perfidy

Mike, they're good for you. If they get you a raise, I will be happy for you. But are teacher's unions helping or hurting education for our children? Probably not, because it is the job of union to improve the situation of its members. Every union, and every special interest group is a conspiracy against the interests of every other segment of society. We have to look at the balance between benefitting the members of that group, and the larger society. Children's education in this country is in the shitter. I will not send my child into that cesspool. Mrs. Buckethead was forced to be a member of the NEA despite her total disagreement with their agenda. She was a teacher in Ohio and Virginia, and can vouch for the sad state of affairs that has been to some extent engineered by the NEA, even in the best school districts.

Buckethead writes,

"If American historians hate and villify the Irish Americans, they are the only ones doing it. I haven't noticed any anti-Irish bigotry in the wider world."

Yeah. No shit. I never accused the wider world of anti-Irish bigotry. I wrote precisely: "That's just one more way for American historians to criticize Irish-Americans, easily the most hated and villified ethnic group in American ethnic historiography over the last 40 years." This is an old ethnic animosity maintained exclusively within the Ivory Tower.

As to the rich man's war/poor man's fight issue, your argument is that that's the way those things are done. Sure, it's the way of the world. But if we all collectively shrug our shoulders and say, "oh well that's how it is," we'll never see any changes. No, we can't put old rich men in trenches. But how about their children? They don't serve. What if they had to? What if the working class, that has historically constituted much of the American military, threw down their rifles and said, "fight your own damn war."

Of course this is an historical issue as opposed to a present issue. With the professionalization of the American military class issues are becoming less acute. The military itself is becoming an opportunity for upward mobility once service is complete. They aren't paid very much while serving, but there are opportunities for education and the acquisition of skills. So the rich man's war and poor man's fight might be evolving into a non-issue.

Post removed. I'm done taking shots at the easy targets. Stay tuned for my closely-reasoned epistemological critique of why Buckethead's ontological assumptions about life in these here United States...er...umm... Oh, forget it. Stay tuned for fart jokes and more carefully moderate politics.

Oh, now this is just too much! A pregnant woman in New York was fined for loitering, because she got tired coming up out of the subway and sat down on the steps for a breather. No kidding. "A spokesman for the police union says cops on the beat are being pressured to generate cash for the financially strapped city....The Bloomberg Administration says there is no ticket quota for police." Gee, it's almost as if the NYPD wanted Mayor Bloomberg to seem like a giant flaming A-hole or something. In-teresting.

It occurs to me that New York is a very different place today than it was even when I lived there three years ago. That was the Late Rudy Years and the city was still pretty damn cool. The no-dancing law was a pain in the butt, as was the no-nudie-bar law, and you'd periodically hear about some poor homeless guys getting kicked off the steps of a church, but overall the city experience was fabulous. The Upper East Side was tony, the Lower East Side was gritty without any menace, the subway was cheap, Queens was nice (for me!), one could still enjoy a beer and a cig, and any minor city-as-nagging-mother statutes were just that, minor drawbacks to a good quality of life.

Not so much anymore, it seems. The Nagging Mother State is fully in charge, and it sucks worse than a lunchtime show at Score's with the pasties on. I was thinking about a trip to New York in a couple months to revisit my old stomping ground, but now I'm gonna forget it and just read "Naked Lunch" instead. For no good reason, a rather lengthy excerpt follows here:

BENWAY

Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, co-operatives, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind that hygienic facade: Benway is a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control. I have not seen Benway since his precipitate departure from Annexia, where his assignment had been T.D.-- Total Demoralization. Benway's first act was to abolish concentration camps, mass arrest and, except under certain limited and special circumstances, the use of torture.

"I deplore brutality," he said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct."

Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio of documents. Citizens were subject to be stopped in the street at any time; and the Examiner, who might be in plain clothes, in various uniforms, often in a bathing suit or pyjamas, sometimes stark naked except for a badge pinned to his left nipple, after checking each paper, would stamp it. On subsequent inspection the citizen was required to show the properly entered stamps of the last inspection. The Examiner, when he stopped a large group, would only examine and stamp the cards of a few. The others were then subject to arrest because their cards were not properly stamped. Arrest meant "provisional detention"; that is, the prisoner would be released if and when his Affidavit of Explanation, properly signed and stamped, was approved by the Assistant Arbiter of explanations. Since this official hardly ever came to his office, and the Affidavit of Explanation had to be presented in person, the explainers spent weeks and months waiting around in unheated offices with no chairs and no toilet facilities.

Documents issued in vanishing ink faded into old pawn tickets. New documents were constantly required. The citizens rushed from one bureau to another in a frenzied attempt to meet impossible deadlines.

All benches were removed from the city, all fountains turned off, all flowers and trees destroyed. Huge electric buzzers on the top of every apartment house (everyone lived in apartments) rang the quarter hour. Often the vibrations would throw people out of bed. Searchlights played over the town all night (no one was permitted to use shades, curtains, shutters or blinds).

No one ever looked at anyone else because of the strict law against importuning, with or without verbal approach, anyone for any purpose, sexual or otherwise. All cafes and bars were closed. Liquor could only be obtained with a special permit, and the liquor so obtained could not be sold or given or in any way transferred to anyone else, and the presence of anyone else in the room was considered prima facie evidence of
conspiracy to transfer liquor.

No one was permitted to bolt his door, and the police had pass keys to every room in the city. Accompanied by a mentalist they rush into someone's quarters and start "looking for it."

The mentalist guides them to whatever the man wishes to hide: a tube of vaseline, an enema, a hand-
kerchief with come on it, a weapon, unlicensed alcohol. And they always submitted the suspect to the most humiliating search of his naked person on which they make sneering and derogatory comments. Many a latent homosexual was carried out in a straitjacket when they planted vaseline in his ass. Or they pounce on any object. A pen wiper or a shoe tree.

"And what is this supposed to be for?"
"It's a pen wiper."
"A pen wiper, he says."
"I've heard everything now."
"I guess this is all we need. Come on, you."

After a few months of this the citizens cowered in corners like neurotic cats.

Mnnnn, sounds like my kinda place! While making a comparison between Annexia and modern New York is a bit of a stretch, it doesn't seem like much of one when pregnant women are fined for the express purpose of raising money for the state. (Not to mention cops dressing up like homeless people and standing in intersections keeping an eye out for seat belt violators. Isn't there a murder somewhere to investigate? My mom can take care of wiping my face, thank you very much!)

Kaus says:

It turns out we weren't reading the reporting of the famous, cream-of-the-profession Times employees, but the reporting of unidentified "stringers" we've never heard of. ... Conventional journalists sometimes sneer at blogs because there's no way for a reader to know whether what a random, unknown person says on his Web site is true. But it sounds as if the Times is not so different from a blog after all--what you are reading is really the work of random, unknown "legs" and stringers. ... 

Of course, in other ways the Times and the typical blog are very different forms of journalism. One obsessively reflects the personal biases, enthusiasms and grudges of a single individual. The other is just an online diary! ...

I don't quite understand his motivation - working at the Times in his twenties, great job prestige, etc. And he goes and makes shit up. Journalism is not hard. I am doing something like journalism right now, in my underwear. It would really be journalism if I called someone and interviewed them. But he was getting paid real money to write for a living. Didn't he realize that when you plagiarize, and put the results in the most important and widely read paper in the country, someone will notice? Holy Jeebus, what dimwitted jackassery. 

Blair is pathetic. The real shame falls on the editorial staff and their meese stuffed animals, who should have applied some standards and integrity to the "Paper of Record." 
 

Regarding Amina Lawal's impending execution, it is in fact set for 3 June. She was sentenced 19 August 2002. My apologies. In other words, she doesn't have much time.

On 19 August, Nigerian citizen Amina Lawal will be stoned to death for the crime of adultery. She has recently given birth, and her accusers claim that the baby is evidence of the adultery. The Spanish chapter of Amnesty International has provided an Urgent Action electronic petition here to request that her death sentence be rescinded.

Mike, here's a case in point about the PC brigades, and it involves Amherst, Massachusetts. Convergence, yes!

From the Amherst Republican (which I have never heard of, and I used to live there, so this may be total hearsay... which won't stop me), comes this story:

"By September, the UMass Gray Wolves men's and women's teams may be charging onto the field, while the gun-toting, single-gender Minuteman - a UMass symbol since 1972 - is sent to the showers for good...."Am I for the change? I'm for the process," UMass Athletic Director Ian J. McCaw said. That process began with the hiring of Phoenix Design Works of New York City, which introduced the Gray Wolves to eight focus groups involving 85 people.... Gray Wolves would be unique in Division I college sports, and it's indigenous to the area," McCaw said. "The design company expressed some concern with the single-gender ethnicity of the Minuteman, and the fact he's carrying a firearm (in the logo) is also a concern." McCaw said social and practical reasons exist for change. For one thing, the women's teams are called the Minutewomen, even though no colonial Minutewomen ever actually existed.

OH FOR CRISSAKES. If I had money, and I ever gave it to my alma mater, I'd stop doing that. I am ever so incensed! Some effing marketing team from New Effing York City thinks they know Massachusetts well enough to capture its essence in the beautiful and majestic Gray Wolf.

Luckily, some people get it. Also from the article:

According to Springfield Republican outdoors writer Frank Sousa, however, the portrayal of a cuddly wolf is ridiculous. "Wolves attack only the sick, injured and helpless," said Sousa, one of the region's foremost outdoors spokesmen. "Besides, the last gray wolf sighting around here was in the late 1890s, in a barrel outside Thompson's Clothing Store in Amherst after being shot in Northampton," Sousa said. "And those were skinned."

As Glenn Reynolds might say: Heh.

Public smoking bans do fall under a different set of ethical issues than most personal liberties. As public smoking is possibly a public health nuisance or threat, it's not like free speech or freedom of the press. But part of my point was that public smoking bans are just one of many objectives of the Neo-reformists. In antebellum America, reformists initiated movements to abolish slavery. They also initiated temperance movements and rabid Protestant Christian Evangelicalism. While abolitionism was a noble cause in that it demanded an end to slavery, temperance and evangelicalism sought to force everyone else to live their lives the way that Evangelical reformers did.

I'm drawing an analogy here. Public smoking bans might be the parallel to abolitionism as an effort to create a greater good. But beneath those efforts for the greater good, or right alongside them, are efforts to make everyone else live exactly the way these present-day reformists, who are frequently guests on Oprah Winfrey's talk-show, live. In addition, public smoking bans are part of an effort to make everyone safe in a world where life turns on a dime, nothing can be predicted, and anything can happen.

If the neo-reformist and pro-safety camps are indeed coming together and pulling their resources, they will not stop at public smoking bans. They won't be happy until everyone has a helmet and everyone lives they way they think people should live. In addition, lots of abolitionists were just as racist as the people who owned slaves. Maybe Neo-reformists pushing the public smoking ban don't really care about public health. Maybe they just want to legislate their narrow vision of morality. When it comes to a moral issue on which we cannot agree, it's best to leave it out of the legislation. Permit it for those who want it, by not outlawing cigarettes altogether, but don't subject people who don't want it to it. A public smoking ban is a way to do that, perhaps. A counter-argument is that non-smokers could simply stay away from bars, but that's not fair.

Of course the problem is that the Neo-reformists don't want to permit naughty things to the people who want them and keep it out of sight for those who don't. Neo-reformists think, "Well, I live my life this way so everybody else has to live their life that way too." Neo-reformists want everyone to wear drab clothing without hooks or fasteners (because they're flashy), not smoke, not drink, not eat red meat, not barbecue, not eat baked potatoes because they're carcinogenic. Of course this brings in the pro-safety camp who agrees with most of the above (except maybe the clothing), and wants everybody to put on a helmet, and wants potential terrorists or people they can paint as such, even though they aren't herded into camps, where they can't hurt the people with helmets on.

The public smoking ban is one thing. It's not the same kind of personal liberty issue. But the pro-safety types want helmets on non-smokers, too, just to be safe. And no baked potatoes, either. The Neo-reformists want to ban cigarettes altogether, because their god told them cigarettes are evil tools of the devil. They have the souls of smokers to save.

In response to Windy City Mike’s comments a couple days ago:

Mike is right to point out that passing legislation against certain behaviors based on what is good for people is dangerous and usually wrongheaded. He's also correct that it's the "in thing". I would like to extend his analysis a little, and bring up the deeper issues that may or may not be at stake.

I see in the Boston Globe today that a total ban on smoking in Massachusetts is in the offing. Whaaaaat? Are those bastids on Beacon Hill caving to the tiny liberal enclaves in Cambridge and Amherst? Do the squint-eyed Puritan moralizers carry the day? Quite the contrary! Check this out:

Two days after Boston outlawed smoking in taverns and nightclubs, momentum quickened on Beacon Hill yesterday to extend the ban statewide, as pivotal adversaries from past years abandoned the fight while surprising new backers emerged in force. . . .

The groundswell of support comes at a time when more cities and towns than ever before - 78 - have adopted local prohibitions against all workplace smoking, covering one-third of the state's population. Politicians and restaurant owners from those communities have become vocal supporters of a statewide law, in part to prevent bars in communities without a smoking ban from poaching customers.

But just as important as the voices being raised in favor of smoking prohibition are those that have fallen silent under the golden dome of the state capitol. The Massachusetts Restaurant Association, a muscular presence against the smoking ban in earlier debates, sent no one to testify yesterday at a hearing about the proposed ban before the joint health care committee. And tobacco company representatives offered no public statements at the hearing. Veterans of the smoking wars in Massachusetts could identify only one or two lobbyists present with ties to the tobacco industry.

Though it’s not perfect, the proposed ban is the result of a grassroots movement that has spread throughout the state.

The difference between the New York and Boston cases is that New York brought the dancing ban down from on high, and the proposed Massachusetts smoking ban springs from a general popular movement. That is the essence of federalism, and it creates a conflict for me. On one hand, I favor smoking bans in bars and restaurants because I prefer to go out for a night and come home free of smoke-reek and a headache. If the people of Massachusetts decide this is the way they should go, I applaud it. It's a local issue, settled locally. Many issues are best decided this way.

But on the other hand, what if Massachusetts also outright banned assault weapons, gay marriage, or abortion? Each of these issues raises serious questions of individual liberties versus public interest. Just this week the Ninth Circuit Court revived the question of whether the Second Amendment provides for an individual right to gun ownership. Gay Marriage may or may not threaten the Full Faith And Credit Clause, since couples joined in Vermont could return to Utah and apply for spousal benefits. Abortion pits the liberties of mothers against the liberties of the unborn, and extends the debate over citizenship into totally new arenas.

Where does the line fall between the right of a community to legislate behaviors to maintain public order, and the liberty of citizens to act freely where they are not injuring others? Do smoking bans really address these same fundamental issues, or is smoking in public subject to a different set of ethical and (pseudo-)legal tests?

What I'm saying is, I like the smoking bans where I live. I just can't find a way to justify them.

[cue finger-wagging] Speaking of revising stories, here's a story about why I'm not a professional card-carrying historian. 

[cue bug-eyed ranting]According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, (via Volokh) the AHA will no longer investigate claims of plagiarism or other professional misconduct by historians, citing an inability to bring sanctions against offenders. 

Thanks, guys! You're already a bunch of bedwetting little pansies, and now you've admitted it. Well, acceptance is the first step toward healing. Why not just disband, now that you've proven you have no power to police the mores of the profession? Ohhhhh right the American Historical Review. Because that's such an excellent publication. Y' know? I'm an historian. That's my training, and part of how I identify myself. It's not a very encouraging sign when I cannot stand to read through even a single issue of a leading journal in my chosen field. Well, it's still better than the Journal of American History. Every quarter that bumwipe features stuff like "The New England Bean Farming Community, 1790-1820: Capitalist Hell or Proto-Marxist Paradise?" or "Roundtable: Interrogating The American Family-- Four Centuries Of Unrelenting Patriarchy" or "Rethinking Marx: How the Revolution Can Still Happen If We Wish Really Hard"

(I'm making these up - barely.) 
 

I'm back. 

So, speaking of New England, Boston has now banned public smoking. New York City has already done so, and a movement is underway in Chicago that will most likely result in a public smoking ban here as well. Everyone is taking their cues from California on this one. 

So people in those cities, working in the food and drink service industry, will no longer be exposed to the risks of second-hand smoke. While that's certainly understandable as the impetus behind smoking bans, in the bigger picture, there are a couple of other motives behind it.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, and the first half of the twentieth century, reform movements sought to legislate their vision of morality and impose it on everyone else. In both cases, it was drinking that was evil. Now moderate drinking is good for you. While it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that the medical profession will ever outline the benefits of moderate smoking (because there are none), these smoking bans do have a certain amount of moral legislation behind them. While providing service employees with smoke-free work environments is fine, moral legislation is dodgy at best. So what's next in this new reform movement? 

My guess is that the new reform movement will center less on the legislation of morality, despite such legislation as a component of the smoking bans, and more on trying to protect people from their own stupidity and errors in judgement. A total ban on smoking has been on the minds of reformers since the early Nineties, and they're sort of accepting a compromise on the public smoking bans. But to protect us from ourselves, galvanized by public smoking ban victories, reformers will demand that smoking anywhere be legislated out of existence. Soon, in their zeal to protect us from our own dumb-assedness, helmets will be required for motorists as well as cyclists. We will have to wear helmets while driving, riding a bus, or crossing a busy city street. Those who do not wear helmets will be fined. 

Since most accidents occur in the home, we will have to wear helmets while preparing dinner. Adult-gates, a version of baby-gates, will be used to separate us from such hazards as bathtubs and pesky formica floors. When we have to shower or stand on kitchen formica, we will have to wear helmets. Activity will be monitored by cameras in the home. 

Red meat will be banned, along with anything that tastes good. We will become a society of non-smoking, non-red meat eating, non-barbecueing (causes cancer too), non-potato-eating (also a carcinogenic substance, apparently), moderate drinkers who must wear helmets while performing ordinary daily tasks. People who might be terrorists will have to sew a crescent onto their clothing, until they can be herded into camps, where they cannot hurt the helmet-clad peoples of America. 

Smoking will of course be permitted in the concentration camps. But just to be on the safe-side, SARS infected blankets will be issued. It's all to keep America safe and wearing their helmets.

They're idiots. They're idiots. They're my former colleagues. From the New York Times (free req req'd):

Some of the world's biggest record companies, facing rampant online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing of software programs that would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according to industry executives. . . .

. . . [Another] program, dubbed "freeze," locks up a computer system for a certain duration — minutes or possibly even hours — risking the loss of data that was unsaved if the computer is restarted. It also displays a warning about downloading pirated music. Another program under development, called "silence," scans a computer's hard drive for pirated music files and attempts to delete them. One of the executives briefed on the silence program said that it did not work properly and was being reworked because it was deleting legitimate music files, too.
Other approaches that are being tested include launching an attack on personal Internet connections, often called "interdiction," to prevent a person from using a network while attempting to download pirated music or offer it to others.

Ohhh, that's REAL SMART, cheeto. The industry only survives based on the goodwill and laziness of music fans. The major labels have been living on the edge for years, trying to balance their pit-bull business tactics with their need to not actually infuriate the average music listener.

Well, if they wanted to find the single, best, way to piss off every single music consumer in the United States, they've done it. I hope they go through with it. The same day that Jimmy and Timmy and Tammy and Mr. Lawyer's computers freeze up because their legitimately ripped copy of Purple Rain set off some massive knee-jerk retaliation is the day the record labels confront suicide face to face. I hope that day is tomorrow.

Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy has a much more reasoned and thoughtful post up, describing the many ways in which this plan is illegal. I suggest you read it. Orin Kerr is very smart where I am merely loquacious and vituperative.

Thousands of dollars? Were you attacked by the scientologists as well?

The Communist Manifesto/Das Kapital duology

Battlefield Earth

I'd start comparing Neuromancer to Pilgrim's Progress or Uncle Tom's Cabin

Since you asked, the most turgid and pretentious turd in Anglophone literature, bar none, is Infinite Jest, by that charlatan David Foster Wallace.

[pre-emptive update]: Speaking of David Eggers, you should all read this McSweeny's piece, which is a transcript of unused bonus audio commentary for the Fellowship Of The Ring DVD by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.

[further update] Lest I seem the philistine, I should point out that "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is the only fiction book I have ever flung across a room in disgust. A library copy, too. Hey, at least I tried.

The Federal Trade Commission just released a study which finds that approximately 96% of business-offer spams make false claims.

Two thoughts immediately leap to mind. First across the line is sorrow at the notion that the US Government needed to spend money on a study that, in the year 2003, concludes "In one way or another, a great deal of [spam] appears to contain important information that is false or deceptive."

Well, no shit.

Stumbling across the finish line in second place is an ardent desire to determine exactly which 4% of the penis enlargers, Nigerian royals, and lonely college chicks are not making false claims, thereby ensuring me a legendary future career in pornography, philanthropy, and philandering.

Everybody knows you can never be too rich, too thin, or too well-hung.

[pre-emptive update] I'd imagine Goodwife Two-Cents would like to have some input on this point, so I will forestall her most obvious objections by pointing out that a) You said it was OK last time, b) no, c) no, d) never!, e) only with your approval, and f) any money gained from Nigerian royalty would go straight to those poor exhibitionist college girls, who would then be able to afford a proper dating service, and could also perhaps buy themselves some self-respect. I love you, schmoopie.

[the above with apologies to many people, first among them, Geek Lethal.]

Ah, another ad hominem shouter. Racist, too. Fine. If everybody just wants to shout at each other, describe what the opposing camp thinks without consulting them, and then call them stupid, go ahead. I tried. Now I'm giving up.