Upon Further Analysis, I May Not Be a "Hep Cat" But Perhaps Instead a "Jive Turkey"

Easily my favorite Skinner monologues, and quite possibly one of my favorite bits in the entire run of the show, is when he's trying to track down a school-skipping Bart. While Bart is arguing his way into an R-rated movie, Skinner is checking all of the places he thinks a young child skipping school would go, and the scene cuts back and forth between these two shots:

Principal Skinner has decided to walk around town to see if he can find
our delinquent young friend.

   Skinner: If I were a truant boy out for a good time, I'd be right
            here: the Springfield Natural History Museum.  [chuckles]
            You're mine, Simpson.

             [Bart argues at a triple-R rated movie box office]
      Bart: Look, if I was under seventeen, I'd be in school, right?
Ticket boy: Yeah, I guess you're right.  Enjoy "Boobarama", sir.

             [Skinner has left the museum, meanwhile]
   Skinner: Why, there are no children here at the four-H club, either!
            Am I so out of touch...?  No, it's the children who are
            wrong.

I just got my teaching evaluations back from the course I taught this spring. For the most part, they were pretty routine; mostly good, a few standard complaints (why don't you put your lecture notes online, I'm a big baby who can't be bothered to take notes), a few "you were the best teacher I've ever had" (seriously, I'm now at over 2 dozen of those, not that I'm keeping track, that would be tacky), one bad review, etc. Again, pretty standard stuff.

But two common threads in this last crop of evaluations are new ones I've never seen before, and they are equal parts baffling and scary, yet for entirely different reasons.

The first thread was that people liked me because I'm young and come up with relevant examples that reflect their life (seriously, sometimes I think these comments are auto-generated from the blurbs on the back of textbooks). Now, I've already covered in this space how the kids these days find me "young" and "hip,"but this is the first time I've ever had anyone, let alone multiple students, write something about me being young in my evals, even though this was, by definition, the oldest I've ever been while teaching.

I'm sure a large part of this has to do with the fact that I still look like I'm 15, but that doesn't really explain why it came up this semester. Maybe it's because this was an intro class and most of the students were first-years and had assumed all their professors would be elderly? I really have no idea why all of a sudden my youth is apparently a selling point to students, and I'm not really sure it's a compliment my students see me as young and relatable. I always strive for more of an "angry and unapproachable" vibe, mostly to keep students from e-mailing me too much.

The other, far more disturbing, common thread in these evaluations was for the first time ever I had multiple students say the Simpsons are getting too outdated to play in class. I have never had a student complain about the Simpsons, and usually have many who are glad it was played. And sure, there were still several pro-Simpsons comments this year, but there were at least 4 or 5 students who thought they were too old. Gah!

So, ironically in the first semester I'm ever referred to as young, I feel older than ever. In fact, I feel like this allows me to pinpoint the exact moment when I began to lose touch. I mean, I have no idea what will replace the Simpsons in my lectures, and I'm not about to start paying attention to youth culture.

Oh well. At least I have written confirmation of a time when I was considered an instructor students could relate to and enjoy in class. 10 years from now when all of my student reviews say "this weird old guy just kept referencing some tv show none of us have ever heard of," I can rest assured it is the children who are wrong.

Feeding the Trolls (Or Why Fame Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be)

Let me tell you a long-winded story that will be relevant eventually. Bear with me.

I've tended to attract weirdos all throughout my life. I'm not really certain why this is, beside the fact I'm fairly odd myself, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, I've always been a magnet for the weirdos no one else would talk to. If there was a kid in class who never showered and played with Star Wars toys instead of interacting with any other human being, you can bet they would just go ahead and consider me their best friend. While this used to really bother me as a kid (even the weird kids want to be cool), as I grew up, I realized it was generally either fun (I have got to meet a lot of interesting people I'm assuming most people never bother to talk to) or, at worst, kind of annoying.

But then in college I started getting heavily into politics. I had always been somewhat involved, but around 19 I became your stereotypical college activist, with the requisite loud mouth and, eventually, even the long smelly dreadlocks (though I used a mint-scented soap to wash them, so my dreads actually smelled minty fresh most of the time). So now, in addition to attracting all the odd folks I used to, I started attracting the political weirdos, which, for the uninformed, are way, way worse than normal weirdos. Some were weirdos who agreed with my politics, but many were weirdos who greatly disapproved of my politics. These are the weirdos who would shout shit at me as I walked around town, send me death threats (anonymously, of course, because people who send death threats are invariably cowards), or even occasionally, tail my car (though, again, they would never actually do anything, because again, these people are cowards. Though funny story: once a guy in an over-grown hotwheels truck tailed my car around town for the better part of 20 minutes and when I eventually stopped, he wedged his car behind me so I couldn't go anywhere. When I got out he said he was going to kick my ass because of my bumperstickers. So I asked him to make it quick because I was trying to run errands, and he just called me a faggot and drove away. See? Cowards. All of them).

Now some of these weirdos are just temporary, but some of them take an odd, bordering on the pathological, obsession with me. In college it was this guy named Trevor (shit. Or was it Tyler? Yeah, that's it. Or is it? Fuck, I can't believe I can't remember dude's name. Man, I am getting really old). Anyway, Trevor/Tyler was head of the College Republicans and wrote a regular column for the alternative conservative (yup, oxymoron) paper on campus. So obviously we didn't see eye-to-eye on much. And while for me Trevor/Tyler was just some dude I didn't agree with, for Trevor/Tyler I was the epitome of everything that was wrong with the world, and apparently some sort of personal white whale that he had to slay to prove...well,  I'm never really certain what these people are trying to prove.

So Trevor/Tyler started a one-man crusade against me. During a several month period my senior year in college, every editorial he wrote for that paper was about me and what I was up to. In the beginning it was cute, but it started to get creepy when he began writing things that made it clear he was either spying on me regularly or had access to some weird case file about me I'm not aware of. For instance, one week I was having car trouble so I was in my backyard working on my car, and he mentioned this is in one of his anti-me screeds. Not sure how he would have known any of this unless he was casing my house, or some such thing. Creepy, right?

At first, this was all somewhat flattering. It's fun to feel so important someone becomes maniacally obsessed with you. But then it just starts to get creepy and sad. Because there's nothing more sad than someone who thinks they're engaged in a fierce war of ideology with a person who doesn't care and is only vaguely aware of this supposed battle.

But beyond the creepy factor and how sad it made Trevor/Tyler look, it got really embarrassing for me after awhile. Not because of anything he wrote (what was true I was fine with, what was made up was so obviously made up I didn't care), but because it made it look like I was part of all this. I barely knew the kid and to this day still don't know why I was the object of his ire. Sure, I was a very outgoing and outspoken radical activist, but so were most of my friends, many of them more so. I actually only spoke to Trevor/Tyler in person two or three times as far as I can recall. Yet nonetheless, he chose me to continually write about. What made it embarrassing is having to repeatedly explain to people that I neither knew this dude nor knew what his problem with me was. Because when a crazy person repeatedly talks about you in public forums, people start to think you have something to do with that crazy person. But I didn't. I don't even remember his damn name.

But really the overwhelming feeling from the whole process was just pity for Trevor/Tyler. He had somehow built in his head a world in which not only was I apparently incredibly important, but that I somehow cared about his opinion of me or what he wrote in his wildly odd/entertaining editorials about me. I guess he sat there typing away, filling with glee over how angry this would make me and how it would shatter my fragile world and...shit, I don't know. I honestly don't get it.

Basically, Trevor/Tyler was an internet troll before that was a big thing (this was awhile ago folks, I'm getting old). Internet trolls are people who throw out insulting contrarian views in the hopes that this will provoke some big reaction from people or destroy their ideals or some such thing. But that never happens. All it succeeds in doing is make the troll look like a small, sad, and petty person. Which would describe Trevor/Tyler in as far as I knew him.

Right. So that's a shitload of exposition about someone you don't know and don't care about. Here's where it gets relevant...

It looks like I have a new Trevor/Tyler in my life, though I don't know who this person is (again, cowards never use their names). Whoever it is and I disagreed about unionizing grad students. As far as I know, I've never actually met this person, but given that I like to procrastinate, I probably spent a fair amount of time arguing with him (I'm going to assume this person is male for ease of pronoun use) on the internets during the union campaign. Then there was an election, and unfortunately, it didn't turn out how I wanted it to. Then I moved on with my life.

But you see, whoever this is did not move on with his life, as far as I can tell. Because the fact that I disagreed with him about this thing that happened several months ago apparently means he and I are enemies for life. Which is fine by me. I don't spend any time thinking about whoever this person is, so he's free to think about me whatever he wants.

And think about me he seems to do quite a bit. I know this not just because he comments on this blog, but because of where he comments and what he writes about. I think the first comment he left was on a post I wrote about the union election. Fair enough. That makes sense, as it was something the both of us were very invested in (well, I was very invested in it. I'm assuming whoever this is was as well, but again I don't know, because: coward). Sure, he only came to gloat like a child whose daddy bought him a better toy, but again, I don't care what that dude does, so to each their own.

But then it started to get creepy, as it always does. Because I get e-mail alerts every time someone comments on my blogs. So I start to get all these notifications that someone has commented on my posts. But the posts being commented on...well, some of them were from about 5 years ago. Meaning dude is obsessed enough with me that he's read through at least 5 years of my blog's back catalogue. I just wish I had fans that dedicated.

So that's already creepy enough, but hey, he seems like the kind of dude who probably doesn't make many friends, so I assumed he's just got time on his hands to read a bunch of shit online. But then he left a comment the other week about the new job I got, making a dig at both my field and the institution to which I'm going. That's not such a big deal, right? I mean, people make fun of me and sociology all the time, so how is that creepy? Well, I thought about it for a minute and couldn't remember ever writing anything about getting a job or where it was. And the more I thought about it, the more curious I got. So I went back through all my posts and checked. And here's the really creepy thing, friends:

I had never in this space posted about getting a job prior to his saying that, and I've certainly never come close to mentioning where it is. In fact, I've made no public announcements about it at all.

Then I checked a little further. And no info about me getting a job comes up until the fourth page of google results. That means dude is so obsessed with me he's clearly spending inordinate amounts of time searching out information about me. And while it's flattering (don't get me wrong, I am a pretty awesome person to obsess over, given how amazing I am), he's crossed the line from cute crazy to "show up at my door with a shotgun mumbling about the cleansing rain of the Lord" crazy.

And again, I'm left not really understanding it. Sure, he and I had possibly a spirited back and forth online during the election, but that was months ago. And we're adults, who I would think are capable of separating political discussions from the rest of our lives. Also, I don't understand the insults. You can go ahead and read through his illuminating comments if you like, but they all basically boil down to "leftist politics are stupid and you are stupid for being a sociologist. And you smell.'' (In his defense, I usually do smell pretty bad). I'm actually pretty surprised he hasn't left any yo mama jokes in the comments, but maybe those are too clever for him. I don't know.

But I honestly mean it when I say I don't get the point of this. Are these random insults that rarely if ever have anything to do with the subject at hand supposed to affect me in some way? What am I supposed to come away with from reading highly intelligent stuff like "I can't believe how easy it is to get doctorates in sociology nowadays?" What does that mean? Was it more difficult to get a sociology Ph.D. at some point in time? Did he have some misconceptions about sociology that I inadvertently corrected? Am I supposed to be so ashamed of my field I instantly quit academia forever? These aren't rhetorical questions; if someone can actually understand what these comments are supposed to make me feel, please let me know.

Because again, all they make me feel are pity. Pity that a grown man who's intelligent enough to be in a Ph.D. program at a major university has no better use for his time. Or is not mature enough to understand adults can disagree with each other without needing childish insults. Or that he apparently thinks insulting sociology is both original and something I give a shit about.

But what I think is saddest about these people is that they always seem to think they're the first person to come up with stuff -- You mean to tell me some people don't respect the liberal arts?!? HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU GUYS! WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME THIS BEFORE?!? These people are like that kid in high school who discovers the Beatles and grows a shaggy early-John Lennon mop top and walks around acting like he's the first person to have discovered this crazy underground band out of England. Really? You like the most popular band in the world? How crazy!

Then to push it past sadness to the point of being truly pathetic (in the literal sense of the word, as in inspiring pathos for such a sad, small person) is that they not only express an incredibly common-to-the-point-of-being-cliche viewpoint, they somehow thinks this makes them some awesome rebel, the only one whose not afraid to speak the truth, man. And they clearly think this is accomplishing something, as if a guy (me) who has heard some variation (or these exact words) from roughly several thousand people by this point will, under the weight of his impeccable logic, suddenly collapse and abandon all of my dearly held beliefs, leave my chosen profession, and be emotionally shattered.

(Side note: the insults aren't stinging or even clever, for that matter. And yet, there's so many legitimate reasons to insult me. Make fun of me because my fiance left me. Make fun of me because I'm klutzy and often injure myself doing routine activities. Make fun of me because I'm so broke I've been using shampoo bottles I've collected from hotels over the past year because I can't even afford to buy shampoo. Make fun of me because I've played baseball for years and yet this season I've managed a batting average that make Drew Butera look like a Hall of Famer. Make fun of me because I pretend to be a musician even though I'm talentless and no one wants to hear my music. Hell, I could spend all day listing ways to make fun of me that would actually hurt my feelings, and yet dude's go-to insult is that I'm a sociologist. Weeeeeeaaaaaaaak.)

At this point, I know I've already violated the cardinal rule of dealing with internet trolls by paying attention to whoever this is. While part of this post is to honestly puzzle at what he thinks he's accomplishing, mostly it was just an excuse for me to reminisce about all the insane people that have crossed my path. But now I am going to just ignore him in the vain hope he either finds a hobby or stumbles across an even scarier academic to tilt at windmills against (side note: please don't anyone tell this person about the existence of cultural studies. Because even sociologists make fun of those people).

But given that I can never resist sticking in one more comment, here's my final bit for you, current anonymous cowardly internet stalker:

Please, please find a hobby. Get out of the house and make some friends. Friends who share your interests. Then you can spend time with them and speak like an adult about things you enjoy. It truly is a much more fulfilling way to live your life than spouting random childish insults at people on the internet. I'm flattered by your attention, but now you're just embarrassing the both of us. You do realize that spending time researching what I'm up to in an attempt to insult me is an inherently contradictory and fruitless pursuit, right? Because no matter what you turn up, nothing you find can make me look as sad and useless as someone who spends so much time researching me on the internet. I'm not mad at you; I genuinely feel sorry for you, as something really sad had to happen to you to make you like this. I would suggest some counseling. Seriously. I've used the campus counseling service quite a bit and it's helped me a lot, and I imagine it would do the same for you. Or, failing that, at least take a little time away from the computer. Spend the time you would spend researching your imagined enemies on thinking about yourself; I guarantee you'll come to some realizations that will really help you.

So this is that last I address my anonymous internet adversary. If that past is any indication, he'll probably follow a path very similar to that of Trevor/Tyler: this announcement will be met with some extreme indignation. He'll probably suggest I'm the one who needs counseling (which, hey, true enough) and then make some more comments about my given profession. Then he'll continue to comment on this blog for a few more months before the continued silence finally pushes him to imagine some other holy war he needs to fight and he goes away. All of you faithful readers can help but not responding to his trolling anymore, either.

Because, my anonymous imagined friend, as Mr. Carter puts it so eloquently in the video above, "what you eat don't make me shit." So, please, for both of our sakes, stop trying to make me shit.

Why Capitalism Is Absurd (Reason No. 7,897,603,194)

Because Jerry Sandusky is writing a book.

Ok, that in and of itself doesn't make capitalism absurd. Anyone can write a book about anything they want. In this case, it's a convicted child rapist writing a book about why he raped children (or probably arguing those kids are liars and he didn't do anything).

Now as the article linked to above notes, he won't get any money, because in most places it's illegal for someone in prison to profit from the story of their crimes, be it in book, movie, t.v. show, or any other form. But there is no law preventing other people from profiting from that story.

Other people like whomever choses to publish this book (I don't believe anyone has agreed to yet, but someone will). Because in capitalism, there is no room for morals. Sure, there may be a capitalist or two who are somewhat moral, but they'll be quickly crushed by their amoral counterparts. Because as they'll be happy to constantly tell you, the capitalists' only duty is to increase profits. Causing trillions of dollars in environmental damage? Too bad! Sexual assault and forced abortions in your factories? Cost of doing business. Firing workers when you're making record profits? Not my problem!

Now you can add to that list "giving a convicted child rapist a platform to publicly denigrate his multiple victims."

You or I, as rational human beings with some semblance of empathy, might think "hey, this guy had a criminal trial to tell his side of the story. Why does he need a whole book to do it again? Didn't the multiple victim testimonies and piles of damning evidence pretty much seal the case?"

But you would only ask that because you're not very good at capitalism. If you knew capitalism, you'd know people love to gawk at a train wreck, so there's lots of money to be made by publishing that train wreck's memoirs (ok, shitty metaphor, but you get the point). Who cares if the whole enterprise is horribly morally indefensible? There's money to be made!

This Things I Believe About Turning 30

So tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of the day I was forcefully expelled from my mother's womb. And though I recognize there's nothing inherently more meaningful about turning 30 than there is any other age, and that the only reason this particular birthday is assigned so much importance is because of our base 10 counting system, it's clearly taken on some significance in our culture. And if there's one thing I've advocated my entire life, it's to always fit in at all costs. As such, I intend to make a big deal out of my 30th birthday.

Anyway, as I understand it, a lot of people make life goals and shit and come up with these big lists of things they want to do by the time they turn 30. The lists are usually pretty boring and are generally dominated by the same few generic major life events: get a good job in my chosen field, marry someone, squeeze out X number of kids, complete a difficult but achievable athletic goal (like running a marathon), do something wacky and semi-memorable (like trying to break the local Mexican restaurant's taco-eating record), and then some really vague pronouncements about finding happiness and fulfillment and, again, more boring shit like that.

I'm not really much of one for planning ahead or making goals, so I never came up with such a list. Since such a list would not only be boring but also impossible for me to complete now that 30 is upon me, I've decided to go the other way and compile a list of notable things I have not done/experienced/completed before turning 30, many (though by no means all) of which I'm actually fairly proud of and would have included on my Not To Do Before Turning 30 list, had I the foresight to make one.

Things I Have Not Done Even Though I'm Now 30:

1. Gotten married
2. Eaten foie gras
3. Punched a goat (Update: Since I conceived of this list, this happened. Well, not so much a punch as more of an open-hand slap. But don't worry, it was completely in self defense. Long story.)
4. Had nude photos surface on the internet
5. Ran a marathon. Seriously, those things are stupid. Fuck marathons.
6. Won an Olympic medal
7. Been to either of our neighboring nations
8. Changed a diaper (I'm strangely very proud of this one)
9. Lived outside the midwest
10. Climbed any mountains
11. Had a job that paid more than $20,000/year
12. Failed to complete an eating challenge (Edit: I was reminded I once lost the Nookie challenge. Must have blocked it out of my mind. My bad. Though to be fair, I had completed it successfully twice before I finally failed, so that's got to be worth something)
13. Had a child (that I know of)
14. Seen every episode of the Simpsons ever made (at one point in my life I'm sure this was a goal, though to be fair, had the show maintained that level of quality, I'm sure I would have)
15. Ever been in debt

But, ok, this being my space for rambling and self-absorbtion, here's some stuff I have done/experienced/completed before 30 most of which I'm somewhat proud of. The list would be a lot longer if I spent some time thinking about it, but I'm just adding it this morning before publishing, so it will be even more scattershot than the previous list.

Things I Have Done Before 30:

1. Been to jail
2. Got a job without actually finishing my degree
3. Various fun celebrity stories (top 3 -- got to interview Harvey Pekar, took Jello Biafra record shopping, had dinner with Chuck D)
4. Helped establish a still-running alternative theater and newspaper at my undergrad
5. Won some awards for reasons beyond simply being a participant (two favorites -- human rights leadership award from my undergrad and best grad instructor award from my department)
6. Been to Iraq multiple times (without a gun, because I'm not a sissy)
7. Have been paid to perform music and/or act on multiple occasions, thereby technically making me both a professional musician and professional actor
8. Adopted the world's most awesome dog
9. Learned how to play a dozen instruments
10. Lots of other stuff I'm sure...damn, this is a much harder list to complete, so I'll just end it there.

So that's about it. I'm getting old, I've done some stuff, I haven't done some other stuff, I'm completely indistinguishable from the rest of humanity as yet another warm body slowly trudging on the inexorable march toward death. So...uh...happy birthday to me?

The Only Olympics Coverage Worth Watching

My pardons if this video is taken down sometime soon (the IOC doesn't seem to have too much of a sense of humor about itself), but I had to share this video from Francis Higgins, someone who is part of something called Hardy Bucks, which is apparently an Irish comedy program.

But what really matters is the very astute commentary Mr. Higgins gives on the sailing finals. For all of you like me who have had the experience of watching an Olympic event and not having the foggiest clue of what's going on or what these people are even trying to do, this should ring pretty true. If you're one of the 5 people alive who actually understands the point of sailing races, then...well, there's still naughty words. And those are usually funny.

Anyway, enjoy.

It's Friday. I've Got Nothing Interesting To Say.

It's Friday and I've been writing all week, and I have nothing left to say. Not that I usually have anything to say, but less than usual I guess. So here's a video by some guy named Smart Guy Chevelle (yeah, I've never heard of him either), but he somehow got Purple Jesus in his video:



Though if you're going to talk songs featuring Minnesota athletes, you will never be able to top the Nick Punto song (though sadly, like the whomever made the video, I must acknowledge LNP is no longer a Twinkie. But with their atrocious middle infield options, let's all hope he is again next year):

"Go, Passer-By, And Tell The World That We Perished In The Cause, Faithful To Our Orders."

Today is the day set aside in Poland to remember the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

For those of you not familiar with it, the Warsaw uprising was a two-month plus underground resistance movement against the Nazis during WWII. With Soviet troops advancing on the Eastern front and American troops far away on the Western front, Poles formed an underground government with it's own armed forces, the Home Army.

With few resources and having already endured 5 years of Fascist occupation, thousands of Poles attempted to liberate the city against a vastly superior (in terms of armaments and supplies) German army. While it was ultimately unsuccessful, leaving over 15,000 dead and another roughly 15,000 imprisoned, it is a stirring example of the power of the human spirit and the desire for freedom. And probably some other cliches that fail to capture the magnitude of what happened.

It's traditionally marked by a minute of silence, so think about taking a minute of your day to remember the uprising or to ponder the many similar uprisings against corrupt dictatorships currently going on throughout the world right now.

But If We Outlaw Meth, Only Outlaws Will Have Meth

So there was this shooting in Colorado and you already know all the details about it. You're also already aware this has (as they always do) sparked a bit of a gun-control discussion. As such conversations go, it has been occasionally illuminating and mostly infuriating. And while everyone thinks their political opponents use specious reasoning, there's a bit of the pro-gun side that blows my mind. If the people making these arguments are being genuine, they have some serious mental issues themselves.

While anyone can pick out some random crazy argument to make a group they disagree with look bad, these are arguments I've heard repeatedly in personal conversations or from respected commentators in the media. These are points that go beyond disagreement and enter into sheer insanity:

Do you think gun control would have stopped that guy?

Well, yeah, kinda. I mean it would have at least made things much more difficult for him. For instance, it's well known now that dude had over 6,000 rounds of ammo. There's basically no legal reason anyone should ever have that much ammunition. Unless you're one of the incredibly small handful of professional target or skeet shooters in this nation (which seriously has to be in the double-digits, tops), the only reason you amass that much ammo is because you're going to kill a bunch of people. Not really much else to do with that many bullets. So yeah, there's a pretty legitimate interest in having law enforcement have a quick chat with anyone buying a small army's worth of munitions.

But for the sake or argument, let's grant that gun control wouldn't have stopped him and he would have killed a bunch of people anyway. Even ignoring the fact that it's harder to kill people without a gun, this is still a terrible argument. You know what else is illegal? Murder. Murder is very illegal. And yet he went ahead and murdered people anyway. So does that mean we shouldn't bother to make murder illegal? I don't think so. I think the reason we make stuff illegal is because we don't want people to do those things, even if we can't guarantee 100% enforcement.

If I (or someone there) had a gun, I/they could have stopped it.


Really? Let's recount what we know about the situation -- it was an already-darkened theater with vision obscured even more by a smoke bomb. Add to that the screaming chaos and a moving target and even Special Ops would have trouble landing that shot. To think that any regular ol' Joe with little to no situational training would be able to calmly pull their gun out and hit the shooter without hitting anyone else is a fantasy of the highest order. Anyone who can honestly say they think more people firing into the smoky darkness of that theater would result in less deaths is either lying or living in one hell of a fantasy.

But this isn't just logically wrong, it's empirically wrong. According to the FBI, there's been roughly 50 such mass shooting events in the US in the past 30 years. Not a single one has ever been stopped by an armed civilian in the vicinity taking out the shooter (even though we have more guns than people). Because that simply doesn't happen. It's fine if you want to have Charles Bronson fantasies and pretend you're some super shot who can solve the world's problems with your amazing gun work. No one's trying to take that away from you. But when you start to set public policy based on your absurd fantasies, then it becomes a problem.

If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.


Yeah, dumbass. That's the point of making laws.

How Privilege Works (In This Case, For Straight People)

I was struck this morning while reading this fluff article about how Bristol Palin's 3 year old might have used a gay slur on their reality show. Now, I think it's pretty pointless to debate what a 3 year old kid may or may not have had bleeped out on a low-rent reality show, as well as it being pretty pointless to debate whether the whole Palin clan is using gay slurs behind doors (for a family that's made a public career out of slamming gay rights and gay equality, it wouldn't be that surprising).

What really struck me was this quote from Bristol (who, please let us all remember, was a single teenage mom), discussing some Obama quote where he explained gay marriage to his kids:

Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview. Sometimes dads should lead their family in the right ways of thinking. In this case, it would’ve been nice if the President would’ve been an actual leader and helped shape their thoughts instead of merely reflecting what many teenagers think after one too many episodes of ‘Glee.’

This is a classic case of someone's personal life only mattering because they have the audacity to tell others how to live their own lives. You can do just fine being a single parent (though not according to the Palin's), just as you can do just fine being a parent in a same-sex couple, or really in any numbered combination with people(s) of any gender(s).

But the glaring hypocrisy of saying "gay people can't get married because children need a mother and a father" while yourself being a single mother is only possible because of how we privilege heterosexuality in this nation. Heterosexuality is seen as "normal" and all other sexualities are deviations that need to be closely monitored less they infect us all and invite God's wrath upon us (I guess. I mean, they never really explain why they don't like gay people).

So because it's assumed heterosexuality is automatically better and more trustworthy than other sexualities, people like Bristol can make all sorts of rules and hurdles for people of other sexualities to follow, even if they themselves do not follow those same rules. That's why it's not ok for, say, a lesbian couple to have a child because oh my God! There's no father there! But it's perfectly fine for Bristol to have a child with no father there because...well, you see, that's where the privilege comes in. For this privilege not only makes it ok for her to be a raging hypocrite, but to also not have to explain, let alone even acknowledge, this glaring hypocrisy.

And if you don't believe it, try to picture it the other way: imagine someone funding a lesbian couple to go around the nation giving speeches about the need to do away with single motherhood, because children need two mothers in their lives to be successful. You see, that has never and will never happen.

Completely irrelevant but fun point: single-mother Bristol Palin is also paid to go around to our nation's high schools extolling abstinence-only sex education. Because it worked so well for her!

Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You (No, Seriously, Fuck You)

So by now you've hopefully heard of Michelle "Trust me, I grew up near a murderous pedophile" Bachmann's McCarthy2.0 campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood and its supposed infiltration of our highest levels of government (no word yet on when Hollywood's elite will be called in to testify, or how she'll be able to tie it to unions, but just wait for it). She recently upped the anti by coming after my own representative and her fellow Minnesotan Keith Ellison (who you hopefully already know dares to be openly Muslim).

STOP IT LADY. YOU'RE FUCKING NUTS AND NO ONE GIVES A SHIT WHAT YOU SAY.

Sorry. Being incredibly cynical, I'm rarely upset by the news, because I just assume it's going to be shitty. But reading the piece above about her ridiculous claims, and them being turned on a relatively good guy (for a politician) who is clearly being singled out for his religious beliefs...I dunno, just got me really pissed off.

BECAUSE MCCARTHY HAPPENED. Not that fucking long ago, either! There are still plenty of people alive today who witnessed it first hand (or had their lives destroyed by it). The very name has become short hand for baseless political witch hunts. Being doomed to repeat history, etc.

Because she has no evidence at all (and never will), mostly because THIS IS CLEARLY NOT HAPPENING. The Muslim Brotherhood is a relatively moderate organization, and beyond the boilerplate "we're not big fans of you because you keep killing us for no reason" things they might say, they've never given any indication of wanting to attack the US. And they're not a very big organization, to boot. Oh, and because a child could see that her whole argument is full of shit.

So there's really only two explanations for this particular instance of craziness out of her, and neither is flattering. Either A) she actually believes all of this stuff, which is hard to believe because she is clearly capable of dressing herself and other mundane activities, indicating she has at least a somewhat functioning brain. Or 2) she recognizes that she's no longer the political flavor-of-the-month and understands she has to up the crazy ante ten-fold just to get back on the tee-vee. And if that means doing her darnedest to whip up an absurd, racist, xenophobic political frenzy that results in thousands upon thousands of lives ruined, well, then you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette.

So, seriously Michelle Bachmann, fuck you.

Why #firstworldproblems and Stuff White People Like are Racist (But Not For Stupid Reasons)

This post stems from a recent facebook post I made. I was complaining that Migration Assistant did a crappy job transferring my files from my old desktop to my shiny new one. While others chimed in with their own tales of migration assistance woe, one friend mocked me by posting "first world problems." In fairness to her, she was just trying to rib me and wasn't really trying to make any larger sociopolitical point, but it's one of my great pet peeves, so here goes the rant.

Besides the obvious ethnocentric and racist implications of using terms like "first" and "third" world to describe differing nations, the implication of #firstworldproblems (I don't know where the phrase first came from, but I mostly know it as a twitter hash tag, hence the douchey way of writing it) is that there are some things only people in wealthy nations would complain about, like problems with their computers. But the problem with this is that it makes so many horrible assumptions about the rest of the world.

In a post I'm not going to bother trying to find, one of the contributors at Soc Images was discussing the challenge of teaching about contemporary Africa and mentioned needing to remind students that its 2012 in Africa, too. Meaning technology and various scientific advancements all exist there as well, albeit sometimes not as widely spread (though in some surprising ways, sometimes the latest technology is more widespread in so-called "third world" nations). I use this line is discussing the Middle East to my students as well, and I immediately thought about it when the comment came along on facebook.

Because you know what happens when one of my friends in Iraq has a problem with their computer? Well, it turns out they don't calmly say "well, given the widespread unemployment and the infrastructure of my nation being under-developed and in some places nonexistent, I can't complain about my computer freezing up." No, they swear and hit the thing, just like anyone else would. Because even though it's a poor nation still experiencing an occupation and a civil war, computers exist there. And when they don't work well, people get annoyed by them. Because it's a pretty human reaction to be annoyed when your computer doesn't work, regardless of the GDP of the nation you live in. To say otherwise is to essentially say "Oh, those poor savages must be so happy to have a magical wonder box that they couldn't possibly be upset by it not working correctly."

The same goes for the Stuff White People Like bullshit, which is really just an extension of the old "white people can't do [blank]" saying (could be dancing, jumping, having rhythm, etc.). This isn't racist because it's making fun of white people (though I'm sure Rush Limbaugh can do a great job of explaining how this shows white people are the true victims of racism), but because it implies a comparison. For instance, if you say white people can't dance, it necessarily implies a comparison to another racial group that can dance. It's really just the flip side of saying all black people naturally have rhythm, and I hope I don't have to explain the racist legacy of that.

And if you peruse the stuff white people like (please only do so if you like obvious jokes or having aneurysms from reading really stupid websites), you'll notice most of the stuff white people like is nerdy stuff. Because white people aren't cool, not like those magical negroes who are naturally cool because they have so much soul. Not to mention an integral part of being a nerd is being booksmart, which is obviously something only white people can be, because they're the only ones capable of being smart...anyway, hopefully you can see how that line of logic gets pretty fucking racist pretty quickly.

So what these expressions (and the others ones like them) are is really just a slightly more clever way of updating the old racist tropes about animalistic people of color being cooler and more soulful than boring old white people who do nothing but be smart and successful in business and whatnot. And while on the surface it appears the joke is on white people, you can really only read it that way if you view being called the dominant social group in the world an insult...

Daniel Tosh Is a Jackass, But You Might Be, Too

In case you don't follow internet-based controversies surrounding stand-up performances, the short version of the story currently captivating a small portion of the web stems from this tumblr post by a woman who went to a comedy show where Daniel Tosh (host of Please Don't Figure Out Youtube Exists) made some bad jokes about rape, she got upset and yelled out that rape jokes are never funny, and then he made even more unfunny rape jokes that really upset her.

As I've written about here before, rape is a subject that can rarely, if ever, be joked about effectively. And although now there are contrasting reports as to what Tosh actually said, none of the versions are funny enough to justify joking about something like that (to summarize my argument: you should be really careful making rape jokes, and they have to be really funny to work).

So people were quick to jump on Tosh for his misogyny, and then misogynists were quick to defend him, and then several other people who were there contradicted the original story, making it hard to know what happened exactly. But what we do know is Tosh made some unfunny jokes about rape, this women got upset and yelled something, and he made more unfunny jokes.

I'm going to leave aside the fact that Tosh is an asshole and not very funny because it's already been well-established. And whatever version of the story you believe, it's clear he was both being an asshole and not funny in that particular incident. I think we call all agree on that.

But what I want to rant about is the woman in question. As a friend of mine who is a former professional comedian pointed out, she wasn't just an audience member. She was a heckler. Now you can argue that what Tosh said was so offensive that she had to say something, and I'd probably agree with that. But she's still a heckler (it's an empirical question -- if you shout out during a stand up set that the performer is not funny, you are ipso facto a heckler). And when a comedian is heckled, it's more-or-less a professional obligation that they attempt to savage the heckler. Now again, Tosh did a shitty and unfunny job of it, but was doing what any comedian would do.

But were I really have a problem with her account of things is that, while again pointing out that I fully agree Tosh was both offensive and unfunny, it falls into the "I'm a special flower and everyone should follow my rules no matter what" type of complaint. Because if you read her original post, she notes that the headliner was Dane Cook (himself a man with quite a record of violently misogynistic and sexist bullshit) and that she had seen his stuff before and didn't think he was very good.

So right there you already have a huge problem -- you're expecting to go to the show of a known sexist/homophobe (that you yourself have witnessed being sexist/homophobic) and expect it somehow magically not contain any sexism or homophobia. And then when you interrupt the show because it offends your sensibilities, you are shocked, shocked! that a comedian would respond to your heckling with anything other than genuine remorse and discussion of our pernicious rape culture.

So I guess what keeps me from getting fully on board with this woman (not including her ending paragraph in which she goes a little far by suggesting she truly believe audience members were going to rise up and rape her right then and there because of what he said) is not that she's wrong about the guy. I don't think he's funny, either, and I also believe he's a misogynistic asshole. But she clearly also has a problem in making good decisions -- you went to a show of a misogynist asshole you admit you don't find funny, and surprise, surprise, on the bill was another misogynist asshole you don't find funny.

And this is why I think she has some of that annoying special flowerism I spoke of earlier -- you deliberately put yourself in a situation that, if you had put any thought into it, you clearly would have realized there was high potential of you being offended. Then, when this largely inevitable thing happens, you freak out like it was done to personally belittle you and was a completely unexpected interruption of your nice night trying to watch the misogynists be funny (but apparently in a non-misogynist way).

Again, I want to highlight as much as possible this is not a defense of Tosh as a person or comic, or to defend in any way what he said. Nor is it to denigrate people taking the brave step of calling out misogyny when they see it. It's merely to point out something that unfortunately many lefties seem to not understand at all -- the world doesn't automatically conform to your sensibilities, even when you're right.

Also, don't go to Nazi rallies if you're offended by Nazi ideals. It's very likely something said will offend you, and given that you're already generally aware of what Nazis stand for, it's at least partially your fault for attending the rally in the first place (even though I hope it goes without saying you're totally right to be offended by what the Nazis say).

Fuck That Noize, I'm Still With It

 

I'm beginning to understand what Grandpa is feeling, and somewhat ironically*, it's because of the Simpsons. I've ended up teaching a lot of night classes during my tenure here at the U. Such classes only meet once a week for three straight hours, which is a long-ass time to sit through a class. Even if you're actually interested in the material (a big if with most college students), it's still pretty damned hard to pay attention for that long to one person.

So I have to come up with multiple ways to break the monotony of one guy lecturing, whether it be through the dreaded group-work, pop quizzes, discussions, etc. I also end up playing a lot of videos, and more specifically, Simpsons episodes. I do this both because The Simpsons is inarguably the greatest television show in history (I said inarguably, so don't bother trying to argue the point, it only reveals your ignorance), but more because it's an incredibly witty and astute show that often offers a better insight into what I'm talking about than I do.

But I fear I only have a few more years of being able to do this, as the relevant episodes of the Simpsons first aired when many of my students were not yet out of diapers, if they even existed in the world yet. And though much of the humor is timeless, obviously the references to anything contemporary are getting quite a bit out of date. This isn't a problem for the "non-traditional" students who are often older than I am, but does make me feel a little out of date to the 18 and 19 year-old students in the room. This past semester, I remember having to explain everything from who Blossom is, to why at one point in time people made jokes about Apple computers being irrelevant, to the fact that Lollapalooza was once a touring show full of bands people  actually wanted to hear. Sometimes it makes me feel about a billion years old.

Which is why, when I was procrastinating by looking for myself on Rate My Professor, I was heartened to read the bottom-most review of me:

 

Also, let it be noted I am "actually funny"

That's right mutha fuckas, I am "young and hip." And this coming from a student who may or may not be hip, but is at least most assuredly young. So while I may sometimes feel out of touch with the youth of today, I now have it in incontrovertible internet writing that I am still young and hip enough for the kids these days.

It also reminds me of a question I had during a recent interview at a University that will remain nameless in which one of the faculty asked me why I thought I was an effective teacher. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was something to the effect of it's easy for me because I look like I'm 15, so no student is ever going to be intimidated by me, and I'm young enough to still reference the correct parts of popular culture so students relate to me. Granted, this was just the best bullshit I could come up with on the spot, but it turns out I was not only not that far off in my assessment, but I now also have empirical evidence that I was at least partially right.

So I don't really have a point to this post, but I will note that I am young and hip, and you, presumably, are not.

*I have no idea if this qualifies as actual irony or Alanis-Morisette-type not-actually-irony, but you get what I'm going for 

Your Post 4th Racism Roundup

So I've got a bunch of stuff sitting around that I was planning on writing about but never got around to, and many of them were kinda sorta about the same thing, so here's your First Inaugural July 4th Racism Roundup:

Here you can see segregation in action with a time lapse of the Red line in Chicago:


And how do things get to be so racially segregated? Well, it comes from many factors (notably redlining and other intentionally racist actions), but one that cannot be ignored is a criminal justice system that to this day still views having a particular skin tone in a particular neighborhood sufficient grounds for a criminal investigation. And again, such systemic racism is that fault of many factors, but an obvious one is how openly racist, sexist, and xenophobic many police are and how little discipline is ever handed down to them as a result.

Finally, lest you be called out for trying to stop any of these problems, here's a handy guide on how to be an actual Reverse Racist ("reverse" because racism is supposed to happen to a certain kind of people).

The World's Most Accurate Pie Chart

From Soc Images, via boing boing:

A Lesson Many Could Still Stand to Learn

In a project to digitize the entire run of one of several journals Charles Dickens used to edit, researchers have found at least one unattributed essay they are confident was actually written by Dickens himself, one of the very few new Dickens writings to be discovered after his death.

The article, a commentary on the patronizing attitudes of middle-class reformers of the era, is not anything particularly novel; we've pretty well been able to establish Dickens' feelings on poverty, the treatment of the poor, the behavior of the wealthy, etc. But while the article doesn't reveal much of anything new about Dickens, it's still a pretty good read.

Perhaps my favorite line from the piece is Dickens explaining to the well-meaning but terribly misguided temperance advocates why their attempt at help is more insulting that anything, telling people of the need to:

"get it into our heads – which seems harder to do than many people would imagine – that the working man is neither a felon, nor necessarily a drunkard, nor a very little child"

Seems like a lesson many people still desperately need to learn...

Shouldn't Penn State Face NCAA Sanctions?

I want to say that I'm starting this argument from the perspective that nearly all NCAA sanctions are absurd and pointless, typically punishing behaviors that while technically against NCAA rules are clearly routine working order for at least all major college programs (and if we're being honest, likely every Division I college program). But for all of the inherent stupidity and hypocrisy (you can make literally billions off of the unpaid labor of college kids, but if you give them so much as $5 to do their laundry, that's a horrible ethical violation), there is at least some form of perverted logic they follow.

And while others can explain much more clearly what said weird logic is, basically, it boils down to the rules making no sense, but at least being enforced every time it's obvious they've been broken. And once a rule is broken, the NCAA is usually quick to drop the hammer. Again, many would argue this is because they want to make routine rules violations look like exceptional cases (thereby making the NCAA look like it's running a tight ship), but they are almost always enforced nonetheless.

Take, for example, the Reggie Bush case. Bush was/is a great college athlete/mediocre professional athlete that played for USC. To secure his services, USC apparently paid him a significant chunk of money and paid for an apartment and car for his parents. There was a lot more to the case, but that's essentially what USC was punished for. And they were punished quite thoroughly; Bush had to vacate his Heisman and USC was hit with some major sanctions, including a reductions in scholarships they're allowed to offer for a period and a multi-year postseason ban.

This was done for illegally accepting money. Well, now that Jerry Sandusky has been found guilty on 45 of 48 counts in his child sex abuse trial, it's also become quite clear many people within the Penn State football program actively worked to cover up said sexual abuse. It's not clear who all was involved and to what extent, but it's pretty much impossible to deny there was an intentional cover up. Heck, most legal experts agree Penn State is criminally liable, and many of the abused have retained counsel for civil suits against the university.

So I'm not trying to pile on an obvious target or get sanctimonious about how I would have acted in that situation (because no one actually knows how they would react to such a thing, and what you would actually do would probably surprise you), but just to say that by the NCAA's own logic, they have to sanction Penn State severely, don't they?

Because if you're going to set the precedent that giving money to a poor kid so he'll play football is a grievous sin, it's got to be pretty hard to argue the covering up the repeated sexual assault of children is not an offense worthy of significant reprimand.

Surprisingly, NYPD Has More Than One Problem

Not too long ago I wrote about the horribly racist (and largely unproductive) "stop and frisk" program of the NYPD. Well, hold on to your monocle, lest the gasp you are about to let forth sends it tumbling to the floor to shatter or humorously plop into your morning Earl Grey and splash your fine garments: it turns out that is not the end of the problems plaguing New York's finest.

A retired narcotics detective from the NYPD recently testified under oath that the planting of drugs on suspects to get an arrest is a pretty regular practice of the NYPD narcotics officers.

Of course, this problem isn't confined to New York; if you take a moment to dig around, you'll find a similar story from pretty much any city of size. And the reason this happens everywhere is not because police are especially corrupt or amoral, but because of the nature of the drug war itself -- people want to see people busted for drugs (or at least the people that matter, like mayors and legislators), police are basically operating with no direct supervision and no meaningful restrictions on their actions, and there's a bunch of poor black and brown people that won't cause any meaningful uproar even when they're imprisoned for no reason.

In fact, if you really understand the role of the drug war (and mass incarceration in general), you'll see that it's far less about any form of crime control or deterrence (mainly because we've been locking up large numbers of people for drug crimes for at least 30+ years now and they've been conclusively proven do neither of those things). Instead, it's about finding a way to control all those pesky black and brown people who insist on continuing to exist. Since we can't enslave them or legally exclude them from our day-to-day lives anymore, we need somewhere for them to go so we don't have to deal with them (here's a fancy-pants academic explaining it in detail).

But hey, at least we can rest comfortably knowing that few, if any, police officers will ever be punished for repeatedly sending innocent people to exorbitant prison sentences. And that's a pretty comforting thought...

Update: Yes Hockey, No ONe Gives A Shit About You

Not too long ago I wrote about the LA Kings' quest to get people to figure out who they are and what sport they play. I also opined a little bit about how no one gives a shit about hockey anymore, and how maybe the NHL itself is to blame.

Well, I don't have any more evidence to offer of the NHL's culpability, but I do have some more good evidence that no one cares about hockey in the slightest, outside of Canadians and Russians. Which, again, means no one cares about hockey.

For instance, take Game 5 of the Stanley Cup. At the time, the series was 3 games to 2, so it was a potential elimination game and all that jazz. And it was a saturday night without much else going on tv-wise, so that should improve the chances people would tune in.

But they still didn't. The game was out-drawn by Fox's Saturday night baseball, which although clearly the superior sport, was featuring a slate of mediocre matchups. And it's roughly 5 years until the playoffs, so even a baseball diehard like myself would say you don't absolutely need to tune in this time of year (though you probably should).

But that's not so embarrassing. I mean, baseball is America's game and all that. But a bit more telling is that Game 5 was beaten handily in the ratings by Spongebob Squarepants. Yup.

So to recap: more people would rather watch meaningless early-season baseball or a decade-old children's cartoon instead of an elimination game in the Stanley Cup finals.

But hey, at least from what I hear, it was a good series. I'm sure that one toothless guy hit that one guy with the French sounding name. And there were probably some goals stopped by a guy with only consonants in his last name. And I'm sure they all had delightful beards or something. Sorry, I can't be bothered to even pretend I care enough to look up shit about current hockey players. Gordie Howe still plays, right?

It's Hard Not To Be Cynical When The World Demands It Of You

Look, everyone knows advertising is bullshit. We know we're not seriously supposed to believe that Bud Light will magically turn women into bikini-clad party girls or that the right pair of shoes will allow us to suddenly be able to dunk a basketball. I would assume most any American alive in this day and age have seen enough ridiculous ads in enough formats to understand they're not exactly honest all the time and that they'll take any angle they can to get us to buy their crap.

But at some certain point we expect some truth out of ads. For example, that's why Sketchers has to pay out $40 million for claiming their idiotic shoes would somehow help you get in shape (and yet they have to pay $0 for ruining any lasting respect we had for Joe Montana, but that's another post for another day). While we all pretty much accept they're going to stretch the truth and present distorted images, we also all clearly agree there has to be some sort of line we draw that says you can't just make shit up.

But that's more or less what advertising is all about, so expecting advertisers not to boldly lie to us is like expecting your dog not to shit in the backyard; it's just what they do. But sometimes the examples of how full of shit the advertisers are just get to be too much.

Take, for example, a recent lawsuit between CBS and ABC. The short version is that ABC is shortly going to première a new reality show called Glass House in which a bunch of strangers live in a house together and do a bunch of stupid shit and maybe one of them gets some money at the end. CBS noticed this is basically exactly what they did with Big Brother (not to mention ABC hired a bunch of ex-Big Brother staff to work on the show) and sued for copyright infringement.

What was ABC's defense? That the show is such a rote and generic reality show that it can't be ripping anything off, because all of these shows are the same thing to begin with anyway. Seriously. Their argument is literally "well, these shows are all the same anyway, so how is one more on the pile make any difference?"

What does this have to do with advertising? Well, I'm guessing "this is nothing original because all these shows are the same anyway" will not be what ABC goes with on its commercials advertising Glass House. Rather, I'd be willing to bet they'll try to convince you there is something new and interesting about this show after all.

It reminds me very much of the recent Pizza Hut v. Papa Johns lawsuit in which the former sued the latter over their use of the slogan "Better Ingredients, Better Pizza" essentially challenging Poppa Johns to prove this is true. Papa John's legal defense (as chronicled in a Dominoes commercial for some reason) was that this statement was "puffery" and that no one really believes they mean it. A convenient legal excuse, but it kind of destroys the entire basis of advertising when you effectively say "Oh, when we say 'better,' that's completely meaningless. In fact, any claim we make should just be ignored."

So it may just be me being cynical to say advertising is a completely bullshit profession, but then again, the advertisers themselves seem to admit as much...

Income Inequality...In Space!

Ok, so technically it's not in space, but rather viewed from space, but that doesn't make for nearly as good a title...

Turns out income inequality is so bad in this country that you can see it from satellite images.

This really isn't surprising to anyone who's paid minimal attention to such things, but does serve as another striking example of the horrid inequalities we continue to nurture in this nation. And the bigger point is that it's not just the difference in size of houses or how close together they are that makes it the most obvious which is a poor and which is a rich neighborhood, but instead it's the presence of trees and other plant life.

And this foliage is about much more than simply aesthetics (though poor people deserve aesthetically pleasing neighborhoods as well), because it serves as a powerful symbol of the health differences between high and low income neighborhoods. I was instantly reminded of an article from the Journal of Health and Social Behavior a few years ago (citation not looked for), which found that pregnant women living near highway on and off ramps experienced far higher rates of complications and birth defects.

But when the researchers disaggregated the data by income level, they found the proximity to freeway ramps only effected the pregnancies of women from upper income brackets. Unfortunately this doesn't happen because poor women are magically immune to pollution, but instead because the neighborhoods they live in are already so polluted and toxic that the addition of CO2 and the various other harmful components of auto exhaust are just a drop in the bucket.

But hey, if we weren't poisoning poor people with our waste, they wouldn't have any encouragement to work, right? They would just be lazy and live off their $5 of welfare every month in the lap of luxury. Quick! Someone get them a copy of Atlas Shrugged!

A Rose By Any Other Name (Can Be Secretly Targeted For Assassination Without Judicial Review)

I've made no secret of my love for Glenn Greenwald in this space, as he's probably the one national political writer I ever regularly agree with. Mostly because he, unlike most political commentators, calls everyone out for abusing our constitutional freedoms, regardless of whether their name is followed with an R or a D.

To wit, check out this superb article about how that great progressive Obama and his staff have defined the word "militant." It turns out that our government now officially defines as a "militant" any adult male who dies in an attack, unless there is specific evidence to prove otherwise. So in other words, all adult men who live in any nation we don't like are now literally guilty until (post-humously) proven innocent.

This stretchy and sketchy (ooo! rhyming burn!) counting method has a lot of implications. The first and hopefully most obvious is that this runs directly against pretty much everything in our constitution and judicial history.

But the bigger story is how this ridiculous definition allows for some amazing propaganda. For instance, the Obama administration is able to claim that of the now hundreds of people killed by drone strikes in Pakistan, less than 10 of those people are counted as civilians (the rest being militants on account of their having a penis and being over 18, not to mention being all brown and scary), a number so low even administration officials have publicly expressed concern over how obviously bullshit this is.

What's even crazier about this is it really highlights how complicit and subservient our media has become. Because this absurd definition is actually public knowledge and has been reported on a handful of times. So even though any human being with basic mental faculties could see at the very least that you can't take administration claims about militants at face value (since they're more or less admitted they're just making this shit up), newspapers all across the nation continue to trumpet our continual killing of "militants" without any mention of the obvious civilian deaths or even the fact that we don't have any reason to believe the people killed were actually militants.

But hey, thank God we don't have state-run media, or we'd all be in danger of only getting propaganda instead of the hard-hitting, fact-finding reports we're used to...

Makin' Jokes About Rape (Or Maybe Not)

This post is largely inspired by this comic about when or if rape jokes are ever acceptable. Go read it, the 30 or so seconds you spend will be well worth it.


Comedy is something I think about a lot at a theoretical level, because I like funny things and I'm a nerd. In college I did improv under the tutelage of the inestimable Dr. Douglas J. Shaw, who in addition to teaching me a lot about the art of making the funny, also really encouraged me to think about why something is funny, why one thing is funnier than another, and why jokes work or don't work on any given level.

And because I'm a nerd who likes to think about these things, and have similarly nerdy friends, I find myself getting into a lot of discussions about how or if certain humor works. These discussions generally center on "edgy" types of humor, like racial humor (not racist humor that attributes motivations to people based on their skin color, but humor that invokes the idea of race).

Racial humor is really tricky because the hory nature of race relations in America creates a context wherein racial jokes are operating at a certain level of understanding regardless of the intent of the creator. When a typical joke fails, it's just simply not funny. But when an attempt at racial humor fails, it ends up not only being not funny, but also tends to sound pretty dang racist, even if that's not the intention of whomever's making the joke. Being a civil libertarian and big fan of free speech, I'm never one to say any particular topic is off limits for jokes, but it's obvious one needs to exercise extra caution when trying to make a racial joke, if for nothing else than not screwing it up and looking like a jackass and/or offending/upsetting folks.

And this obviously extends beyond the example of race into any number of other areas of comedy that deal with things that are potentially offensive or hurtful. Jokes about rape run a very similar razor's edge between possibility of humor and possibility of offense, probably even more so than racial jokes. This is likely compounded by the fact that one can usually tell if someone of a particular racial or ethnic category is around, and most people are then forced to ponder whether their joke is actually funny and worthwhile or if it should just maybe be left unsaid, if not for noble reasons then to at least avoid looking like an asshole.

However, rape is usually an invisible status, in that you're probably unlikely to know someone has experienced rape or sexual assault unless you're a very close friend/family member, and even then, there's a good chance you wouldn't know. And given the somewhat reliable statistics we have on such things, we know roughly 1 in 3 women will experience rape/sexual assault in their lifetime (the numbers we have for men are not nearly as reliable for a number of reasons, but I've seen estimates that put it at about 1 in 10).

So chances are very good that when you make a rape joke, you are doing so in the presence of someone who has been raped. But because this is, again, not usually something someone advertises about themselves, people seem to be more cavalier in making such jokes because they're not forced to take the extra moment to think about what they're going to say, like they probably would be with making a racial joke in a racially diverse group. Teaching criminology courses I often have to talk about rape and sexual assault, but even in a setting where I'm not going to be making any jokes about the subject, I still have to take a lot of care to measure my words. Because again, I know that statistically in my class of 100, there are probably anywhere from 10 to 20 women who have experienced rape or sexual assault, and likely a small handful of men as well. And given that most such assaults occur during the high school and college years, it's likely a very fresh memory for most of these people. I lecture about the subject because it's a necessary component of some courses, but the last thing I want to do is dredge up painful feelings about a horrible experience of my students just because I was cavalier with my language.

Again, the point is not that one can never make a joke that involves rape (as one friend is fond of saying, you can joke about anything as long as the joke is actually funny), but that such a joke requires an extra level of scrutiny before being delivered. Because rape can be (though is not always) an incredibly devastating experience for someone, and when you dredge it up just to make a lame groaner that isn't even funny...well, that's just a pretty shitty thing to do. Rape is really one of those topics where you should only joke about it if you come up with something to funny you simply can't avoid saying it.

So although I understand that for some rape is a subject that should simply be off limits for jokes, I can't quite go that far, because I, too, somewhat share the view that any subject is acceptable if the joke is truly funny enough. But I do absolutely agree with the comic that if you're one of those people who compares the cost of textbooks or the amount of papers you have to write or the taxes you have to pay to rape...well, you're just an asshole.

A Stock Life Love Story

So it appears I've just been posting links to other things more interesting people have done, but that serves a purpose, right?

Anyway, here's an ad some folks made for Getty images, showing off all the fantastic images they have in their stock photo collection. In this case, they use exactly 873 of those stock photos to create a fairly moving little life story called From Love to Bingo. Think the first few minutes of up, but less Ed Asner.

This Will Probably Blow Your Mind

Stare the cross in the center of these two images, and see what happens to the otherwise pretty faces you know and love:


Researchers have dubbed it "Flashed Face Distortion Effect." The working theory is that by playing these images at the same size and orientation next to each other forces our brain to make multiple comparisons between the two, as our brains are wont to do in such a situation.

But apparently by making these comparisons, something in our brain starts to greatly distort the differences until the faces becomes incredibly distorted. To me, the trippiest thing about it is how instant the effect is; if you take your eyes off the middle and look at just one of the images, they instantly become normal again. But as soon as you look back at that center cross, they go right back to crazy as all get out.

Were I in a clever mood, or at least not fried from constant dissertation writing, I would say something about how this demonstrates we must always challenge our assumptions and perceptions of even the most simple things. Except I'd say it in some really profound way that connects this to major world issues. So...think about those kind of things for awhile and then pretend I wrote about them.

Oh Hockey, No One Gives a Shit

If the NHL wants anyone to blame for why no one pays attention to hockey anymore, they have no one but themselves to blame. After all, this is a league that thought it would be a good move to take the team from Minnesota, the one place in America where people still give a shit about hockey, and move it to Dallas. Or to take multiple teams from Canada and move them to hockey hotbeds like South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and even Los Angeles.

In a shocking result that no one could have predicted, people in areas where water doesn't actually freeze don't care as much about hockey as people from places where the sport is basically a religion. Go figure.

Enter the LA Kings. They've had an ok season, but are having an amazing time in the playoffs, storming through them as an 8 seed (the lowest seed in NHL playoffs) and have become the odds-on favorite to win it all.

Yet even while this amazing run is going on, the Kings can't even get LA-area media to distinguish them from the Sacramento Kings (who are not in LA, and play basketball, not hockey). Multiple stations have used the Sacramento basketball logo in place of the Kings actual logo, most because, well, this is hockey, and no one in LA gives a shit about hockey.

But in keeping with the hilariously deadpan style their Twitter feed employs (seriously the only twitter feed of a professional sports team you should ever bother to pay attention to), the Kings have released this handy-dandy infographic to explain the difference between them and that no-particularly-local basketball team (click to expand). At least they recognize their place and understand that the only celebrities that watch hockey are the ones no one cares about...

What?!? The NYPD Has Some Problems?!?

If it's a double-interrobang headline, it must be news...

The NYCLU has recently released a report on the controversial "stop and frisk" program of the NYPD, and surprise, surprise, it turns out the program is less about stopping crime that it is about harassing, intimidating, and often incarcerating poor people of color. To those of us who study the criminal justice system, the news was met with "umm...duh," but to those who don't, this was apparently a bit of a surprise.

The idea behind stop and frisk is that NYPD are given a great (possibly unconstitutional) latitude to stop and search any people they deem "suspicious" and then run their name for any possible outstanding violations (when stop and frisk catches any criminals, which is rare, it's almost exclusively from the background check, not catching them in the act of doing anything wrong.)

The only problems with the program are that it doesn't work and it's horribly racist (other than that, huge success I'm sure). But using the NYPD's own data, the NYCLU was able to easily point out some other major problems with the program. You can go read the full report (which you should, it's short and interesting), but some highlights include:

--Although the make up only 4.7% of the city's population, young Black and Latino men accounted for 41.6% of all stop and frisks. So maybe these people are just committing more crimes and deserve this hideous violation of their privacy and other assorted rights. But...

--90% of men of color stopped had committed no crimes. So maybe you can argue that 10% deserved to have their constitutional rights violated (though even that's kind of a difficult argument), but I think it's hard to argue that hundreds of thousands of people should get stopped and frisked for doing nothing wrong.

--Finally, the number of young Black men subjected to the stop and frisk is larger than the total number of young black men in the city. So you've got to give the NYPD one thing: they are thorough as shit. Once your racist violation of constitutional rights has been spread to every Black teenager you've got, better start all over and try each one again, in case you hadn't yet made it clear how alive and pervasive institutional racism is in our society today...

Rob Ryan's Magical Mystery Bus

Direct from the Dallas Cowboys official website, let Cowboys defensive coordinator Rob Ryan show you his shitty van (seriously, it's well worth your minute and 12 seconds).

I have no idea why the Cowboys thought a tour of Rob Ryan's 1999 econoline, but I'm ever so glad they did. Among the many details you learn in the completely unironic love letter to an old van, is that the van has several DVD player/television sets (all of which don't work), it handles well, and it's probably got a lot of stains inside.

Whenever I stumble on something like this, it reminds me this is exactly why the internet exists. Think, not that long ago in the world, I would have no way to know what kind of vehicle Dallas Cowboys Defensive Coordinator Rob Ryan drives, and is that the kind of world you want to live in?

Surprise! Rich White Guy, Privileged From Birth, Is Apparently An Asshole

One of my favorite Vonnegut quotes (and that's saying a lot, because the man cranks out one liners like an erudite Rodney Dangerfield) goes something like "true terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." I'm especially reminded of it during political campaigns, which typically have even less maturity and decorum than high school student government elections. But in any setting, the point remains that people don't all of sudden grow up and magically become mature and intelligent people. For the most part, the petty bullshit that makes middle school and high school so great for a few people and generally pretty shitty for most people don't ever go away.

Take, for example, the hullabaloo over a recent Washing Post article that revealed, among other things, that Romney once assembled a gang of friends to tackle and cut the hair of a kid they thought was gay. Look, I'm clearly not a Romney defender. His politics and world view are pretty dang far away from mine. And I'm not going to discount how traumatic this event seemed to be John Lauber, the victim of Romney's bullying.

But I'm also pretty surprised at how big of a story this has become for some people. I'm sure part of it is just the bullshit of horserace politics in which each side tries to find even the tiniest defect in the other side to prove they can't be trusted (witness the "Romney was once mean to his dog" vs. "Oh yeah? Obama once ate dog meat" argument that actually happened in the midst of an election full of people who would otherwise appear to be rational, fully-functioning adults).

However, again even though the event in question is pretty shady, I don't think it really tells us anything we don't already know. To begin with, it happened in 1965, so it seems difficult to draw too much in the way of conclusions about someone's character when you're talking about an event that happened nearly 50 years ago.

But the bigger point is that who among us thought Romney held a high opinion of gay people? Or that he wasn't at least kind of an elitist jerk? This is the same man who steadfastly refuses to recognize same-sex couples and has fully embraced the reactionary anti-LGBT policies of the Republican party. This is also a guy who suggests that if you're having a hard time of things, you should borrow $20,000 from your parents so you can start your own company. This is clearly a guy who is not friendly to gay folks and is an out-of-touch rich douchebag.

And that's all that this Post story tells us; something we already clearly knew. And out of the many, many legitimate reasons to dislike and/or not vote for Mitt Romney, the fact that he was once an asshole to some dude he didn't like is probably not the most solid.

Update: Cops Definitely Giving Out Drugs

I wrote a bit last week about the somewhat explosive allegations that police had been picking people up at Peavy Plaza in downtown Minneapolis (where our wing of the occupy movement has set up), giving them drugs (often pushing people into taking them), then bringing them back to Peavy Plaza still clearly under the influence. As I wrote at the time, while it is standard police practice to learn what people under the influence act like, it is far from accepted practice to pull random people off the streets, cajole them into getting high, and then dropping them off in public while still clearly under the influence.

Not too surprisingly, pretty much every law enforcement agency in the state quickly scrambled to say they weren't involved and besides, there's no evidence this was going on, strongly implying it was being made up. But as usually happens in such cases, that lack of evidence soon became plenty of evidence, and the state public safety commissioner has announced the program is being suspended for now and investigations are underway.

There's not a ton more to say at this point (though it will be quite interesting to see what these investigations turn up, although when police investigate themselves, they have a tendency not to find too much), but it's still hard not to be fairly incredulous over the extreme stupidity on display here. It's almost enough to push someone to say we need some police reform around these parts, but I don't want to be overly critical...

I Would Say I'm Going To Do This, But Then I Wouldn't

Here's an interesting/uplifting article about a woman who is going blind and has come up with a list of all the beautiful things in the world she wants to see before she loses the ability to do so.

I've got a lot of respect for people like this, because I feel like it's the kind of thing we all think we would do it that situation. But I know that I, for one, would talk about it a lot but then never actually get around to it. Then I'd be a blind guy who's never seen anything interesting.

It's also a good reminder to live every day to its fullest, live like you're dying, another generic slogan about leading a fulfilling life, etc. Because really, we're all slowly going blind, we just don't have as specific a date attached to it as this person does. And without such a specific notice, most of us tend to go about our daily lives like we'll always be able-bodied people with all the time in the world to do the things we want.

So on that note, I'm going to spend today sitting in a mostly windowless basement working on an outline. Living life to the fullest!

When Is Dealing Drugs Not Illegal?

When it's done by law enforcement. An explosive new video investigation finds members of Minnesota law enforcement (Minneapolis PD deny they're in on it, but we'll see) coming to Peavy Plaza, where our local occupy camp is set up, to pick up demonstrators and offer them drugs. Why are they giving people illegal narcotics? Well, that's where the story gets interesting, because there's some conflicting reports.

Some evidence points to it being part of an on-going study to gain understanding of how people behave under the influence. Some folks report being taken out to suburban Richfield and given weed and other illegal drugs and then having their behavior monitored. While this is in line with sanctioned law enforcement behavior (it helps to know exactly how people on drugs act and/or what they're likely to do), it's not only skirting a moral/legal line in general, but no protocol I've ever seen involves picking up random young people for such studies and then dropping them off in public still very much under the influence. I believe most all official guidelines for such programs involve recruiting adult volunteers and keeping them under supervision until they are well sober again.

And if it just stopped there, we'd have a minor controversy on our hands and good time to discuss when and how law enforcement should be allowed to violate the law to serve a higher (no pun intended) purpose. But of course the story does not stop there.

Instead, several people have reported being offered large amounts of marijuana and other drugs to turn informant, a practice that is definitely not sanctioned by official policy guidelines. Even more problematic is that several people quoted in the story report law enforcement joining in while they toked up their free drugs.

Occupy organizers argue there's an even more insidious angle, as this could definitely be read as a ploy to discredit occupy by making them look like a lot of drugs addicts. As mentioned, it's definitely not protocol (nor legal, frankly) to pick up random people for these studies, and you're definitely not supposed to drop them back in public while still obviously under the influence. Add to this the fact that the still very high people are not being dropped off at their houses or another safe place, but are instead being dropped off at the occupy sight, which again, is definitely well outside of established practice (as well as, of course, being well outside basic logic).

Whether or not this program is an intentional effort to disrupt and discredit occupy, or is instead just some cops acting really, really stupidly, it sure seems like a lot more than a coincidence that they're both recruiting and dropping people off at Peavy Plaza...

Why Can't The American Left Ever Get Anything Done?

It's a question I've argued with many people in my short time on this earth. And while there's obviously a large confluence of factors (many of which the Left can only blame on itself), one that's often ignored is the bloody, violent, and oft-illegal repression of all things left of center. This repression runs the gamut from outright murder and trumped up legal charges, to McCarthy's insane crusade and anti-communist loyalty oaths being required of union members, to simply wiping the works and triumphs of the left out of our collective history (and in the case of public school history books, literally doing so).

One of the more on-the-nose examples of this is Labor Day. While every other nation in the world is celebrating labor day today, we celebrate it in September, because we don't want any association with the leftist recognition of what ironically took place in America. For the real labor day is actually a commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre, an important turning point in the fight for the eight-hour day.

But not only have we in the States moved our observation of labor day lest anyone accidentally learn anything about history, I only learned today that our insane government actually took it one step further. On July 18,  1958, May 1st became officially known as Loyalty Day in the US, a day when we are all to stop and reflect on how loyal we are to the United States government (way ahead of you -- the answer is not much).

So not only do we ignore the important history and symbolism of actual labor day, we've instituted our own "cover your eyes and put your fingers in your ears" day to take its place. And while this doesn't absolve the American left of its many faults, it at least gives a pretty good summation of the context we find ourselves working in.