perfidy

From Stars and Stripes:

From rubble to avenging angel: The U.S. Navy is using steel from the World Trade Center in a new ship, according to the Navy.

Ten tons of steel from the World Trade Center’s twin towers will be used in the construction of the USS New York, according to a Navy official.

The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock is slated to be commissioned in 2008.

Being a squishy peacenik socks-n-sandals sort I generally squirm at gestures that whiff of vengeance. Unfortunately there is twelve-million-square-foot hole in my mercy that is still, four years down the road, full of black rage and sorrow. The notion that some of the steel from the WTC has made its way into a fighting vessel called the USS New York makes me feel... good.

It also nearly makes up for the failure of the designers of the new buildings to go with my preferred plan.

[wik] h/t Blackfive.

Minister Geeklethal cued me in to an interesting article from the English-language Arab News, "The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily." In this opinion piece, the editor holds forth on the proper mindset for beating your wife.

The beating which is only prescribed in the case of disobedient wives is intended to serve as a remedy in an unusual situation. If the husband feels the wife is behaving in a disobedient and rebellious manner, he is required to rectify her attitude — first by kind words, then gentle persuasion and reasoning. Beating as a last resort must never be understood to entail using a stick or any other instrument that would cause pain or injury.

A rebellious woman who is not moved by kind works, persuasion and admonition is a woman of no feeling and must therefore be punished by beating. Psychiatrists tell us of people, including women, for whom a cure lies in beating.

The controversy over the beating of disloyal and rebellious women is part of the campaign against Islam. If beating disobedient wives was advocated by Western scientists, it would have been widely supported by the same people who criticize Islam and special centers would have been set up all over the world to train husbands on how to beat their wives.

Our scholars should focus on explaining to people, especially the young, the real teachings of Islam in order to avoid causing uncertainty and confusion.

It is good that the interpreters of the religion of peace realize that there are two kinds of beatings, and forbid at least one of them to husbands. Instructional beatings at least have the saving grace of providing instruction - whereas run-of-the-mill, smack the bitch for shits and giggles beatings just leave bruises.

Back in Ohio, we would occasionally run across people who clearly "need beating." I now understand that what we were feeling there was a divine inspiration to administer instructional beatings. If only we had read the Koran, we would have been empowered to act on that nudging from the almighty rather than let cretins run around untutored.

It is good for my safety that I am a Christian, seeing as any attempt to deliver admonitory beatings to Mrs. Buckethead would result, not in her adopting a more humble and obedient posture, but in me getting a grade A tae kwon do ass whuppin'.

Further proof that my nonbelieving heathen ass is as contrary to the mainstream of American culture as can be. Beliefnet has an article, as is their wont, about the reasons people go to church and what they believe about people who don't, in the form of results of a Beliefnet/Newsweak poll. There are some very surprising conclusions, such as the revelation (pun!) that 79% of churchgoing Americans and 68% of Evangelical Protestants believe that all good people have a shot at heaven whether they belong to [the church of yr choice] or not. That's interesting... the Antinomian heresy is clearly alive and well. Among other things, this indicates that Anne Hutchison's exile to Rhode Island in 1637 was to absolutely no avail.

More than that it is a testament to the ability of Americans to tolerate others innately, even when they are instructed repeatedly not to on pain of hellfire & eternal whatever. I mean seriously... hell is a pretty central tenet of especially the Fundie folkways, and for all the rhetoric they sling on Sundays and at demonstrations, it seems the better angels of their natures prevail.

But the really interesting part of the survey is this:

Other results from the poll indicate that the appeal of religion is more spiritual than cultural. Thirty-nine percent said the main reason they practiced their religion is to “forge a personal relationship with God” while only 3% said it was to be part of a community. This would help explain why many people report having a regular prayer life but not attending church. Seventy-nine percent said they pray at least once a week compared to 45% who said they went to worship services during that time. In addition, 40% said they felt “most connected with God or the divine” when they were “praying alone or meditating” compared to 27% who said they had that sense when they were in a house of worship or praying with others.

The poll also showed a more basic point that may be obvious to Beliefnet readers but not others: spirituality is crucial to most Americans. 57% said spirituality was "very important" in their "daily life" and another 27% said it was somewhat important. Their behavior seems to back up this notion. 79% said they prayed at least once a week and 55% said they read a sacred text -- Bible, Koran, etc -- at least once a week.

Only three percent of Americans go to church primarily to feel part of a community. The li'l punchline to this is that my wife and I have kicked around the idea of joining a church for the sake of having a community for our as yet theoretical children to grow up within. If only the Unitarians weren't so darned uptight.... Moreover, I have as yet been unable to maintain a regular relationship with my own navel during meditation, much less any putatative sky fairy whom I've as yet been unable to raise on the great Cosmic Philco. Being on the wrong side of a 97% and a 79% majority means you could probably fit all the other people in this great country who think like me in one Winnebago. A small one.

Rather irritatingly, the Beliefnet/Newsweak poll also includes a teaser at the bottom of the first page: "How Many Of Us Believe in Intelligent Design?" On the second page it is revealed that "We Are All Intelligent Designers," which is explained with a data point to the effect that 80% of respondants believe God created the universe. I'm not sure those two statements are compatible, and indeed it is an annoying cop-out in an otherwise very interesting survey and poll.

Anyway, decent article. Apparently I'm a heathen freak.

Have you, as a mature and intelligent amateur pundit or consumer of said amateur punditry, ever said to yourself, "I wonder... where all the hoochies at?"

If so, you're in luck. Thanks to the magic of the Internets and the puckish wit of anonymous code-gnomes, we now have a mashup of new hotness Google Maps with old and busted fad hotornot.com that lets you locate all Hot or Not? submitters in and around your town. From the needy-looking coed who's "up for anything" to the barely legal teen who loves the "hott boyzz" to the scantily clad un-MILF who has "three kids" and wants "NO CASUAL SEX," there's something here for pathological loners and Megan's Law fugitives of all genders and persuasions.

Since this same territory is covered in every meaningful way by dating sites and webcam peepshows of all stripes, what is this for besides giving us an easy way to affirm our superiority? To paraphrase the immortal Dale Gribble from TV's "King of the Hill," Hot Or Not is already "the feces that is produced when shame eats too much stupidity!" This new mashup just makes it easier to identify the losers among us so they may be more easily excised from the margins of our social circles. Hopefully all these hott frontaz and skanky hoochies will find each other and sink together to the bottom of the gene pool.

This is Phase I. Phase II will involve radio tagging.

Is all this unnecessarily elitist of me? After all, these people are already *something* enough (lonely, vacuous, foolish, hapless) enough to end up on hotornot.com. Do I really need to add to the misery they probably (ought to) already feel by pointing an electronic finger and laughing?

You bet I do.

[wik] Link from gawker.

You have not lived until you have heard Motorhead's "Orgasmotron" covered by Yat-kha, a Siberian band fronted by a Tuvan Throat Singer. I don't know what's best... the Russian bouzouki-stylee backing track or the fact that suddenly Lemmy seems like a limpwristed whiny little pussy next to the sinister Satan's-lungs croak of Albert Kuvezin.

Listen here, and be sure not to miss the incredible cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart."

We now return you to your regular programming.

As I type this, NPR's All Things Considered has just finished delivering a story, entitled "A Dilemma Over Sheltering Sex Offenders".

All Things Considered, August 19, 2005 · Public concern over sex offenders has led Florida to open its 59 prisons as hurricane shelters and require registered sex offenders on probation to report there if they don't have anywhere else to go. Registered sex offenders can't go to a public shelter because their probation bars them from being around children. Some sex offenders on probation say the requirement is being punished twice for their crime. Judith Smelser of member station WMFE reports.

Now, I consider myself to be of at least average intelligence, and I try very hard not to read too much into the presentation of any given news story, whether from NPR, Fox, or any of the other standard media outlets. This makes it possible for me to enjoy them all, at various times.

But if any reader could be so kind to give the story a listen, via the "Listen" button at the link above, I'd appreciate an opinion on the thrust of the story. Net: Sex offenders on probation or under state supervision aren't allowed to go to hurricane shelters in Florida, and instead, if they live in an area that's been forcibly evacuated and they have no safe place to go, they have to present themselves to their neighborhood prison, where they're treated like guests rather than prisoners. They have to wear name tags, they can't smoke, and if they leave and go somewhere other than home, they're at risk of violating probation/parole, but they're provided safe refuge.

Here's the thing - I'd swear NPR was trying to make me feel sorry for the sex offenders, and I'd like to hear someone tell me I'm just imagining this.

I recognize that there is a class of registered sex offenders who don't fit into the standard mold, such as 19 year olds with 17 year old partners, rather than, say, a Boston Diocese priest in recent memory. We're talking two completely different "transgression levels", in other words, and I haven't a clue what transgression got the two fellows who spoke their minds in the NPR story onto the list of registered offenders.

However, in order to wring a tear from me after hearing this story, if applied to some disgusting pervert who just wants to be treated like he's not a disgusting pervert because, you know, he's done his time and all that, it would take a ball peen hammer to the grapes.

Most Americans are unaware of how, exactly, their government works. At best, most of our citizenry has a hazy conception of the actual operation of Congress based in large part on vague recollections of schoolhouse rock’s “I’m just a bill.” This is a good and bad thing.

On the one hand, it is bad because liberty in a republic depends on the wise and considered participation of an informed citizenry. Warmed over and fuzzy memories from high school civics layered with factoids from USA Today and CNN do not an informed electorate make.

On the other hand, it is good, because if the good citizens of this nation actually understood, really knew, what goes on in, say, the stygian depths of the House Rules Committee room, they’d invite the British back to finish what they started in 1814. Leaving our fair capital a smoking wasteland would be infinitely preferable to facing the horrifying reality of dysfunction and corruption at the heart of our system.

On a related but tangential track, there’s Sam Cohen. You’ve likely never heard of him, but he’s the dude who invented the atom bomb. The peacemongers and hippies all painted the neutron as an even eviler version of an irredeemably evil weapon. It was the ultimate capitalist bomb – a nefarious device that killed people while leaving their property intact. This is in stark contrast to the actual mindset that led to Cohen to invent the bomb and to declare for decades that it was the most moral weapon ever devised.

Cohen’s logic was that in war, people will use weapons. Weapons are designed to kill. So, it makes sense to design weapons that kill efficiently while doing as little else as possible. If a neutron bomb doesn’t kill you outright, you will live on with out appreciable aftereffects. The infrastructure that you need to survive after the war will be intact – not blasted apart or poisoned with radioactivity. The bomb doesn’t maim, it only kills. Cohen, from his position at RAND, lobbied for years for his concept, only to be rejected by five successive administrations and a military that wanted only bigger bombs, not more efficient ones.

Cohen’s story has some – interesting – accounts of the wrong-headedness of those in charge of our nuclear strategy. But they aren’t as far fetched as they might seem at first. Remember that the depiction of cold war strategic reasoning in Dr. Strangelove is barely exaggerated from the realities of game theory informed strategy used by RAND and the military up until the fall of the Soviet Union. (The takeover of grand strategy by the mathematicians starting with RAND in the late forties is responsible for much of the incredible weirdness of the Cold War, the counterintuitive reasoning, inflexible response postures and bloodthirsty retaliation schemes. Also, the fascination with throw-weight, CEP, megadeaths, and finely-wrought calculations of the effects of nuclear war.) And also that those responsible for setting policy had (with the possible exception of Eisenhower) none of the special aptitude or training one might think necessary for figuring out what to do with city-destroying weaponry.

Knowledge is good, as the Faber college motto tells us. But it doesn’t always make it easier to sleep at night.

[wik] A couple other interesting Cohen bits here and here.

A headline in today's Washington Post informs that Roberts Resisted Women's Rights. On reading the story, these horrific facts were made evident:

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called "the purported gender gap" and, at one point, questioning "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue -- of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of "comparable worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."

...

Covering a period from 1982 to 1986 -- during his tenure as associate counsel to Reagan -- the memos, letters and other writings show that Roberts endorsed a speech attacking "four decades of misguided" Supreme Court decisions on the role of religion in public life, urged the president to hold off saying AIDS could not be transmitted through casual contact until more research was done, and argued that promotions and firings in the workplace should be based entirely on merit, not affirmative action programs.

In October 1983, Roberts said that he favored the creation of a national identity card to prove American citizenship, even though the White House counsel's office was officially opposed to the idea. He wrote that such measures were needed in response to the "real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled immigration."

Now, as a side note, much of this wasn't news to me, as I'd already heard it during the breathless expose on NPR's All Things Considered, the night that 5,000 pages of records had been made available, and all the progressives ganged up looking for instances where Roberts had called someone a homo or some other such disqualifying action.

However, when put in context, like the WaPo did for me, uh, wait a minute. Even in context, the only thing I see there that's even worth a raised eyebrow is the silliness about AIDS transmission. I was around in the early 80s, but can't recall how institutionalized that sort of scientific ignorance was at the time, so I don't really take it all that seriously.

(If you don't already think me an intemperate red-neck, see the rest below the fold)

As for the rest, I read it a bit differently. Roberts didn't want to create women's rights out of whole cloth, and as one who remembers the idiocy that went under the name "comparable worth", he was utterly correct - it was staggeringly pernicious and anti-capitalist. Pernicious because it involved a whole bunch of folks, outside the free market, enforcing decisions about who got paid what, and anti-capitalist for the same reason.

And before anyone says "Hey, anti-capitalist is a good thing", I'd first say "Kiss my ass, Fidel, you ignorant socialist bastard, and keep doing so until you can find a single case where socialism actually worked", but after I'd calmed down, I'd further point out that "capitalist" isn't shorthand for some fat-ass sitting in the corner office smoking a cigar and repressing the working class, it's a concise description of simply allowing the free market to determine worth of various positions. Insisting that women not be paid less due to their lack of Y chromosome was and is an absolutely good thing. Insisting that there be a command economy, in which the Collective makes all wage decisions, would be an absolutely bad thing.

Roberts has suggested that promotions in the workplace should be based on merit rather than affirmative action programs, and this is somehow controversial? Only to ostriches and retards. As an example of why that is and what's wrong with continued over-emphasis on the race wars, particularly in the present day, consider the always-articulate thoughts of Dr. Walter E. Williams, and this excerpt:

When I think of the behavior of today's civil rights organizations, I often think of the March of Dimes. In 1938, President Roosevelt helped found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to fight polio, an epidemic that crippled thousands of Americans. The name March of Dimes was coined by Eddie Cantor in his fundraising effort asking every American to contribute a dime.

Since 1970, polio has been eradicated in the U.S., but the March of Dimes lives on, and they're asking for more than dimes. When they accomplish their mission, most organizations don't fold the tent; they simply change their agenda. The March of Dimes now raises money to fight against birth defects, premature birth and other infant health problems. We'd probably deem them stupid if they continued their battle against polio in America. Why? Because polio has been eradicated.

...

Like the March of Dimes' victory against polio in the U.S., civil rights organizations can claim victory as well. At one time, black Americans did not enjoy the same constitutional guarantees as other Americans. Now we do. Because the civil rights struggle is over and won doesn't mean that all problems have vanished within the black community. A 70 percent illegitimacy rate, 65 percent of black children raised in female-headed households, high crime rates and fraudulent education are devastating problems, but they're not civil rights problems. Furthermore, their solutions do not lie in civil rights strategies.

Civil rights organizations' expenditure of resources and continued focus on racial discrimination is just as intelligent as it would be for the March of Dimes to continue to expend resources fighting polio in the U.S. Like the March of Dimes, civil rights organizations should revise their agenda and take on the big, non-civil rights problems that make socioeconomic progress impossible for a large segment of the black community.

So there's that.

And the latter item, identity cards? Aside from the fact such cards already exist, even if only in the ineffective form of the Social Security number attached to every friggin' trail of American life, the Post talks about his aversion to illegal (otherwise known as "uncontrolled") immigration as though that's a bad thing. I'm all for immigration, done properly. But the apologists who'd pretend that illegal immigrants should just be allowed to stream over the borders are either intentionally deceptive or criminally naive. I'm now officially a minority in my home state of Texas (being a person of pallor), and there's a decent chance that I'll be in another minority soon, as a person actually legally authorized to be here.

That first part doesn't concern me, but the second concerns me greatly - in addition to the drain on resources, paid for by legal citizens but consumed by others, there's the bit about this becoming Mexico, which, well, if I wanted to live in an opportunity-bereft shithole, I could just move there myself. They don't have to bring it to me. And when they do bring it, I'd prefer that they at least bring it in the language of the land, a/k/a English. The fact that they don't is but one of the reasons for lack of assimilation, and the core reason which causes an otherwise mild-mannered and open-minded guy like me to wonder how long before I am a de-facto Mexican.

Don't get me wrong - Mexican-Americans are cool, but Mexicans who seek a better life, and do so by simply transplanting themselves here to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Braves are missing the point. What's right about America is the vast melting pot that it's been for the last couple hundred years. And what's wrong about Mexico is the ineptly governed, economically unbalanced, insular, congealed, undifferentiated mess that it's become over those same couple hundred years. No wonder they want out. But don't congeal our melting pot, is all I'm saying. Well, that and if you're coming, come legally, please?

So, back from my rant to my actual point - I'm supposed to be inclined against Roberts because he seems to have, at least 20 years ago, held a bunch of intelligent positions? Not bloody likely.

But then I've never been overtly progressive like that.

Oh, and regarding whether turning homemakers into lawyers is a good thing?

Roberts's comment about homemakers startled women across the ideological spectrum. Phyllis Schlafly, the president of the conservative Eagle Forum who entered law school when she was 51, said, "It kind of sounds like a smart alecky comment." She noted that Roberts was "a young bachelor and hadn't seen a whole lot of life at that point."

Schlafly said, "I knew Lyn Arey. She is a fine woman." But she added, "I don't think that disqualifies him. I think he got married to a feminist; he's learned a lot."

Lighten up Phyllis. A smart lady like you should be able to tell he was ranking on attorneys, not homemakers or women. See? Even right-wingers can get a periodic case of humor constipation.

There is a certain portion of the American population that is, on its best day, suspicious of higher education. Those folks regard their fellow, matriculated, citizens as arrogant; elitist; lacking in common sense, or, indeed, any knowledge of demonstrable utility; or with a variation of “too smart for their own good.”

A doctoral dissertation studying air guitar doesn't help.

Turning what is little more than a limited, if not limiting, sort of self expression into serious academic inquiry is precisely what the non-eggheads in this world complain about and what serious scholars laugh at. When I finished my master’s, I wasn’t so much proud as I was enormously relieved. Relieved that the pain would finally end, and that it would end because of my hard work and not a .38 to the temple.

Crap like air guitar dissertations are, frankly, an insult to anyone who sacrificed to produce graduate work.

Via Pejman, this glorious post. Excerpt:

THEME (By the Kronos Quartet with vocals by ABBA)
Just the good ol' boys
Filled with guilt and ennui
They're bored, racked with discord
Just hangin' by the fjord
Scarred emotionally

Masking their pain
The only way they know how
Just a bit more existentialist
Than their souls will allow

Just them good ol' boys
Wouldn't change if they could
Psychically crippled
Like two planks of Danish teak wood

Yee. Ha.

SCENE 1
Interior shot of a backwoods cabin in rural Georgia. The room is tastefully decorated with Bruno Mathsson lounge chairs, Eero Saarinen side tables, a rebel flag and moonshine still. An old bearded man lies on a vintage midcentury Alvar Aalto death bed.

NARRATOR (Gunnar Biörnstrand)
Just plumb about everybody in Hazzard County has a story to tell 'bout them Duke boys and their existential auto-didactism. This one starts back at the farm, where Bo 'n' Luke are about to find out that Uncle Jesse has a little surprise in store for 'em...

UNCLE JESSE (Max Von Sydow)
Bo, Luke. Come to my side, nephews.

(Cousins Bo and Luke, scions of Uncle Jesse's crumbling moonshine dynasty, enter.)

LUKE (Börje Ahlstedt)
What is it you want, Uncle?

(Bo and Luke exchange long, blank glance; a Hans Wegner clock ticks on a far wall)

UNCLE JESSE
Death.

BO (Ashton Kutcher)
Your despair has shaken our complacency. I shall bring your jug.

LUKE
It is the same Blomvo jug that Aunt Bessie long ago bought for you at Ikea... when you were young and happy.

UNCLE JESSE
Its design is elegant; yet, like life, it brings me no joy. I am compelled to smash it, like my own existence.

BO

But you must live, Uncle.

UNCLE JESSE
Why must I live? Life is a meaningless parade of pain, and loneliness, and revenuers.

(Bo and Luke stare; close-up of ticking clock)