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Labels: humor Labels: humor
Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
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Other blogs you may enjoy:
My civilian gun defense use blog
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Pete Drum's Web Page
Gun Laws Don't Work
instapundit.com
Dissecting Leftism -- By John Ray
A courageous Briton arguing for relaxing Britain's gun control laws
Right Thoughts
Final Protective Fire
Amitai Etzioni's Blog
Scrappleface -- Dangerously Clever Satire
Michael Williams -- Master of None
Lt. Smash is Again Citizen Smash
Another Conservative Blogger
A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
An Iraqi dentist
Promoting children being raised by their own parents
A federal law clerk opines about the law
Michelle Malkin's blog
Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
A conservative/moderate black blogger.
Another sensible American
Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
Music, Politics, Motorcycles
Maggie's Farm: Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
Another conservative.
Neocon Blues
Conservative Oasis
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Bubbleheads is a retired submariner
An Idaho State University student. A Democrat. Someday, she'll start paying income taxes and change.
A retired Las Vegas stagehand, of all things.
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Dark Skies
If you live in the Boise area, and want to help protect our dark skies, there is a public comment meeting August 12 from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM at Boise First Community Center on Eagle Road between Ustick and MacMillan. The Idaho Transportation Department is discussing a pretty major redesign of Eagle Road, and among the items being discussed will be street lighting.
I was just out along highway 55, on the way to Horseshoe Bend. Just as you reach Summit Road, the skies get so dark that I couldn't find most of the familiar constellations--all those other stars and the Milky Way just washed them out! Wow! If only we could get Boise like that!
Use a Pun, Go To Jail
This news story about a company that has announced the first successful cloning of a pet--in this case, kittens--contains what I consider a pretty serious indictment of the company: A California-based company has reportedly cloned the world's first pets, according to a Local 6 News report.
Genetic Savings and Clone? Oh, please.
Tabouli and Baba Ganoush (pictured, left) were born in Austin, Texas, and are almost 8 weeks old, Local 6 News reported.
Lou Hawthorne, who is CEO of the Genetic Savings and Clone company in Sausalito, says scientists used more advanced technology to create the kittens.
Better Than Giving Us The Finger
I'm not sure exactly what President Bush was thinking, but it's a funny picture, nonetheless:
As James Lileks observes: Captions can’t capture the essence of the image. This picture is all things to all people the world over. If you hate him, you laugh. If you love him, you laugh. You shuckin' to me?
No Connection Between Iraq & Terrorism, Right
Coverage of the arrests of the Albany mosque imam include this: ALBANY, N.Y. — Information found in Iraq led federal investigators to become suspicious of an Albany, N.Y., mosque leader, FOX News has learned.
Last summer, U.S. troops discovered Yassin Muhhiddin Aref's name, telephone number and address in a book left behind in a vacated terrorist training camp, a U.S. official told FOX News. The book also revealed that Ansar al-Islam, the group running the camp, had given Aref a title: "the commander."
Aref, 34, is the Imam of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany, N.Y. He and one other mosque leader were arrested Thursday and charged with helping an undercover informant posing as a weapons dealer who was plotting to buy a shoulder-launched missile that would be used to kill the Pakistani ambassador in New York City.
The Japanese-American Internment
Michelle Malkin has a new book out about the World War II internment, arguing that the motivation for this was a genuine concern about Japanese subversion and spying by Japanese immigrants, and Americans of Japanese ancestry. Eric Muller, currently guest blogging over at the Volokh Conspiracy, has done his best to accuse her of shoddy scholarship, manipulation, etc.
I haven't read the book, but having spent a bit of time in my youth reading about the internment, I know a bit more than the average person about the events leading up to it. I know enough to recognize that while Muller makes some good points, others really aren't impressive--and Malkin's response here is devastating.
There is no question in my mind that a lot of public officials and the general population on the West Coast wanted the Japanese out. Decades before Japan became a military threat, California was passing laws (some by initiative) that prohibited non-citizens from buying land. The reason was simple: Japanese immigrants, not being white, could not become naturalized citizens. Japanese farmers had all sorts of nasty habits that made them unpopular with white farmers: hard work; intensive cultivation of the land; excessively productive.
Malkin does not deny that racism against Japanese was widespread. Her point is that the decision that we now know as Executive Order 9066 was made by officials in Washington who had access to decrypted Japanese communications that showed that there was a large espionage problem involving American residents of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast. I suspect that political pressures from the West Coast might have played a larger role in this decision than Malkin is portraying, but it does seem as though there is a plausible argument that EO 9066 was made in the panic of the moment, based on an inability to identify what was probably a few dozens of Japanese agents in a population that exceeeded 100,000.
A few years back, I read David Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy. At the time it came out, it was promoting a fairly controversial theory: that Emperor Hirohito was not a figurehead, but an active participant in the decision to go to war with the U.S. This is no longer a particularly controversial theory; it may even be the consensus by now. Bergamini was a boy living in the Philipines at the time the war started. He describes his first-hand experience of seeing a craftsman of Japanese ancestry in a Japanese military uniform before Japanese troops arrived in their area. It is certainly the case that third generation Japanese living in China played an active part in the Japanese invasion of China. It would be startling indeed if nothing similar was going on in the United States.
I should mention that one difference between Japanese immigrants to America and a number of other places that I have mentioned. Many of the immigrants to America were Christians who left Japan because of widespread discrimination against them, even after the Mejii Restoration theoretically ended the shogunate's severe laws against Christianity. Still, it would not have been difficult for the Japanese government--which had been planning and discussing war with the U.S. for decades--to have inserted enough agents into the immigrant population that came to America, or to have recruited Japanese-Americans who may have come here for very innocent reasons.
Now, I don't argue that EO 9066 was right. It locked up a heck of a lot of people who had done nothing wrong at all. I do argue that the claim that was only driven by racism is typical leftist hysteria. It might be that it was primarily driven by racism, but military concerns were not completely nonsense. I don't think most people today have any concept of the level of fear that gripped the United States at the time. In Oregon, the governor called up the unorganized militia to patrol beaches, looking for arriving spies. (And as well he should have: there were German terrorists arriving from submarines on the East Coast at about the same time.)
The Army Air Corps built a number of airstrips in Nevada at the start of the war: As part of the Western Defense Program, initiated to repel an expected Japanese attack on the west coast, runways and lighting systems were built in Winnemucca, Minden, Lovelock and Fallon.
Why did they build them so far from the West Coast? A friend who was assigned to what is now Fallon Naval Air Station tells me that the base historian told him that it was because there was concern that the Japanese Army would only be held back at the choke points of the Sierra Nevada passes. Bizarre? Not when you look at how rapidly the Japanese Army crushed everything in its path in Asia, defeating Chinese and European colonial forces with no apparent effort.
Was the relocation of the Japanese a mistake? Sure. Something a bit more narrowly focused on those suspected of disloyalty would have made sense, I think. EO 9066 could have been narrowly drafted to apply only to those with Japanese citizenship, or perhaps those with both U.S. and Japanese citizenship. (A sizeable fraction of U.S. born Japanese had dual citizenship because of the discrepancies between American and Japanese definitions of citizenship.)
A little more effort to make the relocation civilian in nature would have helped--with the government offering to relocate them to the interior, placing them in civilian housing, instead of barbed wire camps. Unfortunately, the government's haste would appear to have been driven by a fear of imminent Japanese attack, and the results were ugly.
UPDATE: Here are some transcripts of intercepted messages from a recent book about the MAGIC intercepts that clearly state that the Japanese government was gathering intelligence from "second generation" Japanese in the U.S. Army and aircraft plants.
Tired of Microsoft's So-Called Wizards?
You know, the annoying little icons that pop up and try to walk you through tasks that you already know? Then you'll appreciate this cartoon about the Microsoft Shooting Wizard.
Reading Manuscript Probate Inventories
I haven't actually spent any time reading handwritten probate inventories--until now. Having now spent some time reading 17th and early 19th century probate inventories on microfilm, I find myself even more impressed with Michael Bellesiles's having included 11,000 probate inventories in his work. If he hadn't discredited himself with so many other...problems in his work, I could believe that he missed so many guns because it is too easy to look at these tiny hopeless squiggles, and have no idea what item is being inventoried. Perhaps working from paper originals would be less of a struggle, but working from microfilm would be a challenging and frustrating task.
Adding to the frustration is that much of the available material on probate are items that the Mormon Church has gathered together in support of their geneaology program, and often, this means you just get a name index, or a summary of a probate inventory that emphasizes the names of people--not the sort of information that I need.
I am pleased at how many probate inventories are available online, however. Here's a list:
http://www.math.udel.edu/~rstevens/datasets/nccprobate/
http://gunstonhall.org/probate/inventory.htm
http://departments.mwc.edu/hipr/www/Fredericksburg/probate.htm
http://departments.mwc.edu/hipr/www/inventories/franklin/19cinfra.htm
http://departments.mwc.edu/hipr/www/inventories/dearborn/19cindea.htm
http://departments.mwc.edu/hipr/www/inventories/ripley/
http://departments.mwc.edu/hipr/www/inventories/virginia/
Some of these are pretty small collections--just a few scattered probate inventories. Some are collections of hundreds! Very nice. If you are aware of any others online, please let me know.
Did Bush Misspeak?
This Reuters news story is headlined: "Bush Misspeak Cites U.S. Readiness to Harm U.S." Why? "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we," Bush said.
Our enemies never stop thinking about ways to hurt us; we never stop thinking about those ways, either, because our side has to anticipate their possible moves. The only manner in which Bush "misspoke" was failing to add, "because we must anticipate their hostile moves to prevent them."
Corporations Line Up Behind Their Candidate!
But not the one you expect: Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry released a list of 204 executives who endorse his economic policies, including Oracle Corp. President Charles Phillips and David Bonderman, founder of the buyout firm Texas Pacific Group.
Okay, okay, there are still more Fortune 1000 company CEOs contributing to Bush than Kerry, but still, let's not forget that corporations have historically been as much in the Democratic Party's camp as anyone else's. For all the rhetoric that Democrats like to spout about "two Americas," in practice, they are at least as much captives of corporate interests as the Republicans.
UPDATE: The Bush campaign points out that 40 of them are from company's on Lou Dobbs' "Exporting America" list--an issue the Democrats should care about, right? (See National Review Online's Kerry blog, and search for Dobbs.)
The SUV Tax Break
I keep hearing this claim--that SUVs get a special tax break, just because they are SUVs. The claim that I kept hearing is that you get to knock $25,000 off your taxes, just by buying one of these behemoths. I kept asking people who made this claim to clarify it. Sure, a vehicle used for business purposes can be written off against your business, but IRS is generally pretty demanding about the requirements for business vehicles.
Now, I see an article in Slate that explains this in a way that makes sense. It turns out that just about all the big SUVs are 6000 pounds or more--in some cases, by such a tiny margin that it must be intentional: It's no accident the automakers churn out so many SUVs that break the 6K barrier. By doing so, these "trucks" (and that's how they're classified by the U.S. Department of Transportation) qualify for a huge federal tax break. If you claim you use a 3-ton truck exclusively for work, you can write it off immediately. All of it. Up to $100,000 (in fact, Congress raised the limit from $25,000 just last year). Heavy SUVs qualify for similar state tax breaks in California (up to $25,000) and elsewhere. These vehicles are also exempt from the federal "gas guzzler tax" because they're trucks. (And you probably know that many SUVs are exempt from the tougher gas mileage and safety standards of cars because they're classified as trucks, but that's another story.)
Now this explains it. IRS has traditionally recognized that people buy nice passenger cars as "business vehicles," and so they are pretty demanding on this--or all sorts of people would be driving Corvettes and Ferraris as business vehicles. I suspect that when the 6000 pound weight figure was adopted, it was because no sane person would buy a monstrously big pickup truck for pleasure, and IRS assumed that these were sensible business investments for that reason. Then the big SUVs arrived to take advantage of that 6000 pound cutoff.
Tax advisers actually warn their clients to make sure they buy vehicles that are heavy enough to qualify for the tax breaks. Some offer helpful lists of which SUVs will tip the IRS's scales.
I don't have the fierce hostility to SUVs that some people do (although I drove a neighbor's Ford Expedition for a couple of days--no thanks!) They make a lot of sense for people with three or four kids who go on vacation. (And yes, where I live, there are lots of families with three or four kids.) They make sense for certain commercial purposes as well. But why are there so many of them floating around, considering how expensive they are? Now I understand--the government's tax break has encouraged people who have some sort of business to buy them. To the extent that this lowers taxes on some, it imposes either higher taxes on the rest of us, or a larger deficit--not good.
This is easily fixed: require that to get the tax break, such vehicles must exceed 6000 pounds AND not have more than two doors. This would keep big pickups in the business vehicle range, and still require SUVs used as "business vehicles" to meet the more demanding IRS requirements of recordkeeping that apply to passenger cars.
UPDATE: Several readers pointed out that this won't work, because "crew cab" trucks (four doors plus a bed) are actually popular and sensible methods for a crew supervisor to transport lots of workers to remote job sites. Others have suggested that the real problem is the income tax. There are certainly arguments for replacing the income tax with a national sales tax. There are also arguments in favor of making gravity optional, and that's about as likely to happen.
UPDATE 2: This blogger has a solution to the original article's proposal for banning SUVs, which suggests that this would be "brave": Has someone gone and redefined the word "bravery" when I wasn't looking? It will take bravery to tell residents that they can't drive their own vehicles on the streets that they've paid to build and maintain?
You get the rope, I'll find some lampposts, then we'll get the "brave" politicians together...
Devastating Ad
Is it true? I don't know. If these guys--John Kerry's comrades in arms in Vietnam are telling the truth, John Kerry isn't.
I suspect that John Kerry's attack dogs are going to regret making a big deal about Bush's National Guard service.
UPDATE: Here's a news story about one of the participants retracting at least of his statements criticizing Kerry.
UPDATE 2: And that veteran is now saying that he was grossly misquoted, and stands by his story. It seems that the "reporter" who wrote that story claiming the veteran was retracting his claim also wrote the official campaign book for the Kerry/Edwards campaign. I'm sure that is just a coincidence.
Doesn't This Just Make All Warm and Fuzzy Inside?
Fox News is reporting about a new service available from the Internet: The business of extramarital affairs is a booming one, with a lot of online companies more than willing to play a part for a price. A slew of Web sites have cropped up offering dates, matches and even lies to the already-married who have strayed — or want to.
Note: These aren't sites for singles that married people just happen to be using; it's a site that explicitly caters to the unfaithful married.
Among them: Philanderers.com, MarriedSecrets.com, PerfectAlibi.com (with good stories for the unfaithful to use to cover their tracks) and AshleyMadison.com, site of The Ashley Madison Agency.
That last site lures the unfaithful in with the slogan “When Monogamy Becomes Monotony” and is the biggest cheating site in town, with claims of 160,000 members. It puts philanderers in contact with potential paramours just like any other dating site for singles does — with pictures, profiles and instant messaging.Many therapists worry about the consequences of infidelity becoming an Internet industry.
This quote must have been recorded some decades ago--or Brett Williams isn't getting out of the office much.
Family counselor Brett Williams said cheating Web sites are making it easy for people to stray and helping to ruin families.
“They’re basically destroying the fabric of our society,” Williams said. “Our society is built on family units. Once that decays, we’re not going to have much of a society.”
I'm sure that there will be plenty of bloggers willing to argue that this is a really good thing--a clever use of technology to make people happy. After all, marriage and fidelity are such silly, antiquated notions.
Trademarks
I very much desire to tell you more about this bizarre story, but I am constrained by the need to avoid using a certain letter of the alphabet--and so far, I have avoided the use of the offending trademark letter. But at the present time, I must necessarily use that letter in quoting the story from this journal: THE W hotel chain is aggressively laying claim to the letter W, no matter what President Bush's nickname is. The group behind the chain, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., has fired off legal letters to two political merchandisers, de manding they re move the letter W — as in George W. Bush — from "apparel and accessories" they are selling.
Want To Make America a Safer Place, But Too Old For Military Service?
If these Intelligence Analyst positions at the FBI had been open when I was out of work in late 2001, I would certainly have applied. Even now, it's tempting, in spite of the relatively low starting pay. I'm quoting from a page that you can't directly access, but you can get to when you visit this page: Announcement Number: FO-2004-0028
Vacancy Description: Intelligence Analyst, GS-0132-13 / 14 (EX)
Open Period: 07/12/2004 - 08/09/2004
Series/Grade: GS-0132-13/14
Salary: $62,905.00 TO $96,637.00
Promotion Potential: GS-14
Hiring Agency: DOJ/FBI
Duty Locations: MANY vacancies Continental United States Throughout the US
...
The incumbent performs as an all-source analyst, with responsibility for the projects and activities with a specifically defined geographical area and/or functional area. Accesses local and national intelligence information databases to respond to/validate requests for intelligence information. Produces communications that present a broad spectrum of issues to other Intelligence Community (IC) and law enforcement entities in a clear, concise, and logical manner. Reviews investigative intelligence reports from various agencies; recommends approval/disapproval regarding the dissemination of intelligence information for use by the IC and law enforcement entities. Forms and maintains extensive liaison with local, national, and international contacts with the intelligence and law enforcement communities. Prepares finished intelligence reports (basic-descriptive, current-reportorial, or speculative-estimative). Ensures compliance with laws, regulations, executive orders, and directives promulgated by the Congress, Attorney General, the Director of the FBI, and the DCI to achieve goals and objectives.
...
QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS
Basic Requirements:
Bachelors degree in any discipline from an accredited college or university. Education completed in foreign colleges or universities may be used to meet the above requirement if you can show that the foreign education is comparable to that received in an accredited educational institution in the United States.
...
SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE:
Specialized experience is experience advising, administering, supervising or performing work in the collection, analysis, program management, evaluation, interpretation and dissemination of intelligence information on political, economic, social, cultural, physical, geographic, scientific or military conditions, trends and forces in foreign and domestic areas which directly or indirectly affect the national security.
Another News Story That Reads Like An Onion Parody
Anti-terrorism laws passed by Britain after 9/11 are coming under attack. Why? Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights supported those complaints in a report released Wednesday, and called for changes to the emergency laws enacted soon after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Gee, can you imagine a reason why that might be? Why aren't there equivalent numbers of arrests of Jews, Baptists, Hindus, and Anglicans under the Terrorism Act? Do you suppose that it might have something to do with what groups are overrepresented among actual terrorists?
"There is mounting evidence that the powers under the Terrorism Act are being used disproportionately against members of the Muslim community in the U.K.," the committee reported.
Missouri Governor Holden Loses The Democratic Primary!
And sure enough, at least one of the reasons why his Democratic challenger won? Holden managed a slim lead in the St. Louis metropolitan area, but McCaskill handily won her home turf - the Kansas City region - and piled up huge margins in rural Missouri.
No surprise there!
...
Turnout was heavy statewide, with many counties posting record numbers of voters. Two constitutional amendments - to permit a casino in Rockaway Beach and bar gay marriage - fired up conservative voters. The gun issue also hurt Holden in rural Missouri. Holden vetoed a concealed weapons bill, a move that he said prompted Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. to endorse McCaskill. He said she had waffled on the issue, which she denied. McCaskill said she opposes concealed weapons.
Now, there were other reasons that rural Democrats voted overwhelming against Holden--but you have to wonder if this might have been a factor for the roughly 4-5% of the population that typically applies for a concealed weapon permit after states adopt such laws. A lot of that population are rural Democrats, unsurprisingly.
I Never Cease To Be Amazed At The Left's Paranoia
There's a "Celebrate Diversity" T-shirt out there with all the different types of handguns on it. As Jonah Goldberg said a while back: As I write this, I am wearing a t-shirt that says on the back, in various rasta-marijuana hues of green, yellow, and red: "Celebrate Diversity." Accompanying these secular holy words are pictures of dozens of different handguns (you can get one yourself from thoseshirts.com).
I thought it was a great joke! But little did I know that there was a dark, genocidal meaning to it! Or at least, you would think that from reading Atrios' remarks about Instapundit modeling that T-shirt: The caption is "celebrate diversity." The colors of the caption are commonly used pan-African colors: red, yellow, and green. While, for many, the "joke" (though, I'm not sure why it's funny) is that here diversity is a diversity of guns. Ha ha. But, look, the clear message here is that the way to celebrate diversity, particularly that pan-African diversity, is to buy a bunch of ____ guns. In other words, celebrate diversity by arming yourself.
, and those of the dozens of screeching leftists who comment with approval on those remarks: and, I presume, shoot as many pan-Africans as possible, maybe even a few queers, since the colors are also reminiscent of the gay flag. Welcome to more and more fascism.
And on and on.
...
I thought it was more sinister than even your interpretation. I read it as "Celebrate Diversity -- kill a black person."
...
Maybe Instapoodle can be encouraged to play Russian Roulette more often.
Discrimination Against Pork Eaters
This news item is about a Muslim-owned company that fired an employee for eating foods that contained pork in the lunchroom: ORLANDO, Fla. -- A Central Florida woman was fired from her job after eating "unclean" meat and violating a reported company policy that pork and pork products are not permissible on company premises, according to Local 6 News.
Now, I do believe that companies should be able to establish policies like this--but if they are allowed to do so, that would include the right of an employer to discriminate on just about any basis, and obviously, the ACLU (the fourth branch of the American government) isn't going to allow that.
Lina Morales was hired as an administrative assistant at Rising Star -- a Central Florida telecommunications company with strong Muslim ties, Local 6 News reported.
...
Local 6 News obtained the termination letter that states she was fired for refusing to comply with company policy that pork and pork products are not permissible on company premises.
However, by the company's own admission to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that policy is not written, Local 6 News reported.
...
The CEO of Rising Star, Kujaatele Kweli, told Local 6 News that they have tried to create an office that accommodates anybody's religion -- not just Islam.
"Clearly you're accommodating," Holfeld said.
"Yes." Kweli replied.
"And you have an ecumenical philosophy," Holfeld said.
" Yes," Kweli replied.
"(Then) shouldn't you be able to accommodate all faiths in the same lunch room?" Holfeld asked.
"We do, we can," Kweli said.
"But you've dismissed one of your employees for eating pork in the lunch room," Holfeld said.
"Yes, pork is considered unclean," Kweli said.
This is a delicious opportunity for the left to squirm. On the one hand, they love multiculturalism (which in practice means that all cultures are equally valid, except for our own which is evil). On the other hand, they claim to oppose discrimination based on religion.
UPDATE: And sure enough, Professor Volokh has split hairs finely enough to explain why this is not religious discrimination, because it was only conduct, not her religious beliefs. When the California Supreme Court prohibited public utilities from discriminating against homosexuals in employment in Gay Law Students Association v. Pacific Telephone, 24 Cal.3d 458 (1979) there was no statute prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals. Instead, the decision decided that If this court were to accede to PT&T's sought sanction for its alleged arbitrary discriminatory practices, we would approve of a rule that would extend beyond the subject of employment discrimination against homosexuals. We would necessarily empower any public utility to engage in an infinity of arbitrary employment practices. To cite only a few examples, the utility could refuse to employ a person because he read books prohibited by the utility, visited countries disapproved by the utility, or simply exhibited irrelevant characteristics of personal appearance or background disliked by the utility.
Instead of prohibiting discrimination based on particular listed categories developed by the legislative branch, the California Supreme Court simply decided that any form of discrimination was unlawful unless you could clearly establish its relevance to the job. So why is that a rule that is good enough to protect homosexuals seeking jobs with the phone company isn't good enough for a pork-eater at a Muslim-owned company?
Or is just that homosexuality is more special?
Missouri Voters Pass Gay Marriage Ban
The news account emphasizes that this isn't surprising--Missouri is pretty conservative. But it also emphasizes the magnitude of the victory: 71% voted for an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage--in a state that often sends Democrats to DC. Of course, if the Supreme Court decides that such state constitutional bans on gay marriage are unconstitutional, they will go away, in much the same way that the Supreme Court overruled an amendment to the Colorado Constitution in Romer v. Evans (1996). But here's the important point for the elections: Louisiana residents are to vote on a marriage amendment Sept. 18. Then Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah are to vote on the issue Nov. 2. Initiatives are pending in Michigan, North Dakota and Ohio.
I expect that there will be a fair number of people going to the polls to vote who ordinarily don't do so--and many Democrats who do normally vote are going to be easily swayed against Kerry if the Republicans actually show enough courage to run ads emphasizing that gay marriage is a Democratic Party sort of thing.
I remember some years ago, the gun control groups put an initiative on the ballot in California for a pretty severe handgun law. It mobilized a lot of non-voters--and played a significant part in Democrat Tom Bradley's defeat for Governor. Relations between the Party bosses and gun control groups were, for a couple of years, rather strained.
Bizarre News Story in Pravda
It purports that a sizeable fraction of captured recent illegals on the Arizona border are Middle Easterners--many Syrians and Iranians, based on reports from one of the local weekly papers: According to the Tombstone editor"s sources, on June 13, 2004, Border Patrol agents from the Wilcox, Ariz., patrol station encountered a large group of illegal border crossers in the Chiricaucha Mountain foothills, just east of what is known as The Sanders Ranch. Agents estimated that the group comprised about 100 people.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a lot of credence to a second-hand account reprinted in Pravda. Of course, last week, we had the news of an al-Qaeda operative arrested in Texas who had illegally crossed from Mexico. Hmmm.
Border Patrol sources who were present at this mass apprehension state that they seized 71 illegal aliens, of whom 53 were males of Middle Eastern decent. The suspects did not speak Spanish and spoke only poor English, sources told the newspaper.
In fact, after a group of the detainees had been placed in a transport van, one Border Patrol agents on the scene who speaks Arabic and Farsi, the native language of Iran, clearly overheard the detainees speaking Arabic through an air vent in the transport vehicle.
Higher-ups in the Border Patrol allegedly ordered these agents involved not to say a thing to the news media.
"But I have to," one of the agents told the Tombstone editor, obviously acting out of concern of the potential terrorism threat as every American should be.
The agents involved in the June 13th incident noted that these suspects wore garb and clothing that is normally worn by migrants: baseball caps, tennis shoes, jeans, T-shirts even with patriotic American slogans.
But the agents said what was particularly odd was that all the clothing worn by the Middle Eastern males was brand new. Each one in the group looked to have had just been to a barber shop with fresh new haircuts, all clean cut, with the exact style and cut of mustaches.
Pravda in the bad old days of Communism was not exactly a high reliability source. In fact, there used to be a joke told in Russia about Pravda and Izvestia. Each of these newspaper names has a meaning in Russian: pravda means "truth", and izvestia means "news." The joke was, "There is no pravda in Izvestia; there is no izvestia in Pravda."
Political Humor
A friend forwarded this to me, supposedly written by: John E. Stoos
Chief Consultant for Senator Tom McClintock
Subject: Freedom of the press
Two boys in Boston were playing basketball when one of them was attacked by a rabid Rottweiler. Thinking quickly, the other boy ripped a board off a nearby fence, whacked the dog over the head and saved his friend.
A newspaper reporter from the Boston Herald witnessed the incident and
rushed over to interview the boy. The reporter began entering data into his
laptop, beginning with the headline: "Brave Young Celtics Fan Saves Friend From Jaws Of Vicious Animal."
"But I'm not a Celtics fan," the little hero interjected. "Sorry," replied
the reporter. "But since we're in Boston, Mass, I just assumed you were."
Hitting the delete key, the reporter began "John Kerry Fan rescues Friend
From Horrific Dog Attack."
"But I'm not a Kerry fan either," the boy responds. The reporter says, "I assumed everybody in this state was either for the Celtics or Kerry or Kennedy." "What team or person do you like?"
"I'm a Houston Rockets fan and I really like George W. Bush," the boy says. Hitting the delete key, the reporter begins again, "Arrogant Conservative Brat Kills Beloved Family Pet."
Hospital Humor
Some of these sound like legitimate typos when transcribing from hospital charts, some sound like a word was left out. Still pretty funny: Hospital chart snippets
1. The patient refused autopsy.
2. The patient has no previous history of suicides.
3. Patient has left white blood cells at another hospital.
4. Patient's medical history has been remarkably insignificant with only a
40-pound weight gain in the past three days.
5. She has no rigors or shaking chills, but her husband states she was very hot in bed last night.
6. Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year.
7. On the second day, the knee was better, and on the third day it disappeared.
8. The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed.
9. The patient has been depressed since she began seeing me in 1993.
10. Discharge status: Alive, but without my permission.
11. Healthy appearing, decrepit 69-year old male, mentally alert but forgetful.
12. Patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch.
13. She is numb from her toes down.
14. While in ER, she was examined, x-rated and sent home.
15. The skin was moist and dry.
16. Occasional, constant infrequent headaches.
17. Patient was alert and unresponsive.
18. Rectal examination revealed a normal size thyroid.
19. She stated that she had been constipated for most of her life, until she got a divorce.
20. I saw your patient today, who is still under our car for physical therapy.
21. Both breasts are equal and reactive to light and accommodation.
22. Examination of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized.
23. The lab test indicated abnormal lover function.
24. Skin: somewhat pale but present.
25. The pelvic exam will be done later on the floor.
26. Large brown stool ambulating in the hall.
27. Patient has two teenage children, but no other abnormalities.
Movies This Weekend
My son recommended Napoleon Dynamite, and I recommend it also. It is nice to see a movie that is achingly funny without be crude. The audience was full of everything from high school age kids (Young lady behind us: "Cameron, get your hand out of there!" "That's my elbow!") to great-grandparents, and everyone got a good laugh out of it.
Napoleon Dynamite is set in Preston, Idaho, a very small town in the eastern end of the state. The actor who plays Napoleon based this film on his experiences growing up there--right down to getting himself elected student body president (an important part of the plot).
Napoleon is the most hopelessly nerdy social misfit you can imagine--and I would expect that the screenwriter has exaggerated this not only for comic effect, but because all of us, especially those of us who were in the "hopelessly nerdy social misfit" category back then, look back with some pain on the dumb things we did back in the day.
The rest of Napoleon's family is also socially challenged, from the 31 year old brother who is still living at home, developing deep meaningful relationships with women that he measures by how many hours he spends in a chat room with them. Uncle Rico is the sort of person about whom Bruce Springsteen's song "Glory Days" could have been written. They live on a farm, sort of, except the only livestock is a llama.
One point that my wife noticed, which may explain something of Napoleon's maladjustment, however, is what isn't in the home: the parents. Grandma is apparently the parent (temporarily hospitalized by a dirt bike accident). While the movie doesn't develop this theme (it is a comedy), I do not think this is a coincidence. Even in rural America, there are a lot of missing parents due to drug abuse, alcoholism, and divorce.
One of the positive aspects of this film is that the laughs don't come as a result of sexual innuendo, or gobs of foul language. There are few expletives here and there, probably to make sure that it didn't get a G-rating. There is also one sequence where Uncle Rico, as part of his many brain-dead moneymaking schemes, is trying to peddle a herbal supplement breast enlarger, but that's about as racy as it gets. There is an otherwise irrational close-up of one person's feet that suggests that a sequel could have a Crying Game theme. But this is so subtle that I am not even sure if that is what was intended.
I also rented The Sixth Sense this weekend--and wow! This is one of the most emotionally powerful science fiction films that I have seen in a long time. Bruce Willis delivers a powerful, understated performance as a child psychologist trying to help a very disturbed child. I've seen Willis in a lot of films, but he is usually playing a smartass, and this was quite a change--and a change that shows the depth of performance he can deliver.
Minor spoiler (but I think all of you have seen the line from the movie, so...)
Haley Joel Osment's performance as a child who sees dead people walking around--and they don't know they are dead--is profoundly disturbing. His performance is so natural that you forget that this is an child playing a part. I found myself so heartbroken by his fear that I was on the edge of tears; I had to keep reminding myself that this was only a movie. (Partly this is because I had several occasions to visit the children's ward of a mental hospital several years ago; watching a line of kids that age walking through the halls--instead of being at home--still brings tears to my eyes.)
There is only one significant flaw that I saw in the film, and that involves how the child helps deliver a message from a recently dead child to the child's father. All the other dead people are associated with a particular location--but not this child. That didn't make much sense. Still, it was a minor flaw in an emotionally powerful sequence. There is also a surprise ending that I was not expecting at all, and I'm not even going to hint at it.
The rating is PG-13, I think primarily because of the intensity of the film and because death--especially violent death--could be a bit too disturbing for many pre-13 children. The dead are portrayed as they were, but the gore is generally kept short enough, and far enough away, that it only disturbs without grossing out. The boy killed in the gun accident would have been examined in great detail in the hands of some directors; not here. He's at the end of a hallway, and while you can see that something is badly wrong with the back of his head, you have to piece together exactly what is wrong from the dialog.
I've seen one other film directed by M. Night Shyamalan--Signs--and while I liked Signs, this was far more affecting. Like Signs, there is an affirming, spiritual dimension to The Sixth Sense that acknowledges that the real world involves loss, grief, and sorrow, and yet does not allow it to destroy us--that recognizes that death is not an end, but a beginning.
Why The Java Native Interface Doesn't Get Much Used
My theory is that it is because it is easier to rewrite most C applications in Java than to debug the Java Native Interface. Unfortunately, the access violation messages are coming from the glue layer (or is tar pit layer?) between the C code and the Java--a place where neither the Visual C++ debugger or the Java debugger dares to go. Even worse, I can't get consistent results--sometimes the C code successfully calls Java methods, sometimes it doesn't.
It will be a bit slower rewriting all this C into Java, but it will be a lot more elegant when I am done. It's amazing how code just goes away: all the code checking malloc/free returns (yes, I do that); a lot of code disappears because I can use the LinkedList class in Java.
