perfidy

Music good. Silence boring. Ugh. Buckethead not know much about music. Can't even bang antellope thigh bone in time with music.

An article on CNN.com suggests that Germany's employment woes might be entirely their own dang fault.

"Germany's education system, like its economy, was once considered the pride of Europe. Worries about the stagnating economy have recently preoccupied Germans, and now they are realizing their schools are also in trouble. . . .

The real wake-up call came last year when an international test of 15-year-olds ranked Germany 21st out of 32 leading industrialized nations in reading, mathematics and science. . . .

[T]ypically, German pupils are home by early afternoon -- after three hours of classes in elementary school and less than five hours at middle and high schools. . . .

Ultimately, the problems in Germany's education system translate to young people poorly prepared for the job market, while companies complain they can't find qualified graduates.
Despite more than 11 percent unemployment, Germany has to attract highly trained immigrant workers to fill an estimated 100,000 high-tech jobs.

What the heck is going on over there? I don't mean to bash on Germany-- I love the nation, its people, its cars and beer-- but I'm just a little surprised that so much is going wrong in a nation that was until recently a powerhouse. (Of course, some of this may well be regional, as NDR pointed out yesterday in the comments. But still...)

Now this, this is effing crazy.

From the "Free Traficant" site linked below, some pearls of wisdom from the mouth of The Don Of Youngstown, cast before ye swine:

"When I get out I will grab a sword like Maximus Meridius Demidius and as a Gladiator I will stab people in the crotch."

"Think about it. While 60 percent of taxpayer calls to the IRS go unanswered, the IRS agents were watching Marilyn Chambers do the Rotary International. Beam me up here. It is time to pass a flat 15 percent sales tax and abolish this gambling, porno-watching IRS completely. I yield back the internal rectal service of the United States of America. "

"The Pentagon just did not waive the Buy American Act, the Pentagon waved Old Glory the wrong way. Mr. Speaker, I suggest that these Chinese berets be made into suppositories and be used on Pentagon brass. Madam Speaker, I yield back the need for Congress to hire a proctologist to train Pentagon procurement officials on the buy American laws."

"They are officially called unisex restrooms. Unbelievable. What is next? Unisex locker rooms with thong/jock support dispensers? How about Maxipad vending machines in locker rooms? Beam me up. I yield back this higher education business as yet simply getting high."

"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room!"

"I want you to disregard all the opposing counsel has said. I think they're delusionary. I think they've had something funny for lunch in their meal, I think they should be handcuffed, chained to a fence and flogged, and all of their hearsay evidence should be thrown the hell out. And if they lie again, I'm going to go over there and kick them in the crotch. Thank you very much."

YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! [pumps arm exultantly like Kirk Gibson]

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- James A. Traficant, a former Ohio congressman in prison for bribery and racketeering charges, has given his approval to supporters to form a presidential exploratory committee."

"The battle to free James Traficant and to evict the Socialists and 'free traders' from the Democratic Party is now under way," campaign spokesman Marcus Belk said. "Someone buy the Washington establishment a bottle of Maalox." Belk said the group, which announced Friday that it had gotten Traficant's approval by letter, has raised $10,224 in cash pledges made on Traficant's campaign Web site. The average contribution was $71, he said.

"Traficant, a Democrat who represented northeast Ohio in the House for nine terms, was expelled from Congress in July 2002 after being convicted in a federal court of racketeering, bribery and tax evasion. He is now serving an eight-year prison sentence at the minimum-security Allenwood federal prison in White Deer, Pennsylvania. "

Never mind that in an election between a trained goat and Jim Traficant, I'd go with the goat every time, this is wonderful! Just what this country needs: a corrupt, venal slippery populist demagogue with a talent for making the insane sound reasonable as long as he keeps talking. And an Ohioan to boot!

Let's review: the current headline-making political figures in Ohio right now are Dennis "Burning River" Kucinich, Sideshow Jerry Springer, and James "Beam Me Up!" Traficant. Makes me proud. Those fat cats in Washington better circle the wagons... 2004 is the Year Of The Buckeye!

Right here and now, I am announcing my support for former Representative James A. Traficant for President of the United States in 2004. But first things first... Free Mumia!Traficant

In response to this statement from Gephardt:

"George Bush has left us less safe and less secure than we were four years ago."

William Kristol had some things to say.

Are we not even a little safer now that the Taliban and Hussein are gone, many al Qaeda operatives have been captured or killed, governments such as Pakistan's and Saudi Arabia's are at least partly hampering al Qaeda's efforts instead of blithely colluding with them, the opposition in Iran is stronger, our defense and intelligence budgets are up and, for that matter, Milosevic is gone and the Balkans are at peace (to mention something for which the Clinton administration deserves credit but that had not happened by July 1999)?

Is it reasonable to criticize aspects of the Bush administration's foreign policy? Sure. The initial failures in planning for postwar Iraq, the incoherence of its North Korea policy, the failure adequately to increase defense spending or reform our intelligence agencies . . . on all of these, and other issues as well, the administration could use constructive, even sharp, criticism. But that we were safer and more secure four years ago?
Gephardt has made a claim that will come back to haunt him and his fellow Democrats...

There are plenty of legitimate grounds to criticize the Bush administration's foreign policy. But the American people, whatever their doubts about aspects of Bush's foreign policy, know that Bush is serious about fighting terrorists and terrorist states that mean America harm. About Bush's Democratic critics, they know no such thing.

This is some amazingly ridiculous thinking, from someone I've come to consider almost synonymous with ridiculous thinking. I think Kristol hits it here. If by some freak of nature Gephardt got the nomination, this would come back to haunt them.

But how many democratic candidates either believe or will say this in the future? If this is any measure of the Democratic leadership's mindset, they are in for a rude shock when they realize how far to the margins they've been pushed. And Gephardt is a centrist democrat!

It is not good for the Republic for one of its two major parties to go traipsing off into lala land. When you add in the conspiracy theories, virulant Bush hatred, and all the rest - you worry. Why can't we have a sane Democratic party, like we had back before '68?

I'm a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson. In my halcyon college days, I read all his classic books in one short stretch of the summer of 1995. I would sit in the shade after six hours of washing dishes for rich summer-band-camp brats, drink gallon jugs of Gin & Tonic, smoke big Mexican cigars until my teeth were brown, and read Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, F&L on the Campaign Trail, and his collected shorter pieces until I could no longer put together a coherent sentence, much less stand on my own. It's not the gin. It's the cigars that will get you every time.

For a long time, HST was one of the best topical writers in America. Even as late as 1995 he would occasionally emerge from his vague rehashing of old, er, hash, to issue a diamond-clear, cutting demolition of the latest Clinton foolishness.

So naturally I was very happy when HST started writing a periodic column for espn.com. Some of them were great-- HST is a huge football fan, and he usually has enough money riding on college basketball for him to write something weird impassioned.

But what the hell is this?!

In his latest piece, Welcome to the Big Darkness, Thompson rambles on about spine and hip replacement surgery, Kobe Bryant, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness in America, and then makes it clear that someone's been slipping him massive doses of Ibogaine:

When I went into the clinic last April 30, George Bush was about 50 points ahead of his closest Democratic opponent in next year's Presidential Election. When I finally escaped from the horrible place, less than three weeks late, Bush's job-approval ratings had been cut in half -- and even down into single digits, in some states -- and the Republican Party was panicked and on the run. It was a staggering reversal in a very short time, even shorter than it took for his equally crooked father to drop from 93 percent approval, down to as low as 43 percent and even 41 percent in the last doomed days of the first doomed Bush Administration. After that, he was Bill Clinton's punching bag.

Richard Nixon could tell us a lot about peaking too early. He was a master of it, because it beat him every time. He never learned and neither did Bush the Elder.

But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. By the summer of 2004, he might not even be living in the White House. Gone, gone, like the snows of yesteryear.

The Rumsfield-Cheney axis has self-destructed right in front of our eyes, along with the once-proud Perle-Wolfowitz bund that is turning to wax. They somehow managed to blow it all, like a gang of kids on a looting spree, between January and July, or even less. It is genuinely incredible. The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgiveable sin in America.

Beyond that, we have lost the respect of the world and lost two disastrous wars in three years. Afghanistan is lost, Iraq is a permanent war Zone, our national Economy is crashing all around us, the Pentagon's "war strategy" has failed miserably, nobody has any money to spend, and our once-mighty U.S. America is paralyzed by Mutinies in Iraq and even Fort Bragg.

The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world.

The Stock Market will never come back, our Armies will never again be No. 1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of our lives.

The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it.

Guh? Wuzzah? Is this screeching hate-fit a clever satire of the far left's alternate reality, or has the Doc finally severed mind from reality and plunged into the Void?

That's the damned thing about modern aesthetics. Sometimes you can't tell the difference between art and bullshit.

Drudge is reporting that Cleveland's favorite ex-mayor was sleeping during Blair's speech to congress. Kucinich insists that he was taking notes. I used to give that excuse in High School.

Maybe he was planning the Department of Peace that he's going to create when he becomes President.

In an interesting tidbit in the UK Independent, a political scientist in Ramallah was assaulted, and his office trashed, by a mob of 100 refugees when word when out that he was about to publish the results of a recent poll his organization conducted.

Why were the Palestinians so exercised? The rioters were delivering, "a message for everyone not to tamper with our rights." This, because the poll demonstrated that only a small fraction of actual Palestinians actually wanted to return to Israel. Khalil Shikaki's survey showed that five times as many refugees would prefer to settle permanently in a Palestinian state than return to their old homes in what is now Israel.

The poll, conducted among 4,500 refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Jordan, was the first to ask where they would want to live if Israel recognized a right of return. Only 10 per cent of the refugees chose Israel, even if they were allowed to live there with Palestinian citizenship; 54 per cent opted for the Palestinian state; 17 per cent for Jordan or Lebanon, and 2 per cent for other countries, and 2 per cent didn't know.

Interestingly, 13 per cent rejected all these options, preferring to wait for the destruction of Israel.

In a related news item, the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad warned yesterday they would end a truce announced last month if the Palestinian Authority continued to try to disarm them. I guess they're serious about the roadmap to peace.

Further muddying the water (or sand) in Iraq, Armed Islamic Movement for Al Qaeda, the Falluja Brancha is saying, "We have attacked the US, not those lying Saddam bitches." Actually, they said, "I swear by God no one from his (Saddam Hussein) followers carried out any jihad operations like he claims...they (attacks) are a result of our brothers in jihad,"

In a pro forma statement, they also boasted of, "a new anti-U.S. attack in the days to come which would "break the back of America completely." Yeah, right. The group also is, "Calling on U.S. forces to leave Iraq," and warned that "the end of America will be at the hands of Islam."

Remember kids, Islam is a religion of Peace.

I don't like to pick on my home state, but they make it so damn easy!

Yes, Jerry Springer is running for the US Senate in 2004. Oh, good. Finally someone to bring some dignity and restraint to Washington! I wish that wasn't so true! I need another Martini!

Jerry: word of advice, son. This time, when you get a hooker, please be sure not to pay her with a personal check. Senators carry cash for that.

The CNN article linked notes that Springer, who was born in Engaland, is therefore not eligible to run for President. Pity.

Last week, I linked to a story about a woman who was pulled over in Ohio for breastfeeding while driving. Nice little episode, right? Well, it's still rolling! Check this out! Turns out the father is suing to be sole defendant, arguing under Mosaic law the father is the sole head of the household and responsible for all members therein. They're members of a sect (here's the main page), of course. The family vows to take this all the way to the Supreme Court on the grounds of religious freedom, claiming they are being harassed by the great state of Ohio.

This is an interesting-- even complicated-- matter, but whatever. Under Ohio law, you can't breastfeed while driving, period. A $100 fine could have been paid by the woman, end of story, except that according to her husband, that would have been bearing false witness, rendering her hellbound. Now it's a federal case. Literally.

Read the article. Great stuff in there. I swear.

A special bonus for those who know me well-- can you spot familiar places in the article? I bet you can!!

I seem to recall the Bears did acquire Kordell Stewart from the Steelers recently, and intend to play him at quarterback. So, this naming thing is only the second dumbest move of the off-season.

I see via fark that the Chicago Bears are now going to call themselves, wherever possible, "Bears football presented by Bank One". 

No, I'm not kidding. Really, I'm not. 

You can call me old-fashioned, hypocritical, or conservative if you like, but the DAY the Cleveland Browns change their name to Browns football presented by Goodyear, I drive seven hundred miles to Ohio with a tire iron, a roll of duct tape, and a car with a three-body-big trunk to take care of some business. 

I have no problem with corporate sponsorship per se-- it's as big a part of modern sport as growth hormone, endorsement contracts, and drug convictions. But of all the stupid... cynical.... *sputter* ... They sold their name?? 
 

This is why the rest of the country thinks we're a joke. From Reason's blog:

"Accessibility for all is very important," says the Web site for the town of Shutesbury, Massachusetts. "Please remember all public events in Shutesbury are fragrance free." 

If you are wondering what "fragrance free" means, there's a helpful explanation here from Ziporah Hildebrandt, chairperson of Shutesbury's ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Committee. If you're planning to go to a select board meeting or visit the public library during Fragrance Free Hours, you should

shower beforehand using baking soda instead of soap and shampoo. Baking soda effectively removes many odors. Change into clothing that has not been dry cleaned or laundered with scented products, especially fabric softeners, and has not been around smoke or fragrances. Rinse contaminated clothes with baking soda. Dry without additives. Wear a hat to contain residual odors from hair products. Wear an uncontaminated shirt over your other clothing. Depending on the event, these measures may be sufficient. Ask others present if your clothing, hair, etc. is a problem. Leave if you cause discomfort to others, or sense that your presence may be a problem. Remember: "An ounce of prevention!" Planning ahead to be free of scents is the easiest and best solution.

The connection between accessibility and fragrance freeness is "multiple chemical sensitivity," a syndrome that, according to Hildebrandt, makes its sufferers vulnerable to "extremely upsetting symptoms as well as irreparable damage" from "just one whiff of many chemicals." Combine this contention with the logic of the ADA, and we may all be forced to go fragrance free one day--not just in government buildings but in any business identified as a "place of public accommodation." Since "just one whiff" is reportedly all it takes to cause "severe pain, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, respiratory distress and other symptoms," separate sections for the fragrant will not cut it.

Jesus. Good think I had my underarms botoxed, or I'd be a damn pariah! 

FYI, Shutesbury is a small town about fifteen miles north of Amherst, a pretty cool little place like you find in that area where farmers and hippies can coexist in peace. Entertainingly, Shutesbury is governed by selectmen and open town meetings. Question: can barring citizens from town meetings on grounds of fragrance be construed as violating the 24th Amendment? (Probably not, but it's still not right.) 
 

In regard to my post this morning on the Supremes upholding the Children's Internet Protection Act, I have to ask... if the Court is leaving it up to "community standards" to determine what gets filtered from library to library, what is the point of upholding the law in the first place??

That funny, funny man Senator Howard Berman (D-CA) has introduced a bill (H. R. 2517) into committee that would give the FBI jurisdiction over peer-to-peer networks and instruct them to vigorously pursue evil file sharers. You can see the bill here (via Slashdot).

Dubbed the "Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2003," the law is pretty much what you would expect from Hollywood Howie Berman, giving the FBI pretty much all the latitude it wants to bust the hell out of teens who are really, really into Justin Timberlake. Idiots. Here's the money section:

The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shall--
(1) develop a program to deter members of the public from committing acts of copyright infringement by--
(A) offering on the Internet copies of copyrighted works, or
(B) making copies of copyrighted works from the Internet,
without the authorization of the copyright owners; and
(2) facilitate the sharing among law enforcement agencies, Internet service providers, and copyright owners of information concerning activities described in subparagraphs (A) and (B) of paragraph (1).
The program under paragraph (1) shall include issuing appropriate warnings to individuals engaged in an activity described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) that they may be subject to criminal prosecution.

Jeez. And, further proving that they just don't get it, Section 4 of the bill, "DESIGNATION AND TRAINING OF AGENTS IN COMPUTER HACKING AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY UNITS," calls for the creation of special detachments of law enforcement and FBI, to be dubbed.... wait for it.....
......wait for it....

.......CHIPS Units, dedicated to the bill's enforcement.

Priceless.

This is just weird.

The Missouri Supreme Court struck down the state's "alienation of affection" law, saying that "stealing" the love of a married person is an arcane legal doctrine. The court, in a 5-2 decision Tuesday, agreed with a woman accused of marital infidelity that alienation of affection is an antiquated cause that has no place in a modern legal system. The justices struck down the law and overturned a lower court's $75,000 judgment against her. The woman, Sivi Noellsch, was sued by Katherine Helsel for allegedly having an affair with Helsel's husband, David, who eventually filed for divorce. Helsel cited alienation of affection as the reason for her lawsuit. . . . .Alienation of affection is grounded in the outdated idea that married people have property interests in each other and its present-day interpretation does nothing to preserve marriages, Judge Richard Teitelman wrote for the majority. . . . "Most lawyers would have predicted this," Ken Jones, editor of Missouri Lawyers Weekly, said of the decision. "It really brings Missouri into the 21st century."

Nooo... It actually brings Missouri into the nineteenth century, when the laws of coverture were eroded by a rising class of property-owning women, but close enough. It's nice to see 500-year-old English common law can still exert a pull. The article also notes that a similar bill banning "alienation of affection" in North Carolina is not likely to pass into law. Heh. 

In other news, the love you take is still equal to the love you make. George Harrison: economist!

If I feel better tomorrow, I will attempt to fuuuuse together Mike's and my two threads into one beautiful Gordian knot of logical syllogism. In brief, it's the damn hippies who got us in this postmodern crisis of academia, and Generation Y are the first wave of students who may never have been exposed to any other pedagogical method.

I would like to go further into this, but I am tired. I didn't sleep much last night, and when I did sleep, I dreamt that I had been abducted and was being given a tour of the mansion-cum-abbatoir where I would soon be killed and eaten. I was just being shown the hook from which I would be hung to be tortured, die and age before being made into a variety of supposedly delicious dishes, when I woke to my alarm. So I'm really damn tired.

As a result, the best I can do in the way of synthesis is this link via Eric Muller, On the Couch With Beavis and Butthead. Besides being hilarious, it sums up perfectly why a little theory in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing. Let's excerpt, shall we!

During the video viewing segments of Beavis and Butthead, they are shown sitting on a couch at Butthead's house. Our viewpoint is as if we are staring out from inside the television which they are watching. However, the possible mise en abyeme effect of Beavis and Butthead watching the television viewer watching them watch television, the feedback loop of (virtual) camera and screen evoking Lacan's Mirror Stage, where the child learns to watch himself watching himself, is not exploited here. Instead, Beavis and Butthead are positioned as analysands. They sit on the couch, in the state of regression described by theorists of the cinematic apparatus (Baudry 698-699), and free associate in response to the music videos, a genre which Marsha Kindler and E. Ann Kaplan have both closely connected to the dreamwork (Kinder 12-14; Kaplan 28). . . .
The single most jaw-dropping moment for the psychoanalytically informed viewer in all the Beavis and Butthead episodes comes in the episode entitled "Steamroller." Our heroes are watching a music video by the eccentric Scandinavian singer Bjork when Beavis blurts out: "I heard Bjork has a schlong." Butthead stammers, and asks where Beavis heard this. Beavis claims it was "the guy in the bathroom." After a few more questions, it becomes clear to everyone except Beavis that "the guy in the bathroom" is Beavis' own reflection.
It is a cliche of Lacanian cultural criticism that any appearance of a mirror must evoke the mirror stage, but surely Beavis' failure to recognize himself, coupled with his reflection telling him that Bjork (a small woman) has a "schlong" (a word chosen, surely, over all other possible penis euphemisms for its incorporation of the word "long"), deserves such analysis. It fundamentally ties Beavis' incomprehension of sexual difference to anality (as described in the last section) to his failure to accept the boundedness of his body. In the mirror stage, the infant recognizes that subjectivity is limited to the surface of the body and agency to the reach of its limbs and voice. Previously, the child has no sense of a world outside, but is total ego, thinking of itself as the entire universe, understanding existence only as immediate sensation. . . .
The threat of castration, represented by Woman's lack, is essential to subject formation, and Beavis is clearly outside of this system. Not only does his reflection tell him Bjork has a "schlong," but when he and Butthead watch another video, which features a (supposedly) nude woman in a bathtub, Butthead expresses the hope that the woman will stand up, revealing her body to them. Beavis thinks that she will not, speculating that "she's embarrassed because she has a stiffie." Butthead attempts to explain that women cannot get erections, but the existence of humans without penises is unimaginable to Beavis.

Indeed! Read the entire thing!

I've been hearing rumblings recently about an impending worker strike at Verizon here in New England. The Boston Globe has the story. Fairly unremarkable as strikes go: copayments and worker insurance payments will rise; layoffs are expected in the same year that Verizon executives gilded their parachutes; and the workers feel they have been subject to unreasonable demands in negotiation.

Through sheer coincidence, I have been privy to some great conversations on both sides, worker and management, in the course of my daily commute. I guess I'm just lucky. Seen on the commuter train, on the back of an IBEW worker from Verizon: a Contract Negotiation 2003 Commemorative T-shirt with the union logo and local on the front, and on the back the best slogan ever: "Can You Hear Us Now??"

Union, yes indeed!