And if your head explodes with dark forebodings, too

It's often been said that "Sports is human life in microcosm", but sometimes it's a pretty tawdry microcosm. Other times, it's just frickin' bizarre. We'll get to tawdry in a second, but first, the quotable sports story of the day:

The chicken toss has been declared off limits at Kansas State. For years, Kansas State students have smuggled live chickens into basketball games against Kansas, then thrown them onto the court and behind the opposing bench before tip-off mocking their rival's Jayhawk mascot.

Umm, how exactly does one get not one, but several live chickens into a basketball game? These days, many stadiums still check purses, on the chance that Al Qaeda might hate not only our freedom, but also varsity college sports. In what exactly can one keep a chicken hidden and quiet, out of view of security until it is chucked onto the court? This has to rank as one of the mysteries of the universe, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, to the tawdry. The chairman of the N.F.L.’s research committee on concussions, Dr. Elliott Pellman, has resigned. Ok, that's not the tawdry part. It turns out that not only was he caught a few years back seriously padding his resume, and not only is he not a freakin' neurologist, but his "research" for the league seems to contradict virtually all the established medical research on concussions. ESPN published a story on him and the NFL's treatment of concussions a year ago which was truly disturbing:

Since it first published research results in 2003, Pellman's committee has drawn a number of important conclusions about head trauma and how to treat it that contradict the research and experiences of many other doctors who treat sports concussions, not to mention the players who have suffered them. For example, Pellman and his colleagues wrote in January 2005 that returning to play after a concussion "does not involve significant risk of a second injury either in the same game or during the season." But a 2003 NCAA study of 2,905 college football players found just the opposite: Those who have suffered concussions are more susceptible to further head trauma for seven to 10 days after the injury.

Pellman and his group have also stated repeatedly that their work shows "no evidence of worsening injury or chronic cumulative effects of multiple MTBIs in NFL players." But a 2003 report by the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina found a link between multiple concussions and depression among former pro players with histories of concussions. A 2005 follow-up study at the Center showed a connection between concussions and both brain impairment and Alzheimer's disease among retired NFL players.

Just to make it clear, post-concussive syndrome can be incredibly serious. Merrill Hoge, a former player and current sportscaster, described his symptoms:

Five weeks later, he was hammered on a tackle in a game against Buffalo and collapsed on the next down. His vital signs vanished for a few seconds. He spent two days in an intensive-care unit, and was told by neurologists that his eight-year career was over.

For a year, Hoge said, he could not stand bright lights and had dizzy spells. He struggled with arithmetic, and reading was difficult. He also had no sense of direction.

"It's one of the most helpless feelings I ever dealt with," he said. "I would get lost in my own neighborhood."

It can get worse. Andre Waters, a player for the Philadelphia Eagles, committed suicide in November, and the brain damage he incurred during his career is being blamed:

Brain damage caused on the football field ultimately led to the suicide of former NFL defensive back Andre Waters, according to a forensic pathologist who studied Waters' brain tissue.

Bennet Omalu of the University of Pittsburgh told The New York Times that Waters' brain tissue resembled that of an 85-year-old man and that there were characteristics of early stage Alzheimer's. Omalu told the newspaper he believed the damage was related to multiple concussions Waters sustained during his 12-year NFL career with the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals.

Anyway, back to the NFL's concussion committee. Were one to be uncharitable, one could suggest that the committee is blatantly violating their Hippocratic oaths and endangering players for either hidden payoffs or possibly even worse, the continued opportunity to be the medical equivalents of starfuckers. Shockingly enough, their systematic trend is to suggest that athletes being paid millions of dollars maximize the value that teams get out of a contract, even if it endangers their lives and livelihoods once they are no longer team property. I'm not trying to suggest that the people on the committee range from physicians little better than tools because they are working outside their field of expertise to compromised hacks who should actually know better...but I'm not really in the mood to suggest any other alternative, if you get my drift. As for the league, it's important to remember that while fans talk of tradition and good times, owners think of dollars. We see championships, they see dollars. We have heroes, they have profits. There may be an occasional exception (Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks comes to mind), but in general, it's all about the money, and we are their all-too-willing ATM machines, as they pull their clever reverse Robin Hood trick on us.

There would be a larger outcry about this kind of thing, except for the fact that in discussing sports, most men take out their brains, place them gently on a padded surface, and replace their cognitive capacities with a mix of testosterone and bullcrap. We value things like "shaking off a hit" even if that hit has left an athlete with a permanent brain injury. Again from the ESPN piece:

A knee to the back of the head knocked Chrebet stone-cold unconscious a quarter earlier, and now the Jets' team doctor is putting the wideout through a series of mental tests...Then he asks, "Are you okay?" When Chrebet replies, "I'm fine," Pellman sends him back in.

For some sick reason, this kind of behavior is seen as exhibiting "toughness" and "resolve", and is admired and complimented. Forget the fact that Chrebet has a family and decades more to live, of course, since he's a wide receiver and this is a close game! For all that I love watching sports, sports culture often disgusts me, as my anti-Chief diatribes should probably have indicated. I'm still trying to convince myself that athletics can be separated from the culture surrounding them, but I haven't come up with an argument that sounds vaguely plausible as of yet. Thankfully, baseball lacks the violence associated with football, and merely has to deal with the fact that some people estimate that over 80% of all players take either steroids or some form of amphetamines. Joy!

I was just a bookworm on a respirator, who's to say that's wrong?

Tonight, I had a little time to spend in a bookstore, which has always been a favorite activity of mine, as most people out there should either know or be able to guess. As a kid, I used to volunteer for the local library, since I spent so much time there and figured I might as well make myself useful. I'm one of the few people out there who considers books to be a central component of interior decorating. I'm not even kidding that when we looked at our current apartment, I looked at the nook in the hallway, figured it would hold two bookshelves, and mentally signed off on the place (my wife liked the dishwasher). Here's the evidence:



I'll note that the photograph on the wall by the kitchen, which shows a lightning bolt against the night sky, was taken while standing about five or six feet away from my co-blogger, as we both aimed our cameras randomly at the sky clicking the shutter when we thought we sensed lightning on the way. By the way, while I'm at it, here's a picture of the cat, since I haven't posted one in weeks:



Anyway, several thoughts ran through my head at the bookstore. First, bookstores are humbling. I read a lot of books, enough to fill several bookshelves over the past decade, and it doesn't even scratch the surface of the good literature out there, to say nothing of the rest of the stuff they have, from good to dreck. For someone who likes to read everything by an author, it's frustrating, since every time I finish off one, several new guys appear to take their place.

More disconcerting, it struck me even more than it usually does that we really do live in a time where someone in the middle class and above in the developed world literally has the entire sum of human knowledge available to them, and is forced to choose the degree and direction of their ignorance. Every foreign language we don't learn, or basic piece of learning we skip past is by choice. Of course, some people out there are more ignorant than others, but most people are too polite to just come out and say that way too many people are content being ignorant and stupid. I am not such a person, and noting my own incapability with respect to cars and virtually everything related to style, I'll happily endorse the point of view that way too many people are stupid and ignorant. For those that care to challenge this statement, I'll post polling data in the comments about how many Americans recognize people about whom they really should know in order to qualify as a moderately informed citizen.


On a more practical level, I wonder what the future of the book will be. Book technology hasn't really evolved all that much over the past couple of centuries, but that may change soon. Recent developments in electronic ink and electronic paper would seem to have numbered the days of the bound-paper book, but I don't know anyone who really wants to switch over just yet. It's not a matter of storage. iPods now hold 80GB of storage, and The complete works of Shakespeare only take up a little more than 5 MB as text, so you can fit about 15,000 copies inside your e-book if you want to make sure that they are safely backed up. No, it's a matter of the feel of a book, and the convenience, but I can't see that lasting for very long. Imagine, for instance, being able to search for given text in every book you own, something that is rather difficult to do with several bookshelves worth of hardcovers and paperbacks. If we don't transfer over to an electronic book system within a generation, I'll be shocked. Perhaps book publishers will be able to teach their music industry colleagues a lesson: the existence of libraries will make it almost impossible for booksellers to make e-books uncopyable, since people are used to sharing books. Whatever model they devise to remain a viable industry will almost have to be adopted by both the music and film industries, unless the latter beat the publishers to the punch (hint: they won't, because they're really dumb when it comes to this stuff). Hopefully, for fogies like me and the rest of my generation, to say nothing of our parents and theirs, these fancy e-books will still be booklike, since books are nice, tangible symbols of the joy that can be found within literature.

Speaking of books, I would note for anyone out there interested in a little self-betterment, like we discussed above, that virtually every great book that predates the 1920's can be found freely online, either through the Google books program or through Project Gutenberg, which makes the text of a huge number of classic works available to the entire world. Among the many works they have is one that was brought up in comments by my dad, The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Think of it as a cynic's response to the Conservapedia, which just happens to predate it by a full century. Highlights can be found at wikipedia:

Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

education: That which discloses from the wise, and disguises from the foolish, their lack of understanding.

learning: The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

marriage: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

mayonnaise: One of the sauces that serve the French in place of a state religion.

and possibly the most famous, as mentioned by my dad:

religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Those, my friends, are some zingers, if I may say so.

zinger of the day

I'm not a huge fan of Bruce Reed (centrist DLC-type) but he can be funny:

After all, the central animating principle behind conservatism has always been that there is no Plan B. That's President Bush's position on Iraq, and it's quite literally the conservative position on abortion.

Zing!

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, then you might find, you get what you need

Sorry, just a quick post tonight. For anyone who has ever used iTunes, there is an interesting article that was linked to on Slashdot that explains how Apple's Fairplay digital rights management (DRM) software works. Suffice it to say, it is extremely complicated:

During authorization, iTunes creates a globally unique ID number for the computer it is running on, then sends it to Apple's servers, where it is assigned to the user's iTunes account. Five different machines can be authorized.

When a user buys a song from the iTunes Store, a user key is created for the purchased file. The AAC song itself is scrambled using a separate master key, which is then included into the protected AAC song file. The master key is locked using the user key, which is both held by iTunes and also sent to Apple’s servers.

Protected, purchased content is locked within iTunes; songs are not scrambled on Apple's server. This speeds and simplifies the transaction by delegating that work to iTunes on the local computer.

The result is an authorization system that does not require iTunes to verify each song with Apple as it plays. Instead, iTunes maintains a collection of user keys for all the purchased tracks in its library.

To play a protected AAC song, iTunes uses the matching user key to unlock the master key stored within the song file, when is then used to unscramble the song data.

Every time a new track is purchased, a new user key may be created; those keys are all encrypted and stored on the authorized iTunes computer, as well as being copied to Apple's servers.

etc. etc. etc. Some people think it is awful to encumber music with this crap, since it greatly restricts what you can do with it. Thankfully, Apple doesn't really want to protect music so much as make it inconvenient to copy. To get full rights to your music you have to burn it to a CD and then read it back into your computer, and presto, no DRM crap!

Right now, even Steve Jobs is saying that Apple doesn't really like DRM, and the music industry makes them do it. As I've suggested here before, the music labels are certainly idiotic enough to make this statement true, but that doesn't make it so. Either way, the simple fact of the matter is that media companies can try to protect things all they want, but they are no smarter than the hackers out there trying to defeat them, and the hackers have them outnumbered thousands to one, even in the case of Microsoft and the biggies. Actually, I should say especially in the case of Microsoft, since the bigger the target, the more attention it gets.

The real proof of this principle can be found in the multiple layers of encryption used for the high-def DVD formats just coming on the market: Blu-ray and HD-DVD. They use similar content protection systems, known as AACS. Since their release in June of last year, hackers have managed to undo three independent layers of encryption, noting that the means used in each case were similar, to the point that they will likely soon crack the entire system, which is already sufficiently compromised to allow an enterprising user to get around any limits that Media companies tried to place on him or her. Thanks to Wikipedia, knowledge of the cracks is publicly available, and already a source of embarrassment for the media giants, who decided to use the time and date of a disc's creation as the "secret key" that unlocks a disc. Great thinking, guys. All this for a system that some predicted would be unbreakable. in the end, the media companies really just hope that you'll be lazy, and not take the time to learn how to get around their protection. We've obviously passed that point for the majority of computer user's with CDs, and DVDs will follow in the not too distant future. In the end, they'd be wise to find some sort of workable subscription model, basically cutting middlemen like Netflix or CD stores out of the process, and just charging a monthly fee for convenient service. We'll see who is smart enough to do so over the coming years.

Truth twenty-four times a second: 2007 Academy Awards

I'm not sure what the situation is most years, but this year there is precious little suspense for most of the major awards. Helen Mirren won literally every film critics society award for Best Actress, as did Forrest Whitaker for Best Actor, almost (they both won tonight). According to the Hollywood Stock Exchange, Martin Scorcese was a lock for Director going in and going out, as was Jennifer Hudson for Supporting Actress (she won). Alan Arkin for Supporting Actor was a darkhorse winner, though this is the "Jack Palance" category. Apparently, Norbit may have actually killed Eddie Murphy's chances, as many critics guessed. Best film was predicted to be a two-horse race between The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine, with Departed, the favorite, winning.

Overall, I'm a bit disappointed in the best picture nominees. I liked both of the favorites, but neither struck me as best film of the year. I can only hope that Children of Men, Last King of Scotland, The Prestige, or maybe The Queen are better (sure Babel and United 93 may be better as well, but both have been described as being so godawfully depressing that I can't say that I'm in a rush to see either).

Further thoughts: African Americans have previously won 2 Supporting Actress awards (Hattie McDaniel in 1939 for Gone with the Wind, and Whoopi Goldberg in 1990 for Ghost), one for Best Actress (Halle Berry in 2001 for Monster's Ball), four for Supporting Actor (Louis Gossett, Jr. for Officer and a Gentleman in 1982, Denzel Washington for Glory in 1989, Cuba Gooding Jr. for Jerry Maguire in 1996, Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar baby in 2004), and three for Best Actor before tonight (Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field in 1963, Denzel for Training Day in 2001, and Jamie Foxx for Ray in 2004). Tonight's two awards add to that total by 20%, and make the third time in six years that Black actors and actresses received multiple awards in a given year, but the first time it happened when the host wasn't black (Whoopi for 2001, Chris Rock for 2004).

Overall, the quality of films this year was good, but concentrated amongst Foreign films and to a lesser extent independent films. This is something of a pattern. Of the IMDB top 100 rated films, 18 have been made since 2000. Three are Lord of The Rings, 5 are foreign (City of God, which was simply amazing, highest among them, and the only non-LotR film since 2000 in the top 20). That leaves ten from America in the past 7 years: Memento (deserves it), Eternal Sunshine (?!?!?), The Pianist (haven't seen it, but seems legit), Requiem for a dream (good, but should be lower), Hotel Rwanda (haven't seen it, seems right), Sin City (?!?), The Departed (good, but should be lower), Million Dollar Baby (haven't seen it), Batman Begins (?!?!?!), and Kill Bill 1 (?!?). Brokeback Mountain should have made that list, but overall, I can't say it reflects all that well on the Hollywood system, nor to a lesser extent on IMDB (Eternal Sunshine as #39, Sin City as the 68th best movie ever, and Batman Begins at #90. Seriously, WTF?). Given the budgets out there, I'd expect more from the studios. I'll note that there is a systematic bias at play: IMDB penalizes the overall ratings of movies with less than 25,000 votes, so independent films don't rank as highly as they would otherwise. Little Miss Sunshine loses 100 spots under this system from #110 to #202, for instance. Still the pattern seems to be cyclical, as the Top 20 heavily favors the 1950's (Seven Samurai, Rear Window, Twelve Angry men), the 1970's (Godfathers 1 and 2, Cucckoo's Nest, Star Wars), and 90's (Shawshank, Schindler, Pulp fiction, Usual Suspects, Goodfellas). Hopefully, around 2010, Hollywood will rebound, or maybe modern technology will finally make the studio system obsolete.

daydreamin'

OK, so I've been bad about posting, not that Jfaber has left us with nothing to read.

First, let me introduce the Rooted Cosmopolitans charity of the month: Medicins Sans Frontières. You've probably heard of them, but to summarize: if there is a group of saints on this here earth, they are it. These doctors are about the only people providing medical care in war zones, like Darfur, Chechnya, and Afghanistan, sometimes getting kidnapped or killed for their troubles. They also do work in disaster areas and other areas of need. It's hard to fathom the dedication of these folks to others, so the least we can do is contribute a small portion of our bourgeois spoils to their efforts.

Second, I want to share a song by a great young rapper Lupe Fiasco, who had an acclaimed album last year, which I of course missed. But here he is with the incomparable Jill Scott, and I can't get this song out of my head:

and now there's just no denying that you're an a$$hole...

So, we have a new national treasure on our hands. Conservatives, fed up with the "Neutral Point of View" policy of Wikipedia, decided to set up "Conservapedia", because let's face it, in the immortal words of Stephen Colbert, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias".

Why Conservapedia, you ask? I'll let them tell you:

On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance. Read a list of many Examples of Bias in Wikipedia.

Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America.

Yes, a set of facts that explicitly favors one religion and one country...not that that should introduce some serious cognitive dissonance. From their more detailed list of complaints:

9. Edits to include facts against the theory of evolution are almost immediately censored. [ed. note: That's because there are no "facts' that contradict evolution, and you, Conservapedia's founders, are flippin' wingnut idiots!]

13. Often key facts are missing from Wikipedia entries in favor of meaningless detail. Wikipedia's entry about Indentured Servitude is massive, but it omits any reference to Bacon's Rebellion, which was the turning point for the use of indentured servants in the New World! [ed. note: Then add it, dumbass! By design, anyone can do so! ]

18. Wikipedia's article on Feudalism is limited to feudalism in Europe and does not mention the feudal systems that developed independently in Japan and India. [ed. note. And your point is....what, exactly?!?!]

Of course, there is an obvious problem with this approach: anyone can edit pages. If you restrict only to members, you don't get enough content generated. Thus, liberals have been having a field day, and some Conservatives make things easier by being nuts themselves. Here are some amusing entries:

1984: "1984 was a book by George Orwell. 1984 describes an alternate history in which Oceania (Australia) is at war with Eurasia. It is a utopian book because it talks about a place where everyone is watched over by Big Brother, who makes sure people are doing what they are supposed to.

The protagonist is Winston Smith. There is something about rats at the end, but it is confusing. The end is probably supposed to be ambiguous. " (since changed, but that was fantastic!)

Islam: "Because Islam is an uncomplicated religion to live by, it is sure to continue in its popularity around the world." I like how this is now a verifiable fact.

Crusades: "It seems that the Christian armies lost sight of our goals to bring and spread love and Christianity along the way, got drunk with power and glory and decided to pillage towns and murder people (note that this is breaking many commandments “thou shalt not murder.” “thou shalt not steal”)

The Crusades went against our Christian teachings and the words of Christ, “love thy neighbor as thyself” “turn the other cheek” etc. " Umm, "our goals" and "our teachings". Again, I'll remind you, this is an encyclopedia.

Seriously, thank the Lord for wingnuts. As evidenced by Fox's attempt to emulate the Daily Show, they may not be funny when they try, but they certainly are most other times....

Friday Concert Clip/Theatre Discussion

For those who noticed that the song "Jet Airliner" appeared as Tuesday's post title, but that I listed "Paul Pena" in the tags rather than the Steve Miller Band, well...I actually doubt anyone noticed, and that is a shame. Paul Pena was, until his recent death, one of the most unique musicians in the world, and I say that without any sense of exaggeration. Blind since birth, he became famous for writing "Jet Airliner" and any number of other songs (apparently, some people have covered "Gonna Move" on American Idol). Blind blues musicians, however, are something of a famous subcategory, so that could hardly be called unique. No, the unique part is that after hearing Tuvan throatsinging on a shortwave radio, he taught himself to sing that way without any formal training. The result can be seen in this clip. Wait for the 1:23 and 1:53 marks for the reason his nickname is "Earthquake". The story of his journey to Central Asia was captured in the documentary film Genghis Blues, and the film's soundtrack is mindblowing. The most impressive song on the album, and perhaps the most original blues song I've ever heard, is the song that won an award at the throatsinging competition featured int he movie, "Kargyraa Moan", and it can be found at this blog. Stop what you are doing and go listen to it. I can wait, and you'll be a better person for it. Seriously, click the link now.

Tonight, my wife and I went to the local community college for an evening of locally written one-act plays. In many places, this would be painful, but we happen to be in a college town with several active theatre departments and theatre companies, so the quality was surprisingly good. While not perfect, it's still a neat experience to catch local theatre, especially since you never know quite what you'll get, unlike just about every Hollywood movie out there. She was surprised to find that we both liked the two dramas more than the one comedy, but we figured out that this makes a lot of sense. Writing plays must be an immensely difficult task. For one thing, the length works against you; a good short story is often harder to achieve than a good novel, since you have less room with which to work. In some inadequate amount of time, you have to introduce characters, invest the audience's sympathies or distaste into them, and then make up enough plot to keep people interested but still allow for some kind of catharsis or conclusion. That's a big task for a 15-page short story (or even an 80-page novella), and is even harder to put on stage, where the dialogue has to carry the action rather than the descriptive passages. In these settings, comedy is especially tough. Comedy generally works if it's very smart or very dumb, but can fall very flat anywhere in between. The dumb stuff works well on film, but requires a great deal of physical effort from a cast, usually more than a local theatre can be expected to pull off given limited resources. Smart comedy, on the other hand, can be just as tough. Some of the jokes in tonight's one-act were pretty sharp, others a bit less edgy, so the final product was good but not great. It had potential, sure, but there are very few new jokes under the sun, and it didn't really find many. Dramas allow for a bit more leeway, since they can be funny, melodramatic, or philosophical in parts, and it just adds to their breadth. The risk always seems to be that after a good opening, it is hard to keep the level up throughout the middle, and then end strong. The first play we saw managed the former but came up short on the latter, whereas the second got a little overcooked in the middle but saved itself with a good ending.

All in all, though, it was a lot of fun. Local productions may lack the funds needed to design elaborate sets and lighting setups, but the play's the thing, not the background. So long as the people speaking the lines are competent, and many, many people in this town greatly exceed that threshold, you don't really lose out seeing something nearby instead of off-broadway, and you can save some serious dough. Of the plays we've seen, several have been very good (Copenhagen, a three-person all-dialogue drama about physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr at the beginning of WWII, was excellent), and the ones that fell flat typically did so more from failings of the playwright than of the cast. Musicals are a bit more hit and miss, since strong singers seem to be rarer than good actors. If there were more great singers, after all, American Idol would never be able to weed down all their applicants. I do have to recommend Urinetown, which we caught at the community college last fall, to anyone who gets the chance to see it. It had to be difficult getting the backing to produce a musical about urination and the economic theories of Malthus, but they managed it, and it's becoming something of a community musical theatre favorite apparently. The best thing about local theatre may be the fact that of all the forms of popular entertainment out there, it supports the best group of people. I pretty much figure the money i spend on movies and CDs goes directly to Big Media, and even new books come out of large publishing houses. Professional sports teams are some of the most odious forces in the world when they blackmail local governments, getting tax breaks left and right that would be better spent anywhere on public services rather than modern day bread and circuses. Local theatre supports...educational institutions, the local arts and culture scene, and even the actors themselves. There is literally no down side. As for tonight, all the people who put on tonight's show can take a bow, they did some very nice work indeed.

Tyranny-oh it comes in many shapes and sizes...Tyranny-but when it comes, it comes with no surprises

There are people, maybe even you
Who think opinion polls equals democracy
'Round here the grownups talk of should or should we not
Meanwhile the kids, they know we're going to war...

Dan Bern, "Tyranny" from My Country II

Tonight brings news from Congress on Iraq, both good and bad, though I still suspect that a scary number of the Democrats have their head stuck up where the sun don't shine. Republicans, frankly, aren't worth discussing at the moment, having abandoned reality a while back. The best idea I had heard from in a while for dealing with the Iraq disaster came from Jack Murtha, who decided that it might be best to actually require that our troops be ready before they go back to Iraq for future rotations. In case you missed it, it went something like this:

He's [Murtha was] proposing a law that bars the President from sending troops in Iraq back to the war zone until they have spent one year being retrained at their home base. It forbids troops from being kept in Iraq longer than the one year tour they were promised and prohibits any troops from going to the war zone until they are fully trained and have the proper equipment.

Sounds like a pretty good idea for a bill, especially in the House, where we have a majority and majorities can force through whatever they like. The plan was fiendishly clever in a way. When it got to the Senate, the Republicans would certainly try to filibuster, but the military needs a supplementary appropriations bill because Bush has spent the past few years cooking the books by not including the costs of the war. Thus, Republicans are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Block the bill, and they block the funding for the troops because they refuse to mandate that the troops are adequately prepared. Vote for the resolution and they get wedged away from their base. It was beautiful, but sadly too beautiful for this world. Even though something like 60% of Americans or so have turned against the war, Democratic moderates seem not to have quite come around (again, no need to mention Republicans, who still haven't realized the inevitable result of drinking the kool-aid). From Friday's Washington Post:

House Democrats have pulled back from efforts to link additional funding for the war to strict troop-readiness standards after the proposal came under withering fire from Republicans and from their party's own moderates. That strategy was championed by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
...
But that approach may be all but dead, according to several Democratic lawmakers. Murtha doomed his own plan in part by unveiling it on a left-wing Web site, inflaming party moderates.

"Congress has no business micromanaging a war, cutting off funding or even conditioning those funds," said Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.), a leading Democratic moderate, who called Murtha's whole effort "clumsy."

Seriously, it's hard to resist the urge to tell the Congressman that he should consider performing an unspeakable act upon himself. Who gives a flying monkey crap where Murtha unveiled the plan? If it's a good idea, then fight for it, and keep fighting for it. There is a time for process, and a time for action, and way too many people in Washington have absolutely no idea how to distinguish the two. A hint: when people are dying, try action, not process. When naming a building or declaring National Brotherhood Week, process is swell. Congress has every business in determining how funds are used, because they're frickin' Congress, capital-C, one of our three co-equal branches of government. It's just not that hard, especially given that the war is deeply unpopular and getting more so.

Shockingly enough, according to the WaPo it's the Senate that may take the lead on this one:

Senate Democratic leaders intend to unveil a plan next week to repeal the 2002 resolution authorizing the war in Iraq in favor of narrower authority that restricts the military's role and begins withdrawals of combat troops.
...
"We gave the president that power to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and, if necessary, to depose Saddam Hussein," Biden said of the 2002 resolution in a speech last week before the Brookings Institution. "The WMD was not there. Saddam Hussein is no longer there. The 2002 authorization is no longer relevant to the situation in Iraq."
...
The new framework would set a goal for withdrawing combat brigades by March 31, 2008, the same timetable established by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Once the combat phase ends, troops would be restricted to assisting Iraqis with training, border security and counterterrorism.

Seriously, Hell Yes! This war was a Republican creation from the beginning, and it's time to hang it around their necks for good. If they choose to block it, so be it, but it will crush their election hopes in 2008, having to explain why we've been for war for 5 years in Iraq and SEVEN in Afghanistan, without signs of things improving, all of our former allies having basically deserted us. This past week, Britain announced that they were pulling troops from Iraq, and no one, and I mean no one, believed it when the administration tried to claim it was a "affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well", to quote the Veep. By now all of realize exactly what happened: the British have no control whatsoever over Basra, and saw no need to continue getting their ass handed to them, deciding that since their troops are desperately needed in Afghanistan, where they can still do some good, they needed to redeploy them.

I have to admit, the people running the show have actually done a pretty good job so far, but this is the time to start hammering away, for the good of the nation and the good of the Democratic party. Courage!

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth

A quick funny story, and then some follow-ups.

The SETI Program is simultaneously one of the great undertakings of mankind, and likely a waste of time. It is a project that virtually every astronomer is glad to see in existence, but happy not too work on. SETI, the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence, is the program that worked in the book and movie versions of Carl Sagan's Contact, but has yet to produce any real results in reality...until now!

It's not quite what you'd expect. You see, the most visionary component of the current SETI initiative is Seti@Home, whereby they take their data at large radio telescopes, but ship it off to millions of people's desktop PC's to crunch their numbers and report back. It was the first of these programs which are now also used for Protein Folding, cryptography, and any number of other projects. According to an AP story that got posted to Slashdot:

One volunteer, James Melin, a software programmer for a county government agency in Minnesota, runs SETI(at)home on his seven home computers, which periodically check in with University of California servers. Whenever that happens, the servers record the remote computer's Internet Protocol address and file it in a database that people running the SETI software can view.

One of the computers on which Melin installed SETI(at)home is his wife's laptop, which was stolen from the couple's Minneapolis home Jan. 1.

Annoyed and alarmed that someone could delete the screenplays and novels that his wife, Melinda Kimberly, was writing Melin monitored the SETI(at)home database to see if the stolen laptop would "talk" to the Berkeley servers. Indeed, the laptop checked in three times within a week, and Melin sent the IP addresses to the Minneapolis Police Department.
...
Kimberly's writings were safe, and the thieves didn't appear to have broken into her e-mail or other personal folders. But the returned computer contained 20 tracks of rap music with unintelligible lyrics, possibly from the person who stole the computer or bought it on the underground.

"It's really, really horrid rap," Melin said. "It makes Ludacris look like Pavarotti."

Kimberly was more enamored with Melin's detective work.

"I always knew that a geek would make a great husband," she said.

I wholeheartedly agree with that final sentiment. Remember: Seti@Home -- It's like Lojack for your computer.

To update some previous posts, the problems at Walter Reed are now being addressed, since a public s#!tstorm is the one thing that can actually bring about action in Washington. According to the daily update in The Washington Post:

Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, used terminology similar to that of a military campaign to describe his plan to overhaul the broken building, including giving it a more "appropriate" name, and the sluggish bureaucracy for outpatient care.

"We own that building, and we're going to take charge of it," Cody said at the Pentagon. "The senior Army leadership takes full responsibility for the lack of quality of life at Building 18, and we're going to fix it."

Cody blamed "a breakdown in leadership" for the troubling conditions but said no one has been fired or relieved of command. He did point to lower-ranking officers and noncommissioned officers lacking "the right experience and the authority to be able to execute some of the missions."

As i remember, based on the past few decades, or maybe even past few centuries, the proper adjective for those who claim to take responsibility for something, refuse to hold anyone accountable, and then pass the buck by blaming nameless inferiors in the organization is "presidential". I should note that the US Army had some warning about potential problems, as Salon published a story about mistreatment of vets with brain injuries TWO YEARS AGO, and again last year!

Speaking about being ahead of the times, or in this case ahead of the NY Times, the video of the Amy Winehouse song "Rehab" that dkon posted on December 28 of last year just hit one of the new blogs at the Grey Lady, as a prescient commentary on the sad tale of Britney Spears from across the pond (though I would note that the misadventures of Pete Doherty and Kate Moss might be more apropos).

Finally, our local basketball team. As I suggested after considering the immensely obvious details, the player who was released from the team after crashing his car into a tree and nearly killing a teammate has been charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident. He was at the game we played tonight, laughing it up with teammates, which frankly disgusts me. I'm not suggesting that he is the worst human being on the planet, but he nearly killed a teammate, and then left him in the car while he went off to do God only knows what (it's been suggested that he tried to mask the fact that he was driving drunk). WTF is he doing joking it up with teammates? Innocent until proven guilty, but keep him the hell away from the team and the limelight. While we're at it, not to be racist, but the car he crashed was his grandparents' Lexus...yes, a Lexus. Either his family is more wealthy than I would have suspected, or the University might want to pay its players a bit less conspicuously, lest we get hit with NCAA sanctions.

Racism at UIUC was symbolized by Chief Illiniwek, but as promised, tonight was the last time that a white dude wearing traditional Sioux garb did a dance inspired third-hand by Plains Indian tribal dances to honor the tribes of Illinois who were driven out of the state in the face of the Western Expansion of other tribes being forced out of their traditional lands by colonial genocide. On ESPN, they just showed some girl with "Chief" painted on her forehead bawling uncontrollably at the site of our team mascot's final performance. Seriously, WTF? 100 Americans are killed in Iraq every month, to say nothing of thousands upon thousands of Iraqis. People all over the world are suffering. People all over the USA are suffering...and you are moved to copious tears because our racist mascot no longer gets to perform at halftime. If nothing else can explain why I hold many people in horribly low regard, this is it. Crying, bitching, moaning, and whining over the loss of a mascot is utterly pathetic, just pathetic. Grow the hell up, and stop embarrassing yourself, the university, and all of the people out there who can recognize plain old-fashioned idiocy when they see it. Jesus H. Christ, people annoy the crap out of me sometimes.

Big ol jet airliner, don't carry me too far away, Big ol' jet airliner, 'cause it's here that I've got to stay

Having flown a great deal ever since moving to the Midwest, I think I can say with some degree of authority that the experience has gotten significantly more unpleasant since 9/11 for an obvious reason. No, not terrorism, if that was what you were thinking. Sure, security lines are occasionally a hassle, especially when airports reconfigure them and they back up, but I've still never had to wait more than an hour in line, and never came close to missing a flight. Most of the mishegas you find in a security line does nothing to actually protect your security, but it doesn't harm it either, so it's basically a wash. One tip: when lines are long, it's great to be flagged for a personal screening, since it jumps you right around the backup, for the cost of getting lightly felt up by a guard who will react extremely well to a passenger who acts politely and calls him sir.

No, the problem for the airline industry is the high cost of gasoline ever since the US used 9/11 to attack Iraq like they wanted to do long before Bush was inaugurated. This isn't mere conspiracy talk, it was the stated plan of the Project for the New American Century, from whose ranks came Richard Armitage, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Their little war has caused oil prices to double since 2003 , killing the airlines' profits and allowing them to basically screw over their customers without restriction. Only Southwest and Alaska Airlines, who bought fuel futures at a ridiculously low price, managed to escape this trap and stay profitable among domestic carriers.

Remember American Airlines "More room in coach" policy...they abandoned it in 2005. During our recent trip to Seattle, a four hour flight, we were offered the opportunity to buy a vastly overpriced snack box, but saw no trace of a free snack, not even a stupid little bag of pretzels. Airlines almost seem to be going out of their way to nickel and dime you, but to be fair, it can get much, much worse.

As many of us have discovered, including some readers of this blog, the entire US Airline flight system shuts down lately the second there is a storm anywhere. My wife planned to visit family over Christmas, but the same storm that kept Alexis in Denver somehow kept a commuter flight from flying from Chicago to Champaign, even though both cities had clear skies and unseasonably warm temperatures. I remember a few years back the fun debates we had with United ticket agents at O'Hare when they tried to argue we were staying overnight in the airport because of weather delays, and we explained that it really had much more to do with their pilots refusing overtime. Thankfully, dad is a lawyer, so the Airlines ended up paying later, if i recall correctly, which is pretty much the standard result you find when dealing with a lawyer about anything.

Of course, these musings are prompted by the recent cancellation of over a quarter of Jet Blue's flights for an entire week, because of a single snowstorm that socked NYC. In the most extreme case, the nice but hopelessly incompetent people manning the airline left passengers on a plane for ten hours without food or water for everyone, and at some point the lavatories backed up. Joy. This has prompted calls for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights. Jet Blue themselves instituted a version of this today, but suffice it to say that no one really trusts them. Airlines voluntarily committed to one of these plans back in 1999, after Northwest pulled the same trick, and look how well that's proven to work since. While actual legislation was blocked that time, it is looking increasingly possible that it may happen this time around. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer has already started drafting a bill, designed so that passengers will never have to sit for more than three hours on the tarmac before being returned to the gate. This doesn't really happen all that often, but it's the extreme cases that demand the most serious regulation.

Of course some groups are already spreading hysteria about how this will doom the industry, as they always do:

But many people within the travel industry are opposed to such a bill. And Professor Gritta himself has mixed feelings about it – primarily because he's not sure the federal government can legislate customer service. He's also concerned that a new set of federal requirements could hamper the airline industry's still precarious financial recovery.

Others in the industry are more adamantly opposed. Kevin Mitchell, president of the Business Travel Coalition in Radnor, Pa., contends a passenger bill of rights could end up creating an entire slew of unintended consequences, such as more passenger inconvenience as well as higher prices.

For instance, one reason that airlines and pilots choose to sit on the tarmac is that if they go back to the gate, they lose their slot in the takeoff line. That could add even more hours of delay to a trip.

"Say a thunderstorm gridlocked O'Hare Airport for three hours and all planes were required to go back to the gate after three hours," says Mr. Mitchell. "It would be a catastrophe for a week [because of various FAA and crew regulations]. And so as well- intentioned as it may be, if you tie the hand of these airport managers and airlines, you're going to get more delays."

Let's take these in order, noting that they are rare occurrences. "You can't legislate customer service"...ummm, yes you can, if you happen to be Congress. It's part of the whole "Interstate Commerce" thing granted them in the Constitution. Think of it like the 40-hour work week and the minimum wage. People said they shouldn't legislate those, either.

"Hamper the recovery": How and why their costs allow them to trap you on a plane for TEN HOURS is beyond me. Since it affects all airlines equally, it's unclear why it hurts any specific airline. If some can't actually make that guarantee, than perhaps they shouldn't be flying in the first place. "unintended consequences" If these arise, then you can amend the stupid law! in the scenario described, you mandate that planes that got held up get priority over the other ones. It's just not that frickin hard. Planes don't take so long to taxi out to the runway, and we have computers that do this kind of scheduling task really, really well. Let's let them try.

In an interview on NPR today, Senator Boxer made a very good point. Since 9/11, airline passengers have been stripped of just about any right to complain about anything while on board a flight. Passengers have very few rights whatsoever with regard to any instruction from the crew. If the airlines refuse to implement policies to protect their interests, than it is the proper role of Congress to step in and take over. Remember, we've heard all of these arguments before. We'll take an example from the auto industry, since I think (ok, I hope) that it may prove to be prescient for the matter at hand. From Off the Kuff:

Generally speaking, the first thing you should do is disregard every gloom-and-doom statement that will emanate from an auto industry flack. These guys have bitched and moaned about every regulation imposed on them since the dawn of time. They fought against seat belts, they fought against air bags, they fought against fuel efficiency standards, and when they lost those fights they turned around and made the features they were forced to add selling points. The whole thing is a big heaping pile of FUD [ed. note: FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt], and should be taken as such. Once we're all straight on that, we can have the real debate.

The band played Waltzing Matilda, as they carried us down the gangway;But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared, then turned all their faces away

A few items for tonight. First of all, you may notice that the Rooted Cosmopolitans Charity of the Month, located in the upper right, has changed. Dkon has suggested Doctors Without Borders for this month's charity, a wise choice indeed given their selfless mission and excellent efficiency in using your dollars for their intended results, not overhead. I'll let him say more about them, but they get $25 tonight from the other half of Rooted Cosmopolitans team.



Speaking of doctors, the Washington Post published a two part series this weekend about the horrid treatment of wounded US Veterans being treated as outpatients at Walter Reed Medical Center. Dana Priest, who broke the warrantless wiretapping story, and Anne Hull, wrote in part one of the series:

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It actually gets worse from there for several of the patients. In essence, while immediate medical care for veterans is outstanding, once they leave the hospital they are frequently caught in a Kafkaesque web of bureaucracy and confusion, left to fend for themselves even when suffering from debilitating injuries and psychological issues. It's become trite to say that we support the troops even when we don't support the war, but apparently the Republican leadership that controlled the purse strings for this operation believed in the exact opposite of that philosophy. Part two, which appeared yesterday, continued the story:

Some soldiers and Marines have been here for 18 months or longer. Doctor's appointments and evaluations are routinely dragged out and difficult to get. A board of physicians must review hundreds of pages of medical records to determine whether a soldier is fit to return to duty. If not, the Physical Evaluation Board must decide whether to assign a rating for disability compensation. For many, this is the start of a new and bitter battle.

Months roll by and life becomes a blue-and-gold hotel room where the bathroom mirror shows the naked disfigurement of war's ravages. There are toys in the lobby of Mologne House because children live here. Domestic disputes occur because wives or girlfriends have moved here. Financial tensions are palpable. After her husband's traumatic injury insurance policy came in, one wife cleared out with the money. Older National Guard members worry about the jobs they can no longer perform back home.

While Mologne House has a full bar, there is not one counselor or psychologist assigned there to assist soldiers and families in crisis -- an idea proposed by Walter Reed social workers but rejected by the military command that runs the post.

in response to the story, the military finally got off their butt and went into a full scale CYA operation (that's Cover your Ass, in case you were wondering). That's our military planning for you, screwing up the aftermath to make the failures of the battle itself seem so much more to scale.

Walter Reed and Army officials have been "meeting continuously for three days" since the articles began appearing, Weightman said. A large roundtable meeting with Army and Defense Department officials will take place at the Pentagon early this morning to continue talks about improvements in the outpatient system, he added.

Weightman said the medical center has received an outpouring of concern about conditions and procedures since the articles appeared and has taken steps to improve what soldiers and their families describe as a messy battlefield of bureaucratic problems and mistreatment.

"We're starting to attack how we'll fix and mitigate" some of the problems, he said.

Gee, good of them to only wait Five Frickin' Years !?!

To honor those who actually work their guts out for our soldiers after they return home wounded, another $25 will be going to The Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust, another charity given 4 stars at Charitynavigator.org. It's sad that the government can't even handle basic matters like these, but hardly surprising. So, if you happen to be reading this, and perhaps even served time in the military yourself, maybe in the Air Force, consider giving a donation and dropping a line in the comments.

I laid down my weapon, laid down my bow, Now you want to drive me out with no place left to go

It's been an eventful week or two for the sports teams here at UIUC. First, several news agencies basically ran the University's denials of the charges made by both Michigan State's former coach and people at Notre Dame that we are illegally recruiting football players. From the original NYTimes story, no longer available online, a quote from UIUC's athletic director:

Guenther also said he and Illinois coaches were convinced that another university's coaching staff had leaked unflattering personal information about recruits to a Web site. He would not name the Web site or the university, other than to say it was not a Big Ten program.

For non-sports fans, that is particularly unsubtle code for Notre Dame.


Next, two of our basketball players were involved in a car accident near campus, where it seems that the driver left the scene, and then left his passenger in the car even though he had a severe enough concussion that he was admitted to the hospital in critical condition. Shockingly, the driver has been released from the team, so that "he can focus all of his attention on the physical, emotional, academic and other related issues he will face in the coming weeks", according to a university statement. You may properly interpret this to mean "deal with numerous legal problems, likely because his blood tests from the night in question will not come back clean".

Still, with all these distractions, the big news is that the University is ditching its mascot, Chief Illiniwek, in response to pressure by the NCAA banning UIUC from hosting post-season tournaments in any sport. The two students who play the Chief at games have sued the school on freedom of speech grounds, but will likely be laughed out of the first court not presided over by an Illini fan, wherever that may be. For goodness sakes, no one has a "right" to dance at halftime for a university, it is a privilege they grant that can be taken away at any time. They own the floor after all. As to the NCAA, they are allowed to control how many sports-based scholarships a school can offer for various teams, and fine coaches for criticizing referees. Needless to say, in the grand scheme of things, the number of scholarships determines how many players get to pretend to get an education, whereas a mascot is a trivial symbol. Besides that, freedom of speech grounds have no power against the NCAA, since they are not a public institution, and thus immune from first amendment challenges last time I checked. Remember, kids, the first amendment applies to laws passed by Congress, and through supreme court verdicts to the other branches of the federal government and later the states as well. Beyond the issue of rights, of course, is the issue of what is right. Even if the students had an inalienable right to dress up like an oppressed minority and dance around during halftime ( a right thankfully not granted in the Constitution by the founding fathers), it doesn't mean they should. A great deal of life is spent having the right to do something but the wisdom not to. Someday, the locals might better appreciate this.

It's important to remember why Native American mascots cause such a problem in the first place. We may like to speak of Native Americans like we do soldiers, as caricatured bold, noble warriors, or as environmental heroes living in balance with the land, but up until the previous century we as Americans spent most of our time committing genocide against them, signing and violating treaties while forcing them inevitably westward toward the least hospitable land the USA has to offer. One of the first acts of biological warfare in history, after all, was giving blankets infected by smallpox patients to Native Americans. Against this backdrop, it is unspeakably insensitive for Caucasians to then dress up like them, in part because there aren't enough Native American students at the university to form a constituency with any power on campus. Imagine Germans deciding to dress up like Orthodox Jews and dance the hora, all while complimenting our dedication to education. Simply put, it wouldn't go over very well. The dominant group in any society is limited in the ways that it can portray others: thus blackface and various immigrant impressions are frowned upon as being hurtful. The view from above is different than the view from below, and angry white people would be well served to remember this fact. It sucks to have one's speech constrained by societal pressures, and we have to live with the fact that while blacks, Hispanics, and in this case Native Americans can mock Caucasians, we will be favored in education, hiring, access to institutions of power, ease of getting loans, favorable treatment by legal authorities, and all the other perks of white skin. Note that this is what makes complaints about nicknames like "Fighting Irish" null and void: the name was given to the team by actual Irish people. As for cultures that are no longer extant (Vikings, Spartans, Trojans), it's enough to note that they weren't the victims of genocide, and left us too early to interact with anyone from the USA.

What makes this issue something of a sick joke is that there is virtually no benefit to the Illini name for Native American students, even though it could easily provide a teachable moment. Students on campus, and the various alums and hangers on, don't know jack squat about the Native American population of the region. If they've heard of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, or Cahokia, it's only through the names of some of the local geography. If they "honor" Native Americans, it's not from having taken the trouble to meet them; rather it has to do with venerating some cartoonish notion of tall gentlemen with well-tanned skins wearing leather and feathers saying "How". Needless to say, it doesn't involve educating themselves about Native American culture, religion, or history. It doesn't involve learning about the present day plight of the NA community. It doesn't even involve the simple step of going to a powwow, even though one is held in June in nearby Taylorville. Basically, the University pretends to care about NA traditions, the fans speak in platitudes, and everyone gets to feel good about the fact that they are very socially conscious racists. I don't think UIUC is particularly unique in this respect. If anything, we are hurt by the fact that the Illini were driven out of the state hundreds of years ago by the Iroquois and other tribes, and thus the university lacks any recognized group to which they can pay what amounts to blood money as political cover. I can't blame tribes lucky enough to hook up with a local university if they get something from it, but in a perfect world every university would put forth more effort to treat the local NA population decently, not just schools known as Chippewas (Central Michigan), Seminoles (Florida State), or some other tribal name.

I have to say the opinions on this topic shock me sometimes. The Chicago Tribune, hardly a bastion of liberalism, supported ditching the chief, even though they weasel-worded their way through their editorial. John Aravosis of Americablog, famous for liberal gay-rights activism, came out pro-Chief, much to the consternation of most of his readers. The latter is an interesting case: as a gay activist, he is rightfully worried that the anti-PC backlash inspired by removing the Chief will ricochet back on all minorities, including his own cause. Still, his argument seems dead wrong in my eyes:

The NCAA, and others, just killed a perfectly respectful tradition that actually reminded Illinoisans of their heritage and made us proud in our school and our state (and frankly, reminded us of our state's native American past, something that is going to be remembered less now as a result of this action). Our mascot was killed because of the caricature that others ascribed to it, not because of the caricature it was - which it was not.

The tradition was hardly "respectful", in that the veneration for the chief was respect for a caricature, not actual Native Americans, about whom the fans know nothing. The "reminder of our past" is frequently invoked but so much bullcrap, since the Chief invokes halftime more than heritage, and most people are too busy cheering along to really ponder any bigger issue than whether to purchase nachos or a pretzel after their upcoming trip to the can. The mascot, furthermore, is a caricature, a white dude dancing like some other white dude's interpretation of some other white dude's somewhat informed idea of Native American dancing. If they wanted it to be serious, they should choose someone who knew what they were doing, like an actual Native American raised in the traditions of fancy dancing.

Aravosis is also angry that the Sioux tribe, who provided some of the Illini regalia, wants it back. For one thing, this should show how hollow the claims of honoring the Illini are. It's like honoring Jews by using elements of Moroccan culture. They are in the same region, after all, but totally different nations of people. Moreover, if the current generation thinks the representation is hurtful, then it is, because they are the ones being hurt, not him. They get to make this call. At the moment, the local NA groups are anti-Chief, and their opinion is the one that persuaded the NCAA and the only one that matters. My guess is that in a generation's time, this will look only slightly less offensive than another local team, the Pekin Chinks, who finally changed their name in 1981, dumping their coolie attired mascot in the process, over much howling from the locals.

In the end, all the people who will "mourn" the loss of the Chief, frankly, are idiots. Mourn lives lost in war, mourn your lost opportunities in life, mourn for those who suffer in this world. Don't mourn for a frickin' sports mascot! Mascots are symbols in the grand scheme, emblematic of something but devoid of substantive meaning, unlike the people who are being offended by having their culture trivialized, which serves to trivialize them as well. Sure, I'm sure many people have happy memories of the Chief, but guess what? They get to keep those memories until death or senility! No PC liberals will be taking those away any time soon, so what exactly are they mourning? If it's the fact that their kids won't get to see a white dude pretend to be a Native American, have no fear, it's already in numerous places on youtube and other video sites (no link will be provided). No, it's not even that noble. They are mourning the loss of a connection to their childhood, because they are too frickin immature to grow up and be an adult. It's like losing one's blankie or bottle; it sucks, but you move on. I hated giving up my bottle when the time came, but I was 3, and transitions are tough at that age. Adults should know better. If people want to relive their childhoods because it makes them happy and harms no one else, more power to them. If it harms someone else, though, or interferes with them leading a batter life, then it really is an impediment that they need to work past. Sports are fun, a way to experience a community and bond with other people, but they are an abstraction whose influence over day to day life should generally be a bit limited. if you put sports in front of your interactions with family or close friends, then you really are a crappy excuse for a human being, no two ways about it. They are fun, but at some level they just aren't real. People are real, and need you more than the athletes you idolize who will never know your name or really give a squat back.

We need not even go into a discussion of the nature of "traditions", on which topic Fiddler on the Roof should have laid all debates to rest. As I said once before here, slavery was once a tradition. "A wrongheaded tradition is not justified because it is longstanding; all that it indicates is that sometimes people are way too slow to change." We often do things because we have always done them, but that in no way morally justifies them. In some ways, it is a cheap attempt to evade morally evaluating one's actions, blaming one's current failings on the past. Unfortunately for that kind of argument, every action we take is a new moral choice, and being wrong before in no way justifies being wrong again.

What's truly sad is that the university will almost certainly lose money in the short run from their decision. Just to spite it, alums and fans are going to hold back donations that will contribute to numerous students' education, all for the sake of a quasi-racist mascot. If nothing else demonstrates misguided priorities, this is it. The whole point of a University is as a center of learning first, a community second, and an athletic endeavor thirty-seventh or so. Anyone who withholds funds that would otherwise pay for a fraction of a scholarship, or a science lab, or books for the library in the name of the Chief is worthy of nothing but contempt and derision. After the Chief is gone teams will still play, but more importantly students will still learn, and the university will go on, and that is a good thing all around. All the spiteful will get for their efforts is the support of their friends and the loss to humanity in all the ways their money would have been better spent. It almost makes one wish for a God just so people like this could be appropriately punished. In the end, people matter. Symbols don't. It doesn't take a college education to realize it, just a sense of perspective, but those often seem to be in short supply. Thankfully, in four years time, the student body of the University will only have vague stories in their head of the silly halftime ritual they used to do at halftime, and they will chuckle at the overheated geezers in the stands who talk about how things were back in the day, dismissing their elders for their backwardness as every generation inevitably does to its forbears. It can't happen soon enough in this case.

Truth twenty-four time a second #3: Tristram Shandy, a Cock and Bull Story

Sorry for the bait and switch, but Cheif Illiniwek will have to wait another day, since explaining myself on why people put too much faith in symbols vs. concrete effects and rights instead of moral obligations. Instead, a film review will have to suffice for tonight. Tristram Shandy is, among other things, one of the greatest books of all time, the second great English novel (after Samuel Richardson's Clarissa), the second post-modern novel ever written (after Don Quixote), and the book I am currently re-reading for my book club. For those who are interested, I have already written a short review fo the novel, but a longer one will follow here when I finish going over it again. Anyway, enough of the tangents, on with the review.

TS: a C+B Story is a movie about making a movie about a book about everything except what it is ostensibly about (the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman). It's been said that the book is essentially unfilmable, as it consists almost exclusively of tangents and meta-commentary and long anecdotes having nothing to do with what would be the plot of the novel, if it actually had a plot, which it doesn't. Thus, the meta-move idea is perfect. Even if the book is unfilmable, you can still make a film about making a film, with the actors playing actors (I would suggest "All the world's a stage" here, but Yorick is the Shakespearean reference that Laurence Sterne preferred). I wonder how much of the book's humor would be lost on someone who just saw the film; they try to explain things, but much of the humor requires several chapters to set up in the book, and there just isn't time. Thus, Dr. Slop's Catholicism and Uncle Toby's tics that force him to whistle rather than express conflicting opinions are glossed over, chestnuts for the enterprising viewers who have previously read the book (that itself was a chestnut for the readers, though the heat of said chestnut may be debated). Still, the movie is constantly funny throughout, both as a satire of the moviemaking process as well a reasonably faithful retelling of many of TS's most humorous set pieces, and that is an achievement in itself.

Oddly enough, this is the second consecutive time that an indirect movie has been made out of an early post-modern classic, though this one was intentionally so, whereas Lost in La Mancha, the story of Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to shoot Don Quixote, was simply the best that could be made out of a very bad situation. In many ways, I think it would make the original authors very happy. Both Cervantes and Sterne were vastly ahead of their time, and both realized that a novel is an author's form of commenting on anything he wants, including the novel itself. That this is expressed in movie form, by commenting on the movie making process as it relates to filming a book (especially a book about itself), is only fitting.

Got to keep the loonies on the path

I'll have a great deal to say tomorrow about my current University's decision to dump their racist mascot tomorrow. Needless to say, I'm in favor. For today, some good news on why we will actually win the science wars, if none of the current military ones.

Kansas is something of an interesting state, deeply red and somewhat famous for having something the matter with it. It's also home to one of the most impressive fossil beds in the country, one that proves that the middle of the USA was under water eons ago. Politically, the state has been undergoing an evolution. The governor, Kathleen Sebelius is a moderately conservative Democrat who has made a cottage industry out of convincing moderate Republicans to switch parties and run as Republicans, including the current attorney general (who soundly defeated the wingnut opponent described in the linked article), and the former chairman of the state Republican party. It went little noticed during the landslide election of November, but voters also elected a slate of Democrats and moderate Republicans to replace the crazy religious kooks on the state board of education. As a result, the infamous anti-evolution science standards adopted in 2005 are now history. From The Guardian:

In a 6-4 vote on Tuesday night, the Kansas state board of education deleted language from teaching guidelines that challenged the validity of evolutionary theory, and approved new phrasing in line with mainstream science.

It was seen as a victory for a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats, science educators and parents who had fought for two years to overturn the earlier guidelines.

The decision is the latest in a string of defeats for proponents of creationism, and its modern variant, intelligent design. It reverses the decision taken by the same authorities two years ago to include language undermining Darwinism - on the insistence of conservative parents and activists in the intelligent design movement.

This is very good news all around. It's been noted that the Republican party has both a long-term and short-term crisis on its hands. Going into 2008, they are squarely on the hook for the Iraq war, and unable to convincingly blame anyone else for their mess. Today's vote in the House of Representatives may have been on a non-binding resolution, but several Republicans just made their races in 2008 much tougher. Chris Shays, the last Republican Congressman left in New England, may have just created an all blue region of the country by voting for against the resolution, and thus for the surge. Ditto several Republicans in NY and PA. In the longer term, however, the R's may be just as screwed. They rely on an uneasy alliance between business oriented economic conservatives, who they've been pissing off by being generally as incompetent with regard to the economy as they are with foreign policy, and the religious right, who are basically the only people left in the country who still support the president and the war. Without business groups and their cash, you end up with a vocal group of lunatics running the show who will start to alienate a great deal of the American population. I'm not confident the Democrats are fully ready to take advantage, but at least they are now showing some sporadic signs of life, though they still could show more courage on some politically charged issues.

As an example of the wingnuts who will hopefully be Left Behind soon (it's a pun, get it?), we turn to some Republican state legislators in Georgia and Texas. Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges recently sent out this um, er, uhh, "interesting" FYI to his colleagues around the country:

“Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” reads the letter that went out under Bridges' name. “This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”

As these kind of screeds go, it's basically three-for-three. Anti-Semitic, as I can only assume that "Pharisees" means Jews in this context. Anti-science just on its face....and to top it off, as anti-English grammar as any document I've ever seen. Seriously, read that quote again. Amazingly enough, a Texas legislator, Warren Chisum, the Texas House Appropriations chair, decided this would be a good thing to forward along, and sent it to all his colleagues. From Talking Points Memo, the inevitable reaction:

The ADL caught wind of the Bridges memo and now Chisum says he's "willing to apologize if I've offended anyone" if anyone got their big nose bent out of shape.

Reports the Dallas Morning News: "Mr. Chisum said he hadn't looked at the Web site and didn't realize that he was distributing that type of material. He expressed chagrin that he didn't vet the material more carefully."

No S#!t, Sherlock. It's generally a good idea to, you know, like read these things before you pass them along. Somehow, neither legislator managed to realize that the website from which the great Big Bang/Pharisee/Kabbala conspiracy theory originated has another rather..."fringe position"...

Barnes' memo [ed. note: the one forwarded by Bridges and Chisum] pointed fellow state legislators to the information at fixedearth.com which rails against the “a mystic, anti-Christ ‘holy book’ of the Pharisee Sect of Judaism” and claims that “the earth is not rotating … nor is it going around the sun.” They've even caught on to the "centuries-old conspiracy" on the part of Jewish physicists to destroy Christianity.

Yup, us crazy Jews and our embrace of the Heliocentric model of the solar system!?! My Sweet Lord, these people are absolutely bats#it insane, and these are state legislators in positions of real power. Just imagine the crazier people who are voting for them...

I'm not quite clear about what you just spoke....was that a parable, or a very subtle joke?

Today on the blogs, we had a flare-up of one of the classic religious/political arguments of all time. Battling for my side (which for our purposes can be taken to be secular liberals, aka flaming-heart heathens) is Atrios, who as I've said is just about always right when he chooses to devote a few words to a topic. First, from the antagonist, Mark Kleiman at samefacts.org:

I'd love it if fervently religious folks decided to try to be "the soul and conscience of the Democratic Party," for example by insisting that the party stand foursquare against torture, or, as Mara Vanderslice suggests, that we need to be fervent rather than lukewarm in insisting on economic justice. And of course if you want to appeal to fervently religious folks, casting them in a role they'd like to occupy is a good way to do it.

This quote looks innocent at first glance, but it got Atrios' hackles up, and rightly so, IMHO:

I see no reason religious people are uniquely qualified to be against torture, or to convince those in the Democratic party to stand against it. It's, again, assuming that religious people have strong sense of morality that magically matches Kleiman's, and/or that they have a higher level of moral authority to persuade others.

I'd love it if religious people all over the country suddenly embraced my policy agenda and persuaded others to do so. But it's absurd and patronizing to assume they will, and it's insulting to both them and me to suggest that they'll arrive there through some deeper sense of morality.

This point goes to the heart of something that I've long believed. Just because someone believes in God in no way makes them inherently more moral (or soulful) than those who don't. Just to make it clear, let's just stipulate that the vast majority of the non-religious believe in some form of the Golden Rule/Inverse Golden Rule as their fundamental moral principle. The Golden Rule is more interventionist, the Inverse more libertarian, but both are basically designed around the reciprocal nature of existence, the idea that other people at heart are essentially like us in just about all moral and ethical qualities. We'll further stipulate that virtually no one decides on grand-scale hedonism as their fundamental moral code, even though a bunch of wacky religious types always seem to assume that this is the case. I'll note just to be insulting that Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Fastow, and the rest of the Enron gang were all churchgoers, as are any number of indicted Congresscritters (cough, Tom DeLay, cough).

The heart and soul of the Democratic party need not be the "religious left", it should be the whole frickin' party. How in the heck can anyone claim that politics should be divorced from a moral basis, anyway? What Kleinman wants to say, and Atrios would almost certainly agree with, is that Democrats should couch their arguments in terms of a persuasive moral vision ("moral" can, but need not, equal "religious"). We don't believe in Social Security just because it's successful, but also because it is the right thing to do for the elderly. We care about the environment not because endangered species are pretty/fuzzy/cute, but because we want to leave the planet a better place than when we first stepped foot upon it. We believe that something should be done for all the forgotten victims of Hurricane Katrina because it's the glaringly obvious thing to do, and we're not criminally incompetent wastes of phosphorus who honestly care more about Trent Lott's vacation house than the million internal refugees we now have in the country. Speaking in terms of right and wrong is something I think Democrats should do more often, but this has nothing to do with religion. If Obama wants to credit his church for shaping his moral philosophy, that's fine, since his moral vision is a really appealing one. If someone comes to a similar set of views and doesn't believe in some form of quasi-spiritual bearded superbeing, though, how does that not count in the same way? Forgive me for expressing an opinion that is somewhat unpopular in our national discourse, but I honestly think that the religious feelings of a scary number of people are driven not by a sense of right and wrong, since that would require more thought and less rote repetition, but rather as a cheap and effortless way to feel morally superior to their fellows, even though they haven't put in the time and effort to really think about how their actions, great and small, fit into a larger moral framework. Still, for the majority who find a grounding for their moral beliefs in Biblical teachings, and then turn those beliefs for good, more power to them.

To close, I think I'll have to turn over the floor to kos, who nailed it today, in the context of the winning campaigns of Democratic Senators Jon Tester of Montana and James Webb of Virginia:

Democrats and liberals have been too willing in the past to make their electoral appeals based on the intellect -- offering a laundry list of 10-point plans and programs they will create and/or support. We're trying to appeal to the brain, while Republicans have learned to appeal to the heart.

So we bore and confuse voters, giving them little sense in what makes our candidates tick. They are busy. They have two jobs, kids to shuffle between soccer practice and camp, myriad problems to deal with. Political blog readers may be obsessed with politics, but it's mostly a hobby. Most people have other hobbies. Politics is background noise. They don't want to deal with the details or learn about the issues. That's why we have a representative democracy -- so we can elect people to worry about the details.

What voters want is a sense of what makes a candidate tick. When confronted with a decision, what values will the official draw upon to inform his or her decision.

And while many people -- thanks to the good branding work of the Religious Right -- think that "values" equals "religion", fact is that values can come from any number of places.
...
And where do those values come from? If a candidate sincerely gets his or her values from religion, then that's fine. The Bible is a wonderfully liberal text. And when it's sincere it doesn't come across so grating, so imposing. Compare Obama's talking about religion to Bush's "favorite philosopher" b.s.

But religious values are no more superior than the values I learned from my abuelita (and most Latinos will get a good sense of what my value system looks like just by referencing the word "abuelita"). They are no more superior than the values Tester learned on the farm from his farmer father and grandfather. Or the values that Webb learned while proudly wearing his uniform. Or the values someone might learn by contemplating the great philosophers. Or whatever.

Values are important, and Democrats must be comfortable talking about them. Voters will respond to those better than any laundry list of issues.

That is the way to make sure people understand that the heart and soul of the Democratic party includes everyone, both people and politicians, religious and secular alike. V'imru, Amen.

Now when arrows don't penetrate, Cupid grabs the pistol

Happy Valentine's day, from me and some gentleman from Atlanta (note the video was made by a fan, and is not an actual music video...which should be really obvious after about three seconds). Tonight, I learned a crucial romantic lesson: if due to the combined effects of bad weather (we covered this yesterday), changes in planning (my wife had a meeting in Peoria today that got cancelled last minute), distractions (my car got stuck half in/half out of the parking spot in the snow), and all around failures on the part of a husband to arrange a Valentine's Day dinner for his wife, hope is not lost. Pick a nice restaurant in town (Biaggi's in this case, an somewhat upper midscale Italian chain, but this is Champaign, after all) and get there early!!! 5:30pm does nicely, getting us a 20-minute wait at what actually passes for a nice restaurant around here. Tiramisu for dessert will make sure that dinner ends happily for all involved.

A brief bit of history: according to the Wikipedia, Valentine's day as we know it was actually not invented out of whole cloth by Hallmark, like Sweetest Day (may those who invented it and ask us to celebrate it be accursed through the ages), but rather by Chaucer. Apparently, he made reference to a non-existent Romantic holiday in May to commemorate the first anniversary of King Richard II's engagement on May 2, the saint's day of Valentine of Genoa. This was confused with the feast of St. Valentine, on February 14, which fell coincidentally near a Pagan holiday, and was eventually used to mirror it, much like Christmas/Yule.

I'll note that starting tomorrow, dkon is welcome to name the second Rooted Cosmopolitans Charity of the Month, which will be features in our right-side sidebar up at the top. In honor of the final day for Kiva.org, I finally made my promised donation to Christina Schuster of Samoa, who is trying to expand the store that allows her to lead an independent life and support her family. I ponied up my $25, and all she needs is $50 more to get her loan. C'mon people, it's Valentine's day, so show the love to her and all the other people who want the chance to live a better life.

Just so I don't forget it, Ezra Klein has a summary from McKinsey about why the US healthcare system is so frickin' expensive. Essentially, they find we pay too much for basically everything. From the blog post:

The very short answer is that we pay more for units of care. McKinsey estimates that it is not higher disease prevalence. Differences in health account for only about $25 billion of the variation -- a drop in the bucket. The difference really is that we pay higher doctor salaries, higher drug costs, higher operation costs, more per day in the hospital, etc, etc. In essence, we're getting a terrible deal.

With that, peace and love to all y'all and remember to be nice to people and especially not to kill anyone if you can avoid it. My New Year's resolution is still going strong (click the link and scroll all the way down if you've forgotten about it)!