Nailing it

I snark occasionally about Andrew Sullivan, but when he's right, he's right:

The protestors keep saying that they want their country back. Sorry, my fellow small-governmenters, but this country is a democracy, and you didn't lose your country, you just lost an election. You had your chance for eight years. You blew it, and you lost. What Obama is doing is what he was elected to do. The principled response is not a massive, extremist-riddled hissy fit a few months in, but a constructive set of proposals to build on universal care for a more market-friendly and cost-conscious system in the future. You have to win some political credibility for that; and then you have to beat the man you lost so badly to last year. That's the civil and civilized way forward for the right. It also seems, alas, to be the one they are currently refusing to take.

About Time

The British government has issued an apology for its treatment (and hounding to the point of suicide) of Alan Turing, rightly regarded as the father of computer science. His leadership of the codebreakers of Bletchley Park shortened WWII by at least 2 years--at one point, Churchill was reading field reports from Wermacht officers before Hitler was. He demonstrated that the Halting Problem was undecidable; that is, it has no general solution applying to all programs. When he was burglarized and blackmailed by an ex-lover, he reported it to the police...and found himself on trial for gross indecency, his security clearance revoked (and thus his career in cryptography destroyed), his career over, forced to undergo estrogen treatments, which were known to have numerous side effects, including depression. He committed suicide at age 41.

Turing, I suspect, would have been appalled at the idea of being any sort of martyr for gay rights. And yet his career and life were cut short, and the world deprived of at least 20 years of a brilliant researcher, because of homophobia.

It's nice to see the British government recognizing, finally, some of the injustice that it perpetrated and condoned for so long.

Least Surprising Headline of the Day Award

And today's award goes to CNN:

The Speech: Quick Reax

Once again, a solid speech.

Once again, I'm left wondering whether a speech is enough.

He presented a strong moral case for reform, using language that wouldn't have been strange coming from Reagan. Of course, if he'd cast it that way a month ago, this summer might have been much different.

The thing I'm worried about is that it's going to take more than a speech. This seems to fit the pattern of hanging back, letting things ripen, letting things ripen a bit more, perhaps too much, then stepping in, giving a great speech, and expecting that to fix everything. Too confident by half in the ability of his speechifyin' to bring everyone together. He's off to a great start, but now he's got to follow through with some of the leadership that's been lacking on this and SO. MANY. OTHER. issues for so long.

A community organizer doesn't get out too far in front of the community he's trying to organize; they might not follow. So he hangs back, works the phones, nudges people to sit down and talk with each other, and, if all goes well, at the end of the process people are amazed at what they've been able to accomplish.

The problem, of course, is that Mr Obama is not the Community Organizer In Chief. The situation doesn't call for cautious nudging, it calls for leadership. It looks like he's finally stepping up to the plate. But there has to be follow-through. One good speech, aided by an ill-mannered boor from South Carolina, won't do it.

Dear State Farm Insurance

I understand that each agent is an independent businessperson. I get it.

However, when I get the same form letter telling me I can save $426 from three different agents all on the same day, it makes it seem as if your agents are competing mostly with each other (rather than agents of other companies) and makes me wonder about how well-organized the entire operation is.

That is all.

Image of the day

[h/t: GottaLaff]

Evolution, Purpose, & Bad Arguments

I'm just now getting a chance to write about this post yesterday by Jim Manzi, who's filling in at Andrew Sullivan's, on The Evolution of God and Manzi's defense (or at least argument for plausibility of) the thesis of divine purpose behind evolution.

On the most basic level, he's right, of course. The existence of God can't be disproven any more than Bertrand Russel's Teapot can be disproven. But Manzi claims something else; or rather, implies it rather than making an explicit claim.

Manzi begins with an explanation of genetic algorithms as a way of introducing concepts of genetics, including the idea of using evolutionary functions as a way of optimizing on multiple dimensions at once. And while I'd have a minor quibble or two with his wording, his explanation is correct; he clearly gets it.

However. He observes that genetic algorithms are used to find the best combination of 'genes' (which may be data inputs or weights, settings on controls...almost anything, really) for a given purpose. Yes, that's true, according to some externally defined fitness function, a way of boiling everything down to a definitive way of determining, for any two arbitrary members of the population, that this one is a better fit than that one.

In biological systems, of course, the "fitness function" is whether or not the organism survives long enough to breed and for its offspring to reach breeding age. (If it gives birth to a hundred young, and eats 99 of them, that's less fitness than one that gives birth to 3 offspring and carefully nurtures and protects them to adulthood.)

Manzi claims, correctly, that genetic algorithms can select the "best" combination. But: In biological systems, the real world, the "best" combination is determined by survival. This can include high-level activities, especially in social species--if I'm a good neighbor, my children will be taken in and raised even if I'm eaten by a bear.

Manzi seems to be making the implicit assumption that if there is a purpose to it all, the purpose must be to develop a mind capable of apprehending God.

(Which is terribly anthro-centric... Even if there is a purpose, why should it have anything to do with us? Why shouldn't the purpose of creation be to develop the perfect jellyfish? Using Manzi's own logic, this hypothesis can't be disproven.)

But evolution doesn't select for apprehension of the Divine, it selects for survival. Therefore, unless such apprehension, or its precursors, conferred a survival advantage on our ancestors, evolution wouldn't select for it. Is there any evidence that apprehension of the Divine, or its precursors, increased survival? Not that I'm aware of. Yes, religious belief is widespread, and was so in the ancient world, but that doesn't mean it's genetic. A study mentioned in Newsweek a few weeks back found that religious beliefs plummets in advanced societies with low levels of social dysfunction (poverty, crime, etc). If it was genetic, it wouldn't fade out so quickly. On the other hand, social dysfunction was ripe in the ancient world.

(Yes, this is the 'opiate of the masses' theory. Or, if you prefer, the "give me sense of being in control or at least a way to tell myself that someone's in charge" theory. Something can be universal or nearly so, and not biologically determined, if the environmental conditions that foster it are universal as well.)

So. If there's a purpose to it all, evolution probably isn't selecting for it. If you remove the assumption that if there's a purpose to it all then obviously the purpose of all creation is to result in us, you're left with...not much.

(Contrary to what some seem to think, evolution doesn't result in an "ascent" toward higher species... that sort of categorization is something popularizers put on it, but actual people working in the field don't. It's more like a bush branching out in all directions at once, not a tree climbing higher and higher.)

Also, a curmudgeonly point but one that needs consideration: We've existed as a species only about a million years or so, hardly a blink of an eye in geological time, and much less than many other species that were once dominant. Given how rapidly we seem to be making the planet uninhabitable and that we may yet succeed in wiping ourselves out, I'd say the long-term survival value of intelligence is still something that awaits definitive demonstration.

At any rate, Manzi seems to have some recognition of the difficulty he's in here. He then falls back on some unseemly hand-waving, simply declaring it out of bounds for science, in bounds for philosophy, and therefore he'll believe whatever he pleases:

A scientific theory is a falsifiable rule that relates cause to effect. If you push the chain of causality back far enough, you either find yourself more or less right back where Aristotle was more than 2,000 years ago in stating his view that any conception of any chain of cause-and-effect must ultimately begin with an Uncaused Cause, or just accept the problem of infinite regress. No matter how far science advances, an explanation of ultimate origins seems always to remain a non-scientific question.

Now consider the relationship of the second observation to the problem of final cause. The factory GA, as we saw, had a goal. Evolution in nature is more complicated — but the complications don’t mean that the process is goalless, just that determining this goal would be so incomprehensibly hard that in practice it falls into the realm of philosophy rather than science. Science can not tell us whether or not evolution through natural selection has some final cause or not; if we believe, for some non-scientific reason, that evolution has a goal, then science can not, as of now, tell what that goal might be.

That's right, there's nothing for Science to do but throw up its hands and believe in teapots!

The combination of a constantly changing fitness landscape and an extraordinarily large number of possible genomes means that scientists appropriately proceed as if evolution were goalless, but from a philosophical perspective a goal may remain present in principle.

And having decided that it "may remain present in principle," Manzi assumes it into being. But he runs into other problems as well.

But in fact, even the “random” elements of evolution that influence the path it takes toward its goal — for example, mutation and crossover — are really pseudo-random. For example, if a specific mutation is caused by radiation hitting a nucleotide, both the radiation and its effect on the nucleotide are governed by normal physical laws.

He's apparently never heard of quantum physics. Those "normal" physical laws include fundamental limits on what's knowable or predictable. We don't call them random, especially an event such as a nucleus ejecting a beta particle, i.e. a bit of radiation-- just because they're too insanely complicated for us to understand--they really are random. This has been taught in any college-level physics course for decades. He seems to admit this a paragraph later, but obviously hasn't thought through what it implies. Yes, statistically we can talk about half-life, which is an average, because we don't need to know which precise nucleus broke down--but when a phosphorus atom inside a DNA strand decays and is suddenly something else, it does matter which precise atom decayed, and which direction the beta particle was heading.

The theory of evolution, then, has not eliminated the problems of ultimate origins and ultimate purpose with respect to the development of organisms; it has ignored them. These problems are defined as non-scientific questions, not because we don’t care about the answers, but because attempting to solve them would impede practical progress. Accepting evolution, therefore, requires neither the denial of a Creator nor the loss of the idea of ultimate purpose. It resolves neither issue for us one way or the other. The field of philosophical speculation that does not contradict any valid scientific findings is much wider open to Wright than Coyne is willing to accept.

Well, only by shifting definitions enough to keep them that way. Of course, the beauty of this particular dog-and-pony show is that the goalposts can always be moved. If we work out, for example, why pi has to have the exact value it does or why our physical laws are the way they are--perhaps no other set of laws would be stable--Manzi can always say "Yeah, but why is that?" and then declare that to be the 'ultimate' question. And when it's answered, he can find another. The problem isn't that "we don't care about the answers," it's that the question is poorly posed.

Might there be a purpose to it all, even if there's no evidence of such purpose? Sure. It can't be disproven. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. But that's no reason to take it any more seriously than hen's teeth or orbital teapots. If someone wishes to believe there's a purpose to the entire universe, and they're it, that's their business, but "you can't prove it isn't!" is also no proof that it is. If you're claiming such a purpose exists, in the absence of any evidence, then you need to produce such evidence, or solid reasons why the lack of evidence doesn't matter. Unfortunately, Manzi has done neither.

"We Pledge Allegiance To Gene's Shirt...."

I swear, you cannot make this up.

Y'know, when I was in grade school, a student came to school in a flag-motif shirt...and was sent home to change, and his parents were called in to have a chat with the principal. Flag desecration not being something the school would put up with.

Now, of course, it's a matter of political orthodoxy.

Nazis

Why we need to tone down the rhetoric on health care. Because the memory of those who died at their hands shouldn't be cheapened by using the term to mean "someone I disagree with politically."

Go read.

[H/T: GottaLaff]

No life? Hardly...

There's a how-many-movies-have-you-seen meme floating around Facebook at the moment that begins with the declaration:

SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 films, you have no life.

Note that we're never told who's supposing this...

But at any rate. Let's test that assumption.

Assume that you see 85 movies. Further assume that the movies you see average 2 1/2 hours, about as long as the latest Harry Potter installment. (Mini-review: It was good, but as a friend of mine put it, I really don't see what there is about this that inspires such fanaticism...).

Further assume you spend 8 hours per night sleeping, 40 hours per week working, and 3 hours per day in other stuff (eating, commuting, etc), leaving 51 hours per week potential movie-watching time.

Let us further assume your movie-watching career began at age 10, and you are 35 when you take the quiz.

51 hours per week * 52 weeks per year * 25 years = 66,300 potential movie-watching hours.
85 movies * 2.5 hours each = 212.5 hours.

So if you've seen 85 movies, you've spent 212.5/66,300 = 0.321% (rounding up) of your time watching movies.

Hardly into "you have no life" territory.

As an aside, it's amazing what you can distract yourself with when you don't want to work....

The Not-Me-And-Julia Project: Status report

It's possible that seeing Julie & Julia triggered the final snap, but I've been in a culinary rut with the same few easy-to-fix things for quite a while. And, well, frankly, I'm getting darn tired of my own cooking, and how limited it is.

So, something snapped, and I says to myself, I says, "Self, either buy a damn cookbook or stop griping!"

So, I bought a damn cookbook.

No, not Julia's. The French cuisine I've had, eh. About half of it has been really good, about half inedible. (Yes, that may, probably does, say more about me than about French cuisine. Big deal. My point is, why master making food I don't care for?)

No, I'm not working my way through it systematically. I have no particular timetable, no "X recipes by this date" obsession. And as classes haven't started yet, I've got more time to cook that I do during the semester.

So far: Six days, seven recipes, only one failure, and I figured out what I did wrong with that one and tried again, with better results.

So, I may not have all my assignments and lecture notes written up, but at least I'm not sick of my own cooking.

Mini-review: GI Joe and the Rise of Cobra

When one is watching a movie based on a cartoon series, and that cartoon series was designed to sell toys, one should keep expectations pretty low.

In this case, those low expectations weren't disappointed. It was, rather refreshingly, exactly what it claimed to be, no less and certainly no more.

Though the "weaponizing the warheads" sequence was particularly silly, even by the low standards of the movie-of-the-cartoon-of-the-commerical genre.

Though I'll give it this: Unlike the Transformers movie, it was always possible to tell who was fighting whom in the big finale. It's not much, but it's something.

Protest In America

Thomas Schaller has a good post up at Salon about about the faux-outrage on the right, shouting down dissent, and wondering where these people were during the huge governmental power grabs, documented lies, and government intrusion into health care over the last 8 years.

Recent Reading List

The Myth of the Rational Market

The Drunkard's Walk

Rubicon

Fooled by Randomness

Foucault's Pendulum (re-read)

Fooled by Randomness, followed by Foucault's Pendulum (which is all about looking for patterns that may or may not be there) makes for an interesting combination. Though I did notice some things on the re-read that I hadn't noticed when I first read the book, years ago... a message that had remained hidden all this time.... [snicker]

Back from Japan

I've been gone for most of the last week on a personal trip to Tokyo. Lots of fun, many moments of minor culture shock, and continued amazement at the Tokyo public-transit system.

Coming back...well, American Airlines was having a very bad day at DFW yesterday. I'd like to personally thank them for the long delay before boarding, followed by the delay after boarding but before takeoff, so it was actually after our expected arrival time before we ever got off the ground. Coming at the end of a 24-hour marathon of planes and airports, it just helped make the trip that much more....special. After seeing Tokyo's Narita airport and how things could be run just made the experience back here that much more depressing. And annoying.

The snark will resume once I'm back on a normal schedule and caught up on my reading.

This Just In (Badly Worded Headline Division)

Man Held in LA in Stolen Violin Case

What is it, some kind of kidnapping? And in addition to stuffing the poor man into a violin case, the case itself was stolen? Is that even relevant? Given what you'd have to do to get someone (even a very small someone) stuffed into a violin case, is ownership of the violin case itself really the issue here?

Why must I define myself by your criteria?

A reader at The Dish speaks the truth:

I do not identify myself as an atheist, because it is an entirely negative word -- it doesn't really say anything about what I do believe, only what I don't. And it continues to frame the discourse in the terms of the believer. I understand that for believers (or many believers, anyway) questions about the existence and nature of God are very important. But they are not important to me. I think the question of God's existence is just not very interesting, and my lack of belief in God is not a foundation of my moral or philosophical identity (however much believers want it to be). How could it be a foundation? How could I build a moral and philosophical view of the universe predicated on what I don't believe?

What's important to me is what I do believe -- and that's what I'd rather talk about. The mysteries of science and philosophy -- particle physics, genetics, phenomenology, neurology, astronomy, Camus' struggle with absurdity. There is so much there to talk about that is fascinating and unknown and worthy of study and speculation, that to be constantly dragged back to this obsession with "God" is really just kind of dull. That's one problem people who don't believe in God run into -- all anyone wants to talk about is their non-believing. It keeps the ball entirely in the believers' court, and the discussion entirely on their terms. (When non-believers are allowed into the discussion at all, of course.)

Exactly. I've had more discussions than I care to that fall back to me being called on to justify why I don't find someone else's holy book convincing, when it was obviously written by the Big Guy Himself, and we know it was because it says so, right there on the cover...

Or being told that I cannot appreciate wonder, or beauty, or really love anyone...

Which, of course, isn't exactly the case.

[Note to self: Don't start blog posts 15 minutes before class. More later....]

The Google Chrome OS

As the point of this blog is allegedly tech, maybe I should talk about tech once in a while...

There's an article on Slate discussing why the new Google Chrome OS is doomed before it ever gets out of the gate. I'm not sure I'd write it off just yet, and some of Farhad Manjoo's reasoning is just silly, but all in all it does look as if the odds are against it. Dealing with the 5 reasons why it's a bad idea, in order:

Linux is hard to love. This part of Manjoo's argument is the weakest, because he's cherry-picking his facts. Yes, we know, MS Office (Word, Excel, etc) won't run on Linux. Has he heard of Open Office? Of the GIMP for image editing? Apparently not. Are there features of the MS products that the Linux counterparts don't support? Not that he mentions... Apparently if it doesn't have the MS stamp on it, it doesn't exist.

Likewise, his argument about hardware installation is weaker than it first appears, mostly because he's apparently unaware of the progress that's been made in making Linux more user-friendly. The vast majority of hardware issues can be resolved much more easily than his example.

But. There's that last 5% of hardware issues that are tricky, or that involve multiple steps. There's less hand-holding in the Linux world, and a general assumption that you're willing to learn a little something about the computer you're using. Those who want to pay a couple of thousand dollars for a computer and then specifically avoid learning anything about it are advised to give their money to Steve Jobs, buy an Apple, and pat themselves on the back for being precious unique snowflakes. [set snark=OFF]

There's also the issue of the entire ecosystem. I still use Windows. I could make the jump to Linux for 95% of what I do. I'm not worried about the oh-so-terrifying setup process (my last Linux install went smoother than any Windows installation has ever gone for me) or that I might have to configure something myself. But it's the last 5% of apps, the occasional game, the tool that I need to use because my workplace has standardized on it and while there are plenty of Linux tools that do the same thing, they're not file-system-level compatible... and it doesn't make sense to have a second computer just for those few things. I suspect I'm not the only one. And this is the biggest hurdle Linux (or Chrome) is going to have. I can use Open Office for writing and spreadsheets, GIMP for image editing, GnuCash instead of Quicken for managing my finances.... but if that last 5% of software is my favorite game, or a business-critical application, then I'm locked in to Windows no matter how much I loathe parts of it.

We aren't ready to run everything on the web. Again, an argument that gets weaker by the day as Web options develop. But this section contains what is actually Manjoo's strongest argument--that once everything moves to the web, it doesn't matter what OS the user is running anyway. That's the entire point of moving to the web, to do everything through that interface so it works the same way in any standards-compliant browser. (Which rules out Microsoft, but they're making progress... oh darn, there goes that snark again.) So if you're using Windows, or a Mac, or Fred's Kustom Home-Made Hand-Carved All-Natural OS, and are satisfied with it...why switch to Chrome?

Microsoft is a formidable opponent. Yes, indeed. As Tolkien put it, "It does not do to leave a dragon out of your plans, if he lives nearby." MS isn't a particularly innovative company and hasn't been for years. They wait until someone else demonstrates that a product can make it, and what features are necessary to gain popularity--then either buy it up or brew their own. And they have lots of smart people working for them, and the deep pockets to keep working on it until they get it right, generally around version 3 or 4. At that point, the second-to-none MS marketing team goes to work, and the competition gets ulcers.

Google Fails Often. I'm not sure what to make of this argument, which seems to boil down to "Google tries lots of things and not all of them work." Well, yes. The same could be said of a certain company in Redmond. And the small market share for the Chrome browser isn't necessarily an indicator that it's a failure, given its short time on the market and out of beta. Firefox demonstrated that if you do something better than MS, you can take share away from them. And that giving Microsoft some competition spurs it on to more innovation itself. (Development on Internet Explorer had essentially stopped until Firefox started taking market share away and goading MS into doing something about it. Monopolies lead to higher prices, slower innovation, and poorer quality. That iron law of economics has not been repealed for the benefit of the Redmond Behemoth.) Most companies fail often. Few have deep enough pockets to survive more than 2 or 3 such failures. Google can, so it can seem like a long record of failure. In fact, it's very difficult to predict what's going to take off, what's going to be popular, etc. So they throw everything at the wall & see what sticks. Failure is part of the process. Thomas Edison said some very similar things; most of what he did failed. The few successes made up for it.

Chrome makes no business sense. Again, he raises a point that I wonder if Google had considered. What's the business case? Attracting people to Google so they'll use Google's tools? They could do that in Windows. Push costs down to help grow the netbook market? Microsoft has shown it's willing to cut incredible deals & take a loss to keep its hegemony. It's hard to see how this leads to increased share of an existing market or substantial growth in an emerging market that Google wants to be a part of.

So, bottom line. Doomed? Not necessarily. Manjood overstates his case a bit. But the odds are against it. Given some time and some luck, it may become a niche player. Of course, at one time, that's what Microsoft was, too....

Another possibility...

Ross Douthat has an article in today's NY Times that sets up a fairly bogus dichotomy, then plays with it to try to demonstrate that Sarah Palin's problems are ultimately just class envy. Or something.

Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

Well.... not quite. The whole "anyone can become president" idea is, yes, about the idea that in theory at least, your chances of becoming president shouldn't depend on whether your name is Clinton or Kennedy, Bush or McCain. Or whether you went to an Ivy League school.

Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.

But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don’t even think about it.

No. Sarah Palin's problems aren't that she didn't go to an Ivy League school. They're related to the fact that she was nominated for VP, much farther than many already go...and demonstrated repeatedly that she wasn't up to the job. She claimed to read "all" the newspapers but couldn't name a single one. She claimed that being able to see Russia from parts of Alaska constituted foreign-policy credentials. She claimed her life was an open book and her administration set a model for transparency, but refused to release any of her medical records and used private email accounts to conduct state business to avoid open-records laws. She claimed to support the Bush Doctrine, but couldn't say what it was. She compared herself to a pit bull but complained when she was called an attack dog. There are many, many graduates of many fine state universities who show more of a grasp of national issues.

Sarah Palin was put into the rigors of a campaign, was weighed, measured, and found wanting. There's no shame in not being up to the job of President; most of us aren't. I doubt Mr Douthat is; I'm certainly not. And given a few years to prepare, it's not inconceivable that she can make herself ready by 2012, or 2016, or 2020. But in 2008, she was not ready.

The "democratic ideal" is not and never has been that J. Random Citizen can ascend to the White House in the absence of any other qualification. It's that with ambition and talent, one can prove him- or herself fit to serve, even if there's no Harvard or Princeton or Yale time in the biography. Sarah Palin's loss says nothing about that.

Despite what Mr Douthat says, the message isn't "forget it." The message is "a diploma, or lack of one, will only take you so far."

Were some of the attacks on Palin unfair? Yes. Were they any worse than the unfair attacks Obama was dealing with, including Palin's "palling around with terrorists" line? I don't think so. Certainly no other VP candidate has gone so far to question the basic loyalty of the other party's nominee. Has there been any candidate for President or VP in the last 40 years who hasn't faced unfair attacks in the rigors of the campaign? Has there been any candidate who's refused to give interviews or hold a press conference, and not been criticized for it?

There's a not-so-subtle conflation going on here. Mr Douthat starts by presenting the democratic ideal as "that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard." Well, she won a statewide beauty contest (something many others have tried and failed to do), rose through politics to become Governor of her state (again, something many others spend their careers trying and failing to do) and became the VP nominee of a major party. There are talented, ambitious people (many with Ivy League degrees) who spend their lives preparing and striving for that goal, and who never make it.

True, she lost the election. In any election, there can be only one winner. But does the fact that she has already risen higher than 99+% of the professional political class, is nationally known with a strong base, with at least 20 years of her career still ahead of her, not indicate that she can, already has, become a success story?

Of course, success at that level brings life in the fishbowl, unfair attacks, media attention, and all the rest. If she's as smart as her supporters claim, then she should have known that going in to it. The experience of the campaign should have convinced her.

And Mr Douthat should know better than to blame her problems on social class, as if the election was hers to lose until that gosh-darn elitist liberal media started ganging up on her.

I'm not dead yet

I haven't posted much the last few days, in spite of some remarkable news events abroad and truly snark-worthy happenings in the media, because I'm continuing my education as a new homeowner.

Though I must commend the staff at both Lowe's and Home Depot for putting up with some ill-informed questions and a couple episodes of walking me through some options until we worked out what it was I needed.

As the new-homeowner expenses are settling down a little, my car has been acting funny the last couple of days... so it's off to deal with that this afternoon. I can't help thinking of John Lennon's definition of Life: "What happens when you've made other plans."

Dear Michelle Bachmann...

You claim that when you speak out against White House policy, you're targeted by the media.

Actually, it's not that.

It's that when you spout half-informed moonbat conspiracy theories, people laugh at you. You're being "targeted" only because you're good for ratings, and not in a way you'd like.

There's a difference.

This just in

People in Iran have really long names.

Where would we be without Faux Noise, er, um, Fox News, to tell us these things?

I've spent much of the last several days glued to my monitor watching the extraordinary events in Iran unfold. I don't have any information or much insight to add to what's already being said, and Andrew Sullivan is doing extraordinary work on this.

The only thing that's striking about this is how it seems to have caught everyone in the West so thoroughly by surprise. Like the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this appears to Western eyes to have come out of nowhere, though in retrospect we'll tell ourselves there were signs there to be seen. And there probably were...but we weren't paying attention. We didn't notice them. We didn't take them seriously.

Of course, it would have been hard to predict that the election would be rigged that clumsily. A rigged election was more or less expected, but one that "no one in their right mind can believe" wasn't, and has proven to be the proverbial straw.

And so far, Obama has done exactly the right thing, by staying out of it, so neither side can accuse the other of being pawns or dupes of the Great Satan. This isn't about us; it's about them.

Really not sure what to think about this...

On the one hand, several of George Will's points are well-taken. Trying to prop up failing carmakers may well just be prolonging the pain. (Mr Will seems more concerned with the harmful effects of propping up companies that provide working class jobs than the evils of propping up investment banks, but oh well....)

I'm just not sure how seriously I can take an argument that relies on Calvin Coolidge as its model of prudent leadership.

And off we go again...

Summer classes started last night. I've got 24 students, which is big for a summer class. So far, so good, though I've got plenty of assignments to finish up. Which is part of why I haven't gone looking for time-wasters...I don't have a spare weekend just yet. But it's on the list, really. Just as soon as I finish up prepping for the summer class already in progress, finish up the revisions for the engineering programming course that's getting a long-overdue overhaul, follow up on a long-ago pledge to the department chair to get some training in the accreditation process to step up my committee responsibilities....

Yeah, right. I might have a free weekend someday.

Elevating the Debate

Wonkette sums up my feelings about Chuck Grassley's indignant twitters to/about Obama, which have the depth & tone you'd expect from a teenager:

We are all stupider for having read this.

Seriously, go read the twits in question. They read like something an overprivileged teenager would write. This clown is a U.S. Senator? Yes, the 140-character limit of Twitter doesn't lend itself to pensive asides or elaborately-built-up arguments, but this is absurd.

Proof once more of the dictum from the founding fathers (I don't remember if it was Jefferson or Madison, and could be wrong about both of them). Democracy doesn't ensure the people get the leadership they want, but it does ensure they get the leadership they deserve.

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]

The Internets, Where All Your Questions Are Answered

Including the one that everyone wonders about, "How Many Balloons Would It Take To Lift A House?"

Incidentally, welcome to blog post #400. Launch the balloons, toss the confetti, and all that.

Today's fun little ditty

Apparently Pat Robertson made a spectacularly silly comment to the effect that if gay marriage becomes legal, then marriage to ducks can't be far behind. Or someone who likes sex with ducks will be able to marry one. Or something. (Last time I checked, animals couldn't enter into legally binding relationships with people, or vice versa, but I never ever claimed to understand Pat Robertson's thought processes.)

At any rate, here's a fun little song about where it all could lead.

On "irrational numbers" and innumerate bloggers

Warning: Extreme nerd-dom ahead.

So there's a post at the Atlantic about the government's ownership of 60% of GM, taking on the ludicrous claim that the government now owns a large swath of corporate America. As the post correctly points out, the actual ownership of private companies by the federal government is substantially under 1/10 of 1%, which is hardly a socialist paradise. However, the reporter completely blows it with this discussion of the (admittedly rather fun) pie chart produced by Excel:

What I do see is that Microsoft Excel feels the need to portray the percentage of American companies owned by the government as an irrational number. That's 5.07e^-02, or %0.0507 of American companies that are owned by the United States. (When I ask Excel to display this breakdown in real numbers it just becomes "100%" and "0%.")

Um, no. Wrong. That's not an irrational number. It's scientific notation. An irrational number is a number that can't be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers. It has nothing to do with whether it's written in a mantissa-exponent form (as in 5.07 * 10^-2). Scientific notation is handy for dealing with very large or very small numbers, and yes, Excel would round it to 0%, unless you asked Excel to display things out to some fixed number of decimal places.

Which is simple to do, as is suppressing scientific notation in the first place. Either one takes about 4 clicks of the mouse.

Really, people who do business reporting should be familiar with the basic functions of spreadsheet software, and if you're going to complain about something being a particular type of number, you should have some idea what you're talking about.

Update: After numerous comments in the comments section, it's been fixed so that instead of "irrational number" it says "exponential notation." All is well.

George Tiller

No, late-term abortion isn't a good thing. But life sometimes presents unpleasant choices, his practice was legal, and he didn't deserve to be shot down in church.

Prediction: The killer will claim a religious justification.

And remember, that report from DHS a while back about right-wing extremists (that GWB ordered up) was just liberal hogwash, because conservatives would never, ever actually do anything violent. And yes, this was terrorism. This wasn't just about Dr Tiller. This was also intended to send a clear warning to any doctor thinking about providing a similar service: You could be next.

Mark Kleiman, as usual, nails it. Three times in a row: One Two Three.

As one of the things I've read the last day or two put it (I can't track down the original post now, it may have been a commenter on Sullivan), women have the capacity to choose to end pregnancies, even late-term ones. Never mind the legalities, they can make that decision and take action to carry it out. Given that reality, I'd rather they had the option of a doctor's office and not a back-alley coat-hanger operation. Yes, it's morally problematic. Regulations may need to be tighter, and support for other options strengthened. But it has to be one of the options, if only because it's less problematic than shoving it onto the black market.

Yet another status update

Picking up the rental truck this morning, then getting my posse (such as it is) together to get the furniture hauled down here. At that point everything will be officially moved.

I may get out from under the huge stack of boxes at some point in the future....

Status update, again

This post is being made from the new house... First night in the new place, and I don't know if it's the paint, or the new furniture, or the new bedding, but something's giving off a few fumes, judging from the slightly sore throat I've got this morning.

Oh well. Back to get the rest of the kitchen stuff. I've got most of what I need moved, getting down to the "do I really need this stuff? Bad enough to pack it up and schlep it across town?" stage... Further updates as events develop.

Status update

The house is bought, and possession has been taken.

I am becoming familiar with Home Depot and Lowe's much more thoroughly than I ever expected to the first week.

Paint has been applied, shelves installed, a few blinds up, and I have applied proper first aid for the credit card burns I got at Nebraska Furniture Mart yesterday.

The next two weeks are going to be an interesting experience of caravaning my stuff across town. Posting may be even more sporadic than usual.

That is all.

Life's little ironies dept.

From this morning's CNN homepage... Check out the poll question, and the sponsor.

Credit where it's due dept.

I certainly don't agree very often with the Southern Baptist Convention, about anything, but it's hard to improve on this statement about torture (specifically including waterboarding) from Richard Land, of the SBC ethics & public policy conference:

"It violates everything we believe in as a country," Land said, reflecting on the words in the Declaration of Independence: that "all men are created equal" and that "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

"There are some things you should never do to another human being, no matter how horrific the things they have done. If you do so, you demean yourself to their level," he said.

"Civilized countries should err on the side of caution. It does cost us something to play by different rules than our enemies, but it would cost us far more if we played by their rules," Land concluded.

Given how much the GOP is in the pocket of the SBC (and vice versa), that's a risky statement to make. All the more reason to applaud it.

[h/t: Andrew]

"And they will know we are Christians by our love..."

So it turns out that those who attend church most often, are also the most comfortable with torture.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Note: There were problems with sample size, so this may not be particularly generalizable. The problem isn't bad enough that I'm prepared to flat-out call bullshit on this, but it may be a mistake to read too much into it.

But how does that "religion make you better person" thing work again? Granted, this is only one questionable data point, but still...

[h/t: Paddy]

Wish-I'd-Said-That Dept.

Mark Kleiman nails it once again.

Inequality, opportunity, and IQ

Email to Andrew Sullivan:

You wrote:

My point was that growing inequality will be very, very hard to prevent or restrain in the face of these factors.

Nice job of proving Doug's point. [Ed. note: Doug's post is here.]

Right now our educational system is, for the relatively affluent, mostly pretty good and in some places very good. For the poor, the average quality is lower, and in some places, the schools are a sad joke. And of course, a better basic education leads to the opportunities for better college education, etc.

When we're providing good-quality basic education across the board, and the reward structure in our society is less tilted toward "them that has, gets; them that hasn't gets left behind," maybe we can have the discussion about how much of the remaining inequality is unalterable.

But are you seriously suggesting that the current huge and widening inequality in our society is because the affluent are simply smarter than everyone else, without regard to anything else? My, how convenient. After all, if the problem is that the poor and unemployed are just stupid, well, what can you do?

Will there always be some inequality? Of course. But I'm not aware of any serious work on the issue suggesting that intelligence is "infinitely alterable." Stop knocking down straw men. Yes, we need to focus on education. Yes, we need better metrics than dollars spent per student and the perverse incentives of No Child Left Untested. Yes, absolutely. And we shouldn't expect better schools to bring about Utopia tomorrow. But if anything, a better focus on education, on bringing failing schools up to where they ought to be, would decrease inequality. Or at least make the face of success look a little less Anglo-Saxon.

I teach freshman-level courses at a public urban university, and my classes have too many smart students who can barely read, have never learned math, and have no idea what study habits are. They're going to school while also supporting themselves, and sometimes extended families, at low-wage jobs in crumbling neighborhoods. Oddly enough, they seem to have more problems than the students who come out of better school systems and are able to devote themselves to school full time. I've had more than one bright, promising student in my office explaining that they like being in school but can't afford it; or their child care fell through; or they have to care for an uninsured parent who fell ill.

When those students have the same opportunities and resources that you and I take for granted, we can talk about inequality due to differences in intelligence. Sure, there will always be some. But you cannot seriously believe that's what's causing the "growing inequality" of the last three decades.

Homebuying update

It appears the logjam has broken... I've spent most of the day coordinating phone calls, faxes, document scans, and emails between my local loan officer, the loan approval officer at the national office, my insurance agent, and my realtor. So yippee.

On the other hand, I haven't got much else done this afternoon, and I've got some things that really need to be done. It may be a late night.

Brit Hume, even more clueless than usual

It seems that Brit Hume doesn't think much of the Obamas' new dog, deriding it as "girly."

He, um, is aware that the President has two daughters, isn't he?

Someday there needs to be a cable-news smackdown, Brit Hume vs Keith Olbermann, to see who can do the most self-important harrumphing.

That may even be worth a pay-per-view.

I love my country, yes I do...

First it was the tebagging parties.

Now it's the 2M4M movement.

To quote a friend of mine, "Is there anything gayer than straight America?"

Power Tools Dept

In a revelation that should surprise no one, the "spontaneous" citizen's uprising calling itself the teabag movement is actually being coordinated by two corporate lobbying organizations with a long history of setting up fake astroturf campaigns.

So I hope the enraged wingnuts are enjoying being corporate tools.

On the other hand, as someone generally in favor of teabagging, I hope they have a great time.

[h/t: GottaLaff]

I'm not the only one wondering

I was wondering how come the CEO of GM is being forced out while the CEO's of BoA, Citi, and Goldman are all still in place.

David Sirota has some of the same questions.

GM Chief Resigning in Deal with U.S.

Okay. Fair enough.

I'm just curious, though.

How many executives at AIG, Goldman, or Citigroup, or Bank of America had to resign as a condition of receiving any assistance?


*crickets*


And they got a straight bailout, if I recall correctly, didn't they? It wasn't just access to loans? And wasn't it an order of magnitude more money?

Why, yes. I believe it was.

Can someone explain how this is anything other than rank classism, with financial companies given billions while manufacturing companies are forced to jump through hoops to receive much less assistance?

Anyone?

...Bueller?

Late edit: It was only 1 order of magnitude more money, not 2. My mistake.

Why You Shouldn't Use Foreign Terms You Don't Really Know

From an article on GM's woes....

General Motors has experience shedding divisions, and shut down the Oldsmobile brand in 2001. Plenty of Oldsmobiles are still on the road today, and continue to receive service through GM dealers and the independent aftermarket industry. Likewise, when Ford bid alvederzane to their German Merkur brand or when Chrysler furled the sails on Plymouth,...

Emphasis added.

Okay, trying to throw in some German when referring to a German brand is understandable. But next time, would it be possible to get it proofread by someone who actually knows German? I'm not sure I could spell Auf Wiedersehen correctly without looking it up, but I could certainly come closer than that...

(And I didn't look it up, and I may have misspelled it...but I still came closer than the supposed pro....)

Update Mar. 29: It's been fixed.

A Useful Rule of Thumb

From John A. over at AmericaBlog:

If you're emailing it to one person, what you're sending is probably good. If you're emailing it to 5 or more people, it's probably crap.

That about matches up with my experience.

Oh, Snap!

There's an outraged op-ed in the Times today from an offended trader at AIG financial products, angry at getting tarred with the same brush as the people who brought down the company.

And then there's Andrew Leonard's point:

DeSantis received a bonus payment on March 16 of $742,006.40. But he's going to donate all the after-tax proceeds to charity, and he can do that because "I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust."

If you are in a position to donate more than half a million to charity and your family finances are still secure enough during one of the worst recessions in American history that you can blithely quit your job, then you are sitting squarely within the most privileged sector of U.S. society. You are still living a life that is out of reach to the vast majority of Americans.

And I just don't think most people will care how betrayed you feel.

Exactly.

Personal Update

Work is coming along, though Spring Break is going to be mostly an exercise in catching up (and this is any different than usual how?). Made an offer on a house and we're moving forward, but the inspection inevitably found a few things, so now we're in the negotiations about who pays for what. So it's far from a done deal and could still fall through in any of several different ways. Something had to go overboard, and it was mostly blogging. Meh. Life happens. Oh, and I haven't had as much time to devote to the all-important webcomic reading either. I am SO going to have to get caught up over break....

Assisting Mark Kleiman

In a post about a topic I'm not informed enough to have an opinion on (yes, there are a few of them), Mark Kleiman wonders if there's a form of the term "bimbo" that applies to men.

The term I've heard used is "himbo."

Glad to be of service.

Still alive...

And kicking, more or less... Also house-hunting, which takes up an inordinate amount of time...

Shorter Kathleen Parker

Just because Obama won, doesn't mean the voters liked his ideas; they just didn't like McCain very much. If he's serious about bipartisanship, he should do whatever the Republicans want.* And it's foolish for the President to take on someone as powerful as Rush Limbaugh, because he can get the Republican base very riled up.

*Remember, that's what 'bipartisanship' means--Democrats doing what Republicans want.

=====

Yes, I know, it's insanely out of touch and irrational. But there it is. For Obama to act as if he's got political capital, just because he won, is no different than Bush's 2005 declaration of how much capital he had because he squeaked by into a victory that didn't have to be handed to him by the Supremes.

If it weren't so sad, it'd be funny.

And yes, I know, no posts for a month. I'll try to do better.

Tolerance is not immunity to criticism

Noah Millman on religious tolerance:

[C]orporate bodies to exist at all must define their boundaries: this is who we are, this is what we believe, this is how we behave. And this requires an implicitly if not explicitly excluded “not that.” This being the case, if freedom of religion means, most fundamentally, the freedom to be a heretic, it equally means the freedom to declare that the other guy is a heretic. In a very real sense, a social environment that is hostile to religious intolerance must necessarily be hostile to religious freedom.

But this is only true if that intolerance calls upon the power of the state for its enforcement.

If someone says, "OUR magic sky-fairy only accepts white, heterosexual, blonde-haired blue-eyed worshippers who make at least $50K," fine. Go for it. Have fun. But when you run around telling certain "other" people that the magic sky-fairy thinks they're no different from pedophiles, that the magic sky-fairy says they're evil disgusting sub-humans, and the magic sky-fairy wants the gummint to make sure they aren't treated equally under the law--you're going to be criticized for it. Politicians who give you a platform are going to be criticized.

That's only "hostile to religious intolerance" in the sense that public statements and public actions are open to public criticism.

As far as I'm concerned, the Saddleback Church is completely within its rights to exclude gay members. I wish they wouldn't, but they certainly have the right to do so and there's no particular reason they should listen to me on the subject--after all, I don't claim to follow their magic sky-fairy or to be an authority on magic sky-fairies in general. Rick Warren is perfectly within his rights to say everything he's said. And I'm perfectly within my rights to point out the hateful bigotry in those statements. It's not the religion that's the problem here, it's the bigotry. Bigotry on behalf of a particular magic sky-fairy is still bigotry. If his magic sky-fairy tells him to be a bigot, that's his business, not mine. When he starts organizing and fundraising to take away my civil, secular, legal rights, it becomes my business.

A religious body is perfectly free to be intolerant. But when they express their intolerance through public discourse and the political proces, they become subject to public criticism. If your religion tells you to be intolerant toward certain things or certain people, fine. If you're too cowardly to face criticism from others who don't share your belief, keep them to yourself.

But religion doesn't give you the authority to run around criticizing everyone else while being immune to any such criticism yourself.

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]

Speaking of people I like...

Christopher Hitchens' column over at Slate is a winner, as well.

As Barack Obama is gradually learning, his job is to be the president of all Americans at all times. If he likes, he can oppose the idea of marriage for Americans who are homosexual. That's a policy question on which people may and will disagree. However, the man he has chosen to deliver his inaugural invocation is a relentless clerical businessman who raises money on the proposition that certain Americans—non-Christians, the wrong kind of Christians, homosexuals, nonbelievers—are of less worth and littler virtue than his own lovely flock of redeemed and salvaged and paid-up donors.

This quite simply cannot stand. Is it possible that Obama did not know the ideological background of his latest pastor? The thought seems plausible when one recalls the way in which he tolerated the odious Jeremiah Wright. Or is it possible that he does know the background of racism and superstition and sectarianism but thinks (as with Wright) that it might be politically useful in attracting a certain constituency? Either of these choices is pretty awful to contemplate.

I've read several different explanations of how this is actually shrewd politics, a healing gesture, whatever. No, it isn't. Wrong messenger, wrong message. By an amazing coincidence, once again it's the gays being told to keep a lid on it, never mind the symbolism, we all have to put aside our personal issues and come together in unity and all that... but how come no one else has to do much adjusting?

Is this really just a cynical move? Do something to get the gays in an uproar, to gain credit for being a centrist who's willing to anger his base? A Sister Souljah moment? I can believe there was some of that present. I can't believe the Obama team fully expected the depth of the reaction, because they misjudged the depth of the hurt in the gay community. Having your civil rights put up for a vote, and taken away, to the tune of vile, hateful rhetoric, can do that. And inviting a major fundraiser who spewed more than his share of that bile to give the invocation, and thus implicit sanction....it's simply too much. It goes too far. Marc Ambinder's wrong about this, by at least half. And Andrew Sullivan is obviously seeing something I'm not; the "earnestness and sincerity of his campaign" are belied by the hamhandedness (or blatant cynicism) of this invitation.

As I told a friend of mine: I knew Obama would disappoint me. It's inevitable; every winning politician must, inevitably, disappoint his or her supporters. I just thought he'd be in office before it happened.

I know, I know. He's a politician, from Chicago. I never bought into the walks-on-water enthusiasm of some. But I thought he was a cut above the typical politician.

I'm not so sure now.

Why I [heart] Glenn Greenwald

His spot-on column today about how Obama's "new politics" is actually the same old politics, and how poorly it's worked in the past.

Go read it, it's good.

It's the end of the world as we know it....

In another sign of the impending Apocalypse, I find myself in agreement with Charles Krauthammer, at least on the Caroline-for-Senate thing.

If Princess Caroline wants a seat in the Senate, let her do it by election. There's one in 2010. To do it now by appointment on the basis of bloodline is an offense to the most minimal republicanism. Every state in the union is entitled to representation in the Senate. Camelot is not a state.

Zing!

Oh, well, never mind, then.

Kathleen Parker has a vaguely-unhinged column up at today's Post explaining that questioning Caroline Kennedy's qualifications for the Senate is reasonable, but there's a simple reason why those who oppose her on those grounds have got their facts wrong. You see, unlike those who opposed Palin on the grounds that she was "anointed--cynically selected without proper vetting", Caroline Kennedy would only be a Senator, would only be one person among 100, and would have to stand for election (eventually) anyway.

The thing of it is, Parker clearly understands, at least on an intellectual level, the argument against appointing Kennedy:

The real rub is that she hasn't earned it. The sense of entitlement implicit in Kennedy's plea for appointment mocks our national narrative. We honor rags-to-riches, but riches-to-riches animates our revolutionary spirit.

Palin paid her own passage unfreighted by privilege. But I and others opposed her spot on the Republican ticket for good reasons, some of which resemble concerns now aimed at Kennedy.

To wit: It isn't enough to want the prize. One must be up to the job, in a league with one's fellow actors.

Excellent summary! Couldn't have said it better. So what could possibly outweigh this argument?

In Kennedy's case, those actors would be senators, not heads of other, potentially belligerent, nations. If appointed, she would be a single vote among 100 and otherwise a placeholder until 2010, when she would have to run for election as any other.

Oh, well, in that case, it's okay, I suppose. After all, she can't launch nukes, so why shouldn't she have it, just because she wants it?

Hey, I have an even better idea. Since a Senate seat is no big deal, a House seat, where you're one person in 435 and have to stand for election every two years, must be next to nothing. If someone in a prominent family decides they'd like one, why don't we just let them have it? After all, you can't launch nukes or anything. And in fact, we could simply say that certain families have first dibs on the seat. We could pass them down through multiple generations! Won't that be exciting! Think about the fairy-tale endings we could put on our media narratives! And we could give those families special titles to show they're part of the aristocracy! Oh, wait, there's that little matter of the Constitution. Well, the last eight years have shown that it's mostly just suggested guidelines that don't really need to be taken seriously anyway.

Sorry. But simply being a Kennedy and deciding she wants to be Senator aren't enough. For Palin to rise to the Governorship in spite of her apparent lack of qualifications says a lot about her political chops and her determination, if nothing else. If Kennedy wants the seat, let her campaign for it.

Would Hillary have won if she weren't Mrs. Bill Clinton? Probably not. But she still campaigned. She met with voters, she pressed the flesh, ate the ethnic food and pretended to like it, the whole thing. Why should Caroline Kennedy have the seat for even two years, and the benefit of incumbency in the upcoming election, simply because she wants it? If there were a track record of elective office, of something beyond boards and fundraisers, it wouldn't reek so much. And if a prominent socialite not part of the Kennedy clan were interested in the seat, they wouldn't be getting this much serious consideration.

Of course, I'm not a resident of New York, so my opinion matters somewhere between diddly and squat. I don't know where Kathleen Parker lives. But to whatever degree she's trying to influence opinion, including the opinions of those who do matter on this question, her reasoning is shallow, waving away with an airy la-de-da some very real concerns about the corrosive effects of dynastic politics. For someone who tries to consider herself a conservative, she doesn't seem to understand basic political theory all that much.

What's the price going to be?

John A. cites anonymous but allegedly inside sources that the decision to invite Rick Warren came from Obama himself, that this wasn't from Feinstein or a staffer. Assume for the moment that's true.

Part of why Obama's felt free to disregard the left is that they gave him their support cheaply. As Congressional Democrats have demonstrated repeatedly, when there's no penalty, no price to be paid, for disregarding your concerns.... your concerns get disregarded a whole lot.

So. What's the price going to be? What sort of concession is going to be demanded? Early action on DADT? Federal recognition of state-level domestic partnerships? It should be something more than just some speechifyin'. He wouldn't have to devote his entire first term to LGBT issues--the Inauguration invocation, while a big deal, isn't an earth-shaker--but there has to be something.

And if he isn't held to it, made to pay a price for going out of his way to insult a constituency--then that constituency has no one and nothing but itself to blame.

This is ridiculous.

Every winning candidate must sooner or later disappoint his supporters. It's inevitable.

Backing the idea of Joe Lieberman staying in the Democratic Caucus was annoying. But Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inaugural? WTF?

The election is over. I thought Obama's appearance at the Saddleback forum, unhealthy for democracy as it was, was an unfortunate example of a candidate doing what had to be done to win. But this is outrageous. The reasons are laid out very well by Joe at AmericaBlog, John at AmericaBlog, at Pam's, by Mark Kleiman over at RBC. I don't have much to add to what they've said.

We've heard oodles and oodles about how Obama's transition team is the savviest political team ever assembled. I can therefore only assume that this was deliberate. Has Obama made a calculated decision that the support of the LGBT community is not needed, that its loss will be more than offset by the uniting picture of a popular right-winger at the Inauguration?

Well, he's a politician. And he won the election. That means he gets to make such decisions.

But I don't have to like it. And I don't.

Most of his cabinet appointments have been good, and I don't share the general amazement that he's picking a team of centrists and relative insiders. That's pretty much the platform he campaigned on. But Rick Warren isn't centrist. He's Dobson with better PR. And putting him up on the podium sends a very clear message.

Message received, Barack. Loud and clear.

Kleiman update

Re: The previous post, which was originally about this post.

Mr Kleiman posted a comment pointing out a factual error in my post (my bad, I gotta stop posting late at night) and laying out his position in more detail. I was, in fact, misreading him in places, and his proposed solution has quite a bit to recommend it. I don't think it's likely to happen politically (govt recognizes partnerships, under some different name, for everyone, gay & straight alike, and religious organizations decide for themselves what 'marriage' means), but it would be a cleaner solution, and Mr Kleiman doesn't seem to think it's likely to happen immediately either. Anyway, go read the comment, it's worth it.

Thanks for the quick & courteous reply. I'm still sometimes amazed to realize I'm not just talking to myself on this internet thingy....

Trying to have it both ways

Mark Kleiman has a generally very good post over at RBC discussing gay marriage and his lack of sympathy for Maggie Gallegher, who resigned from the Coyote Grill in Hollywood after it was boycotted over her contributions to Prop. 8.

Most of the post is very good, pointing out that the boycott was about her public political acts, not her private religious beliefs, and that disapproving of something is not the same as wanting to use the power of the state to prohibit it.

So far, so good. However, in the last paragraph he reveals how little he really gets it:

Not that it matters, but I'm not especially a fan of legal recognition for same-sex marriage. I agree with Barack Obama that the state should recognize and protect committed pairwise domestic partnerships regardless of what they are called, and leave the definition of "marriage" to be worked out in civil society without the interference of the state. But that wasn't the question on the ballot.

But that's the problem. As the experience of New Jersey is showing, saying "it's a protected committed pairwise domestic partnership but not marriage" leads to all sorts of problems. Lack of insurance coverage, hospital visitation and consent-to-treat issues, and more, because the relevant (Federal, for the most part) regulations use the M-word exclusively. If it's not marriage, real marriage, it's separate and very much unequal. Leaving the definition of "marriage" to be "worked out by civil society" is playing with the lives of the people he claims to care about.

Leaving it to the states lets the states serve as policy laboratories. that's the classic Federalist argument for non-involvement. In this case, the experiment of almost-but-not-quite marriage has failed. It has not produced equality under the law for gay couples. Saying "civil society can work it out without government involvement" is impossible in an economy and society in which the government is as involved in our lives as it is. (Should it be less involved? Maybe. But that's not the question on the ballot, to borrow a phrase.)

If Mr Kleiman means that some sort of domestic-partnership status is a necessary waystation on the road to full equality, I'm skeptical but willing to be convinced. But unless I'm misreading him, that's not the point he's trying to make. He seems to be arguing in favor of benign neglect, of leaving the issue fallow because, after all, it's just so messy and while he doesn't personally have any objections, you understand, he just doesn't see the need to make it official. The states can set up something separate but equal (because we all know how well that works out) and "civil society" (by which he appears to mean straight society) can decide whether or not it's ready to allow queers to use the m-word. And if there are specific legal privileges that are tied to the m-word, well, um, I guess the queers will just have to wait, and be grateful for what they can get.

I wonder how many signatures we need to put the validity of Mr Kleiman's marriage on the ballot. We are going to get to vote on that, right? Or is he comfortable with the idea of the majority voting on minority rights because he's confident that it won't be his rights that are taken away?

I dunno. It's late, I'm in finals-week grading, perhaps I'm being unnecessarily uncharitable. But when someone who's usually so sharp says something so obtuse, it stands out.

Ruth Marcus Loses It

Ruth Marcus's column today on why Caroline Kennedy should be named Senator for New York starts off trying for some fair-and-balanced by discussing several very good reasons why she should not be named:

I always find it a bit creepy when children follow the career paths of their parents.... even though politics as family business has a lengthy pedigree in American history, I recoil from political dynasties.

For one, dynasties tend to illustrate the phenomenon of reversion to the mean: It's rare that the second generation outperforms the first....

More unsettling, political dynasties are fundamentally un-American. This is not -- or is not supposed to be -- a country in which political power is an inherited commodity. The notion that Caroline Kennedy could simply ring up the governor and announce, or even politely suggest, her availability grates against the meritocratic ideal. After all, even the children of politicians generally take the time to climb the usual rungs rather than parachute into top jobs.

Right on, Ruth. She gets it. Caroline for Senator would be a bad idea. If she wants to attain high elective office, let her go through the rigors of a campaign. Let her demonstrate her competence and let the voters decide if she's worthy.

A big bundle of cash -- see, for example, Jon Corzine, former Goldman Sachs chairman, former senator from New Jersey, now New Jersey governor -- is helpful for vaulting your way over the drudgery of doing time on the state Senate subcommittee on pensions. Ditto other forms of celebrity -- see, as an example, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Before getting all huffy about Caroline Kennedy's qualifications for the job, let's take a breath and remember Jesse Ventura and Sonny Bono.

But, again, they all campaigned. They all went through the process. They had to come out with positions on issues that weren't their pet causes, they met the voters, they did what they were supposed to. Yes, they had advantages. All other things are never equal. But U.S. Senator wasn't their first elective office. Even Hillary went through the process. Did she run on Bill's coattails? Duh, of course. But she also did fundraising, and campaigning, and the other things that gave her legitimacy.

So, why is Caroline so uniquely qualified? What makes her the best person to fill that position and represent New York in the Senate at this time?

What really draws me to the notion of Caroline as senator, though, is the modern-fairy-tale quality of it all....The lucky little girl with a pony and an impossibly handsome father. The stoic little girl holding her mother's hand at her father's funeral. The sheltered girl, whisked away from a still-grieving country by a mother trying to shield her from prying eyes.

In this fairy tale, Caroline is our tragic national princess. She is not locked away in a tower but chooses, for the most part, to closet herself there....She is the last survivor of her immediate family; she reveals herself only in the measured doses of a person who has always been, will always be, in the public eye....

I know it's an emotional -- dare I say "girly"? -- reaction. But what a fitting coda to this modern fairy tale to have the little princess grow up to be a senator.

Actually, no. Not if it's by being named to the position with little significant accomplishment in public life. (Yes, she's written a book. Better than nothing, but is that enough? By that standard, Bill O'Reilly is better qualified.) For her to enter politics and build on her family's legacy, by achieving something significant in her own right? Absolutely.

But of all the ways of choosing Senators, and of all the reasons to choose a particular person to fill a vacant seat, "it would make a perfect fairy-tale ending" is one of the worst. It isn't (or shouldn't be) about happy endings to stories we tell ourselves, it should be about the best combination on ideology and competence to get done what needs to be done now. I suspect Ruth Marcus knows better and, on reflection, will come to her senses.

Who, exactly, are these "reactionary liberals"?

George Will's column today is on the perils to the Republic posed by the threat of reviving the Fairness Doctrine. I'll let him summarize it:

[T]he doctrine required broadcasters to devote reasonable time to fairly presenting all sides of any controversial issue discussed on the air. The government decided the meaning of the italicized words.

He points out, quite correctly, that the original argument in favor of the Doctrine was scarcity of spectrum; with only a relatively few stations, and those stations using the public's airwaves for private profit, they had a responsibility to present different sides of an issue. (From his comments, it appears Will found the rationale unpersuasive, but that's a separate issue.)

And he observes, correctly, in an era of 100-channel cable packages, exploding talk radio, and that there Internet thingy, the scarcity argument doesn't carry nearly as much weight as it used to. BUT... check out the last few paragraphs. Note what's there, and what isn't.

[S]ome liberals now say: The problem is not maldistribution of opinion and information but too much of both. Until recently, liberals fretted that the media were homogenizing America into blandness. Now they say speech management by government is needed because of a different scarcity -- the public's attention....

And these worrywarts say the proliferation of radio, cable, satellite broadcasting and Internet choices allows people to choose their own universe of commentary, which takes us far from the good old days when everyone had the communitarian delight of gathering around the cozy campfire of the NBC-ABC-CBS oligopoly. Being a liberal is exhausting...

If reactionary liberals, unsatisfied with dominating the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood, were competitive on talk radio, they would be uninterested in reviving the fairness doctrine. Having so sullied liberalism's name that they have taken to calling themselves progressives, liberals are now ruining the reputation of reactionaries, which really is unfair.

So I have a question: Who, exactly, are these "reactionary liberals"? Part of why I read Will is his careful research, his willingness to name names, cite sources, and in general provide a factually-grounded as well as well-reasoned argument. (I seldom agree with him, but his columns are always thought-provoking.)

Yet here he simply invokes the right-wing bugaboo of "reactionary liberals." Um, I spend a fair amount of time cruising through the left blogosphere. Not all my time--I do have a life, such as it is--but I'm simply not seeing a groundswell from the Left for reviving the Fairness Doctrine. I'm hearing a lot of bloviating from the right about how restoring the Doctrine is going to be Barack Hussein Obama's first step in turning America into a Socialist Muslim Atheist Marxist Dictatorship. The Lefties I'm reading are more concerned with the economy in free-fall, the Iraq mess, and health care, than with restoring the Fairness Doctrine.

So who are these people, Mr Will? What are your sources? Or, to keep your readership up with the base, do you just occasionally take a Limbaugh rant, edit it for tone, and run it?

Roger Ebert on Ben Stein

A wonderful take-down of Stein's awful creationist movie. Here's a sample:

This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.

And there is worse, much worse.

For the entire buildup, to see how he reaches that point, go read the entire thing.

[With a big h/t to Princess Sparkle Pony!]

Giving Thanks

Gail Collins reminds us of the things to be thankful for that we may not have thought of.

Though if I can find the Thanksgiving Prayer that Heather Havrilesky wrote for Suck.com back in the day... that's still one of my favorites ever.

the Lieberman decision

Disgust does not BEGIN to describe my reaction to this. The Democratic "leadership" has decided that expecting Joe Lieberman to pay a price for supporting the Republican nominee, demonizing and questioning the patriotism of the Democratic nominee, and being the least effective committee chair in the Senate would be unreasonable; after all, that would make Joe all frowny, and we can't have that.

So now the lying opportunist hack is still caucusing with the Democrats. Argh.

Glenn Greenwald has documented some of the extent of Joe's perfidy and the excessive degree of "bipartisanship" that made the Democrats nothing but a punching bag for Republicans, a role they seem determined to keep playing. John Aravosis has some insights as well.

What they said.

I kan too has profundity

This morning's lead article on Salon is an attempt to explain the phenomenon of lolcats to those who have been living in caves the last couple of years. (Obsession with the election isn't a valid excuse, as there were sites dedicated to lolmccain, and lolmccain and lolobama sites up before the election. A lot of them seem to be gone, but some are still around.)

It's an attempt at deconstruction, but it's the most shallow, facile attempt at deconstruction I've ever read, an overly-earnest explanation of how the humor works, how it's actually symbolic, you see, so they're not really cats, they're symbols, all leading to the conclusion (are you ready for this?):

They're people. They're us.

Wow. That's really the best you could come up with? Seriously, anyone who needed that explained to them probably isn't a Salon reader in the first place. The thing I regret most is that reading the article took me about eight minutes, and I'll never get that eight minutes back.

Or, in lolcat:

EPIC FAIL. KTHXBAI.

Quote of the day

From a commenter on one of the blogs at WaPo:

Being in the majority means responding to the weakening cry of "Liberal!" with the loud and overbearing oath, "Dimwit!"

Olbermann

Usually I don't have much patience with Keith Olbermann, unless for some reason I need a dose of umbrage and indignation. (Maybe it's just the things of his I've stumbled across or had forwarded to me--I'm not a regular viewer.)

But this, I think, is worth thinking about. A plea for love in a harsh, sometimes uncaring world.

Memo to Kathleen Parker

Just a few quick comments on your column today:

1) Yes, I'm sure you're getting angry mail from annoyed right-wingers. BUT, your response:

Yes, absolutely, let's start censoring people who entertain ideas and opinions that make us unhappy. Now there's a sure path to enlightenment!

while satisfyingly high on the snark scale, isn't accurate, and I think (hope) you know it. You're confusing censorship and criticism (or threats to boycott). Refusing to read your column and censoring you aren't the same thing. Not even close. If you make public commentary, you're going to have people who disagree with you. Why, even I myself have on occasion been criticized by regular readers of this blog--both of them. (In my case, I don't confuse censorship and obscurity.)

2) A bit of info. You write:

The most common complaint I've heard lately is that when people on the right criticize each other, the left uses that to its advantage. (The right would never do such a thing.)

You're quite right to be skeptical about the right not using disorganization of its opponents to its advantage. Yes, the left has its share of circular firing squads. But the right has been very skillful at exploiting them (anyone else remember Limbaugh's 'Operation Chaos'?).

Also, I'm told, the left doesn't eat its own the way the right does. . . . Whether assertions about the left's sturdier loyalties are accurate, I can't say.

I can. They're not. And this isn't new. Truman said, "I don't belong to an organized political party, I'm a Democrat." Remember the drama when David Geffen suggested Hillary might not be the one? Howard Dean becoming DNC Chair?

But one could argue that eating one's own -- that is, being willing to say what's true even when doing so is not in one's immediate self-interest -- is not a defect but rather an imperative that conservatives might wish to claim as their own.

Here, of course, you're quite right. One's commitment to the truth should be paramount, even when that truth is embarrassing or inconvenient. Alas, we live in an imperfect world.

Oh, and please walk down the hall and point out to Harold Meyerson that while some post-election schadenfreude is in order, and I'll admit to indulging a little myself, it's actually in our long-term best interest for the GOP to get its act together. (Jettisoning the Faux Noise wing of the party would be a first step, I agree, and a welcome change.) But: A healthy democracy needs a healthy opposition party. Today's GOP isn't it. As Meyerson points out, it's a regional, narrow, race- and class- defined party with strong elements of anti-intellectualism, Know-Nothingism, and xenophobia. They need to get their act together to force some discipline onto the Democrats, who certainly don't seem capable of disciplining themselves some day.

(Case in point: Why are we debating whether Lieberman should keep his chairmanship, after he campaigned for the GOP, questioned the competence and basic loyalty of the Democratic nominee, lied about the nominee's voting record, and did NOTHING during his previous term as committee chair? Because, apparently, expecting him to pay a price for misbehavior would make Lieberman feel bad, and that would make people all frowny.)

The Republican party can use this as an opportunity for soul-searching and rebuilding. If they follow the Democratic model, though, they'll have to lose another round of midterms and possibly a presidential election (Sarah in '12!) before they get serious about it.

In the meantime, while I can take some pleasure in watching them go through the process, I can only hope they get through the process relatively quickly.

Well, that didn't take long.

Every winning candidate must, sooner or later, disappoint his supporters. It's inevitable.

I just didn't expect it to happen this soon.

Lieberman campaigned for the opposing candidate. He questioned the competence and basic loyalty of the Democratic nominee. He held NO hearings as chairman of the homeland security committee. With everything going on with warrantless wiretaps, habeas suspensions, renditions, and the unitary executive, he couldn't find anything to poke around in.

Why, exactly, are the Democrats bending over backwards to keep this clown in the Democratic caucus?