falling upstairs

moral weights

2006-07-21T16:02:00.000-04:00

do you kill one person to save ten?

now this is a standard question in moral philosophy, one whose meaning has been explored by kant (no), the utilitarian (yes/maybe), and just about every uppity philosophy 101 student. it has many forms and variants (recently cropping up in organ harvesting - no pun intended), and is one of those things whose answers aren't really all that interesting, but whose justifications are the real substance.

so why the phil spew? because i think some people's weighting systems have gone a bit unbalanced and it is a good way to re-center them. from my dear conservative friend, on lebanon-israel:

conservative: part of me is scared shitless this is gonna escalate more than it has. but part of me, though, is sorta glad we're seeing the extremists emerge here

me: yeah, that one requires some explaining

conservative: at least now we know what we're really dealing with, ya know. before, it was the easy way of fixing the problem, hope a strong man who you can coerce or cajole fixes it for you. its like the argument you dems always make about s. america -- [stop] funding the contras, fix the underlying causes and the contras won't be needed. well, US foreign policy has for years favored the contras in the ME (ie arafat, assad, mubarak, prince __ of saud, etc) as opposed to fixing underlying causes.

now that we see what those underlying causes can result in we're a step closer to fixing the problem. is that completely cracked out? its like the argument against rent controls in cities if the signal of how valuable the property is doesn't get sent, then you will end up with less housing than you actually need.

hm. lemme check whats on cnn - troops at the border, families fleeing, civilians dead and wounded... ok, the washington post has a roundup: more civilian casualties... and the guardian has a piece on children killed and how ineffective the bombing has been... so if that is reality, then what in the world is he seeing? because 'knowing the mideast has big problems' doesn't really count as an upside here. most of us knew that already.

this isn't just my friend - this is what the president thinks:

"The president believes that unless you address the root causes of the violence that has afflicted the Middle East, you cannot forge a lasting peace," said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. "He mourns the loss of every life. Yet out of this tragic development, he believes a moment of clarity has arrived."

this (confirmed with this) is a dangerous shift from our "camp david" policies. 'root causes' here clearly doesn't mean dependence on oil (that finances this conflict). or a history of mistrust (fueled by recent conflicts). it means the existence of hezbollah in lebanon. to them, the conflict is an opportunity to kill terrorists - a long term plus. between now and 'the long term', of course, we lose our role as an honest broker. predictably, the conflict ~~can/will~~ has escalated without us.

but i started with the moral point. to even consider killing one to save ten, 'we' (philosophers, ordinary people) require a clear idea of what is lost and what is gained. the more vague, the more abstract the argument becomes (kill an undefined number now to potentially save more lifes in the future), the more we - rightly, i think - become unsettled. but in the fight between between israel and hezbollah (and by extension, lebanon), nobody has made even a vague case. to infer from actions, killing 306 to save 2 seems a bit unbalanced. accepting 'collateral damage', to kill others (hezbollah) isn't what i'd call a justification, either. as i understand it, this isn't a game of counterstrike, where there are only so many terrorists we need to kill. these groups are always recruiting, and - unlike us - i imagine this conflict only fills their ranks (see the guardian reports, above). just killing and destroying isn't an endgame. it is probably counterproductive. and it definitely won't build peace. i could ramble on, but i think this makes the point.

i'm not saying don't respond. i'm saying respond intelligently. think it through. philosophers may not agree on the answer (or even the question), but at a minimum a clear articulation is required. otherwise, it is running straight into misery. (there are, of course, additional benefits to clear statements in the field of public policy.)

[update: no, nevermind, my friend thinks this is all terrible and we need to address inequality in the region. see, now if everyone i know is being reasonable, why can't the international community just do the same?]

data makes me do the happy dance

2006-07-21T10:46:00.000-04:00

datamining has an interactive map of the blogosphere. the map layout is a "variant of the force layout approach to graph layout. There certainly is meaning to the location of nodes in the image: proximity indicates a tendancy for mutual citation." meaning: the map is more than just a pretty face. the place of nodes has actual social meaning.

but this is even more sexy, as a suggestion:

Time stability is an interesting problem. One way to do this is to fix nodes in location (or certain nodes). Alternatively, you could allow nodes to become more lethargic in movement according to how long they have been there. This seems like a good idea. Are you going for some form of animated representation?

dangit, where is my programming computer when i need it!

[update 1]: ok, i heart datamining. this visualization method is pretty darn inspiring, and pretty straightforward to understand (compared to other methods i've read)

we start by giving some amount of money to some user (initiator) in LJ network telling him to evenly distribute it among his friends, then his friends are performing the same action among their friends and so on. Obviously, if these guys are the members of some clique it will not take too long until all of them have an equal amount of money (thanks to small-world property), meanwhile only some small part of the initial amount will leave this community. So the amount of money of a particular user defines his thermodynamic distance from the initiator. If we have two initiators - we can plot the figure like the one shown here.

expect more updates as i read through the whole archives this weekend.

[update 2]: don't run too far through the links. i accidentally made it to 'linked', a book that makes me angry. hulk angry

et tu, brute?

2006-07-21T10:45:00.000-04:00

82.37 cups of betrayal-y goodness.

three laws safe

2006-07-21T10:44:00.000-04:00

unintended complications from i, robot may have infested my work computer. this may be a sign.

totally stealing the best sentence idea soon.

you've spun yourself into immorality when...

2006-07-20T15:20:00.000-04:00

i understand the need to put your best foot forward in politics. it doesn't make sense to lose an argument, simply because the wrong words were chosen, or because the wrong argument was made at the wrong time. thats reasonable, and those are valid roles for media experts. but... this...?!?

...the reason the United States has been so slow in evacuating its citizens from Lebanon is that the public diplomacy (i.e., P.R.) issues raised by evacuating under Israeli assault are so complicated. Individuals within the State Department, I am told, have been reluctant to create an impression that the Israeli assault on Lebanon is as bad as it is or that civilian U.S. citizens are being threatened by U.S. ally Israel. If a conflict this severe had broken out in, say, Indonesia, the American embassy would have been shut down the next day and its personnel and families rapidly brought to safety. That's how things normally work. (See Laura Rozen on the evacuation from Albania here.) In this case, however, the diplomatic message sent by shutting down the U.S. embassy in the face of Israeli bombing would have contradicted the U.S. government message of support for the Israeli mission against Hezbollah terrorists, which, when added to the general concern within lower-level diplomatic circles about ever creating a Fall of Saigon-style visual for the news media, have led the Americans to be slower than they could have been about getting U.S. citizens out of harm's way.

if this thought has even crossed the minds of those in power, i'd say we have a real crisis in goverment. there is, of course, a chance that this is katrina-style failure. which is equally disturbing in my mind. either way, can someone in the media/congress look into this, its kinda important. (and a friend from college is there...)

[whee - reading the comments from above, someone cites the Lavon Affair. since when did reality become a Tom Clancy novel / episode of 24? (the comment also cites the USS Liberty Incident, but i can't make sense of that one.)]
[via shakespeare's sister]

patriarchy claims another

2006-07-20T14:09:00.000-04:00

a husband suspects his wife had an abortion and lied, and the advice given is outright amazing:

These are problems of emotion and hope and living, human problems, rather than a problem of whether she did something wrong or not. And this work may require you to think of the connections between your life up till now and your relationship with your wife; things that you consider unrelated may come up unexpectedly. You will need to make a good-faith effort to see how these things are related.

and then it makes it onto pandagon, where it becomes a bit nasty, i think.

what purpose does this post serve on pandagon? i don't know more about feminism as a result of it. its not deep enough for that. this certainly isn't newsworthy. it isn't quite a parable. its a witch hunt. a chance for the faithful to stone someone, to affirm who they are. there really isn't enough here to assume (as some commenters do) that he's a jerk, and responses seem to be more about assumptions than anything else. its like a slightly skewed rorschach inkblot.

i know communities do this all the time. i have a sense of the psychological functions it serves. still, a little disheartening. at some point, it looks like we're defining ourselves and our goodness by who we exclude, rather than who we care for and the kindness we offer. i appologize if this post violates my own rules.

[full disclosure: this sounds like a trust/communication issue to me, with a whole debate being grafted onto that.]

this message brought to you by facts

2006-07-20T14:06:00.000-04:00

From C&J on DailyKos:

CHEERS to breaking the spell. (via Raw Story) Congressman Gil Gutknecht (R-MN) on Iraq June 15:

"Members, now is not the time to go wobbly. Let's give victory a chance."

Congressman Gil Gutknecht on Iraq after actually visiting the place:

"The condition there is worse than I expected. I have to be perfectly candid: Baghdad is a serious problem. [...] Baghdad is worse today than it was three years ago. [...] We learned it's not safe to go anywhere outside of the Green Zone any part of the day. [...] All of the information we receive sometimes from the Pentagon and the State Department isn't always true. [...] What I think we need to do more is withdraw more Americans"

Welcome to the reality, kiddo. Ain't it a kick??

and this is exactly why the bush administration has to censor all the facts, and filter out the bad stuff. this is why the media's seeming inability to get behind the story, and do substantial analysis, this is why that matters. a congressman shouldn't have to go to iraq and see reality firsthand to get the facts.

satire (the end of it)

2006-07-12T10:00:00.000-04:00

between the dead baby jokes, racist stories, and sexist comments, my group of friends is pretty hard to understand. for us, every bit of it is satire. the anti-semitic jokes come from my friend who is deeply in love with the daughter of a rabbi (and strongly jewish herself). the sexist comments come from the guys who head to marches for women's rights and are NOW members. while our weekly thursday party in college was called ladies night, we all understood it as a joke. sure, by senior year it was a pick-up party for both sexes, but we named it sophomore year, when it was 9 guys getting drunk and watching cartoons of talking fast food.

so meeting us now is a bit like jumping in mid-conversation. without the history, none of it makes sense. this happens in all conversations, of course. wandering around town, i pick up bits and pieces of conversations, and its not uncommon to hear just the wrong thing at just the wrong moment, and really start to wonder. especially if you have strong expectations.

on a related note, reading through pharyngula today, i found out that one man's satire is another man's reality. i think there is actually much more going on here than is discussed. way back, i wrote an article on hell houses where i inappropriately cited a satirical site as a real hell house (i can't find the old article). the satire, to me, looked entirely believeable as authentic. it was just one step further than everything else i'd read. at this point, reading the real stuff about hell houses, i was too shocked. it looked like nothing was outside the realm of possible anymore. [i'll admit, i was also being a lazy writer and should have source checked the article - the fault really is mine, but even my editors and peer reviewers thought it was authentic, which says something about the universality of being blindsided by something so alien .]

i imagine something like this happened to this pete fellow at march together. a bit worse, since most of us know what the onion is. [side note: maybe he's too close to it, but why not say "honest mistake" and move on? (he didn't)]. i just wish the whole affair was a bit tempered. as-is, comments are like pointing at a train wreck and laughing.

but this just keeps happening. my college roommate and i have a longstanding debate about Maxim. i think its satire. i just can't read that junk at face value. he thinks its offensive. i read the articles and laugh, because they're preposterous from my point of view. i understand that people read them seriously, and i haven't got a clue what the editor thinks, but its not the material thats offensive (to me), its how people read it that bothers me. if everyone read it and laughed, i'd be quite content. (he thinks its inherently offensive, and that i'm not actually reading it and laughing, but that at some level it reinforces my latent sexist worldview - even though he accepts that i'm a feminist. its a complex argument, with a very different idea of thinking, as i understand him).

i can't claim to have insight from The Book (of erdos) that locks this one up, but pieces keep falling into place. in college, the super-self-involved theatre crowd became obsessed with the notion of "post-ironic". not being in the conversation (and thinking they were all pompous jerks anyway), i mocked the very idea of the term. but thinking it over, its a workable concept. more than a few people i know date the death of irony sometime around when henry kissinger was awarded the nobel peace prize. its not just that the joke can't be topped. we're just too shocked. most english classes shrug off swift's a modest proposal. today's cheers and jeers starts with a letter about the flag and i can imagine it stated earnestly. or this liberty with a cross statue, which is the sort of thing used to mock someone, not something they go and build themselves. same deal with the homosexuality conversation referenced below.

the size of the shock betrays the real cause. when the premises of perspectives radically differ, and when they've been developed in isolation from other conversations, satire is effecively DOA. i wonder what other forms of communication are killed too. (abrupt ending, i know, but this is an unwieldy post as-is)

----

two notes:
(1) the same is pretty much true of contemporary art. unless you trace the conversation the artisitic community is having with itself since WWI (debateable starting point) --> the present, it really looks like senseless garbage. 'postmodern' authors are in the same boat (i think).
(2) nothing about this means to say i don't think some premises belong exclusively to yahoos.

lieberman's camp

2006-07-07T15:39:00.000-04:00

reading through the comments at dailykos (yes, thats how slow today has been), i found this comment

[lieberman is] kind of like a train wreck that you shouldn't look at but that you stare at anyway. He went from being a decent, honorable senator (even though I disagreed with some of his positions) to someone who so valued "collegiality" that he sacrificed his principles in order to cozy up to the powerful to, now, someone who's desperately grasping to keep his power. It's almost Shakespearian.

this touches on why the lamont-lieberman story has such a blogfrenzy around it. lieberman's story is the story of far too many dc-dems (and repubs). the particular reason is always just a bit different (sen clinton spent a bit too much time thinking about politically smart, and not enough on principles - powell with loyalty, so on). but the powerful in the party lack a principled core. those who can fill that gap [obama] meet with general praise.

i guess the general objection to this is that there aren't enough liberals to elect a president, so candidates have to be politically savvy. (and spawn a small army of consultants). in CT, of course, nobody can make that claim. the CT senators should be some of the most liberal in the country.

ny state supreme court ruling

2006-07-07T11:04:00.000-04:00

From the decision:

First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it mains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true. The Legislature could also find that such relationships are all too often casual or temporary. It could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement -- in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits -- to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other.

The Legislature could find that this rationale for marriage does not apply with comparable force to same-sex couples. These couples can become parents by adoption, or by artificial insemination or other technological marvels, but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse. The Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples, and thus that promoting stability in oppositesex relationships will help children more. This is one reason why the Legislature could rationally offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only.

so if i understand this, they're saying:

(a) babies need stability
(b) straight-people-sex is the dominant means of procreation
(c) straight people sexual relationships are too casual
(d) to ensure stability for baby-making partnerships, the legislature established the institution of marriage
(e) this doesn't apply to gays because
(1) queer relationships don't make babies by accident
(2) if a gay couple has babies, its planned, and the relationship is already stable

going that way, i think, is a kind of scorched-earth victory. it certainly deprives marriage of meaning, if thats all it is. imagine if "Four Weddings and a Funeral" adopted this attitude to marriage. and by leaving aside the richness of marriage, the court opinion really fails to meaningfully enagage the debate. which is sad, because thats one of the primary functions of the courts.

you have to wonder about the level of scrutiny employed here. as determinations of fact by the legislature, they don't survive critical thinking. there are to many "but what about..." moments. but its not even that the NY leg said this, the court is inventing justifications. "the legislature could have found...". this is several layers below the weakest scrutiny in conlaw. its bad jurisprudence.

instead, one could imagine the court demanding the legislature give a justification for the law, one that passes at least intermediate scrutiny, forcing the legislature on the record, on the issue. my bet is this would inevitably open the way for court-remedy civil unions (i honestly don't understand objections to civil unions). and if we could get some thoughtful people to discuss this, honestly, i'd like to think a solution would present itself.

fair-minded words

2006-07-07T09:11:00.000-04:00

obama has always struck me as a powerful speaker. that or he at least has a great speechwriter. my only disappointment has been his inability to translate this into equally impressive actions. his call to renewal keynote on the 28th did not fail to impress, of course, but the best part was the letter he quoted:

I sense that you have a strong sense of justice...and I also sense that you are a fair minded person with a high regard for reason...Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded....You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making any claims that involve others...I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.

the writer was responding to a section on obama's website that said he would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose". strong words. party words. ~~they'd probably get cheerleaded on dailykos.~~ i've probably said them a hundred times in conversations with others. i know i've written more than a few articles along those lines as well. [goodness, i just thought about this blog.] i've certainly mocked the anti-choicers more than once.

but responding to the letter, obama took down those words. and felt a certain sense of shame.

i have to say, i do too.

[update: i went through the archives, and found a link to this. i can't say which is the better path to walk. i'll puzzle, and hopefully add an entry later]

gapminder

2006-06-29T09:48:00.000-04:00

via crooked timber and jim gibbon, i stumbled into gapminder, a neat data-visualization package available online (alternate link). so so cool, and not just for us geeks.

while i'm at it...

neat link on the monte carlo method
we all use it, i just need to store links: mathworld
possibly going on my sidebar: social science stat blog. too cool

right wing humor

2006-06-08T09:09:00.000-04:00

yesterday i'm in line for x-men III (for the second time) with a republican and a dem. we get to discussing john stewart ripping bill bennett apart on gay marriage. nothing bennet said made any sense - america stands for progress like no other nation has in history (yey), but we should outlaw gay marriage because nobody else has done it (huh?). bennet's worst argument was the comparison to polygamy. (since the question is really whether these are human relationships or mere fettishes).

so the republican starts arguing this raises the question whether you can marry your parrot. and the gay guy next to us jumps in, thinking this was a joke. sadly, while the argument is laughable, the sentiment is sincere.

so i got to wondering - do they have a sense of humor? to test, are these jokes? check it out.

anchor babies and toddlercide
legal follies

maybe its time to speak only via satire

justification?

2006-05-26T09:24:00.000-04:00

does anybody really believe that this:

a small number of marines in western Iraq carried out extensive, unprovoked killings of civilians, Congressional, military and Pentagon officials said Thursday.

is justified by this:

WASHINGTON, May 25 — President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, two leaders badly weakened by the continuing violence in Iraq, acknowledged major misjudgments in the execution of the Iraq war on Thursday night even while insisting that the election of a constitutional government in Baghdad justified their decision to go to war three years ago.

i'm also willing to bet that the fact that our troops are overstretched, overworked, and underequipped can't help.

A Dilittante's History of The United States

2006-05-23T10:51:00.000-04:00

but i didn't have to learn that in high school!

tinkerbell epistemology

2006-05-18T08:42:00.000-04:00

browsing through the facebook (like you do, on mornings at work), and i came across this on the frontpage:

Do your part to prevent global warming, pledge to see THE TRUTH this summer in the An Inconvenient Truth group.

*clap harder*

first, great movie. go see it. the reviews suggest its both entertaining and informative. but the consequences? i guess its standard, in an age where everything is the best thing ever, but its tiring, to filter out most of what people say, as complete garbage. and it certainly plays into the model that we can consume, to obtain whatever we want. (all things new and easy.)

thank goodness for my major...

2006-05-15T10:52:00.000-04:00

moral dilemmas

so much for polite...

2006-05-15T09:39:00.000-04:00

chris clarke has written a nice salvo for those of us a little tired of watching the world fall apart, and being forced to smile politely.

it is not civil to discuss things quietly and collegially while people are dying because they can’t afford medicine. It is not civil to speak in even, chuckling sardonicism as one beleaguered wild place after another is paved for profit. It is not civil to calmly raise logical arguments against torture, against kidnapping, against using nuclear weapons on civilians to show our resolve.

and the first comment is, in a word, golden.

In my experience, people with power howl for civility when they have nothing more substantial than their critics’ timidity standing between them and exposure of their foul deeds. This particular bleat is a sign of progress.

via pzmyers.

memes

2006-05-05T10:29:00.000-04:00

hm, i guess i'll bite too

Accent: i don't have a base accent, i tend to pick up the language patterns of the people i'm around immediately... though someone once claimed i have southwestern dipthongs.
Booze: beer, usually of the PBR variety. also whiskey.
Chore I Hate: restocking toiletries. as a result, i buy everything i can in 12-packs. there is a reasonable chance the US will run out of oil before i need to buy irish spring again.
Dog or Cat: dog. a large one, ideally able to eat undergraduates lacking essay-writing skills.
Essential Electronics: My iBook, Wonka. A close second is my iPod, WonkaPod.
Favorite Cologne: i have an unnatural dislike of cologne. makes me sneeze.
Gold or Silver: bleh. neither. i'd take turquoise any day.
Hometown: hm, i was born in albuquerque. but lived in santa fe until i was 14. but i consider myself a montanan, since thats where i really "grew up".
Insomnia: why yes, i look forward to grad school
Job Title: Financial Strategies and Research Analyist. did i mention i have a degree in philosophy?
Kids: i'd rather not inflict my genetics on the future.
Living arrangements: the washington, dc equivalent of fort knox, with two college friends.
Most admirable traits: when i set my mind to something, i never give up.
Not going to cop to: sometimes, i want to put down the academic books and just read trash. i also occasionally believe in god, and am a bit of a romantic.
Overnight hospital stays: never - i've been very very lucky.
Phobias: once upon a time, heights. curiousity over came this during a trip to the grand canyon. since then, not so much.
Quote: changes way too often...
Religion: Dad is Jewish, Mom is Episcopalian. they let us kids choose. My brother dabbled with Wicca, sis went for a couple versions of YoungLife style Christianity. i've decided i don't know enough to decide, and that its hard to salvage the good from the junk.
Siblings: two - see above.
Time I wake up: 6:00 a.m., then i hit snooze on my cell phone once every 5 minutes until 6:30...
Unusual talent or skill: Touching my nose with my tongue.
Vegetable I love: i can't remember the name, i'll get back to you on that one.
Worst habit: Procrastination.
X-rays: Teeth. MRI brain scan.
Yummy foods I make: give me a grill, and meat of any kind. sandwitches.
Zodiac sign: cancer.

(via aetiology, via adventures in ethics and science, via writingasjoe.)

redacted

2006-05-02T11:12:00.000-04:00

it has come to my attention that my previous post on patriotism lacked... how do i put this lightly... any semblance of intelligent thought. don't get me wrong, there were ideas in there. many of them are good ones. but it needs some editing. possibly descartes-style.

this probably goes for a few other entries too.

ahh, spew...

2006-05-02T10:59:00.000-04:00

today i decided to read the wikipedia post on helen thomas, and a few clicks later made it to this site. i still feel ill from the hated and animostiy it spews. he attacked helen thomas on objectivity? wha...?

but the frontpage says it all - at an immigration rally: "I'm beginning to feel like General Custer now." its like he satirized himself. then again, anyone that could ride "its a small world" 50 times in a row...

patriotism

2006-04-26T12:16:00.000-04:00

crooked timber has a debate between harry brighouse and peter levine, on whether patriotism should be taught in our schools. levine has this little nugget of gold.

Patriotism is love of country. For most people, it is not a passionate and exclusive and life-altering love. It's more like love for a blood-relative, perhaps an aunt. It doesn't involve choice. It doesn't require a tremendously high estimate of the object's intrinsic qualities. … I think that people should love large human communities in this way. You may put your family first, but to love only them is too exclusive. Loving all of humankind is good, but it doesn't mean the same thing as love for a concrete object.here

thats cute. nation as concrete object. i'll have to remember that.

other than "the nation", patriotism doesn't really tell you what to love. what is 'the nation', after all? (sorry for channeling socanth 101, but bear with me). i consider myself a patriot. i go to the all you can eat buffet, look at the people around me, then down to the american flag on the sneeze guard, and sincerely think "god bless america" (honestly). i live in dc, and little makes me happier than watching families on vacation roam the mall. little makes me angrier than watching people disgrace america - enemies foreign or domestic.

the history of america i know isn't a positive one. we were founded in slavery. affirmed in class warfare (shay's rebellion). expanded via genocide (trail of tears, state of oklahoma). fought wars of conquest. our interventions in latin america have been nothing but criminal. i can't say that i'm fond of the nicaraguization of the rest of our foreign policy. i worry about the path we're on. i worry what it means that so many americans are depressed...

but i love our ideals. freedom. truth. democracy. i chose to study political science to better understand and communicate them to others, because i want us to live up to them. being this kind of patriot, i think, is productive. its what shocks me into action, every time a public official lies. (or when liars become press secretaries, if you like topical).

what worries me, not all people understand america the same way. growing up in montana, i can remember more than a couple shotgun-staccato'd yells of "long live white america" at 4th of July celebrations. my car has been peppered more times than i can count with "save the white baby" posters. (did i mention? i'm hispanic - native born, like it matters). a 'friend' in high school insisted on singing cheech and chong songs around me, and calling me a spic. on main street, my (gay) friends and i (straight, like it matters) have had beer bottles thrown at them from the backs of trucks. if i remember, the thower yelled about a "queer pride parade".

i imagine they don't think of the nation the same way i do.

to people who don't understand america, who think hispanics and gays and... and... don't belong, patriotism isn't a virtue. its a rosarch test of vice. large swaths of this country aren't far from that. i do want them to love the america i know. its the one they see that scares me.

good sites

2006-04-21T11:43:00.000-04:00

its a good site, but someone needs to help out their html code... my eyes...

hm, i wish they'd be half as efficient as protecting the nation

"quit letting Cheney's crackpots run foreign policy and talk to Iran. After all, the administration's ideologues killed an opportunity to ratchet down tensions three years ago, and since then things have only gotten worse". wow. even kevin drum agrees.

earth day

2006-04-21T11:27:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is Earth Day.

Bush will be golfing [here]

Apparently, in wetlands.

That being the case, the regularly issued report for the first time in its 20-year history does not differentiate natural-occurring swamps, marshes, bogs and potholes from golf course water hazards, storm-water retention impoundments, lakes and reservoirs related to development, and other recently created open-water areas. [here].

not actually back to this yet

2006-04-20T08:22:00.000-04:00

but, in case this link is useful political philosophy. read it.

liberals are going extinct

2006-03-15T12:28:00.000-05:00

my conservative friends want to kill me. (see when conservatives populate the earth, also [here]).

despite what you might think, i don't object to conservatives. i object to stupid. i expect people to think. preferably prior to inflicting their partially digested bile upon the world.

this time, the author points to seattle and salt lake city, to infer that republicans outbreed democrats. salt lake city has a large mormon population (duh). mormon families tend to have more children than any other demographic, and tend to be republican. but - i could just as easily observe that swarthmore (republican) has low fertility rates, while albuquerque, new mexico (deep dem) has higher ones, and make the opposite inference. its true, fertility correlates with religion, which correlates with political affiliation. (all of which correlate with economic class, btw).

the issue is (among many other things, including the most laughably bad understanding of patriarchy since rush) a misunderstanding of correlation. all the factors above are listed as weak predictors by the general social survey (r-squared < 0.4). what that means is that approximately a third to half of the variation in fertility is associated with religious attendance, political affiliation, or economic class. most variation is unaccounted for. making long-term predictions about our values is spurious. (imagine predicting the future of conservatives based on birth rates during the realignment of the 1900s-40s - today's political landscape would be unimaginable).

consider this. reading the article, you wouldn't know that the largest and fastest growing population in the united states are hispanics, a dominant subset of which are immigrants or children of immigrants, and mostly from mexico. they tend to have more children than other populations (not so many as mormons) and be very religious and frequent churchgoers. but they vote overwhelmingly for democrats (the only group that splits more to dems are african-americans) and pregnancy rates don't explain the split (actually, the hispanics with fewer children tend to vote republican, but i imagine the older cuban refugees skew that subset). its true, they aren't the biggest fans of abortion, but poll them on healthcare, education, or other liberal programs, and you get my point.

one monkey, one typewritier, and 15 minutes...

2006-03-15T09:45:00.000-05:00

could write better than the WaPo today.

*slow clap*. i know its an op-ed in the washington post, but that has to be the poorest excuse for "thought" i've read in ages. he made a straw-man argument based on stereotypes and debunked it by citing one of the worst papers in the field, but because it has a fetch title.

does the author want a cookie?

** * **

i can do the same: watch.

stereotypes:
republicans are a party of faith and god
democrats are atheists

in montana, faith is not a significant predictor of party affiliation or voting outcomes {cite study because it makes me look smrt/hip. refer to paper as "meterosexual". comment about author's shoes. disregard that undergraduates writing the paper would be flunked from an introductory statistics course}

proceed to ignore vast literature on topic. disregard influence of race, education, immigrant status... the leaders of the civil rights movement... accurate journalism just never won a pulitzer

rather than make an interesting point about the psychology of politics (or of the right-wing noise machine, or the historical influence of the heritage foundation)... scapegoat time! convienient target: the media! {ignore irony that this is an op-ed piece}

consult crystal ball. insert vague predictions about 2008

you can't handle democracy

2006-02-28T08:38:00.000-05:00

i've intentionally avoided saying anything about the danish cartoons, largely because i've found the debate around them fairly lacking, but then i read this:

it may be safer, in trying to explain why a free press is so important – and a press that is free to give offence – not to fall back on the word ‘democracy’. Many people who think like the demonstrators, and millions who don’t, remember the Islamic Salvation Front being denied their victory at the polls in Algeria in 1991 (it was the wrong result); they see all the tut-tutting about the recent Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections (wrong result); they watch as the murderous gift of democracy is bestowed on Iraq. In these contexts, you would be likely to approach democracy in the way a scientist examines a dangerous virus or a villager circles the wreck of a downed aircraft. [here]

the hypocrisy of those who proclaim 'the west' to be wiser and more experienced with democratic values is increasingly irksome, particularly when it exposes such thinly veiled racism. and being completely ignorant of any context these protests occur within doesn't make the situation any better.

south dakota...

2006-02-26T15:35:00.000-05:00

the south dakota legislature has not only decided to outlaw abortion, but also to... well, see for yourself:

abortions terminate the constitutionally protected fundamental interest of the pregnant mother in her relationship with her child and abortions are performed without a truly informed or voluntary consent or knowing waiver of the woman's rights and interests. The Legislature finds that the state has a duty to protect the pregnant mother's fundamental interest in her relationship with her unborn child. [here]

i'd like to take a moment to thank these sexists for at least being explicit about their power-grab for the patriarchy. usually media-saavy republicans try to soften their sexism. but this bill outright declares that women are incabable of excercizing choice over reproductive rights, since abortion is inherently coercive. for a society that defines 'people' as those having autonomy, this is huge. (another sign: the bill penalizes doctors, not women - women couldn't commit crimes, after all, that'd require they be 'people' first.) the next step: women are fundamentally about babies and motherhood. which is just so upsetting, i don't know where to start.

but wait, it gets worse...

the legislature apparently decided not to let the citizens of south dakota vote on the measure, presumably because it would fail. however, they are currently accepting donations for the $1 million or so in legal fees they expect. so basically, unless you have tons of money, the south dakota legislature doesn't care what you think.

and, oh no, the worst is yet to come:

If a woman who is raped becomes pregnant, the rapist would have the same rights to the child as the mother [here]

this, apparently, "delights" the bill's sponsor, Rep. Roger W. Hunt (shocker: republican), who thinks that exceptions for rape/incest/health would "dilute" the ban.

great minds

2006-02-22T20:50:00.000-05:00

at a meeting today, i had the insight that our conversation could be described as the product of aristotle, hobbes, and foucault meeting to discuss finance:

boss 1 (aristotle): as a community, we all know what an investment project is, but what we really need to do is think about our definitions, so we can refine them just a bit.
boss 2 (hobbes): i don't see why we're meeting about this, i defined project in the data collection system. and that is the end of that.
coworker (foucault): what is it we mean when we say 'project'? isn't that to privilege one viewpoint over another? and there can be no basis for such an action of violence, so project has no meaning.

the interaction, of course, was nothing but a dostoyevski comedy. the aristotelean sought consensus in a world of myriad diversity, the hobbesean mechanistic approach collapsed under its own reductionism, and the foucaultian might as well have stuck dynamite under our reporting process for all the good it did. i have my background in philosophy to thank for being the only one to get something out of the meeting. alas, i couldn't think of any way to share my insight.

reductionists define race

2006-02-22T20:43:00.000-05:00

minorities: individuals of non-White racial ancestry.

yes, that is how my bureau decided to define minority in the glossary to our latest report. i had the definition deleted from the report, only to discover that this may be the "official" definition.

pre-washington ideals

2006-02-20T12:19:00.000-05:00

so alexander pope thinks i should stop writing a blog. and all of this is about a week after i tried to post it at first. silly me.

juan cole (who i now love reading) notes that there are already laws on the books regarding warrantless searches in war time, and that constitutional avoidance and the expansive executive are bunk.

but don't talk too loudly, the enemy might have forgotten. and more importantly, you never know who is listening. but don't worry, we won't investigate

*** ** ***

most of all, i'm overflowing with comments about the gang that couldn't shoot straight

(1) dick cheney <3 aaron burr
(2) quails are not republican lawyers
(3) oh my god, i didn't know the VP had gout. how perfect aristocrat is that?
(4) no - wait, i shouldn't laugh about this. but is it too early to yell "coverup"?
(5) what the? where did the beer go? story two doesn't have it, but a screenshot and a google cache do
(6) but lets blame the 78 year old man who got shot in the face and then suffered a heart attack

*** * ***

just in case you'd fogotten, though: corruption, corruption, corrption.

i'm spinning all of this

quick sorry

2006-02-17T08:23:00.000-05:00

work, alas, has been fairly busy recently, leaving far too little time for me to, you know, "do" things. like post. though i'm not sure where the day goes once i get home. hm. anywho, read these

you're an...

2006-02-15T09:16:00.000-05:00

asshole

and a smoker

wait, same diff

verizon - totally founded in the 1750s

2006-02-07T09:59:00.000-05:00

george washington had an ipod, and i want one too:

Alberto: President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale.

as swattie emeritus pointed out to me yesterday, this has far-reaching implications for our nation's history. was b franklin's whole kite thing actually him spying on the redcoats? i'm submitting a foia request as we speak. but i'm willing to bet the material still falls under executive privilege

*** * ***

thank goodness for gmail packrats:

From: Ben Franklin 'b.franklin@gmail.com'
Date: ~~Feb 6, 2006~~ September 10, 1789 11:25 AM
Subject: NSA Warrantless Domestic Wiretaps
To: George Washington 'george.washington@gmail.com'

Madison and those other liberal 'founder' pansies are being un-American for disagreeing with us, they're all French sypmathizers anyway. The Kite Surveillance Program is critical to the health of our fledgling nation. Do they know how long it would take for me to call up Attorney General Edmund Randolph for each and every kite I fly? I don't even know who that guy is. They should go pass a Bill of Rights if they disagree, or create a system of checks and balances. Psh.

Heterosexually yours,
b franklin

* *** *

well, i guess if you can trust one george, you can trust them all. i don't know about you, but that definately convinced me to agree with our ~~emperor~~... ~~fearless leader~~... president

[update: void post, done much better here

we need a higher class of garbage here, people

2006-02-07T09:54:00.000-05:00

it has come to my attention that i'm reading far too few news sources. nytimes, dailykos, and wapo are all in the same vein. so i'm trying out some new things: wired, wampup, wonkette, the note, tpm cafe,...

thus far, this has yeilded a news bombshell, a significant decrease in productivity, and other assorted nuggets

when did the catholic church become so cool?

2006-02-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

it is always a good thing to be surprised:

How are we to interpret the scientific picture of life’s origins in terms of religious belief. Do we need God to explain this? Very succinctly my answer is no. In fact, to need God would be a very denial of God. God is not the response to a need. One gets the impression from certain religious believers that they fondly hope for the durability of certain gaps in our scientific knowledge of evolution, so that they can fill them with God. This is the exact opposite of what human intelligence is all about. We should be seeking for the fullness of God in creation. We should not need God; we should accept her/him when he comes to us.

the whole article is definately worth reading - i can't remember the last religious leader who made sense of science. i wonder where this will be metabolized?

pretentious

2006-02-05T23:18:00.000-05:00

1. demanding distinction or praise, generally undeserved
2. show-y (see peacock)
3. this blog

...

2006-02-01T11:50:00.000-05:00

in related news, the world is round

i'm stunned, really.

[update: i can think of a few errors in their methodology that would yield similar results. due to republican states being more segregated and having fewer visible minorities, individuals there - both parties - are more likely to rely on cultural tropes (stereotpyes) since they lack the experience to have their basis of interpretation in experience.]

** * **

anyway, this piece on race and ethnicity in casting is actually quite interesting. this is, after all, the meat of cultural feedback.

the issues, in brief? should writers do a diversity pass, intentionally casting against racist stereotypes? really, does the script become less "Whitey McWhite" if the writer just changes the color of the actor? is the diversity pass absurd and racist because these are simply new stereotypes created out of pity or noblesse oblige?

sorry to play 20 questions, but this is a microcosm of so much that i think about, and... definately a 3-pipe problem

** * ***

[here] makes me happy

today is a bad day

2006-01-31T14:48:00.000-05:00

alito was confirmed. and the state of the union is tonight. it was nice to know that mother nature agreed with my prospects for today; this morning, the wind gusted and it poured. all the while, this exerpt from the tiger looped in my brain

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

cynic? me?

take your moderate bunk and...

2006-01-30T15:47:00.000-05:00

you know, i'm a bit tired of being told how "liberal" i am. the other day i was chatting with a guy who just wouldn't stop talking about these nonlethal force crowd-control devices developed for cops. i mentioned that i don't think its worthwhile for our military / police to have crowd techniques that involve shooting pepper spray bullets into crowds. (didn't we learn after the water cannons?) i don't want them having the ability to stop crowds without using lethal force, because i never want them to stop a protest without crossing that line, so some blabbering meme on fox can't claim that this was just what the founders did in shays rebellion and the whiskey rellion. (jerks). he mentions latin america. he says it'd be of great use in iraq. i note this proves my point - i don't want us led into thinking we have the power to act in those situations - because no advance in nonlethal technology makes those interventions just (or even tenable). i'm told that he's thinks of himself as on the left, but "you're really liberal".

jerk

i wanted to punch him. or at least yell out - your little weapons fettish, however disguised it may be, is peverse. being more efficient at controlling and harming people isn't "progress" on any rational scale. only a profoundly sick human being could think otherwise, even for a second. and while we're at it, i'm where the center should be, not to the right of creeps like you.

instead, i smiled. some days i doubt my commitment to nonviolence, even as i affirm it.

comedic minimalism

2006-01-27T15:52:00.000-05:00

sometimes, comedy says it all:

Q. How does a War Bill become a War Law?
A. It all begins with the president, who submits a bill to the president. If a majority of both the president and the president approve the bill, then it passes on to the president, who may veto it or sign it into law. And even then the president can override himself with a two-thirds vote.

but maybe we need to be minimalist about it...

grinding a mill

2006-01-26T10:36:00.000-05:00

[2006.01.26 - 0930] push keys, news returns. all bad.

[2006.01.26 - 1030] more keys, news returns. still bad. test rat still surprised. fool.

[2006.01.26 - 1330] bang keys, dailykos cheerleading... nope, still bad

you think i'd learn. but i'm torn. a lover of knowledge, i note that 'news' is more shadow than substance. stories are constantly becoming, they reveal to us few truths and even fewer facts - it may be they are more lies than anything else. but that lover of a good life notes that there is much to be said for cultural literacy. and being ignorant of surroundings is certainly no virtue. and it is certainly a fertile ground for random musings... in any case, the conflict is a gordion knot. the conflict between the two orientations (plato/aristotle) is intractable when pushed to the extremes, so i'll go on reading news stories, for better or worse.

** * **

considering one's intellectual heritage is a funny thing. i know, for example, that much of my moral and political philosophy ressonates with the art of happiness, but i know i held these opinions before i read that book (some 7 years ago), even if i was shaped by it. perhaps my deepest ressonance is with on liberty. i get weepy reading john stuart mill. i mean, read isaiah berlin on the topic. and it is from this lineage and affinity that i ponder my love of rights, reason,...

by my senior year at swarthmore, i felt this part of me was under siege. i felt alone defending Reason against the historically determined marx, the psychologically determined freud, and the emotional neitzche. the same trio that destroyed religion for more critical intellectuals was being swung back against the very basis that gave life to the there. and yet, i clung to Reason, since it is for me the basis of liberty, of equality, the individual... my adversaries (the backswing of the trio) asserted not only that reason didn't exist, but also that equality between individuals was oppresive, most strikingly in arguing against freedom of thought as a tool of the powerful against the weak (hate speech) - including my former roommate (who then infamously declared that even formal contradictions in his logic were insufficient evidence he might be wrong). tip of the iceberg...

a good liberal, i ran through the claims. most were spurious. but a few still give me pause. i recognize (intellectual history again) that some of what i believe is less rational and more rooted in the past, even influenced by my emotions. that much political thought may be processed at a subconscious level doesn't help. wandering through the news, one can find frequent mention of psychological (mis)use, such as the infamous rat commercial. i watch those around me, i hear them answer polls, and i wonder... was lippman so wrong? do i have to jump off the Reason ship? and then what am i?

*** * ***

the best thoughts and ideas must be mulled over, like a fine cider. but don't overheat, or you get this mush. i just needed to get it off my chest. but like my mulling over religion, this one requires a couple months buried in a library just to start moving again... hm... i have weekends off... lj will be devoted to planning

and this one i just have to lift from dailykos

2006-01-25T12:09:00.000-05:00

They are vehemently against abortion, they resist progressive woman's rights. They view homosexuality as a crime against nature and God, some advocate the death penalty as an option for it. Separation of Church and State is despised by these folks; they insist the nation is founded on the principles of their religion, and they work hard to bring that de facto theocracy about. They deplore strong language, gay characters, and sexual content on TV and in the media. And they ignore the Geneva Convention when it suits their ideological purposes, including provisions against torture or due process. They're anti-stem cell research, pro-creationism, and generally distrustful of science. These folks are easily whipped into a state of frenzy with ideological manipulation to the point where they will commit violence, or at least tacitly endorse that violence is acceptable, if it advances their Divine agenda. They then take great pains to justify that violence, including unprovoked attack of civilian areas, under certain conditions, with convoluted theological gymnastics. They are almost to the man pro-death penalty ...
Am I railing against the religious right again? Could be, but my target here is actually Al Qaeda and related fundamentalist wahhabism; the source of terrorism, the scourge of our planet, the Axis of Evil. [here]

oh the irony

** * **

originally i only posted this to save the link from falling into the oblivion that is internet archives, but i think there is more to this. as one of my mentors at swarthmore (schuldenfrei) was fond of observing, there appears to be a movement across the globe toward a radically conservative interpretation of traditions, communities, and religion. the appears here is critical - any meaningful accessment would require an exhaustive study of the histories of dozens of cultures, spanning hundreds of years. but since when was this blog, you know, 'meaningful'? [edit: come to think of it, maybe the value of schuldenfrei's comments was less their social scientific objectivity than their challenge to our framework of thought]. le pen in france, racial and immigration politics in the netherland, the american fundamentalist movement, hindu nationalists in india,... they're all certainly similar in their politics and aims, but is there an underlying thread that connects them?

i tend to view them as deracinated ghosts, an attempt to return to a (mythic/fictional) time, without any awarness that the context that animated and gave meaning to whatever truth exists their vision has faded away. the result is a hybrid of the worst prejudices of modern times, added to those of the past; a contemporary movement, responding to current issues through the (rhetorical justification/self-interpreted lens) of tradition. schuldenfrei took this as a rejection of liberal autonomy. to him, the liberal notion of a self-created and self-defined individual is being -violently- rejected. communities are desperate for meaning and order. enough of this pc nonsense. and while they're at it, we're none too fond of that descartes guy, throw that out as well.

because they reference a myth of who they were, and claim the sole right to interpret their sacred reference (theological, historical, whatever), any means can be justified, since no one else can judge.

* *** *

the tragedy of it all is that, for all the damage these groups will create, no good can come of it. consumer capitalism eroded the moral fabric of america long before homosexuality became an issue, or the warren court took on civil rights. "france" stopped being "french" before algeria gained independence, and immigrants had nothing to do with it. their path seeks the impossible, and so they'll lose, of that i'm sure. i just wonder what the by-products will be

ah, discourse

2006-01-23T09:14:00.000-05:00

i'll admit it, i once contemplated reading the dictionary. i'd become obsessed with language - the idea that we use many words virtually interchangably, despite their meanings being actually quite distinct. i decided that the process created far too much confusion, and all sorts of beining was lost. reading the dictionary, as it turned out, wasn't much of a help for most language, because it was too detached from life (yes, this surprised my 14-year-old mind. bite me).

later, at swarthmore, i noticed that many words are used as placeholders for broader meaning, even to compensate for lazy thinking. as an example, privilege. is it simply a power dynamic? did you mean to say social capital, but bourdieu is just too hard to pronounce? or a socially intrinsic property of an individual? does defining it as "social" make it contextual? or is it a third-order idea, the theodicy for your political project? (and, btw, just because i want what i say to have a measure of truth and reason in it, doesn't make me conservative... being on the left doesn't give you an excuse to be an idiot)

the problem, of course, is language. on the way up to phili, my roommate lamented debating philosophy with philosophers (well, specifically, me). people trained in phil tend to require a degree of concision in language (and i'm not just talking about the analytic folks, who are at the extreme end here) that non-specialists reject. i say Reason, you say postmodern socially-determined force, what does it matter? except, now we're not having anything that resembles an exchange of ideas, and the interchange is reducible to two monkeys shouting (thanks dave). and the issue isn't just that postmodernism is basically the project of pissing on everyone else's hard work and going "aha! i mock your silly project"

i could ramble on (me?) but the thought came to me that, like stereotypes, the construction of language, particularly a discourse, is an attempt to use a set of words to model a vastly more dynamic system, and the issue of a well-ordered system of thought is the 'fit' of the model. but the issue isn't just the robustness of the vocabulary, but more the premises of the model (linear algebra folks: did you choose the wrong basis). words that are placeholders for meaning invariably suggest that the premises of the model have run afoul. [i know the hannah arendt crowd is screaming "totalizing system", but so is science. and should one opt for astrology over modern physics, simply because one is a worse fit? if so, i strongly encourage you to abandon the germ theory of disease, on similar grounds]

thou shalt not...

2006-01-20T13:38:00.000-05:00

and kevin drum wills to power the overman

For the sake of argument, let's assume that we had pretty good intelligence telling us that a bunch of al-Qaeda leaders were in the house we bombed. And let's also assume that we did indeed kill al-Masri and several other major al-Qaeda leaders. Finally, let's assume that the 18 civilians killed in the attack were genuinely innocent bystanders with no connection to terrorists.
Question: Under those assumptions, was the attack justified? I think the answer is pretty plainly yes, but I'd sure like to see the liberal blogosphere discuss it. And for those who answer no, I'm curious: under what circumstances would such an attack be justified? [here]

pretty plainly yes? i guess this is what a cavalier attitude toward life looks like.

** * **

the more i think about this, the more i find wrong with this situation. try it this way: what makes this different from bombing a group of equivalently bad terrorists hanging out in the human rockies? if the civilians were complete innocents - human shields for the terrorists - is the attack still justified?

life =/= life? pretty clearly no, i'd say. and if anyone wants to bomb my home state... well, please go on cnn so your political party can go on the record as the one ordering the airforce to initiate domestic bomb raids. but if our assessment changes, as i think it must, why? is the life of a foreigner as valuable as that of an american? if drum (or his merry band of cubicle warriors) think that an american life is worth more than a pakistani one, we can safely end the conversation and quite accurately use the r-word to describe them.

no other option was open / political context. maybe the cubicle bomb brigade would attribute the justification to political instability in pakistan. president mushrraff has barely survived what - three? - assassination attempts, and his government has virtually no control of the region. the noble cubicle warrior would, no doubt, insist that no other options were open. this argument is dangerous, for two reasons. first, it requires that one explore and disprove every other option. did we even assess grabbing this guy? what were the resources? and second, what distinguishes pakistan from, say, australia? it can't be that the country simply won't do it, or can't do it for political reasons. this has to be a "true" lack of governance - which, if you can quantify, please go write a journal article. fortunately, in pakistan, this isn't the case.

moral frame. normally, we don't bomb the houses of those responsible for mass death. timothy mcveigh got a trial, as did pinochet, as did those put on trial in nuremberg. we do, however, bomb in war. why the difference? and do the relevant terms of war apply here? (this is a metaphorical war. its not like we're conquering territory, are we? or fighting on a field, right?)

** * **

anyway, it may be that reframing like that simply ducks the issue. so you know what, i'll bite the bullet, and i'll do it clearly

killing people is wrong -always- end of story.

it is at best the lesser of two evils. but don't pretend that makes it right. sure, kill the jerk who is about to press the button and blow up new york. but you don't deserve a parade, and you certainly don't deserve political kudos for it. you still killed someone, and calling them a 'jerk' or even a 'terrorist' doesn't deprive them of humanity. i don't think you can simply sum up the amount of evil they would have done, discounted for the 'collateral damage' incurred in stopping them, and call it a day. we aren't gods, even olympian ones. not only are will filled with biases that blur our reason, but reason is itself limited. nobody knows the future, and so the consequences of our actions are anything but predictable.

honestly, what good came from these deaths? does anybody really pretend that another terrorist won't rise to take this place? that if somehow we just manage to kill enough leaders, the killing will stop? piss off. mountains of dead won't stop this war, so don't mar what is left of america's good name with innocent civilian deaths, especially when no good can come of it

more gore

2006-01-19T10:47:00.000-05:00

On the home front, it will take an unapologetically powerful leader to break Washington from its transactional rut. At the same time, we need a vigorous Congress with a sense of urgency that can hold the executive branch accountable not only for the rule of law but for results.
Al Gore is right that like Nixon, Bush acts like an imperial president. But the best way to curb the imperial presidency isn't for Congress to tie the next president's hands. It's for Americans to elect a new president and Congress who will go all-out to earn the public's trust.[here]

just... no. our system of government isn't based on the hopes that the better angels of men will be elected, and their judgement curb their power. madison, wisely, thought there should be structural limitations upon the power of the president. checks. balances. that part of history in high school that apparently only democrats were awake for...

don't get me wrong, i like the idea of once again trusting our elected officials, but that only takes ya so far. trust erodes, and COINTELPRO wasn't so long ago. besides, there is no harm in setting boundaries any president worth trusting would never cross. and electrifying them, for good measure.

** * **

besides, this is simply another case where sacrificing liberty for security yields neither. there are some problems a single reformer in a system can solve given sufficient power (at least without wrecking the system they operate within - for the worse). they tend to have clearly defined objectives (right to vote issues) and are relatively 'cheap' to impliment (parts of the civil rights movement). neither the war on terror nor the reformation of washington fit these categories.

part of the problem is the frame most conversations approach the problem within. the "war on terror" has been a terrible metaphor ever since the republican noise machine invented it before the rubble had even cooled. police action, while less stirring, is a more appropriate model. the logic of this viewpoint isn't exactly difficult to understand. when fighting an enemy that so readily uses asymmetrical force, and when even lone individuals have the power to destroy en masse, we're required to collect vast quantities of information on our enemies, and use surgical precision against them, while at the same time eliminating the underlying causes for their success. on this view, wars are counterproductive. they destroy our intelligence networks and use their resources frivously. they are exceedingly messy, with causualties clearing the thousands. and they reinforce many of the underlying causes - promoting a vision of american imperialism, spreading suffering, etc.

if we're going to win this one in any meaningful sense, it is going to require a broad consensus and a substantive public debate. it requires incremental changes to the economic, political, and international structure of the country. presidents are a vital part of that but they aren't the only ones that count, particularly ones enamored with their supposed power.

just... wow

2006-01-18T13:04:00.000-05:00

A whole new set of hazzards associated with reading crooked timber:

A huge report was issued by the National Center for Health Statistics. It covered the topic of teenage oral sex more extensively than any previous study, and the news was devastating: A quarter of girls aged fifteen had engaged in it, and more than half aged seventeen. Obviously, there was no previous data to compare this with, but millions of suburban dads were quite adamant that they had been born too soon. [here]

the whole review is amazingly good, though i'm not sure what kind of peverse intentions led me to read it. as it is, i'm just a little more bitter/depressed about the state of the nation reading it

busting it loose

2006-01-17T13:24:00.000-05:00

and gore - in an absolutely amazing speech - reminds us of one of the many reasons illegal wiretaps matter:

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.
The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide. [here]

these and other abuses were part of the rationale for FISA. it made me think: the history of the act is probably something conservative pundits would shout down, and even call the other person un-american, if reminded of it.

in that spirit, some links to make the pundis cry:

COINTELPRO: a systematic attempt by the FBI and the CIA to undermine the american left, including civil rights leaders and the peace movement. they even had a coloring book. for other highlights [here]

Church committee: the senate committee charged with investigating the abuses of the CIA and the FBI after the watergate affair. named after senator church, committee chair.

Church committee reports: their records, which are fairly bonechilling, including this general overview of their findings:

the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propogation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence

commitment issues

2006-01-13T10:03:00.000-05:00

commitment issues. i realize that there are a set of standards that men are judged by, and expected to conform to, but recently this one has particularly grated on me. presumably, because my roommates have decided that i have them, and need to work on them. don't get me wrong, they're my friends and i take their advice to heart, but at the same time, i wonder where some of this advice is coming from

** * **

its interesting the number of sexist tropes that are used to cover all sorts of behavior by men. a guy that doesn't want to settle down - or is too vocal about the (lack of a) future - has 'commitment issues'. and its almost like his motivations and reasons are irrelevant - "men, sigh...". or, worse, the 'real reason' must have something to do with his wanting to play around. oh, and heaven forbid men should complain about this state of affairs, which is considered oversensitive at best. (in my experience, even the feminists scorn this kind of talk, something about appropriating the discourse of resistance... really screwed up model of victim here). the fascinating thing is that the expectations for the reasons of noncompliance with the standards - the need to fool around - set an entirely different set of standards. hypersexual, with either the emotional range of a toaster, or perhaps a teflon coating around an emotional (and presumably broken) core.

i guess there are two ways to go from here, one way toward what exactly is at issue with treating people this way, and the other toward whats wrong with a feminism that doesn't think this is an issue.

* *** *

one might object to the above sentiments with an argument of the form that (1) this is generally the the male behavior observed and (2) that it is reasonable, and in some ways necessary, to generalize upon broad trends in human behavior

i completely agree that some amount of generalizing is essential to interacting in a modern society. we learn based upon our experience, and part of that process is generalizing based on repeated interaction ("my coworker tends to drink coffee in the morning" is in this sense similar to "putting my hand on the stove causes pain"). repeated confirmation leads to generalizations that aren't just probabilty statements (putting my hand on the stove tends to cause pain // cheetas tend to run fast), but statements of being (the stove is hot, cheetas are fast runners)

this extended model, however, ignores the role of agency in human affairs. unlike objects, which can be reasonably modeled as having immutable properties (stove = hot), an individual has the capacity to choose at any moment. i may be a coffee drinker today, and a tea drinker tomorrow. the a generalization thus not only overpredicts action, but denies agency - in both a passive and an active sense, as the loss is not only in our poor modeling, but its impact upon the observed. at a minimum, being told what one IS yields an expectation to preform, enactment. hence that subset of overgeneralizations known as stereotypes, those that deny agency in a meaningful sense.

(i won't pretend to be terribly happy with this analysis, and there are more than a few major shortcomings in its epistemology and social basis, but its a working basis for later elaboration)

* * * * *

feminism and men. if it is the case that man - woman are separated into a binary in sexist constructions of gender (as most suspect and comment), and that this reification is an agency-denying overprediction of the type commented on above, then it seems clear to me that - in this aspect of agency at least - feminism has yet to address the impact of sexist constructions upon men. just as our sexist society has constrained women to being passive, when many women would rather be assertive, it seems clear to me that the same sexist society forced men to be assertive, while many would rather be passive.

the most frequent objection - that men are the supposed beneficiaries of the system - seems to operate on a very narrow concept of benefit. within the terms of the sexist society, it is true that men tend to take the privileged aspect (reasoned over emotional, assertive over passive). but it baffles me why being well adjusted to a profoundly sick society is a measure of good health. it even strikes me that the term for benefit - privilege - insofar as it is construed as a characteristic of individuals, suffers from the issues mentioned above.

* *** *

i think i can sum this all up in one of tim burke's (and my) persistent worries,:

that I, and perhaps more than myself, are trapped in recurrent, irresolvable debates and conflicts, that the academy is at the edge of its limitations, at a moment of arteriosclerosis

Real World?

2006-01-09T12:28:00.000-05:00

I share Kuperberg's ideas on the relationship between Swat and the so-called "real world". If you haven't read it before, his Last Collection speech is truly great. I'm not going to lie, this comes to mind more often here, since there are moments when life inside the Beltway is too unreal.

Arcologies and ideologies

2006-01-06T09:45:00.000-05:00

I arrived at work today with great hopes of engaging myself by running a series of significance tests on the data, checking to make sure that our results . Less than thirty minutes later, the work was done and the search for something to do began again, amid pangs of sympathy for the poor math teachers who had found ways to occupy my brain over the years. Is my current lack of work a betrayal of their hard work and a squandering of my gifts? I certainly didn’t challenge myself getting this job, and while this may be the fruits of sloth, I have hopes that things will pick up in the coming weeks.

Searching for something more interesting than eating those last few elusive pistachios with barely-opened shells (hint: use a paperclip), I turned to wikipedia, and after a series of articles on Judaism, found myself reading about arcologies.

** * **

Remember those ugly towers in SimCity2000 that you had to build after there was no more land, but the compulsion for “more” meant finding any way for the city to expand?

Apparently they’re called arcologies (from their combination of architecture and ecology), buildings meant to house entire communities, and to do so sustainably, recycling most of the waste for use within the facility. It is not only an attempt to reduce the ecological footprint of humanity, but to change the scale upon which our lives are lived. One part I particularly like:

The automobile divides a city by scattering it across the landscape. Greater attention is given to human scale in an Arcology. In it the pedestrian reigns. Distances are measured by walks and minutes. Within it the automobile is nonsensical. here

It is strange to think that the basics of city layout haven’t changed much over the centuries. Discrete units of city function are laid out on a flat map. We consider travel a vertical scale. The horizontal plane carries us between destinations, and it is only once we’re within a place – an apartment building, and office – that we move up/down. The costs of this mindset are glaring, creating 2+ hour commutes in traffic every day, twice a day.

And I wonder: was the Wonka Chocolate Factory, something of an arcology?

* *** *

There are, I suppose, some “obvious” objections to this kind of construction. What about my backyard? My house, the kingdom I reign supreme in? And what of the need for constant change, when the technology for waste management improves and we have to gut the whole city rather than one facility? But the questions are only obvious because of what we’ve been trained to expect. Had I been born in one of the structures, I can easily imagine being revolted by the thought of suburbs… though, that isn’t much of a stretch.

I suppose I could go off on the positive feedback loop between geographical and social architecture, but the point is that an arcology (or the lack thereof) is a social product, a reflection of ourselves (our consumerism and greed in particular) as much as anything. Some social forms – many we hold dear – simply aren’t possible in a bounded city. Ostentatious displays of wealth through home size and grandeur can’t be constructed within the space – no Mc Mansions here. Construction of a larger home requires that one leave the community, in both space and ideals. The fetish of ‘brand new’ simply isn’t possible when the future must be connected to the old. And so on...

* * * * *

It is just unfortunate that the whole concept has gotten about as much attention as most of my half-baked drawings on napkins. Only these have been posted on the internet. The resistance to arcology raises a fascinating concept, though, of the relationship between science and society. On many occasions I’ve questioned my decision to turn from the natural to the social sciences. Many of the problems we face (for example, gas usage by automobiles) would simply be solved by the magic bullet of technology (alternative energy), and many of my daydreams involve advances along those lines. Wouldn’t it have been better to choose engineering, and solve the political problems that way? But this takes a very narrow view, since our society is generally open to technological change, and thus seems to give it the upper hand. The fate of arcology suggests that the range of problems to be solved by science alone is rather small, and that it is the social scientists who must allow innovation.

Perhaps this is because we understand so little about how change occurs in a social system. Our model for action – one individual – is hopelessly overpowered against most social forces (globalization) and so change seems impossible. Hence our imaginations and our histories focus upon superheroes with extraordinary powers (not only the X-Men and Superman, but also the Donald Trumps and Eli Whitneys), who are little more than our model with a few upgrades. Ultimately, we stick to the familiar rather than venture into the unknown and test our core assumptions a bit.

There are some clear ties to Howard Dean’s political success and problems in modern liberalism, but that will (hopefully) be in a later post. For now, my brain needs a reboot. Being sick, I'm no longer human, just a disguistoid in human form, and my thoughts are all muddy.

polar bears

2006-01-04T13:35:00.000-05:00

drowning polar bears

does dc have to be underwater for us to start worrying? i bet some would say i'm nuts for even suggesting that new orleans was a pretty clear sign something is up.

but the guy in the pretty house just 4 blocks west of me can stick some pipes head in the sand and beg the saudis to increase oil production to save his approval rating and all those fine SUVs. then again, if we don't buy their oil, how could they fund all those indoctrinating schools and jerks that blow ppl up?

ugh.

honestly, what is it? greed? cowardice? we've become too attached to comforts? ignorance? if someone could just let me know, i'd appreciate it

Hello, World!

2006-01-03T15:33:00.000-05:00

well dangit, I've forgotten my blogger password - again. i know, big loss, given that i never bother to update these things anyway. i'd make a new years resolution about it, but i never keep them anyway.

on that note...
resolution #1 hold for one hour, at arms length, at least 4 of the following: a 20oz dr pepper bottle (no substitutes allowed), a book i really should read, my right shoe, and a completed copy of my thesis.

resolution #2 dance like shah rukh khan in a bollywood film

possible resolutions for next year:

drop a bowling ball off a cliff in yellowstone. find, if possible - maybe attach a beacon of some sort? if not shattered, repeat as necessary.