perfidy

Via today's Best of the Web, we find the travails of Bethany Hauf, of Victorville CA, in a story entitled Term paper about 'God' earns student failing grade.

He told me you might as well write about the Easter Bunny. He wanted to censor the word God.

The horror!

Hauf's teacher approved her term paper topic — Religion and its Place within the Government — on one condition: Don't use the word God. Instead of complying with VVCC adjunct instructor Michael Shefchik's condition Hauf wrote a 10-page report for her English 101 class entitled "In God We Trust."

"He said it would offend others in class," Hauf, a 34-year-old mother of four, said. "I didn't realize God was taboo."

So she wrote it anyway. Perhaps she should have dropped English 101 and taken a basic comprehension course instead. Either that or she was spoiling for a fight.

"I don't loose my First Amendment rights when I walk into that college," Hauf said. She is demanding an apology from the teacher and that the paper be re-graded.

Mmmm... o-kaaaay. Which of the words below were foreign to her, I wonder:

Shefchik wrote her back an e-mail approving her topic choice, but at the same time cautioning her to be objective in her reporting. "I have one limiting factor," Shefchik wrote, according to the ACLJ. "No mention of big 'G' gods, i.e., one, true god argumentation."

Being an utterly irreligious fellow, I can't get too jacked up by either Hauf's overt religiosity or her teacher's overt lack thereof - they're each entitled to their kinks. But several things jumped out at me from the story.

First, the author or editor of the story needs to reread the style guide for the Daily Press, assuming they have one. It probably contains a maxim such as "Q: What is hard to lose but can sometimes become loose? A: Your bowels". And if it doesn't have a style guide, it should. Failing an editorial lapse, maybe Hauf actually said "loose", in which case she should be immediately demoted to a remedial spoken English course. And failing that, of course I'm just being too picky, but only because I'm perfect in every way.

Second, even giving credit for the teacher's apparent antipathy toward things religious, Hauf received a valid assignment for an English class, and a challenging one, given her choice of topic. Rather like the lipogram by Ernest Vincent Wright called Gadsby, only a whole lot shorter and easier.

Finally, who is this ACLJ, and why do we need yet another set of harpies to advance the cause of feigned infringement on our basic rights as human beings? Even if we did need such an additional advocacy organization (and I'm not saying we do, by a long shot), at what point in time did the First Amendment become stretched to cover fulfillment of class assignments, as distinct from simple expression of opinion? I don't think one loses one's rights to free speech when entering a classroom, but there's a time and place for expression of opinion, and it's the part of the class where, well, people are discussing opinions. In an expository paper, such as the one she was assigned, opinion has next to nothing to do with, and fulfilling the assignment has everything to do with one's grade. If she'd gotten a bad grade because of her views, I'd understand the umbrage, but she clearly got a bad grade because she explicitly failed to fulfill the assigned task.

And hollering about repression isn't a substitute for just doing the damned assignment.

Commenter Bram offered Roe v Wade as an example of judicial activism. Is it? I think it is not, and here's my reasoning.

Roe v Wade is a decision that is often discussed, but rarely read. I just went and read it, and I think you should too. There's a lot of historical ground that the decision covers. This is not a matter of "inventing" a right to abortion; nothing of the sort took place.

Very specific constitutional grounds were specified in Roe's appeal -- privacy and liberty. Roe did not argue she had a "right" to an abortion; she argued that she had the liberty to do as she pleased. Your liberty and privacy are guaranteed by the constitution, and as such preempt state law. So the question before the court was, can a state impose in liberty and privacy in this manner?

You gotta read the whole thing, but the thinking is something like this:

By no means did the court confer an arbitrary right to an abortion. Rather, the court struck a careful balance between personal liberty/privacy, guaranteed by the constitution, and states' interests. It drew the line at the boundary between religion and science.

I really don't want to provoke an abortion war, but I think it's worthwhile to note that the tenor of this decision follows the pattern I've noted: A difficult issue, subject to considerable subjective analysis, but still requiring a decision to be made. This is not a simple issue of states' rights. States may not make laws that violate the constitution, and Roe raised a serious and substantive constitutional challenge.

In an editorial from today's WSJ, Peggy Noonan asks the question:

What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No. 1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them?

As an admittedly devoted fan of Ms. Noonan's prose, of course I'll tell you to read the entire thing. Among other items, covering the range of the political classes, she has a go at Barack Obama's unfortunate-but-inevitable first public attempt at foot-ingestion, as well as Bill Frist's latest.

Sadly, she's doesn't attempt to answer it, but it's still a pertinent question.

My sense is that the answer has its roots in that whole "power corrupts" leitmotif. It's certainly not that they're somehow, by nature, more special than the rest of us. But perhaps they don't know that?

Via ace, we find that the ever useful Forbes magazine runs the numbers for how much aspiring crime fighters will need to throw down to become a Batclone. Short answer, a lot. 3,365,449 samoleans, to be exact. And that’s the bargain basement price, for those without access to a billion dollar inheritance. (According to the Forbes ranking of the richest fictional individuals, Bruce Wayne comes in at number seven just after Willy Wonka. If the Bruce were real, Forbes believes he’d eb a notch below Rupert Murdoch.) So how do you become Batman? Let’s take a look.

For the bat-fu, Forbes suggests Shaolin training:

A good place to start would be an internship at the birthplace of kung fu, the Shaolin Temple in Henan, China. One month of training at the prestigious Tagou school costs about $740, including a private room and training with a personal coach. It'll take a while to get good enough to stop the Joker's worst thugs, though, so count on spending at least three years and about 30 grand for the trip.

I had no idea that Shaolin training was that cheap. If I had known that ten years ago, I would now be the baddest technical writer in world history. But I don’t think Mrs. Buckethead would approve of me going off to China for several years at this point.

Where do you stash your gear between missions? Seeing as the underlying geology of New York is not conducive to cave formation, Forbes recommends another alternative:

So what's a budget-minded vigilante to do? We recommend you find yourself a nice out-of-the-way warehouse. In the outer boroughs of New York City, a decent-sized ground-floor commercial space can be leased for as low as $2,000 a month, particularly in isolated, questionably safe neighborhoods, exactly the kind of place the Bat would fly.

That’s not a bad deal. Certainly cheaper than what my friend Drew is paying for his condo in Battery Park.

This is the kind of hard hitting, informative investigative reporting we need to see more of.

There are two publications whose obituaries I always read. The Economist, which does a single obituary as a full page item to close each issue, always provides interesting facts about important, though sometimes little-known, people of our time.

And then, there's the Telegraph, which does the same, but with taglines such as this:

William Donaldson

Wykehamist pimp, crack fiend and adulterer who created Henry Root and produced Beyond the Fringe.
27 Jun 2005

How, I ask myself, could I not read such a death notice?

Garfield Ridge has a great post up on one of Baseball's true greats: Dock Ellis.

Thirty-five years ago, on June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirate and future Texas Rangers pitcher Dock Ellis found himself in the Los Angeles home of a childhood friend named Al Rambo. Two days earlier, he'd flown with the Pirates to San Diego for a four-game series with the Padres. He immediately rented a car and drove to L.A. to see Rambo and his girlfriend Mitzi. The next 12 hours were a fog of conversation, screwdrivers, marijuana, and, for Ellis, amphetamines. He went to sleep in the early morning, woke up sometime after noon and immediately took a dose of Purple Haze acid.

A bit later, how long exactly he can't recall, he came across Mitzi flipping through a newspaper. She scanned for a moment, then noticed something.

"Dock," she said. "You're supposed to pitch today."

Ellis focused his mind. No. Friday. He wasn't pitching until Friday. He was sure.

"Baby," she replied. "It is Friday. You slept through Thursday."

Dock went on to pitch a no-hitter.

Maybe Buckethead doesn't like it when uncomfortable comparisons emerge.

Rather than pluck words, let's look at it.

The apology came a week after Durbin, the Senate minority whip, quoted from an FBI agent's report describing detainees at the Naval base in a U.S.-controlled portion of Cuba as being chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings," the senator said June 14.

If I read or heard about prisoners "chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures" I too would assume that it referred to prisoners of some repressive regime.

If I read your comments correctly, you all are telling me that you would not make this assumption, and that you acknowledge such activities occurring in US prisons. You then neatly "cover your asses" with finger-wagging about how you don't approve of such measures, but comparing us to really bad guys just isn't fair.

All the guy said is that these are practices that Joe Average, who believes that we're the good guys, would attribute to some of the repressive regimes that are commonly known. That sounds pretty damn fair to me.

But you want to generalize the statement, and to achieve that generalization you invoke logic that can be used to stifle, eliminate, and declare treasonous any criticism. This has distressing parallels to the politics of the moment.

We have some very solid knowledge in history present on this blog.

If those regimes were the wrong ones to compare these particular actions to, please tell us the right ones. Which governments or regimes chained up prisoners, denied them food or water, and subjected them to extreme temperatures?

Or would you prefer that we simply engaged in comparison-free dialog, arguing all of this from relativist positions, without reference points?

This court decision is a major blow to the citizens of this country. I am compelled to point out that in the last six years American citizens have had the character of their relationship with the government changed radically:

1. Takings: Any local government can now hand your private property to another private owner if any excuse for redevelopment is avialable. This is a clear invitation for corruption, and will inevitably result in a major upswing of same.

2. Trial by Jury: The current administration has reserved for itself the right to detain and permanently imprison any citizen, without trial or justification, under the guise of "fighting terror".

Let's recap. Any property you own is yours strictly subject to the whims of the government. Your freedom itself is also an illusion in the "conservative" world of George W Bush; it currently has no force under the law if some arbitrary member of the administration decides otherwise.

So what private right is Bush for, exactly? Well, he's strongly in favor of allowing property owners to pollute the hell out of that property, regardless of the effect on others. Apparently there's some sort of principal at work in that case. I struggle to understand how environmental concerns are less of a "public use" than protecting the profits of developers, but there it is.

These two things are pretty damn fundamental, and I'd say the average citizen of this country figures they're his birthright. They are, of course. But we are in exceptional times, times in which corruption and greed flow like electricity through the body politic, taking the path of least resistance. This administration is indistinguishable from its insider supporters, and its policies, while lacking any verifiable correlation between promised and actual effect, have inevitably benefited those same insiders.

‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing'

I was distressed to read that Phillip Carter, author of the Intel Dump blog, received reactivation orders last Thursday. Phil's taken the news with characteristic class; well-wishers abound in the comments, hoping for the best for Phil.

What no-one seems to be saying, and Phil is obviously unable to say himself, is this: Is this payback? I don't know, but I'll say it, and I'll say that this administration and this military leadership will breath easier in the information vacuum his forced activation creates.

Phillip Carter has been one of the more outspoken critics of the military and of the government since leaving the active service. He's written clear and precise articles as an intelligent man who's been there and done it. He advocates the draft, and calls'em like he sees'em.

He advocates very effectively for positions that are highly inconvenient to the administration and to the military.

We all know that very large numbers of recently departed active service members are being reactivated as the military struggles to keep the necessary forces in place. Recruitment has suffered hugely; forcing the recently active to serve additional tours is very much the only option at this point.

Last night, some folks got together to drink and play pool. Some took in dinner and a movie. Other people went to a ballgame, or had a clambake, or fought a couple guys before passing out, or dealt out a few hands of Texas Hold 'Em.

Last night my buddy Brendan came over and we all made flavored vodka. We decided to go the low road, utilizing a theory first promulgated by the website Oh My God It Burns! which posits that a home water filtration unit (such as a Brita filter pitcher) can remove the impurities from cut-rate vodka and render it the near-equal of top-shelf brands.

What we found was that filtering a bottle of cheap (plastic-bottle store-brand distilled with pride in Somerville, Massachusetts) grain vodka five times does in fact remove nearly all the nasty smell, aftertaste, and burn, making it almost but not quite as delicious as the magically smooth Luksosowa brand potato vodka we used as a control. Although a faint hint of the gluey flavor of cheap vodka remains, the newly enspiffened and filtered liquor is nevertheless the full equal of Skyy, Stoli, or Ketel One, and will work very nicely once infused. Brendan had already made some raspberry and lemon vodkas, both of which were delicious in lemonade.

We ended up making four different vodkas: pepper, orange, ginger, and cranberry. Think about it! Instant seabreezes with just soda water! Orange vodka in cream soda! Ginger vodka in ginger ale! And the by-now hackneyed spicy martini!

We expect the pepper and cranberry vodkas to be ready within a few days based on past experience. The orange zest can sit in the vodka for months, though we anticipate maximum flavor extraction to be achieved in a month or so, possibly sooner. The ginger vodka is a total toss-up, (just a little ginger flavor so far) and I expect I will end up adding another quarter cup or so of grated fresh ginger to the 500ml of vodka and quarter cup of sliced ginger already in the jar. For the pepper vodka we chose one lone poblano pepper. Both Brendan and I have tried making pepper vodka in the past, and have learned caution accordingly.

My first attempt at pepper vodka used 750ml of Luksosowa and three fresh cayenne peppers fresh from Chainsaw Mick's garden. Within three days the vodka had turned green and was spicy enough to kill a lesser man. I enjoyed every drop of that vodka in a succession of my own patented "filthy" martinis, the recipe for which follows, until I got to the dregs. It seems that capsaicin, the active heat ingredient in chili peppers, is both alcohol soluble and heavier than vodka. The last martini from that bottle nearly killed me, but through generous applications of ancillary oral analgesics (shots of Jim Beam) I managed to get through it. Brendan's prior experiences were similar, so for this new iteration we chose to employ the mild and flavorful poblano chile. If after 48 hours the vodka has not taken on any heat, I can always drop in a leftover cayenne for a little while to kick it up, but I expect I won't have to.

We also chose to try to make our vodkas extremely concentrated, so that when the infusions are ready we can dilute them down with freshly filtered cheapo liquor to a usable strength. We have future plans for combo infusions, say, ginger and lemongrass or orange and vanilla. I am hoping to try out more savory flavors as well like cinammon, clove, and cardamon. If anybody has any hott drink ideas, please send them along. Perhaps I could substitute dark rum for the vodka in the last instance and make insta-mulled cider when winter comes. Nummy-num-num-num.

So that was my Saturday night. Any of my friends living nearby can expect fancy-pants liquor for Festivus this year.

Filthy Martini

2 oz. ice-cold pepper vodka
dash chilled dry vermouth
2 tsp chilled green olive juice
1 Tbsp chilled kosher pickle juice (use fermented pickle juice with live cultures, not just vinegar pickles)
2 green olives

In a shaker, pour vermouth over ice and drain, leaving behind only a residue. Add vodka and olive and pickle juice, and shake or stir as desired. Strain into martini glass and garnish with olives.