I'm due to defend my Master's degree this summer. I can probably work out a way to stay here for my PhD, but I'm also trying to line up other options. I've applied to the University of Guelph, which is just down the road from here. I'm also submitting an application this week to the University of British Columbia, which is a long way from here. If I'm accepted at one or both of those places, I'll have a tough decision to make.

FW: GOD Is Busy

Here's another wonderful edition in the ongoing series of email forwards I get from my family, and my replies to them.

Subject: FW: GOD Is Busy

----- This is great...keep it going! If you don't know GOD, don't make stupid remarks!!!!!! A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the courses had a professor who was an avowed atheist, and a member of the ACLU. One day the professor shocked the class when he came in. He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, GOD if you are real then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you exactly 15 min.' The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, 'Here I am GOD, I'm still waiting.' It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him; knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold. The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked and stunned, and sat there looking on in silence. The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, 'What in the world is the matter with you? 'Why did you do that?' The Marine calmly replied, 'GOD was too busy today protecting America's soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot. So He sent me.' The classroom erupted in cheers!

So a student attacks a teacher for saying things he didn't like, and then delivers a sanctimonious lecture about protecting freedom of speech... this violence and hypocrisy is something theists approve of?

There have been over 4,000 US military deaths in Iraq, hundreds in Afghanistan, and tens of thousands wounded. I guess GOD didn't protect those people, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died in these wars and the millions who have been driven from their homes? But instead of reflecting on the carnage and terror our country's leaders and military have inflicted on our own troops and on countless innocent people throughout the world, let's all fantasize about smashing atheists in the face!

Destructive and illegal invasions of other countries have obviously made us less safe, not more, which even US intelligence agencies acknowledge (and which was understood to be the likely consequence beforehand). Holding up these murderous rampages as some glorious acts of protecting freedom is ridiculous. And making war out to be a holy act of god makes me proud to be an atheist.

things cops are allowed to do to strippers

if an on-duty cop can't wait outside of a strip club until a dancer leaves, follow her to a secluded stretch of road to pull her over, whip out his erect penis and ejaculate on her, i think we'd all be less safe. thank sweet birthday jesus for good cops like david alex park, and for the jury who ruled that the slut deserved it. hooray for justice!

dinner party lineup

in a dream last night, i was in a room with:

1) a girl that i (barely) knew about 15 years ago, and haven't seen for at least 10

2) a guy i worked with 5 years ago and haven't seen for 4

3) dick cheney, who brought me to the room

WHAT THE FUCK?

spectacle

I have a friend who has a tradition of going to a mall Thanksgiving night to watch the "Black Friday" shoppers. He doesn't buy anything; he just enjoys watching the insane spectacle. I find the whole thing too rotten and sad to get any pleasure out of it, perhaps for the same reasons I don't think I could possibly enjoy watching a dog fight or a cock fight: fighting animals and Black Friday shoppers are both pitiable creatures conditioned to enthusiastically destroy themselves for someone else's benefit.

I manage to avoid the consumerist frenzy of the Christmas season for the most part, as I don't watch TV or go to malls. There do seem to be more parties to attend though.

today i sewed a button onto a pair of pants. i haven't tried them on yet to be sure it worked, mostly because i'm too proud of myself right now.

I honestly believe that this guy, an unemployed 22 year old running for mayor of Minneapolis on an "awesomeness" platform, would make a far better pres than BO

more great things the state does

Government steals peoples' homes and gives their land to private corporations. Supreme Court approves, saying the theft serves a legitimate public purpose, presumably because the city claims that it is all part of a plan to lure big-pharma ogre Pfizer to the area and create jobs. A few years later, Pfizer announces they're shutting down operations and leaving. Hooray!

why gay people shouldn't adopt children, according to Utah Senator

So the quote is funny in that way, but also note the obvious contradiction. If gay people living their lives or fighting for equality offends him so much that he sees such actions as "stuffing it down his throat," then, no, he isn't okay with gay people.

Virginia cops kill an unarmed man suspected of stealing flowers. Hooray for the state!

a brave kid

Not a big fan of lawyers, but his career aspirations aside, I'm going to say that Will Phillips is awesome.

All living no blogging these days. Most of what's going on I just don't want to blog about.

I churn out one of these most weeks, but those are geared to a fairly narrow audience.

The strike here ended with the union accepting the offer that had been on the table before it started, leaving me wondering why the hell we were on strike.

Noam Chomsky on life without his wife

union

My union of teaching assistants has been on strike for over a week now. I've withheld my labor, and put in 5 days of picket duty, each 4 hour shifts, for which I was paid $10/hour from union funds, which partially offset my lost teaching wages. Picketing has been a memorable and exhausting experience. I wonder if I've been fighting for nothing though.

I suspect the union will cave and accept a bad contract from the University, which is a shame, because I think it will hurt the quality of education here in the long run, and it will make it even harder for grad students to pay their bills without debt financing. Ideally we'd have a huge turnout and a decisive rejection of the offer, which would put tremendous pressure on the administration to come back with a better deal that includes protection for TAs from tuition increases, better benefits, and limitations on class sizes. More likely, in my estimation, is that the offer will be accepted with less than half of the union bothering to vote. Results will be announced later today; maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

I do want to get back to work soon though. I genuinely like many of my TA duties (with marking exams as the primary exception), and picketing is distracting me from my research. But if the strike continues, I'll most likely be back out on the lines...

wow

dundas peak

Martin Daly - Risk-taking, Inequality, and Homicide

A recent public lecture by my supervisor. 45 minute video.

confusion

Why would someone think it's wise to embrace the defining tactics of a political movement that has been stomped, repudiated and crushed?

Uh, because they're part of that movement and continue to believe in it, and because it hasn't actually been crushed, just rebranded?

expectations

Criminalizing cancer and AIDS patients for using a substance that is (a) prescribed by their doctors and (b) legal under the laws of their state has always been abominable. The Obama administration deserves major credit not only for ceasing this practice, but for memorializing it formally in writing.

- Glenn Greenwald

What other abominable things does BO deserve credit for not doing?

please consider sending Arthur Silber some money. he's a brilliant writer living in desperate poverty and illness. every little bit helps.

i might have commented on the BO peace prize or columbus day, but i was visiting friends in wisconsin. cheese and beer, etc.

responsibly avoiding responsibility

Nina Alexander, the prosecutor who went after a grandmother who bought more cold medicine for her 3 grandchildren than the law allows one person to buy within a week, says basically: "I am incapable of distinguishing law from morality, and thus am absolved of any responsibility for anything I do that follows the letter of the law. I am a robot, programmed by the state. You wouldn't get mad at a robot, would you!?"

My favorite part was her demented nanny-state logic whereby a law that results in chaining, caging, and fining the poor old lady trying to care for her sick grandkids must be "a good law because it has had the desired effect, i.e. a reduction in meth manufacturing and meth use." By Nina's logic, a law that says anyone suspected of using meth must immediately be shot would be a good law.

As always, the lesson is that the state poses more danger to you than it prevents. A secondary lesson is that law is a religion, and a particularly pathetic one.

I'm to the point with BO where I can't even stand to hear him talk. I have to turn it off. It took me years to get to that point with W.

Freddie Got Fingered

I always liked this movie.

Margo

My co-supervisor died last Thursday. She was a wonderful person and a brilliant scientist. I've written about deaths of friends and family on here before, but I feel like I have very little to say this time, despite the loss being quite severe. I'll miss her.

American public overwhelmingly supports a public option in health care reform. The political class overwhelmingly opposes it.

But... but... but... the political class are supposed to represent the population...

... wouldn't passing something the public wants make them more popular....

... why don't I just cover my ears and sing happy songs

stupid people

Councilor Paula-Ayn Phillips said she was afraid backing a resolution or law that decriminalizes marijuana could lead people to not being punished for driving or flying under the influence of drugs or could encourage people like surgeons to operate under the influence.

i have lots of respect for GG's work, but... what's the problem here? or, i think the answer is obvious

It's a bad time to be an American these days...

I'm not at the point where I can see "begs the question" used to mean "an obvious question that follows from this is..." and not lament the demise of the superior-in-all-ways former meaning of that phrase, but I am at the point where I recognize that I should just... let it go.

celebrate Constitution Day with me!

Today is Constitution Day. The "Constitution" was some document that some old dudes in goofy wigs wrote a long time ago. People used to believe that the purpose of the Constitution was to limit the powers of the federal government. Isn't that cute? Luckily we've made a lot of progress since then and now we know that the Constitution ensures more important things, like allowing George Bush to start wars of aggression and Barack Obama to order his employees to committ murders. Yay Constitution! Yay Government! YAY America!!!!

barely scratching was successful, by the way.

sleeping arrangments

"Sleeping together may be harmful to health and relationship."

We've been dancing around this idea for a while, but reluctant to act on it for various reasons. A recent change we've tried has been to take the two beds we own, one double and one twin, and put them right next to each other.

adspar on demand

I'd like to blog about something, but don't have any great ideas. Post an idea in the comments and I'll write about it.

her nipples are legal!

To follow up on this item, charges against the topless lady have been dropped. Turns out that nothing she did was against the law. Needless to say, the men who kidnapped her will not face any consequences.

I thought this part of the story was interesting:

Two other factors played a role in the police prosecutors’ decision to drop the charge against Nicosia, according to Duguay.

They wanted to keep the N.H. Supreme Court from having a chance to weigh in on the law, which could have happened if Nicosia was convicted and appealed, Duguay said. If asked to examine the state law dealing with indecent exposure and lewdness, the court might find that the language in the statute is too broad and then drop the entire statute, he said.

Apparently we came very close to allowing a court to review the law, which risks determining that the law is inappropriate, and having to change it! Whew, disaster averted!

more on schools

or, or, as prof crispy says:

surely schools are good at absolutely anything compared to their ability to teach individual responsibility. they're more effective at nurturing an extreme ethic of concealment, even as they try to encourage a culture of anonymous denunciation of others etc. and of course what you're subjected to in terms of actual subject-matter is standardized across all individuals, and the behavioral goals are uniformity, silence, and detailed control over people's movements and expressions to achieve homogeneity.

I didn't blame anyone for the loss of my legs - some chinaman in Korea took them from me - but I went out and acheived anyway!

I've been exceptionally unflexible my entire life. Touching my toes was unimaginable; I couldn't get more than 2 inches past my knees. About two weeks ago it occurred to me that this wasn't healthy, could lead to injury, etc., and that I should work on improving it.

So I've been stretching haphazardly during the day, and the improvement is pretty impressive. I can reach down to my shins now, about 2 inches above my ankles.

I used to do pilates every once in a while with Kira, and the sensation at the end of a pilates session was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Now I know that feeling is what stretching feels like.

what's mine is mine

Via Radley Balko, I notice this splendid story about how police forcibly catheterized a man suspected of drunk driving, after he had already passed a breathalizer test. When the blood and urine tests also showed he was innocent, police charged him with obstruction of justice, for resisting their efforts to shove a tube up his penis.

The state owns you. It claims your body as its property.

things we can all agree on

chick behind the veil... selfish bitch?

give it up for the boss

or, as RAtM says, the classroom's the last room to get the truth

what schools are

IOZ says schools are "miserable, enervating, spirit-crushing, thought-destroying, mind-rotting, child-processing, conformity factories." IOZ is right.

delicate sensibilities

A family member ("T") unexpectedly read my blog recently and contacted me to complain about an entry titled "give up". It is short, so I'll just repost it in all of its crude glory:

among all the things that take themselves seriously, is there anything more fuck-yourself-in-your-own-asshole-with-your-own-cock-and-complain-about-the-pain retarded than politics in the US? jesus ass-fucking-with-his-own-cock christ!

T said the entry showed "hatred and bigotry" towards the US and towards Christianity. Uh... no. The object of my scorn is clearly politics in the US. As I've said before, a group of people and the system that rules them are not the same, so I haven't shown hatred or bigotry towards the US. Nor have I shown hatred towards Christianity. I'm not cursing Jesus, I'm just using "Jesus ___ Christ" as a curse, as is quite common practice, e.g. "Ow I just hit my thumb with a hammer! Jesus fucking Christ, that hurts!!". I haven't shown bigotry, I've simply failed to show reverence. There's a difference between hostility towards a religion (which isn't necessarily bigotry by the way - I think I've been hostile towards religion in other entries without being bigoted) and simply refusing to embrace its sacred cows. So I think T is way off on that criticism.

T further said that "[t]his shows no respect or tolerance for the beliefs of others" which "shut[s] down any chance of a civilized debate on real issues." Now I'm not sure how many of my readers have mistaken a profanity-laced comparison of the US political process to a painful act of auto-erotic sodomization for an attempt to initiate a "civilized debate on real issues," but I'll clarify now: I was just pissed off and venting frustration. If you want to see my attempts to start a reasoned discussion, look through my other posts. There's lots there to talk about! Or, if having seen the tiny kernel of thought contained in my rant, you want to start a debate about self-inflicted damage and the political system, I'll gladly take part. I'll even be happy to keep my diction in line with your sensibilities.

What can kill a friendly debate is conflating irreverence with hatred and bigotry. If you want to have conversations about serious and emotional issues, it doesn't help to have a shut-down-the-conversation-because-of-perceived-disrespect system with a threshold so low that vocabulary trips the switch.

her nipples are showing

another thought about this.

americans like to make righteous noise about women being forced to cover themselves from head to toe in muslim countries, lest they risk being stoned to death by angry mobs. definitely a terrible situation. of course, in america if a woman doesn't cover her breasts, she risks being chained and thrown in a cage by men (who might use lethal force against her at any moment).

yes, the latter is better than the former, but it isn't anything to be proud about. america only looks good by comparison to misogynist totalitarian fundamentalism. how about this for a radical crazed leftist lunatic perspective: women should be able to wear whatever they want, and not liking their decision doesn't justify physical coercion of any kind. justification for the use of force against another person requires a high burden of proof. "her nipples are showing" doesn't qualify.

but i know, i know, that's fucking batshit insane, and couldn't even be contemplated in civilized society. so how about this for a perfectly reasonable and moderate position, argued from the popular progressive standpoint of basic gender equality: armed agents of the state should allow a woman to appear in public wearing anything that a man is allowed to appear in public wearing.

image via

NBA stats: finessed to look however the home team scorekeeper wants them to look

greenwald and chomsky

Glenn Greenwald is under contract to write a book (he appears in the comments) that will be "a comprehensive examination of Chomsky’s life as a public intellectual as a means of understanding how America’s dominant media controls and narrows political debates." I look forward to that.

woman chained, kidnapped, thrown in a cage

for not wearing a shirt. I have to think the cops feel pretty stupid about this, right? Some of them anyway.

Pinker on violence and anarchy

In the interest of confronting ideas that challenge my beliefs, here's Steven Pinker writing that violence has steadily declined over the centuries. I've seen him sing this song before. One hypothesis he mentions for why we see such a trend is the rise of the State, which specifically is the notion that I find unpleasant. He doesn't defend that particular idea too vigorously, just mentions it, but I do want to take exception to part of it. I don't like the way he uses "anarchy" here:

And today, violence continues to fester in zones of anarchy, such as frontier regions, failed states, collapsed empires, and territories contested by mafias, gangs, and other dealers of contraband.

He's using anarchy to mean lack of a powerful state in a particular geographic area, but also using it to mean chaos, violence, etc. I don't know what frontier regions he might be talking about so I can't quibble with that, but it occurs to me that many of today's "failed states and collapsed empires are failed and collapsed" because of the states that did or continue to exercise power in the area. Examples? duh, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. As for "mafias, gangs, and other dealers of contraband," what is the distinction between those entities and State governments? Scale?

So needless to say, I don't buy this logic:

These tragedies can be averted by a state with a monopoly on violence. States can inflict disinterested penalties that eliminate the incentives for aggression, thereby defusing anxieties about preemptive attack and obviating the need to maintain a hair-trigger propensity for retaliation.

But if you take out the "disinterested" part I think there might actually be an important idea here. If the State is the only actor who can legitimately use violence, and the state is controlled by the interests of an elite few, that in and of itself could reduce violence. Rather than dozens or hundreds of little mafias, you just have a few big mafias. If nobody else gets to use violence, seems like that could indeed reduce overall violence.

So those are my hastily thrown-together thoughts on the matter. Comments?

more sports thoughts

good and bad things about various pro sports, from a fan perspective, and trying to ignore overall issues about priorities, expense, etc.

football

bad - i don't like to support it because it is too violent. nfl players get seriously hurt very often, and after a few years in the league they're often fucked up for life. the players contracts aren't guaranteed, so many of them don't even really make very much money considering the risks they face. plus the amount of hype and commercialization of the game is fucking insane, worse than any of these others. it is impossible to sit still through an entire game with the constant commercial interruptions.

good - the complexity of 22 players on the field at once, all with very specialized roles, results in some very cool strategy and creativity. football is a good sport to sit around and watch with people while not actually paying much attention to the game. i guess that doesn't say much for it.

basketball

bad - almost all coverage of the sport is asinine, focused on personality, interpersonal drama, soap opera bullshit etc. commentary and coverage of the game itself is all about flashy plays, with very little attention paid to what actually wins games.

good - watching nba players compete (while ignoring the announcers) is amazing. i love to play basketball, so seeing the same number of players in the same amount of space with the same ball and same hoop, but doing such different things is very fun for me. the popular criticism that nba players don't try hard is wrong. they play hard, and when they play smart, it is very enjoyable.

baseball

bad - it can get boring. all the best players have been cheating for the last 20 years. the best teams can just buy the best talent.

good - it is a thinking man's game. all about anticipation, playing the numbers, etc. deep history. sitting in the bleachers at a nice ballpark is a great way to spend a summer evening.

soccer

bad - the best soccer is played in time zones that make it hard to watch where i've lived. soccer riots are stupid.

good - 45 straight minutes of uninterrupted coverage per half. that's huge. also, as the most widely-played sport in the world, i suspect that the best soccer players are better at their sports than any other players in other sports, if you follow. there are also 22 players on the field like american football, but each of them basically does the same thing, just in different parts of the field, so it isn't as complex as nfl games. that's not a bad thing, there is real beauty to the subtleties of the game.

take that, cara!

banality of evil