Is this thing still here? I've neglected it for some time.

Anyway.

Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain has said before that he is definitely opposed to attempts to de-privatize the health care industry. McCain, ever a Republican, believes that the market will sort things out. As I have opined before, this position makes no sense: the "invisible hand" trope invented by Adam Smith works only when the interests of business and the interests of the public are congruous. In the case of health care, the market cannot sort things out by design. The health care customer wants the most health care he can get. The health care company wants to provide the least health care possible. Why? Because the less health care a company provides, the greater its profits, and in a capitalist economic system, profit maximization is the name of the game. Therefore, it is impossible for the market to solve the problem of health care.

Health care is one of those things that the market may do "efficiently" in the sense that it maximizes marginal benefit and minimizes marginal cost. But this efficiency is averaged out over the entire health care industry. On average, Americans have good health care. But on the individual level, things are rotten. 18 million Americans are un-insured, and millions more are under-insured, meaning they can go to the doctor for a routine visit, but if a catastrophe were to happen -- a family member needed a heart transplant, for example -- they would be unable to afford the expense and would have to let that family member die, or go into massive debt. Contrary to what Bush & Co. would have you believe, the number one reason Americans go into debt is not unrestrained spending on Faberge eggs; it's health care spending, necessitated by aa health care system that provides a level of service equal with a person's ability to pay. Can you pay $1,000 a month? Great! You get top-tier care. Can you pay $300 a month? You'll get middling-level care.

And, truthfully, the market is not sorting things out. The markets sloughs off onto the government -- as it always does -- those people who cannot afford its products. If you can't afford health care, then you are shuffled to Medicaid, where taxpayers foot the bill because insurance companies don't want to. This is typical of the private market, and a trait that is frequently overlooked by Republicans who trumpet the superiority of the market. The "this" is this: the private firm reaps for itself the benefits of private spending, but passes its losses onto the government. For all the trumpeting of free enterprise that Republicans make, they are unwilling to let the market deal with the losses as well as the profits. This is why they routinely vote for corporate welfare: tax breaks, exemptions to regulations, absorption of debt by taxpayers, monopolization. This is what the housing industry is receiving right now: taxpayers will end up absorbing the losses generated by a mortgage industry that knowingly fooled consumers and made a boatload of money unsustainably. This is what happened in 2005 when Congress voted to take over United Airlines' pension plan after United decided it could no longer afford to pay out pension benefits.

Is this not the definiton of a double standard? Private individuals are expected to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps, to be unflinchingly self-reliant, and not expect the government to save them when they fall. Yet, a corporation is allowed to reap the benefits of an unfair, unsustainable, and possibly illegal practice, and yet, when that practice breaks down and starts costing the corporation money, individual Americans -- many of whom had nothing to do with the corporation -- are expected to pick up the check. How does this make sense?

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July 4, 1776 was not the day America was founded. If anything, that honor belongs to Sept. 17, 1787, when the Constitution was introduced to the Constitutional Committee in Philadelphia. Or, perhaps it is Apr. 23, 1789, when George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the new United States of America. But July 4 is a red-letter date in American history only because the Declaration of Independence was introduced to the Second Continental Congress on that day.

The Declaration was authored by a committee consisting of Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Robert Livingston of New York, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. The document was authored mostly by Jefferson, with the rest of the committee making changes here and there. The Declaration contains references to God, but that by no means indicates that the official religion of the United States was intended to be Christianity; indeed, the Declaration is not even legally binding. At its heart, it is a persuasive essay that declares, in no uncertain terms, that the American colonies intend to separate from England, and then enumerates the reasons why.

The colonists were unhappy with their treatment by their king, George III. Though technically British citizens, American colonists saw themselves as different from their countrymen on the other side of the Atlantic. The sheer expanse of time and distance that separated London from New York was enough to create in Americans the sense that they were at once Englishmen, but also not Englishmen. Couple this with their sense that they were being treated as second-class citizens: they paid taxes to the crown, and yet had no voice in Parliament. When the king began to punish them for their actions – with legislation like the Townsend Acts (a tax on various manufactured goods), the Tea Act (a tax on tea), and the Quartering Act (a requirement that American colonists house British soldiers in their private homes, and the reason for our Third Amendment) – some of the colonists revolted. Southerners more than Northerners wanted to make peace with England (the former had more economic ties to the mother country due to its huge agricultural economy) and initially refused to support any resolution declaring independence from England.

This essay, though, is about a different George who only acts as though he were a king. Of course, his name is George W. Bush – George II – and he fancies himself the be-all and end-all of government. On this July 4, the day we celebrate our fracture from England, how true do Jefferson’s accusations of abuse of power ring when they are applied to the 21st century King George?

The Declaration begins with a statement that overturns everything an 18th-century Englishman would have believed about the nature of government: first, “that all men are created equal,” and that man, through God – or, more appropriately for Jefferson, et al., by virtue of his being a reasoning being – has inherent or “inalienable” rights. Rather than go with the top-down formulation that had characterized government in the West since the Middle Ages, Jefferson instead starts government at the bottom, with the people themselves. Taking a page from social contract theory, the Declaration posits that it is regular people – not deities or kings – who create governments, and create them for particular ends. If a government no longer fulfills the needs of the people who created it (and herein lies an implicit acknowledgment that even the so-called Divine Right of Kings was a human endeavor), then “it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government.”

None of this is particularly relevant to our analysis; however, it establishes that governments spring from the bottom up, and not the top down. As far as the Declaration of Independence is concerned, governments ought to be created to serve the people, not the other way around. This has been the basis of western political thought for over two hundred years.

And what of Jefferson’s laundry list of complaints? Here they are, in bullet point format:

1. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
2. He has forbidden his Governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, has utterly neglected to attend to them.
3. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
4. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
5. He had dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
6. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
7. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
8. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
9. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices. And the amount and payment of their salaries.
10. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out of their substance.

This isn’t even the entire list of complaints against King George III. And yet, the list is not unfamiliar. Regarding item 1, George W. Bush has refused to assent to laws. He has repeatedly claimed that his powers as commander in chief allow him to ignore limitations placed upon him by Congress, most notably in the field of warrantless wiretapping, although he has also ignored the law in his signing statements and in his refusal to permit White House officials to testify before Congress.

Bush passes laws that are convenient. Recall last year, when the FISA expansion was about to expire, Bush – who claimed that such an expansion was absolutely necessary for the security of the United States – refused to sign a temporary extension of the law so that Democrats would be forced to either give him the limitless powers he asked for, without expiration; or face his public relations wrath as he berated them for not wanting to keep America safe.

Thankfully, item 3 is not possible in this country. Although, Bush has refused to pass legislation that would benefit large numbers of people, most famously SCHIP, which would have expanded government-sponsored health care for low-income children. Bush would rather that they use the private insurance system, which he thinks does a much better job at keeping people healthy.

Item 4 is also not possible in this country, since Congress is required to meet. However, in the early days of the Bush administration, the Republican-controlled Congress prevented investigations into malfeasance and corruption from going forward. Bush was also initially vehemently against the establishment of a commission to investigate the September 11 attacks. And then there’s the establishment of Camp X-Ray, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which was placed there because the administration’s legal eagles believed it was outside the reach of U.S. law. The Supreme Court nixed that notion in 2005.

Item 5 is definitely not within President Bush’s power.

Item 6 is reminiscent of the clamor about Michael Mukasey. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, concerned about Mukasey’s evasive comments regarding torture, did not want to confirm him. Bush challeneged them, saying that Mukasey was his nominee, and if the Senate didn’t want to confirm him, then there would be no attorney general. The Democrats did not call his bluff, and Mukasey – who doesn’t think that waterboarding is torture – is now in charge of enforcing the laws of the United States.

Item 7 is familiar to anyone who has tried to gain “legal” access to this country as an immigrant, or even as a vacationer. Homeland Security requires fingerprinting of every tourist or temporary visa-holder who enters this country. They’re currently trying to pass legislation to require fingerprinting when people leave, as well. And, with the latter plan, the administration wants the airlines to pay for it.

To people who say, “Well, why don’t they just come here legally?” it is clear that those people have never tried to come here legally. Without any well-placed business connections (and, yes, it is mostly business or other money-making connections that get you into the fast-track), an immigrant can expect to wait at least ten years before becoming a U.S. citizen. It can take half that time to become a permanent resident. The system is so confusing and bureaucratic as to render it unusable – to say nothing of the increased cost: almost $1000, up from $325 a few years ago. It’s no wonder that people come across the border illegally.

Regarding item 8, see item 1. Bush selectively enforces the laws he wants to enforce. When Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton didn’t respond to their subpoenas to testify before Congress, Congress ordered the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to prosecute them for contempt. Bush, in turn, in his capacity as the chief executive, ordered the U.S. Attorney not to respond to the contempt request.

Item 9: refer to the U.S. attorney firing scandal. Yes, U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, but all evidence points to the attorneys being fired because they were not sufficiently enforcing the political machinations of the president, who has been in a state of “permanent campaign” since his inauguration in 2001.

And, finally, item 10: the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, warrantless wiretapping, the USA PATRIOT Act, the abuse of National Security Letters, and Orwellian projects like Total Information Awareness have eaten away at our right to privacy so much so that Americans no longer possess an expectation of privacy.

Here we are, 232 years after Jefferson penned the Declaration, and we are – where? In the same place! We face tyranny at the hands of a king named George, who believes that he alone has the power of the entire government at his fingertips. We face a government that seeks to erode the principle that governments serve the people. We face an executive who is uninhibited in his protestations that he is above the law. We face a system that, if it had its way, would be able to delve into the minds of all Americans and know what each one is thinking at any given time.

Jefferson’s best axiom is not contained in the Declaration, but around the inside of the rotunda in his monument in Washington, D.C. If I may be nostalgic, the first time I read this line as an eighth-grade student on a field trip, I felt inspiration tingle up my spine: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Whether you believe in God or not is immaterial: swear on whatever you want, but as Americans, each of us is obligated to declare our hostility against tyranny over one of the most important things that has ever appeared on planet Earth: the mind of man (and woman). The "inalienable rights" Jefferson wrote about are what keep that mind up and running; without them, there is no freedom of the mind, and thus no reason to exist.

This Independence Day, remember that an American’s political loyalty is to the Constitution – not the president, not the military, not a party. For it is that Constitution that keeps our worst dystopian fears from coming true and from rendering the words Jefferson wrote as nothing more than vacant poetry.

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By Richard D. Erlich

Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama is politically a Baby Boomer, and I'm among the throngs hoping the 2008 presidential election "turns the page" on the culture wars of the 1990s, which means getting beyond the Boomer clashes of the 1960s. Still, the underlying issues will remain, and a key one is good to think about around the Fourth of July: What is America?

From the ads on TV, you'd think we're just an economy, a conglomeration of consumers and hustlers. But we'll undoubtedly get an old-fashioned Fourth of July speech or two that remind us of the birth of the Great Experiment: the American Republic. That's one theory, and the one I like. But the Republic has competitors.

In a book in 1999, Patrick J. Buchanan argued that we're "A Republic, Not an Empire," so there's the imperial option, but that one is out of favor. For a while we won't be hearing about a benevolent American empire using our military to bring democracy and free-market civilization to Earth's lesser folk. Afghanistan, as a cynical observation has it, is where empires go to die, and Iraq and Afghanistan have exhausted for a long while any US fantasies of empire.

What competes with the Republic — in most Americans' vocabularies and subconscious minds, and as a subtext of conscious debate — is America as a nation.

I'm old enough to remember people for whom there was nothing subconscious or subtextual about it: people declaring America "a White Protestant Nation." We've progressed, and the "White" has mostly dropped out, and "Protestant" has been ambiguously expanded; so what you hear nowadays is "Christian nation" or sometimes "Judeo-Christian nation," or, most often, just "nation," with the listener free to supply any modifiers.

On the one side, then, there's the republic, perhaps "a secular revolutionary republic," in, if I recall correctly, Anthony Burgess's disapproving formulation.

Or we may be a nation: one people, with a shared history and descent, and maybe with one religion — or at least one monotheistic religious tradition.

How you usually see us has important implications.

To start with, a Christian nation includes just Christians and excludes a lot of American citizens, including Catholics if the nation is run by people who can say, as one of my students did, "I used to by Catholic, but now I'm a Christian."

A nation can have all sorts of governments, with the most "natural" one probably monarchy: nations are tribes "writ large," and tribes can be confederations of clans — and clans can be seen as big extended families. As the father is the natural head of the family, even so, the king is the natural head of the nation.

Trust me on this: I'm not old enough to have heard such arguments in church, but I've studied enough English history to have read the old homilies on obedience to rulers. Nowadays, most people would never make such arguments explicitly: we speak of ourselves as democrats, not mere republicans. Still, the old arguments for kingly prerogatives are implicit in arguments for unrestrained presidential power, or talking about the president as "commander-in-chief," even over civilians — reversing the theory of the president as chief executive but still a servant of the (capital "P") People.

A republic can have only one philosophy of government: republican, and you become a citizen of the American by loyalty to that doctrine. Implicitly or explicitly you agree to defend the Constitution of the United States, and, in theory, you're willing to risk your life for that Constitution and even put your children at risk, if need be, to defend it.

For the nation, you can pledge allegiance to the flag and throw in the Republic almost as an afterthought. And if the Constitution gets in the way of protecting the nation — most centrally its people and maybe its flag — then elements of the Constitution can go.

If America is the nation, national security and survival trumps all, and even national symbols become nearly sacred.

We're not going to get beyond this tension, and to some extent shouldn't. The republicans get the Glorious Fourth (of July) and get to wave the flag a bit on the Fourth and read the Declaration of Independence; the nationalists have the flag most other days, and patriotic songs and the possibility of celebrating the very neat holiday of a religious, family Thanksgiving.

But the tension is serious.

The question came up over printing the Pentagon Papers of how many Americans one might sacrifice for the First Amendment, and that question remains with protecting Americans against terrorism. I'm a republican, and I'm willing to put myself and other Americans at some risk to protect America: primarily the Constitution, the rights and liberties of Americans. So I'm a mild threat to the nation. And from a republican point of view, people willing to sacrifice key liberties for safety are among the "enemies foreign and domestic" against whom the Constitution must be protected.

We need "to turn the page"; but the political conflict will continue.

Richard D. Erlich is a professor emeritus in English at Miami University, Oxford, OH, currently living in Ventura County, California.

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By Richard D. Erlich

"Pronatalism" is a word we don't hear much any more, not for a generation or so, but it's an important word and needs to be recycled.

"Pronatalism" refers to social policies encouraging the production and successful raising of children. Often these policies have included conscious policies on population; maybe more often, pronatalism has been incorporated into religious beliefs and from there into law and custom.

It doesn't matter much where pronatalist practices come from. "Cultural evolution" is more than a figure of speech: customs that function to help cultures survive will tend to be retained the way useful genetic traits are retained — and pronatalism, by its nature, has been useful for survival.

Until recently. Until humankind's population went into the billions, and the unchecked reproduction of humans became a threat to human species-survival. Until some cultures became somewhat democratic and individualistic, and the press of population put stresses on democratic principles and individuality. It has always been difficult to argue that any individual human is special; the argument becomes almost impossible when there are over six billion other human individuals. "Freedom" has been defined informally as the right to swing your arms until you endanger someone else's nose; some place along the line, population density gets to where there's little room for figurative arm swinging.

Alternatively, an individual human has the same right as any other animal to urinate in the local stream; the people of a small village probably have the right to put their excrement in the river; towns and cities, however, have no right to dump in the river untreated sewage, poisoning decreasing supplies of water.

More of that later. For now keep in mind that surviving societies often have built in a strong degree of pronatalism.

You need to know this if you're to understand the underpinning of the sex laws and "mores" of the United States, including our rules on marriage and attitudes toward the wide range of sexual activities.

Start with obvious questions: Why would people care about occasional or even frequent masturbation in private? Why were there ever laws against oral or anal sex, or just about anything done between or among two or more consenting adults in private? The short and most basic answer, one that underlies both religious and secular, official and popular-culture prohibitions, is "pronatalism."

Humans are highly sexual animals, and across a significant population people will practice all sorts of sexuality. Cultures, though, can evolve ideologies and customs that tend to direct sexuality into practices that are reproductive and nurturing. Consciously or unconsciously, societies can try to limit sex to vaginal sexual intercourse between fertile couples who are likely to conceive, bear, and then raise babies.

Cultures can try to limit sex to "making babies" by people who'll stick around to raise babies: for a very important example, limiting approved sex to married heterosexual couples who have conception as a goal — and, hence, don't try to prevent conception and who avoid sex when the woman is menstruating.

Sound familiar? It should if you know the traditional rules for Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews.

Under a doctrine of pronatalism, such rules make sense, and pronatalism itself makes a lot of sense in military, nationalistic, and economic terms.

Pronatalism becomes a bad idea when it's a game many societies play and the human population rises rapidly, when the standard of living rises enough among many of those societies that they strain the environment.

Think of a billion or two Chinese and Indians starting to live like rich Americans.

Pronatalism in our time makes sense for individual countries that want to maintain their eminence; pronatalism makes sense for older generations who want to retire and be supported by lots of young workers.

For the human species, and for humans who like freedom, pronatalism is a problem.

"Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it" (Genesis 1.28) was good doctrine, and it may be the one commandment we humans have fulfilled; but it is fulfilled now, and it's time to cut back.

We — we humans generally — need to move rapidly toward zero growth in our population, which means rethinking the laws, policies, customs, and attitudes based in pronatalism.

People are going to have sex, but it doesn't have to be reproductive sex; and contraception can be very low-tech, inexpensive, and almost as effective as abstinence in preventing sexually-transmitted diseases. To start, we need a campaign to "Wrap that Willy," making condoms readily available and condom-use a manly thing to do, and a womanly thing to demand.

For other things to do, look at the pronatalist aspects of human cultures, and try to figure out practical ways to encourage reproductive restraint.

Richard D. Erlich is a professor emeritus in English at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), currently living in Ventura County, California.

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Once again, Glenn Greenwald is my hero. Greenwald writes in Salon about the notion that "centrism" and "balance" make an opinion good or correct. He argues that the tendency in the so-called mainstream media (The New York Times, CNN, et al.) to demand what they deem objectivity is detrimental to the debate going on:

When there is grave imbalance in political power, corruption or extremism -- as there has been for the last eight years, at least -- then those who preach balance and demand a centrist critique of everything are the ones who are mindless, misleading partisans. They demand centrist equivalencies as an ideology, regardless of whether those equivalencies are real.

He then offers several examples of book reviews in which the authors are criticized not for being wrong, but for being too one-sided. As Greenwald notes, none of these critics ever addresses the issue of the authors' facts.

The street goes both ways. President Bush insisted that the the other side of the story needs to be addressed when it comes to global warming, even though no credible scientific sources suggest that humans are not causing global climate change. State governments that want students to hear both sides of the story when it comes to evolution insist that evolution and intelligent design (or its parent, creationism) don't understand -- or refuse to admit, or wish to be intentionally deceptive regarding the fact -- that there is no scientist who does not believe in evolution.

Greenwald is right: there are times when the "there are two sides to the story" trope is wrong. The Bush administration has consistently broken the law. Period. There is no way to give them the benefit of the doubt. There is no way to come at the adminstration from the other side. They are unilaterally wrong. The notion that humans are not causing climate change is wrong. The notion that evolution is not real is wrong. And, says Greenwald, people shouldn't be afraid to say that.

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By Richard D. Erlich

US politics are getting explicitly generational again, so US media need to take much more care in how they discuss age groups; how the media frame the image of different groups is politically significant.

Case very much in point -- for over a century, people who should know better have established adolescence, and more recently, "late adolescence," as definite stages of human development, and then have generalized about the pathology of adolescence as a time of Sturm und Drang, impulsive violence, still-forming brains, raging hormones, and unique ignorance and stupidity.
In this context, consider two basically innocuous, useful, and well-written recent stories from The New York Times News Service.

An article by Sam Dillon tells us, as headlined in my local newspaper, that a "Survey finds teens are ignorant of history," and "On literature, the teenagers fared even worse. About half knew that in the Bible Job is known for his patience in suffering."

Uh, Job has become a by-word for patience amidst suffering because there have been some powerful adults with agendas and a whole lot more adults who have never read the Book of Job.

In the poem of Job, Job fairly spectacularly loses his patience and accuses God of injustice: "I am blameless; I regard not myself; / I loathe my life. / It is all one; therefore I say, / 'He [God] destroys both the blameless and the wicked'" (9.21-22, RSV, slightly re-punctuated).

Michael Males has suggested at some length that older U.S. teens are in most ways a normal adult U.S. population. I'll suggest that if older U.S. teens are more ignorant of history than their elders, it may be because a bit more of history is history for them, and not remembered current events. If they are ignorant in many areas of history and literature -- and they are -- it may be because they are indeed a normal adult U.S. population.

If they have forgotten or haven't read the Book of Job, they may be in company with a well-educated journalist, his editors, and the writers of a survey important enough to be reported by The New York Times News Service.

Unless they do something major about it, ignorant teens become ignorant grownups, and the ignorance or knowledgeability of American teenagers needs to be put into the context of Americans generally.

Context is also important in teen automobile driving, the background subject of a very interesting piece by Mary M. Chapman and Micheline Maynard on U.S. teens' delaying getting drivers licenses.

Chapman and Maynard remind us that "Overall, teenage drivers have the highest crash risk of any group. Car accidents account for one-third of all deaths of 16- to 18-year-olds. Also, more 16-year-old drivers die because of driver error than those from the ages 17 to 49."

Is the problem that teenagers have the highest number of new drivers of any age group, or is the problem that teenagers are teenagers? We get no information on how older new drivers do. Nor do we get any information about driver error among drivers 50-years old and up.

And the high percentage of deaths from car accidents for teens may be the downside of something very good: that teens don't often die any more from infectious diseases and are not prone to dropping dead from heart attacks or strokes.

The more interesting statistics on U.S. teens' delaying getting drivers licenses may be any that reflect U.S. teens' more generally delaying adulthood. And those statistics might be most useful if we asked if U.S. teens might make a rational choice in delaying adulthood.

Look, I spent thirty-five years teaching undergraduates and living in a neighborhood both rich in college students and an easy walk to a consolidated high school. I'm well aware that U.S. teens can be ignorant, stupid, loud, drunkenly obnoxious, rude, and/or ill-mannered.

Still, moving into an era of increased generational competition for resources, it would be best to assume that older US teenagers are young adults and deserve a fair share. Evidence to the contrary needs to be presented carefully as contextualized, comparative evidence.

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In the interest of using this blog for intellectual pursuits, I present the Gallery of Hotty McHottersons:

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From the Buffalo Beast, the 50 Most Loathsome People in America. This is unbearably hilarous. But in case you thought you were laughing with everyone, check out no. 9:

9. You

Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism -- it's nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears' children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you're going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques." You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can't spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don't want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy's doing well. You're an idiot.

Exhibit A: You couldn't get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn't cover. You deserve it, chump.

Yes, You are largely responsible for the way the country is today, since You voted for George W. Bush twice!

[Via kottke.org.]

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Here's the story: a wealthy, elderly single woman wants to sell her million-dollar luxury condo. She puts it on the market for a while, but since the housing market is going into the tank, she doesn't get what she wants for it. So she puts it on Craigslist -- or, more accurately, her realtor puts it on Craigslist -- in the hope that someone will rent it. Her plan is to rent it out for a year, then come back and sell it. From what we can tell, neither she nor the realtor has ever rented before. These are people with multiples of millions in the bank; why should they ever have experience renting a place? They own!

And in we step, into the Park Bellevue Tower, an exorbitant name for an equally exorbitant place. We found the place online and, as far as we can tell, we were the only people who called to inquire about it. The realtor -- who is the building's realtor -- didn't put any pictures on the Craigslist posting. To those who know how Craigslist works, this is a capital offense, as posts without pictures don't get looked at.

The Park Bellevue Tower (or PBT to those for whom living there constitutes normalcy) is a twenty-five story luxury condominium tower on the shore of Lake Merritt. Lake Merritt is a large-ish inland lake on the west side of Oakland (but it's not in West Oakland!). The lake is close to several neighborhoods that contain a lot of interesting things to see and do, and places to eat: Lake Merritt, which contains those things immediately around the north shore of the lake; Grand Lake, home of the Grand Lake Theatre; Lakeshore, where a new Trader Joe's just opened up; Park Ave., the location of another cool movie theatre, the Parkway Speakeasy; and Downtown, which is just what it sounds like it is. The good part about living where we live is that we are within walking distance of a lot of things. Emeryville just wasn't a walking town. Certainly it was possible to walk to places like Trader Joe's or Bay Street, but the city wasn't designed for it.

Our apartment is quite large, with marble-looking floors in the halls, kitchen, and bathrooms and hardwood floors in the bedrooms. Hardwood floors always sound like a draw when you're looking for a new home. They don't get as disgusting as carpet can, they look nice, and they're easy to clean. They're also easy to scratch. Living with hardwood floors requires that you cover with a rug the areas occupied by your furniture. After all, you wouldn't want to scratch those floors. By the time you're done covering everything up, you don't get to see your hardwood floors because they're covered with rugs. The hardwood floor then becomes no better than an Old Masters painting you keep locked up in a safe. It's a thing you have, not a thing you enjoy. It's hard to enjoy a hardwood floor, especially when people are constantly becoming anxious about scratches. Normally, I wouldn't worry about scratches (after all, it's a freaking floor, and scratches are going to happen -- you may as well become uptight about your luggage getting scratches), but this isn't our house, and the security deposit looms like a thundercloud over the hardwood floor.

Ultimately, I had qualms about living here. I still do. It's not the kind of place I would have looked at, nor is it the kind of place I would have moved into on my own. The "luxury condo tower" is not my kind of place. I don't like having to take an elevator eighteen floors up and down (even though we're on floor 19, there's no floor 13 out of superstition). I don't like being greeted by a friendly doorman every day. He makes it feel as though it's not my home. I would never have a doorman at my house. The whole place feels prefabricated and sterile. There's an exercise room and a pool on the sixth floor. Why would anyone ever leave? It's like a gated community, which I think some people would really like. I am not one of those people. I will take my chances with the outside world if only to have easy access to the outside world. I am not afraid of the outside world. There are some people who are, though, and for them this building is a boon.

Another of my friends lives in what used to be a small mansion on the other side of the lake. The mansion has since been divided up into four apartments, two on the second floor and two on the first. She lives in one of the apartments on the second floor and has a small living room, kitchen, and bedroom. She also has a set of stairs that leads to the attic, which is carpeted and has dormer windows looking to the outside. I love this apartment. I wish I lived there. I would make my room upstairs in the attic and turn the bedroom into an office. It's not so small that it is oppressive; nor is it so large that it feels empty. PBT feels empty. If I had millions more dollars, I would stuff it with as much stuff from Pier One or World Market as I could (which is what the previous occupant did) just to make it seem more cozy. But my friend's apartment comes cozy at no additional charge. That is the place where I want to live. The only thing missing is a porch where I can sit on warm summer nights or cool winter nights. It would be a place where I didn't have to walk past a doorman every day or take an elevator eighteen floors up.

I first nicknamed this place American Psycho tower because it's exactly the kind of place where Christian Bale's character from the film might have lived. It's a luxury condo that overlooks the lake. It's insulated from the dangers posed by the Real World. To live here means that You Have Arrived. But now that I've arrived, I'd much rather leave.

Posted by Mark at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"What do you think of black universities?" a friend asked me the other day.

"I think they're fine," I replied stupidly. I wasn't stupid for thinking they're fine; I was stupid because I didn't really think about the question and thus gave a very simple answer. I had never before thought about historically all-black universities, like Howard University.

The all-black university was created in a time when both de facto and institutional racism prevented African-Americans from going to "regular" universities, which were inevitably populated by white men. Black students, owing to their having been schooled in sub-par schools (which were, again, institutionally devised thanks to Plessy v. Ferguson), didn't have the credentials to get into white universities. They also didn't have the family standing to get into a white university. With perhaps a few exceptions, there were no black Rockefellers or Carnegies.

And take a look at where black universities are: the South! Naturally, if there were deep-seated institutional racism to be found, it would be there. Merely living in the south, with its atmosphere of discrimination, prevented a black student from attending a white university. Thus were born the black universities, designed to give the black student in the south a chance at the education that was denied him because of his skin color.

I've brought up the issue of affirmative action before: is it really necessary to give black students extra help merely because they're black? Do they face that much hardship that they need help? Why not make scholarship opportunities need-based instead of race-based? She cites the example of rural Ohio, where people are as poor as the poorest southern blacks, but are denied scholarships because they aren't black. We both know wealthy black students who received scholarships to Miami University not because they had a need, but because they were black. Does being black qualify as a "need" on par with being poor? Moreover, is it just as racist to discriminate based on race -- but instead, denying opportunities to white students because they're white and haven't endured the hardships of being black?

To begin our analysis, let's go to University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), the first Supreme Court case of so-called reverse discrimination. Respondent Bakke had applied to the UC Davis medical school and was twice rejected. In both years, however, "special applicants were admitted with significantly lower scores than respondent's." Bakke sued, claiming "reverse discrimination." Both the trial court and the California Supreme Court agreed with Bakke that Davis' system violated the Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court did not completely invalidate Davis' system: it said that Davis could take race into account in admissions, but it could not use a strict quota system.

At the end of the day, the purpose of affirmative action is to correct historical wrongs. For hundreds of years, blacks were systematically removed from the mainstream of American life, putting them in situations that continue to affect them today: poverty, for one; discrimination, for another (witness the noose-hanging that precipitated the "Jena 6" incident).

But do these systematic problems affect wealthy black people? Are our wealthy (or even middle-class) black friends at Miami University in as much need as a poor white person? In terms of getting into college, "probably not" is the answer. The purpose of affirmative action is to equalize the playing field, but what are the stakes in the playing field? For college admissions, it's money; therefore, scholarships should be doled out based not on race, but on income. This means that any person who can afford to go to college will go to college, and any person who cannot will still go to college.

Now back to the all-black university. Are all-black universities necessary anymore? Again, "probably not" is the answer. The explicit racism that kept black students out of "white" colleges is gone; no (accredited) university today would dare refuse to admit an applicant because of his race. And yet, the black university remains an historical oddity. Some opponents of affirmative action might argue that there are all-black universities, but no "all-white" universities. Obviously, no one would ever accept the existence of an "all-white" university, but it's difficult to compare these two things. Black universities were created out of a particular historical moment; at no time in the history of the United States have white people ever been marginalized to the degree that they needed their own universities. Someone who wanted to be particularly smarmy might point out that, for most of our country's history, non-black universities were all-white universities. That person would be smarmy, but he would also be correct.

While the all-black university may no longer be necessary, there are still some stepping-stones necessary to help those who remain marginalized; namely, the poor. In business, of course, and in housing, being a racial minority is still a barrier to entry in some parts of the country, but by and large, I don't believe that being a racial minority is still a barrier to entering higher education.

Posted by Mark at 8:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Richard D. Erlich

Spam is not a victimless crime, and I immodestly propose below what I think is a suitable punishment. Before getting to that, however, I need to dispose of more moderate suggestions since it is indeed true that radical means should be adopted only if there are no other ways likely to reach important ends.

It has often been suggested, since spam first became a problem, that the obvious solution is to charge for e-mail.

A US penny per post is the usual price mentioned nowadays, but even if the cost were only a few mils --thousandths of a dollar -- the job could get done. The only reason it makes economic sense to broadcast to the world offers for sexual enhancers, fantastic mortgage deals, and the opportunity to aid notable Nigerians is that the cost of doing so is effectively nothing. Start charging for the service, and a .0001% (or whatever) rate of response won't bring any profit for the e-barrage.

However, for technical, philosophical, and political reasons, this ain't a-gonna happen any time soon; indeed it won't happen until the Internet is nearly swamped and brought to a standstill.

Nor will technological quick fixes do the trick: at least some spammers will always be ahead of their opponents.

So we need to support the geek police in the technological fight, but their efforts must be reinforced with something else, and I think I know what: what is called in the old play Gorboduc, "wholesome terror to posterity," and, more to the point, "wholesome terror" to the techno-evildoers working their evils now, and totally terminal termination of the evil-doing of several of them even more "now."

I'm philosophically against the death penalty, but I think we should apply it to spammers, and apply it in a manner that will make the point: the guillotine. I know some people will object: the guillotine is messy, and it's French, but it's quick and doesn't raise the ethical problems of needing a physician to assist, or even to certify death on the spot: any coroner's assistant can certify that someone without a head is definitely, indeed definitively, dead.

But that's a detail, and I'll hardly insist upon the method. What needs to be argued is justification.

• First, it's standard doctrine that a high probablity of punishment is a far more effective deterrent to crime than severity of punishment. Still, as the effectiveness of enforcement goes down, it is tempting to use severity to beef up deterrence. In the case of spammers, I recommend we vigorously succumb to that temptation.


• Second and far more important, it is just to execute people for spamming. And herein will consist the rest, and the heart, of my argument.

In a sense, all we have is time, and murderers take time away from us, more from the young than from the old.

Bit by bit, and byte by byte, spammers rob us of time, and those who send out millions of spam e-mails (aye, and junk snailmail and telemarketing "robocalls" as well)--well, when you add up those bits you get lives. And over the months and years you get many lives.

And when that time adds up to hundreds of lives, we must proclaim spammers mass murderers and punish them accordingly.

As they have stolen time from us, so we should limit their time.

Very firmly, very finally.

International authorities should add up the volume of spam and the seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years of people's lives shot to hell because of it, and each time it adds up to three-score and ten -- that's 70 years -- a spammer should be arrested, quickly tried, and executed.

This will not solve the problem of spam, but it should help to reduce the volume. In any event, "Though the heavens fall, let justice be done," and justice demands the ultimate punishment of those who'd suck away the life-time of millions.

Richard D. Erlich is a Professor Emeritus of English at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is a recent immigrant to the California Bear Flag Republic.

Posted by Mark at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An article today from Psychology Today lists "Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature." Among them: "Most suicide bombers are Muslim." She goes on to say that the prevalence of polygny (men with multiple wives) in Muslim societies caused increased competition for mates and can cause some men who don't have mates to become despondent and resort to violence. Okay, that's fine. In fact, it makes some sense: domestic violence rates are so high among Appalachian men because their poverty causes helplessness and what they perceive to be a loss of masculinity (the man, without a good job, can't provide for his family and fulfill his traditional Christian role as head of the household, the breadwinner, etc.). They get over this loss of masculinity by beating their wives.

What isn't fine is one of the ways the author bolsters her point:

However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

I'm so sick and tired of people repeating this "72 virgins" thing! This insistence that a Muslim who martyrs himself for Islam will receive 72 virgins in Paradise is what made me read the Qur'an in the first place. After a thorough reading, I concluded that it ain't in there! The Qur'an does promise believers that they will be rewarded with virgins in Paradise, but there's no set number, and there's no specific actions mentioned that will get you those virgins.

Years later, I read Terror in the Mind of God by Mark Jurgensmeyer. Deep in the back of the book, in his endnotes, is the reference to the original "72 virgins" statement. Guess where it comes from? A Hamas training manual from the mid-1990s.

For the last ten years, politicians, pundits, and even academics have been repeating that the Qur'an, or some nebulous doctrine of Islam, promises martyrs 72 virgins in heaven. The fact is that Hamas made this up to recruit suicide bombers and militants.

Posted by Mark at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the summer, McSweeney's had a contest in which entrants were to use one of thirteen writing prompts to generate a 1,000-word short story. Here's the prompt I used: "Write a story that ends with the following sentence: Debra brushed the sand from her blouse, took a last, wistful look at the now putrefying horse, and stepped into the hot-air balloon."

As it turns out, I didn't win. But, here is my story, anyway.

The Clown and the Librarian

As a boy, Leon had often imagined what it would have been like to be a professional clown. When he was seven years old, he told his parents – investment bankers both – about his aspirations. When they stopped sobbing, they asked him if that he was certain about his dreams. He emphatically nodded “yes.” They took him out of Lawrence Q. DeLaney’s School for the Unusually Wealthy and enrolled him in New Jersey State Clown Academy (“Where boys are made into men, and then those men are made into clowns”). For the next ten years of his life, he ate, slept, drank, and breathed clowns. He was first in his class in juggling, and at his graduation, he received the school’s highest honor – the Golden Rubber Nose with Distinction – for his one-man pantomime performance of Antigone while riding a unicycle over a tightrope. The headmaster commented afterward that it would have made Sophocles himself weep.

But the New Jersey State Clown Academy was only the beginning. Leon managed to secure a scholarship that sent him to Great Britain’s Royal Jestering College (for, you see, “clowning” is called “jestering” over there), where he excelled in such fields as designing comically oversized shoes and fitting several people at once into a tiny car. After four years, he emerged a changed man. He decided he would best be able to use his jestering abilities for the good of mankind (rather than for evil, as some clowns had done in the past, but they were always stopped by the good clowns) and joined a circus back in the United States.

His sordid love affair with Debra would become the stuff of pulp biographies. She was not a clown, but the clown’s sworn enemy: a librarian. Who is to say what drew the clown and the librarian together? His love of honking horns and her love of peace and quiet should have split them immediately, but no: there was a magic between them, the kind of magic that existed only once every few hundred years. There was magic between Antony and Cleopatra, between Abelard and Heloise, between Napoleon and Josephine.

After a brief period of courting in which Leon gave Debra one of those never-ending handkerchief things, and Debra gave Leon his very own pair of glasses to wear on the end of his nose, the two were engaged to be married. The marriage would take place on a beach, under a circus tent. Leon would invite his parents and his circus colleagues; Debra would invite her parents (retired rock musicians) and her colleagues from the library.

On the appointed day, they went down to the beach – careful to avoid the trash and syringes – and prepared to get married. On the groom’s side, the fire-breather, the lion-tamer, and the snake-charmer. On the bride’s side, several neat and uniform rows of men and women wearing more or less the same colors, sitting quietly with their hands folded on their laps, looking straight ahead and paying attention. And in the back, Debra’s parents, screaming, “Dude! Righteous wedding!” and holding up their lighters.

They were married by the ringmaster. Both the bride and groom looked marvelous, she in her beige wedding gown and he in his striped tuxedo, comically oversized patent leather shoes, and his diamond-studded dress nose.

After the ceremony, they had a reception on the beach in which everyone ate mounds of wedding cake. “Debra,” said Leon, “After spending so much time with you, I know that you have a fondness for romance novels in which women are swept off their feet by long-haired European men with chests like tanks. In my small way, I would like to make that dream come true.” He left the reception and went behind the tent, bringing with him a beautiful new horse. “Once I start working out and growing my hair long, I’m going to ride up to you on this horse and sweep you away to parts unknown. I’m also going to take lessons from a dialogue coach so I have an Italian accent.”

“Oh, Leon!” said Debra. “I have a surprise for you! Knowing you as well as I do, I discovered your fondness for random assortments of colored fabric sewn together. So I did the only thing I could think of to do.” She went off to the other side of the tent and brought back a hot-air balloon that she had sewn together herself.

Everyone was so happy to see the new couple offer each other these wonderful gifts of love. Leon’s parents clapped quietly, while Debra’s parents hollered and held up their lighters.

In this was the mistake.

The fire-breather, so full from wedding cake, let out an enormous belch. His breath, laden with gasoline, ignited the flame from Debra’s parents’ lighters and created an enormous fireball that hit the horse head-on. The horse was so shocked at being hit by a fireball that it fell over, dead and on fire. The force of the flame threw everyone to the ground.

The guests could only stare at the horse as it burned on the beach. They looked from the fire-breather to Debra’s parents and back to the horse. Debra didn’t move. Leon did the only thing he could think of: he jumped into the hot-air balloon and started the gas.

“Debra, come on! We must get away from this tragedy! Oh, what folly there is in the circus! I should have been an investment banker! Debra! We must leave this place and never return! We’ll start a new life in the jungle, as missionaries!”

Debra brushed the sand from her blouse, took a last, wistful look at the now putrefying horse, and stepped into the hot-air balloon.

Posted by Mark at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Air travel is a funny thing. Every element of air transportation is dependent upon the element that came before it. If there's bad weather in Chicago, then the plane that is supposed to leave Chicago is late departing. This means that the next flight that that plane makes from, say, San Francisco is late. And so on down the line.

For the past three days, San Francisco has had horrendous, terrible weather. By this I mean that it's been raining. The people of the Bay Area don't know how to deal with forty-degree temperatures, much less rain. When it's forty-five degrees outside, they put on winter coats and scarves. Jared and I walk around with our sleeves rolled up. When there's rain, everyone is late, because no one knows how to handle driving in rain. If it rained in Los Angeles, everyone would die.

As Gilda Radner's Saturday Night Live character Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, "It's always something." Last year, you'll recall that my Christmas travel was delayed thanks to a snowstorm in Cleveland and a shortage of de-icing fluid at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport (CLE). This year, I thankfully have to wait only an hour instead of twelve hours.

The "bad weather conditions" (i.e. rain) in San Francisco has made the incoming flight late, which means that I'll leave at 12:35 instead of 11:40. The only forseeable problem here is that I might not make my connection at Chicago-O'Hare (ORD). There's a line of people in front of me -- a very long line -- all of whom are trying to work their connections out with the SFO agent, even though there's very little a SFO gate agent can do for connections at ORD.

Moments after I wrote the last paragraph, my name got called. They rounded up the half-dozen people on the flight who had tight connections in Chicago and sent them to another gate. So it looks like I won't be late to anywhere; I'll be just on time.

On this flight to Chicago, I was reminded what midwestern girls look like. Midwestern girls have skin that's too tan (because they go to tanning salons) and bleached-blonde hair. This in and of itself isn't unusual, but it's the middle of winter. They desperately want to look like their idols, girls from Beverly Hills. (Note, of course, that not all midwestern girls look like this; it's just a hurtful stereotype.)

It's actually cold in Chicago. Not California cold, but real cold. The kind that requires a real coat. After waiting for an hour in Chicago, I got on a plane to Cleveland, where it is about ten degrees. I'm home!

Posted by Mark at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that Mark has allowed me back on the venerable sedhe train, I am going to update all you greedy readers, i.e. matt and maybe scott, on a fascinating and surprisingly undocumented topic, ME. Since Mark won’t tell you about his life, I will tell you about mine, at least briefly. Mostly because I am really really really bored at work right now. Also cuz you care. And I renounce sedhe protocol and refuse to use correct grammarness and capitol letters (sic).

so what does a day in the life of a confused little hippy look like? well, it can be surprisingly mundane. i get up circa 8 (aka 8:40, or 4 hittings-of-the-alarm) and get a small shock as i get my first glimpse of a frail corpse lying next to me in bed. then i realize it’s mark and…i still get a small shock (what does this wonderful intelligent good friend man see in little ol’ me?!). i drive about fifteen minutes from my run down rental house on a park at the foot of the berkeley hills to my work in emeryville, or, as we affectionately know it, pixar-ville (home of pixar, it is also home to chiron). my work days are either 1) spent at the office doing myriad non-job things like writing for y’all and checking out rock climbing info or 2) cruising for hours in a little isuzu truck with a genuine vintage hippy who regales me with his years of labor organizing, blunt comments, and insight into reality that he has gained with the help of… um… various… herbal, fungal, chemical aids. i’ve often entertained the idea of quitting because of days type 1, also the low pay, but stay because of days type 2 and the utter lack of supervision i enjoy. sometime between 3 and 6, i get fed up with work and leave whenever i feel like it. on days type 1, the office days, i am gone to 1-1.5ish hours eating fast food on the shores of the bay, which is minutes away, while listening to, inevitably, air america radio, your show for progessive talk. currently, it being dec 14 so understandably cold and all, it’s in the low 60s, not a cloud in the sky so i see a picnic in the near future, i.e. when i am done writing.

about twice a week, i try to make it rock climbing in the huge berkeley climbing gym. i recently got my own shoes off of craigslist and am now searching for a harness. climbing makes me feel all strong and muscular-y, even if it’s a false since of muscular-y-ness, and i like it almost as much as my other common recreational activity, i.e. smoking, although i find the two mutually exclusive because it’s hard to climb when you have smoky lungs and i certainly don’t feel like climbing after i smoke. once, i climbed this huge rock without any ropes a few months back and smoked at the top. man, getting down was NOT FUN and certainly not safe, so… no more of that. mark joins me in most of the climbing/smoking ventures here mentioned, so the company’s been wonderful since he’s moved (and not updated you about his life, which is going well, i hear).

on thursday nights, we go to needle exchange, mark having jumped on the community work bandwagon, much to my delight (he’s a wonderful person, that mark, btw, also rather cute). and mark and i just started what we hope will become a weekly tradition. after needle exchange, we head to the albatross, one of the coolest bars ever, where there is 25 cent bottomless popcorn bowls and one dollar unlimited darts.

on the weekends, i mostly travel and have gone from local backpacking trips, santa cruz, and the rocky marin beaches to places such as the lost coast, the redwood forests, oregon, olympic national park, seattle, vancouver, big sur, los angeles, and the previously described whirlwind tour o’ the west. sometimes i stick around the bay area and hike or go to the ocean, usually under the influence of something interesting. on my week nights, mon-wed, i go to lots of restaurants, eating my way around the world, as there is everything from ethiopian to nepalese in berkeley, but only one fast food place. i also see lots of "films," i.e. sh1t you can’t see in ohio.

i agonize about whether or not to take the MCATs again. the rebel side of me says NO WAY. the rational side of me realizes that there are only two schools in this area where i want to stay, ucsf and stanford, ranked 1 and 6 respectively, so i better have my sh1t together if i wanna chance at those two. hmmmm.

but mostly i agonize about when i will see the cherubic faces of you, my dear readers. will scott make it here before feb and shipping off to parts unknown??? what’s this i hear about a certain mr. smith weaseling his way out here on the company dime circa jan??? these are the great mysteries in my life.

Posted by Ed at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So I went in this morning to interview for an office manager position with a non-profit organization called the California Housing Partnership Corporation, which helps other non-profit organizations make affordable, low-income housing available.

While they appear not to be interested in me for full-time office manager skills (although that is apparently still being decided), they hired me immediately as sort of a contract worker for technical support. They want a dependable, dedicated technical support person and were very interested in my IT background. At the end of the interview, they asked if I could start immediately ... as in, would you like to see what IT problems we need to be fixed, and what can you do about it right now? So, instead of being back home at 3:30 PM PST, I'm still at CHPC's office in downtown San Francisco, updating an old iBook and an old eMac to Mac OS 10.4. Later today, I'm going to the Apple Store near Union Square to get a battery for a Titanium PowerBook. They've essentially told me that I just have to submit an invoice to them for the hours I work, and I'll get paid. They threw out $25 an hour as an hourly wage. Of course, I'm still looking for full-time work. But they'll certainly let me take time off around Christmas. My schedule is pretty flexible.

This, however, was the strangest interview I've ever been to; I walk in, and they put me to work immediately! And I got free lunch out of it.

More updates later. The Comcast guy is coming tomorrow to activate us for the Internet, so hopefully once I have an Internet connection I'll be able to put up more information, as well as pictures from Ed's Whirlwind Tour of the West.

Oh, and to Elizabeth and Brian: I'll get your accounts fixed.

Posted by Mark at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So, apparently people care about what I've been doing? Well, if I haven't replied to your calls, emails, etc. for the last week, don't despair; it's because I've been looking for more permanent housing and a job. I've found the housing, but now I'm working on the job.

Posted by Mark at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Originally, I was going to travel to San Francisco via I-80, an interstate that goes through Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California before stopping in Berkeley. The trip was going to take two days, with one stop in Nevada, but that would be okay: it would be efficient.

Elizabeth said that she wanted to come out to Denver to accompany me back with her, so she spent her own money on a plane ticket, flew out to Denver on Wednesday, and left with me on Friday morning. We had Thanksgiving at my house. For the past week, Elizabeth had been nervous about something. She claimed that she had something in store for me that she hoped I would like. Then I became nervous.

Friday morning, at 12:30 AM, we set out into the vast, unknown west. We took I-70, which is a lot more scenic than I-80. It goes right through the Front Range in Colorado and there are dozens of little mountain towns/ski resorts (Vail, Breckenridge) along the way. When we stopped for gas in Silverthorne, Co., the temperature was 3 degrees! It reached only 2 degrees on our trip through the mountains, but we hoped it would get down to 0 sometime.

After Colorado came Utah. Elizabeth's idea was for us to go to Arches National Park on the way back to Berkeley, so about an hour into Utah, we got off of I-70 and traveled south to Moab. It was 7:30 AM when we got into Arches.

There are a lot of arches in Arches. Some of them are free-standing, others are in the hills. The arches there formed because of a salt lake that was in the area millions of years ago. Over time, the lake flooded and receded about 29 times, leaving different layers of sediment and salt behind. The salt in the rock expanded horizontally, forcing the rock to expand vertically. This rock then began to erode from the ground up, leaving a hollow -- the arch that everyone knows and loves today.

Arches is good if you like arches. Turns out I don't like them a lot, but I was also kind of cranky, since I hadn't slept in seven hours. But after some Wendy's, I felt better.

Elizabeth also decided that we should visit Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park, since they were both in Moab. Dead Horse Point State Park is very small and its centerpiece is a large piece of rock that juts into the Colorado River. I thought it was spectacular: the river is 2,000 feet below you and you can see for miles in any direction. There's lots of canyons, which I liked. Canyonlands National Park was even more chock-full of canyons. Again, it's 2,000 feet up, and you can see for miles. There's even canyons in the canyons. We watched the sun set there and then drove off to our next destination.

But where would that be? I had no idea.

Elizabeth drove through Utah while I slept. Sometime in the night, she told me that she was lost and that we'd have to just stop at a motel for the night. I was tired and agreeable. But let me fill you in on some facts. Prior to the trip, Elizabeth told me she had booked two hotel rooms, one with a fireplace. She also told me that she'd be doing a lot of lying on this trip so as to conceal the surprises that were in store for me. Was this a lie? I thought. Were we really lost?

Turns out not. We arrived at exactly the motel we were supposed to, a Best Western that included one room with a fireplace! It was totally awesome. Guess what was more awesome? We were a few miles from Bryce Canyon National Park! I had told Elizabeth that I visited Bryce Canyon National Park many years ago as a kid. She was heartened when I said that I liked canyons, because apparently her anxiety for a week before was due to the fact that she wasn't sure if I would like the trip she had planned. She also told me we would be visiting Zion National Park, since it was very close to Bryce Canyon. Awesome!

Bryce Canyon National Park was amazing. Each bunch of canyons has its own unique thing. Bryce Canyon's unique thing is that it was a lot of orange-and-pink rock layers, as well as tall rock towers called "hoodoos." It snowed a little the night before, which should give you an idea of how cold it was. The temperature was about 30 degrees and the wind was a-blowin'. Walking around the rim of the Bryce Canyon Amphitheatre, their largest canyon, was bone-chilling. Nevertheless, we drove around the park, looking at all the different sites to see. The views are amazing and sometimes terrifying, especially when a vista point is located on a narrow rock bridge that juts into the canyon, with only a short metal fence to keep you from careening into the canyon.

At about noon, we left Bryce (it's pretty small) and drove to Zion National Park. Zion is different from the other parks; it's primarily a driving tour. You drive down into the canyon and see the different sites. Of course, there are lots of trails to hike, but we only had until sunset that day, and besides, you could spend a week at any one of these parks if you wanted to. We only had a few days to see all of them. Zion has a lot of interesting natural rock formations, but again, its rock stuff is different from the rock stuff in any other national park. There was a really cool waterfall -- more like a water trickle -- that came from mud that filtered through the sandstone.

We left Zion at sunset and I wondered where we would go next. Elizabeth said that her plan was for us to go around the Grand Canyon at night and head to a mystery location, which I would see in the morning. How intriguing!

At about 11:00 that night, Elizabeth announced, "Oh no, I've lost us again. We're at the Grand Canyon." The saucy minx had lied again! The Grand Canyon was our mystery destination! We stayed at a hotel in Tusayan which is more the gateway to the Grand Canyon than Williams, Az., which claims to be the "Gateway to the Grand Canyon®." (And, yes, they've trademarked that phrase.) Tusayan is two miles from the south rim entrance to the Grand Canyon; Williams is about an hour away. Many a foreign tourist has booked a hotel in Williams, thinking that it was really close, but was horrified and annoyed to find that it wasn't.

The Grand Canyon is amazing. It's so big that it's more like an omnibus canyon -- a giant canyon made out of little canyons. It's about a mile deep, which makes Canyonlands, with its 2,000-foot depth, look like a ditch. It's also ten miles across and over two hundred miles long. That's a big freaking canyon. It was carved over the course of millions of years by the Colorado River. Looking a mile down into the canyon, you can see the river, and it's mind-boggling to think that something so tiny carved a canyon so monstrously huge. We took a little shuttle around the scenic points on the South Rim, the more developed side of the canyon. After a stop at Hermit's Rest, a little shop on the South Rim (that's on the South Rim -- as in, twenty feet from the rim), we headed back.

And that was Ed's Whirlwind Tour of the West. For the next several hours, we drove back to Berkeley, finally getting there at 6 AM on Nov. 28. All of Elizabeth's friends said she was crazy to attempt such a tour of five of the nation's national parks in three days. Elizabeth was terrified that I'd hate it. But you know what? We did it. And I loved it. It was a hundred thousand times better than just driving to Berkeley along I-80. And she figured, hey, we'll be in the area, why don't we visit these places? And that's the truth. Don't do things hurriedly and efficiently if you don't have to; instead, stop and look at nature along the way. It make take a few more days, but you'll be glad you did it. And I'm glad I got to see the nation's canyons on my way to my new home.

Posted by Mark at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Details to follow. The trip here was awesome. There will be pictures.

Posted by Mark at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You heard me.

Posted by Mark at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(1) Verizon Wireless

I'm better off using tin cans and string. I can't talk for four minutes before I'm disconnected! And I'm standing still! Not doing anything! This is no way to run a cellular phone company. In Europe, the technology is light-years head of what we have here. Why can't the most powerful country in the world have cell phone service that doesn't crap out every five minutes?

(2) Intelligent design advocates

Who are they kidding? It's just creationism in disguise. They failed in the '80s when they tried to get creation into science classrooms, as the Supreme Court said, "No dice." Then they regrouped and came up with a new plan: intelligent design, which is as much science as Alf is President of Uganda. It's nothing more than a marketing scheme: sow some seeds of doubt amongst the people, take advantage of the fact that the gum-chewing public knows nothing about how science actually works, and pretend that there's some sort of "controversy" within the scientific community about evolution. Yeah, and there's controversy about whether or not gravity is real or the Lord Jesus Christ just affixed double-sided tape to our feet. The jury's still out on that one!

(3) Traffic in Denver

Everyone here drives like an old lady! In a 55 mph zone, I guarantee you that half the people are doing 45. There's no excuse for this! Plus, there's always traffic. From 3 PM to 7 PM, it's rush hour. For four hours! So if I want to go anywhere, it will take me twice as long than it would any other time of day.

(4) Commercials before movies

I didn't pay six bucks to learn about how great Coca-Cola is, or how much I need a new SUV. I like the movie trailers because they're something I haven't seen before. I know what commercials look like, and I hate them. I don't need to see them again on a twenty-five-foot screen (well, golly, if they're bigger, then they must be better!).

(5) Companies that use DRM

Look, buddy; it's my music. I bought it. So don't tell me how to use it. Copyright law doesn't give you the authority to tell me when, where, and how I can watch or listen to the content that I bought. The more DRM you pack onto a CD or an MP3, the more I'm going to avoid your content like the plague.

(6) Neo-cons

They finally did it: they got middle America to vote themselves into the poorhouse. Under the guise of religion, the Neo-con party (formerly the Republican Party) has usurped everyone in the United States. If you're the CEO of a giant, multinational corporation, then you vote Republican because you know that the Republicans will help your company out, since you donated thirty million dollars to the RNC. If you're a Democrat, but you're a Christian, then the neo-cons will use the fear of gays or abortion to get you to side with them. "If you vote Democrat, the queers will pass a law requiring you to be sodomized by RuPaul every night of the week!" Or, "If you vote Democrat, the godless communist abortionists will mandate that everyone must have abortions. And godless anal sex will be the law of the land!" So, the God-fearing Democrats voted Republican, and in the process, voted to screw themselves over. The rich get richer, the middle class shrinks, and the poor get poorer. And Karl Rove goes home at night and supplicates himself before the altar of Satan while Ann Coulter dresses up in bondage gear and whips Sean Hannity unconscious (but that's okay, because he likes it). Has America gone stupid? Don't Americans know what's going on?

(7) George W. Bush

Okay, this is an extension of (6), but he deserves his own category. First, the guy is a moron. He brags about how he doesn't read very much. He has people summarize important issues for him because he either can't be bothered to learn about an issue for himself or because he's too stupid to learn about an issue for himself. Then he proceeds to appoint people to important positions for which those people are extremely unqualified. Now, every administration has experienced cronyism, but the cronies are usually in unimportant positions, like Ambassador to Micronesia or Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for Housing and Urban Affairs. But Michael Brown? Harriet Miers? These are people who were (or will be) in important positions, and they were (or are) incredibly unqualified for the job. Oh, and George W. Bush was chosen by Karl Rove to be the next president not because he was smart, but because Karl Rove could meld him into a candidate that appeared good. And George W. Bush looks like a monkey, the way he furls his brow sometimes as he desperately tries to remember a talking point that someone told him to mention during a Q&A session.

(8) People who drive SUVs but have no reason for doing so

If you have thirty-seven kids to haul around, then go buy an SUV. Arnold Schwarzenegger owns eight Hummers. That's profane. Just because he's a killer cyborg from the future doesn't mean he shouldn't respect the environment of our own time period. Seriously, folks, the world's natural resources are becoming depleted, and with China an up-and-coming industrial superpower, the oil is going to run out a lot faster. It's time for Detroit to get with the program.

Is there something you hate? Something you want to complain about? Add a comment. We must all gripe together, or must assuredly, we shall gripe separately.

Posted by Mark at 8:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a public service announcement:

For your health and well-being, the United States of Me kindly requests that you shut the f*ck up about my work with needle exchange.

That proclamation is to serve as a slightly comedic, mostly serious introduction to today’s topic – Needle Exchange: Preventing HIV vs. Enabling Heroin Addicts.

First, allow me to introduce the topic to those of you unfamiliar with it. Needle Exchange Emergency Distribution (NEED) is the large needle exchange program (NEP) in the Bay Area. NEPs are based on the health care model of harm reduction. They are usually established in the face of skyrocketing AIDS rates. In this area, San Francisco and other counties declared a state of emergency due to AIDS a few years ago. AIDS rates of IV drug users (IDUs) can range from 25-60% in different areas.

IDUs contract HIV due to the sharing of needles. It is illegal in most areas to possess needles without a prescription (for example, given to diabetics needing to inject insulin). Opiate withdrawal does not merely suck sweaty ass, it kills, sometimes, especially if the cold turkey method is used outside of the naloxone-dispensing expensive rehab centers. When IDUs need to inject, they really, physically, need to inject. Opiate addiction is one of the most physical of all possible addictions. In the absence of clean needles, they will use old ones, even ones on the street or in abandoned housing. Once HIV penetrated this community, it is easy to see how it would naturally spread like wildfire.

NEPs were developed in response to the alarming levels of HIV transmission due to dirty needles. They claim not to advocate drug use but rather to provide individuals with the healthiest possible choices within a decision that they have already made. Opponents claim that they are enabling drug use, diverting candidates from rehab, and encouraging initiates to use because of the facility of attaining all but the main ingredient through the NEP.

Admittedly, certainly, there is logical reasoning to the argument of tho