YouChomsky

I've been spending time in between my reading binge watching Noam Chomsky videos on yewtewb. This man is a treasure, and the amount of free material instantly available to you is incredible. (Many are audio tracks with still pictures added.) Make an hour some time and watch this 6-part series, or any of the many shorter items available.

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Cat Rescue Updates

Kira has the story.

We were very sad to learn that "Big Boy" had contagious feline leukemia and was killed. That disease is contagious and he would have required an unrealistic level of care, so I'm reluctantly conceding that euthanasia was probably justified in his case. I really liked that guy though, and he would have made an awesome pet if someone had taken care of him before he got sick.

The good news is that 3 of the 4 other cats we've taken in have now been adopted, including the fraidy cat. The last one left is the one I thought was most likely to be adopted, the adorable little kitten. We're pretty sure that both of those guys were Big Boy's sons, so he has left quite a legacy.

so many books (so much time)

I realized today I'm in the middle of these 7 books right now:

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

A collection of 5 Chomsky essays. I've read one so far, and it was excellent, as he always is. The interesting thing about this volume is that it has 5 appendices of supplemental material, one for each essay, whose combined length is longer than the main text. I haven't decided if I should read each appendix as I read its corresponding chapter, or just read it all in a row.

Teaching As a Subversive Activity

Originally published in 1969, about a philosophy of teaching and criticism of the existing school structures. I've read the first chapter and found myself vigorously nodding my head in agreement.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

I'm about a quarter of the way into this scathing critical analysis of the execution of the Iraq invasion and occupation. To an extent, I think this subject is unnecessary, since I'd contend we had no justification for invasion regardless of how ineptly things were planned and managed. But the book seems very well researched and written, and offers a great deal of information that supports my position regardless of the author's intention or views. It also provides insights into the minds of various government and military figures, which is interesting for me, given my interest in political psychology.

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

Richard Dawkins writing about evolution is always delightful. I'm about halfway through. The book has a very cool premise: start with humans, and go back in time meeting each common ancestor along our evolutionary family tree all the way back to the origins of life. So I've met all the apes, and then monkeys, other primates, etc. He structures the book in the fashion of The Canterbury Tales. A very cool idea for a book, and very good reading.

1984 (Signet Classics)

I started this classic work of fiction a while ago, but haven't touched it for a long time because I can just read the news and get the real thing. Orwell was truly a genius.

Unexceptional: America's Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2007

I met the author at a lecture and he sent me an advance copy of his book. I've read most of his concluding chapter, which he said he originally planned to read as part of the lecture (but changed his approach to fit the audience). I'm not sure if I'll end up reading the whole thing, since I feel like I already know most of the material on a basic level, and might not be especially interested in learning it in more detail.

God Is Not Great

The Christopher Hitchens polemic, subtitled "How Religion poisons everything." I read the first few pages last night because I was excited when it arrived in the mail. I anticipated it would be lighter reading for me, but I found Hitchens' style to be more dense than I expected (I've never read a book of his before). So I might pretend I never started it and move this into the next group of books.

The next group includes at least these 5 on my reading pile:

What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World

In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines

Les Misérables (Signet Classics)

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

I'm declaring a reading binge, to begin immediately. How long until I finish all 12? Does the end of February seem realistic?

do they say anything else?

could Dick Cheney have brain damage?

I imagine many of you have seen the old clip of Cheney from 1994:



The video above attributes Cheney's inconsistency to financial interests. Maybe.

I just started reading Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq which in passing raises another possibility. After discussing how Cheney, before the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, had always seemed like "a realist" who "demanded the hard facts" and was "very practical," Ricks writes "Cheney had changed... perhaps because of his heart ailments, which can alter a person's personality."

This immediately made me think of Phineas Gage, whose personality drastically changed after a railroad spike accidentally was driven through his frontal lobe. He became obstinate, abusive, and profane. Since then science has come to understand that region of the brain to be important for judgment and impulse control.

I wonder if heart attacks could cause minor frontal lobe damage? Could Dick Cheney literally have brain damage? Not to the extent of Gage's obviously, but enough to make him more aggressive, less reasonable, and more profane? This is the guy who told Senator Leahy "go fuck yourself."

This is obviously pure speculation on my part, but it struck me as odd that I'd never seen this idea anywhere else.

assortments

I jogged around the neighborhood in shorts today. In Ohio. In January.

I'm sending off my 4th and final graduate application today. I have no idea if I'll get in to any of these programs.

I haven't eaten meat in 4 days.

I haven't seen a stray cat near my house since I've been back from Maryland. They must know we're the people who disappear felines.

the story of stuff

watch, then do something

belgian beer value alert (updated)

Trader Joe's 2007 Vintage Ale is now available, which I've never had, but it is brewed by Unibroue and costs $4.99 for a 750ml bottle, which seems like a great value for anything from that brewery. I'll try it soon to let you know if you should rush out and stock up.

I'm just looking out for you.

UPDATE: Delicious. It is a dark brown Belgian-style Dubbel Ale, very spicy and sweet, and smoother than you'd expect from a 9% ABV offering. Great value for $5.

a nice church story (seriously)

This is a pretty cool story, about a preacher (with the awesome name of The Reverend Hamilton Coe Throckmorton) who did something of an experiment with his congregation, based on a biblical parable. He gave everyone $50, and asked them to use their talents double it and donate the profit to charity. They made about $40,000.

The money raised really wasn't "profit" in the business sense. While many people did produce goods and services of value, it sounds like ultimately most of the funds raised came from within the congregation, so I think of it as more a success of charity than business, not that that's a bad thing. The article emphasizes what I see as the real value of the project: bringing the community together, giving people a reason to use their talents and creativity, and providing an opportunity to enjoy life.

When I argue that religion is a bad thing for society, I am often misunderstood to be saying that nothing good comes of religion, which is definitely not my point. One of the best things that organized religion offers people is a sense of community. Charity is also commonly associated with religion, and it is possible that religious people generally are more charitable (there are some popular studies of this subject that seem inconclusive). I would argue that religion is unnecessary for either of those things, and I'd similarly argue that the success of the $50 project had little to do with religion. Helping others and enjoying community is a natural thing, and religion can be a unifying factor, but it also causes a lot of other damage.

When I argue that religion is a net negative, it is because I'm unwilling to attribute the success of Rev. Throckmorton's idea to an irrational belief in a supernatural deity who hates gay people and will condemn you to an eternity of suffering if you cross him; I attribute that success to the basic goodness of people.

"I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture..."


hmmm

consume the terror

How is it possible that I've eaten the #1 most terrifying food in the world, a food more terrifying than #5, which is illegal and causes bloody diarrhea, or #4 which is a drink with dead baby mice as a featured ingredient?

I call bullshit on this list and on paulp's tumblog that led me to it.

nice

good shit

no rights for godless parents

1970

now

yay God!!

je t'accuse

Sara at Orcinus makes a good point, which is that you can learn a lot about what someone thinks by listening to what they accuse their opponents of:

When conservatives tell us that we need constant surveillance to make us secure, what they're telling us is that they themselves are prone to criminal behavior if they think nobody else is watching. The fear of exposure is the only force keeping them on the right side of the law -- and that's why it's the only form of "security" they understand. Bear this in mind if you decide to do business with them.

When they tell us that our future depends on supporting a military that's bigger than the rest of the world's fighting forces combined, what they're telling us is that they can't handle chaos, complexity, change, or being out of control. The whole world is a threat; the only solution is a bigger gun. Bear this in mind if you find yourself in conflict with them.

When they tell us diplomacy isn't an option, they're telling us that it's not an option they understand. Words, agreements, treaties, and contracts mean nothing to them. Brute force is the only option they comprehend...or are likely to respond to themselves. Bear this in mind before you negotiate with them.

When they tell us that homosexuality is a threat to American families, what they're telling us is that homosexuality is a threat to their families. As in: if they ever dared to admit their own sexual interest in other men, their wives would leave them, and take the kids. Bear this in mind when they hold themselves up as moral paragons.

When they tell us the Islamofascists are a threat to our way of life, they are quite correctly pointing out that there are fascists threatening our way of life. They're just deflecting their own intentions on to brown people far away. Bear this in mind before assuming they share your belief in constitutional democracy.

When they accuse reality-based folks of promoting "junk science," they're telling us they basically think all science is junk. Bear this in mind before attempting to present them with convincing evidence of anything.

When they tell us to support the troops, what they're really saying is: You better, because we won't. Bear this in mind when you evaluate the real costs of the war.

When they tell us the government can't be trusted, they're telling us they can't be trusted to govern. Bear this in mind every time you step into a voting booth.

She obviously focuses on political conservatives, but there are lots of other good examples, in and out of the political realm. In my personal experience, keeping this principle in mind has been useful for making sense of various family squabbles.

democracy and anarchy

Another excerpt from Chomsky On Anarchism, this from a 2004 interview with Ziga Vodovnik.

Ordinary people often confuse anarchism with chaos and violence, and do not know that anarchism (an archos) doesn't mean life or a state of things without rules, but rather a highly organized social order, life without a ruler, "principe." Is pejorative usage of the word anarchism maybe a direct consequence of the fact that the idea that people could be free was and is extremely frightening to those in power?

There has been an element within the anarchist movement that has been concerned with "propaganda by the deed," often with violence, and it is quite natural that power centers seize on it in an effort to undermine any attempt for independence and freedom, by identifying it with violence. But that is not true just for anarchism. Even democracy is feared. It is so deep-seated that people can't even see it. If we take a look at the Boston Globe on July 4th - July 4th is of course Independence Day, praising independence, freedom, and democracy - we find that they had an article on George Bush's attempt to get some support in Europe, to mend fences after the conflict. They interviewed the foreign policy director of the "libertarian" Cato Institute, asking why Europeans are critical of the U.S. He said something like this: The problem is that Germany and France have weak governments, and if they go against the will of the population, they have to pay political cost. This is the libertarian Cato Institute talking. The fear of democracy and hatred of it is so profound that nobody even notices it.

It seems to me that many of the ideals of democracy, particularly those expressed by the founders of this nation, are quite admirable by anarchist standards, especially as compared to the actual state of things in our "democracy," which is why genuine democracy is feared in a similar way to anarchy. Thus, working to advance actual democracy is a reasonable intermediate action for someone convinced that anarchism is the ideal social vision.

kiss me

Is it just me or is this article basically saying, "Billick, I've always hated your ass and I'm fucking loving this shit"?

Anarchy

I've always struggled to classify myself according to any of the political ideologies that I've examined in any semblance of a serious way. But that was before I examined anarchism in a semblance of a serious way, and now I think I'd be pretty comfortable labeling myself an anarchist, where anarchism is loosely defined as a philosophy that all human interaction should be voluntary and thus rejects permanent authority. I tend to see anarchy as the fullest realization of human freedom.

I anticipate that a common response to advocacy for anarchism is that government is here to stay and thus anarchy is unrealistic. It is probably true that the institution of the state isn't going away any time soon, but that doesn't mean that anarchist philosophy has nothing to offer. In an essay from 1970 titled "Language and Freedom," published in Chomsky On Anarchism, the brilliant linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky writes that "social action must be animated by a vision of a future society, and by explicit judgments of value concerning the character of this future society." One who finds the vision of an anarchist society attractive can then engage in social action inspired by that vision, and guided by anarchist principles.

Chomsky goes on:

A vision of a future social order is in turn based on a concept of human nature. If in fact man is an indefinitely malleable, completely plastic being, with no innate structures of mind and no intrinsic needs of a cultural or social character, then he is a fit subject for the "shaping of behavior" by the state authority, the corporate manager, the technocrat, or the central committee. Those with some confidence in the human species will hope this is no so and will try to determine the intrinsic human characteristics that provide the framework for intellectual development, the growth of moral consciousness, cultural achievement, and participation in a free community.

Needless to say I am one of those who hopes man is not a blank slate, and I think scientific inquiry in the nearly 38 years since that essay was originally presented has brightened this hope.

Chomsky concludes:

I like to believe that the intensive study of one aspect of human psychology - human language - may contribute to a humanistic social science that will serve, as well, as an instrument for social action. It must, needless to say, be stressed that social action cannot await a firmly established theory of man and society, nor can the validity of the latter be determined by our hopes and moral judgments. The two - speculation and action - must progress as best they can, looking forward to the day when theoretical inquiry will provide a firm guide to the unending, often grim, but never hopeless struggle for freedom and social justice.

Just like I was an atheist before I realized it, I was an anarchist before my recent investigation of the subject, and I think that my personal statement attached to my graduate school applications (I might publish part or all of it in a future post) essentially identified a similar thought progression as a primary reason that I want to study psychology (though probably not language specifically). Understanding the nature of humanity can help create a better social structure, and regular readers certainly know what little regard I have for the current social structure.

back to it

It is growing more and more clear to me how totally insane the world is and at the same time less and less clear how to feel about it. As for the other question - what to do about it - I'm as convinced as anything by the 'stop traffic' approach, though the idea that anyone can do anything seems rather ridiculous.

xmas trip recap

Well we're back from our whirlwind tour of Maryland. We put 1600 miles on the car (I'm thinking about buying carbon offsets - any suggestions anyone?), slept in 8 different places (some more comfortable than others), had some good meals and some bad ones, had some good times and some bad ones, and despite enjoying our trip, we're both quite glad to be home.

As for possible topics for blogging in the near future:

• I read a lot of Chomsky on the trip, and imagine I'll be blogging about it. I also landed a handful of books as gifts, and they'll be showing up too.
• I won my fantasy football league, which was worth $320. Perhaps I'll share my secrets to paying a month's rent with your fantasy sports prowess. (Teaser: Step One is to move to rural Ohio.)
• We encountered all kinds of family drama, which at first I thought I shouldn't really write about. But then I realized that I'm only aware of one family member reading my blog with any regularity, so what's the difference right? And in a way that inattention is related to the drama, so there's all kinds of opportunity for the self-conscious meta-analysis on which this blog was founded.
• The cats traveled with us, and spent an exciting evening with an energetic 8 week old mini-beagle. An overload of cuteness was the inevitable outcome. Also, the puppy pooped in the litter box.
• We saw I Am Legend and The Golden Compass. I'd cautiously recommend both and might elaborate in a future post.
• I've submitted 3 of the 4 grad school applications I'll be completing (the last is due by January 15), and might share some thoughts on that subject.
• My friends are really starting to reproduce. I hung out with two infants and a pregnant woman. This feels like some kind of life passage. (I myself have no plans for reproduction in my near future. Maybe if we get one part-time job between the two of us...)

That's all I got for now. If you're part of my immense audience the is here for the kinds of powerful political insights I usually generously provide, I'd suggest clicking on some of the blog articles linked to in my sidebar or here.

adspar disappears for newtonmas

Not that I ever blog any more, but I'll be home for the holidays from tomorrow to some time late in the month, and so I won't be posting for a while probably. I'll make it up to you guys, I promise!

This post makes way more sense than post are usually allowed to make

Before I get back to my latest stray cat rescue attempt, here are these things.

1.) Courtesy of Glenn Greenwald, here is Noam Chomsky making way more sense than people are usually allowed to make.



2.) Courtesy of Walt, here is Santa Claus making way more sense than people are usually allowed to make.



3.) Nancy Pelosi fails the Jason Bourne Test and so she must go down. The Jason Bourne Test makes way more sense than tests are usually allowed to make.

hope for the fraidy cats

The cute little guy who was hanging around our door has been living in our bathroom for the last 24 hours. We got him in the house, and he hated it at first, but he's made huge progress. He went from being terrified of us to seeking out and loving our affection. We have a vet appointment for him tomorrow to make sure he's healthy and free of diseases and parasites, and we'll get him fixed soon too. We're still not sure if we want to keep him or just socialize him and then find another home for him. He's not going to be interacting directly with our cats until we know it is safe.

Meanwhile the shelter I built intended for him has another occupant, and two other interested parties. There have been some fights over the rights to sleep in it. So we built another one that isn't quite as good, and we're not sure if anyone is taking that one or not. One of those three cats, the dominant one, seems extremely friendly to humans, so we're definitely planning to take him to the shelter.

In regards to the shelter, we've learned that the two adult female cats we've taken there have both been adopted, and the baby kitten is still too young to give out, but he's likely to be adopted as well. So we're getting pretty confident that any friendly cat we take there will end up in a home. We're just reluctant to take in a cat that is scared of people, but the guy in the bathroom is teaching us that there's hope even for the fraidy cats.

I feel pretty good about helping these poor things. It is damn cold out there. As long as there are friendly ones on the stoop, we'll be trying to get them into a better situation.

RIP Chip Reese

One of the greatest poker players of all time, Chip Reese, dead at 56.

more stray cats

It has started to get very cold here, and a few nights ago a tiny kitten and his mother showed up on our doorstep. We put out one of our cat carriers with a warm blanket in it, and they slept there. The next morning we took both of them to the shelter.

I'm reluctant to take an animal from its home area and put it in a cage somewhere, especially at a shelter that does kill some of its animals, but in their case I think it made sense. The kitten was still young and cute and could likely still get used to people, so he seems very likely to be adopted. The mother is healthy-looking and attractive, and she was somewhat open to human touch. Plus she looked like she might be pregnant again. The shelter says they have a very good adoption rate, so I think it was the right thing to do in their case.

Now there's another cat outside our door. We had seen it hanging around with those other two, and we suspect it is an older kitten from the same mother. This guy is somewhat afraid of people, and does not like being inside at all. I don't quite know what to do with him (or her), because his extra wildness seems to make it less adoptable and thus more likely to get killed. But it is getting really cold outside, and he clearly wants something from us. He looks well-fed, so he must be getting food from somewhere.

My best idea is maybe to put together some kind of more permanent shelter for him, but I don't really want to start feeding him. I'd kind of like to get him fixed and immunized too. But I'm kind of averse to spending so much time and money on this guy, for fear that soon I'd be doing it for more of them.

Ugh.

Popularity contests for mortals

CHALLENGERELIGION.COM

Watch out, godless motherfuckers! See For Yourself is climbing in the charts!

Steve Francis

Abbott on Stevie Franchise:

After playing a key role in a big win for the first time in a long time, Steve Francis was hilarious in the post-game TV interview last night. Arm draped casually around the interviewer's shoulder, joke at the ready, and clearly in no hurry ... he was like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard: ready for his closeup. Jason Friedman of the Houston Press reflects on his two good games: "Francis is like that loveable kid in your class with a knack for saying or doing the wrong things at the wrong time. As much as you like the guy, you can't stop wondering what he could accomplish if he just buckled down and applied himself. Sometimes, he gets kicked out of class, after which he always comes back contrite and respectful. But the moment he starts feeling comfortable again, the shenanigans return. So you have to ask yourself: Will this time be any different? The thing is, the Rockets don't need Stevie to be the Franchise of old. They'd happily settle for Manu Ginobili-Lite; someone who can come off the bench, fill-up the stat sheet, and provide a spark with his energy, offense and derring-do. That's exactly what Francis has done the last two games. Both resulted in Rockets wins. So know this: The class is watching you, Stevie. They're also pulling for you. What will you do next?"

This seems about right to me. Francis was one-and-done at Maryland my freshman year, and I've always had conflicted feelings about him. He does seem like a very nice and likeable guy, from limited firsthand experience and from various stories I've heard. As a pro he's been rather petulant at times, but that seems more because he wears his heart on his sleeve and is maybe a bit immature than because he's some kind of chronic malcontent.

Aside from the personal level, I both love and hate his game. He's an amazing athlete and can been very fun to watch, but he tends to take bad shots and play selfishly. But he's been a great rebounder and good assist man, and does seem like he wants to get his teammates involved and win. I always wished that he'd be able to channel his talent in a positive, team-friendly way. I can't help but thinking that coaching has failed him a bit, though I'm sure he bears significant responsibility as well. He should really be used as a shooting guard, rather than at point, and maybe a bench role would work best at this point in his career. Iverson has shown us that its hard to build an elite team around an undersized shooting guard with a poor field goal percentage. Steve can't really be The Franchise any more, but maybe that Ginobili-lite role would be a good one.

Time Magazine Lies and the Power Perspective

Glenn Greenwald has a recent series of posts showing how Time Magazine publishes blatant lies that serve a clear political agenda (you can go find the links). The basic story is quite familiar; the writer simply asked a few partisans about a pending bill and printed their talking points without verifying the facts at all. The whole premise of his column was built around a blatant lie.

In response to the controversy, the offending writer, Joe Klein, has gone through a series of embarrassing denials, weaseling, and obfuscating. The punchline is his recent quote that "I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right." He seems to think this is a defense, because in his pathetic bubble world of elite beltway journalists, investigating reality is not something anyone is expected to be interested in or capable of doing. They just repeat what their sources say.

Political operatives are well aware of this, and hence are unconstrained by truth when they feed information to such "journalists." From some perspectives, this tends to favor Republicans. This isn't incorrect, though other perspectives provide more clarity: the powerful use their power to to their benefit, and the truth is rarely their friend.

college football too

From deep in the belly of the beast, Buckeye country, I risk life and limb by passing along this scathing criticism of the college football industry. A highlight:

From Creation -- Rutgers beat Princeton on Nov. 6, 1869 -- college football has been criticized for being violent, commercial, and a higher-education distraction of the first order. That's why we love it. Not to mention the chance to play war, invent fungible icons, and engage in acceptable homosocial behavior.

The true heroes of the game have not been the players -- usually too young to be interesting in their firefly careers -- but the loud, devious, flim-flam artists who convince the young that winning a game as a group is more important than any kind of individual expression. The most manipulative of them succeed by convincing "their" boys that they are a "band of brothers" who can trust only each other and need to sacrifice their bodies (more and more often now at the expense of their future health) for the greater good. Most college players understand that they are being played, but they do genuinely love the game, the contact, their friends, the steam of the locker-room.

From Pop Warner at the Carlisle Indian School through Bear Bryant at Alabama to Tom Osborne at Nebraska -- who, after I questioned his repeated "forgiveness" of a felonious running back, asked me if I'd rather have the player loose in my neighborhood -- the unstated mission of coaches has been to provide a model for controlling and exploiting young manhood for factories, corporations, and armies.

What Thanksgiving is all about

In 1970 ... the Massachusetts Department of Commerce asked the Wampanoags to select a speaker to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims' landing. Frank James "was selected but first he had to show a copy of his speech to the white people in charge of the ceremony. When they saw what he had written, they would not allow him to read it." James had written:

Today is a time of celebrating for you... but it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People... The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors, and stolen their corn, wheat, and beans... Massasoit, the great leaders of the Wampanoag, knew these facts; yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers... , little knowing that... before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoags... and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them... Although our way of life is almost gone and our language is almost extinct, we the Wampanoags still walk the lands of Massachusetts.... What has happened cannot be changed, but today we work towards a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once again are important.

What the Massachusetts Department of Commerce censored was not some incendiary falsehood but historical truth. Nothing James would have said, had he been allowed to speak, was false, excepting the word wheat.

But truth isn't important as long as we have our feel-good myths.

The true history of Thanksgiving reveals embarrassing facts. The Pilgrims did not introduce the tradition; Eastern Indians had observed autumnal harvest celebrations for centuries. Although George Washington did set aside days for national thanksgiving, our modern celebrations date back only to 1863. During the Civil War, when the Union needed all the patriotism that such an observance might muster, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday. The Pilgrims had nothing to do with it; not until the 1890s did they even get included in the tradition. For that matter, no one used the term Pilgrims until the 1870s.

But if they did have Thanksgiving back in Pilgrim times, what would white people have given thanks for?

King James of England gave thanks to "Almighty God in his great goodness and bounty towards us" for sending "this wonderful plague among the salvages [sic]."

All above quotes are from James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me.

bad movie alert

We Own the Night. Don't see it. (Unless you really love Eva Mendes, in which case leave after the first 2 minutes.)

"I don't read your political blog posts"

1.) "I don't read your political blog posts." I get that line a lot. I'm curious as to how those people expect I'll react to "Hey I don't read the 95% of what you write... you know, the stuff you obviously care a great deal about. But dude that shit about the Ramen was funny! I love Ramen!!!" Thanks. Thanks a lot. (If you've said this to me recently and figure I'm talking about you, I assure you that you're not alone. My readership has changed dramatically since I used to write about poker and movies all the time.)

2.) I had a conversation recently with my mother, who loves George Bush unconditionally, trusts him completely, and fully supports his war-making. Over the course of this conversation it became appallingly obvious how ignorant she was about basic facts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She actually outright refused to believe factual information I provided that casts the actions of our military in a negative light, starkly denying the possibility that it could be true. She knows nothing but Progress and Noble Goals, and unquestioningly assumes the Goodness of The United States of America. She once told me "America is number one." I stopped and asked her what that means exactly. She paused, thought about it for a while, and said "it means that we have the privilege to live in a country that is the best."

--

This is America in a nutshell. We're occupying a country on the other side of the world that we illegally invaded, causing death and injury to untold millions, and nobody wants to know a thing about any of it. The vast majority of us are shockingly ignorant and oblivious, but that doesn't stop huge numbers from blindly supporting our course of destruction anyway, because hey, if we're doing something, it must be right, because we're Number One and being #1 means we're The Best. The Best might occasionally mess something up or have an isolated bad apple, but we're always operating with the Noble Intention of Spreading Freedom, and the net effect of our actions is always Good. (Because we're The Best. The Best = #1. America is #1. )

I don't blame you that you don't want to question these stories. I know you don't want to actually think about this. I know you don't want to discover that your country is a monster and your flag-waving friends are idiots. Do you think I do? Do you think I want to know that my own mother's carefully considered explanation for why America is #1 is that "we're the best"? That she believes every lie from George W. Bush's forked tongue and not a word from mine?

Go read that link. I know you don't want to; that's what the link it actually about, the way we censor our own conversations to avoid unpleasant reality. If you manage to suppress your urge to click elsewhere, if you actually read it, you might realize that by voluntarily ignoring the spread of evil, you're willingly surrendering to it.

Explain this phenomenon to me

I object to Bush's war and they bring up Sandy Berger. This has happened twice now, once with each parent, in incidents almost a full year apart.

[Berger was Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor who later stole classified documents from the National Archives by stuffing them down his pants. The lead prosecutor of the case indicates that he stole only copies and that no original material was destroyed, though this story is hotly disputed by Rush Limbaugh and the like, who claim without much factual basis that something much more sinister was happening.]

Who knows what the hell was going on there, but what kind of derangement is happening when you attempt to compare this to Bush's war crimes? Its like comparing the Columbine shootings to spray-painting some graffiti on a school wall. I can't even fathom what point they're trying to make by bringing it up. "Well you're saying that Bush illegally invaded two sovereign nations causing the slaughter of at least a million people, but this one guy who used to work for Clinton stole some documents!!"

Jesus approves of torturing cats

As long as it makes a musical sound


This makes Hattori so mad:

Ramener

I've been ravaged by illness for the last few days, but that gave my wife the opportunity to introduce me to one of life's great pleasures: adding egg to Ramen Noodles. Just crack one into the boiling water to add extra deliciousness to your salty noodle-water.

someone has my back

fiddle and the drum

more Morton West

If any of the kids from that school happen to see this, for what its worth, I'm with you. You're right and they're wrong. Fuck them.

francais?

Remember, remember the 5th of November

Morton West High School

Dissent will not be tolerated. These poor kids are learning their lesson early. Take a moral stand against authority, and authorities will freak the fuck out. They'll beg and they'll bargain and they'll lie. And then when they don't get what they want, they'll come down on you as hard as they can.

Read Arthur Silber's take on it, and follow his advice and sign a petition urging the school to go easy on these kids.

what is wrong with this God fellow?

God gives an adorable little girl an extra set of arms and legs that threaten her survival, and this is a gift? Of course, God kills women who obey his profoundly inexplicable and murderous rules, so extra arms does sound generous.

Helen Keller and Brian McGough

At the time Keller became a socialist, she was one of the most famous women on the planet. She soon became the most notorious. Her conversion to socialism caused a new storm of publicity - this time outraged. Newspapers that had extolled her courage and intelligence now emphasized her handicap. Columnists charged that she had no independent sensory input and was in thrall to those who fed her information. Typical was the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, wrote that Keller's "mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development."

Keller recalls having met this editor: "At the time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him." She went on, "Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which was are trying to prevent.

- James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, p22. Thanks to Brice Lord for recommending it.

Rush Limbaugh:

VoteVets.org has -- they describe themselves as an organization comprised of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns who oppose current policy in Iraq. They've put together a TV ad that takes aim at me. This ad's going to run on Fox News, on CNN, it's going to run on WMAL radio in Washington, $60,000 ad buy that's going to run, I think, on our local West Palm Beach station down here. And there's a man identified as Brian McCoff -- McGough -- it's M-C-G-O-U-G-H, I'm not sure how he pronounces it, McGo, McGuff -- I haven't watched the ad.

He discusses his service in Iraq, the wounds he suffered there, and he says to me in this ad, "Until you have the guts to call me a 'phony soldier' to my face, stop telling lies about my service." You know, this is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said, then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media in a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into.

This man will always be a hero to this country with everyone. Whoever pumped him full of these lies about what I said and embarrassed him with this ad has betrayed him. They're not hurting me, they're betraying this soldier. Now, unless he actually believes what he's saying, in which case it's just so unfortunate and sad when the truth of what I said is right out there to be learned.

what is a boy to do?

Before the last discussion got out of hand, there seemed like there was a possibility of discussing the merits of an approach to a moral dilemma. I still want to do that. The question, simply posed, is this: given that this country is hopelessly fucked, what is a boy to do?

You might not be on board with the assumption. I'm slightly more interested in the moral issue, but I understand if you first feel the need to figure out what is so fucked and why it is so hopeless. I've explained this somewhat in this post, which also dealt with the question of what to do about it. Read all the links from that post if you want to try to understand where I'm coming from. Beyond that, authors whose writing has influenced my opinion on the matter are most notably Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson. The scholarship of Jared Diamond and Howard Zinn has also contributed. Arthur Silber and Chris Floyd have blogs that relentlessly document how fucked everything is. My arguments are their arguments.

Now, given all of that... now what? Well on more than one occasion Floyd has looked to Thoreau for guidance on the matter, and found an answer that I find convincing: "How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it." Also in that comment thread I link to three items containing ideas that I also find convincing. I'd recommend reading them. Here they are again: (1) Fuck (2) the (3) system.

Based on all of this, I put forth the idea that refraining from working when I don't need to for my immediate survival, thus minimizing my association with the government by avoiding income tax, is some kind of noble form of principled dissent. I fully acknowledge the possibility that there might be convincing arguments against this line of thinking, I don't see that any of them found their way into that discussion, but that doesn't mean they can't exist.

Here is my version of the argument offered against my idea (as opposed to arguments against the underlying assumption, or arguments about details along the way, or various invective):

But some of the theoretical tax dollars I would be paying to the government would have helped people. Needy people.

I'll assume that it is true that some tax dollars pay for things that help people, but I reject that as a compelling argument against my position on a variety of grounds, some of which I mentioned in the comments:

• Illegitimate acquisition of funds
• Immoral use of funds
• violence
• coercion
• torture
• racist behavior
• environmentally destructive policies
• energy
• transportation
• agriculture

It was pointed out that this method of weighing the good against the bad is a utilitarian approach (at least considering everything but the first bullet, to which I'll return later). In spite of repeated dismissals of the value of measuring utility only in "dollars that help" versus "dollars that hurt," there was extended discussion about how the budget is allocated. It isn't that the information about where tax dollars are spent is useless, but that those values need to be weighted in such a subjective way, and with such disparate coefficients, as to render the actual figures trivial values in the moral calculus.

To translate that to an easy example, consider an organization that collects money from its members, and uses 99% of it to give pennies to people on the streets, and 1% of it to fund the murder of small children. Giving people money helps them, and killing hurts. I don't think anyone would argue that tweaking the percentages even by a orders of magnitude would change the moral righteousness of buying into the organization. No matter how many acts of goodness they do, it will never add up to enough to surpass the evil of murder. Lots of little goods don't outweigh a bit of heinous wrong.

Going back to reality, it is obviously my contention that the way our national budget is spent does more harm than good. Whether we spend 40% or 55% or 80% of our tax revenues on social good doesn't really matter as long as we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to sustain an illegal and immoral occupation of a nation we illegally and immorally invaded and destroyed, as long as we're holding people without charges, as long as we're torturing people, as long as we're conducting warrantless domestic surveillance, as long as millions of nonviolent drug offenders are imprisoned, as long as we're massively subsidizing unnecessary crops that ravage our environment and our health.

And on top of all that, much of the spending that on the surface may appear to be good is actually significantly less good than it appears, if not outright bad. I consider this to be the case for much of our education spending, as I mentioned, and I suspect that it would be the case for just about everything, including the State Department's involvement in the recent World Radiocommunications Conference, which was mentioned in the comments. I imagine this effect is worse than normal under Bush, whose administration has looked at absolutely every agency, program, and crisis as an opportunity to enrich their supporters, bolster their own power, and bludgeon their opposition, all while purporting to help people. Take, for example, two other purported good efforts mentioned - nuclear nonproliferation and environmental protection programs. It is true that money spent in ways that genuinely advance those causes would be doing good, but any money we spend on them and good that results is completely undermined by the way our "defense" policies and arms manufacturing and sales escalate arms proliferation and the way a multitude of our national policies wreak havoc on the environment. Those "good" programs, placed in proper context, are then nothing but pathetic fig leaves for our leaders to point to and pretend they're doing something to help fix the problem.

So, yeah, I don't think the math adds up favorably for the good of the way our tax dollars are spent. But you can even put every bit of all of this utilitarian rambling aside*, because I don't even think there's any justification for this government taxing my income to begin with, because I basically have no say in how they use it. This goes right to the heart of why everything is fucked about this country: because it is no longer the representative democracy it claims to be, though it still goes through the empty motions. Many of the authors I've mentioned have made this case quite convincingly. This essay is one of the best. I don't recognize any right by which an organization can forcibly take my money and give me effectively no say in how it is used. Even if the utilitarian calculus added up in favor of good, taking my money at gunpoint is wrong. Give your government that power, and sooner or later the people running it will start to use it for their own selfish purposes, not the beautiful noble ones they'll claim. A few centuries into the American experiment, and we're well past that point. I'm not sure that any government has ever stayed on the good side of it for long.

I can't imagine someone putting forth a case that substantially undermines the thrust of what I'm saying here, but I'd much prefer to live in a world where they could. But the idea that my opinion is some immobile monolith is hard for me to take seriously, given how wildly my opinions have changed over the last few years. I'm open to good argument, and I've found it from the authors I've cited. I don't like the idea that I live in a country and world that is so hopelessly fucked, but when someone makes that case convincingly, I'm going to accept it. And then at that point I'll try to figure out something to do about it.

And the last point here is to point out that the tragic absurdity of this quote from the comments:

"what really bothers me about your little plan of not working, and your modus operandi in general, is that if you're so convinced that everything is so fucked then do something positive to fix it, or just remove yourself from it entirely and live in a shed in the woods in Canada."

What on earth do you think I'm doing? I can't magically fix everything by myself, and my whole point is that the whole system is impossibly fucked beyond the point of fixing. The only conceivable way, in my estimation, to make anything better is by tearing the system down, and what I can personally do about that at the moment is minimize my contribution to the system, which is what I'm trying to do by avoiding income (I could also consider taking some of the measures mentioned in the "fuck the system" links above). And beyond that all I can do is try to spread awareness and urge more people to do the same.

Given that I'm doing all I can about it, what is really being said in that quote? "Either fix it or go away" reduces to "get the fuck away and shut the fuck up" The very act of acknowledging the unpleasant reality bothers people, so much so that they prefer not to hear it. This creates a pretty fucking vicious natural support for the abhorrent system to which I'm objecting. That would be funny if it weren't so fucking sad.

And yeah, rarely does a day go by when I don't think about running away from all of it.



* - If you wanted, you could structure this point into the utilitarian framework as well, and that might even be implicitly what I'm doing here. I just think it gets to complicated to write about it that way, because then you're talking about one utilitarian decision set depending on the range of possible outcomes of various possible subsequent utilitarian decision sets.

The Dude abides

I don't think I've mentioned this on here before, but I'll do so now. A significant part of why I'm not working right now is political. I don't want to earn income that can be taxed.

As Chris Floyd recently quotes:

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

-- Henry David Thoreau

I'm going to avoid such associations as much as possible. I don't believe this government has a right to my money, but I'm not willing to risk a direct challenge to their power. So I just won't work until I have to for pure survival, at which point I hope to be able to earn income without compromising my values.

the power of the pen

This email, whether genuine or not, reminds me very much of my personal correspondence with check my ip. It has the same aggressive condescension towards someone for questioning authority, the same disregard for logical argument, and the same sprawling agrammatical style.

It is an endless source of personal frustration that people with the mindset demonstrated in this kind of writing achieve positions of immense power. This frustration seems pretty pointless though, as there's nothing I can do to change it. There are reasons why such people are in such positions, and the reasons why they shouldn't be involve abstract values that are meaningless to people who think only in terms of raw power.

via

I was going to write this, but Winter Patriot did it first. Check him out, and take his advice.

Have you ever been several minutes into telling some kind of story and suddenly realized that there's no possible reason why anyone other than you would care about what you're saying? And then you have to decide if you finish it, or skip as quickly as possible to the ending, or just abruptly stop in mid-sentence.

Yeah.

Wouldn't that be funny if I was writing this because I was on the receiving end and wanted to drop a not-so-subtle hint to someone to stop telling me stupid shit?

Bush, Cheney: terrorist leaders

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their cohorts have made the deliberate, conscious decision to engage in state terrorism in order to advance foreign policy and energy objectives they held long before 9/11 "changed the world."

That is the true context, and content, of the war. Anyone who supports its continuation -- under any auspices, in any form, for any amount of time longer than it takes to remove all the troops quickly and safely -- is advocating the perpetuation of state terror in the name of the American people.

Yup.

6 years later, 10 points dumber

I took the GREs yesterday. That lasted about 3.5 hours and by the end my brain hurt. It was like running a mental marathon when I hadn't seriously trained in over 5 years. You get most of your score instantly, and I got 640 on the verbal and 800 on the quantitative (they're scored like SATs). My expired 2001 scores were 650 and 800, so at least I'm consistent. I expect these results to make me very competitive for any of the programs to which I'll be applying.

For reading this, you are rewarded with a picture of dust-covered Katsumoto.

Ecuador!

I hope every country in the world pays attention to what Ecuador is doing. Their President says that the U.S. can maintain its air base in Ecuador only if Ecuador can open a military base in Miami. On one level, I agree with Libby that I can't wait to see what contorted pretzel logic the White House uses in its response. But I also wouldn't be surprised if they pull out some dirty tricks to apply pressure. Nobody fucks with our Toddler-in-Chief's killin' toys.