Accidental Blogger

No Centaurs For The Senator

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) is a long time champion of "sanctity of human life." He is a staunch opponent of abortion and since his conversion to Catholicism, also of the death penalty, except in rare cases. It is not surprising therefore that Brownback does not support embryonic stem cell research or cloning. All this while I had assumed that his opposition to both stemmed from his "culture of life" philosophy in which making and taking of lives should be left in the hands of the almighty. But now I find out that the senator is also worried about genetic research leading to the creation of human-animal hybrids. To thwart the sudden emergence of mythical creatures like centaurs and minotaurs in the midst of our otherwise peaceful world, Brownback has introduced a bill called the The Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act.

“This legislation works to ensure that our society recognizes the dignity and sacredness of human life,” said Brownback. “Creating human-animal hybrids, which permanently alter the genetic makeup of an organism, will challenge the very definition of what it means to be human and is a violation of human dignity and a grave injustice.”

The Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act would ban the creation of human-animal hybrids. Human-animal hybrids are defined as those part-human, part-animal creatures, which are created in laboratories, and blur the line between species. The bill is modest in scope and only affects efforts to blur the genetic lines between animals and humans. It does not preclude the use of animals or humans in legitimate research or health care where genetic material is not passed on to future generations, such as the use of a porcine heart valve in a human patient or the use of a lab rat with human diseases to develop treatments.

Brownback continued, “This legislation is both philosophical and practical as it has a direct bearing upon the very essence of what it means to be human, and it draws a bright line with respect to how far we can go in attempting to create new creatures made with genes from both humans and animals.

“My background is in agriculture, and for a number of years we have been working with crops and animals to produce a superior soy bean, a superior cow, and so-on. We can genetically engineer safe products and herds that are disease resistant or that possess more desirable attributes. But doing this in plants and livestock is very different than doing this in humans.

“The issue is that when you make changes in the germ-line, such changes are passed along to one’s offspring. You could make a change now that could be passed along through the gene-pool for the rest of humanity. We do not know what the full effect of this could be, and it could be disastrous.

“Tampering with the human germ-line could be the equivalent to setting a time-bomb that might detonate many generations down the line; but once it is set, there is no reversing course.

“I am optimistic that our nation we will make a sound choice for the generations to come. Already, in Louisiana last month, Governor Jindal signed legislation into law that would prohibit the creation of human-animal hybrids. That law is modeled after earlier versions of the legislation that we introduce today.”

All the co-sponsors of the bill are Republican senators (John McCain among them). What is Democrat Mary Landrieu doing here? Trying to outdo Governor Bobby Jindal in political grandstanding, I suppose. But don't they love mermaids in Louisiana?

Lincoln out, Christianity In

Having failed in their attempt to inject religion into science education, Texas conservatives have shifted their attention to the state's elementary school social studies curriculum. According to some, school children need no longer learn about national figures such as George Washington and Abraham Licoln or Texas leaders like Stephen F. Austin.  Other public figures, Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall for example, too could be excluded from the study material.  According to the right wingers, the former is an "unworthy role model" for young school children and the latter's life story and influence are deemed "inappropriate." Instead, they would like to emphasize the role of Christianity in founding America and formulating Texas history. I suppose if you can't indocrinate older children with faith based science, it is far simpler to catch them young by way of revisionist history.

AUSTIN — Biographies of Washington, Lincoln, Stephen F. Austin? Not fit reading material for children in the early grades.

Cesar Chavez? Not worthy of his role-model status.

Christianity? Emphasize its importance.

Such suggestions are part of efforts to rewrite history books for the state's schoolchildren, producing some expert recommendations that are sure to inflame Texans, no matter their political leanings.

The State Board of Education expects to start discussing new social studies curriculum standards this week, with members of the public getting their first opportunity to speak this fall and a final board vote next spring.

The process is a long one with lasting impact: reshaping the social studies curriculum, including history, for 4.7 million Texas public school children.

“This is something that every parent would want to be paying attention to. This will determine whether or not the kids get the education needed to succeed in college and jobs in the future,” said Dan Quinn of the Austin-based Texas Freedom Network. “If we are going to politicize our kids' education, that will put our kids behind other kids when they're competing for college and good-paying jobs on down the road.”

Curriculum standards are updated about every 10 years; the last social studies update came in 1997.

According to a preliminary draft of the new proposed standards, biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Stephen F. Austin have been removed from the early grades, said Brooke Terry of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

The early draft, which is likely to change multiple times in the coming months, also removes Independence Day, Veterans' Day, and anthems and mottos for both Texas and the United States in a section on holidays, customs and celebrations, she said.

About Time!

In a recent landmark ruling Delhi's highest court has decriminalized homosexual sex among consenting adults in India's capital. 

NEW DELHI —In a landmark ruling Thursday that could usher in an era of greater freedom for gay men and lesbians in India, New Delhi’s highest court decriminalized homosexuality.

“The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognizing a role in society for everyone,” judges of the Delhi High Court wrote in a 105-page decision, India’s first to directly address rights for gay men and lesbians. “Those perceived by the majority as ‘deviants’ or ‘different’ are not on that score excluded or ostracized,” the decision said.

Homosexuality has been illegal in India since 1861, when British rulers codified a law prohibiting “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal.” The law, known as Section 377 of India’s penal code, has long been viewed as an archaic holdover from colonialism by its detractors.

“Clearly, we are all thrilled,” said Anjali Gopalan, the executive director and founder of the Naz Foundation, an AIDS awareness group that sued to have Section 377 changed.

“It is a first major step,” Ms. Gopalan said during a news conference in Delhi, but “there are many more battles.”

Clearly not everyone is "thrilled" by the groundbreaking decision. See here and here.

Thursday’s decision applies only in the territory of India’s capital city, but it is likely to force India’s government either to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, or change the law nationwide, lawyers and advocates said.

Outside the hall where the Naz Foundation news conference was held, dozens of young men and women gathered to celebrate, along with a group of hijras, men who dress and act like women who classify themselves as belonging to neither gender. “It is a victory of human rights, not just of gay rights,” said one 22-year-old man who only identified himself as Manish.

Gay men and women have rarely been prosecuted under Section 377 in India in modern times, but it has been used to harass, blackmail and jail people.

Britain legalized homosexuality in England and Wales in 1967, but many of its former colonies, including Singapore, Zimbabwe and Malaysia, still retain strict laws against same-sex relations.

India’s society is generally unwelcoming of homosexuality except in the most cosmopolitan circles. It is not uncommon for gay men and women to marry heterosexuals and have families, while carrying on secret relationships with members of the same sex.

In their decision, Chief Justice A. P. Shah and Justice S. Muralidhar declared Section 377, as it pertains to consensual sex among people above the age of 18, in violation of important parts of India’s Constitution. “Consensual sex amongst adults is legal, which includes even gay sex and sex among the same sexes,” they said.

For more on the history of homosexuality and the prevailing gay culture in India see Namit Arora's essay.

Father's Day

President Obama on fatherhood. Happy Father's Day to the dads among our readers.

SHOULD’A / WOULD’A (Narayan)

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama's pick for the Supreme Court has been characterized by right wing rabblerousers as a racist and a militant femme. She has caught a lot of flak, particularly for one statement she made in a 2001 speech at the University of Berkeley entitled, ‘A Latina Judge’s Voice,’ during which she elaborated upon her experience on the bench as a woman of Hispanic background. Her critics have interpreted the statement as racist and biased against white males (some of them are backtracking now).

Reader Narayan Acharya, who has contributed several interesting opinion pieces here, speculates that Sotomayor was not making a political statement at all when she brought up her race, gender and life experience. The much reviled, awkwardly worded sentence was the result of thinking in Spanish and speaking in English. The grammatical differences of the two languages may have crossed wires in her brain, according to Narayan.  Specifically, Sotomayor was tripped up by the "subjunctive!"

Narayan explains:

What Sotomayor said was :

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness o f her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

This is a daunting sentence to analyze. By now we know all the negative meanings and implications that have been imputed to the speaker by those with an axe to grind. But is there something more subtle going on in the rendering of the sentence? I think so, although I find it difficult to clearly identify it. Simply parsing the sentence is futile because mere structure is not what I’m after – deconstruction is needed. Let me strip it to its skeleton anyway :

“I would hope that X would U than Y who hasn’t V” where X is ‘a wise Latina woman’, U is the verbal phrase ‘reach a better conclusion’, Y is ‘a white male’, and V the verbal phrase ‘lived that life’.

One cannot quarrel with the sentence except to quibble that a strict grammarian of a generation or two ago would take issue with the opening verbal phrase saying that ‘I should hope that’ is the only admissible form. I recall being shown a typescript of a primer that claimed that ‘should’ also signals the subjunctive mood, but have not been able to confirm the validity of this claim from other sources. Fowler states that the pairing of ‘I’ and ‘would’ is an “invasion from the other side of the Atlantic”, and that ‘should’ is the correct word to use with the verbs like ‘like’, ‘prefer’, ‘care’, ‘be glad’, ‘be inclined’ etc.

The crux of the matter, I believe, is that Sotomayor is bilingual, and though she may be a native English speaker, her mother tongue is Spanish. We can agree that she is also a native Spanish speaker without debating which came first. Undoubtedly she learnt both languages at an early age when speech is established through imitation rather than formal learning. At that age one learns to speak correctly memetically, without knowing the whys and wherefores. I maintain that Sotomayor must have learnt the use of subjunctive verb forms well before she knew why they were needed.

I do not recall being taught about the subjunctive in English and didn’t know of its significance until I embarked on a course in Spanish. Since then I have discovered that, except perhaps for the uneducated, Spanish speakers use the correct verb forms when the subjunctive mood is called for. English speakers, even the best educated, are sloppy in this respect, using the indicative where the subjunctive is called for, arguing that the meaning is understood anyway by the context.

 From “A Dictionary of Modern English Usage”, H.W.Fowler,1965

“Subjunctive … a verb-form different from that of the indicative mood in order to ‘denote an action or a state as conceived (and not as a fact), and [expressing] a wish, command, exhortation, or a contingent, hypothetical, or prospective event’ – OED. About the subjunctive, so delimited, the important general facts are : (1) that it is moribund except in a few easily specified uses; (2) that, owing to the capricious influence of the much analysed classical moods upon the less studied native, it probably never would have been possible to draw upon a satisfactory table of the English subjunctive uses; (3) that assuredly no one will ever find it either possible or worth while to do so, now that the subject is dying; and (4) that subjunctives met with today, outside the few truly living uses, are either deliberate revivals, especially by poets, for legitimate enough archaic effect, or antiquated survivals giving a pretentious flavour to their context, or new arrivals possible only in an age to which the grammar of the subjunctive is not natural but artificial.”

From “The American Language”, H.L.Mencken

1936 ed : “…virtually extinct in the vulgar tongue”

 1948 ed : “On higher levels, of course, the subjunctive shows more life, and there is ground for questioning the conclusion of Bradley, Krapp, Vizetelly, Fowler and other authorities that it is on its way out.”

From “Modern Spanish Grammar – A Practical Guide”, J.Kattán-Ibarra & C.J.Pountain, 1997.

“Sometimes the subjunctive is automatically required by another element in the sentence such as a verb or a conjunction. Sometimes there is a choice between subjunctive and indicative, in which case there is always a difference in meaning between the two. The subjunctive is not ‘avoided’ in Spanish, and is not in any way old-fashioned or unusual.”

Writing about Work (Dean)

Last week, Ruchira featured an article by Matthew Crawford about the redemptive value of manual labor. My comment begins, "Crawford is full of it." Read the comment if you care to know why I think so. Now, thanks to Ron Silliman's blog, I see another "philosophically" styled column by Alain de Botton in the Boston Globe about a purported dearth of novels in recent years dealing with work life. (The scare quotes respect Wikipedia's report that de Botton is a writer with a philosophical style, i.e., not a working philosopher. Certainly the column consists mostly of leisurely musing, nothing remotely philosophical in an academic sense.)

De Botton evidently would like to see more literature about all kinds of work contexts, including the corporate offices shunned by Crawford in favor of a motorcycle repair shop. But his advocacy for such literature stems from a sense that the work can indeed be mind-numbing and alienating. It would be literature's job to depict in modern work life "new varieties of sensory deprivation, melancholy, boredom, passion, eroticism, vindictiveness, charity, triviality, and seriousness." Novels about website optimization and telephone company management would assist readers to see the richness of these enterprises.

I wonder whether there is in fact a void of recent literature about work. De Botton points to recent Booker Prize winners, a sample that is surely skewed. But how would one search for novels about work, anyway? You could search your local library for books with a subject like Work -- Fiction, but there are drawbacks to such an approach. For one, that particular Library of Congress heading is intended for children's books. More significantly, there are obviously many work related topics that would not be described as fiction about "work," "labor," "employment," i.e., the general theme of de Botton's piece. There are also books about blue collar workers, working women, and so forth, as well as about particular jobs and professions. Searching Berkeley Public Library's collection for works with the keywords "corporate" and "fiction" produces 41 results, many recent, and many of which would seem meaningful to de Botton. Admittedly, he probably wouldn't enjoy Personal Days by Ed Parks, which is perhaps not in the tradition of Balzac and Dickens.

Nevertheless, I don't think de Botton has really done his homework. By focusing on a narrow, elite arena of literature he precludes, in a sense by definition, works that would satisfy his desideratum. But this move serves him well, because it permits him to claim as his own (rather than any mere Booker Prize recipient's) the observation that seemingly dull work can be interesting. In this respect he shares with Crawford a view, either naive or condescending, that the appreciation of work requires a special kind of philosophical or literary insight.

Monday Mixer

Feeling too lazy to write at length on anything (an increasingly frequent occurrence of late). So here are a few links to stories that I heard, saw or read in passing over the last week.

No Smiley Faces On DMV Mugshots:

Few places in Virginia are as draining to the soul and as numbing to the buttocks as the branch offices of the Department of Motor Vehicles. And yet, until recently, smiling was still permitted there.

No more. As part of the DMV's effort to develop super-secure driver's licenses and foolproof identification cards, the agency has issued a smile ban, directing customers to adopt a "neutral expression" in their portraits, thereby extinguishing whatever happiness comes with finally hearing one's number called.

The driver's license photo, it seems, is destined to look like a mug shot.

DMV officials say the smile ban is for a good cause. The agency would like to develop a facial recognition system that could compare customers' photographs over time to prevent fraud and identity theft. "The technology works best when the images are similar," said DMV spokeswoman Pam Goheen. "To prepare for the possibility of future security enhancements, we're asking customers to maintain a neutral expression."

At a Manassas DMV branch yesterday, that translated to a simple directive: "Don't smile."

No Liberty For Democrats:

Liberty University has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club, saying “we are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by” the university.

“It kind of happened out of nowhere,” said Brian Diaz, president of LU’s student Democratic Party organization, which LU formally recognized in October.

Diaz said he was notified of the school’s decision May 15 in an e-mail from Mark Hine, vice president of student affairs.

According to the e-mail, the club must stop using the university’s name, holding meetings on campus, or advertising events. Violators could incur one or more reprimands under the school’s Liberty Way conduct code, and anyone who accumulates 30 reprimands is subject to expulsion.

Hine said late Thursday that the university could not sanction an official club that supported Democratic candidates.

“We are in no way attempting to stifle free speech."

Mixed Race Americans - Fastest Growing Demographic Group

WASHINGTON — Multiracial Americans have become the fastest growing demographic group.

The number of multiracial people rose 3.4 percent last year to about 5.2 million, according to the latest census estimates.

First given the option in 2000, Americans who check more than one box for race on census surveys have jumped by 33 percent and now make up 5 percent of the minority population — with millions more believed to be uncounted.

Demographers attributed the recent population growth to more social acceptance and slowing immigration. They cited in particular the high public profiles of Tiger Woods and President Obama, a self-described "mutt," who are having an effect on those who might self-identify as multiracial.

Measured by percentages, Hawai'i ranked first with nearly 1 in 5 residents who were multiracial, followed by Alaska and Oklahoma, both at roughly 4 percent.

Population figures as of July 2008 show that California, Texas, New York and Florida had the most multiracial people, due partly to higher numbers of second- and later-generation immigrants who are more likely to "marry out."

Rick "Secessionist" Perry: "no" to stimulus money; "yes" to home improvement.

AUSTIN, Texas – While Gov. Rick Perry is criticizing Washington bailouts, state lawmakers are planning to use $11 million in federal stimulus money to help rebuild the badly burned Texas Governor's Mansion.

Approximately $10 million in state tax money will also be spent on a renovation, which is expected to cost about $20 million, officials said Thursday. A House-Senate committee agreed on the expenditures late Wednesday night.

The mansion was burned in an arson fire last summer.

Perry has railed against federal bailouts and what he called the free-spending, power-hungry ways of Washington. In January, he said Texas was endangered by Uncle Sam's "audacity."

Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle released a short, written statement late Thursday when asked about using stimulus money to renovate the mansion.

"We are continuing to work with lawmakers on the budget," she said.

The $11 million for renovations would come out of the $700 million rescue package for Texas, lawmakers said.

"If we're going to fix it up we're going to have to use stimulus money," said state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan. "We've made a decision to use the stimulus money. This is a good use of it."

The governor has been living in a three-story, limestone home with a heated pool, an outdoor cabana and a guest house.

The state is paying some $9,900-a-month in rent while the Governor's Mansion undergoes renovations, records show.

The Philosophy of Motorcycle Maintenance

A very interesting article in the New York Times about the joys of manual labor. (link via Leiter Reports) The author of the piece has a Ph.D in philosophy. He runs a motorcycle repair shop in Virginia. 

The television show“Deadliest Catch” depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty Jobs,” shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who inseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows must lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material reality have become exotically unfamiliar. Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive. “Dilbert,” “The Office” and similar portrayals of cubicle life attest to the dark absurdism with which many Americans have come to view their white-collar jobs.

Is there a more “real” alternative (short of inseminating turkeys)?

High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.

When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the suggestion of Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use,” which concludes with the lines “the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.” Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.

This seems to be a moment when the useful arts have an especially compelling economic rationale. A car mechanics’ trade association reports that repair shops have seen their business jump significantly in the current recession: people aren’t buying new cars; they are fixing the ones they have. The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But there are also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information technology, that have the surprising effect of making the manual trades — plumbing, electrical work, car repair — more attractive as careers. The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.

The article is six pages long. Do read the whole thing.  Matthew Crawford, Ph.D in philosophy, fascinates with his perspective on work and satisfaction with life. The paradox here of course is that had Crawford not gone through the initial "safe" life trajectory of higher education and cubicle jobs of "ideas," he wouldn't probably have developed such a carefully weighed and regret-free appreciation for manual labor and nor perhaps the facility with words to make his case so succinctly for the cost-benefit of the informed choice he made. 

Crawford begins his piece with a reference to a television show.  That reminded me of another TV show, also to do with jobs. I am not much of a TV watcher. But during our brief stay in Germany in the early eighties, I used to watch a fair amount of TV with my two small children partly out of boredom and partly in order to get a grip on the German language. A game show called "Was bin Ich?" (a spin off of the American game show, What's My Line?) used to air on German TV in those days.  I remember noting with interest that some of the hardest vocations for the hosts to guess were manual jobs, even though one would think that such work would offer up more concrete clues than amorphous intellectual pursuits.  But then as Crawford notes, inseminating turkeys is working with your hands but who would ever guess that someone actually does it?  Similarly, I remember that on "Was bin Ich?" one guy's job completely stumped the hosts and he ended up earning a sizable prize for keeping them in suspense for the entire episode. He turned out to be a "Totenkopf Maler." ( see translation) Evidently, there is a market for painted skulls - at least, there must have been one in Germany!

Where Life Is Good ....

That would be in Japan and the European micro-nation of San Marino, according to a recent WHO report.  The two top the list for the highest life expectancies in the world - Japan for females and San Marino for males.

A girl born in Japan today will likely live to celebrate her 86th birthday, the longest life expectancy anywhere in the world. Men fare best in the tiny European nation of San Marino, where the average boy will live to 81, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The West African country of Sierra Leone has the shortest life expectancy for men — just 39 — while Afghanistan fares badly for both sexes, with men and women living on average to 41 and 42 years respectively.

The figures in WHO's annual World Health Statistics report are from 2007, the latest year available.

They show that some countries have made remarkable progress in increasing life expectancy since 1990 — partly by ending wars, partly through successful health initiatives.

Eritrea increased its average life expectancy by 33 years to 61 for men, and by 12 years to 65 for women. In Liberia the figure for men jumped 29 years to 54, and rose 13 years to 58 for women. Angola, Bangladesh, Maldives, Niger and East Timor also increased the average life expectancy for men and women by 10 years.

Other countries showed a sharp decline over the same period.

Women's life expectancy in Zimbabwe fell by 19 years to 44; Zimbabwean men live to 45 on average, compared to age 57 in 1990. Lesotho recorded a 16-year drop for both men and women to 43 and 47 respectively. Women in Swaziland live to 49 on average, a drop of 14 years. Men's life expectancy in the southern African country declined by 12 years to 47.

Botswana, Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Zambia also reported significant drops in life expectancy for both sexes.

In the United States, the life expectancy for men rose to 76 from 72 years, and for women to 81 from 79 years.

The most significant indicators for lower life span and higher infant mortality continue to be poverty, war and disease. Cessation or control of any of those circumstances improves the lives of people.  The report also found the following:

"Be Prepared"

The unsettling events of the past decade - eight years of Bush-Cheney's reign of terror, 9/ 11, an economy in the doldrums, two wars dragging on for years and now a black president in the White House, have some Americans feeling particularly paranoid. Hate groups are quietly increasing their ranks and recruitment efforts, anti-immigration fervor is high, guns and ammo sales have spiked and the Explorer program of the Boy Scouts of America is training teenagers to fight terrorism and illegal immigration.

Although Sir Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts movement in America was a passionate pro-military patriot and scouting does have an element of quasi-military regimentation (duty, obedience, honor, patriotism etc), for the most part youngsters in the program are taught values like discipline, teamwork, responsibility and self-reliance. We don't expect scouts to be well armed and combat trained. But apparently, some adults feel that a scout's training should not be limited just to learning  rope knots, lighting campfires, pitching tents and earning merit badges through community service.

IMPERIAL, Calif. — Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

No matter what the Explorer leaders say about the training being confined to simulated settings, we know that children like to show off their skills to impress others, especially the ones they also enjoy practising. Filled with patriotic zeal and paranoia, some may begin to nurture adventurous fantasies.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

What is to prevent Cathy or another Explorer from deciding that the man mowing the lawn next door is an illegal immigrant or the gas station attendant looks like a terrorist and taking matters in his/ her own hands with the hope of becoming the neighborhood hero?  In any case, how is this a good idea, pumping unnecessary fear into young minds and teaching them to take lethal action? We point fingers at fundamentalist Islamic nations for fueling jihadist fires. We claim that the ill education offered by the madrassas is early training for terrorism later in life. What are we then doing through such stupid drills under the aegis of a respectable youth organization like the Boy Scouts? Creating future xenophobic, trigger-happy goons? How can we go about "civilizing" the rest of the world when our elected leaders attack other countries without provocation like the old Soviet Union and torture  prisoners like middle eastern theocracies and third world dicatorships? How safe can we become by ridding ourselves of decency and common sense? Should we now also go down the same road as the Congo, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone and train child soldiers?  How safe will that make us?  And how civilized?

"Be Prepared" is the motto of the Boy Scouts. "For what?"  Baden-Powell was often asked. "Why, for any old thing," he's supposed to have answered. Any old thing, indeed. At this rate of fear mongering, that may no longer include helping little old ladies waiting to cross the street!

Saved From The Savages

Nearly three years ago I addressed the issue of looted, neglected or destroyed treasures of the world - whether the value of rare, ancient art and artifacts should be measured in regional and nationalistic terms or do they represent the foot prints of history pertinent to all humankind and therefore qualify as global treasures? I wrote:

Those of us born in antique lands with long and continuously evolving histories spanning several centuries and millennia, will identify with the question I am about to pose. It pertains to the theft and sale of ancient artifacts that leave the countries of their origin and find new homes in the museums and private collections elsewhere in distant lands. Trafficking in art and artifacts flows exclusively in one direction - from the poorer nations to the more prosperous ones.  India, China, Egypt and much of the middle and far east have seen ancient religious and cultural artifacts leave native shores and surface in Europe and America.  The fact that much of the art was "taken" by occupiers and colonizers often without even an unscrupulous middleman making money from the sales, is a particularly touchy and often painful aspect of this transfer.

But the story is not as simple as it would appear on considerations of ownership alone.  Many valuable objects were taken or stolen during colonial times.  In the modern era after independence of the host nations, some were acquired legally while others changed hands illegally on the black market. Most countries now ban the sale or transfer of antiquities but rare and ancient artifacts continue to find their way into public and private collections beyond the borders. It is difficult to speculate on the possible fate of the artifacts had they been left where they originally belonged. Would the local governments and museums have had the will or the wherewithal to offer them the wide exposure and  pride of place they have come to enjoy in western museums?  Or would they have crumbled, gathered dust and disappeared altogether? Do poorer nations have the capability to care for their priceless ancient heritage?  Given the immediate economic concerns of more pressing nature, should that even be their priority? There is even a question about how much value locals assign to ancient stone piles and crumbling edifices from a long forgotten era. Can those who are embattled by today's precarious existence, worry about yesterday's fine art?  While "creating" art is the prerogative of the poor and the rich alike, is "preserving" art a luxury afforded only by the wealthy?   The dilemma is indeed a wrenching one - place of origin or centers of preservation and greater visibility?  This is a bit like asking, "Are endangered species better off in their threatened and disappearing habitat or in a well kept zoo?" Should destitute and incapable parents give up their children for adoption or let them struggle and languish in a desperate family milieu? Difficult to answer.

There is another disconcerting factor to consider here other than the priority and capability of less prosperous nations to preserve their heritage. The political tensions that can often overrun the national psyche in developing nations can put historical treasures at risk. Changing ideologies can make monuments and artifacts belonging to opposing political or religious camps vulnerable to vindictive abuse. Think the rampage of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Think Babri Masjid in India. Think the magnificent Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. 

Ah, the Bamiyan Buddhas! I am not overly sentimental about the disappearance of antique treasures, especially those that are lost to the usual ravages of time. But I find their deliberate destruction for political or religious extremist causes repulsive. The demolition of the nearly 1500 year old colossi of Buddha, in the Bamiyan region of Afghanistan in 2001 by Taliban zealots was unforgivably barbaric, in my angry opinion. The images built in the Greco-Indian style that the local Muslim villagers had peacefully co-existed with for centuries, calling them by the endearing names of Big Neighbor and Small Neighbor, dated back to the Gandhara period when Buddhism flourished in Afghanistan. Ignorant religious fanatics thought nothing of reducing them to rubble for the sake of ideological purity, depriving the world of an awesome ancient record of inspired artistic tribute.   

Yesterday a friend and I went to see the exhibition Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul, currently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. The exhibit comprises ancient treasures of art, worship and craftsmanship, some archaeological finds dating back to the Bronze Age. The mostly pre-Islamic relics hark back to Afghanistan's  mercurial early history influenced in turn by early Greek and Indian conquerors as well as the central Asian nomads who passed through its rugged terrain. The art treasures were rescued and kept hidden by Afghan museum curators and art lovers from the rage filled eyes of the Taliban lest they too became prey to the same fate that befell the Bamiyan Buddhas.

My friend and I found the well designed exhibition admirable and the efforts of those who saved the treasures of their ravaged nation from disappearing, even more so. An excerpt from the museum brochure:

Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul explores the rich cultural heritage of ancient Afghanistan from the Bronze Age (2500 B.C.) through the rise of trade along the Silk Road in the first century A.D.

Strategically located on the commercial routes between China and India in the East and Europe in the West, Afghanistan was at the crossroads of civilizations in Central Asia. This unique blend of cultures and artistic styles is seen in nearly 230 artworks: Bronze Age incised gold vases; bronze and stone sculptures of Greek heroes; graceful ivory apsaras, the beautiful women of Indian tradition; Roman type glass vessels and plaster reliefs; magnificent Persian and Scythian style gold jewelry; as well as distinctively local works. Gold ornaments from the famed Bactrian hoard, a 2,000-year-old treasure cache discovered in 1978 but hidden from view until 2003, are included. Visitors also will gain insight into how the artifacts survived the recent decades of war and chaos and will learn the stories of heroic Afghans who risked their lives to save these and other national cultural treasures from destruction during Soviet occupation and Taliban rule.

More, including slide shows, on the Hidden Tresures exhibits in the National Geographic.

Sotomayor, Eagleton and hullo (D)

Okay, I shall begin with politics, post on something I've often mused about, and which is brought for me into renewed focus by topical politics - the search for Souter's replacement, and Sonia Sotomayor's chances at getting to the US Supreme Court. If you've followed the story this past week, I shouldn't be surprised if you shared my sense that this hatchet job has been disturbingly successful. Despite considerable push-back, I suspect that throughout any nomination period the major subtext is going to be dubiously qualified Latina, not editor of Yale Law Review, not breakthrough minority candidate, not graduate summa cum laude from Princeton, not remarkable success story from underprivileged background. The only non-flat-out-indecent reason I've seen people in comment threads give for discounting her achievements is Affirmative Action (though if she's an "unfair" beneficiary - assuming she is one - I'm not sure what precisely an instance of fair beneficiary might look like.) Which brings me to this:

I don't know if it'd help that much, but I've wondered often and wonder again if there's a good case for having American colleges follow the Indian example on Affirmative Action / reservation in one regard: in India of course there are separate admission pools, one for all candidates, and another set aside for various underprivileged groups. People from scheduled/backward castes compete for admission both within the general pool, and again in the separate quota pool if they don't qualify under the general criteria. Lists of accepted applicants are provided and published separately for each pool (with ranks!) I think this might be a useful process to adopt. Here's how I weigh the idea, in increasing order of difficulty for my case:

a. The benefit, for the Sotomayors, Obamas and Roland Fryers of the world, seems clear.
b. So too is the benefit to society from getting superstar minority scholars and journalists and role-models completely free of asterisk.
c. People who end up on the reserved list, but for whom a glance at biography reveals non significant hardship (broadly construed), do much worse. C'est la vie, I mostly shrug and say.
c1. Might even shame universities into more aggressively recruiting minority candidates from the ghettos and lower-middle classes, lowering grade/test score requirements to the required extent, which seems like it'd be an extremely happy outcome.
d. People who'd wind up on the reserved list, but whose biographies do indicate hardship:

This is, I suspect, the case our judgment should turn on. To me, it seems like there's a subsidy effect ended here, as in effect the luster of people in (a) would cease to dilute the 'stigma' of AA for others. It's not quite clear to me whether a need to help people in category (d) should outweigh the desire to be 'nice' to those in category (a). I'm able to consider the 'no' option, because:
- we'd seem to be redistributing social stigma, not creating more of it
- As suggested in (c1), it could create its own need to re-dilute stigma in ways I'd regard as socially beneficial, refocusing AA on social uplift and away from diversity qua diversity - my instinct is that making (a)'s involuntarily shoulder a burden of benevolence isn't quite kosher, a fortiori when the (a)'s themselves demonstrate economic hardship in addition to minority status, as with Sotomayor

Thoughts?

Let's conclude on lighter matters. Just for lulz, I googled Terry Eagleton "rather like". If you'd like to see some of the weirdest analogies ever used by a reasonably well regarded thinker, you might do the same. Giving this idiot child a thousand words and a deadline is rather like stir-frying a coconut in elbow grease. Or something.

[Hiya. call myself D, am twentysomething, in grad school, Indian, ditto gay, do some particle physics, and recommend Hajmola and Diet Coke (NOT Coke Zero, which is as sewage) to anyone who asks. The most played song in my itunes from the past few months is 'Apeman', which is mildly embarrassing (and very catchy. Repeat after me, with the over-population and inflation and starvation, and the crazy poli-ti-shiuns. And again.]

Past-Modern Art (Sujatha)

A few weeks ago, I saw the intriguing works of twin painters Amrit and Rabindra, better known as the Singh Twins via Asian Window. They have applied the techniques of Indian miniatures to contemporary Indo-British life, making for an intriguing and what they like to term a 'Past Modern' approach to painting.

They use the same vivid and highly detailed composition and techniques as the Indian miniaturists of yore, examplified here in the Padshahnama pictures of court life in the age of the Mughals.

The Most Influential Person of 2009 Is .... Moot!

Who is the most influential person of 2009?  Instead of relying on assorted "experts" Time magazine decided to open this year's annual polling on this topic to the "general public." And just as democracy is messy, so are on-line public polls. Totally unexpectedly, the top position has gone to someone named "moot." (There is more to moot than meets the eye. Read the story). The following nine positions are equally stunning. According to the "public" the ten most influential people of 2009 are:

1. Moot

2. Anwar Ibrahim

3. Rick Warren

4. Baitullah Mehsud

5. Larry Brilliant

6. Eric Holder

7. Carlos Slim

8. Angela Markel

9. Kobe Bryant

10. Evo Morales

How many of these have you heard of? Okay, at least some I am sure. A couple are leaders of their countries (Morales, Markel), one is the newly appointed AG of the US Justice Dept who beat out his widely popular, better known and vastly more influential boss in the White House. Then there is also a Christian pastor (#3), a wanted terrorist (#4) and a basketball player (#9). # 2 is someone I have never heard of. What gives? I guess this will teach Time (and other media outlets involved in list making and wishing to influence public opinions) a lesson in at last figuring out that the "public" is not only quite often ignorant but sometimes, as in this case, also mischievous. NASA learnt the same lesson when it opened up the naming of the International Space Station to public voting and was mortified when it ended up with Stephen Colbert. I suspect that this result too was skewed by the parochial partiality of the voting public.

Barack Obama does figure among the top 100 most influential persons of 2009.  He is at a hopelessly feeble # 37 ... well below Britney Spears, Jon Stewart, Ron Paul, Tina Fey and some other knowns and unknowns.  

Food for thought and the palate

I have been sitting on a couple of blog posts that I wanted to expand upon since they appeared on 3 Quarks Daily  on the same day in the beginning of March. Both pertain to food, both are written by Indian born authors who muse on Asian food habits and their relation to religion, culture and the versatility of the human taste buds. 

The first article is written by Namit Arora who is familiar to our readers through his comments and blog linked on A.B.  Namit took his readers through the eating habits of two large Asian countries - India and China, geographic neighbors with ancient histories and vastly disparate culinary cultures.  He focuses on the prevalent natural, religious, and philosophical climates that may have influenced the choice of food of the two peoples, in particular, meat eating and vegetarianism. Read the article and comments below and see if you find the arguments convincing. Although Namit did not address the morality of eating meat in this article, I know that he had the thought in mind (he admitted to me as much in an email) as I myself do occasionally. If I were to ponder this issue, the practice of killing animals for food or other consumer products, I will have to answer some of the following:

• Is it an "all or nothing" proposition?  Is killing another sentient being for our comfort and appetite immoral under all circumstances?
• Does the mere fact of eating amount to immorality or is the suffering of the animal the more important issue?
• Does eating less meat and therefore killing fewer animals count for moral Brownie points? Do waste and over indulgence count towards immorality of meat eating? (the US population will fail miserably)
• Does the "life" of the slaughtered animal matter - (free grazing vs factory farmed) as much as its death?
• Do "compassionate" killing methods count in alleviating the moral pangs?
• If we ate the meat of an animal that died "accidentally" without any affirmative killing agent involved, is that ethical?
• Why can't we eat our dogs and cats but can slaughter the chicken and cows in the backyard who too can become like our pets when we take care of them?
• Should we look upon ourselves as biologically inclined meat eaters like many other carnivores / omnivores and merely accept our place in the food chain? Or are humans, as highly evolved beings with ethics and morality a significant guiding principle in the thought process, be able to buck our "natural" inclinations and formulate our eating habits to accommodate the rights of other animals?

As an animal lover I have oftentimes grappled with the above thoughts. I have answers to some and not to others. But I continue to eat meat. If some day, the fact of another animal dying (being killed) for my food starts to weigh too much on my conscience, I will indeed become a vegetarian. And if I do, one particular veggie will definitely figure prominently on my menu. That vegetable is bitter melon or karela (in Hindi),  a delicacy in some parts of the world, mostly in Asia. Not everyone can stand the taste of it, some not even when it is disguised with spices and other ingredients. The second post on 3QD is about this very same bitter item of food. Author Aditya Dev Sood waxes philosophical on why some among us would choose not only to eat but thoroughly enjoy something that by normal standards of palatability, should be quite unpalatable.

Karela is a truly bitter vegetable and the taste is somewhat acquired or perhaps one has a genetic predisposition to enjoying it or not. I myself have loved it from early childhood, when most children reject bitter, to the astonishment of adults. I enjoy almost all the ways the vegetable is prepared. I can even eat it plain, just boiled with a sprinkling of salt. My husband on the other hand, can only consume a few mouthfuls even when it is spiced up. If any uninitiated reader would like to try it, I will present here a few tips and recipes for consuming karela. 
 
First, a quick guide to karela buying. There are two varieties of the vegetable. The Chinese variety features larger, smoother gourds which are less bitter and less delicious to my bitter loving palate. It is more widely available both in Asian markets as well as in the produce section of large grocery stores. The Indian variety is smaller, crunchier and more bristly looking (see photos of both varieties in the Wiki link).  Usually, only Indian or Pakistani stores carry the Indian variety. Also, the Indian bitter gourd  is decidedly more bitter and truer to the karela taste that I crave. If you have never tasted the veggie, you may wish to begin with the less bitter Chinese variety.

Recipes follow.

Flying Footwear As A Means of Journalistic Inquiry

The Indian elections are just around the corner. Politicians are out bloviating in full force. Journalists are following them around and asking questions. Some of them are not taking "no" or evasive tactics for an answer. Instead, the proactive reporters have begun taking things in their own hands (or feet in this case, perhaps) and are throwing shoes at the offending politicians. Apparently, assaults by shoe hurling have reached epidemic proportions at Indian political venues.

Reporting from New Delhi -- If the shoe fits, throw it. Or so many people in India seem to believe these days.

Taking a cue from Iraqi journalist Muntather Zaidi, who earned a year in jail for his "real-time editorializing" after hurling both of his shoes at then-President Bush, India has witnessed a flurry of flying footwear in recent weeks.

These missiles of malcontent have left politicians on edge and prompted inquiring minds to ponder: Why can't journalists aim better? Do they get their shoes back? And is this so endemic that shoe hurling will become a required subject at journalism schools?

"It's become an epidemic," said Ashis Nandy, a political psychologist.

First off the mark here was local reporter Jarnail Singh, who got into a heated exchange with Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram this month. At issue was why a prominent lawmaker of the same party was cleared of all charges in the death of 3,000 Sikhs after he was accused of firing up a sectarian mob a quarter of a century ago. As blood pressures soared at the news conference, Singh, himself a Sikh, launched his size 9 Reebok sneaker at the minister, who was standing five feet away.

Although his question may have been "on target, his shoe was not," one news portal noted. "Perhaps he will practice some more at a nearby shoe-throwing range."

Fame of the 15-minute variety quickly followed. The Shiromani Akali Dal, a Sikh political party, offered Singh a $4,000 reward for his "courage and bravery." And several people pushed for an auction so they could acquire the offending item. Singh responded that hurling was a not-for-profit activity aimed at making a point. And anyway, he said, the police who grabbed it for evidence still haven't given it back. No charges have been filed.

 

A few days later, a 64-year-old retired school principal threw a shoe at popular Congress Party lawmaker Naveen Jindal during an election rally. Let out on bail after a short time, hurler Rajbal Singh Saharan explained that he hadn't aimed at Jindal as much as India's political system. Returning home inebriated that day, he said, he saw the rally and became enraged at the false promises of politicians at a time when his son had just lost his job.

 

Read more about the flying missiles here.  The L.A. Times reporter speculates that the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at Bush may have set a journalistic trend. Perhaps. But that applies only to the latest fad in the Fourth Estate. Shoe throwing (or shoe waving) as a gesture of utter contempt, is an age old cultural practice in many parts of Asia. 

Sujatha Struggles With A Philosophical Question

A few years ago on a plane, my husband and I got into polite chit-chat with a fellow passenger. The talk turned to children. The lady asked what our kids were up to with their lives. Our daughter was at the time a graduate student in philosophy. Instead of providing that simple bit of information, my husband said rather grandly, "My daughter is a philosopher." The woman retorted laconically, "Aren't we all?" My husband, I am sure, was properly chastised for his pomposity.

What is philosophy? Who is a philosopher? What do philosophers do?  All tricky questions, in my opinion.  Answering them can be a bit like the "Not this, not this"  approach to describing God / Brahman in Hindu philosophy . Our own Sujatha was interrogated by her young daughter along the same lines recently and came up short.

"What is a Filo- so-fer?" M enunciated carefully.

"What?"

 "Here it says that Muskrat was a..." and she showed me the book page.

"A philosopher. Umm, I think that's a person who ponders hard-to-answer questions, like 'What is the purpose of life?' "

 "Or, how did the Big Bang start the universe", M tried to grapple with this new term.

 "No, that's a scientific question. A scientist can do experiments to try and find the answers to such questions. That can't be done in philosophy."

"Or, how did God create Man?"

"No, that's a theological question, not a philosophical one."

 "Or why are we Hindus instead of some other religion?"

"Not exactly", I was starting to run out of adjectives that could be easily explained (cultural? social? ethnic?). "Though it is possible that people of different religions may develop their own philosophies."

M gave up trying to get a coherent answer from me and went back to her book and the whimsies of Moomintroll and Muskrat.

Original post at Fluff 'n' Stuff.

Voices and Faces (Sujatha)

After all the world-wide interest in Susan Boyle, there are still some things about the phenomenon which are rather puzzling to me. On seeing the Youtube video for the first time, I was struck by how exaggerated the judges' and audience's eye-rolling and snickering seemed to be. Why should they react thus at the sight of Susan Boyle, who looked like a perfectly ordinary lady you might run into on the street, quite literally, if you were paying more attention to your cellphone than who was in front of you. Her speaking voice and dialect were a little hard to follow, but once she started to sing, barely two lines into the song, the amazing roar of approval, clapping, widened eyes and judge reactions seemed a tad bit too pat. Cue the artifice, the unseen signs prompting the audience to 'Stand up and clap'.
Her voice is amazing and true, and like other feel-good stories, says to the average underdog "Yes, we can...win over the world with the secret talents we unleash upon it." It's the stuff of childhood dreams, when soot-covered Cinderella is removed from her ash-filled corner, ensconced in a beautiful gown, parading in triumph in her glittering carriage. Only, in this case, the focus is on the fact that even a pretty dress and getup will not change the fact that Susan Boyle's face was pegged as ordinary, even ugly, by today's societal (or media-driven?) standards of 'beauty'.
From the Wikipedia link:

Tanya Gold wrote in The Guardian that the difference between Boyle's hostile reception and the more neutral response to Paul Potts in his first audition reflected society's expectation that women be both good-looking and talented, with no such expectation existing for men. In a similar vein, a columnist on Salon.com wrote that Boyle's performance reminded people that "not all fortysomething women are sleek, Botoxed beauties", going on to say that Boyle's sudden fame came from her ability to remind her audience that, like them, she is a normal, flawed and vulnerable person, familiar with disappointment and mockery, but who nevertheless has the determination to fight for her dream.

Several media sources have commented that Boyle's success seemed to have particular resonance in the United States. Writing in The Scottsman Craig Brown quoted a U.S. entertainment correspondent who compared Boyle's story to the American Dream, in that it represented talent overcoming adversity and poverty. The Associated Press described this as Boyle's "hardscrabble story", dwelling on her modest lifestyle and what they saw as urban deprivation in her home town., The Independent New York correspondent David Usborne wrote that America is a country that will always respond to "the fairy tale where the apparently unprepossessing suddenly becomes pretty, from Shrek to My Fair Lady". Piers Morgan, one of the show's judges, also commented on the unusual power this story seemed to have in the U.S., stating that "Americans can be very moved by this sort of thing." He likened Boyle's rise to fame from poverty and obscurity to that of the fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, who was the subject of a series of Hollywood films.

----------------

A meteoric rise to fame, fuelled by the technology of Youtube/Facebook/Twitter, as well as major exploding coverage on the network and cable channels. It's hard to believe that this was a reflection of something that happened in January 2009, followed by months of careful editing and virality being unleashed around April 11, 2009.

Talent notwithstanding, the media is unleashing reams of commentary along the lines of "Looks aren't everything, talent is." and "Isn't it amazing how wonderful her voice is, despite her looks and those terrible beetling eyebrows?", "Will she or won't she have a makeover?"

I will confess that I'm amazed by all this silly pontification (Kindly ignore the fact that I'm indulging in it here, as well). Doesn't day-to-day life teach all these millions of people that talent can be wrapped in unlikely packages? Don't they know of mailcarriers or janitors or unprepossessing matrons who share their secret talents with the small circle of friends, untrammeled by the spotlight and glare of airbrushed magazine covers and HDTV?

I seriously doubt it. This is just a temporary phenomenon, even with the huge numbers involved. Tomorrow everyone will be chasing after the next viral thing to hit the internet. But for now, Susan Boyle has achieved her dream, and given fuel to a few million other dreams as well.

(Cross posted from Fluff-n-Stuff)

Ruining the Pirate Myth

I didn't know grown men play make-believe pirate games. Apparently, it is a popular pastime for some who are beguiled by the tales of high jinks on high seas popularized in books, theme parks and movies. Those daredevil outlaws of the past occupy a romanticized place in the hearts of some modern day men with sedate lives. In their spare time, they like to put on eye patches, dress up in tight pants, fancy hats, assume flamboyant names and play at being swashbuckling buccaneers.  But the recent real life crack down on scruffy Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean who prey on merchant ships that has shone the light on the unglamorous aspects of piracy may have put a damper on the  playful spirits of the fantasy pirates on land.

America’s pirate subculture is a peculiar world where grown men strap on eye patches, sing pirate chanteys and take on names like, in Clayton Jackson’s case, Morick Towain.

Once a month, Jackson dresses up in pirate garb — such as a head wrap, pair of pointy boots and special piratey pants. Then he hits the bars for some drinks with a few similarly dressed friends.

“Being a pirate is about freedom, it’s the lifestyle of that old-time period that catches my attention,” said Jackson of Dallas, who runs a social group for Texas pirates. Spurred by popular movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, interest in pirates of centuries past has skyrocketed in recent years.

But the recent worldwide furor over real-life Somali pirates raises a pressing question: Should people really be romanticizing murderous pirates — even old ones?

In the tightknit pirate subculture, the issue is a touchy subject and rarely discussed. Leaders of the movement say they’ve recently begun fielding more pointed, occasionally uncomfortable questions.

“If we had been thinking ahead we would have called it `Talk Like a Buccaneer Day,' ” said John Baur, speaking of the now famous Talk Like a Pirate Day he co-founded with friend Mark Summers in 1995.

Summers became so concerned with the issue of modern-day piracy, he recently wrote an open letter to the Somali pirates in a trade magazine.

Sexualizing Fast Food

I have never been impressed by overly sensual/ carnal language applied to food.  I know, I know, sex too is a natural appetite and lust and gluttony can describe urges both above and below the belt. But for some reason, calling a piece of chocolate cake "sinfully delicious" doesn't make me want to eat it more. So it was not a surprise that I found the following article about marketing a burger with overt sexual imagery quite annoying.

When I watch the Carl's Jr. commercial featuring "Top Chef" host and mega-model Padma Lakshmi make hot sweet love to a Western Bacon Cheeseburger, I have many thoughts, some of which, I confess, are not entirely to my credit. The spot features the former Mrs. Salman Rushdie sitting on a brownstone stoop in a clingy sundress hiked up mid-thigh, cramming the giant burger into her educated maw and sucking barbecue sauce from her fingers and wrists. Let's not mince onions here: This is sex with a burger.

You might think that here, at last, television advertising might have crossed some sort of debauched Rubicon, or at least some tripwire at the Federal Communications Commission. Not even close. It's merely the latest chapter in the weird mash-up between sex and diabolically unhealthful fast food.

What gives?

Go ahead and read the whole unappetizing story and take a good look at the model, Padma Lakshmi aka  ex-Mrs. Salman Rushdie #4.  The only sentence you need to pay attention to is the one at the very end.

And so you have the impossibly lean and beautiful Lakshmi wolfing down a 1,000-calorie burger. Now that's hard to swallow.

Tragedy of the Commons = Rorschach Test? (Joe)

I was just reading about water law pertaining to the use of underground water.  Making some point or another, the author invoked the tragedy of the commons, which got me to thinking -- is it an inkblot?

An initial disclaimer: I'm not smart enough to understand the game theory aspects of this, i.e., that the tragedy of the commons is a multiple-player prisoner's dilemma.  So maybe to economists it's more than just an inkblot on a Rorschach test.

For the rest of us, this is still probably one of the more well-known thought experiments out there.  Basically, of a group of farmers neighboring a common plot of grazing land, each individual prefers to allow his goats to graze on the commons, rather than keeping them on his own inadequate land, but the commons will be depleted and rendered unsuitable for grazing after we reach some sort of threshold amount of grazing.

I know I have heard conservatives use the tragedy of the commons to make the point that we need private property.  Private property is the only way the tragedy of the commons can be averted, they say.  Otherwise all the grass will be depleted and then the goats will starve, and while there might initially be a mutton-based feast, soon thereafter there will be no goat's milk, and this is no good for anyone.  Then the conservatives get together, read Ayn Rand, and sing Kumbaya.

But as someone with pretty clear liberal tendencies, my instinctive reaction is to disagree.  Ayn Rand lacks literary merit and is even less meritorious philosophically, I would say, were I actually having this conversation.  What we need is government control of the commons, with science-based regulations and monitoring, and a strict permitting system operated for the benefit of everybody.

And that's all well enough, as far as it goes.  But there's at least a third option, which my first-year torts book is trying to get me to hear; unfortunately for it, I didn't pay attention that day when we skimmed over Coase, whose theorem posits that in the absence of transaction costs, the efficient outcome will be reached irrespective of initial distribution of legal rights.  I'm not sure what a transaction cost is, so I look at my case book inquiringly.  The goats do not starve to death for lack of grass, stupid, it snaps.  Oh.  Unless of course someone wants to build a golf course, or maybe a strip mall.  But then all the goat farmers can just work at the Gap instead.

So we have, quite plausibly it seems to me, three options.  One, we need to give individuals absolute private property rights.  Two, we need some form of communism.  Or three, it doesn't matter what we do, because the market will find a way to avert tragedy.  That is, anyone can (and does) use the tragedy-of-the-commons argument to score cheap rhetorical points in order to make some sort of political claim, but at bottom, it's about as meaningful as a blot of ink, which by the way looks suspiciously like a cat climbing out of a sink.

Does that make sense, or am I missing something?  Why is it prevalant, if it's so meaningless?

Call Me "Betty Brown"

A Texas legislator has suggested that Asian Americans should consider changing their given names and adopt something simpler "that’s easier for Americans to deal with.” I understand that foreign names can be a mouthful and a bit confusing across language barriers. Have some Asians themselves confused things further by adopting "American" names for daily usage while keeping their "official" names on some documents?  In any case who says that a citizen has any obligation to make things "easier" for politicians and bureaucrats? (link: Sanjukta)

AUSTIN — A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”

The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes. The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.

Easier for voting?

Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?” (emphasis mine)

Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie said Republicans are trying to suppress votes with a partisan identification bill and said Brown “is adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments.”

Brown spokesman Jordan Berry said Brown was not making a racially motivated comment but was trying to resolve an identification problem.

Berry said Democrats are trying to blow Brown’s comments out of proportion because polls show most voters support requiring identification for voting. Berry said the Democrats are using racial rhetoric to inflame partisan feelings against the bill.

“They want this to just be about race,” Berry said.

Brown has since then issued an apology for making the remarks.

Orin Kerr Accidentally Refutes Self (Joe)

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr has a post up, the polling data of which purportedly show that liberals are more willing to set aside the clear text of the law in order to reach a result which is not cruel and awful.  Orin and I agree that non-deportation is the "compassionate" response; I disagree with his assertion that there is "no doubt" that deportation is the correct legal answer.

Basically, a guy named Pierre committed a crime, then attempted to kill himself by drinking battery acid.  To keep living, he now requires constant medical care and tube feeding.  He served his 10-year prison sentence, and the INS deported him to Haiti. 

The basic question is whether a court can keep him here (the en banc Third Circuit said "no").  The only law which can keep him here is the Convention Against Torture, which forbids deportation to a country where person probably faces torture.  "Torture" must be

intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or her or a third person information or a confession, punishing him or her for an act he or she or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or her or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

Pierre argues, and we assume to be true, that if he's sent back to Haiti he will detained indefinitely in prison.  Facilities can't provide him with the medical care he needs, and he will painfully starve to death over a course of days or weeks.

Orin's poll asks the reader to be the judge and decide whether the INS gets to send him to Haiti, or whether he gets to stay here; it also asks which side of the political spectrum the reader's beliefs or preferences generally fall on.  As it turns out, more liberals than conservatives would keep Pierre here; more conservatives than liberals would send him off to die an agonizing death.

Marriage by definition

First the Iowa Supreme Court, followed by the Vermont Legislature and now Noah Webster?  Will the fact that dictionaries are giving a nod to same sex unions in their definition of "marriage,"  smooth the way for gay marriage?

Opponents of gay marriage generally have relied on two authorities, the Bible and the dictionary—the divine word and the defined word. A 2006 friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of anti-gay-marriage organizations in a Maryland marriage case cited no fewer than seven dictionaries to make its point. And when the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage last week, it ignored the state's plea to abide by a dictionary definition that limited marriage to "the legal union of a man and a woman."

But in their latest editions, the dictionaries have begun to switch sides—though until recently, no one seemed to have much noticed. The American Heritage Dictionary, Black's Law Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, and Webster's have all added same-sex unions to their definitions of marriage.* The right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily broke the news in March about Webster's, reporting that the dictionary had "resolved the argument" over gay marriage by applying the ancient term "to same-sex duos."

How, exactly, has the wording in the dictionaries changed? American Heritage went first, adding this to its definition of marriage in 2000: "A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage: a same-sex marriage." In 2003, Webster's included in its definition "the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage." In 2004, in its eighth edition, Black's added "same-sex marriage" to its marriage entry, recognizing that "same-sex couples have successfully challenged the laws against same-sex marriage" in a number of states. Even more interesting, 2008's Webster's Contemporary School and Office Dictionary says nothing gendered about marriage at all. The entry simply states that marriage is "the state of being united to another person as a contractual relationship according to law or custom." And the king of them all, the Oxford English Dictionary, since 2000 has included in the definition of marriage the phrase "long-term relationships between partners of the same sex."*

"M" Is For Money - In Marriage, At Least

Love and marriage? How about the global economy and marriage?

Indian bachelors in the US and other western countries used to be a coveted catch in the arranged marriage market back home. Not any more. With India's own economy improving and western job markets wobbly, many Indian brides (and their parents) are opting for marital bliss at home.  With their own job prospects improving in the domestic sector, career women in India too find the lure of settling in a foreign country less compelling. The "Boy from Foreign" is no longer the marketable Prince Charming he used to be. (Link to the WSJ article via Razib)

Vikas Marwaha would normally be considered a good catch by Indian parents seeking a husband for their daughter. The 27-year-old software engineer earns $80,000 to $100,000 a year and comes from a family "of doctors and engineers," according to his profile on a matrimonial Web site.

But Mr. Marwaha works for a start-up Internet phone company in San Francisco. And because the U.S. economy is wobbly, that's a problem. Many Indian parents now are balking at sending their daughters to the U.S. to marry.

During a two-week wife-hunting trip to India in December, Mr. Marwaha interviewed 20 potential brides in 10 days. He says several parents asked him, "How has the recession impacted your job?" Mr. Marwaha says he assured them he hadn't been affected at all, but still he returned to the U.S. brideless.

Indian parents used to think it a plus to marry off their daughters to Indian men living in wealthier countries, including the U.S. and Britain. But as India has grown more affluent in recent years, the demand for overseas Indian grooms has been fading. While India's economy is also slowing down, it is still growing, and layoffs aren't as widespread as in the West.

"Even if something happens, in India there's a comfort" that the woman's parents are around to help, says Murugavel Janakiraman, founder of the matrimonial Web site Bharatmatrimony.com. Favorable responses to overseas grooms registered on his site have declined by 20% in the past nine months, he says. ....

Anisha Seth, 26, has been looking for a groom for two years now. But she feels "jittery" about considering nonresident Indians as possible options.

Ms. Seth says that if she were to move to the U.S. or to another developed country, she might not get a job quickly and would have to be dependent on her husband for a while. While she's open to the idea of giving up her independence, she worries that given the state of the U.S. economy, a groom based in America might not be earning enough to support her. For instance, Ms. Seth says she likes nice clothes and would like to have a flat-screen TV. "Is he really prepared to provide the kind of lifestyle that I have right now?" She expects a husband to earn more than she does.

Some brides simply see India as more livable these days. As salaries have gone up there, Indian married couples are able to afford houses, and young women with jobs have money of their own. In contrast, in the U.S., "people have to even clean their own toilets," says Hasit Dave, 55, who runs the Klassic Match Marriage Bureau in Ahmedabad, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

Career-oriented Indian women, meanwhile, have grown concerned about their job prospects in the U.S. Sandeep Gohad, a Manchester, Conn., software consultant who's between jobs, got such questions during a two-month-long visit to his hometown of Pune, near Mumbai. He told bride candidates they would have a hard time getting a work visa in the U.S. And even if they did, finding jobs would be tough. He, too, came home single. An engineer or doctor "has absolutely no reason to go to the U.S.A. and work as a housewife," he says.