Sometimes We Disagree

It's difficult to have two jobs. Switching back and forth between any two frames of mind isn't as easy as simply concentrating on one thing, but obviously most people can think about multiple things. So having two jobs, while certainly not as easy as having only one, is easy enough, I suppose. But wearing two hats at the same time, in the same place, is hard.

I'm a theatrical carpenter by trade, which means that I build scenery for stage productions. The problem is that I am called upon, as are many theatre technicians, to be a creative thinker and simultaneously a practical doer. In plainer terms, for those in the know, I design much of the scenery that I build.

It sounds like that would be easier, because I don't have to work with another person to make the designs into reality. That's tough too. But my inner designer and my inner carpenter don't get along often enough. It's like having endless staff meetings in my head.

When I design, I want my designs to retain all their integrity. I want the artistic themes to overshadow all things. I'm sure this is a common thread for many designers. On the other hand, when I have to build unrealistic plans, I get homicidal, and since my inner designer always seems to have unrealistic plans, he's got to go.

But I don't want to make it seem like my inner designer is the only one who has issues. My inner carpenter doesn't really want to build anything. He wants to use things already built, or cut corners to make things easier to build, or just plain cut the scenery from the show if it looks like it will be too difficult to build. He's a lazy slacker. My inner designer makes some very reasonable requests that my inner carpenter doesn't want to hear because they might involve too much work.

So I fight with myself. A lot, in fact. Unfortunately, at the moment my inner carpenter wins a lot of the fights because I'm feeling kind of lazy, and also because my artistic integrity as a designer isn't as important to me as it used to be. Largely, that's because I'm not really interested in being a designer. Some of my happiest moments have been after I've been given detailed, easy-to-build designs by other people.

But I think the dichotomy is important, not just because it makes me talk to myself and act crazy so people don't mess with me. If my inner designer didn't pressure my inner carpenter, I wouldn't ever build anything, or if I was forced to for some reason it would be slipshod or ugly or lazy. But if my inner carpenter didn't keep it real (I can't believe I just used that term) my inner designer would build sky castles and waste money and never get work.

I'm not sure what lesson there is to be learned here. I don't know that I care if there is a lesson at the end. It's just an aspect of my life that I thought would make a few paragraphs.

Let's Get Physical

Am I the only person who likes to own objects? Maybe I am, because it seems like I'm going the way of the dinosaur. Or perhaps I should say that the things I want to pay perfectly good money for are going the way of the dinosaur.

Take music. I like to own things I pay for, and I like to have a physical object there to remind me. Yes, I know objects take up space, but CDs are really not that large. I don't like the idea of renting music from a service which can cut me off at any time; that's why I buy CDs and why I continue to do so even though it seems like I'm the only one.

Or how about books. I like books a lot, and what's more, I like being able to take them anywhere. I can't do that with my computer, so if all my books become digital, I'll be out of luck. Magazines too. I can't take my computer into the bathroom with me. So pretty soon I guess, the only time I'll be able to read anything is on a computer, and I can't afford to keep buying laptops.

I can't say that I'm all that thrilled about reading things on the computer either. One, it's bad for the eyes because of the screen. Don't tell me it's not. They don't warn you to stop reading and take a break every hour when you're reading a book, but you shouldn't spend your life looking at a screen. Not healthy. Two, there's the whole portability issue, plus the fact that for a lot of so-called online content, you're not purchasing, you're renting. I don't want to rent a book; I want to own it. And finally, three, the type on most web pages is too damn small. I'm not blind, but sometimes I wonder.

So why can't I continue to receive magazines and newspapers in the mail? Why can't I buy books? Why can't I listen to music that I actually physically own? I know it kills some trees, but frankly, so do many things. I want a physical object as part of my ownership, damn it. Why does everything have to go online?

Speaking of Trust

Why the hell should Iraqis trust US soldiers?

Let me put it to you this way. You're at home, in the United States (let's say in Idaho, because it was the first state name I thought of). A group of unarmed men comes up to your house in broad daylight, knocks on your door, and says they are there to arrest your father (or brother, or some other close relative, although for the purposes of this discussion let's imagine that they are a man; sorry ladies). When you ask them for what reason, they tell you he is a criminal but won't elaborate. You ask where he will be taken and they cannot tell you. As they are taking him away, much to your dismay, they assure you that, if he is innocent, he'll be able to come home like nothing happened. Do you trust these men?

You might, under those circumstances. But I bet you'd have your doubts. I certainly would. And that's under those circumstances.

Now imagine instead that you are still in Idaho, only this time armed men in camouflage kick your door down in the dead of night. They ransack your house without saying anything, then they handcuff your male relative and drag him away from you kicking and screaming. When you ask them why, they tell you, in condescending tones, that he is a bad man. As they exit, leaving your house in disarray, they say that if he turns out to be innocent, he'll come back. Trust them now?

A little less, I would imagine. And that's in the United States. Let's add in some complications, like the fact that they do this to you nightly, that three other of your family members have been taken away and never returned, that you are living in constant fear of attack by other people as well as these armed kidnappers, and that they don't speak your language but are still condescending. Let's not forget the exit line though: "If he's innocent, he'll come back." That's the one which always gets me.

I think you see where I'm going with this. Why should Iraqis trust anyone, let alone soldiers of a power which has occupied their country and continues to kidnap their families with little or no explanation? Why should they believe that innocence means anything to the United States, since it doesn't seem to. Why should they have faith in their own government, let alone soldiers from the US?

I don't know the answer. I'm not in the situation, but I can tell you that even if the police arrested my father for a crime that they specified, their assurances that he would be safe if he was really innocent wouldn't reassure me that much. The system is innocent until proven guilty, not, "If he's innocent, he'll come back." Add in the fact that terror suspects in the United States have very little due process, to say nothing of random abductees in Iraq. Add in the fact that families have no idea where their loved ones are being taken. Add in, add in, add in.

Why should they trust us? I wouldn't. Would you? And if they don't trust us, how can we keep them from turning against us? It's not enough to say that we have to do these things because they don't trust us; they don't trust us because we do these things. I don't want terrorists any more than anyone else, and I don't want Americans or Iraqis to be killed, but what is going to make it better? Catching a few minor terrorists now? Or gaining the trust of the people for the future?

Don't Trust Them

Don't trust people who want to take away your rights. I don't care whether they're taking them away for what might be good reasons. I'm not even saying that they shouldn't be allowed to take rights away. But if someone tries to take away your rights, you shouldn't trust them. Keep a close watch on them.

Don't trust people who keep secrets from you and everyone else. If they can't trust someone, anyone, who is sufficiently different from them with their secrets, don't trust them. If one branch of the government doesn't trust another branch of the government enough to let them in on the secret, that secret is probably something someone else ought to look at. Don't trust the secret-keeper.

Don't trust people who claim to act in your interest without telling you what they're doing. If they're acting in your interest, they should let you know how. The exception is if you ask someone to act in your interest. Obviously, you should have already trusted that person enough. But don't trust someone who takes it upon themselves.

What does it mean to not trust someone? Does it mean you have to violently oppose them? Not at all. There's a difference between allowing someone to do something and trusting them. The difference is oversight. Trust is a lack of oversight.

So people who aren't trustworthy can still be allowed to do things, but we must take steps to ensure that they don't use their power for purposes other than what should be allowed. That's why, actually, this whole piece can be boiled down to one point: if you give someone power over you, don't trust them. Make sure they use their power appropriately. Don't trust them to oversee themselves.

At the end of the line, you have to trust someone, and I'm not advocating widespread paranoia. But power is dangerous, albeit necessary, and people with power should be given limits and oversight. Don't trust them. Make sure you know what they're doing with the power you gave them. There is nothing implied in government which says that we have to trust everything the government does. We can accept it, even approve of it, but we should know what we're accepting and approving.

I'm sounding paranoid now. But remember, just because you aren't paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. The fact that they may or may not be out to get you has nothing to do with whether or not you trust them. It's whether they get away with it. Don't let them get away with it. Don't trust them.

Richard Perle Is a Putz

Well, obviously, as a neo-con, he's got all the necessary qualifications to be a putz. But Richard Perle justifies America's foreign policy by pointing to fundamentalist Muslims' treatment of women, among other things. What a putz!

Let me elaborate. Sure, fundamentalist Muslims treat women like crap. It's not really a point which should be up for discussion. Some people think it's just terrible, others think it's just swell, but the treatment is pretty much a closed book, fact-wise.

So I guess the religious fundamentalists who aren't Muslim must treat their wives significantly better than those naughty Muslim fundamentalists. And they support neo-con policies, so... well, so what? Religions seem to have one thing in common: treating women like crap. I'm not a woman or particularly religious, so I can't really complain.

But if those naughty Muslim fundamentalists treat women like crap, I guess we should go to war with Saudi Arabia too. After all, regime change can only help the women in that country. What about all the other places in the world where women are treated like crap?

I guess what it comes down to is that our foreign policy has nothing to do with giving women rights, and you shouldn't let them sell you that line. Whether you agree or disagree, we didn't go to war to help people out. We went to war for very specific reasons at the time, reasons which I think many people would like everyone to forget. Don't forget them.

And Richard Perle, I would advise getting some new lines. In fact, a comparison to how the United States violated the trust of the South Vietnamese and pulled out might serve you well. Look for that; they'll start making comparisons to Vietnam any day now. Vietnam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction either.

Uniformity

School uniforms are unnecessary, evil or not. I have yet to see anything approaching conclusive evidence that uniforms or dress codes improve the school experience for anyone.

I know we've all heard the arguments. Uniforms instill discipline, or dignity, or respect. They prevent people from fighting about clothes, their expense, or rarity. They keep children from wearing things that are inappropriate without making recourse to subjective judgment which is hard to justify. They save money. They save time.

I've only ever believed that uniforms save time. For some people. I wear practically the same thing every day anyway, so it would save me no time to wear a uniform, but for some people it does reduce the amount of time they spend obsessing over their clothes. But it doesn't conclusively improve the quality of academics; that statistic simply proves that schools with good academics also tend to have dress codes. No causality there.

I approve of uniforms more than dress codes because dress codes are invariably subjective and take way too much effort. But why can't school uniforms be comfortable? For that matter, why can't any uniform be comfortable? Why can't the school uniform be jeans and a t-shirt?

The answer is that uniforms aren't designed to be useful; they're designed to enforce uniformity. That pun isn't really a pun, but it's intended. Uniforms are often not designed for utility or comfort either, which I find a little annoying. Well, a lot annoying, in fact.

The bottom line is that making everyone look the same isn't as useful as they make it out to be, and it's ultimately unsuccessful. School children in particular are deeply concerned with individuality, and perhaps rightly so. It's a crucial time in their development, when they create an identity for themselves. Wearing a uniform won't stop that.

To be brutally frank, I think the real reason school uniforms are so popular is because people own stock in uniform companies, or they secretly want their children to be more corporate or military. Ulterior motives, certainly. Why not let kids be kids? It's not any less effective.

That's What Guns Are For

I'm going to cheat a little here, so if you can tell that I didn't write this when I say I did, good for you, but since I'm not going to make reference to any specifics, it's still a true point and I believed it when I said I did.

I heard a terrific quote today. Since I can't remember who said it or what the precise wording was, I won't give it as a quote, but it was a good one. Guns are for killing people. That's it.

I know that's not strictly speaking true. Guns are for killing people, but also for killing animals and uppity tin cans (joking, only joking, tin cans are wonderful people). They can be used for target practice of various sorts. They make terrific noise-makers at parties, although for safety blanks should be used because shooting bits of lead high into the air tends to lead to bits of lead shooting down from the air and killing people. It really does happen. And actually, guns are really loud and hearing protection should be used because it makes your head hurt whether or not you use blanks.

But guns are mostly for killing. And when you're not killing with a gun, you're practicing to kill with a gun, even if you never actually do anything other than practice. There's really nothing else you can do with guns. That's hard to say about many other things which can be used to kill people.

I'm not saying that guns are the only thing that kills people, not by a long stretch. But they do kill, all the time in fact. If you support guns, then you believe that their uses to kill people are positive, like home protection. If you support gun control, you think that perhaps the right to kill people with guns isn't as important as the right of other people not to be killed by guns. And then of course there's the undeniable fact that most people who get killed by guns probably fall under the category of homicide, which isn't a right at all.

So what's wrong with a little control? Sure you can own a gun, but you should have to do something other than pony up the dough for it. Maybe it should be harder to get guns. If you need that gun to kill the guy who's threatening your family with nuclear anthrax (Jack Bauer, I'm looking squarely in your direction) it'll be there, but you might have to wait a few days to get it. What's so wrong with that? Plan ahead if you think it might happen.

And do you need an assault rifle with Teflon-coated bullets to protect your house? Or hunt deer? I'm not so sure. My grandfather was a hunter and he didn't run into too many deer with bullet-proof vests.

I'm not saying that gun control will keep criminals from having guns. Far from it. There are countries which ban privately-owned guns completely, and yet they still have criminals with guns. But there are fewer of them, and fewer small children who accidentally kill their friends with their parent's handgun, and fewer students who go on armed rampages with an arsenal of weapons procured from God knows where. And if the price to pay for fewer of those is a five day waiting period and a ban on weapons that only an army needs, what's the big freakin' deal?

Oh, and please don't tell me that you can use guns to only hurt people, because I certainly wouldn't want to take the chance that by trying to hurt them I would kill them, or that by trying to hurt them I would miss and they would kill me. That's why people shoot to kill. You don't hear much about shooting to hurt.

The Boat Has Sailed

Here's another one: Show Boat. What is the appeal? Paul Robeson is dead, so no one will ever be able to pull off Old Man River like that again. Are you hoping that by doing the show often enough, you'll cause the dead to rise and be able to see zombie Paul Robeson sing the song live? Because I don't know that there's much chance of it.

It's like South Pacific: the music is so-so, the story is terrible, and the message is a hammer. Can you beat it into us any more? I don't happen to think so, but I guess there are people who still do.

It was groundbreaking when it came out, I guess. But Hell, the fact that the Paul Robeson character wasn't called Ol' Negro Tarbaby and wasn't played by a white actor in shoe polish was pretty groundbreaking, and I'm not sure the world is still at that level of non-ground-brokenness. Black people do occasionally appear on stage, in movies, and on TV, and many of them are given speaking parts (see my bit about sarcasm).

I agree that race relations have a long way to go in this and every country. But there are better plays out there to tackle this problem. For instance, not only have black people been allowed to appear on stage, but they've been taught to write by crazy liberals, and now they write plays too. That came as a tremendous shock to me, I don't mind telling you. I thought that black people had to be given a voice by white people who know better (see my bit about sarcasm if you're interested in writing caustic comments).

So why don't we perform new works with arguably better quality written by people who actually experienced the problems they write about firsthand? Because Americans are shackled to the wheel of classic musicals, and when we break free of that, we're still shackled to the wheel of terrible musicals.

So I missed this boat too. Me and Paul, standing on the shore, watching the steamboat float away. If I could sing basso profundo, I'd make a go of a duet.

Pride

Just because someone is in the military, we are supposed to be proud of them. We're supposed to thank them for serving our country and making the world a better place. It's part national pride, part indebtedness. And it's hooey.

People point to the decadence of our society (by that I mean the society of the United States, for those of our readers living in places other) by saying that people take the sacrifices of our soldiers for granted. They say we don't make sacrifices of our own to deserve our soldiers, even to the point where we don't seem to care about them and what they're doing. We're decadent because we don't feel enough pride in our armed forces.

I can't write this article because it's too hard. No one listens. I'm not proud of people killing each other. I'm not proud of going to war, whether or not it was avoidable, whether or not it was justified. I'm not proud of soldiers who do what they signed up to do. They weren't drafted. I'm not proud that our nation seems to be bound and determined to believe that the only thing worth admiring is the military. I'm not proud of any of it.

I'm proud to be an American, not because it's the thing to say, or because it fights terrorism. I'm proud to be an American because I can say this type of thing and not be arrested. I can express thoughts which might not mesh with many other people's views and not be thrown in prison. And until I stop having that right, I'm going to continue to say the things I believe, even if no one listens.

I'm proud, I guess, to live in a country where so many people (including me) can take so many things for granted.

Ah hell, I'm not proud of that. Who would be proud of that?

There's more to pride than approval. There's more to pride than support. We might accept that certain unpleasant things need to be done, but that doesn't make us proud of them. And there's nothing which says that we have to accept them either. There are more ways to sacrifice for your country than to kill for it. Pride is an empty word for most people.

So yes, I guess I'm contributing to the downfall of civilization because I'm not proud of the things "my" soldiers do. I don't care whether people think the things have to be done or not. That doesn't make me proud.

Sarcasm

Sarcasm doesn't read too well, I've found. Not on the Internet anyway. Or rather, maybe I should say...

Sarcasm works so well on the Internet, it's absurd. I cannot tell you the number of times I've written something sarcastic and someone has read it and died laughing because it was obvious I wasn't being serious about it. People have a tremendous sense of this, and I don't think that body language, verbal cues, or the tone of one's voice is necessary to express sarcasm, because it's just so completely obvious when someone is doing it. Can't everyone tell? But then, I guess the people who can't should probably be elected President, or maybe even Lord-High God-Emperor of Earth because they aren't dumb enough to fall for sarcasm on the Internet.

It's an old joke to say, "In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic," after you say something obviously sarcastic. Well, in case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic. And you might not have been able to tell.

Why? You're an idiot. No, just kidding, only a borderline pinhead. Actually, if you can't tell that someone is being sarcastic on the Internet, join the club. The response you'll usually get is that you're a retard for not knowing, but it's usually hard to tell. Sometimes it's because the person being sarcastic isn't over-the-top enough. But even then, a lot of times, the issue under discussion is so weighted that people with very radical viewpoints probably exist.

And where do they exist? That's right. The Internet. Because there are lots of people with lots of views on the Internet, what could be sarcasm could also be someone being completely serious. You never know, and since you don't have any auditory or visual cues, it's very hard to find out. Even on the telephone, I find that people don't cue in to sarcasm, and I often don't either. It's nothing to be ashamed of. I often don't get people's sarcasm when I'm standing right in front of them. I must be a Faulknerian man-child.

The best way to combat misunderstanding from the writer's side is to be as over-the-top as possible. Comedians know it, now you do too. The best way to combat misunderstanding from the reader's side is two-fold. One, find out what the author's views actually are (which is hard to do on the Internet, another reason why this is such a problem), and two, don't take anything you read too seriously.

Seriously, if you're prepared to get into a knock-down-drag-out fight with someone you've never met over something they wrote on the Internet, you need to simmer down. I know it's tempting to start flame wars or send insulting emails. I know that most of the time people are being serious and their points of view are crazy and/or stupid. I know all this. But unless you take them seriously, they can't truly be effective. If it's one comment they left on a message board about anime, you should probably let it slide.

If someone, Internet or not, is expressing views you find distasteful on a regular basis, then do something rational about it. Like tracking them down to their home and killing them with a rusty, dull knife of some kind, then ripping out their eyes for trophies and posing their corpses in embarrassing positions and taking pictures to send to their families. Then you should eat their hearts to gain their courage.

In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic.

Objectivity

I keep seeing things about journalistic integrity or objective truth or truth in history, and I think they're all relatively right. I can say that because it's a joke about objective truth. Get it?

It seems to me that while there might be an objective truth out there somewhere, at least as a Platonic ideal, no one will ever experience that truth the same way. That's a fancy way of saying that there is no such truth, I realize, but I think the ideal can be useful. Striving to get as close to the objective truth as is humanly possible (and notice I say humanly possible, because whether you like it or not, that's what it is) can be a powerful motivation. It can keep us honest, make us more investigative, all that truck.

However, even if we experience that pure objective truth (not that I'm saying we would, since I highly doubt it), we'll never be able to write about it objectively. News or history, the facts aren't even objective. So we're faced with several options.

The one most people seem to choose is to try as hard as they can to achieve perfection and then assume that perfection has been, for all intents and purposes, achieved. Sometimes an author shows the manuscript around to try to remove all the controversy. Sometimes we try to argue both sides of the story, or at least present them. We feel guilty that we might be biased, so we try to remove the bias.

It's an impossible task, I'm afraid. The mere statement of a fact is biased against not stating the fact. I know that sounds trite, but all statements are biased in some way. We can't objectify something by removing bias; it can't be done.

Other people embrace biases without bias, as it were. Sometimes this is appropriate, as in a political manifesto. But in journalism or history, pandering to your subjectivity is not a recipe for success. How many people take Nazi histories seriously, for instance? For that matter, how many people take political manifestos seriously as historical fact? Wait, don't answer that, it's too depressing to think about how many people probably do.

The only way, to my mind, to mitigate bias and pursue objectivity is to acknowledge the problem. Instead of attempting to remove any biased statements, an author should simply own up to his or her biases. Knowledge of the author's views (remember my little piece on Op-Ed) enables us to read what must undoubtedly be at least slightly biased material through the lens of knowing what biases informed the work.

Obviously it doesn't make sense to read a biography of an author before reading the author's own biography of someone else. For that matter, you'd have to read the biography of the person who wrote that biography, and so on and so on. So bias must be acknowledged where it would have the most affect. For instance, if an historian writes a book about 17th Century Europe, it probably isn't important to know that historian's opinion of computer operating systems, or what car that historian drives. Then again, it might be very important, so there are no hard and fast rules of disclosure here, I'm afraid.

Unfortunately, the burden of revealing the author's bias most often falls on the reader. The lesson here perhaps is that objectivity, however well-intentioned, cannot be trusted completely. If a point of view seems to be leaning in some direction, find out why. Do a little research into historians beyond reading the book jacket and learning what other books they've published and what degrees they hold. No matter how hard they try, they're not completely objective.

In the spirit of disclosure I must point out that I have read a few books about Post-Modernism, and while I'm not sure where I stand as far as literary criticism is concerned, I think that many of the same ideas can be applied more successfully to reading history and journalism. Since I don't completely understand Post-Modernism, I'm not sure that helps. And my father was killed by a historian/journalist who believed in objective truth.

No, that was a lie. But if it had been true, wouldn't you have seen the previous paragraphs a little differently?

The Charade

I'll own up to it. I'm back-dating posts. I haven't said anything about it for a while, but the simple truth of the matter is that I'm not writing this when I claim to be.

Why do I maintain the fiction that I'm writing one article a day? I'm weeks behind. If I had made a resolution, I would have given up by now. But I tend to rationalize, like I recommended. So I'm rationalizing that I will write something for every day, even if I don't write it on that day. If I ever get up to date (and that will happen around about the time that time ceases to run, at which point I'll be up to date because there won't be any) and I have articles to write, I'll write them and stick them on the day I wrote them, because antedating is one thing, but postdating is quite another. I could just sit down and write 365 things and publish one a day to make people think I was writing one a day, but that's not the purpose of the exercise. And I'd never be able to do it anyway; by the 300th thing I would be cackling maniacally and writing about cheese.

Am I lying to you? Not really; look down at the bottom of this and every post and tell me you don't see the message that says it probably wasn't written on such-and-such a date. Sometimes I write things away from the computer and it takes me a few days to post them, but mostly it's because I'm late. I am trying though.

Am I lying to myself? A little. Full-disclosure on my part to myself would probably be something along the lines of admitting that yes, I did in fact make a resolution to do this, so I've failed miserably and all the rationalizing in the world isn't going to make that different. But then I'd have to be honest about my reasons for writing what is essentially an Op-Ed piece filled with griping. Plus all the other little lies we tell ourselves to stay sane. It doesn't work very well, but I'm an expert compartmentalizer. Maybe I'll write about that some time.

So I'm not really sorry that I maintain the charade because it isn't one, really. Giving things I write dates is convenient for organization, so I don't have to group things by theme. And we all know it's a charade anyway, so why not let it happen? It does motivate me when I see how far behind I am, and that can't be bad.

Setting meaningless milestones can be helpful. For instance, this is the eightieth time I've posted something to this blog. Not 100, but getting closer. When we hit 300, maybe I'll still be sane enough to keep from giving you a reasoned and passionate argument against cheese in our nation's banks. Maybe.

Pubes

It got your attention, didn't it?

Anyway, the question for discussion, were this a forum for such things, would be, "Why do humans grow more hair in certain places and not in others?" And I'm not just talking about the naughty places. Why do humans grow hair on their heads, for that matter?

Also, why don't most animals have to cut their hair? And why does body hair never grow past a certain length? There are scientific explanations for those. But why did Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom (so infinite in fact that most people have trouble fathoming it, which is a definite downside to infinite wisdom, or indeed infinite anything) see fit to make humans grow only certain types of hair?

Sure, the hair on my head keeps my head warmer than it otherwise would be. But if evolution (survival of the fittest or otherwise) has seen fit to remove the body hair which is no longer necessitated due to the invention of clothing and central heating, why didn't it remove the other hair too? Why leave us with a thin coating all over our bodies which isn't useful, it's just annoying, and then stick large clumps of hair in places that don't make sense?

Why don't they make sense? Well, putting an insulator in a place which is already warmer than the rest of the body doesn't make sense. Here I'm talking about armpit hair, actually. Why put more hair under the arms, where it just gets sweaty? It also attracts bugs and various other unpleasantness, and that fact is made worse by the fact that the hair is located in an uncomfortable place to have bugs. Here I'm talking about all the various areas of more body hair most of us have.

I'm not here to answer these questions. No, I'm here to wonder why men have beards and women don't, why we can't all just wear hats instead of having to deal with haircuts, why mites and fleas must be drawn like magnets to the areas most likely to have complications from itching. I tell you, if I had been in charge when these things were decided, things would be different. Not necessarily better, just different.

Forgive the Lateness of My Reply

I'm going to go all Andy Rooney on you for a minute here. By the way, did you know that he's a decorated war hero? I had no idea. It doesn't make him any less annoying, but the man's got medals.

Anyway, I remember when no one had email. Well, maybe not no one, but certainly no one I knew, and a lot more people besides. We used primitive drums to send messages from village to village until semaphore was invented.

No, actually, we used telephones. The kind that plug into a wall, mostly. And now that so many people have so many different telephones, everyone seems to be afraid to use them. Instead, they send email.

Now I'll be the first to admit that email is handy. It costs less than sending a letter (unless you really examine the costs of email, in which case it might very well not, but that's not the topic for discussion), it's easy, and it's quick. But I always try to write my emails as if I were writing a letter, because that's the way I look at them: easier letters. I'll admit that I do bend letter-writing rules, but I don't use chat-speak or emoticons or any of the numerous other annoying things that people do, and I always check my letters before I send them to make sure they aren't egregiously misspelled or un-grammared (as far as my grammar and the use of imaginary words goes, anyway).

I could write a book of complaints about people's awful email style, but that's not what I'm complaining about today. Today, it's the fact that email is not instantaneous communication, and you can't be sure if the person on the other end will get it by a certain time. I find, more and more, that people expect me to check my email every few hours or so to make sure that something important hasn't come up and rescheduled a meeting or changed a date. I get cancellation notes by email all the time, and usually the person sent that email an hour before the meeting that was cancelled, so I have to get into the habit of checking my email before I go out the door.

People, email is not a telephone substitute. I know that it's hard to call people; I hate the telephone too. But if you need to change something a few minutes before everyone is going to show up, you need to call them and tell them, rather than relying on them to check their email (to say nothing of relying on the various email systems to accurately deliver your note). Email is like easier letters, not less-personal phone calls.

Unfortunately, since I staunchly refuse to get a cell phone, most of the time people can't reach me by phone either. I think maybe people should think more than fifteen minutes ahead, and if it's an emergency, at least try calling. And don't expect me to answer an email within ten minutes of you sending it either. It's a two-way street, and I walk slowly. Plus all that editing and checking takes time, but I think it's worth it not to get an email which looks like a three year old typed it.

I am obviously alone in all of these views.

Opinionated

Since when is having an opinion something remarkable? It's a sad lookout for the world at large if opinionated is either a compliment or an insult. Shouldn't everyone be opinionated?

I know what people mean when they use the word. They mean outspoken in one's opinions. And I understand that some people feel that one's personal views should be kept quiet. I won't complain if no one ever gives me a personal view again, frankly, because I can see the upside to everyone keeping to themselves. Opinions too often are confused with statements of fact, and on that score, neither a borrower nor a lender be.

There is a proud tradition in journalism, the Op-Ed piece, and the Op part stands for Opinion. Editors write editorials filled with their own personal views. Why do we read them? Why do they write them? Simply because they are illustrative in many ways.

For one, it's useful to know what the editor of a newspaper or magazine thinks on various subjects because they have a great deal of control over how those subjects are portrayed within the pages of their publication. If an editor takes a consistently anti-Semitic stance in his or her editorials, then any stories about Jews within the publication should be examined fairly closely. If the editor has obvious Communist leanings, labor relations stories are bound to show that bias. So learning the editor's point of view can help the reader see that point of view within the publication.

Secondly, editorials and other pieces of opinion serve to inform the reader's opinions. I'm not saying that opinion should be confused with fact for this purpose, but learning what someone else thinks on a subject is never completely without use, even if you totally disagree. This is, of course, provided that you can see in your own views any possibility of change; if your views are set in stone, hearing any arguments to the contrary would be useless. Sadly, all too many of us suffer from this problem at one time or another.

Thirdly, editorials provide a synthesis of the facts laid out in the news. It is for this same reason that we pay any attention to pundits and analysts. Editors of news publications are assumed to be slightly better informed about the world situation than the general public. This is a lofty ideal but seldom works out well in the real world, and we listen to analysts far too much and the actual facts far too little.

So there can be a use in sharing opinions, and not just in newspapers. As for me, I don't call this blog "Nobody Cares About the Facts" for a reason. They are my views, and I guess that makes me opinionated. It's a badge I will wear, if not proudly, at least openly. Why be ashamed of opinions? We all ought to have a few of them at least.

It Ain't Me Babe

I don't watch new Simpsons episodes any more. Actually, there was only a brief period of time when I watched the Simpsons in anything resembling real time; now I just watch DVDs. When I first started watching the Simpsons it was long after they had already passed into the realm where some people think they've completely sold out and others think they've jumped the shark and all of that good crap. So I can't claim to be a long-time Simpsons fan. I didn't see them "live."

But that said, I don't like the new ones. And I think there's a reason why. I don't really know what the reason is. It's not that the new episodes are more slap-dash; the Simpsons has always been a little slap-dash with certain aspects, like continuity. It's part of the reason I don't like the show as much as some others I could mention, but won't because I don't really care. I don't even think that there's a lack of material; sure, they've used up a lot of the traditional avenues, but they've started doing commentary on current events more frequently, and doing parodies and musical episodes and all that jazz.

Maybe that's why I don't like the new episodes as much. They don't remind me of the old episodes. But I'm also not a purist; I like shows from later on in the run too. And some of the earliest episodes were pretty bad, let's face it.

It probably has a lot to do with the fact that it's been on for long enough that the evolution is noticeable. If a show is only on for a few years, unless there are radical changes made (and then those changes become shark-jumpings) the subtle differences which come with time are less noticeable than if a show is on for two decades. There are Simpsons fans who weren't alive when they first began broadcasting episodes, and many of those fans came to the show in later seasons rather than beginning at the beginning. When I started watching the Simpsons I didn't have a clue what episodes were in which seasons, so I still find myself enjoying newer episodes which a purist would write off as post-shark-jump.

Things change, and I don't really have a problem with that. This isn't really about the Simpsons; rock music has changed since I started listening to it, and popular music continues to change. And I like some of the new stuff, and some of it doesn't do anything for me, even though it's perfectly good music. And some changes are for the worse, regardless of how objective you want to be. So the fact that there are kids today who watch new episodes of the Simpsons every Sunday and think that the old episodes are fuddy-duddy is just life in microcosm.

But thinking about it rationally does make me feel old, and that's yet another reason why I prefer television shows that were canceled after four seasons or so. Sometimes things need to end, no matter how much we wish they wouldn't. And sometimes things are better off ending, even if they don't really need to. And deep philosophical meanings really ought to be kept out of discussions about the quality of recent Simpsons episodes.

Why Yell

The blog's been getting pretty heavy recently, so here's something lighter.

Chevelle, why do you have to yell? Actually, I guess this is mostly directed toward Chevelle's lead singer, whose name I don't remember. But nameless lead singer of Chevelle, why all the yelling?

I can understand why some singers yell. It makes them sound better. In fact, Zack de la Rocha should never do anything but yell. And the yelling of Korn's lead singer Dingly Dan (whatever) provides a nice counterpoint to his ordinary voice, although I've noticed that, of late, ol' Dan (whatever) seems to be more taken with sounding like Marilyn Manson's funkier brother. In short, there are many bands whose singers profit from yelling.

But Chevelle, you are not one of them. Your harmonies are so appealingly dark, and the tortured angst in your tone is so wonderfully low-key, that any yelling simply turns you into Yet Another Whiny Band (YAWB). And there are too many YAWBs out there already. So why do it?

Do you think that it makes the music more intense? It doesn't. It just makes it look like you couldn't keep your cool. In arguments, or when you're trying to impress someone else with your intensity, yelling just makes you look lazy, like your content doesn't have the punch, so your decibels need to take up the slack. You're better than that, Chevelle.

This message needs to be carried to other bands that yell needlessly. And there's a big difference between yelling and screaming. I'm in favor of a good scream, one which makes it seem like your entire soul has just violently exited your body by way of your voice box. But some people just shouldn't yell, especially if they can sing normally pretty well.

On the other hand, if you're Fred Durst, I think yelling is all you've got, bro, so you might just want to stick to that rather than doing terrible covers of good songs. In fact, Fred, just stop singing altogether.

Hate Crime Laws

I have been anti-Hate-Crime-Laws since long before various Christian Fundamentalist organizations started up their crusade, and I'll state that at the outset. I am also not ashamed of my stance, politically correct, politically incorrect, or other. But I don't want people to think that I'm against Hate Crime Laws because I want to beat up minorities.

The criticism often leveled at at Hate Crime Laws is that they are entirely based on motive, which shouldn't have anything to do with sentencing. Sadly, this is completely bogus. Motive is one of the most important parts of sentencing, whether it be for hate crimes or for straight-up garden-variety murder. It shouldn't play a part in guilt or innocence: wishing that a person was dead is not the same thing as killing that person. But it often does: wishing a person was dead is probably not something a defendant would like to come out in a trial where that defendant is accused of murdering said person.

At the end of the day, I'm against Hate Crime Laws because I feel that they use motivation in an inappropriate way, a way which is unconstitutional (if you don't live in the US, feel free to disregard everything I say on the subject, because I don't know enough about everyone else's can of worms to open it). I am also, for the record, against the division of murder into First, Second, and etc. degrees. I am not against judging that accidental death is a different crime from willful death. Nor am I against making divisions as an aid to sentencing for judges and juries, as long as said divisions respect mandated maximum sentences for the crime considered.

What the hell do I mean? Well, at the moment motive is used in one of several ways. It can be used to determine with which crime a criminal (well, not technically a criminal, but rather a defendant) is charged. The difference between First Degree Murder (which, by the way, is not universal between states, nor do all states have such a division) and Second Degree Murder is usually motive-based (although not always, and this is another problem with the system: it's not very hard and fast). Likewise, some states explicitly charge the accused with Hate Crimes based on the prosecutor's take on the defendant's motive.

Secondly, sometimes motivation is used purely in sentencing. The accused is charged with murder, found guilty, and then whatever sentencing process is used is informed by the criminal's motivation. There can be guidelines for this. The only problem I have with this system when used exactly as stated above is that it too isn't hard and fast.

The system often isn't exactly as described, and in many cases Hate Crime Laws allow a completely untried offense, that of Hate Crime, to be added to the sentence by the sentencing body or official. This means that a murderer can be found guilty of murder without motivation ever being considered in the trial, and the prosecution can then present evidence to the judge showing that the crime was also a Hate Crime. The judge can then add additional time to the sentence, even to the point where the sentence exceeds the mandated maximum. This isn't fair at all and should be stopped.

Our justice system is based on complicated systems, and to enumerate the exact reasons I have problems with Hate Crime Laws would take forever. Also, each state, and probably each judicial district, is slightly different because of the aforementioned complicated systems. But rather than say that motivation shouldn't be a factor in the criminal proceedings, I would just like to say that it should not be the deciding factor in guilt or innocence, which Hate Crime Laws threaten to make it.

A criminal is guilty or innocent based on their actions. They may be more culpable because of their motives, but whether they actually committed the crime should be important in reasonable doubt. They don't ask the jury to decide whether they think a criminal could have done it, or whether they think the criminal wanted to do it. They are asked to decide if they think, beyond reasonable doubt, that the criminal did it.

Unfortunately, criminal law isn't simple, hard, or fast. And me being against something on hard and fast grounds probably isn't going to change anything. After all, they don't pay lawyers (well, some lawyers) the big bucks for their fashion sense.

Equal Rights and Justice

I think we should strive for equal rights, and that is an extremely safe position to take. You won't find too many people saying that we should steer clear of equality for all. There are certainly enough people who say it to cause people to be worried (or it should cause people to be worried anyway), and there are definitely enough people who don't really believe it to make me worry, and without a doubt the number of people who actually strive versus the number of people who say we should strive is a small enough fraction to cause concern. But I'll say it, and I hope that, if a time comes when I can prove that I'm not just saying, "Equal rights, rah rah!" I will prove it.

The problem is that many people seem to believe that the best way to ensure equality is to remove privilege. In other words, if you want to ensure that everyone has equal voting rights, make it so that no one can vote. It's equal, right? Zero is equal to zero. And it works; if no one has rights, then everyone is equal. So in order to elevate the downtrodden, some people seem to feel that it's easier to simply lower the heights to a more scalable loftiness. It's usually cheaper, sometimes simpler, and it makes the downtrodden get a feeling of, "Yeah, we got those elite bastards good, didn't we?"

Usually, that's the way communist countries start out. Instead of trying to improve the lot of the peasant, they knock the aristocrat out of the equation completely and then everyone lives like peasants. Burma, or Myanmar, or whoever they are now, appears to be taking this route, and taking it hard. But there are usually a few people who still get to be higher, the "more equal than the rest" crowd. And they see to it that everyone else stays equal to zero, or maybe even slips into negative numbers. Liberation through work, as it were. Funny, that slogan sounds oddly familiar.

Liberation and equality should be elevations. They should not have to result from the other guy getting taken down a peg. Freedom and rights are things the oppressed need to win, not things that the oppressors need to lose. Equal rights and justice is not just a Bob Marley song. Equality without justice means that everyone is equally screwed. And equality at zero is not something to shoot for.

A Metaphor

I drive by cow pastures a lot on my way to various places and I've noticed something about cows. Some of them strain to reach the grass outside the fence even when the grass that's easier to reach is perfectly okay, at least from my point of view. I don't eat grass and I'm not a cow, so I don't know for certain. But since other cows don't strain to reach the outside grass, the grass they can easily reach can't be that bad.

It's a lot like people, actually, so i wonder if it's an eternal truth. I know they say the grass is always greener on the other side, but it's not just that. Some people try really hard to get at the greener grass even though they're only able to nibble at the verges, but some people seem perfectly happy to eat the local grass. Not everyone wants what they can't have, and of the people who want it, not everyone tries for what they can't have.

We need both kinds of people, and both kinds are annoying at times. The people who eat the easy grass even though it's covered in cow crap will always be happy with grass as long as it's there. The people who strain to reach the two inches of grass outside the fence ignore the masses of perfectly good grass which is theirs for the taking. Without people to use up the resources we already have and take for granted, we would probably not get the best bang for our buck, but without people to try to reach other pastures, we'd never... well, we'd never get grass that didn't have cow crap on it.

It's not much of a metaphor, since there are cows which will cheerfully lean through fences and then walk out to find more grass. Sometimes even the cows who are happy to stay behind and chew cud most of the time are enticed into going out of the pasture through the hole in the fence. All the cows wind up somewhere they shouldn't be, and the best thing that can happen is that they don't do too much damage before the farmer realizes it.

Humans don't have a farmer to see that the fence is broken, and a lot of times that gets us into trouble. But sometimes our pasture was too small anyway. And many of us are smarter than cows.

The Price of Eggs

What, exactly, does a politician's private life have to do with their fitness to govern? We've come a long way from the days of the Divine Right of kings and all that garbage. I say all that garbage because usually the Divine Right meant that kings could do pretty much whatever they wanted, rather than the mandate of heaven being only passed to those who were worthy, morally speaking. I digress.

We live in an age of bureaucracy, not an age of fiat. If someone is good at making laws, who cares whether he or she is slightly imperfect from a moral standpoint? I know I'm not perfect, and I want representation. And I'm pretty sure that even people seen as "moral" aren't perfect; in fact, believing yourself to be perfect is immoral, at least where I come from. Maybe it's different elsewhere.

Lawmakers should not, however, be above the law. If there's a law saying that you can't smoke crack with a prostitute, then being caught doing that is not a question of immorality; it's a question of illegality. If you were elected as an anti-drug candidate and you are caught doing drugs, the voters might rightly believe that you were not going to be an effective legislator against drugs, but the bigger issue would be whether or not doing drugs was illegal (chances are, yes).

The BBC had a very interesting article about European politics which made some points on the subject, to be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6450823.stm. The central points, for those of you who are too lazy to look at the article (I know I frequently am, which is why I try not to post too many links), or if the article has been altered or removed (see previous discussions about this), are:

...[A staffer of an embattled politician] could not see why politicians - technical experts at designing the best possible laws - should have to behave in a certain moral fashion before any such law is introduced.

[He] claims this is a line through Europe, much more wobbly and patchy but just as real as the olive oil / butter line. It is the political line between Catholic and Protestant Europe. He thinks it is very Protestant to expect politicians to be secular saints who lead by example.

According to this theory, most Catholic nations accept flawed human nature for what it is and know that preachers may stumble in practice without affecting the truth of their doctrine, or indeed the wisdom of their laws.

But regardless of your religious feeling, you should realize (the operative word being should, as you probably won't) that the laws one supports are significantly more important that one's private life, as far as deciding fitness to govern. I personally don't believe that governments should legislate morality anyway, so all I'm looking for in representation is a person or people who will support laws that I support. What they do in their private time isn't terribly important. But I do support the tabloids' right to blow any impropriety out of proportion, because why have a government if it's not funny sometimes?

That's a Big 10-4

If you pick a speed to drive when you set out on your journey and you continue to drive at or about that speed regardless of surrounding conditions, you are probably an asshole. Sorry to break it to you, but there's a fair chance. More than a fair chance, actually. An extremely good chance, in fact.

The good Lord, or rather the good government, gives us speed limits for a reason, and even if you choose not to follow them, as many people seem not to, the speeds can be relatively right. If you drive 60 in a 40, then when the speed limit drops to 25 you should slow down too, maybe to 45, but at least slower than you did in a 50 m.p.h. zone.

And yet some people seem to think that speed limits were designed for the edification of other drivers; i.e. what speed you ought to be driving if you aren't special, like me. And what's worse, the assholes in question usually pick a speed which is just too fast for residential areas, but much too slow for anywhere else, like 32 m.p.h. I'd just like to know how they pick it each day; is it a per trip calculation, do you roll dice; what's up?

I guess the worst part is that many of these assholes are elderly people, which makes my complaints seem like I'm being bigoted against old people, which I'm not. But I kind of am, too. Because if you can't drive at least sort of normally, you shouldn't be allowed to drive, whether you're old, young, or indifferent.

However, if you're from Massachusetts, where the traffic law dictates a speed limit change every three feet, you have my pity. But I wish you'd just pull over and get out of my way.

Grok the Vote

Now I feel terrible for using this title. Ech!

That aside, here is my solution to voting machine irregularities. As a non-trusting digital citizen, I don't want to place my life in the hands of machines. I don't trust them. I don't trust humans either, so it's really a toss-up as to whom I trust less.

The problem with most current computerized voting machines is that they don't leave any paper record. The problem with most current non-computerized voting machines is that they are hard to understand and hard to count because they have to be fed into some kind of tabulation machine. Let's address the second problem first.

For the record, after the 2000 election I was in a human interface design class (fancy word for usability class) and we looked at the "Butterfly ballot." It's poorly designed, really poorly, in fact, but there's more than that. It's a poorly designed example of a poorly designed system, because I've voted using ballots of the type in question with no problem, but the Florida ballot was really difficult to understand. If I, who knew what to expect, had difficulty with it, I can only imagine what people who were less savvy to the process might have thought.

Why the hell not design a good system? I don't know. Probably money. So the first problem is easily solvable: design a good system, using good design principles.

Ha ha. Okay, got you. If you think that designing a good system is easy, then no offense, but you need to look around at the Internet. Find a design company, a web design company even, look at their web site, and tell me all the ways it violates rules of good design and usability. I'll wait.

While the foolish are doing that, let's look at the second problem, counting manual ballots. Hanging chads should convince us of this problem too. So why not use computers?

Well, then there's the third problem: computer voting machines suck. The solution: use them like non-computerized voting machines. The computer helps the user vote. It prints out a copy of the vote, which the voter then takes over to the ballot box just like a non-computerized vote. Rinse. Repeat if you live in Chicago.

How will this solve the problem, you ask? Well, provided the design of the voting system is usable (the people who believed that would be an easy task have all either committed suicide or they're still looking), even marginally better than existing systems, it can help the user vote. It can then either simplify matters by counting the vote itself or leave that up to a tabulating computer somewhere else (probably a better solution, since it's easier to tamper with a computer in place, especially if it has to be hooked up to the network, than a central computer). But since the computer prints the vote, it can print both a human-readable representation and then a little bar code at the bottom for the big tabulation computer back at the base.

So we get the best of both worlds. We have computer standardization to keep hanging chads from fouling up the count, we have a (hopefully) slightly more easy to use system for confused voters, and we have a paper trail which will be easier to recount anyway because, like we said earlier in the sentence, no hanging chads.

I know I have problems trusting the vote. But we don't live in Zimbabwe, so I trust it enough to vote. And this system would not require me to trust it any more than I already do. It's the ideal system because it combines the positives of several systems which already work acceptably well.

And this (and money), children, is why it will never be implemented. There will never be any standard of voting. Sometimes I curse our Federal system.

Horrible

They don't make good horror movies anymore. I'm pretty sure I know why this is, too. Because we can show the monster now.

I'm not saying that all old horror movies were good. Far from it; many old horror movies are terrible. I don't buy into camp value for horror, anyway. Horror isn't supposed to be campy.

Let me define terms for a moment. A horror movie is one which is intended to be scary, but not viscerally scary. It is supposed to horrify, not simply disgust or titillate or whatever surface emotions they seem bent on scaring up these days. Horror might have some elements which scare, but it's not just about shock, or fright; people should be afraid of the monster throughout the movie, not just in the moments when it might jump out and offer a cheap thrill.

Most so-called horror movies these days are either gory or surprising or a combination of the two. That's fine, as far as it goes. I won't say that I don't get scared at movies any more; the most disturbing movie I've ever seen was disturbing because it was both gory and surprising. It wasn't a very good movie, and I'm in no hurry to see it again, but it did its job and made me afraid. Horror, however, is not "afraid." It is horrible, horrifying, all of that kind of thing.

And now, my thesis: just because we can see a scary monster doesn't necessarily mean we should. The most horrible monsters I've seen on screen were the most normal-looking, because it reminds us both that the everyday can be terrifying in the right context (or perhaps the wrong context, if you're the victim of it) and it makes us look at our surroundings, normal though they might be, and wonder just what is lurking beneath the surface.

Not seeing the monster, or seeing the monster and not realizing it's a monster, is much less viscerally scary, but it can be horrifying. Zombies stumbling around looking for brains can be scary; a demon that inhabits the bodies of your friends is horrifying. The supernatural doesn't have to look unnatural; it's above reality, not separate from it.

Watch Fallen and tell me that John Goodman doesn't kick ass. That's it.

Rendering Judgement

I write article stubs because sometimes I have ideas and don't have time to write about them. When I looked at the title of this particular piece, I thought, "Hmm, a discussion of the merits of OpenGL vs. DirectX?" If you get that joke, which is actually the truth, you are as big a nerd as I am. If you are preparing for such a discussion with gusto, perhaps even wanting to write in your thoughts, you are a bigger nerd than I am, because I couldn't begin to have a discussion on that topic. Don't try to have one in my absence either, because I am not really all that interested in that topic. But I did think it for a second or two.

Then I read the sentence I put down, which said, "Judging things based on artistic merit is really hard." I was tempted to just leave it at that, because it's the truth, and anything I might say would just be embellishment. But embellish I will, even though whatever I say will inevitably be judged on the basis of artistic merit rather than truth, since I said this at the beginning.

I've participated in and judged contests, everything from playwriting to pie-eating, and I've come to the conclusion that things which are artistic are really tough to rank according to quality. Sure, one can probably separate the good from the bad (and then others will disagree, which is a whole different problem in the judging business) but once it comes to the good, how do you say which is best? Usually the snap judgement says one thing, whereas a more reasoned approach says another, and if you read something often enough (or see, or hear, or whatever) chances are good that it will decrease in estimation just by virtue of being overplayed.

I'm not the only one who has this problem; look at the Olympics for example. They just cannot get ice skating right, and I don't blame them, because it's not the judges' fault, it's the fact that ice skating is more artistic than strictly sportive. When there's a debate about who is fastest, you can race to settle it. Who can jump farthest? Jump and we'll tell you. Sure, you can debate about the rules, but at the end of the day, under a certain set of rules, one contestant will be better.

I know there are rules to govern the judging of art, but they're not hard and fast, or if they are they can't be the only deciding factor. Usually you justify a qualitative decision based on quantitative rules, rather than making a quantitative decision in the first place. It's not easy, and no one agrees, and that's not a good thing.

At the end of the day, as a judge, you just have to listen to your gut, unless there's an obvious winner, which there seldom is. And you have to listen to your fellow judges, but your gut should get a say. It's not a democracy, it's a consensus, which means that everyone has to at least agree that the decision is fair, even if they don't agree with the decision itself. And then you have to stand behind it.

So yeah, judging things based on artistic merit is very hard. I should have left it alone.

The Meaning of Life

Why do people ask, "What is the meaning of life?" That's always the deep question that everyone wants answered. Well I'm here to tell you that it's a crock. There is no answer to that question because it's a dumb question to ask.

Why, you ask me? Well, for starters, the meaning of life is, well, life. It's one of those irreducible problems; if you try to take it apart, it doesn't mean the same thing. It's a complex phenomenon, to throw out a nice buzz word. Chunks of life aren't meaningful without the context, and the context is the rest of life.

The question, I know, is shorthand for various questions people want to ask but don't feel like phrasing. "What is the purpose of life?" is a good one. "What should I be doing with my own life?" is a slightly more personal question. But both of those, and the others I can't be bothered to write down, are asking a definite question: what are we supposed to do? It's a good question; sometimes I myself wish someone would answer that question for me. Many people hear answers to that question which probably aren't right. Many others spend their entire lives searching for the right answer. It's definitely not an easy question to answer.

But it isn't, "What is the meaning of life?" Our purpose doesn't have anything to do with life's meaning. That's probably what most people want to ask when they ask, "What is life's meaning?" but they should ask the right question. It's like asking, "What is the meaning of a stone?" Stones are. They may have purpose. But they don't really mean anything, unless they're in a work of art or the only meaning you're looking for in a stone is: stone.

We seek understanding; we're curious. But life's meaning is not just something we can't understand because we're too stupid. It's something we already do understand: life. The meaning of life doesn't imply direction (that's purpose). Nor does it demand comprehension. It's just life.

Philosophers, start your engines.

March Ahoy

Well, after a few fits and starts, mostly mine, March is well and truly upon us. It's a so-so month, enthusiastically speaking. Sometimes we get winter through March, but usually (and by saying this I'm dooming us to something completely different) March just slides by in the mud. Not that I'm complaining, because I live on a hill and if I didn't, I'd probably get washed away.

I'm not completely sure why March would be named after Mars, Roman god of war. It might be celestial. All I can say is that March is a lousy time to make war. It's not fun to march through mud either. Perhaps it's more a reference to the onerous march of time, slogging through this muddy month on its way to somewhere more pleasant.

If Julius Caesar had listened to the soothsayer, we would all be much more comfortable with the Ides of March. As it is, I'm not sure that anyone really knows when the Ides are. I know I don't without looking it up. It's not something we tend to celebrate, largely, I suppose, because the Christians didn't co-opt it to be their own festival. Maybe St. Patrick's Day is really the Ides of March. I doubt it, since as I recall the Ides are on the 15th. But what with the Gregorian/Julian switch and the new Gregorian switch later on, it's hard to tell.

It isn't spring yet, and I'll tell you why: I haven't purchased a bag of sunflower seeds for my car yet. When the weather gets warm enough to drive around with the windows rolled down I like to amuse myself by eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells out the window as I drive. That, to me, is the end of winter (and, I suppose, the uglier parts of spring, since I can't drive around with the windows down when it's raining).

I'm Not Saying

I haven't been alive since the dawn of the political age; in fact, I'm not even sure when the dawn of the political age would be on a time-line. There have probably always been politicians, at least as long as humans have existed. Certainly, they've been smaller in scale, and possibly less-well received, but they've probably been there. Since, as I mentioned, I wasn't there to see them, I can't speak to the vast universe of history. But politicians these days don't say anything.

I don't mean they never speak. That would be a blissful wonderland of silence. I mean that they never actually say anything, or very little. Listen to a politician answering questions some time. See how many they actually answer. Of those questions, see how many were important, say-something questions, and how many were obvious. How many were unavoidable? If the world explodes tomorrow, not answering a question about it would be hard, but it could still be done, and I bet the politicians would do it.

As I said at the start, I don't know whether this is a growing trend or simply something that politicians have always done. I'm not sure that it's not growing, possibly not from zero, but certainly becoming more and more common. Why? Because there are so many more people listening. Pretty soon, politicians will be in the public eye 24/7/365. This increased scrutiny, via the Internet and bloggers and good old-fashioned television, has some good points. It keeps them honest. But it also has at least one bad point: it keeps them from saying anything that could be interpreted as a decision. We are penalizing politicians for making any kind of statement of decision or purpose.

This isn't to say that politicians don't make gaffes. They do all the time. But look at what people jump on these days. It's not statements of policy. It's stupid, picayune stuff. The whole spectrum of political thought is guilty of this; we criticize politicians for speaking off-the-cuff, so their handlers restrict them more and more. You almost never get to hear a statement of purpose from a politician; the good ones can weasel out of a true/false question.

I don't think that means greater openness. I think it punishes honesty and integrity. I have more respect for someone who can state their mind and be wrong than for someone who never speaks at all. And the truly depressing thing is that we don't go after people who actually do lie or have improper opinions because we're too busy focusing on what a politician was saying between the lines. We have pundit after pundit interpret politicians, which distorts what little they do say. If politicians actually spoke candidly, not small talk but on issues that people care about, if they answered questions forthrightly, they would still be distorted because of our addiction to pundits. So the circle is unbroken and no one says anything.

Twilight Savings Time

So they've moved Daylight Savings Time back because it will save energy. This is, of course, relying on the premise that the biggest consumers of energy are electric light bulbs. I would be willing to bet that heating and electronic appliances probably burn a lot more energy, but I'm not in the government and I don't know. I didn't say, "so I don't know," back there because I'm not sure that the two follow logically. In fact, I'm pretty sure that people who pass these laws don't know.

I have yet to receive an adequate explanation for Daylight Savings Time. I'll be honest; I don't give a damn whether it happens three weeks early or a month late. It's a hassle regardless.

I know why we have time zones; the railroads. But they aren't responsible for Daylight Savings Time. I've heard that it's for farmers, but what the hell do I care about farmers. Why can't they get up earlier to milk the cows? Why can't they go to bed later to take advantage of all that wonderful natural light? I don't know; I'm not a farmer.

I suspect that Daylight Savings Time is simply another cog in the, "everyone gets up early," machine, like the lack of flex time and horrible commutes. I hate to inform the world, but I don't do my best work at 7AM. Sorry, world, it's just true. And I'd be willing to bet that there are a lot of other people just like me. But think about it: why does time jump forward for half a year, rather than jumping back? I don't have the answer, and I'll bet no one else does either. It's become tradition, carved in stone. But maybe it's because it makes us go to bed and wake up an hour earlier. There's no Twilight Savings Time.

The argument about saving energy reminds me of another funny law which was proposed (no, I won't give a citation, because I don't remember where I read about it, but it's true and I'm sure you could look it up) to eliminate the months of January and February. The theory was that if January and February were the coldest months of the year, turning them into part of July and August would make people, psychologically, feel warmer, and they would turn down the heat.

Hey, it makes as much sense as Daylight Savings Time, which for the record was not named "Savings" because it would save energy.

What Happened to Debate?

It's a pretty obvious point, but what the heck happened to our ability to think for ourselves? Last time I checked, membership in a political party simply meant that you'd checked a box on a form, not that you'd signed your brain away. I don't know; it's been a while since I registered to vote, and I've never run for office, so maybe things are different.

Just what makes it the right thing to do to march in lock step. The fact that our country (okay, my country for those of us outside it) has only two (major) political parties is supposed to simply simulate the various coalition governments that multiparty systems have, and make them simpler. It is not supposed to represent two (and only two) diametrically opposed points of view to be held at all costs because, "Many stones can form an arch; singly none."

Sure solidarity can be great. Sometimes we all need to pull together. But diametrically opposed solidarity does not accurately represent the majority of opinion. We become so focused on scoring political points and maintaining power that we pay no attention to what the vast majority actually thinks, because they aren't noisy about it. And the major reason they aren't noisy is because they buy into the fallacy that dissent in the ranks will lead to our side (whichever side that may be) losing, and while you may not always agree with our side, at least we're not their side.

No one is willing to give, largely because it's a national game of chicken, and he who blinks loses. I suppose it is a credit to people who genuinely believe in their points of view that they are willing to suffer the end of a null-game of chicken (being run over by the train) to keep the other point of view from winning.

But what happened to compromise? To debate which sought not to win at any cost but to find the best way forward? Why can't we talk about things civilly? Think of all the dinner conversations which we can no longer safely have because those topics have become political. What's so political about doing the right thing?

Signs Point to Yes

If you drive a flashy red sports car, there's a fair chance that you are an asshole. I'm using the coarse term because, let's be frank, that's what you are. There's no real reason to drive a flashy red sports car, unless you like talking to police officers. They're more likely to pull you over, you know? You did? Then why the hell do you drive that flashy red sports car?

If you drive that car and you violate basic traffic laws, you are definitely an asshole. There is no maybe this time. You are an asshole if you drive that flashy red sports car too fast and pass people on the right while swerving around them at breakneck speed. If you don't stop at stop signs with your flashy red sports car, you are definitely on the list. What list? The list of people who are assholes.

Where do you have to go, anyway? I mean, I'm not always the staunchest follower of traffic regulations, but, and this is the kicker, I don't drive a flashy red sports car. You do. Are you in a hurry to get to the hospital where you're planning to read to children with cancer? Well, you should have taken a different car, because you're still an asshole. Most likely, though, you're in a hurry because you're an asshole, and you're always in a hurry. Slow down, asshole!

And the worst thing about this is that you are probably proud of your flashy red sports car. You're not always a man, so I won't say it's just penis envy. You might be a woman with a flashy red sports car, and you probably picked the color to go with your nails. Why? Because you're an asshole.

I make this pronouncement not because someone in a flashy red sports car did something bad to me, but because it's just obvious. I promise, I will not swear as much next time. Probably.