My Misgivings About the Rally for Sanity/Fear

Mark Ames has a different take

From "The Rally to Restore Vanity: Generation X Celebrates Its Homeric Struggle Against Lameness". Let's just say that Mark Ames didn't think much of the rally and leave it at that.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this has been the Great Dream of my generation: to position ourselves in such a way that we’re beyond mockery. To not look stupid. That’s the biggest crime of all–looking stupid. That’s why they’ve turned Stewart into a demigod, because he knows how to make the other guys look really stupid, and if you’re on the same team as Stewart, you’re on the safe side of the mockery, rather than dangerously vulnerable to mockery.

In fact, I think this is why so many Gen-X/Yers turned against Obama: because he made them look stupid. They made themselves vulnerable to looking stupid by believing in him–and he jilted them. That’s how they see it–not that politics is a long ugly process that has nothing to do with self-esteem and everything to do with money and brawling–it was more like an “indie” consumer choice: They bought into the Obama brand, wore it, and suddenly discovered that the label wasn’t as cool as it seemed at the time, especially after the sentimental high of electing a half-black president wore off to the hard slog of what came after… so they threw the Obama jeans away and went to work trying to salvage their coolness creds for having made that fashion mistake.

(* * *)

I am very tempted to vote during this next election. Not because I've "seen the light" and now love my future Democratic/Republican overlords, but because of something I read on this website:

There is always another perspective from which to view these things…. The rulers of every regime demand flattery. Democracy is no different. We are the rulers, and demand that we be considered vituous. Hence all ills of society must be blamed on others. Evil, perhaps insane our traitorous, follow Americnans (of the right or left, depending on our current mood). Or evil foreigners. Best of all, the “system” — through the wonder of abstraction avoiding the painful necessity of assigning responsibility.

All we must do is wait for politicos to arrive that are worthy of us, for whom we can vote and begin a new age. Or, alternatively, these evils will grow until things collapse in a cleansing fire. On these ashes a new world will arise.

Perhaps so. I’ll bet that instead …
1. The government continues more or less corrupt as are we ourselves.
2. The government improves (or deteriorates) more or less proportionate to changes in our willingness to get involved in it.

Maybe we've become so self-flattering that we're treating our votes like a royal grant or a knighthood. "What? You, Mr. Politician, are not worthy of my fine vote. You have not bowed deeply enough to me."

I'm still thinking about all of this. I do know that I'll be voting on the Chamblee annexation issue. But like most Americans, I still don't know how I'll vote.

(* * *)

Where I start: Where Suncrest Boulevard meets State Road 80, Savannah, Georgia
Where I end up: State Road 80, Near Johnny Mercer Boulevard, Savannah, Georgia
Total distance on map: 4.160 km
Spare kilometers for next run: +0.04 kilometers

I'm very close to "Island Miniature Golf and Games", so if I wanted to I could stop my run/walk and play a few holes.

I'm still on the Islands Expressway, in an area which is close to "Whitemarsh Island". By the way, if you want to know who Johnny Mercer is, as it turns out he wrote a crapload of songs. Now I know who (at least co-)wrote "Jeepers Creepers," "That Old Black Magic" and "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate_the_Positive".

The Amazing Run

Where I start:On State Road 80 off the Fort Pulaski National Monument, ready to turn into Savannah, Georgia
Where I end up: Where Suncrest Boulevard meets State Road 80, Savannah, Georgia
Total distance on map: 3.782 km
Spare kilometers for next run: +0.18 kilometers

This part of State Road 80 is called the "Islands Expressway" and we are now running alongside a four-lane highway which is heading towards Savannah. I seem for now to be running through a very expensive area of Savannah. From what I can tell, there are houses on sale here that range up to $600,000. I'm still in the Tybee Island area of Savannah, in an area that appears to be held Talahi Island. Nothing but traffic and retirees out here. If I see anything interesting on the map, I'll let you know.

In a Glass Cage of Emotion

Last night, I attended my first National Hockey League game in about five years or so. The reason was that my employer was offering marked-down tickets and I asked my wife if it was something she wanted to do. Myself, I can really take hockey or leave it but my wife had some ice-skating lessons and had played some hockey and she decided she wanted to see the game.

And so I went.

The venue: The venue is Philips Arena in Atlanta, GA. I've been to about a zillion Atlanta Dream games and am very familiar with Philips - but never as a hockey venue. The hard part of Philips Arena is that it's in downtown Atlanta and if you've never been there it can be daunting. As for me, I only know one specific way to get there and one specific way to leave there. Whenever the Atlanta city government has to close a road, it's always daunting.

There are two cheap parking areas in the bowels of the stadium. One is uncovered and from what I year, you have a great chance of getting your car broken into if you park there. The other area is covered, and has a nice stairwell which leads you right into Philips at about the 200 level. Don't ask me how to give you directions; I couldn't tell you.

Seats: We were sitting in Section 312 - approximately six rows away from the back wall of the arena. The 300 sections are very high up and they are steep. My wife has a fear of heights and the steepness of the angle nearly gave her vertigo.

Incidentally, the face value of these tickets is $45. For Section 312, which is why I shall never attend a hockey game in Atlanta unless the seats are marked down to the $20s again. There is no reason why anyone but the most fanatic of sports fans should ever spend $45 for a sporting event unless you're virtually sitting in the front row. The experience of seeing a live sporting event is great - but not $45 great.

Truth be told, the view from Section 312 is fantastic. You're looking right over the ice. If you actually want to see the game, the 300s might be the best place from which to do it.

National Anthem: Everyone stood for the National Anthem, which they do at Atlanta Dream games. With a sample of n=1 majority white male audience vs. a sample of n => 50 majority black female audiences, the relationship to the anthem seemed to be different - positively reverent vs. merely respectful.

Furthermore, everyone shouted at the word NIGHT. I'm sure this is some part of Thrashers fan arcana that completely perplexes non-fans. The Atlanta Thrashers had a "teachable moment" they could have used to integrate first-time viewers into the complexities of the community of Thrashers fans - and they blew it. "At the National Anthem, we Thrashers fans shout on NIGHT because...." Put it up on the Jumbotron. Ten seconds.

Ambiance: Attendance was listed at 10,172 for the game. If you believe that there were actually 10,172 people at that game - you are either a liar, or you don't know that much about estimating attendance.

A sellout for the Atlanta Dream is about 9500 or so, at least an announced sellout. That usually translates into about 6000 living, breathing people, all of whom have been restricted to the lower two levels of Philips. Sitting from high up gave me a good chance to estimate attendance. If you had taken everyone at the arena and shoved them into the lower bowl, you would have had about as many seats filled as you'd have at a Dream sellout. There were entire rows on the lower arena with only one or two people sitting in them.

So the NHL is fibbing about its attendance. Big deal. Major league baseball does it. The WNBA does it. The NBA does it. I'm assuming that pretty much every sport out-and-out lies about its bodies-in-seats attendance. The multiplier seems to be about 0.65 to multiply the stated attendance by to get actual attendance, except at true, obvious sellouts.

It seems that most of the people choose to sit at the end of the rink, behind the goalies. Maybe they think it's cheaper that way. Sounds like a horrible place to watch a hockey game.

There is a lot of bombast at a NHL game. They were actually louder than Atlanta Dream games. Not in terms of fan shouting, but in terms of loudspeaker volume. In Dream games the overhead is on and you can hear it; in Thrashers games the volume is turned up to permanent shift of hearing levels.

Maybe I'm too used to the Atlanta Dream games, but the Atlanta Thrashers games seem to be rather inconsistent in attempts to movitate the crowd. The organ music - or pumped up rock songs - are just annoying, the music always seems to chime in during rather pedestrian seeming events. (Like a bunch of guys standing around for a minor face-off after some whistle that has brought action to a complete stop for about two minutes.) At Dream games, there is a better sense of musical direction, where the really loud stuff seems to kick in only after something really dramatic - like, say an Angel McCoughtry steal and fast-break resulting in a basket.

There's a lot of reliance on canned video - non-live video, that doesn't seem to motivate the crowd that much. The rest of the experience is quite similar to the Dream experience. Cam shots. Trivia quizzes for prizes. Silly games during intermissions. (But fewer - it seems that NHL fans are enthralled by the man driving the Zamboni.)

The Thrashers do have the Kiss Cam. How I feel about the Kiss Cam is another blog post. And of course, they ended their Kiss Cam exhortions by focusing the cam on two male Buffalo Sabres fans, har-de-har-har. I'll just add two comments and let it go:

a) they're too gutless to put the Kiss Cam up during an Atlanta Dream game, because everyone knows of course that even exposure to one loving lesbian kiss will turn your children instantly gay.
b) if I ever go to a sports game with a guy, I'm telling him, "you'd better make sure you're sitting one seat away from me, because if they put the two of us up on that kiss in that homophobic har-de-har-har, then buddy you're getting tongued." And I'm as straight as an arrow.
c) of course, it might not have been a homophobic har-de-har-har. It could have just been an older Buffalo Sabres fan and his older wife who kind of looks like a man now after passing seventy. You never know. Even so, my two previous points stand.

Hanging from the roof of the arena are two gigantic plastic Thrasher heads in profile. During player introductions, Thrashers goals and other high points of the game, these heads breathe fire. Since it can be cold in a hockey arena, and since 312 puts us close to the threads, goals meant one could warm one's self by the fire. My wife suggested sticks and marshmallows.

The fans: Hard to tell. They're really just like Atlanta Dream fans with better jerseys. Mostly white and male.

I hated going to baseball games in Florida because after a few drinks, the crowd gets really obnoxious. The Atlanta crowd seemed to be okay, except for one guy at the lower level who kept screaming at the top of his lungs, "BUFFALO SUCKS!" Then again, in the 300 levels I was removed from most human contact.

There was, however, a very large group of loud, vocal fans who cheered on the glories of their team. Unfortunately, they were Buffalo Sabres fans. In the WNBA, you don't see a lot of enemy jerseys because the league has only been around for 15 years and there's not a lot of expatriate loyalty to outside teams. I suspect that's different in the NHL - at times, it seemed like Atlanta fans were getting out-shouted by transplanted upper New Yorkers.

The game: I know virtually nothing about hockey, except a few facts:

a) it is a sport played on ice,
b) if you do something bad, they put you in the box - and then, you feel shame
c) putting the puck in the net is one point.

The rest I was able to surmise, along with some help from my wife who has actually played the sport. Unlike basketball, I figured it was a sport much like football in that the more you held the ball - or controlled the puck - the more likely it was for you to score.

Buffalo proved that right at the beginning. In the first period, Buffalo's goalie could have brought out an Ottoman, propped his feet up and read a magazine because all of the action was taking place near the Atlanta goal. Sooner or later, probability would shift in favor of the Sabres and they went up 1-0.

Atlanta managed to score a goal halfway into the first, but had it taken away due to a boarding penalty by the Thrashers' Nik Antropov. "Boarding", I guess, is when you slam someone into the boards in a way that betrays a lack of common decency. Maybe you break wind on someone, I don't know, but Antropov was put in the box and made to feel shame, and Jordan Leopld scored on the power play to make it 2-0 Buffalo.

Among the various incomprehensible random facts flashed on the screen, one was very interesting - that Buffalo was among the worst teams in the league in "penalty killing". Penalty killing is what you do when one of your players has been made to feel shame - down one player, you try to randomly twiddle the puck around and keep it away from anyone who could score with it. I think that the Sabres had two players feeling shame when Atlanta scored their first goal in the second period. Four minutes later, Alexander Burmistrov added another goal and the score was tied 2-2 after the second. For the 19-year old Burmistrov, it was his very first NHL goal.

As for the quality of play - it was lacking. My wife kept complaining about how everyone seemed to be out of position and that the puck-handling skills weren't good. According to Ruth, passes should go right onto the end of the other player's stick, not in the general direction of the other player. There seemed to be a lot of chasing the puck around after an errant pass, which reminded me of the essentially random nature of hockey. Unlike basketball, where the ball is pretty much in your control at all times and if you make a crappy pass it goes out of bounds (and if you don't score within 24 seconds, you lose the ball), in hockey the action might be randomly determined by whenever this little black rock slides off to and whichever players happen to catch up with it. (In a way, the NHL is much like quidditch.)

To a neophyte, it looked rather sloppy - a bunch of guys wearing plastic futilely swatting at the puck. It could even be a little bit dull sometimes, but the night was lightened up by the hostility between the two teams which really didn't seem to like each other that much. In the first period, Bryan Little got checked into the boards by the Sabres' Shaone Morrisonn. (Correct spelling.) Morrisonn received no penalty while Little ended up on the ice holding his bloody face, and was taken out of the game with a concussion. There were no riots, but you could tell that Atlanta was sensitive about the whole thing.

Buffalo kept racking up the penalties. A roughing penalty tacked on to the end of the second quarter put Atlanta in the power play (Buffalo down a player) to start the third - and fifty seconds later, the Thrashers scored again, 3-2. There were still 19 minutes of hockey to play. So we waited and waited and waited. With three minutes or so left in the game, we thought the chances of Buffalo scoring again were pretty slim, so we left.

Mistake. With eight seconds left in regulation, Derek Roy managed to shove the puck into Atlanta's net from close range to tie the game 3-3 and send it into overtime. We tuned over to 680 The Fan to verify Atlanta's victory over the radio, and was surprised to hear that the game was still in progress. The game went into a five minute overtime period and could have ended in a tie, but Dustin Byfuglien hit a goal with just 29 seconds remaining in overtime to give Atlanta the 4-3 victory as the first team scoring in overtime is given the victory.

"I'm in a glass cage of emotion right now!" was Thrasher announcer Dan Kamal's cry. My wife and I chuckled at the profoundness and incomprehensibility of that.

Overall assessment: Better than average, but not by much. The seats are way too expensive for us to see hockey regularly in person. No one really famous out there on the ice. The hockey was very sloppy at times. It cost $5.50 for a Coke, but you could refill it infinite times and make use of the Philips Arena bathrooms.

The sight lines were very good. Crowd was sparse. I don't know enough about hockey to truly appreciated it and missed all of its subtleties. Bryan Little disappeared from the ice and we never learned what happened to him during the game. People got to ride the Zamboni. Not a bad way to kill a few hours, if you don't mind paying $20 a ticket. We might do it again, but we're not in a hurry to do so.

Superheroes, Chicken, Cross Country

There's an interesting map at the Patchwork Nation website, where you can enter your county and it will tell you what kind of county it is?

Is it a Boom Town?
Is it an Evangelical Epicenter?
Is it Tractor Country?

As it turns out, I grew up in an Evangelical Epicenter. I have now ended up in a Monied Burb. I'd rather live in the latter than the former.

Here's a story about the town I grew up in. You might not know this, but the state of Kentucky is divided into wet and dry counties. (There is also a subcategory of "moist counties", which have one city as wet.) In a dry county, the sale of alcoholic beverages is not permitted. Drinking is not against the law, and you can bring alcohol in from a wet country into a dry county. Of course, you can only bring enough for your personal use and not for resale.

These laws do very little to stop drunkenness or crime. As a matter of fact, methamphetamine use is a real problem in my home town. People drug themselves in other ways, like prescription medications. The local religious hierarchy - deeply intertwined with local government - has put a stop to my home county becoming wet. I'm sure the bootleggers were more than happy to assist with any fund-raising in such efforts.

Anyway, back to the story. My hometown has a rivalry with a neighboring town whose only claim to fame is that the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise was founded there. (There used to be billboards in Chickenville, long ago, that read, "N_____, don't let the sun set on you in Chickenville.')



If the fear was that blacks would lower property values, rest assured, Armageddon couldn't have lowered the property values in Chickenville. The place was a rock-bottom dump back then and despite Harlan Sanders, remains one today.

So our dubious little paradise always had the joy of looking down on Chickenville. My father said this: "This town will never let Chickenville get a leg up on it." (My father didn't think much of the churched residents of our hometown.) For the longest time, the county of my hometown and the county of Chickenville were both dry. But in the 1990s, Chickenville passed a law allowing liquor to be served in restaurants as long as 70 percent of the income of the restaurant comes from food sales.

Did my hometown raise the banner of war, and shout from the throat of every fierce tongue, "the sins of Chickenville shall not be visited upon our fair city?" No. One or two years later, my hometown passed the same law. Trust me, sundown towns and dry counties do not stem from great moral principles. They stem from something baser and meaner.

(* * *)

If you ever read superhero stories, there will generally be a set of powers that are evenly proportioned out among the members of any superteam. There's one person who is very strong, one person who can fly, etc. etc. These powers, as a whole, are not duplicated. There's never been a superteam where every single person on it had the same superpower - but if they wrote such a story, it would be interesting. (Five strong heroes, five fast heroes, etc.)

Many of these powers correlate to useful tasks. After all, when one has abilities far beyond those of mortal men, one first must understand what abilities are possessed by mortal men, and for what those abilities are normally used. These tasks are usually employment-based.

Super strength - any job where you have to lift stuff for a living, or where you have to use actual strength (carpenter, furniture mover)
Super intelligence - any job where you have to calculate something (mathematician, chemist, physicist)
Super speed - any job involving travel (pilot, mail deliverer, etc.)

If you think about it, one could start with the job and come up with the superpower. Maybe somewhere out there there's a super pet groomer, or a super actuary, or a super cordon blue chef. "Activate super cordon blue chef power, which is highly specific!"

Even the basest jobs could have a super power associated with them. Take all of the shit cleaners out there. Someone on the planet must have a job cleaning up shit. I don't want to do it. You don't want to do it. And there's some poor sap out there, cleaning up dung for a living. I'll bet he wishes that he had some kind of super power or combination of super powers.

This got me to thinking about something else - what is the definition of a superlative dung cleaner? I'd assume that the person could clean dung so well that you wouldn't know that dung had ever been deposited in the spot from which it was cleaned. However, there are two ways to clean dung:

a) by sheer effort - getting some water and scrubbing, or
b) using your noggin - by using some sort of specialized detergent that makes the job a breeze - or by using some method kept secret by the International Dung Cleaners Association of America (Local 3135).

So here's my question: you are presented with two dung cleaners. Both do a mathematically equivalent job of cleaning dung. The one does it with eight hours of sweat. The other one does it with some much easier specialized method that lets him drink rum and coke for his remaining seven hours and fifty minutes. The results are the same.

Which one is the better dung cleaner? Are they equivalent because the results are equivalent? Is Dung Cleaner B cheating by using some method that Dung Cleaner A doesn't know about? Do we have to provide both sides the same methods to make the results equivalent?

This is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night.

(* * *)

I'm currently traveling on Route 80 in my imaginary run, and you can find out more about this road here at the Wikipedia article.

If you're not familiar with US history, there's a famous old road that took you through the American west called "Route 66". Route 80 was actually a transcontinental route at one time, that started at Tybee Island, Georgia and took one all the way to San Diego, California. Unfortunately, in 1964 it was decommissioned in California when Interstate 8 took it over and various other city and county governments encroached on it. The current western terminus of Route 80 is at the border of Dallas and Mesquite, Texas. That would be nice if I wanted to visit my in-laws; the difference is I want to trek across the country, in my imagination anyway.

Incidentally,,,,

...my Kindle arrived today. Had to charge it up, not much time to play.

My first Kindle e-book download - Histories, by Tacitus. Total cost of e-book: $0.00.

No Post

More running today. Might think of something profound later.

Where I start: Off the Fort Pulaski National Monument, somewhere off State Road 80, Savannah Georgia.
Where I end up: Still wandering on Route 80, but hopefully, I'll end up turning into Savannah soon.
Total distance on map: 5.836 km
Spare kilometers for next run: -0.13 kilometers

Marching Through Georgia

On the treadmill, I ran/walked for 3.37 miles. This is 5.42348 kilometers.

This means that when people brag about completing a 5K, I complete one of those...three times a week. Wow. Didn't see that coming, not by a long shot. I know a guy who walks over an hour to work; he can probably cover 3.37 miles four or five times a week - going to work, and then coming back.

Let's see how far I can "run", then. At this rate, I should be able to run across the entire United States in about 1000 days or so. Let's start on the shores of Savannah, Georgia and end up somewhere in Westport, Washington.

Where I start: The Tybee Island Lighthouse, Savannah, Georgia.
Where I end up: Off the Fort Pulaski National Monument, somewhere off State Road 80, Savannah Georgia.
Total distance on map: 5.023 kilometers
Spare kilometers for next run: 0.4 kilometers

Across the road as I end, to my left is a bending river and to my right is the Fort Pulaski National Momument. Fort Pulaski guards the entrance to the Savannah River, which I suspect is on my left. This could have been an important port for the Confederacy, but since they didn't think Union troops would land on Tybee Island, they abandoned the island.

Guess what? Union troops landed, bombarded the fort and took control. That was the end of Confederate shipping through Savannah.

And that's one to grow on.

Legan Vangardians

Let me pose a thought that would be considered very reactionary, even among self-proclaimed reactionaries. (It would only be discussed behind closed doors.) This is the idea that "smart people know better". To wit:

Assume that the running of a modern government requires either information or political knowledge that it would be difficult for the masses to obtain or understand. Since leaving the government in the hands of the ignorant would be a disaster, this must never come to pass. Therefore, for the benefit of the people decision-making power should come to rest in the hands of a political elite.

This theory is illustrated in scenes from two different media: in the film The Remains of the Day and in the television series Boardwalk Empire. The scenes are so similar that I can only conclude that Empire flat-out stole its scene from Remains, a movie that few people are likely to have seen. (I only remember the scene because the rest of the movie was so dull.)

Reactionary and non-reactionary are arguing about political points. The non-reactionary implies that people have to be given what they want, or that the views of the average citizen need to be considered.

The reactionary calls a servant into the room : in the case of Remains the servant is an English butler in the 1930s and in Empire the servant is a black maid in the 1920s. The servant is queried about a series of abstract political debates relevant to the era? (Was the Hawley-Smoot tariff a good idea? What should be American trade policy? Should we go off the gold standard?) In both cases, the servant is unfamiliar with the political issues, having had no time to watch The McLaughlin Group on television between ten hours of peeling potatoes. The servant not only has no answers to the questions, but he/she doesn't even know what the questions mean.

The conclusion of the reactionary: "See? And that's the kind of person you want to give the vote to."

Would the world be better off if scientific decisions were placed in the hands of the (unelected) Grand Council of Scientists? Or economic decisions placed in the hands of the (unelected) Grand Council of Economists? Or even the (unelected) Grand Council of Computer Information Specialists? My only answer is a famous quote previously applied to economics, namely that democracy is the worst political system of Earth - with the exception of all of the other political systems ever devised.

This problem has me thinking about things due to the self-awareness reached in the fact that like most people, I don't know much about science, or economics, or computers, or health care, or religion or anything except that which I've been able to cobble together from a set of (probably very biased) sources on the internet. I couldn't make an argument about whether or not Obama's proposed health care plan is good or bad because not only do I not understand how it works, the sheer effort of understanding it could put you to sleep - and I like to consider myself intelligent enough to understand such things given enough time and effort. The problem is that I'm too busy peeling potatoes to understand it. And yet, millions of people think that they know how this thing works and how it's going to affect their lives:



Combine that with the fact that most of the very loud people out there appear to be the most ignorant, and combined with the pact that we are swamped with political commercials in the United States as the Congressional mid-term elections are coming up, I'm more angry about the electoral process and democracy than ever before. (Don't worry, I'm not going to become a fascist.) Last night, someone who I have friended on Twitter asked "how much would you pay your cable company for an option that removed all political commercials?" My wife and I pondered the question.

Our conclusion: we'd pay $100 for the privilege of not watching political commercials. Political commercials are no more than intellectual junk mail, most of the level of the spam e-mail you get for secret medicines that make your dick grow four inches longer - and in both cases, only fools fall for them.

We might both be contributing to the death of American democracy, but for any radical capitalist out there we've presented a money-making opportunity. Let the Invisible Hand rule!

Malarkey

Back in the old days, people didn't know enough about the world to make informed decisions. So their representatives, supposedly men of pragmatism, made those decisions for the people.

Our problem is that our "independent individualists", our pragmatist men-of-thought-and-action who have stepped up to Make The Common Sense Decisions for the Ignorant Masses, are just as ignorant - in their own way - as the most backwoods hillbilly that Appalachia could produce. They can't make informed decisions, either. Therefore, we're all screwed.

Women's College Basketball: The Death of a College

In 1997, a small college which had been running for one hundred years closed its door permanently. So what does this have to do with women's basketball? I found myself interested in the subject of colleges, universities and the history of higher education in the United States because I wanted to be able to write intelligently about women's basketball, of all things.

One problem with sports writers is that they write for today. It is assumed that the reader possesses a base amount of knowledge and when he (usually he) reads the sports page, he merely needs to be brought up to date. The move for "relevancy" is a pressing one, and the new fad in sports writing is to pepper one's writing with pop culture references so that a running back can be compared to Snooki or a baseball team's pitching lineup can be compared to Survivor characters. This means that fifty years from now, it will be almost impossible to read the older sports journalism which will be a hybrid of Walter Winchell gossip columns, pop-culture references and incomprehensible in-jokes. Most readers of the future will throw up their hands and these relevant writers will soon become irrelevant.

I remember reading in I, Claudius where Claudius states that he intends to write for a far-off posterity thousands of years in the future. (This gives Robert Graves a reason to fill in background data on ancient Roman society, because Claudius is assuming that his readership might not even know the names of people famous to every Roman of his time.) I thought about sports writing from the same perspective - how would we write sports if we knew that we were going to be read 100 years in the future? What would we say about sports if we assumed that our readers knew nothing about it? The problem is a difficult one, because sports writing is a running narrative of events, and there must be some sort of common understanding between the reader and the writer. The writer can't be forced to redefine everything for every new reader.

If the writer cannot and should not be establishing basic definitions, he should at least know something about the background of his or her own sport, and something beyond the obvious names of administrators and famous players. Knowing the "whats" turns sports into a recitation of dry facts, much like that of the pedestal of an ancient Roman statue listing the names of consuls who were present for some long-forgotten triumph. Knowing the "whys" of sport, however, is of the utmost importance because the "why" explains the "what".

So what about women's college basketball? That's three nouns right there, and the "college" is the part that I want to focus on.

What is called the system of higher education in the United States is founded on two types of institutions - institutions of basic education called "colleges" which provide four years of education after secondary school. The second type of institution is called a university, which provides education for those who wish to seek education beyond the four years provided by a college. The basic degree offered by a college is the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree; at a university one can be awarded higher degrees. The Master of Arts (MA) or master's degree is usually awarded after two or three years of post-graduate study; the highest distinction is the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.) degree awarded after many years of study. Those who have earned this degree may choose to call themselves "Doctor [Surname]", as if they were a medical doctor.

The United States has a multitude of these colleges and universities, many, many more than Europe has. This does not mean that Americans are smarter than Europeans. Far from it. Rather, the multitude of these institutions is the result more of historical accident than reflecting a quest for knowledge.

There are only a handful of real universities at the United States: the members of this list change from year to year, but only a few institutions in the United States inspire the awe that a Oxford or a Sorbonne might inspire in Europe:

Harvard

Yale

Stanford

University of Chicago

Johns Hopkins


...and...that's about it, really. The universities that come after this list tend to fade in and out. Some years Dartmouth is on the list, some years it isn't. Some years Northwestern is on this list, some years it isn't. But you'd probably find these five universities among anyone's top ten.

So why are there so many colleges and universities in the United States? The answer is that they're not really colleges or universities at all. At best, they should be called "trade schools" because a long time ago, that's what they were. There used to be a small group of places of higher learning in the United States, and for those that didn't want to teach at the university level, one went to a teacher's college (if one wanted to teach elementary school) or to a school of divinity (if one wanted to preach for a living) and so on.

School like Harvard and Yale became status symbols, and in America's capitalist economy, everyone wanted to be the next Harvard or Yale. Add America's flair for idealism and everyone who had a difference with his neighbors - usually religious - founded a college to preach the higher truth. Add to that historical expansion, which mean that North Dakota had to have a state university just like Virginia did. Add to that the baby boom of the 1940s-60s, which meant that there were more students and more money to chase around. Add to that what I call "educational regression", where one needs higher and higher ranking degrees to be assured of a middle-class job. (Fifty years ago, a high school education might have been good enough for clerical work.)

The result was that many of these schools got promoted. Bowman Teacher School bought a few buildings and added a handful of faculty to offer other degrees and expanded to Bowman College (which has a fine education department). The Smith School of Divinity added some extra theological courses that allowed them to offer a master's degree and became the University of Smith (which has a fine divinity department).

One way for schools to get popular was to offer entertainment, particularly by offering sports. (*) The schools with the most money offered football, a very expensive sport whereas schools with smaller budgets offered basketball because it was cheaper. The hope was that these sports teams would become a draw. To some extent, professional sports in America is partially subsidized by the education system, because most professional players are drawn from the teams that play at these colleges and universities - the professional sports class is trained by the state within the university system.

In 1971, Title IX was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law. This law prohibited discrimination based on many forms - including gender - in how a college distributes its money. In effect, this meant that college sports had to either subsidize women's sports or eliminate many of the fees they charge to students - after all, if a female student pays a student fee or the taxpayer subsidizes the state college, shouldn't all students have the same opportunity to participate in sports? There was an explosion of women's teams in every sport except full contact sports like football and certain other sports that had female-dominated variations (men's baseball vs. women's softball).

Basketball was a relatively inexpensive sport to support at the college level. It didn't require open space that had to be tended by groundskeepers. It took place indoors. It only required giving between ten and fifteen players scholarships, where their student costs would be paid for if they participated in sports. It did not require much in the way of specialized equipment. The result is that there are hundreds of colleges that participate in women's basketball, competing against each other for the honor of being a championship team. Only a minuscule percentage of their players will advance to the professional ranks and make money from basketball - but still, many women compete on college teams.

So what is this about the title "The Death of a College?" Let's go back to that college in my hometown. It was always sort of in the background growing up, but I never really thought about it much. Even in my small town, the college didn't dominate the community - some small towns in America are called "college towns" because if it weren't for the presence of the college as a central point, the town would probably be nothing without the college. My town was certainly not a college town - despite a population of under 10,000 with only about 4,000 in the city limits - despite the fact that we had a college in it.

This college was initially a "community college" - a two-year college that provided basic courses. After the two years, students would usually end their education with an "associate degree" (AD) or transfer to a four-year institution. In 1964 or so, the college promoted itself into a four-year institution, but even so it made little impact on our town.

By the 1990s, the college had a reputation for being an expensive four year school where the wealthy and stupid kids went - the college would take you if you couldn't get into anywhere else. Even so, the 1990s would be a rough decade for the hometown school. Two state universities - in the never ending business-like quest for expansion - established "annexes" which offered basic courses which would be accepted at the university level. The idea was that community teenagers would go to the annex after high school, and then go to the university which would be guaranteed to accept their transfer credits. These two annexes now directly competed with the small town college, and enrollment plummeted.

The result was that the college's endowment began shrinking into the negative numbers, and with no money, the school failed to upkeep the basics....including the library. This brought it into conflict with the triangle upon which every American college is founded:

a) accreditation, or the right to be recognized as a college
b) the power for students to obtain financial aid while attending college, which is granted by the federal government
c) the power to grant degrees, which is conferred by the state

With no library worth speaking of, the college lost its accreditation. It was now on a race against time to regain its accreditation (a) before it fell afoul of the federal government (b). However, the college was already in the red and living off student financial aid. When accreditation was lost, the federal government decided that it would not grant financial aid to any school attending this college. This meant no federal money.

I don't know if the state ever got around to (c) - stripping the power to confer degrees from the school. The school was founded by a religious denomination, and the school's belief was that this affiliation would rescue it as the denomination would not let the school fall. But it did. In December 1997, the school gave up the ghost and closed its doors permanently. Other colleges agreed to accept the credits of the students, one specific college accepted the school's historical records, and that was the end.

The place is now called a "community center". Maybe when I go back home, I'll take some pictures there.

Did sports help? No. In the 1990s the school founded a football team, but it had to compete at the lowest level of competition in the United States (NAIA, I believe). The school had mens and women's basketball for years, but never had the kind of success that could grab the town's attention. Funnily enough, if the school had been better at sports...it might have survived for a few more years. If it had had a good women's ball team - if it had any kind of good team - it might still be a thriving institution.

_________

(*) There is the "bread and circuses" theory of college sports, which goes like this. Many big schools save money by having graduate students teach, and all of those students teach from a select group of college texts, meaning that the education that a student gets at Florida State - in the basics, anyway - isn't really that good. In order to distract students from this fact, there is a lot of fol-de-rol about how important Florida State football is to the university.

It might be important, but the success of the football team has little (if anything at all) to do with one's quality of education or ability to get a job after graduation. Whereas Harvard and Yale...well, those degrees convey some influence. If you really want to insult a university in the United States, call it a "football school" or a "basketball school", two things which Harvard and Yale are certainly not.

Kindling

A few days ago, Ruth got a Kindle from Amazon - actually, the Kindle was an early birthday present from her mother. We've often talked about getting a Kindle - or a pair of Kindles - but I didn't want to make what I considered an extravagant purchase, figuring that once you got into Kindle culture, you'd basically be repurchasing every book you owned. I'm old enough to remember watching vinyl replaced by cassettes, and cassettes replaced by CDs, and CD replaced by digital media. (I'm still stuck on the CD stage, wanting nothing to do with iTunes.) Likewise, I remember the VCR format wars and then watching as cassette tape was replaced by DVDs. (*)

Here's how the Kindle works, based entirely on the two or three times I've held it in my hands. It's a very thin and light device, less than a quarter of an inch thick. Its dimensions are not much bigger than that of a birthday card. The device does require power - and there's a charging cord - but seemingly, it doesn't seem to require much of it. Apparently, the device is always on, going into "sleep mode" when not in use.

There's a wireless connection. I don't know if it connects to one's home wireless or to a set of towers maintained by Amazon.com, but the device can put you in touch with Amazon's main server of e-books. You can look for an e-book, and purchase it, with your Amazon.com account being credited. The contents of the e-book are then loaded into the Kindle, which can hold up to thousands of books.

So why would one have a Kindle, versus say an actual tangible book?

1) Storage. For every Kindle-ized book you own, it's one less real book that you have to own. If you relocate a lot - or even if you just travel a lot - the amount of books you can take with you is limited by the physical dimensions/weight of the books. If you have a Kindle, you simply take your entire library with you.

2) Cost. This is the funny part of the equation. First, just about every book published before 1920 is in the public domain. This means that copyright on these books cannot be violated. (This was in the days before copyright became a tool for the heirs of prominent creators to obtain free money, forever.) When you look up a public domain book on Kindle, you will find that its download cost is...$0.00! Which means that you can stock your library with the classics at no cost to yourself.

I believe every single book that Ruth has on her Kindle - save one - is a public domain classic. A lot of Jane Austin/Bronte Sisters stuff. All absolutely free. If these books were in dead tree form, they'd require a lot of bookshelf space.

The only one that Ruth had to pay for is an amusing story. Let's assume that you want a free copy of Jane Eyre. It exists. However, when you look up Jane Eyre on Kindle, you'll find not only the free author's copy but a bunch of annotated copies either for student use or for literary criticism. Those books cost money. Ruth's classic was buried under a pile of annotated versions with the same name, and in disgust Ruth bit the bullet and purchased an annotated version.

The other amusing story on cost comes from the fact that no one has figured out the price point of a Kindle-ized book. The reason books cost $20 at the bookstore is that you have to take in the cost of paper, publishing, the yacht storage fees of the CEO of the publishing company, etc. etc. The question then becomes "what is the fair price to charge a Kindle-ized book?" When you look at the prices of non-public domain e-books, they're generally cheaper than the dead tree versions.

Of course, there are some limitations. You're limited to the books that have been converted to e-books form. For example, if you're interested in women's basketball (and who isn't?) you only get the piss-poor collection of women's basketball books that have already been switched over. On the other hand, if you're a John Grisham fan (**) you can probably find his complete works in e-book form for no problem.

This leads to an article on Cracked I read about e-books and the concept of artificial scarcity. If you think about it, in the digital age there is probably nothing easier to copy than a book would be. Give me enough time, and I can create a perfect copy of a book. Even if you decide never to sell your new masterpiece It Was a Dark and Stormy Night in e-book form if I have 1,000 spare hours of free time I could just buy the dead tree copy, open it to Page One, open up a .doc file on my computer - and start typing. By the time I'm done, I have a computerized version that is almost as good as the real one, and for a lot of people it would be "good enough". It would be much more difficult for me to, say, self-copy the latest Franz Ferdinand album (I can't play guitar) or Debbie Does Dallas (no comment).

This opens up the possibility that sooner or later someone will be able to hack the Kindle and you'll be able to duplicate e-books and download them off megauploadtorrentspyware.com. Or be able to shove your own .doc or .pdf files into Kindle, or scans of books, or porn. I can't wait to see how that all plays out.

_____

(*) - There is a real push from "the industry" to have DVDs replaced by Blu-Ray, but it doesn't seem to be taking hold for the same reason that Betamax never took hold over VHS in the cassette tape days. Yes, the picture and sound were (supposedly) better with Betamax, but there becomes a "good enough" threshhold where you're high enough on the quality curve that any gains beyond the present can only be appreciated by connoisseurs. VHS was "good enough" and people didn't need Betamax. Furthermore, VHS tapes could record six hours of tape compared to two hours for Betamax. Likewise, DVDs are "good enough" for most people and I don't see myself replacing all of my DVDs with Blu-Ray versions.

This is why I obtain most of my music through...YouTube. YouTube is "good enough" for my music listening; a connoisseur would be aghast.

(**) - If you are, you're reading this at the airport on the red-eye waiting for the 6:20 am flight from Denver to New York.

The Bigger World

I remember the first time I came into contact with the Bigger World.

I don't remember the specifics, but I must have been in my room with its tiny black and white television when I was in seventh or eighth grade or so. This much have been some time after January 1978, which was a red letter month in the CINCGREEN household because it was the month we got cable television. Undoubtedly, I was flipping through the channels (twisting the dial, not pushing the buttons) to see what was on television and the dial came to rest on a bunch of guys wearing robes. I knew they weren't Klansmen because they spoke with British accents.

The robes were not from some sort of backwoods social club, but were Roman garb. Our state's education television network was showing I, Claudius on Masterpiece Theatre. I have to say that State Educational Television was a godsend. I saw both The Prisoner and Monty Python back-to-back on Saturday nights, and as it turned out Monty Python ended exactly when Saturday Night Live began...but back to I, Claudius. I ended up starting with Episode Three or Four just when the really good stuff was happening and I made sure never to miss an episode after that. As far as I knew, I, Claudius was an independently-realized television drama springing from no source other than the mind of some British scriptwriter.

In junior high school, our math class took a field trip to the fine establishment of learning known as Eastern Kentucky University. (I suspect we were there to watch a basketball game, the particulars were extremely hazy.) Part of the field trip involved visiting the college bookstore. Most of the kids picked up a banner or a sports T-shirt or something, but I enjoyed looking at the books - even in Richmond (*), the selection at the college bookstore beat the sorry-ass offering of books in my hometown.

And then, I saw it. I, Claudius. It was a book! I didn't even know that! Having been given a few bucks to buy lunch or something, I spent all of my cash on buying that book, and I didn't even wait to get home to start reading it. I tore into Robert Graves's period piece like a starving man at a Chinese buffet. I was so eager to consume the book that I skimmed over a lot of it, the equivalent of gorging. As I got to the end of the book, I realized, "hey, the writer's never going to get to the stuff about Messalina by this point." I would learn sometime thereafter that the miniseries covered not just I, Claudius but its sequel Claudius the God. I only owned half the story.

For those readers who are unfamiliar with I, Claudius, let me explain it. It was written by Robert Graves, a British writer and poet well-versed in the classics. It purports to be the autobiography of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, the step-grandchild of the wife of the Emperor Augustus through a previous marriage. Unfortunately for young Claudius, he suffers two maladies from birth - a horrible stammer and a limp from a weakened leg. The result is that he's considered an idiot and a cripple by the rest of his family, and is either ignored, insulted or outright abused by most of them.

My understanding is that there were two overlapping entries into the Roman political world of the optimates era: one could be a patrician and pursue a career as an Equestrian and then a Senator, or one could serve in a level of political offices with progressively increasing responsibility supplemented by a successful career as a military officer. Due to his infirmities, both of these avenues were closed to Claudius. With scholarship as his only comfort, Claudius retreats into a world of books and resolves to be a historian.

This gives him a great advantage, for as a member of the Imperial family he has a front row seat to Roman power politics. Furthermore, his stammer and limp prove useful in a perverse sort of way. The rest of the family concludes that Claudius will never amount to anything and in their world of power plays and political murders Claudius is always overlooked for the simple reason that he's not worth killing. He survives the reign of his step-grandfather Augustus, his uncle Tiberius, and even his insane and murderous nephew Caligula. After Caligula is killed by his own bodyguards the Imperial genetic timber has been whittled down to firewood during the reigns of the previous three emperors with few surviving contenders for the throne. After Caligula's death the Imperial Guard run riotand decide that if there's going to be another emperor, they'd better be the ones choosing him. They find Claudius hiding in the palace to avoid the killing and looting, and decide that Claudius has the pedigree if nothing else. (**) Therefore, Claudius is implausibly installed as the next emperor. (That's Book One.)

In Claudius the God, Claudius attempts to be what he considers a "good emperor". Years of experiencing the a Rome where the Republic exists in name only convince Claudius that only the true restoration of the Roman Republic can save Rome - he shall turn over power to the Senate, and then retire. However, the problem of power-hungry senators and surviving relatives is a serious one - they believe that due to Claudius's reputation of being an utter imbecile that he can easily be removed in a coup. Claudus knows they'd never let him survive if he turned over power, as the potential would always exist that some faction could yank him out of retirement and force him to become their figurehead. Therefore, Claudius has to hang on to the throne to save his own life....and then, since he has to repair the damage of the previous emperors to strengthen Rome, the restoration of the Republic is moved further and further down on the agenda. Claudius always promises himself that he'll get around to it when the conditions are right.

But the greatest danger to Claudius is...at his side in the form of his teenage wife Messalina (whom he was forced to marry by his crazy nephew Caligula). Messalina is sweetness and charm, and Claudius is enthralled with her - but Messalina has designs on the throne herself. Eventually, Messalina's plot is discovered at the last second before the coup and Claudius is forced to have Messalina executed. A bitter Claudius concludes that people would never accept the Republic even if he did bring it back - things have to be very, very bad for a revolution, so Claudius will speed one along. He decides to marry his niece Agrippinilla who already has a child from a previous marriage - Nero. He knows that they should never be entrusted with power, but that's exactly who he intends to trust it to. Agrippinilla can never rule as a woman, and she'll have to run the Empire through Nero, and Nero will then rebel against Agrippinilla because he's a douchebag and will assume absolute power and then Nero will ruin the Empire, and after that, people will be clamoring for the Republic...won't they?

Luckily, Claudius has a Plan B that will ensure that the next form of government shall be a restoration of the Republic. Shame that Plan B falls apart, and Claudius knows in the end that he - and the Republic - are screwed. The End.

If any of the above sounds interesting, wait until you see the BBC version.

Derek Jacobi as Claudius.

Brian Blessed as Augustus.

Sian Phillips as Livia.

George Baker as Tiberius.

Patrick Stewart (yes, Captain Picard, when he still had hair, or at least a good toupee) as Sejanus.

Patricia Quinn (yes, Magenta) as Livilla.

John Hurt (yes, that John Hurt) as Caligula.


It's absoutely kick-ass. I'd recommend it to anyone.

So why do I call this post "The Bigger World"? I think that my introduction to I, Claudius was my first inkling that there was a bigger world out there beyond the television shows of the 1970s and the required reading from middle school. It was the first notion that serious books - and serious television - could and should be fun. For better or for worse, what I am today is because of I, Claudius - so if you ever get to Robert Graves's grave, you know where to spit.

"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud - hatch out!"

_____

(*) - An amusing side-note is that as Kentucky became populated in the 19th century town founders looked to European cities as town names. Therefore, there is a London in Kentucky, as well as a Paris and a Richmond and a Madrid. However, just because you name a town something doesn't mean that the common people can pronounce the spelling. Therefore, you get Athens, whose "a" is pronounced just like in the word "day", and Versailles, which is pronounced to rhyme with the word "sails". This never fails to astonish both visitors and Kentuckians, amused that someone would ask where Ver-SIGH is.

(**) - It helped that Claudius's brother was Germanicus, a much-admired Roman general and potential ruler until he succumbed to not having his food tasted.

Things I Shall Ask God (*)

* The names of every girl that was ever interested in me. Just for giggles.

* Whether or not Abraham Lincoln was gay. Not that I have any personal interest, I just want to solve a mystery.

* What was it that actually killed the Roman Empire?

* Would capitalism/communism/Christianity ever have worked if practiced 'properly', whatever God decides to call proper practice? (CINCGREEN's Law of Philosophical Practice: The faults of any abstract philosophical system will sooner or later be blamed on malpractice.)

* The mathematical correlation between hard work/intellectual effort and success in life. (**) I suspect that the correlation is definitely not high, and might be low...but if it's negative, I'll truly be astonished. (***)

* Did we really get Hitler in World War II, or did he run away and escape under an assumed name?

* What my 'perfect job' would have been.

* What one particular decision I made changed my life for the best - and which one for the worst.

* The various outcomes of certain branching decisions. ("What would have happened if I had chosen to do 'X' instead of 'Y'?")


Note that none of these questions deal with theological questions, like 'how can God allow suffering in the world?' I'm not interested in the answers to stuff like that; I want to swat fungoes with Babe Ruth.
_____

(*) - Assuming that he/she exists.
(**) - This reminds me of something I recently read in Sports Illustrated about a coach asking his players what it took to make it in the NFL.

Talent? No, unrecognized talent is almost a cliche.
Hard work? Ditto.
Luck? Luck is usually a function of opportunity and preparation, which basically means that luck correlates to time.

So what do you need to make it in the NFL? "The willingness to take another man's job away from him."

(***) - I can name several people who are successful in life and who don't seem to work very hard. Likewise, I can name several people who turned out poor but who work quite hard.

Squeeze

I have squeezed under the midnight deadline again. Unfortunately, I'm too tired to put together a real post. This post was going to be about NaNoWriMo - but hell, if I go to the well at 11:45 pm and draw up an empty bucket, what chance do I have at NaNoWriMo?

To Hell with Realism

I've jumping on the bandwagon of a new HBO series, Boardwalk Empire. I've heard it described as a combination of The Sopranos and The Wire. The show is set in 1920 - Atlantic City, USA just after the signing of Prohibition. City treasurer Enoch "Nucky" Thompson is as corrupt as they come, and he plans to make a killing with the banning of alcohol. However, there are other people around who plan to make a killing as well.

We've watched the first two episodes and we like what we've seen. We'll hang in there.

Interestingly enough, I was flipped on to an essay by George Orwell who writes about the difference between two modern crime stories, Raffles and No Orchids for Miss Blandish. The difference is that in the older story, Raffles - ostensibly the bad guy, a gentleman crook - has a sense of morality. He only steals whenever he's been invited to someone's home, and he only steals from the other guests and never the homeowner. He would never think of killing anyone. Whereas, No Orchids for Miss Blandish is what we call a realistic crime novel. Orwell has this to say about realism:

[The author of No Orchids for Miss Blandish] is a popular writer — there are many such in America, but they are still rarities in England — who has caught up with what is now fashionable to call ‘realism’, meaning the doctrine that might is right.

Funny, that seems to be the doctrine of The Sopranos. And The Wire. And Boardwalk Empire, for that matter.

Orwell concludes:

Several people, after reading No Orchids, have remarked to me, ‘It's pure Fascism’. This is a correct description, although the book has not the smallest connexion with politics and very little with social or economic problems. It has merely the same relation to Fascism as, say Trollope's novels have to nineteenth-century capitalism. It is a daydream appropriate to a totalitarian age. In his imagined world of gangsters Chase is presenting, as it were, a distilled version of the modern political scene, in which such things as mass bombing of civilians, the use of hostages, torture to obtain confessions, secret prisons, execution without trial, floggings with rubber truncheons, drownings in cesspools, systematic falsification of records and statistics, treachery, bribery, and quislingism are normal and morally neutral, even admirable when they are done in a large and bold way. The average man is not directly interested in politics, and when he reads, he wants the current struggles of the world to be translated into a simple story about individuals. He can take an interest in Slim and Fenner as he could not in the G.P.U. and the Gestapo. People worship power in the form in which they are able to understand it. A twelve-year-old boy worships Jack Dempsey. An adolescent in a Glasgow slum worships Al Capone. An aspiring pupil at a business college worships Lord Nuffield. A New Statesman reader worships Stalin. There is a difference in intellectual maturity, but none in moral outlook. Thirty years ago the heroes of popular fiction had nothing in common with Mr. Chase's gangsters and detectives, and the idols of the English liberal intelligentsia were also comparatively sympathetic figures. Between Holmes and Fenner on the one hand, and between Abraham Lincoln and Stalin on the other, there is a similar gulf.

Ouch.

Orwell's point - to repeat it - is that No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a Fascist novel, even though the book has absolutely nothing to do with political philosophy. I don't know if Orwell is making the unintentional point that everything is political, down to the shows we watch, the books we read and the clothes we wear. All of these choices are choices grounded in philosophies of one sort or another, and all politics is is philosophy applied to human relations on a large scale.

You know you've read something great when it makes you think about the choices you've made in your own life. And furthermore, it makes you think about the meaning that is taken away from media. A person can watch The Wire because it reflects her own philosophy that an political system, corrupted by modern prohibition (the Drug War), will grind people up. Another person can watch it and say "if I ran a crew, I'd run it like Marlo Stanfield". Same medium, different philosophical interpretation.

Casablanca on the Big Screen

Last night - I'm still on Friday - Ruth and I went to see Casablanca over at a place called the Earl Smith Strand Theatre in Marietta, GA. The website is here, if you want to learn more about it. The Strand was an old-fashioned, one-screen only, non-Cinemascope type theatre built in 1935 which fell victim to the disappearing town movie theatre blues in 1976.

We went there to meet Eric and his wife Andrea, and his sister and brother-in-law. We couldn't meet them before the movie and we managed to get there about fifteen minutes before the movie started. By the time we got there, there was some sort of curator going on and on and on about the theatre with some corny wisecracks. (It looks like, just as today, you had to sit through a lot before the movie started.)

The curator played a "sing along" with the pipe organ as titles flashed on the screen. I would like to say that this was really something special, but there wasn't so much a singing as a sort of very quiet mumbling. They need to have some plants seated in the audience to sing loudly, and to shame everyone else into singing. Part of the problem with the sing-along is that they generally play the general melody of the song once - to give one an idea of the rhythm - and at some point, you jump in. (I think there's an artificial pause which serves as the cue.) But I kept missing the cue. It was pretty frustrating. The attendees actually need to be taught how to sing along.

Anyway, after this disaster it was time for the movie. The quality of the movie was extremely good, so good that I could only assume that this wasn't an actual film at all - it was a "computerized print" projected against the screen. Okay, so we don't get to watch the reel change cues in the upper right corner. Big deal. The movie was crystal clear and you could see so much detail that you'd never see if you just watched Casablanca on television. Humphrey Bogart is one of those actors that they said dominates the big screen...and for once, the screen was as big as Bogart was in Hollywood.

I have to tell you - if you get any chance in your life to watch a great black-and-white movie full screen, you must take it. It is an incredible experience, which puts even HDTV to shame. I wish I could write more about the Art Deco style of the theatre, but unfortunately I forgot my camera. I can only write that the theatre experience is authentic, at least in architecture. This is just what a small town, high-falutin, art deco single screen theatre would have looked like. But instead of rotting curtains and the upholstery falling out of the seats, everything is in tip-top shape.

Ruth and I want to go again, but the only question is "when"? We're thinking about seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on Halloween Weekend. The problem is that we're old farts now. When you're young, it's much more fun to stay out all night, and sleep is something you just have to put up with. As you get older, and sleep becomes lighter and lighter, you come to treasure a good sleep. I just don't know if I've got it in me to stay up until 2 am with a bunch of teenagers.

Maybe the problem with my life is that I belonged in Bogie's era, and not in Rocky's.

(I was toying with providing a review of Casablanca. The problem is that Casablanca is almost told in another language, despite the fact that it is an English-language film. If you weren't an American citizen in 1942, you wouldn't have understood it. And it wouldn't be understood today. "Everyone coming together, and making a real sacrifice for the country? For an ideal?" That wouldn't play on either side of the aisle.)

Outsourced

Today, my wife was told, "Oh, by the way, we're outsourcing your job in two months to Schaumburg, Illinois. If you want the job there, you'll have to re-apply for it."

What the f--k?

To say my wife is distraught is an understatement. No specific time frame given. Just, "oh, we'll move your job at some point in the future, with just enough time to fill you with dread and uncertainty". It gives you f--k-all time to prepare for that, and it throws all of our plans into a trashcan. Thanks for nothing, Unnamed Idiot Company. (Oh, the stories my wife could tell about trying to deal with these legacy processes!)

Of course, Friday is always the day they tell you this stuff. They figure they can get four productive units out of you the rest of the week, and if hearing the news curtails your mood severely, well, it's the weekend anyway. And of course, they f--k that up, too because now my wife has no incentive to provide anything beyond the bounds of the most minimal of competencies for the remaining tenure of her employment. As for giving notice when she finds a new job, well, sucks to be you, Former Employer.

I have been thinking about the whole world of employment recently. Note that I said "employment" and not "work".

employment: the condition of a contract - implied or written - wherein labor is theoretically exchanged for wages, with the hours or tenure of the labor understood by both parties. This differs from a job, wherein the contract is one which is legally recognized and which offers protections to both sides.

work: the condition of implying effort - physical or mental - to a task, either self-determined or determined by others.

There is no correlation between a job and work. There might be one between employment and work, but one of low value.

Back in ye old days, a job was something that was very difficult to lose or to be moved. This was an implicit contract betwen the employer and the employee. "If you do the things I ask you to, and I'm satisfied with them at a minimal level, I will keep you here as long as you want to be here." It was probably the closest thing to what the Brits call "the Dole" that a capitalist society would ever get; almost guaranteed employment. For employees to labor for thirty, forty or even fifty years at the same company was not uncommon.

Enter the 80s. (Really, if you think of it, probably the 70s.) I don't know the exact reasons for it, but there was a seismic shift in how employees were treated. Now, they were to be treated like disposable commodities, downsized or rightsized or otherwise euphemistically fired, shifted, or outsourced. It took about 20 years for the employees to catch up and treat employment not as a possible lifetime contract, but a contract of convenience, one to be disposed of whenever one felt that there was a better opportunity somewhere else. Of course, this merely gave the employers the justification to downgrade the status of the "ungrateful" employees even more.

As I believe, "Office Space is a documentary, but Mike Judge never intended it to be." The solution for his main character was to become a contract employee, building houses for his neighbor. I wonder how that's working out for him with the housing crisis.

I've never been great at offering condolences. Even offering sympathy, I find it hard to think of things to say. What I'd really want to do is punch the guy in the nutsack who called my wife to tell her this, but it wouldn't do to have both of us potentially unemployed.

It's The Thought That Counts

* Today I received a birthday card from my company. Which was really nice, except for the fact that it was almost two weeks later. Oh well. At least I got a party four days after my birthday - the party was combined with that of another employee. Perhaps birthdays should simply become floating holidays. "I was born Octoberish."

* Incidentally, I'll be going on a cruise in early November. November 2nd is Election Day and I'll be leaving that same week. Which means I get to avoid the wailing and the gnashing of teeth when the Democrats take a hit in the midterms, as well as avoid one week of the mindless news cycle. Truly, this was a fortuituous trip. Furthermore, if one was really depressed about the elections - which I am damned well not - one could just get off the boat at a foreign shore and not get back on again.

* Ruth has volunteered - or is preparing to volunteer - to cook dinner for her best friend and our pseudo-goddaughter that live one state away. (Three people would have to die for such an outcome. Since the girl in question just hit double-digits, not very likely.) It's a very nice gesture, at the least, and guarantees that four people get a decent meal.

* Recently, we received some gifts in the mail from a married couple whom we hosted for a weekend visit. (Before our cruise departs, we go to Florida and attend their wedding.) There were some cute Halloween-themed mugs, coffee and cocoa, and...pumpkin-flavored gummi bears. Ruth thought that the bears tasted okay but she thought the texture of the candy was terrible. I had trouble with the whole concept.

* It appears that Malcolm, our black cat, likes fruit. Mangoes. Peaches. Grapes. Applesauce. Obviously, he can't eat human proportions - two grapes is a lot for him. I suspect that he's been leaving us a lot of "gifts" as a result - that's like high-fiber for a cat.

* The Chilean miners were rescued recently. I haven't paid much attention to the rescue porn that passes for news, as the miners seemed to be in fairly good shape despite the fact that they were several hundreds of feet underground. I'm glad that they got out - it much have sucked to be down there - but they weren't exactly starving, just horribly lonely and miserable. If this accident had happened in Appalachia, I suspected that the mine owners would have blasted the passage underground shut and told the government, "Miners? Who told you there were miners down there?"

* Work is holding a costume party on October 29th. I hate these bursts of planned gaiety - I think it's the curmudgeon in me. On the other hand, work is offering a chance on that same night to see the Atlanta Thrashers play the Buffalo Sabres at just $10. I thought that $10 was a bit much to ask (!) but Ruth and I have decided to go to "Blueland" as they call it. We'll let you know how it turns out.

Call IT for Assistance

I shall explain an IT situation at work which will be amusing only to those who have experienced similar situations, or perphaps to anyone working in IT.

Every three months, my department runs a process which we have been running for years. However, there was a key component to that process which was provided by a specific member of IT. The process was automated, but this specific member - with a lot of seniority - adjusted the output of that process to fit our specific needs. When this process was created in 2007, IT asked our department to verify the output. Unfortunately, since verifying the output would require obtaining historical information that was just about impossible to obtain, everyone sort of looked the other way, IT kept complaining about our department not verifying the process, and we used whatever data the IT department supplied.

Then...that person quit. And the secrets of how that process was performed walked out the door with her. We have the query she ran, but we know nothing about what she did to the output to bring it to its final form.

Therefore, for almost six months now, we have not had this critical information. We have completed information up to March 2010. June 2010 came, and went. Still no IT support. We finally got some IT support last month, they managed to run the existing query for us - which provided incomplete information - and then...we fell off their radar. Now it's coming up past September 2010 and...still no data.

I have no authority to compel IT to give me what I want. Neither, I suspect, does my boss. So here is how it will go down.

1) My boss asks me to complain to IT. I complain to IT.
2) IT does nothing.
3) After 1) and 2) cycle for a while, and after we need to supply this information outside of the company, my boss kicks it upstairs to his boss - which is one of the four men in the company who are the bosses.
4) His boss assigns the IT shakedown to his partner in the Gang of Four, who I suspect is the designated nutcracker.
5) The nutcraker goes over and shakes down IT, the way the Mafia shakes down a storeowner.
6) IT devotes emergency resources to the problem. The result is a half-assed result that is very different from what we needed, but which we're forced to use in the end.

Currently, this is how our IT department works. "Busy" does not even remotely describe IT. IT's responsibility is not to information technology, it seems, but crisis management as IT is called upon to use its magic and put out a never-ending series of conflagrations as more and more of the company's business goes through IT.

The reason IT can't put out my small bonfire is because right now they are dealing with a massive ten-alarm bring-down-the-thunder conflagration which threatens to turn our business into ashes and will make weeping widows and distraught children. Yes, it is extremely hot where I'm sitting but trust me - the asbestos-clad forces of IT have seen much, much hotter things. "I can't deal with your piddly bonfire now - I'm up to my ass in fire hoses."

From my understanding of business - this will get much worse in the coming decades. With automation and artificial intelligence taking a greater and greater role, most functions of business will either be supplemented by computer technology...or replaced by it. (Read "Data Dump", on this website.) More and more jobs will become IT jobs. More and more of the business of a company will be influenced by something that happens in IT.

This will require an expansion of IT at some level. Maybe not at the data entry level or programming level - those levels are being outsourced - but at least an expansion at the watchful eyes level. At the "take the requests from the angry executives/workers/customers" level. At the input and output levels. Jobs might end up shrinking across the board, but IT's share of the remaining jobs that humans can still do will increase more and more over time.

I remember reading something said about computer programmers, namely that an good programmer is worth 10 average ones...and an excellent programmer is worth 10 good ones. My hope is that somewhere on site we have a good programmer who can solve our conundrum. Honestly, I'd be happy with an average programmer devoting his or her time to my bonfire, or even a poor one.

(* * *)

My mailing pledge to you:

a) If I ever send you an e-mail, the e-mail will have a subject header, one which is in some way relevant to the content of the body of the e-mail. It will not be "[No Subject]" but instead something like "Where's that library book you borrowed from me, you rat bastard?"

b) There will be more than a simple mysterious link as the body of the e-mail. The only exception to this rule will be in cases where I've actually exchanged e-mail with you and the body of the last e-mail message contains something like, "I'll send you a link in a follow-up e-mail, but I'm rushed for time so I might just send the link instead." Even then, it would be rare that I would send a link without any accompanying text.

c) If there is text in the mail, the text shall use proper grammar and capitalization, and it will eschew loose slang. You will not read anything like "hey guys :) check thizz out" but rather, "Here's an interesting link on the relationship between murder and bullying - I picked up this link at Fark.com and it's worth looking at." (This is merely a sample, as I would not repost any of fark.com's links.)

d) If the text uses proper grammar and capitalization, it will not read like a Markov Chain.

The above was inspired by three people I know whose e-mail accounts have been taken over by spammers. Cutting too close to home. I might end up dropping yahoo.com as a reachable e-mail address.

(* * *)

So I’m in the car and I’m in my new pants, getting ready to go to work, pulled up to the traffic light that’s just off the mall. And then I look down and notice….

…I can see my underwear. Not just the outline, but the white underneath. The pants are see-through. Ruth says that this is called the "pantyhose/slip moment." And even though I intend to wear these pants because they're so damned comfortable, work’s not the best place for that. So I turn around, go back, put on a pair of new jeans and I’m in the office at 9:15 am.

About 10:30 am, I feel something on the back of my leg. I forgot to take the sticky tag off. Good thing I was seated most of the day and no one noticed it.

Ate lunch. Some pizza sauce got on my white Land’s End shirt. Agh. Ever have that kind of day?

Today's Blurbs

* Ruth has bought our tickets to see Casablanca in an actual theatre.

* She also bought me two bow ties. Not clip-ons. Actual ties. I'm sure there's a YouTube clip somewhere with instructions.

* The Nanny: It's good as light-weight sitcoms go: occasionally funny, rarely insulting and essentially harmless.

Where Jamie Oliver Failed

I can't remember that name of that show with British chef Jamie Oliver coming to some sad town in Appalachia - in West Virginia, I believe - with the extraordinarily difficult goal of getting the horribly unhealthy people there to "eat healthy", whatever that means as of October 2010. They don't seem to show the program anywhere on American TV right now; I saw a few episodes, lost track of it, and have never watched it since.

Oliver faced multiple pressures. One was the assembly-line nature of food and the natives' lack of free time to prepare healthy foods or the knowledge of how to prepare it. Another problem was the institutional pressure against "outsiders", a common one in Appalachia where I grew up. Oliver raised the ire of a conservative radio host who was unhappy that some furriner (probably a liberal to boot!) was coming in and slagging this wonderful slice of Middle America - God-fearin', gay-bashin', gun-lovin' etc. etc. etc.

There was an interesting segment - now highlighted on Metafilter - where Oliver wanted to wean the elementary school kids off chicken nuggets (like, say, the McDonald's McNugget). This was his plan. He would actually make a chicken nugget out of the various spare parts of the chicken used to make the nugget, parts so odious and disgusting that you don't even want to be in the same room with them under the best of circumstances. After kids saw how the nuggets were made - and had the choice of eating healthier and better fare - surely, the kids would choose the better food over the nuggets? Am I right?

Wrong. When Oliver asked for a show of hands, the overwhelming majority of kids picked the chicken nuggets. Maybe one young contrarian chose Oliver's fare, the rest wanted the nuggets.

So why did Oliver fail? He failed for lots of reasons. The first was that to the kids, chicken nuggets tasted better than what Oliver was offering. When people decide what to eat, there are only a few who decide, "okay, I'll eat that because it's healthy". Most people choose to eat what they eat because it tasted good. To the kids, the chicken nuggets tasted good and the taste issue trumped all other issues.

"But CINCGREEN!" you cry. "Chicken nuggets don't taste better! They taste like shite!" Well, maybe to you but not to the kids - and how are you going to tell someone that X tastes better than Y when they know otherwise? "Who are you going to believe, little girl, me or your own taste buds?"

Yes, most of the "taste" of chicken nuggets comes from meat with liberal applications of fat and salt. But Oliver failed to realize that this was the traditional diet of Applachia, heavily processed, fatty salty food. It was the only food the kids really knew. They had become attenuated to it, they were used to it. They were definitely not used to his healthy alternative, and for most people, taste is a matter of teaching. If you give a kid cinnamon with every meal, he's going to want the taste of cinnamon with his meals when he's a teen. He was fighting eight years of taste memory, if such a thing exists.

Furthermore, he thought that the gross factor would be enough to turn the tide. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close. Frankly, many foods are made in a disgusting way, cutting the meat off of some poor animal. Even vegetables grow in muck and shit. Life is disgusting. The only way you can avoid that in food is if you eat rock. My wife often says to me, "I'm so hungry I'd eat a rat's asshole if you put the right kind of sauce on it." And you know what? I've started to say it, too. Because it's true. I know what's in hot dogs; I ain't stopped eating them.

The final way Oliver failed is that he naively assumed the following:

My opponent has belief X.
I present my opponent with new information which clearly refutes X and supports my belief, Y.
My opponent, therefore, will switch his belief from X to Y when presented with the new information.

This is not only not true, it is only rarely true in the best of circumstances. It's only true if the opponent is already inclined to believe Y, or if the world makes a lot more sense if one believes Y instead of X. The belief will switch only under those two circumstances. As they say

A man convinced against his will/is of the same opinion, still.

Think of religious conversions, for example. How do you convince an atheist or a Muslim or a Christian to become Mormon (*)? Either the prospective convert is already inclined to go with the argument - his life is miserable and Mormonism is a great life preserver - or the person is rationally convinced that everything in his common experience makes much, more sense under Mormonism than it does under any other belief system.

In the end, the kids went with what they knew. They weren't unhappy with the food they had been previously eating. And, realizing the amount of trouble they'd have to go to switch over - even if they liked Oliver's new fare or had time to get used to it - it simply made little sense to switch. Health issues can't play into it because nine-year olds think they're immortal.

The information that Oliver presented wasn't an ultimate weapon. On the contrary, it was a man bringing a pen-knife to a bear fight. Either the bear has to be sick - or suicidal - for the man with the little knife to win it.

____

(*) The argument is still out as to whether Mormonism is a subset of Christianity, or is so distinct that it should be called an entirely separate religion. Islam has Jesus, too, but Muslims generally aren't considered Christians.

The Politics of Cat Football

Things that I have to know for work:

* That Georgia defeated Tennessee 41-17 in football. I should know three things beyond the score. Let's see:

** Georgia is 2-4 and 1-3 in the SEC.
** They play Vanderbilt next
** Quarterback Aaron Murray had a good game: 2 TD passes, 17-for-25 passing, and a touchdown run.

* That Georgia Tech defeated Virginia 33-21.

** Georgia Tech is 4-2 and 3-1 in the ACC. Easy to remember. Turn the Georgia numbers around and you get Tech's numbers.
** They play Middle Tennessee next
** RB Anthony Allen: 195 yards, 3 TD runs.

* Georgia State is 4-2. I don't need to know any more than that.

So what does this have to do with work? Well, for one, it allows me to have a conversation with one of my cubicle-mates who follows Georgia football. It allows me to have something to talk about with the other jockish guys. I really don't give a damn about college football one way or another - it's the same to me if Georgia is 6-0 or 0-6, but to thousands of people in the state it's a freaking crisis or a cause for celebration.

* The Simpsons had a great line in this week's episode. Lisa is feeling down because Springfield Elementary's only Yale graduate - and only Ivy League University graduate (what, Ralph Wiggum couldn't get into Cornell?) - has criticised Lisa's list of extracurricular activities which is clearly not extensive enough for admission to a school like Yale.

Lisa, seeing her chances at an elite education disappearing, is consoled by her mother who believes that Lisa can go to McGill University - "the Harvard of Canada". Lisa answers with something I'll call "Lisa's Law".

Lisa's Law: "Anything that's the 'something of something' isn't the anything of anything."

* The ASPCA's commericals are horribly ineffective. The idea is that they'll guilt-trip you into contributing. There is nothing wrong with guilt-tripping people into giving to an organization - it's a great approach to any charitable commercial.

The problem is that the entire commerical is sad looking dogs and cats in cages. It's too sad - it's so unnerving and horrifying that people change the channel the very second they figure out what the commercial's about...and no one ever gets to the message at the end. Sad dog + Enya = channel change.

* Today's Cat Evil: we put out some frozen chicken to thaw before dinner. Ruth goes out shopping. I go out for a 40-minute walk. I come back and Malcolm and Eartha are eating the frozen chicken!

You can't turn your back for a second before the cats have your food. The cats slept most of these evening. No wonder. All that protein.

* There's a gubernatorial election in the state of Georgia this year. Two guys, both good old boys (or at least, they can talk the lingo), both running the same commercial about two old goobers in Georgia ruminating about...

"Did you hear what Candidate X said about Y?"
"Really? That ain't Georgia home spun wisdom!"

This makes me glad that most of the stuff we watch is recorded, and I can speed past this crap. After this, the state goes back to sleep for two years.

* Political thought exercise: stolen from another blog.

There's an election of some sort. A voter has four options: vote for D, vote for R, vote for I, or don't vote all. Assume that voting for I and not voting at all have equivalent effect, i. e. I is the kind of party that no one votes for.

Furthermore, assume that D is always a better choice than R. (Or, likewise, R is always a better choice than D.) The inequality sign has no bar underneath.

Questions: If D is always better than R, how bad does D have to get before you won't vote for D?

* Planning to see Casablanca on the big screen sometime this Friday. Will write about that later.

More Drabble

Since I got nothing, I'm going to puke up something that I read somewhere else. I don't know to whom it should be attributed - for all I know, I might have blended together other sources. This is the fate of building ideas. There are few original ideas; most are stolen from somewhere else.

The idea was based on which message boards are more vulnerable to trolling - or, if not trolling, to having conversation generally derailed. The agreement was that the vulnerability was based on three ideas:

1. Ease of entry: if it's easy to join a message board or online community, it's easy to troll it - trolling, in effect, becomes cost-free. For example, my wife belongs to Metafilter, and you can't post on Metafilter unless you're willing to pay $5 for a membership. The five dollar cost is so low that just about anyone could pay it, but high enough to repel people who want to make hit-and-run posts. Likewise, if you have to fill out some sort of application to join, or if you have to be approved to join, or whatever. It's just a simple law - the harder it is to join the board, the more resistant it will be. Trolls are much like lazy theives - if there's anyone watching, they move on.

2. Amount of moderation: There are various levels of moderation, from Moderation What Moderation? to Fascist Groupthink. Most boards seek some sort of golden middle amount, based on two general rules:

a. Everyone has the right to be heard, and
b. No one has the right to derail a thread - when you've had your say, shut up.

Both extremes are bad - if the mods are wishy-washy, the trolls drive everyone out. If the mods are fascist bully-boys, the mods drive everyone out. This is a sort of high-intensity version of #1.

3. Anonymity: The Penny Arcade Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory was first written in 2004.



On the other hand, if you're required to post in your real name, or if you have to fill out some identification that specifically indicates who you are - even if the admins are the only ones who know about it - the chain is broken. It's hard to say nasty crap when a potential employer might read your mean-spirited rant five years later.

(* * *)

Okay. We have an interesting theory. But here's the crux of the nub: let's assume that these places exist that either have a) barriers to entry, b) good moderation, or c) a lack of anonymity. They are relatively free of trolls. But the big question is do these places have the kind of smart, intelligent conversation we've been hoping for since Day One of the internet?

The answer is "not always". For each of the above, I can give an example. Metafilter has some useful comments, but it also has really stupid ones as well, and most Metafilter comments are contests along the lines of "who can be the snarkiest?" As for b) we've all seen PPMB and know well of its excesses. Friendly, yes? Intelligent? Not always. I know about The Well, which exemplifies c) above. I've not read it, but someone I've talked to who was once (?) a member said that the conversation was ofttimes no better than that on a message board where everyone used anonymous handles.

Getting rid of the trolls is great, but it won't make your message board smarter. After all, you can bring peace to a rowdy town but there are a lot of quiet, peaceful places in America - and some are so dull as to be barely worth living in. There is, however, a lot to be said for not getting shot.

(* * *)

Some other useful social laws:

Poe's Law: Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

Poe's Corollary: It is impossible for an act of Fundamentalism to be made that someone won't mistake for a parody.

Poe's Paradox: In any fundamentalist group where Poe's Law applies, a paradox exists where any new person (or idea) sufficiently fundamentalist to be accepted by the group is likely to be so ridiculous that they risk being rejected as a parodist (or parody).

Bechdel Test: In order for a movie to pass the test it has to have,

a) two women, who
b) have a conversation with each other, a conversation which is not about
c) men.

Bechdel's Measure: d) the women actually have to have names.

Campbell's Law: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Pareto Principle: Roughly 80 percent of the effects come fro 20 percent of the causes.

Postel's Law: Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you allow.