A Century of Controversy over the Foundations of Mathematics

A-gigity-gigity

2006-11-18T09:55:00.000-08:00

My favorite Family Guy clip of the moment:

Remind Me by Royksopp

2006-09-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

This music video is like an animated version of the How Things Work book. More importantly, it's really awesome. And surprisingly, I actually even like the techno-ish song.

from Pogue's Posts

I've got more hits than Sadaharu Oh

2006-07-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

On a drive from Oakland to Minneapolis in early June, I picked up a USA Today in Elko, Nevada. On the cover of that USA Today I saw the smiling mug of a Minnesota sports favorite, Torii Hunter. The article attached to the photo discussed how Torii has set up an organization to get US American black kids--particularly city kids--interested in baseball again. He's asking other major league baseball players who support the cause to pitch in to the tune of $10,000 each and, as you can imagine, several have happily stepped up to the plate. Since I read that article I've read about Torii's program again in the New York Times, Sports Illustrated and, strangely, just this last weekend in my once-again local Minneapolis Star Tribune. It's certainly a story that the mainstream press likes to print.

Now Torii's face and cause brought a smile to my face and generally made me feel good about being a Torii Hunter fan. Indeed, I whole-heartedly support his cause, and in fact, any cause that aims to make the erstwhile national passtime more appealing and inclusive for everyone in the nation. However, across all the articles I've read I've heard the same assumptions about the declining popularity of baseball among African Americans uncritically accepted and rebroadcast.

Here's some representative copy from an SI article:

Nearly 60 years after Jackie Robinson burst through baseball's color barrier, U.S.-born African-American players are virtually vanishing from the game. Three decades after blacks made up nearly 30 percent of major league rosters, they now make up about 8 percent — less than half the 17.25 percent of 1959, the first year every team was integrated.

OK, so there are fewer African Americans playing the game than when it was integrated. That's a fact. And it sounds horrible. And maybe it is horrible. May-be it is. But for the sake of argument, here's my angle... Dear reader, you tell me if it holds water:

According to the US Census Bureau, there were 35 million "Blacks" in the United States in 2004, or about 12.4% of the US population. Now, against that percentage, 8.4% in the majors doesn't seem all that shocking. It's certainly a statistically significant decline from the 30% of a generation ago, and it is certainly an impetus to further research. But instead of measuring the black representation of the game today against that of yesteryear, shouldn't we instead compare the heterogeneity of major league baseball against the heterogeneity of contemporary America? (Actually, it gets more complicated since it is a world sport, but then again it is disproportionately popular in Asia, North America and Latin America, but we'll leave that out for now since it's way too confusing to deal with.)

Anyhoo, my point, which you may have already have guessed, is that the "ideal" percentage of African Americans in major league baseball (if such a concept means anything) should be 12.4%, not the 30% of yesteryear. Now, MLB is at 8% right now, and that is clearly below 12.4%, but it's not as far off from the general US population as articles like that SI one I quoted above make it seem. And when black players made up 30% of major league rosters, wasn't that just as, if not more out of whack than it is today? See, I guess what I'm getting at is if you think that African Americans *should* be disproportionately represented in professional baseball--as they are in the NFL and the NBA--aren't you kinda coming at the question with your own racist assumptions about the natural athleticism of African Americans?

What does it say that the news media loves printing stories about Torii getting black people to play America's game again but is silent by comparison on the parallel fact that black people are overrepresented in the NBA? Put differently: why is it so natural for us to accept that black people should be overrepresented in all sports, and, relatedly, for baseball to be re-legitimized as a "true American sport" it's got to get blacks to play the game again?

Now I'm not saying what Torii Hunter is doing is bad by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, I'm more for bringing baseball back to the inner city than I am for say bringing back guns and drugs, but not actually more than bringing back science and economics education, or even say, jobs or equity, since there's probably a lot fewer than 8% black representation in the sciences and in finance capital. But this isn't an argument about whether it's better to have Torii spend his time on baseball rather than finance capital, I think it's fine for Torii to be doing what he's doing. Someone else can teach math to the kids. That's a different guns and butter-esque argument. My only point, really, is that I wish all these articles on the declining popularity of baseball would maybe frame the discussion a little differently and maybe get into some of these larger issues.

I've said what I think. Now, what do YOU think?

There's not much glam about the English weather. There's nothing left keeping us together.

2006-06-20T23:49:00.000-07:00

Slow down! It's Summer '06 and politics is not where it's at. Instead I'd like to talk about baseball, specifically Central Division interleague play:

A Midsummer's Day, 2006:

Chicago AL 20
St. Louis 6

Detroit 10
Milwaukee 1

Minnesota 6
Houston 5 10 innings

Cleveland 4
Chicago NL 2

Kansas City 10
Pittsburgh 6

Also. Iraq. Yawn. Apparently, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead and who are the two happiest factions? The United States government and al-Qaeda, that's who. Unfortunately, Zarqawi's legacy is an articulation of anti-Americanism to a fascist atavistic politics that recalls an imagined eleventh century caliphate for a generation of Iraqi freedom fighters. What can we gather from this particular moment in world history? That Sunni-Shia race war is the new geopolitical hot potato, toward which is it in the status quo's best interest to be always lukewarm.

My love/hate relationship with Starbucks.

2006-06-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

For the first time in many years, I am questioning my relationship with the Starbucks Coffee Company. As with any other major life-changing decisions, I need time to assess the situation in detail. Am I ready to cut off a long-term committed relationship spanning over 5 years? I don't want to be hasty; why should I suffer?

Reason #1: I have become addicted. I don't know how or when it happened, but it has. I know this, because I sit here at work at 2:30pm waiting for my girlfriend Cathy to bring me back my tall non-fat mocha frappuccino with easy whip. This morning, I already downed a tall non-fat iced vanilla latte. This is why I fear the addiction is only getting worse. I can't remember every having two Starbucks drinks in one day. At least I'm not in denial.

I even try, at times, to switch up locations just so that I'm not "that girl", the one that Barista #206 knows; she knows my name, exactly what time I come in every morning and my drink order according to my moods or the weather outside. I hope that day never comes. By the way, the dictionary defines a Barista as: "a person who makes coffee drinks as a profession; an espresso bartender who is an expert in the art of making espresso and espresso based beverages". Basically, a fancy word for "coffee maker". I say, BORING.

Reason #2: My wallet. The suffering to my bank account. Can we talk about that for a second? It just can't seem to handle the daily trips any longer. $2.90 on Monday, $3.45 Tuesday. Heaven forbid a co-worker asks if I can pick them up a latte on my way to work (or I feel obligated to pick them up one because they have done so for me in the past)...then the order goes up to $7.00 and some change. I have mouths to feed, a car payment I can't afford and rent that is sucking me dry. It's summer...I need a new bathing suit, shoes and there is also weekend drinking to be done, and by weekend drinking I mean many alcoholic beverages that don't come cheap. I also need to travel and save up to buy a house. I think it would be pretty pathetic of me if I realized at some point I couldn't afford the necessities because my Starbucks addiction had thrown me into bankruptcy. I don't want THAT hanging over my head.

Reason #3: I'm fully against whatever it is that they put in those drinks (I have no idea if it's heroin, special caffeine or some secret substance that keeps you running back for more), but whatever it is...I'm against it. What DO they put in those drinks? Occasionally I think I should just sit here with a drip in my arm like a heroin addict, rocking back and forth...de-lish. Fill me up. Keep it coming please. Then, I ask myself "does this really do something to me or is it just psychological? Leave it to me to overanalyze a cup of coffee. I should just get decaf, really. I never see a significant change in my energy level. I don't even think caffeine has any affect on me at all. My partner-in-crime aka boyfriend will tell you otherwise, but I beg to differ. And yet, I still continue to have this feeling, this urge for Starbucks. It's a sickness, isn't it? They suck you in with their "specialty" drinks, the little tasters they have sitting on the counter as you wait, and now with all the tao, chai, green tea drinks. It's a one-stop-shop. Why go anywhere else?

It has been more than two weeks since I started writing this blog and I am not any closer to making a committed decision to stop purchasing from the Starbucks Coffee Company. Back to square one...feeling indecisive, and by feeling indecisive I mean trying to decide what type of non-fat latte to order later this afternoon.

I've been to 36 states!

2006-05-29T16:40:00.000-07:00

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

In Defense of Keith Hernandez

2006-05-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

Mets broadcaster Keith Hernandez was recently reprimanded by the team's TV network for "inappropriate" remarks during a broadcast about a female member of San Diego's training staff.

We're wondering when somebody's gonna say something about that mustache.

After spotting Padres' full-time massage therapist Kelly Calabrese high-fiving Mike Piazza after a home run, Hernandez said, "Who is the girl in the dugout, with the long hair? What's going on here? You have got to be kidding me. Only player personnel in the dugout."

When he found out later that Calabrese was on the training staff, he repeated that she was out of place. "I won't say that women belong in the kitchen, but they don't belong in the dugout," he said.

And you, my friend, belong in a cave with a club and a sabertooth tiger-skin toga. Or in a kennel with a muzzle. Or on a platter with an apple in your mouth. Or back in rehab.

Hernandez later laughed and said: "You know I am only teasing. I love you gals out there -- always have."

Which, of course, makes it all better. Meathead.

So this attempt at journalism is admittedly taken from the Contra Costa Times, not exactly in the pantheon of American dailies, but its attitude is pretty damned representative of the reaction of the national sports press to announcer and former New York Met Keith Hernandez’s comments during a game between the Mets and the Padres in San Diego a couple weeks ago. Even those two guys from ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” whose entire show consists of the two of them arguing about almost anything they can think of, were in perfect harmony on this one: Hernandez is a sexist, inconsiderate boor, an idiot even. He’s living in the Stone Age and he deserves to be fined, suspended, fired, etc. God, what a jerk.

And so then my friend and blog-patriot Nate Fisher e-mailed me an article comparing the Hernandez debacle to a troubling incident in the career of Kim Ng. Ng is the Assistant General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers; she previously served in a similar capacity with the Yankees. I submit to you the following:

In 2003, Bill Singer, a scout for the New York Mets, approached Ng at the GM meetings in Arizona.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I'm working," she said.

"What are you doing here?" he asked again. Singer went on to mock Ng's Asian heritage before New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman, who had hired a 29-year-old Ng as an assistant GM, intevened.

Now this exchange got Singer fired, and rightfully so. The guy was calling into question a person’s right to work in a professional, corporate environment based upon that person’s gender and nationality. Obviously not cool. Ng has proven herself to be another Theo Epstein type – anything you read about her describes her as being as whip-smart and as hardworking as anyone in the business.

You might notice my use in the above paragraph of terms like “professional, corporate environment” and “whip-smart” and “hardworking” and “business.” None of these things, in my mind, really apply to the game of baseball itself. Sure, many of the players train hard to get to where they are. There’s a lot of work put in. That work is done mostly in batting cages, at the gym, etc., and not in the dugout. What do players do in the dugout? Mostly they sit around, watch, wait, and cheer on their teammates. Oh they also chew tobacco or gum or sunflower seeds. They used to be able to smoke in the dugout, which I find awesome. But seriously, if my boss came in this morning and I had a massive plug of chaw in my left cheek, I don’t think it would pass as acceptable behavior. I think it would pass as “umm dude what the fuck is in your mouth. You look like half a chipmunk.”

This whole situation is kind of like poker night. Poker night is, in my opinion, guys’ night. It’s a time for men to get together, talk about sports, talk about women, etc. There’s usually whiskey, cigars, sometimes pot. And then you have one guy bring his girlfriend and it sort of kills a whole element of it. Because then you KNOW that Tom’s not going to be comfortable telling his story about how last weekend he got a prophylactic stuck inside some girl he’s seeing and they spent the whole night at the hospital and then they had to wait for a pharmacy to open up so they could get the morning after pill and everything. See, these are the ties that bind us as men. Well, they’re not the only ones, but they are sort of important. Because it’s a funny story. But where as eight guys could have enjoyed the retelling of the story together, the shared experience, then one guy brings his girlfriend and the volume on the whole evening goes down from 25 to like 10. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for ruining poker night.

It’s like Keith said later in the game:

In the fifth inning, Hernandez returned to the subject of Calabrese, who again was on camera. He elaborated on his second-inning commentary.

"I stand by those statements. I think this is a man's game and I feel very strongly about it," Hernandez said. "And if anybody thinks when I made that comment about women being in the kitchen, and takes it seriously, well, get a sense of humor."

Of course this didn’t satisfy ANY of the people who were angered by the comments in the first place, so he issued the following non-apology the next day:

"In my discussion I made a couple of inappropriate comments," Hernandez said. "If I have offended anybody I sincerely apologize."

Baseball: a man’s game. Poker night: a guy’s night. What is so wrong with these things? A man shouldn’t have certain areas of his life that are kept from the other sex? And I guess if Keith Hernandez thinks it’s a man’s game, that’s just one man’s opinion, right? Which you can take two ways. Either think he’s an idiot and move on with your life, or think “hey, this guy actually PLAYED pro ball for like 12-15 years, maybe he has some idea what he’s talking about.”

So but another thing to mention: out of everyone I’ve talked to, and everyone on the air blathering about this, nobody was actually watching the game at the time, except me. They were forty minutes into the broadcast, but all anyone heard were those thirty seconds. Hernandez’s quotes were taken COMPLETELY out of context. Completely.

There’s a certain rhythm to the announcing of a baseball game. I mean, think about it. These games are like three hours long and there are 162 of them in a season. That’s almost 500 hours, almost 20 days straight, of two guys talking. So my first point is that over the course of a season, baseball announcers will wind up talking about some pretty weird and off-topic shit on the air, guaranteed. If you don’t believe me, try turning on a game in late August, when they’ve already been at it for four and a half months. I once heard Tom Seaver do a fifteen minute sort of philosophical-slash-comedic bit on why Arizona doesn’t observe daylight-savings time. He really beat this topic into the ground. (If you’re interested, it’s because of farmers or something. I’m sure you can find it on wikipedia.) So point being they’ll talk about anything, and they’ll stretch topics out way too long, because, well, what the fuck would YOU talk about if your interior monologue had to be verbalized and broadcast for three hours every day?

And my second point is that if you took a few sound clips of Vin Scully talking out of context, you could make about a five-minute pastiche of stuff that could serve as sufficient proof of insanity to have him committed to a mental ward for the rest of his life. Now Vin is old, but he’s pretty damned lucid for his age. Rhythm, people. Rhythm. You can’t pull the scene of Zed fucking Ving Rhames in the ass out of “Pulp Fiction” and expect someone who’s never seen the film before to think they’re not watching gay porn. Context. Rhythm.

So within the rhythm that EVERYONE failed to hear EXCEPT those of us who were actually watching the game, Keith’s comments not only came off as non-offensive, but actually funny. I was watching the game with a real-live female, a rather comely one, and she totally appreciated Keith’s humor and found no offense in it whatsoever. It’s like, you ever read Dave Eggers’ “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”? There’s this part where he talks about how he and his little brother have a joke where they’re always going “you’re just saying that because I’m black,” even though both of them are white as the driven snow. They’re making fun of the American hypersensitivity to ethnic discrimination or whatever. But we all know that Dave Eggers is basically a hippie and a good Democrat and probably these days drives a hybrid. I mean he lives in fucking San Francisco, right?

But if Keith Hernandez, (and who knows his political orientation but he’s a dumb jock who stumbled his way behind the microphone somehow and now offers sexist rants daily, right?,) if Keith Hernandez starts saying these types of things, then all of a sudden he’s the David Duke of baseball. Because there’s no possible WAY that Keith was being at all self-aware when he made these statements, right? This being the fucking guy who starred in two episodes of Seinfeld? You think he might have just the slightest grasp of irony, sarcasm, wit, meta-humor, or whatever you’d like to call it? No, no, no, that’s impossible. He’s a caveman. For sure.

You see what I’m getting at here? I know it’s taken me a while to make my case, but I hope I’ve convinced you. I’m really hungover and tired, hence the fragmentedness and ranting above. I just moved to Venice Beach last night and we had sort of a mini-housewarming party so old Charlie’s a little flagged. But anyway, thanks for reading the first of my blog postings. Oh, and before I go, I just want to add that women have no place in the dugout. I won’t say they belong in the kitchen, but they don’t belong in the dugout. End of story.

The Family Guy

2006-05-02T16:36:00.000-07:00

There are very few shows on television that I enjoy these days; Re-runs of Seinfeld, Extreme Home Makeover (the family version that makes me tear up just watching the previews and then I practically breakdown by the end of the show), Friends re-runs and sometimes the Discovery Channel. Occasionally, I’ve even been known to take in a game or two of Jeopardy, if I have my steady companion with me, because he is amazing to watch and smart as a whip. Damn him! I rarely watch it anymore, it’s like Trivial Pursuit to me; I can never leave feeling smarter.

However, I will admit to thoroughly enjoying The Family Guy. I’ve only seen a few of the episodes but to me, it’s akin to laughing at a nasty joke in church: it may be screamingly funny, but you're pretty sure you're going to Hell for thinking so. It’s often outlandishly offensive and yet you find yourself glued to the television wondering what Stewie Griffin will say and do next. (If you haven’t seen the show and you don’t know who Stewie Griffin is…you should watch it because I don’t think I’m going to go into detail about the cast members). But I will say that Stewie is this genius infant with a head shaped like a football (sideways) who speaks with an English accent.

While The Family Guy's humor often obliterates the boundaries of good taste, it also espouses faith in the American Family, however mutated. As the theme song declares, The Family Guy is about "good old-fashioned values". The characters do reflect those "good old-fashioned values," but outside of traditional social norms. I consider myself to be a pretty family oriented person with pretty traditional values, so the first time I saw it, I was shocked at how much I laughed…out loud, nonetheless. No, I hadn’t been drinking (well, that’s not necessarily true), but I hadn’t been taking any illegal substances while watching.

I now find myself going over the show in my head sometimes, laughing (almost out loud) remembering some of the funnier things that Stewie may have come up with. “Stewie: Easy! Massage the scalp. You're washing a baby's hair, not scrubbing vomit off your Christmas dress, you holiday drunk.” If you’re watching the show with someone who truly appreciates its humor, it’s a much safer environment. This way, you don’t feel AS guilty laughing at some of the rather obscene jokes and the way the family is really a family and yet completely dysfunctional…plus, laughter is always better with someone. It keeps me from feeling crazy or at the very least, having others think I am crazy.

Anyway, I believe the show's genius is that it challenges censorship codes while also providing material that appear to justify their existence: given the chance, it seems sometimes the show may "go too far," pushing the codes until they snapped. Laugh-out-loud one-liners and sight gags and critiques, The Family Guy, I think was underappreciated and underrated. Underrated like eating Marbled Molten Panda, which I may talk about in the future.

Si se puede

2006-05-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

I attended a large May 1 rally in San Francisco today. This is significant because while May 1 is a worker's holiday in much of the world it is not a holiday in the United States. The rally was combined with a general strike. People took the day off work to gather and march one and a half miles down Market Street, from Justin Herman Plaza to the Civic Center. The rally was a backlash against HR 4437, which cleared the House of Representatives in April and would felonize undocumented immigration. One objective of the rally was to call for an amnesty for the approximately 12 million undocumented workers living and working in the United States.

The scope of today's events was unprecedented. Over one million workers participated in a general strike, which has perhaps never before occured in US history. It is especially compelling that this was a labor rally that was not primarily conducted through union organization and thus had an organic feel to it that wouldn't have been present if they were simply an action by organized labor.

I know that Los Angeles, Chicago and for some reason Denver got a lot of attention in the media for their rallies today but I want everyone to know that SF held it down with between 50,000 and 100,000 in attendance. I have been to several antiwar demos in SF and there were at least as many people today as there were at the largest one I went to, back in October 2002. The most striking feature of the rally was that--and this was true all across the United States--everyone got the message to wear white. The sea of white that flooded Market Street looked really sharp, let me tell you.

Maybe one reason the SF rally didn't get as much press is that people were probably just like, "Predictable old San Francisco. They'll protest about anything." This is of course true. And a San Francisco protest can get pretty lame unlike, say, a Sydney protest (where I happened to find myself when the Iraq War began on March 20 2003 and where the protesters met up in pubs across Sydney for the party after the demo). But the people here today were not your typical wine-swilling, East Coast educated post-hippie fascists who make up Nancy Pelosi's base. They were overwhelmingly Latino, which is a different ethnic composition than the antiwar rallies I've been to in the City. Moreover, as Aaron Golfsmith pointed out to me today while smoking a Parliament Light on the steps of City Hall as the rally flooded into the welcoming bosom of the Civic Center and UN Plaza: whereas these protestors took work off to be here, the opportunity cost for people at antiwar rallies (which are, in any event, held on weekends) is, for the most part, nil.

Anyway, it was hands down the most chill demo I've ever attended. People really seemed like they were having a good time. There was dancing in the streets and music everywhere. But the message was serious. It is also important to remember that the rallies and strike were, in essence, reactionary. That this event was a backlash makes the chillness of the whole thing that much more impressive.

I think the rally really captured the sprit of May Day: people took a day off work, enjoyed the time they took, and gathered to participate in and celebrate organic class organization. It was cool that the rally wasn't opposed by organized labor, which in fact helped organize the rallies. This is a step forward. But it would be nice to see all US workers, regardless of race, view immigration as a class/labor issue instead of as a racial/national issue.

While the protest was peaceful, I also say kudos to the SF police for blocking off streets and directing traffic even though the rally didn't have a permit. The police did exhibit their disturbing, hilarious tendency to post up outside of fast food restaurants on Market Street, though. What's the deal?

An introduction of sorts

2006-05-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the POP car.

The POP car is this tidy corner of the world in which myself, your narrator and my beautiful fiancé, Clea Duvall reside. Much like the secret Soviet shadow government of the Cold War, we spend our days riding around in a special MUNI train in San Francisco through secret tracks and underground passageways. If the train says “out of service," look carefully into the tinted windows and you may be able to see us–watching cable news, telling bedtime stories, chainsmoking cigarettes and playing dominoes, or making love in the operator’s booth.

POP is the Paramecium of Parables, which is what we write. The stories we tell are small in nature: bedtime stories to help you drift off to sleep. Mostly, it’s a cynical take on life that drives them. Clea, after a moderately successful movie career, gave into the despair. I found her curled up in a passenger car on an Amtrak train, 400 miles outside of St. Louis and heading west. Only through riding in a train could she deal with the small, gnawing knowledge that everything was more or less total shit and that there was little hope in the human condition. Now, there is nothing more attractive than a depressed B movie actress and our eventual union was foretold in the stars.

We chose train sharing love together and ever since then, Clea has begun to improve. A train is a calming instrument, a type of therapy for the bitter. The sensation of the train, of traveling, taught her that there were possibilities over the next horizon. We came out here together and the grateful city of San Francisco awarded us with our own train car.

Here, we meander on forgotten tracks through the quiet neighborhoods and filthy slums. There is no reason to stop because then we would have to actually be somewhere. This way is much better. We see much from the train, via satellite, via wireless internet connections and through the words of many prophets. We are here to deliver you the big intangible sorrows of the world in bite sized snacks.

Don't go throwin' no coupons on my grave. Don't go carvin' no happy face on my tombstone.

2006-04-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

April has traditionally been a poor month for new media. It comes as no surprise, then, that April 2006 has seen A Century of Controversy over the Foundations of Mathematics enter into a time of fallow. Well, before improved soil husbandry, this sort of thing was common, dear readers. What we gained in prolificacy, we lost in terroir: the terroir of the mind.

Two weeks ago, I held a staff meeting in the West Village. Claire, Ji and I met over a few pints of Brooklyn Pennant Ale and frankly managed to avoid all discussion of our blog. Then Claire and Ji touched and disappeared in a flash of light. All seemed lost.

Then I met my dear friends Chuck Ittner, Kelly Lowenberg & Aaron Golfsmith, as well as Chuck's beloved Misty at the Redwood Room in San Francisco on Sunday evening. Among the increasingly desperate starfuckers and the disconcerting digital portaiture, Chuck suggested to me that all A Century of Controversy over the Foundations of Mathematics needed was a little "shot in the arm."

That made a lot of sense.

So, the upshot is, look for big things in this space again real soon. I'm working on a roster of 7 bloggers, each of whom will blog on a different subject of their choosing on their own unique day of the week. Claire and Ji will be grandfathered in and will be able to blast through the schedule as they see fit. Something tells me we'll never hear from either of them again, though.

Until then, friends.

And now for something completely different... Ask an Informative but Chauvinistic Business School

2006-03-23T16:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Informative but Chauvinistic Business School,
I'm deeply in love with my best friend. I've tried to drop some hints to show him how I feel but he just doesn't seem to see me as anything other than a platonic friend. How can I get his attention without having to resort to a slightly desperate (prob. drunken) confession? -- Longing in San Pedro

LISP, it appears to me that what you have here is a classic marketing problem. Assuming you have a competitive product (you're not fat, are you?), your business challenge is to heighten perception of your brand among your target demographic audience (male, 18-25, best friend).

There are several approaches you can take to reposition your product in the marketplace. Although recent surveys show executives increasingly question their effectiveness, a traditional advertising and/or PR campaign is one option. Place pictures of yourself in conspicuous locations he's sure to see, preferably wearing a bikini. Remember, you want as many impressions as possible since repetition is proven to impact consumer mindshare. It'll require more creativity on your part but you can also come up with a catchy jingle about yourself that you should sing, often, in his presence, preferably while wearing a bikini.

Another initiative you can pursue, probably even in conjunction with an advertising/PR campaign, is to relaunch your brand, creating a "blank slate" with which to develop an identity with your target audience. This often includes a name change, which may seem drastic at first, but is a widely accepted industry practice and has been an effective marketing strategy. Case in point: do you know who Natalie Oliveros is? That's right, no one does. But under the pseudonym, Savanna Samson, Natalie Oliveros has starred in two dozen pornography films and recently won Best Actress in the Adult Video News Awards.

The last topic I'll touch upon is the time-tested power of word of mouth advertising. Especially in a small market, word of mouth can often be the very most effective method of advertising your product plus your cost expenses are greatly minimized. Recent examples that easily demonstrate how much of an impact word of mouth can have include: Skype, Myspace.com, and the Brooklyn band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! (esp. due to the music website pitchfork.com). So... you may want to consider sleeping with his friends. A positive testimonial about you from a close friend can potentially persuade your target consumer to perceive your brand the way you want it be.

Warm regards,
Informative but Chauvinistic Business School

Notes from a Dream-Journal

2006-03-21T02:02:00.000-08:00

The eros struggle why are you here she asked I am a parricide ein parasit I knew committed crime prières de pènitence expiate the woman smiled lightpitiful Osterberg's my name the masked man said I knew the voice Gottwalles les brumes de l'Est the frontier-town and Osterberg Easterberg Mt. Easter Pâques and Ostern immer die Grenze Eastertown how strange the Buddha language die heiligen worte der urzeit die schwestern tanzten les oraisons des saintes . . .

(This material was never developed; but I find the notes interesting as demonstrating the automatic metamorphosis of a night-word.)

- Eugene Jolas (American, 1894 - 1952)

"Abduction" is the ninth in a series of ten etchings collectively called "A Glove," drawn in 1881 by Max Klinger (German, 1857 - 1920)

Kirby Puckett, 1960 - 2006

2006-03-08T01:36:00.000-08:00

From Wikipedia:

Kirby Puckett (March 14, 1960 – March 6, 2006) was an American center fielder in Major League Baseball who played his entire career with the Minnesota Twins from 1984 to 1995. Puckett led the Twins to World Series titles in 1987 and 1991, the only two championships for the franchise since their move to Minnesota in 1961. After being forced to retire at age 35 due to loss of vision in one eye from glaucoma, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001 in his first year of eligibility. He passed away at the age of 45 following a massive stroke.

I lived in Minnesota for 19 years including all 12 of Kirby Puckett's seasons for the Twins. For the past few days I have been trying to think of an appropriate Kirby moment to relate to you, but I've come up short. I remember going to the Hubert H. Humphrey metrodome as a kid; I listened to the announcer yell "Kirrrbyyyyy Puckett" as he stepped up to the plate countless times. Kirby was synonymous with Twins baseball to my young mind but nothing really stands out as a special on-field moment. On August 30 1987 (in the thick of a pennant race), Kirby went 6 for 6 against the Brewers with 2 homeruns and robbed Robin Yount of a grand slam in the same game, but I had just turned six years old and don't remember it.

By 1991, I was listening to games on the radio every day. During those games, I would thumb through my Topps and Upper Deck sets of Twins cards, taking special care with Kirby's cards and their imposing offensive stats. Obviously, his solo shot in the 10th inning of Game 6 of the World Series that year was huge. For me, though, mundane as it is, the presence of a likable hometown superstar for my childhood years was a greater contribution than any individual moment of greatness Kirby provided.

Kirby valued his privacy a lot and I feel like the public respected that privacy for the most part. It's a little awkward writing this since I don't really know much about him. I know he was born into poverty in the projects on the South-side of Chicago. I know he was engaged to be re-married when he died. I know he had a lifetime batting average of .318. I know at his retirement press conference he said, "Don't take anything for granted, because tomorrow is not promised to any of us." That's about it.

Barbara Guest, 1920 - 2006

2006-03-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

Poet Barbara Guest died February 15th. She was one of the venerable New York School poets. You may have heard of the rest (Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, John Ashbery). There was no obituary in the Times until March 4th, so I couldn't link to it until now. Here is an excerpt from "An Emphasis Falls on Reality."

A column chosen from distance
mounts into the sky while the font
is classical,

they will destroy the disturbed font
as it enters modernity and is rare....

don’t make it a big deal; don’t be so sensitive

2006-02-28T23:46:00.000-08:00

If February were luminescent, the last light of the shortest month would now be waning in Oakland--a beautiful pastel sunset against the frozen Minnesota sky of my imagination. As I type this it is a new month in forty-five states but here March remains several minutes in the future.

The final day of this eventful month by coincidence was the first day I bothered to listen to Tidal by Fiona Apple all the way to its tenth and final track, "Carrion." Don't misunderstand me, the album has its share of filler. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably trying to sleep with a mid-90s version of you, and in any case doesn't deserve to ever know what real love is. But the baroque ferocity of the album's ostensibly lounge-y conclusion has inspired A Century of Fakers to usher out February of this late year with a pathetic virtual observance of mardi gras. With a tall boy of Sapporo, three Fiona Apple compact discs and memories of New Orleans from the early aughts to keep me company, I offer you these thoughts on the ostensibly lounge-y yet ferocious month nearly past.

The three top stories in the United States to my mind are the same as they were in January, and in December for that matter:

Iraq,
New Orleans,
the domestic wiretapping controversy.

The stories that successively dominated news cycles this month were, however, none of the above. They were the Vice-President shooting a 78-year old man in the face and the Dubai port controversy. (Thankfully no one in America really cared about the Torino games.) Neither story cast the Bush administration in a particularly favorable light, and so if you read last weekend that a CBS poll found the president's approval rating to be 34%--yet another low for his presidency--you could be forgiven for thinking that things are going badly for the president.

In fact, this rapid succession of pseudo-scandal is a massive diversion from the fact that the Bush administration continues to operate with near-total impunity on the real issues of today: his disastrous Iraq policy remains unchanged, the people who used to comprise the 80%-black population of New Orleans remain criminally neglected six months after a predictable and possibly avoidable human disaster, no one yet has any idea the extent to which the president authorized the National Security Agency to spy on the signals communications of American citizens in their own homes and offices.

A recent CNN/USA Today poll that showed 21% of Americans think it's likely that their phone has been tapped by the government. Combine that with the CBS poll and one can make a case that Americans are not idiots. Just sixteen months after he was reelected with 51% of the vote the president can find support from only 1 in 3 Americans. This would be a liability if the president in any way sought support from the American people. But the president has 35 months left in office, is no longer running for anything and has made it very clear that he does not care what the American people think. Meanwhile, his policies remain essentially unchallenged by the minority party and the mainstream media. In the absence of stories being prioritized, placed in context and followed-up on adequately, President Bush--a tin president if there ever were one--will continue to pass for teflon.

Last weekend we were greeted by U.S. newspapers pronouncing a causal relationship between the bombing of one of Shia Islam's holiest shrines and a nascent sectarian civil war. It was as if the press were searching for a historical moment with which to pinpoint the birth of this civil war (and, sadly for the world, the final throes of a largely tolerable drôle de guerre). The news in February was also dominated by reports of violent protests against anti-Semetic Danish cartoons on three continents. When this wasn't being laughed off as the collective immaturity of a major world religion it was being analysed as a possible opening salvo in the long-predicted "clash of civilizations," a child's fantasy term for global civil war.

Well, no. The bombing of a symbol and anti-cartoonist riots are signs, not causes. Let's hope that for once enough people with enough power can see past the monumental history of the present that is being written for us and can analyse the situation with some sense of epidemiology, not necessarily rationally but without at least resorting to chimeras and fetishes.

February fun facts

2006-02-28T22:37:00.000-08:00

January and February were the last two months to be added to the Roman calendar, since the Romans originally considered winter a monthless period.
February was probably named for the Roman god Februus, the god of purification, or for the Roman god Juno Februata, the goddess of passion.
February was nominally the last month of the Roman calendar as the year originally began in March.
At certain intervals Roman priests inserted an intercalary month, Mercedonius, after February to realign the year with the seasons.
On a few occasions in history, February has had 30 days.

(source: Wikipedia)

look in my heart and let love keep us together, whatever

2006-02-23T00:41:00.000-08:00

Last night, my housemate/friend/lover Sabina escorted me to the excellent film Valley Girl, starring Nic Cage, at the Parkway for $0. God, what an awesome film. The soundtrack is teeming with New Wave classics and the script contains some of the most realistic dialogue ever recorded in a Hollywood film.

This morning, I was tired of the usual poached egg on toast and orange juice routine and I had a couple of slices of stale bread just sort of lying on the top of my fridge. So I decided to make pain perdu, aka Freedom Toast, following the Joy of Cooking's classic recipe:

Whisk together in a shallow bowl:

1/3 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt

One at a time, add:

3 slices white bread

Turn the slices in the egg mixture until thoroughly saturated but not falling apart. In a skillet, melt over medium heat:

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Add as many slices of bread as will fit without crowding and cook until the underside is golden brown. Turn the bread and cook until the second side is golden. Serve immediately.

Instead of topping the toast with traditional syrup, I used Knott's Berry Farm Boysenberry Preserves. I decided that preserves would be a more healthy--and perhaps tastier--option than syrup, and I happened to have a 1-serving jar of Knott's Berry Farm Boysenberry Preserves in my cupboard thanks to a magical Friday evening spent in the company of room service and Kelly Lowenberg at the SFO Marriot Hotel. While the Knott's Berry Farm preserves contained high fructose corn syrup, this was something I was willing to overlook because, hey, it's Freedom Toast.

In conclusion, the vanilla is what really makes the Joy of Cooking recipe authoritative.

February in Oakland

2006-02-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

darling, you hugged me—opposite and obsolete.
A thousand things to do, we all

*

crawl
this February arc
from switchbacks to doldrums,
disaster tourism and the non-profit-industrial complex:
paperless in,
traced out.

Consider
meaninglessness and sound;
call it cynicism or humanism, it isn’t mine.
I was sheltered by your words for so long:
instead of probabilities,
I saw things.

*

Grow up, baby blue,
get ready for Spring.

What happens if the manager won't give you the diamonds?

2006-02-14T13:11:00.000-08:00

"Look, if you ask me to sign something that says the government shouldn't do that, I'll sign it, put it to a vote, I'll vote for it, but what I won't do is play ball. And as for this non-college bullshit I got two words for that: learn to fuckin' type, 'cause if you're expecting me to help out with the rent you're in for a big fuckin' surprise."

self-doubt and selfism were the cheapest things I ever bought

2006-02-09T22:30:00.001-08:00

Though it is a concession to the immaturity of the body politic and represents the antithesis of the Enlightenment, I respect the concept of the benevolent dictator. To paraphrase Jake, Google is trying to become the benevolent dictator of the Internet. With projects like Google Earth the company has demonstrated its power to mute security concerns over the free flow of information by fait accompli. As a student of Nietzsche, I find that easy ability to effect synthesis immensely compelling.

Still, am I the only one who feels uneasy about Google Talk being built into Gmail? Now, whenever I have my Gmail window open I can be messaged in real time. This will inevitably lead to the expectation that I am availiable to chat just because I happen to be checking my email. I haven't really explored my Gmail/Chat preferences but after a glance it appears there is presently no way to completely turn the feature off. This strikes me as a blow to privacy from a company that elsewhere champions quaint notions of user privacy in our hyperinformed era.

The preferences do have a toggle between "Save chat history in my Gmail account" and "Don't save chat history in my Gmail account." This is similar to the choice the Oakland Library gives me between recording the history of the books I've put on hold and not keeping a record. Though it may be quaint I still appreciate it.

I also appreciate that Google is defending its users' privacy rights against the Justice Department while companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft are rolling over as obidientely as the Congressional Democratic Leadership in an intelligence hearing. But in the current environment of open hostility to civil rights, is Google a benevolent champion of privacy rights or a paper tiger? To wit, the Attorney General on Monday--conspicuously not under oath in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee--refused to answer a question put to him by the committee's ranking Democrat about whether he as the nation's top law enforcement officer thought the president, without a warrant, could legally open first-class mail he felt was sent by a US citizen to a suspected terrorist.

pack a vest for your jimmy in the city of sex

2006-02-06T21:10:00.000-08:00

Jeffery Skilling, former CEO of Enron, was indicted on 35 counts of fraud, insider trading, and other crimes related to the collapse of Enron. His trial began January 30. If convicted of all 35 counts, he faces up to 325 years in prison and at least $80 million in fines. Skilling's rise through the ranks of Enron and the company's subsequent collapse is documented in the excellent, Oscar-nominated film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Here is an excerpt of a March 28 2001 Frontline interview with Skilling about the California energy crisis.

FRONTLINE: Mr. Lay told us yesterday--and I wanted to clarify this--that he thought that one of the reasons that energy spiked in California is that there are old plants that had to go out for maintenance and that caused the problem. I went back and I looked. And the situation was that in October of 1999, forced and scheduled outages in California were, let's say, 1,000 megawatts. A year later, in 2000, it's 8,000 megawatts. In November, it's 11,000. So there were five times the amount of outages. Does that make sense?

SKILLING: I really don't know. It could be. We've been running those facilities really hard ... this past summer. Demand in California was up 10 percent last year. That is unprecedented in a developed economy. ... So last summer they were running these things flat-out, and I would imagine they were deferring maintenance on all of them at that time. So it might be catch-up time. ...

FRONTLINE: So when professors--like Professor [Frank] Wolak in Stanford who works with some other professors at Berkeley at the Business School--say that their calculations are that there is no real reason, given supply and demand and, I assume, maintenance, for prices to have gone up as high as they did, then there's manipulation going on. You dispute that?

SKILLING: Yes. I don't think that's the case. I don't know. I'd love to see their numbers and see what they're saying. But I would be shocked if there was any kind of price manipulation going on. ...

FRONTLINE: So people who are looking for an explanation for what happened in either a cartel activity, they call it, or a conspiracy. You're here to say it hasn't been happening?

SKILLING: I don't buy it. ... I don't know what everybody else does. But I know when the markets were getting tight, we were doing everything we could to get electrons into the California market--everything. My guess is that everybody else in the industry was doing that, too.

What the deal, NASA?

2006-02-05T15:16:00.000-08:00

Official lyrics of Road Trip '06

2006-02-05T12:47:00.001-08:00

Other than the fact that our road trip began on a Sunday afternoon (exactly one week ago) and that the song's title is "Interstate Love Song," I can't say exactly why the lyrics resonated so much with Matt and I. That the music is such a tour de force of straight-ahead rock certainly helps. Admittedly, the lyrics don't seem to hold up so well on paper; they owe much of their strength to Scott Weiland's delivery. Still, I think there is something there. I've been listening to the song on repeat all afternoon and it's the lyrics that keep bringing me back.

I remember being cheered up by the line about "leaving on a Southern train" while I was depressed and alone in my cubicle last year as the sun shone through my West-facing window overlooking the 700 block of Harrison Street in San Francisco. The first time I heard the song was at a junior high dance at Our Lady of Grace that I went to with some Catholic kids in my neighborhood. As I was listening to the song for the fifth time today--this particular time running around Southwest Minneapolis--I was reminded of how foolish I was to think I might meet a girl at that dance. I still have no idea where to meet girls. Here are the lyrics:

Waiting on a Sunday afternoon
for what I read between the lines,
your lies.

Feeling like a hand in rusted shame,
so do you laugh or does it cry?
Reply.

Leaving on a southern train.
Only yesterday, you lied.
Promises of what I seem to be
only watch the time go by.

All of these things you say to me.

Breathing is the hardest thing to do,
with all I've said and
all that's dead for you.
You lied.
Goodbye.

Leaving on a southern train.
Only yesterday, you lied.
Promises of what I seem to be
only watch the time go by.

All of these things I say to you.

the government know the kid been lovin' the dough since I was movin' white off the curb and shovelin' snow

2006-02-04T13:05:00.002-08:00

The Secretary of the Treasury gets paid $87.85 an hour, is fifth in line to succeed the president, and is one of the original cabinet officers dating back to 1789. That said, I've had a hard time over the past half hour figuring out what his job actually consists of. Here's what I've come up with:

overseeing the mints
hiring the IRS Commissioner
making sure kids know how cool savings bonds are
stumping for the president's fiscal policies
talking about how good the economy is
signing paper money

My guess is he takes long lunches and leaves work early a lot. But I bet he'd get real defensive if I ever said that to him. What am I missing here?

the South takes what the North delivers

2006-01-30T14:19:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning in Emma Kolsky's bed in Mudd-Blaisdell dorm at Pomona College. Bam. A Century of Fakers is on the road, and I am back to the place where it all began one lazy August afternoon in 1999.

Unless you've lived in Claremont--or your name is Lamont Cranston and you have spent time training with Buddhist monks in the Himalayas--odds are you haven't experienced an 11,000 foot peak chilling, invisibly, two miles away from your eyes. Well friends, I experienced just that this morning as I went through the motions of my old college 3-mile run. I didn't have Ji Money at my side helping me along, god rest his soul, but rest assured he was with me in spirit. Say what you will about the abominable air quality, the man-made deltas and the concrete rivers of Southern California; any place that is 75 degrees Farenheit and sunny literally every day is OK by me.

The reason I'm typing to you from Emma's desk in what used to be Gibson computer lab is because the Big Kolsk and I are driving from the Bay Area to Minneapolis by way of Claremont. The Big Kolsk is going through a major life transition and will be driving on through the Minneap to his final destination of Evanston. There he will redouble his efforts at becoming the best Kolsky he can be. Allegedly, that will include raising three stacks of high society and filming a feature length romantic comedy as well as continuing to attempt to break into the world of sports journalism. A Century of Fakers wishes him nothing but the best.

As for me, I'll be laying low in Minnesota until February 8, when I will touch down at SFO at midnight. Our crazy plan is to do some reading on Walker Beach, maybe have a catch, until 5 o'clock when we will embark into the Western night like vampires on a straight shot to Denver. Our only planned stop is to try our luck on the roulette table in the Luxor around 9ish. Though we've both done a fair amount of cross-country driving, it has been years since either of us traversed the mountain route, the stretch of I-70 between Las Vegas and Denver that is perhaps the most beautiful stretch of interstate freeway in the United States. Though Salina, Utah happens to be the site of the Big Kolsk's greatest ignominy, I am personally looking forward to checking back in with the surreal moonscapes of Southern Utah around sunrise tomorrow.

We plan to arrive in Denver at noon tomorrow, where we will recover from the drive then dine with the Big Kolsk's "Uncle Tom." By the time dinner is over, Katie McCarthy will have returned to Boulder from Aspen where she is spending a long weekend snowboarding and observing the X Games. We'll hang with her, spend the night in Boulder, then continue on Tuesday though the Great Plains onward to Minnesota. Except for watching Marty McFly overcome his problem with people calling him yellow in Back to the Future: Part III with Helen, I have no idea what Minneapolis has in store for me.

Only one thing is certain: what happens in Minneapolis stays in Minneapolis. Hence, this personal note will stay the exception not the rule and it will be back to politics, culture and baseball at A Century of Fakers. In the interim, be sure to check back every so often for some superlative poetry from poetry editor Claire.

It's the black fly in your Chardonnay...

2006-01-25T22:57:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Wednesday said he would not deal with Hamas unless the militant group which made a strong showing in the Palestinian election renounced its stance on Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"A political party, in order to be viable, is one that professes peace, in my judgment, in order that it will keep the peace," Bush told the newspaper in an interview Wednesday morning, before polls closed in the election.

Before this post devolves into an oblique cheap shot at the unnervingly large chasm separating his words from his actions, let me first say that I understand the point King Adorable was trying to make. Let me also say that I do indeed understand the gravity of Hamas' surprise victory today. Combine that with the x factor of a brand new, unelected Israeli prime minister and a Quartet that suddenly finds its condescending strategy overtaken by history, and you've got a volatile region and the specter of world war.

Nevertheless, that quote in today's WSJ is a little like... rai-ai-ain on your wedding day. It's a free ride when you've already paid. It's the good advice that you just can't take. And who would have thought? It figures.

Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's ok
And everything's going alright
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

Slough

2006-01-21T21:03:00.000-08:00

This John Betjeman poem from 1937 inspired the hit British television show "The Office," which is set at Wernham Hogg Slough. Aside from the call for German bombs to rain down on the suburban town--which doubtless stung more in the years before the Battle of Britain than it does now--Betjemen's nihilistic rage has withstood the onslaught of the intervening 69 years depressingly well:

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Everything you see, you see, I already saw.

2006-01-20T00:04:00.000-08:00

For $110, locatecell.com will provide you with the outgoing call records of any cell phone you want. They even say they'll email you records within 1 to 4 hours of your request.

There is no language anywhere on the site to indicate that the service is legal. Indeed, the Attorneys General of Illinois and Connecticut have begun criminal investigations, the FCC is investigating, and Cingular Wireless has obtained a court order enjoining First Source Information Specialists, the company that owns locatecell.com, from using any information received from Cingular. Fair enough. But why was Cingular aiding and abetting what may have been a crime in the first place? And why was a restraining order against First Source necessary? Shouldn't they hold off on handing over phone records until their lawyers determine that they have a legal responsibility to comply?

My guess is that since this issue has gained such a high profile, Congress and many states will quickly act to close the loopholes that allow companies like 1st Source to sell phone records to the public quasi-legally. Privacy laws that are already on the books will be more rigorously enforced. No one will seriously offer a "bad apple" defense here as the loss of privacy is such a pervasive, well-documented condition of 21st Century American life.

I am afraid that none of these things will do anything to solve the underlying problem. There are many reasons for this. Our embrace of ridiculously advanced communications technology that only experts understand is one. Another reason is that locatecell.com represents exactly the "slippery slope" that critics of privacy advocates say is just an abstract liberal fear.

It is hard not to note that the Justice Department yesterday published a 42-page white paper laying out the government's legal defense in the domestic surveillance controversy. It's an awkward task for the federal government's law enforcement branch to act to protect Americans' privacy rights against what amounts to organized crime while it is busy defending itself against the same charges.

Chris Hoofnagle, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, had this to say to the media:

"If you have a legitimate need you can get these records, the problem is these companies are offering an illegal shortcut that is unfair to the consumer."

The key phrase in that statement is "legitimate need." That signifier has been at the center of the privacy rights debate at least since the events of 9/11. Questions of what constitutes a "legitimate need" (questions that should rightly be answered by a warrant-issuing magistrate) aside, I submit that when law enforcement agencies are allowed to violate the law in "our interest," organized crime will be an unintended benficiary. The millions of dollars the grandfathers of quasi-legality--not the KKK, silly, the CIA--spent training Osama Bin Laden are a case in point.

Bottom line: When extralegal spaces exist for governments to act, parallel spaces will exist for syndicates like locatecell.com to operate in a similar grey area.

Your "avian flu" is probably just baseball fever...

2006-01-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a handful of soulless bureaucrats at the U.S. Treasury Department implementing the Republican Party's annoying Florida strategy, the status of the World Baseball Classic may be in question. But that's not going to stop a little thing called Major League Baseball from starting up again come April. And for the first time in four years, the Minnesota Twins are right back where they're most comfortable: as massive underdogs.

They may be coming off a dissapointing 83-79 season, their worst in four years. There may be just one position player left from the scrappy band of misfits that took a team that a court order saved from contraction in 2001 all the way to the American League Championship Series in 2002. But thanks to some wheelin' and dealin' by Terry Ryan, the 2006 roster promises its share of scrappy misfits and, as always, a lot of heart. Plus, we've got the best pitcher in baseball. Will that be enough to put the free-spending, major-market, steak-and-lobster-expensing World Champion Bitch Sox back in their accursed place? Will the Gemini Warriors be able to stave off challenges from a young, hungry Cleveland team? Only time will tell.

Thanks to the icy heart of billionaire owner Carl Pohlad, the Twins may not be able to spend as much as other teams in the AL Central, but the work ethic wrought from six grueling months of icy, sub-arctic winter just may be able to compensate. Thanks to Roger over at Twinkie Town, here's a look at the 2006 payroll for...

YOUR MINNESOTA TWINS:

Starting Pitching:

Brad Radke 9,000,000
Johan Santana 8,750,000
Carlos Silva 3,300,000
Kyle Lohse 3,900,000 (A1)
Baker/Liriano 315,000 (M)
Joe Mays 500,000 (B)

Relief Pitching:

Joe Nathan 3,750,000
Jesse Crain 375,000 (E)
Juan Rincon 900,000
Matt Guerrier 350,000 (E)
Jose Reyes # 550,000
Willie Eyre # 327,000 (M)

Catchers:

Joe Mauer 400,000 (E1)
Mark Redmond 900,000

Infield:

Justin Morneau 400,000 (E)
Luis Castillo 5,000,000
Jason Bartlett 330,000 (E)
Tony Batista 1,250,000 (X)
Juan Castro 1,050,000
Nick Punto # 737,500 (A2)

Outfield:

Shannon Stewart 6,000,000
Torii Hunter 10,750,000
Michael Cuddyer 1,300,000 (A2)
Jason Kubel # 327,000 (M)
Lew Ford 450,000 (E)

Designated Hitter:

Rondell White 3,250,000

---------

64,223,500

# Could be any one of several players
(A1) Arbitration at player's number (Lohse)
(A2) Arbitration at mid-point of numbers
(M) Minimum
(B) Buy-out of 2006 contract, likely included as
part of 2006 budget
(E) Estimate
(E1) Estimate, has been discussion of long-term contract
(X) Not guaranteed, $208,000-312,500 buy-out

Civil Liberties: 0, National Security: 0

2006-01-18T00:29:00.002-08:00

"If you're not talking to a known Al-Qaeda member or a member of an affiliated organization, you don't have to worry about this," White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said yesterday.

That was another brilliant defense of the National Security Agency's not-so-secret program of spying on US citizens without a warrant. It was in response to two civil lawsuits filed yesterday in New York and Detroit to enjoin the Bush administration from continuing the NSA program of illegal wiretaps.

The logic of McClellan's argument is annoying, to be sure, but I think I detect a trace of desperation in there too. I mean, how does this sentence sound in defense of the president suspending trial by jury? "If you're not committing a crime, you don't have to worry about this." Once the media pressure is racheted up, arguments like that aren't going to fly.

Speaking of racheting up, here's an excerpt from an article in yesterday's New York Times:

Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends

By LOWELL BERGMAN, ERIC LICHTBLAU,
SCOTT SHANE and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said....

The War Crimes Act of 1996

2006-01-16T02:25:00.000-08:00

In her cover story on impeachment in the current issue of The Nation, Elizabeth Holtzman mentions something called the War Crimes Act of 1996:

Under the War Crimes Act of 1996 it is a crime for any US national to order or engage in the murder, torture or inhuman treatment of a detainee. (When a detainee death results, the act imposes the death penalty.)

Since I had never heard of the law before, I assumed that it must be so vaguely worded as to be meaningless. I wanted to know more, so I turned to THOMAS and made a little legislative history query into HR 3680.

It turns out the law is short and to the point. It explicitly makes the Geneva Conventions part of federal law and imposes criminal penalties on anyone who violates the Geneva Conventions. You can read it in its entirety here.

This wasn't some left-wing bill drafted by hate-America-first Democrats in the post-Watergate era. The War Crimes Act was so uncontroversial that it cleared the Republican-controlled House on July 29 1996 by a voice vote. It passed the Republican-controlled Senate by unanimous consent on August 2. President Clinton signed it into law on August 21.

The fact that the War Crimes Act exists at all (let alone was passed with no recorded opposition by a Republican Congress) amazes me. The law effectively takes questions of the Bush adminstration's numerous violations of the Geneva Conventions in Guantanamo and "black sites" around the world out of the political sphere and places it in the hands of the federal criminal court system. All we need is one U.S. Attorney with a conscience to step up to the plate (unless of course it turns out the Supreme Court agrees with the president that he has the right to violate the law in the interest of national security). Therefore, I'm hereby recommending that liberal groups like MoveOn do something useful and organize a campaign to put pressure on U.S. Attorneys to investigate the Bush administration for possible violations of the War Crimes Act.

The sponsor of the bill was Rep. Walter B Jones, Jr., a Republican from North Carolina who is still in Congress. You may remember him as the man who (along with soon-to-be-indicted Bob "Representative #1" Ney) coined the term "freedom fries" in March 2003 as a newspeak alternative to "French fries."

According to wikipedia, Jones is "perceived as one of the most conservative members of the House" and was a strong supporter of the Iraq War. Lately, though, Mr. Freedom Fry has had a change of heart, calling on President Bush to apologize for misleading Congress on the threat Iraq posed to the United States:

If I had known then what I know today, I wouldn't have voted for that resolution. ... I just feel that the reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there.

On June 16 2005, Jones joined with Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) in introducing a resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq to begin by October 2006. While it is astounding (and certainly underreported) that a conservative, Southern Republican has co-sponsored legislation to bring the troops home with Dennis Kucinich, I suppose it makes sense given that the author of a bill that makes the Geneva Convention actionable under US law can't be all bad.

I think it's pathetic of the mainstream media to play up the whole ridiculous "freedom fry" thing and then bury the fact that the guy who coined the term now wants an apology from the president and the troops to start coming home. Things like this make me wonder how monolithic the Republican party really is and how many people in Congress (and in the executive agencies like the NSA and the DoJ) are fully signed on with this administration's neo-con agenda.

It may well be that nearly every Republican is willing to follow the president away from the republic and explicitly into empire; the press certainly makes it seem that way. But there are five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress, each of whom has taken an oath to defend the Constitution. It's really a question of how far these people can be pushed in their fealty to the president. It's a question that I don't pretend to be able to answer, but it is also one that I think we'll get an answer to in the coming months.

Relatedly, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, brought up impeachment without being prompted on This Week earlier today. While he was quick to add that he was speaking in entirely theoretical terms, he did say that just because he was in the same party as the president didn't mean that he's not prepared to pursue every appropriate remedy, including impeachment, if it turns out to be warranted.

one step forward, two steps back

2006-01-12T23:05:00.000-08:00

Dear reader,

If you're tired of reading about impeachment, scroll down for a hilarious send-up of the Sam Alito hearings.

-Ed

The January 29 issue of The Nation broke the ice and became the first major American weekly to run a call for impeachment on its cover. It will not be the last.

The story is by Elizabeth Holtzman, an attorney and former Democratic Congresswoman, who was first elected in 1972 from New York at the age of 31. The article breaks no real new ground but is simply a summary of the case against the president. I nonetheless recommend it to you if you have some time on your hands. Here is an excerpt that I particularly like as it is in line with my own thoughts on the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy:

Since no good reason has been given for avoiding the FISA court, it is reasonable to suspect that the real reason may have been that the wiretaps, like those President Nixon ordered in Watergate, involved journalists or anti-Bush activists or were improper in other ways and would not have been approved.

While The Nation may be the oldest American weekly still in existence, its politics of course lean far to the left of the mainstream press. That's why its cover story call for impeachment is less surprising than when the conservative business weekly Barron's--the Wall Street Journal's sister publication--called for Bush's impeachment in a December 26, 2005 editorial.

At the same time, The Nation has a circulation of just shy of 200,000 (and is expanding), which makes it more widely read than The New Republic, The Weekly Standard and The National Review. I would say that gives The Nation standing as a major US weekly. So however marginal The Nation's politics admittedly are, the precedent of having a major US weekly run a cover on impeachment will make it easier for more mainstream publications to follow suit. Let's call the next one Newsweek, say April 24.

The four annoying days of Alito hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee were as banal as I predicted. But despite myself, the hearings did manage to wrest several hours of my time. Even though I said I probably wouldn't blog about them, I just can't help the impulse to lash out and, in turn, wrest your time from you.

Without further ado, here are my awards to the senators who participated in the Alito hearings.

Biggest jackass: Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Dude, you made Alito's wife run out of the room in tears.

Most ineffective liberal: Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Ted, listening to you speak for five minutes makes me question my own beliefs. How the fuck do you keep getting elected?

Senator who sounds most like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: Charles E. Grassley (R-IA). He might sound like doe-eyed Senator Smith, but with comments like, "Don't worry about breaking your promises, Judge. We senators do it all the time," he leaves a lot to be desired.

Biggest sleaze-ball: Joe Biden (D-DE). Can this man do anything that isn't calculated to help his candidacy in 2008? What's worse, his attempts at humor are ridiculously tone deaf and, frankly, borderline creepy. I think the low point of the hearings was when he put on a Princeton baseball cap to mock Alito for belonging to a Princeton alumni group that criticized the school's decision to admit women. In fact, the more I think about it, the more Senator Biden reminds me of the sober frat boy at a party where everyone else is drunk who will talk about "the plight of women" if that's what it takes to bag drunk sorority pledges. Odds of being the Democratic nominee in 2008: infinity to one.

Most sensible questioner: Dick Durbin (D-IL). Class act. This guy won major points from me for his non-hysterical, respectful questioning of Alito. The fact that he's Assistant Minority Leader is one of the few things that the Demmies have going for them. Bonus point: he got Alito to categorically state that the First Amendment protects atheists.

Least sensible questioner: Tom Coburn (R-OK). Did I actually hear this guy ask Alito to explain to space aliens visiting Earth why running over a pregnant woman with a car and killing her fetus counts as murder but abortion does not? Space aliens? Really? Hey, let me take a crack at that one, Tom: it's called a woman's right to choose... that's the operative difference in the clever little comparison you drew.

Given that Alito is clearly pro-life, I'm not sure where Coburn was even going with that question in the first place. Then after Alito gave the legalistic answer he obviously had to, the senator just repeated the question again, emphasizing the fact that Alito's answer wouldn't make sense to space aliens. After Alito gave the exact same answer one more time, Senator Coburn saw fit to spout off about how many innocent fetuses are killed each year because the American people deserve to know. Earth to Tom: the only Americans watching these inane hearings on C-SPAN or listening to them on NPR are pro-choice monsters! Congratulations, you just changed absolutely no one's mind! How did this lunatic find his way onto the Justice Committee?

Least annoying Republican: Sam Brownback (R-KS). I still wouldn't want this guy anywhere near my marijuana-tinged, abortion-on-demand-providing yurt, but I've got to hand it to him: he knows Alito's his boy, he knows the Dems aren't gonna touch him, so what does he do? He says a few nice things and yields back his time.

Cutest bipartisan couple: Arlen Specter (R-PA), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ranking Member. You just can't fake the chemistry these two share. Leahy doesn't have the votes to force the committee to do anything. But with Specter at the helm, he knows if he's got a problem with anything, Specter's got his back. And you know Leahy would do the same for Arlen.

"If there were a patient in this hospital named Justin Selb, I'd know!"

2006-01-09T17:57:00.000-08:00

I got around to yesterday's edition of This Week with George Stephanopoulos on my iPod this afternoon and can confirm Justin's report to me that Stephanopoulos indeed asked Ted Kennedy if the president should be impeached. Though Kennedy gave a non-answer, the point is that 2006 is barely a week old and the "I-word" is already being thrown around on network television.

The other thing I found noteworthy from This Week was when Stephanopoulos asked Senator Brownback (R-KS) if he agreed with the Bush administration's position that when Congress gave the president war powers in the aftermath of September 11, it implicitly authorized the president to spy on American citizens without a search warrant:

Stephanopoulos: You don't think the 9/11 resolution gave the president the authority for this program?

Brownback: It didn't in my vote. I voted for that resolution. That was a week after 9/11. There was nothing you could do to stop us from going to war in Afghanistan but there was no discussion in anything that I was around for that we gave the president a broad surveillance authority with that resolution.

Recall what the Attorney General said on December 19, 2005:

Our position is, is that the authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following September 11th, constitutes that other authorization, that other statute by Congress, to engage in this kind of signals intelligence.

So the senior senator from Kansas has compared abortion to the holocaust, favors the flat tax, strongly supports the Alito nomination, and has supported the president on everything relating to national security...until now. Now you might be saying to yourself, well he's potentially a candidate for president in 2008 (Pat Robertson has endorsed him by the way) and so this high-profile break from the president was extremely calculated. I'll grant that point; even so, we can take two things from this:

1. At least one conservative politician is betting that when the other shoes finally drop the Bush administration and the American people will be be on opposite sides of this issue.

2. The president has lost a key ally on the Senate Judiciary Committee. (It's worth remembering that the Republicans only have a one-vote majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee.)

After today, I probably won't write any more on impeachment until something substantive actually happens that I feel needs comment. Writing and defending these political posts takes a lot of time and drains my will to write; I just don't want to burn out now that I've finally found a device to get me back in the habit of writing nearly every day. I probably won't blog about the Alito hearings either, unless some interesting Fourth Amendment and/or presidential war powers stuff comes up. Though I obviously want to see that nomination go down in flames, my take on Supreme Court nominees is pretty much "to the victor (of the 2004 election) goes the spoils."

For those who aren't acquainted with Justin, my dream partner, I want to call your attention to his blog. Even if you know the man but not the blog, it's worth checking out. While A Century of Fakers has just sort of been treading water for the past few days, Justin has been busy documenting our week spent together in Minneapolis from December 22 to December 29, 2005. A lot happened to us in the Minneapp over that fateful week so Justin's wisely chosen to make a three-part series out of it. Start with "What have we got, Sandy..." and work your way up to parts II and III.

Finally, I haven't forgotten about my pledge to keep you updated about the New Year's flood in the Sacramento River Delta. I'll write about my trip to Collinsville in the next few days. Rest assured, however, that despite a front page mention in the San Francisco Chronicle, the flood was more bark than bite.

Bobby says it's fine; he don't consider it cheating

2006-01-06T14:57:00.004-08:00

A lot of you don't seem to have hopped aboard the impeachment train yet, but the media--from the Los Angeles Times to the Village Voice--have already begun to sniff the blood in the water. In fact, if there's not at least one Vince Foster-like suicide in 2006, I'll buy each and every one of you a steak dinner.

But whenever anyone says anything that actually makes sense, there's going to be a backlash, and calls for impeachment are no different. That's why you heard David Brooks appear on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on December 23 and actually say that President Bush's end run around his co-equals over at the Hill might be justified because he didn't feel like he could "trust Congress" to amend FISA without leaking sensitive information to the press. Well, never mind the fact that one of the eventual articles of impeachement against Bush (or at least Cheney) is going to be that he broke the law in leaking the name of a covert operative of the CIA to anyone in the press who would listen, if you can't trust Congress to keep a secret you might as well put them on double secret probation and just amend laws without them (and without telling anyone). Sounds pretty conservative to me, Dave.

Anyway, when sycophants like David Brooks actually try to defend the president, the argument is going to be some variation of the claim that the president has implied wartime powers that supercede the Bill of Rights. That sounds like a winning argument and it's certainly one of the reasons that Republicans enjoy an advantage over the Democrats on issues like "national security," but is it true? Read on, friend.

Here's a couple talking points to refute that assertion. Feel free to use them on democracy's younger sister, the letter to the editor:

1. One of the complaints voiced by the Declaration of Independence against King George III was "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power."

Now, that's a hell of a thing for the Founders to say but the Declaration of Independence says all sorts of crazy things and it's not legally binding. Well, let's check in with what the Supreme Law of the Land does say.

2. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution explicitly lays out the presidential oath of office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Huh, that's interesting. It doesn't say "homeland," it says "the Constitution of the United States." The man's said it twice, it's not like he doesn't know what he swore to preserve, protect and defend. For the record, the Fourth Amendment is a part of the Constitution, which is what it all pretty much comes back to. Here it is again, for posterity:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Cryin' won't help you / Prayin' won't do you no good

2006-01-04T02:20:00.000-08:00

Shortly after I was apparently one of the few people in America to take the threat of Hurricane Katrina seriously, I became concerned with California's own hundred-year-old system of levees that prevent the often-below-sea-level Sacramento River Delta and San Joaquin Valley from flooding. I was particularly concerned with reports that the winter storm that hit Northern California last week had overtaken the levees.

On New Year's Day the levee was breached just downstream of Rio Vista near the ghost town of Collinsville. Only a handful of residents remain in what was once a fishing village of 500 and there is only one road that leads to the town. When the levee breached, the residents were evacuated. No one was hurt, and, thanks to dilligent sandbagging, none of the homes (in Collinsville at least) were flooded. Still, anytime a levee breaks is cause for alarm; it was a close call.

I found out about this from the San Francisco Chronicle. Here is an excerpt from that story, which was filed on January 1:

"Collinsville is flooded, and I suspect Sherman Island will go next," said Mike Yankovich, 24, of nearby Rio Vista. "We haven't had power for two days. Thank God we can still cook."

Rio Vista remained dark Sunday night as residents left town, heading to higher and drier ground. The Red Cross opened a shelter at Rio Vista High School and expected about 40 evacuees from Rio Vista, Collinsville and nearby Twitchell Island.

Workers were frantically piling sandbags along the Sacramento River, but were "losing the fight with the levee," said Rio Vista Mayor Eddie Woodruff. "The homes along the waterfront are being pounded by the water. The walls that protect the homes are in danger of failing."

On Monday, I was able to borrow Jenny's digital camcorder and head out to the Delta for a few hours (it is an hour's drive from Oakland). I took about 15 minutes of footage of the Great Flood of '06. If I can figure out how to get video up here, I may share some of that with you. In the meantime, I am able to give you a brief dispatch direct from the front....

Though the flood was not as extensive as feared, this only required me to be slightly creative in the shots I took. There is no levee on the Rio Vista side of the Sacramento; the town just butts up against the river with only a three-foot-high floodwall separating the river from City Hall. Thus, there was ample evidence of flood and wind damage in Rio Vista at least.

Driving along the levee roads on the south side of the river on the way to Rio Vista, it was obvious that the longest river in California was swollen nearly to the level of the road, but had not spilled over to the vast stretch of farmland that sits below sea level on the other side. In Rio Vista at high tide Sunday, the flood line had reached across Front Street, in front of the Moose Lodge. By the time I got there Monday, the water had receeded behind back behind the flood wall, but just barely. A downtown park was still flooded, as was Second Street between downtown and the marina.

I began my day in the field by enjoying a pint at Foster's Bighorn, where the bartender grudgingly answered my questions about the flood. This was enough to pique the interest of the old-timer next to me, who was drinking white wine and watching college football. Knocking on wood, he told me the flood was not nearly as bad as predicted and that his waterfront home was fine. He said that his home had been flooded once in the fifty years he had lived there, but that this flood was the second worst he had seen. The conversation then turned to his annual fly fishing trip to Oregon, and the 16-pound fish on the wall in front of us.

The sun poked out just in time for it to set, so I also got strikingly beautiful images of a rainbow and the sun setting behind a field of power-generating windmills on my way to Collinsville. I was unable to make it all the way to Collinsville, though, because the road was flooded out. A pick-up truck would have been able to navigate the road (most people in the Delta drive pick-up trucks) but alas my little Saturn could not. I went back to Rio Vista, to the high school that was supposedly being used as a Red Cross shelter for the Collinsville evacuees. I found out that the few that had stayed there on Jan. 1 had returned to their homes today and none were staying.

After two days of heavy rainfall, the levee system breached. This is in a part of the country that is prone to monstrous earthquakes. Yet suburban development of the Delta is continuing at a furious pace as the Bay Area expands outward toward Sacramento and the Central Valley. UC Davis geologist Jeff Mount predicts that in the next 50 years there is a 67% chance that a catastrophic geologic event will lead to systemic levee failure. As the Delta changes from farmland and sleepy small towns to a major population center, I fear what may have once been a minor disaster will become a full-blown scourge with the potential to kill thousands and leave hundreds of thousands homeless.

Tomorrow morning, I am heading back to Collinsville in the hope that the road has dried up enough for me to pass. I really want to see the delta ghost town in its gothic, post-flood state and perhaps talk to some of the residents there.

I'll update you as events warrant.

twenty oh six, pick up styx

2006-01-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

Seriously, go out and treat yourself to a copy of Greatest Hits. This album contains "Blue Collar Man," a song whose lyrics just nail my current feelings right on the head:

Give me a job, give me security
Give me a chance to survive
I’m just a poor soul in the unemployment line
My god, I’m hardly alive
My mother and father, my wife and my friends
I see them laugh in my face
But I’ve got the power, and I’ve got the will
I’m not a charity case

I’ll take those long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my eye to the keyhole
If it takes all that to be just what I am
I’m gonna be a blue collar man

Make me an offer that I can’t refuse
Make me respectable, man
This is my last time in the unemployment line
So like it or not I’ll take those

Long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my back to the wall
If it takes all that to be just what I am
I’m gonna be a blue collar man

Last night, I had an enjoyable time ringing in the new year at a house party with a bunch of indie rock kids in Lower Pac Heights. I told everyone there who would listen of my new year's resolution:

I will henceforth refer to 2006 as "twenty oh six."

This is an attempt to sort of move those of us who use the Gregorian calendar on past the post-millennial seething we've all been wallowing in for six full years now. And don't think just saying "two thousand six" instead of "two thousand and six" is going to cut it. We need to move the ball forward, people, not simply tread water. How will history judge a generation that in 13 years is still saying "two thousand and nineteen," not to mention still living at home? Piss poorly, I'd venture to say.

My new year's resolution is retroactive, by the way. As in: "Hey, remember the anthrax scare of twenty oh one? Did they ever arrest anyone for that?" Also: "Hey, remember that airliner that crashed into Jamaica, Queens back in November, twenty oh one? Has there really not been a major commercial air crash in the United States since then?" Frankly, I think it's the only responsible way to continue. The pity party ends now.

Pride and Prejudice

2005-12-31T03:56:00.000-08:00

As one of this blog's minor themes is metajournalism, I want to address the following sequence of events that occured recently at A Century of Fakers:

1) On December 24, I activated Blogger's "moderate comments" feature, whereby comments made to A Century of Fakers were first vetted by me through email. This was due to what I felt were increasingly uncivil and vulgar comments being made by one commenter (full disclosure: we were in a Nietzsche seminar together in early 2001).

2) Yesterday afternoon, I deactivated Blogger's "moderate comments" feature. I did this because I felt that the comments I was now receiving were sufficiently civil and unvulgar enough to publish unvetted.

While I reserve the right to editorial oversight and will resort to the "moderate comments" feature if pushed, I understand--indeed share--the free speech concerns this necessarily raises. I am particularly mindful of the chilling effect my actions may have on comment.

I certainly appreciate the overwhelming majority of comments I do receive. Moreover, I view them as the lifeblood of this blog. Please feel free to disagree with me (or anyone) on any issue raised on this site, virulently if need be. Rest assured, if your comments are civil and anywhere from chaste to somewhat vulgar, they will find unrestrained shelter here.

August 8, 2006

2005-12-30T01:53:00.000-08:00

In 1972, Richard M. Nixon won reelection to the presidency with 60.7% of the popular vote. His Democratic rival, George McGovern, won 37.5% of the popular vote. Nixon carried 49 states and 97% of the electoral college.

On the 565th day of his second term--August 8, 1974--facing articles of impeachment, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency.

In 2004, George W. Bush won reelection to the presidency with 50.7% of the popular vote. His Democratic rival, John F. Kerry, won 48.3% of the popular vote. Bush carried 31 states and 53% of the electoral college.

The 565th day of Bush's second term will be August 8, 2006. I'll check back in then with an update on how the president is doing.

two beautiful babies (by popular request)

2005-12-29T02:02:00.000-08:00

You asked for it.... You got it! The $52 million dollar couple: Michelle Damon and her pink, frilly counterpart.

Welcome to Babytown, you big baby

2005-12-23T02:56:00.000-08:00

Is President Bush a Liar? You Make the Call... (Round 2)

2005-12-22T17:54:00.000-08:00

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so."

- President Bush, April 20, 2004

L'Etat C'est Moi

2005-12-21T00:47:00.000-08:00

In the coming months you are going to hear a lot about whether President Bush should be impeached. If things get really bad for the president, impeachment proceedings may indeed be initiated against him in the House of Representatives before the midterm elections next November. The events of the past week have taken me by surprise because they have crept up so suddenly, partially because I have been on vacation--albeit from unemployment--since December 9, and so I have not had the regular Internet access that I normally enjoy. But nonetheless something monumental has happened, and I do not think that most people yet realize how major the events of this week really are. I did not live through the resignation of President Nixon, but I think that if anything, not having lived through the events of 1974 would bias me against how quickly the fall of a seemingly invincible president can happen once he loses the faith of the press, and of the public. At this point into Nixon's second term, he was already toast. To wit, one of the articles of impeachement drafted against Nixon accused him of illegal wiretapping.

If the facts being presented today are correct, it seems clear that President Bush knowingly violated a federal law passed in 1978 called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (I said "President Bush" rather than "the administration" because, amazingly, the president chose to make it clear that he wasn't just signing off on illegal wiretaps; it was his idea to violate the law in the first place). FISA created a secret court system to allow the president to obtain search warrants without jeapordizing national security by letting America's enemies know what the president was up to. Hence, FISA codifies a process by which the president retains his power to protect the nation's security while still operating within the bounds of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.

For what it's worth, the Fourth Amendment is written in plain English and its intent remains clear some two hundred and fifteen odd years after it was written:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The most shocking thing, and what I think will ultimately lead to the president's downfall, is his categorical defense of what he more or less admits amounted to a violation of the law. His defense, the vice president's defense, and the attorney general's defense all amount to the argument that in the interest of national security, the president, in his capacity as commander in chief, is above the law. This is akin to saying that the president cannot violate the Constitution because he is the Constitution.

But if President Bush is above the law, why has he been so insistent that the USA PATRIOT Act be renewed before the last day of 2005? Why do these secret intelligence courts exist? Why does the president use them, except when he wants to avoid using them? They're secret for christ sake, and they do whatever the president wants. The answer, of course, is that the president is not really above the law.

As pathetically toothless as FISA and the USA PATRIOT Act are in their checks against the executive branch designed to protect our civil liberties, the president still saw the need to circumvent them and still feels comfortable defending what he has done. But the fact that Bush thinks it's all right to employ such a ludicrous, balls-to-the-wall argument that he is indeed above the law only exposes how insulated from reality, isolated and insane this administration has become. How amazing is it that right now he and his apologists are still taking the approach that they are angry that this news was leaked to the New York Times and has hurt America's security?

The brazen admission that "yeah, I broke the law, and it's a good thing for America that I did," more than the actual violation of the law, is what I think is ultimately going to come back to haunt this administration, and it is what is going to force the Congress to finally act against what has increasingly become a Shakesperean exercise in the limits of sanity in the quest for absolute power. Mark my words: these domestic spying revelations are just the tip of the iceberg. In the coming months, we are going to find out in greater detail just how extensive the president's illegal spying on his own citizens really has been. By the time he is finally forced to admit he was wrong (if he is even capable of that) it may be too late. You heard it here first.

Is President Bush a Liar? You Make the Call...

2005-12-18T22:48:00.000-08:00

I think the partial transcripts below do a pretty good job of making my point for me. Before I get to them, though, I do want to say that while I don't expect much out of Brit Hume, I am pretty disappointed in Jim Lehrer. This is a guy who works for PBS and moderates presidential debates. He should have his shit together, but for some reason he kept backing way off after initially casting out some potentially tough lines of questioning.

The excerpt from the interview below is a good example. He could have just stopped with "I mean, you essentially said he was innocent," and let Bush squirm, but he instead gave Bush an out. He did that a lot throughout the interview, walking the line between reporter and Bush handler. I guess he was just being deferential to the president, but honestly what's the point of being so deferential? After a while, I got the sense that he didn't want Bush to have a tantrum on camera.

Partial Transcript from Jim Lehrer's interview with President Bush on December 16, 2005:

JIM LEHRER: Why did you say [Tom DeLay] was innocent?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I was--

JIM LEHRER: This is an interview with Brit Hume.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I did and-- but the point I was making was innocent till, until otherwise proven, and I was also asked did I hope he would come back to Congress. The answer was yes.

JIM LEHRER: But you-- I looked very carefully at that transcript. I mean, you essentially said he was innocent. I mean, you weren't-- that wasn't-- you weren't really saying that then. You were just saying he's presumed innocent?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I-- that's exactly what I was saying.

JIM LEHRER: Okay.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: You feel the same way about Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is--

PRESIDENT BUSH: Innocent until proven otherwise.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah; yeah. But I mean it's not--it's in the same league--your feelings about him are in the same league about Tom Delay.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I--

JIM LEHRER: It's not a pronouncement, it's a--

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah. It's a, it's a-- it's a belief in the system, that-- and that's not always the way people are treated here in Washington as you know. Some people are guilty until proven innocent.

Partial Transcipt from a FOX News interview with President Bush on December 14, 2005:

BRIT HUME: Do you hope and expect that Tom DeLay will return to be majority leader?

BUSH: Yes. At least, I don't know whether I'm expecting it. I hope that he will.

HUME: Why?

BUSH: Well, I like him. When he's over there, we get our votes through the House. We had a remarkable success of legislative victories. A remarkable string of legislative victories. We've cut the taxes and delivered strong economic growth and vitality. We've had an energy bill that began to put American on its way to independence.

HUME: You know a thing or two about Texas politics. What is your judgment of the prosecutor in the case, Ronnie Earle?

BUSH: I'm not going to go there, simply because I want — I want this trial to be conducted as fairly as possible. And the more politics that are in it, the less likely it's going to be fair.

HUME: Do you just — do you believe he's innocent?

BUSH: Do I? Yes, I do.

Maybe It's Only Me...

2005-12-09T23:59:00.000-08:00

Foxes guarding the henhouse of the Christ

2005-09-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

Watching the hated Anaheim Angels clinch their second straight AL West title in my own beloved City of Dope last night grew so painful that I switched over to the Situation with Tucker Carlson, whose smugness, it came out, I marginally prefer watching than everyone's on the Angels, save Vladamir Guerrero's, who is all right in my book and, it should be said, is never overtly smug. Mr. Carlson was about to interview an "atheist" (perhaps fittingly, the words "Anaheim" and "atheist" violate that cardinal rule of the English spelling cannon, "I before E except after C"). He prefaced his interview by saying that he hadn't met a lot of atheists. Lovely.

Ever the grandstanding cutie, Mr. Carlson began his interview by asking the atheist what she said when something surprised or bothered her. She didn't have a response to that, so he prodded: What do you say after "Oh my..."? She still had no answer (just a guess, but perhaps this is why she was selected to appear on the Situation). So he concluded the exchange with "Just one of the many drawbacks of being an atheist," and proceeded to berate her for having the audacity to lobby the Congress for a separation of church and state in such an obviously Christian society as ours.

I realize that by now I should have learned not to let anything Tucker Carlson says upset me, but clearly he still gets to me. I also realize that my animus for writing this post is one of the less relevant things I could call him on. That said, I still wish to point out that this isn't actually a drawback of being an atheist, but quite the opposite, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition. To wit, God's Second Commandment is fairly clear: "You shalt not swear falsely by the name of the Lord...." Not that Mr. Carlson would actually know anything about his ostensible religion save that he can use it as a big wedge to keep the Republican Party in the majority in this poor, confused country of ours.

Where is the young Christ with his bullwhip in the temple when we need him?

Detachment

2005-09-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," President Bush said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Sep. 1.

What?!?

Apparently, President Bush didn't read the paper on his vacation.

But this latest sign that our president is completely detatched from reality is hardly surprising, especially after his ridiculous comment on Rafael Palmerio. In case you've forgotten, here's what he said on Aug. 2, way back at the beginning of his vacation:

"Well, Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He's testified in public, and I believe him. He's the kind of person that's going to stand up in front of the klieg lights and say he didn't use steroids, and I believe him. Still do."

What?!?

But back to my point about Bush actually asserting that no one saw this flood coming: Since ABC apparently doesn't see fit to provide transcripts for Good Morning America like an actual normal news organization would, and I'm not about to spend $29.95 on a third-party transcript, I have no way of knowing what Diane Sawyer's inane follow-up question was. I'll bet you a fair amount of money it was a softball though. Maybe even a complete change of subject. Why would you even hand the presidential interview to Diane Sawyer in the first place?

To conclude, having no idea what Diane Sawyer's follow-up question was, I believe the press is criminally complicit in repeatedly letting this president off the hook as it becomes increasingly and horrifyingly clear that he is now completely insulated from the outside world.

Racial Composition of New Orleans Parish

2005-09-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

White: 28.1%
Black: 67.3%

(Source: SF Chronicle, Sep. 2, 2005, A20)

*

"This is a national emergency. This is a national disgrace," said Terry Ebbert, the director of homeland security for New Orleans. "FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans."

Also weighing in against the Bush Administration was Mayor Ray Nagin, who told a local radio station: "They don’t have a clue what’s going on down there. Excuse my French, everybody in America, but I am pissed."

(Source)

Exercise #1

2005-09-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

tonight, the outdoors is a soup, thick (naturally)
and enjoyable in anticipation.
inside is sex: someone else's sex, however,
unpleasant to look at and
impossible, thankfully, to touch.

the universe is so cozy-cold, so
wrap me up and present me to the
prime minister and his color cabinet.
you can pack me on the train,
take me on a northern route:
$6 beers through the Cascades and
Coos Bay and ritalin would remind me of being in love.

1. May 8, 2005
2. David Ortiz
3. linear thought
*. Cape Canaveral and year-round baseball,
orange alcohol drinks, and, finally,
the pain of uncertainty abutted against
the Horror of the Certain.

Katrina and Iraq

2005-08-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

From a column by Will Bunch in Editor and Publisher:

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

New Orleans

2005-08-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

From an August 28 AP report, "Monstrous Hurricane Heads for New Orleans":

As much as 10 feet below sea level in spots, the city is as the mercy of a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry.

Scientists predicted Katrina could easily overtake that levee system, swamping the city under a 30-feet cesspool of toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins that could leave more than 1 million people homeless.

Hurricane Katrina

2005-08-26T00:51:00.000-07:00

From an Reuters story by Michael Christie:

"Forecasters have predicted an unusually high number of storms this year because the Atlantic has swung into a period of more intense storm activity."

Hey Michael Christie, have the balls to call out global warming.

technical suggestions for oral history interviews

2005-08-08T01:13:00.000-07:00

Ask open-ended questions rather than questions that can be answered by yes or no. Especially don't ask leading questions. For example, if you were interviewing a line worker, you would not ask, "Don't you feel that management was hostile to your concerns?" but "What was the attitude of management toward your concerns?"

Ask simply structured, single-stranded questions. Compound questions, multiple rephrasings, and false starts are harder to answer, and harder to transcribe. If you have more than one point to pursue on a given topic, compose follow-up questions. And if a point that hasn't occurred to you in composing your questionnaire flies by in the midst of an interviewee's answer, you can always go back to it later in the interview. Keep a pen and pad handy to jot down a word or two during the interviewee's response to remind yourself to follow up.

Questions should be not only open but concrete, avoiding as much as possible jargon or theoretical concepts (unless the jargon and concepts are part of the interviewee's experience). People's memories hang on substantial hooks. Asking for a description of a typical day, a family gathering, or breaking a subject down into its component elements (for a study of a factory, for example, asking about coworkers, foremen, work processes, job training, etc.) will give the interviewee points of reference from which to reminisce.

Interviews are generally improved by sending the interviewee a list of your questions or a summary of what kinds of questions you'll be asking--in this latter case being sure that your summary is written in neutral terms that won't prejudice the interviewee toward a certain perspective. The point is to give the interviewee time to think about people and events that may not have occurred to him/her in a long time. Be sure to explain that the questionnaire or summary is only a framework, and that other points may occur to both of you that could be included during the interview.

(Source)

Having your cake and eating it too

2005-08-05T11:17:00.001-07:00

Is Iraq a central front in the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism or not? The administration's official answer: yes and no, depending on how it makes us look.

From the Guardian Unlimited today:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday rejected as "nonsense" the notion that recent terrorist attacks in London were retaliation for the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

"Some people seem confused about the motivations and intentions of terrorists and about our coalition's defense of the still young democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq," Rumsfeld said in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

"They seem to cling to the discredited theory that the recent attacks in London and elsewhere, for example, are really in retaliation for the war in Iraq or for the so-called occupation of Afghanistan," he added. "That is nonsense."

Compare this to President Bush's comments about the al-Zawahiri tape yesterday:

Question: Thanks, sir. Al Qaeda's number two, Dr. al-Zawahiri, is warning that attacks will continue until U.S. troops leave Iraq. How serious a threat is this? And after so many Marines were killed this week, what's being done to improve their safety?

President Bush: The comments by the number two man of al Qaeda make it clear that Iraq is a part of this war on terror, and we're at war. In other words, he's saying, leave. As I have told the American people, one, that people like Zawahiri have an ideology that is dark, dim, backwards; they don't trust -- they don't appreciate women; if you don't agree to their narrow view of a religion you'll be whipped in the public square. That's their view, and they have tactics to help spread that view. In other words, they've got goals. They want to spread that point of view throughout the world, starting in the broader Middle East. And part of their goal is to drive us out of the broader Middle East, precisely what Zawahiri said. In other words, he's threatening.

Pointing out logical inconstincies in the Bush Administration's justifications for the Iraq War seems like shooting pheasants in a barrel, but the press isn't calling him on it, and I hate that about the press.

OK Computer

2005-08-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

From the Educational Testing Service:

"For security reasons we are not currently accepting online registrations for Nigeria. In addition, only admission tickets indicating a Nigerian test center will be accepted for testing in Nigeria. Credit cards will not be accepted for Nigerian registration fees. This includes anyone who is requesting a Nigerian test center or who has a Nigerian mailing address. We will continue to accept the following preferred forms of payment: international money order, authorization voucher from ETS, international bank draft, and UNESCO coupons."

what the deal, nasa?

2005-07-31T12:58:00.000-07:00

on the side of the road

my fingertips

have desire

hold on, or death-pause:

telephone the dead, return.

hug a tree.

jettison, or recuperate?

nostaligia is the most dangerous look:

computer 1, NASA 0.