull he used to, so I'm not under the delusion that public opinion would shift any more away from the war because he disagreed with it. But since all of the memorials are focusing on his willingness to take the tough stand and call it like he sees it, it would be nice to not scrub all of his opinions post 1976...

Exactly Two More Weeks of Bachelorhood

As of August 1st, the lease on my beloved li'l apartment will be up for the final time and I take the plunge and move in with the lady. Technically we already live together as we've had our house since early June, but I've still had my apartment the whole time and she's been in D.C. for the bulk of the summer, so we haven't really been living together. But she gets back the same day my lease is up and we move in for real, just like big kids.

And because we're hippies who have little, if any, faith in the institution of marriage, moving in together is pretty much the apex of our relationship. And actually, I argue that moving in together is a far bigger step than getting engaged anyway. Because if you get engaged and then decide things aren't working out, there would certainly be all sorts of emotional pain and whatnot. But if you move in together and then things don't work out, there's all the same emotional turmoil, but now it's combined with a whole mess of material consequences. And being a good Marxist I know that material conditions are far more influential than petty ideological ones.

So I'm trying to squeeze all of the enjoyment out of my last few days of bachelorhood as possible. Of course, I'm a pretty boring guy so instead of cavorting with shady characters or enjoying all sorts of depraved misogynistic pastimes like most guys in such a situation I instead enjoy the real pleasures of not having a partner at home -- showering sparingly, belching often and loudly, letting the dishes pile up into foul-smelling, precarious tributes to my laziness, etc. You know, the kind of things women seem to have some sort of weird problem with.

But honestly, I'm more than ready to settle down with the lady and enjoy the domestic life. Really the only thing I'll miss about my days here is the 5 minute walk it takes to get to my office, as opposed to the 20 minute commute I'll now have. Well, that and the aforementioned ability to live like a pig.

All in all, though, a pretty small sacrifice to make to get to come home to the love of your life everyday. Albeit a love that doesn't appreciate your ability to save water through bypassing showers, but no one's perfect...

The (Western) Human Cost of the War on Terror

The easiest way to get people to support a war is to hide the dead. Witness the first gulf war, which was so popular because there were "only" several hundred U.S. deaths (of course, there were hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, but who gives a shit about them?). This would also be the reason it was illegal for so long to photograph the caskets of U.S. service members. After all, if people were to actually see the fact that kids no older than 18 or 19 were dying for the constantly-shifting rationale of the war, it would be hard to swallow.

Well, to bring it all on home, the Daily Mail over in the UK has a fascinating article on the Western deaths in the war on terror. For example, here's a google maps image of where the U.S. soldiers and contractors who have died came from:



And this handy map links where they came from to where they died:



Just a nice sobering thought for your morning. Maybe you want to forward it on to your elected representatives who still won't end this pointless and illegal war...

In Case You Missed It...

The Talcott Parsons Project EP is here!

If you like hard-rocking, mystical-creature-centric shred-metal, then this is the album for you. If you don't like those things you are a loser and dead to me.

Either contact me for the whole shebang (artwork, jewel case, etc.) or download your free copy here.


Warning: This album may result in socks being rocked off and asses blown out

Basking in the Glow of Student Reviews

Teaching can be a maddening process. Of course, it can also be a very rewarding process, but it seems like the rewarding moments are sandwiched between multiple disappointing or frustrating moments.

I get where this comes from. I'm only a few years away from having been a college student myself, so I understand the blank-eyed stares and not wanting to talk in class, and I'm a guy who really enjoys talking. The only problem with this is when you get to the other side of things, it's hard to tell if the blank stares are just part of being a teacher or if the students are not understanding a thing you're saying. Or listening to a thing you're saying.

And it can start to wear on you. Class after class of slack-jawed, dead-eyed students quietly staring at you (ok, that may be a slight exaggeration) leaves you questioning not only how good a teacher you are, but your life trajectory in general.

Ah, but then come those rewarding moments, and there you are again, all wide-eyed and filled with optimism about the power of knowledge and educating future generations and blah, blah, blah (not to undermine how important I think education is, I just assume readers of this blog get that point by now). One such moment came today as I finally got the student reviews from the spring semester.

Once again, no one had anything negative to say (though maybe the people who hated me didn't show up that day or bother to fill out the form...), and there were a few pretty touching comments. Without falling too much into solipsistic ramblings, I'll just point out my favorite. One fella (well, I'm guessing it's a guy from the hand-writing) said something about me being a good professor (not technically a prof yet, but who am I to correct him?) and then wrote "please don't get burned out and become really boring like the rest of them."

Can't guarantee it, but enough rewarding moments like these and I should be ok...

It's So Bad in Iran It's Almost St. Paul!

The great thing about television news is that it doesn't need to make sense. 24 hours is a lot of time to fill with news, so no one seems to bother to see if what they're saying makes any sense at all as they desperately try to fill far too much airtime.

For example, they show scenes like this from Iran:



And then they talk about how repressive the Iranian government is that it would call out riot police simply because freedom-loving citizens were protesting the election of an abusive, reactionary government. Certainly this means the Iranian government is corrupt and beyond contempt -- after all, what kind of sick government abuses its own people when all they are asking for are democratic rights to speak out and be heard?

Of course, just under a year ago they were showing scenes like this from St. Paul:



But these were accompanied with stories about dangerous anarchist protestors intent on destruction and those poor police, who despite being heavily armored and carrying nearly a half-dozen weapons each, were afraid for their safety against these unarmed people and reacted like anyone would when faced with the menacing threat of hippies carrying poster board.

Just an interesting little example of how a simple change of location seems to make certain behaviors suddenly perfectly fine (like protesting an abusive government) while others oddly become suddenly deplorable (like beating and mass-arresting innocent protestors).

On Being a Minnesota Sports Fan

Baseball fans know that Tony LaRussa hit win number 2,500 as a manager last night, a feat only surpassed by two other people and unlikely to be touched again for a long time (the next closest active manager is Bobby Cox, and he's a couple hundred games away and heading to retirement soon).

LaRussa used his post-game conference to give a shout-out to some other managers he said would also be in his place if they had the chance to be a skipper on the clubs he has. One of those was longtime Twinkies skipper Tom Kelly, much to the surprise and amusement of the Sports Center crew, which is typically the reaction they have when reminded that people who don't reside in major media centers are capable of doings things well.

And it got me ruminating, as I often do, about what being a sports fan in Minnesota teaches you. As I've mentioned before, it definitely teaches you to have lowered expectations, which is good thing to learn in life. But this is a great example of the humility it teaches you. Tom Kelly never had the talent LaRussa had -- his big names were Jack Morris, Kent Hrbeck, Kirby Puckett, Gary Gaietti, Dan Gladden...all good players, but certainly not the superstar household names like MacGuire and Pujols.

And yet, with a fornt office rarely willing to spend money and a playing and living environment unlikely to tempt big-time free agents, TK managed to win two World Series Championships, which is no small feat in any market. Yet Larussa's mention of him as one of the best managers in the game is met surprised laughter.

But that fits well with the type of values we like in the Midwest, anyway -- you work hard and it doesn't matter if anyone rewards you for it wth praise and adulation. Or more cynically, it teaches you another great life lesson -- you can work really hard and accomplish great things, but usually no one really cares...

Sorry About The Nonexistent Blogging

Spent the past two weeks moving into, painting, and fixing a new house. It is never-ending, but I have proclaimed today a day off. Well, a day off from house work, which I conveniently get to spend doing school work. Blogging to resume normally next week...

Love in the Club, Showbiz Pizza Style

Again, although I hate to be the "lookie what I found on the internets!" guy...well, lookie what I found on the internets (or more specifically, look what Gutter the bus driver showed me on the internets):



There's a whole variety of hits and standards as performed by the Rock-afire Explosion band, so please do waste your entire morning giggling at childhood memories as filtered by some dude with an internet connection and a lot of time on his hands...

Welcome to Reality, Mr. Cheney

Well, Richard "Call me a Dick" Cheney has finally admitted there's absolutely no link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Of course, what he fails to mention is that this was clear all along to anyone with a second-grade education or higher and that he intentionally lied about it to go back to a war he'd been itching to finish since he started it with Daddy Bush a decade earlier.

And, of course, despite the hundreds of thousands (likely millions) of people who have died because of this very intentional bald-face lie, he will never be punished in any way at all. Nice work if you can get it...

How To Talk You Way Out of Torture, in Just a Few Easy Steps!

Via Digby:

To help you keep track of all the morally duplicitous arguments for why it's ok that we're torturing people, here's a handy flow chart. To see it in a larger, more readable, format just click n the picture. Enjoy!

Continuing to Ignore Actual Terrorism

The funny thing about the government's incessant spying on leftist groups in the name of preventing terrorist attacks is that there is no known terrorist activity involving a left-wing group since the weather underground some thirty-odd years ago.

However, if you take a moment or two on the Southern Poverty Law Center's website, you can see the dozens upon dozens of right-wing terrorist attacks this country has seen in the past 10 years. And let us not forget that the single biggest domestic terrorist attack, the Oklahoma City bombing, was carried out by a group of staunch right-wingers.

Well, once again the right wing has attacked and killed an abortion-services provider. And now all of the "mainstream" anti-choice groups are up in arms about how they're being unfairly persecuted just because they suggest you should kill abortion doctors and abortion doctors keep coincidentally getting killed.

It's funny how I've earned a FBI file for suggesting that we shouldn't kill people (and been quite ignored in my suggestions) and yet those who encourage violence which is then carried out are seen as fine, upstanding citizens. The kind of citizens who, in reaction to a man being brutally murdered in cold blood, react by saying "well, he didn't really deserve to live. Let's go get some beer and chicken wings!"

R.I.P. Northland Poster Collective

One of Mpls' great labor institutions, the Northland Poster Collective, is now going under. A sad reminder that while the companies who started this whole mess are getting billions in free money and will most likely continue on with little to no problems for their executives (cough, GM, cough), the people who have been fighting against this insanity are faltering left and right.

Giving When It Means Something

Like most things that challenge people's world views, I've often had to deal with a lot of misconceptions about being a Marxist. For example, I often go on a long-winded rant about how people with less money are almost always more generous with their limited resources than are people with far more money. Those who don't like Marxism always accuse me of re-arranging reality to fit my political beliefs, when in reality, it is the exact opposite. A good deal of what pushed me to becoming a Marxist was noticing things like how the people I knew in my life who had little were always willing to help others out, while the people I knew who had plenty liked to keep their plenty for themselves. And it makes sense -- after all, you don't get rich by giving your money away.

Well, whether you believe my story of political evolution or not, at least the numbers back up my thinking. According to a recent study by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on consumer expenditure, the poor donate money at rates far exceeding the wealthy. You can read the article for specifics, but essentially the poorest 5th of Americans give at rates exceeding their capacity, the next two lowest 5ths give at capacity, and the top two 5ths give well below capacity.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions about that, but if nothing else, at least it offers solid evidence as to why trickle-down economics doesn't work...

Who Is This Guy?

Check out this all-done-in-one-take live instrumentation cover of "Let the Beat Build." This is the first I've heard of this Nyle guy, but I gotta believe good things are coming after this:



"I don't need no sample/gotta girl with a banjo"

Yup, Still Torture

As I've mentioned here before, waterboarding is definitely torture, thus definitely making it illegal and completely immoral.

Well, as so often happens, yet another conservative asshole who insists it's not torture has undergone waterboarding to prove their point. And once again, they proved themselves wrong. This time it was conservative radio jock ManCow, who underwent the procedure last week to prove how easy it was to endure. Well, he lasted all of 7 seconds.

So on this Memorial Day, let's honor our vets by actually upholding the ideals they supposedly fought for and call on our reps to ban the use of all forms of torture.

Modern Art and Social Capital

One of the best things about living in the Twin Cities is the appreciation for the arts and the attenuate benefits that come with that appreciation, such as free Thursday nights at the Walker Art Gallery. The only problem? Modern art is incredibly stupid and pretentious.

For example, there was a collection of works by a guy who had simply cut a line into blank canvases. You see, he wasn't wasting canvas (as I might argue), but instead he was commenting on the hegemony of canvas in Western art, while critiquing ideas of space and conventionality. Or, he was just cutting a line into a piece of canvas.

I could give multiple other examples, but they all remind me of a good buddy's high school art project. When asked to make a wire sculpture, he mashed a bunch of wire together into an oddly-shaped ball and called it "The Wrath of Youth." He received an F and had to re-do the assignment.

This is why modern art can be better understood with some sociology. You see, what separates my F-receiving friend from the large-amounts-of-money-receiving artists is social capital. You see, social capital is analogous to regular capital -- if you learn the values and mores of a social clique (like the art world) and increase your social capital, you can "buy" more respect and believability, much like the more regular capital you have, the more goods and services you can get. Now it gets more complicated than that, but that's the quick version.

And you can see it in action in the art world -- when I (someone with no artistic social capital) cuts a hole in a canvas, I have wasted some perfectly good canvas. But once one has become a famous artist (and has a large amount of social capital in the art world), such random destruction becomes a highly-valued work of art. The only difference is the social status of the two people involved -- one has high social capital, the other has little.

That's one of the best things about sociology -- it can easily be used to puncture the over-inflated egos of pretentious artistes. Sure, they would probably just argue I'm looking at it all wrong, but it's hard to argue the idea that the same piece of work produced by a high school student wouldn't be nearly as valued as it is when it's produced by an already recognized artist. Thus, it's pretty hard to argue anything other than that the value lies in the social construction of the object, rather than the actual object itself...

What Happens When You Justify the Use of Torture?

You get your very own newspaper column!



John Yoo, the man whose twisted logic and complete lack of respect for human life or decency paved the way for torture scandals revealed and yet-to-be-found, has been rewarded by the Philadelphia Inquirer with his own op/ed column.

The Inquirer claims they were aiming for balance by adding a conservative voice to their opinion columnists, but this is either A) them covering their ass for a monumentally stupid decision, or B) proof that we as a nation have become evenly divided on the issue, to the point where the debate is now "torture is wrong" versus "sometimes you've got to crush a few testicles."

Either way, this is not a good sign for anyone...

Your Depressing News of the Morning

You know the now long-established cultural joke of photos of missing children on the milk carton? Let's not forget it was once an actual program. I wasn't able to find out any information on how successful the program was, though I do know that the great majority child abductions are committed by disgruntled family members (usually the non-custodial parent after a divorce), and as such, distributing photos is probably not super likely to be effective.

And as some anecdotal evidence of that claim, it turns out the first kid ever on a milk carton is still missing.

Happy Wednesday!

Piracy Pioneers

DJ Danger Mouse, who's probably currently best known for being half of Gnarls Barkley, got his slightly-less well known start by mashing the Beatles White Album and Jay Z's Black Album to create the hip-hop masterpiece (and most appropriately titled album ever) The Grey Album. And, of course, what made The Grey Album such a fascinating piece of the pop culture landscape wasn't just that it was a good album, but that it was only available via illegal download, and thrived despite constant cease-and-desist letters from the owners of the Beatles and Jay Z's publishing rights. It also showed a person could achieve international stardom completely through free and illegal file-sharing.

How do you follow that act up once you've become an established star? Simple. Danger Mouse's new album will be released as an album of packaging, artwork, and a blank CD-R. That's right, no music will be included at all -- it will be up to the purchaser to find the music through their own illicit channels (there will be no legal downloads available).

Agree or disagree with the methods, you've gotta give it to the fella -- that is a cocky way to release an album, especially one with a line up like the one featured on the poster above.

If you can't wait to find it or have some sort of perverse objection to file-sharing (not that this website in anyway advocates the cool crime of illegal file-sharing), you can listen to it track-by-track here, courtesy of the latte-sipping liberals at NPR.

And We're Happier, Too...

From Cartophilia, via the misses

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently conducted an extensive study asking American about their stress level. From the CDC:

This county-by-county map shows the percentages of residents who reported "frequent mental distress" (FMD)—defined as 14 or more days of emotional discomfort, including "stress, depression and problems with emotion," during the previous month. Three days of mental distress is considered average, the researchers say.

Amongst the obvious notables on the map (it sucks to live in Kentucky, it seems pretty nice to live in Hawaii), the map also lets on about my beloved Midwest. Amongst so many things we have that the holier-than-thou outer reaches of the nation lack, you can put happiness right up there on that list.

And really, that explains a lot. You see, people who spend so much time making fun of other people and putting them down for not acting the same way they do are usually pretty sad and empty people...

Please Quit Copying Me

It's interesting what difference a couple of months make. For the last 8 years, we've been constantly told that all people who would dare question presidential policies or (even worse) actively protest them are the most spineless, anti-American hate-mongers that exist. And to even begin to compare the rightist police-state tactics of Republicans to fascism was the highest form of treason, and just another example of how hyperbolic that loony left is.

Well, at barely over 100 days into the Obama administration, it's amazing how quickly he and the rest of the Dems have become HitlerStalin to right-wingers. And I'm not even sure why; I think it's about him raising the taxes on rich people a little. Now, I'm no Obama fan, but if we can't yell at the guy who started an illegal, immoral, and unjust war (to quote that late JPII) and completely destroyed our economy, why do you get to suggest secession just because a guy wants to change the marginal tax rate?

But my bigger beef is well encapsulated in the above photo (via Tim) -- the portrayal of Dems as both Nazis and Communists. Now I know that Republicans can't tell the difference between all people who are different from them (like when their names are hard to pronounce), but you can't be both a Nazi and a Communist; they're completely antithetical ideas.

Communism is a political system based on wide-spread political and economic equality, whereas fascism is a totalitarian corporate system of no representation and economic exploitation. Or, as an even simpler demonstration, 90% of all German Nazi war deaths occurred on the Eastern front, at the hands of the Soviet military. My guess is that if the commies single-handedly defeated the Nazis, they're probably not chomping at the bit to become best buddies...

But regardless of things like irony, obvious hypocrisy, and historical fact, it just never ceases to amaze me how quickly protesting the government has changed from the worst thing anyone could do to the highest calling for a patriot. Man, I wish everything I did was automatically right...

What Makes the "Hard" Sciences so Hard?

Something I try to get across to my students is that just because everyone has an opinion on the criminal justice system, it doesn't mean informed scientific research on the subject is useless.

You see, people tend to think the physical sciences are "real" sciences, in which experiments build upon past knowledge and discover the laws that control our universe (as opposed to the social sciences, which are just a bunch of egg-heads sitting around making stuff up). But as any researcher will tell you, the "hard" sciences have no more hard and fast hold on the truth than social scientists do; it's still pretty much a guessing game for everyone.

I, for one, think this comes from the fact that the basics of social science are far easier to understand, thus making everyone feel qualified to comment on them, regardless of their (lack of) knowledge regarding the situation. For example, it's pretty easy for any Joe off the street to question your recommendation for new policing policies, because they know what the police are and probably have some opinion on what they should do. Contrast this with string theory, when few people are probably going to argue with their physics prof about the fundamental matter of the universe because one time their uncle had a bad experience with Einsteinian philosophies of matter and gravitation.

However, as the good folks over at Scatterplots point out, if you measure it in terms of cumulative knowledge and replicability of findings, there's no measurable difference between the "hard" and social sciences.

Far be it from me to make this more sociological by suggesting that it might be our culture-wide worship of technology and scientific progress, rather than actual research findings, that make the "hard" sciences appear more reputable, but I'll let you form your own opinion on that...

The Greatest Announcement of the Past 15 Years

Punch Out (with Mike Tyson's visage conspicuously missing) is coming to the Nintendo Wii.




Though I'm almost always opposed to re-makes of my beloved childhood memories, if the above video is any indication, these folks know what they're doing with Punchout. Now, if I could only afford a Wii...

Why We Need Torture?

The above video was put out by the Republican party, ostensibly to make us support what's going on in Guantanamo. In the video they identify three dangerous people currently housed there as a reason why we shouldn't close it down.

This is a classic example of specious reasoning, but let's examine it a bit shall we? What the video leaves out is that dozens of the detainees in Gitmo have no charges pending against them. It also omits the fact that out of those prisoners that have died in U.S. custody, over two dozen have been classified as homicides by the Army.

And, of course, closing Guantanamo by no means forces us to let those three people go. I hate to call it too early, but is an ad this desperate hinting at the complete irrelevance of Republican war-mongering? Well, we can hope...

tourture and hypocrisy

Over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald has a great piece on American hypocrisy regarding torture. In a recent New York Times obituary of an American fighter pilot who was captured by the Chinese military during the Korean war, he was described as being tortured by having to stay in a dark cell with no bed, substandard food, and subject to sleep deprivation.

If this sounds familiar, it is because it's the basic starter package at Guantanamo and other U.S. holding facilities. Only we have declared it not torture when we do it. This is a great example of one of the more pertinent arguments against us using torture (other than the fact that, you know, it's illegal, immoral, etc.): how are we now to condemn it when it's done to our soldiers? Track down any description of what passes for our "interrogation methods" and you'll see it's some pretty sick shit; well, when our soldiers get captured by Taliban operatives (or coming soon: Iranian forces!) and get tortured within an inch of their life with these same tactics, there will be no one to blame but Bush, Cheney and company who have repeatedly argued this stuff isn't torture and is just fine and dandy.

I'm sure that will be plenty of solace for American G.I.s as they're being waterboarded and electrocuted somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan...

New Rock Band Versions

Very late in posting this, but with all the rage surrounding the Beatles Rock Band release, Medialoper has this list of other versions of the game soon to be released.

They're all pretty good, but there were assuredly my favorites:

Rock Band: The White Stripes will deduct points if you hit more than one of the drum pads at any given time.
Rock Band: Prince will force you to play all of the instruments at the same time.
You will have to reprogram the colored buttons in order to play Rock Band: Sonic Youth.
Every time you play Rock Band: U2 absolutely perfectly, an indebted country becomes debt-free.
Rock Band: The Rolling Stones will require that you play the same 20 songs for 30 years.
Rock Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival will sue you if you actually play any of its songs.
Rock Band: Neil Young has been delayed until 2029.
Rock Band: Ryan Adams will never quite live up to its potential.