Ruminations, Haunts, and Errors

Ah, election day, when American citizens can exercise their constitutional right to mostly determine who will be annoying them by mismanaging public affairs for the next couple of years…

• When the poll worker reached to hand me my ballot, at first I thought it must be one of those instructional posters…I was not prepared for how enormously large it was!  It felt like Voting for Dummies or something; as we were getting coffee later, Eric and I joked that all we needed were big crayons to grip in our whole fists to complete the kindergarten feel.

  But, mightn’t it be a good idea to either make the ballots smaller or the voting booths larger? And maybe tie down the pens? I’m just sayin’…

• At least the pens gave me an opportunity that I’d for too long passed up:  the write-in candidate.  However, I used it mostly as a protest, writing in NONE for all of the judgeships and other races (why the hell do I need to vote for board members on the Water Reclamation District anyway???) where the candidates were unopposed.
• For the first time in my voting career, I essentially passed on a top-line race, Illinois Governor in this case.  (Well, technically I voted for NONE, but really that was just to prevent the scanner from kicking out my ballot as having an undervote.)  My thoughts were
  • I just can’t in good conscience be an enabler and vote for Blagojevich. At worst, his administration is slimy and headed for a couple years in federal courts. At best, he’s a Democratic hack and populist grandstander who never made the proper transition from the demagoguery of the U.S. House to the more nuanced role of chief executive. At least his questionable competence and distracting controversies haven’t run the state government into the ground.
  • I just can’t bring myself to vote for Topinka either. Sure, she’s done a good job as Treasurer and would arguably make a more competent executive. Yet, she’d bring back to positions of influence people and a party who’ve been a disaster for this country for the last several years. Besides, as governor she’d be severely hamstrung by the Democratic grip on the General Assembly and other constitutional officers.
  • Green Party candidate Rich Whitney, or write-in Constitution Party candidate Randy Stufflebeam? I briefly wavered in my opposition to minor-party candidates, but got over it. Even if a sudden shift in the body politic swept one into office, then what? With no political allies anywhere in Springfield outside his own office, either one would find himself even more marginalized than would Topinka. How does four years of railing against the system, even from the governor’s chair, help out Illinois? At best a vote for Whitney might bring the Greens over 10% and shake up the next round of elections a bit, but I think I should vote for the candidate and not the second- or third-order effects of his candidacy.
  
  So, in the end, NONE was my choice for governor: I really didn’t care whether the governor’s chair was empty or not, I don’t think it will make a whole lot of difference.
• Well, it looks like the Dems can flex some muscle in the U.S. House for the next two years. Congressional oversight again? It will be interesting to watch over the first couple months of 2007. The Dems would be justified in turning the tables and ramming a couple things through as a bit of payback, but they would be wise to limit such tactics to a couple bills that would enact amendments they tried to attach to things during the past few months–items that may still have support among moderates. After that, they should recognize the even split of the country and try to restore a spirit of bipartisan statesmanship that has been sorely lacking over the last dozen years.

At least until things start ramping up for the February 2007 municipal elections, alas…

In the last two months of this dismal, astonishing season I’ve made a deliberate attempt to watch just two Cubs games in their entirety: one in person against the Cardinals in August, and then the last game of the season. Fortunately, they won both, and I was especially happy with the latter since, for some odd reason, I can feel somewhat satisfied in my Cubdom by finishing an otherwise disastrous season with a victory (especially at sun-splashed Wrigley with the ivy showing hints of color); perhaps it’s just knowing that the last innings for several months turned out well.

Anyway, as the Dusty Death March finally stood a day away from resolution there was yet another flurry of activity with Andy MacPhail’s announcement of his resignation, resulting in an hour of press questions for MacPhail, iterim prez John McDonnough, and Tribune Co. chariman Dennis Fitzsimmons. As I listened to the talk it dawned on me that the great Corporate Cubs Canard–the suits see fans in the seats win or lose, so they don’t care about winning since it might cost more money–was about to dominate the local sports news for a few days, especially since the management reins were being handed, at least temporarily, to the team’s (successful) VP of marketing.

A quick look at the papers this morning of course proved me right. Yet it just exasperates me, the argument is just so fricking ridiculous, especially when spewed from the mouths and keyboards of people who claim to understand both the business and on-field aspects of the sport.

Okay, I will concede that Tribune Co. isn’t going to feel a particular urgency to single out one of its assets for special attention, especially when it seems to be generating steady revenue year-in and year-out. Perhaps the general corporate short-term attitude has also crept into the Cubs’ front-office mentality and is preventing them from properly constructing longer-term plans to rebuild the whole organization. But in the 25 seasons of Tribune ownership the team has won three divisions, one wild-card berth, and twice been within a couple innings of the World Series. That’s a vast improvement over the previous 35 seasons under the stewardship of the Wrigley family, which makes it hard to argue that the ‘corprate mentality’ has hurt the team on the field.

Yet what I find utterly ridiculous about the notion that Tribune management is deliberately constructing mediocre-to-bad teams, and emphasizing Wrigley’s party atmosphere, over on-field success is the notion that a successful team is inherently less profitable than a bad one. Certainly, success leads to higher player salaries…but it also generates more interest, resulting in more prime-time playoff appearances (read: higher advertizing revenues) and the ability to bump up next season’s ticket prices. Yes, Connie Mack said that a team that gets off to a fast start, generates lots of interest, and then ultimately finishes fourth is nicely profitable because the money is taken in but management can hold the line on player salaries–but the key element is still some measure of success.

Moreover, did anyone pay attention to the buzz around Wrigleyville in the fall of 2003? The ringing of cash registers at souvenir stands well into November? The throngs of ticket-seekers on a cold February morning in 2004? Do people really think that cold, corporate calculation in Tribune Tower feels that the revenue potential of putting the Cubs–the long-standing doormats of the National League–into a sustained run of prime-time battles deep into the World Series would be lower than that of just running the world’s largest beer garden?

If those corporate suits were so smart and calculating as the armchair owners seem to think they are, here’s a more likely scenario for maximizing the profit potential. They would build up the team to the point where it would consistently take all three playoff series to the limit, thus maximizing the profit of each by playing all possible games whose net reciepts don’t need to be shared with the players. They would make the team just good enough to reach the 7th game but perhaps not good enough to win it, thus keeping everyone (players and fans alike) hungry while justifying both ticket-price increases and some dampening of players’ raises. They’d keep this up for several seasons, culminating in a World Series victory–after which the team would quickly be sold: the team’s valuation would be at a lofty premium, and Bill Veeck knew long ago that you don’t make money by operating a baseball team but rather by selling it.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there is a TribCo beancounter with a cost-benefit spreadsheet showing that the risks involved with such a scenario are too high compared with the current steady revenue stream. But, as in most human endeavors, it is probably incorrect to attribute the lack of success to calculated malice when it can just as easily be explained by incompetence and bad luck. The self-fulfilling prophecy of a goat’s curse probably has a lot more power, and longer life, than any corporate business model.

The principal role of the science and technology community is to advance human understanding. But there are times when this is not enough. Scientists and engineers have a right, indeed an obligation, to enter the political debate when the nation’s leaders systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interests ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research.

SEFORA

Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers

Who knows whether this will go anywhere, seeing as government officials and members of th public are already inclined to ignore the advice of the National Academy of Sciences—supposedly composed of our nation’s best scientists–from time to time on important issues.  But it’s nice to see a useful agenda laid out so clearly.

Earlier this week I trekked out to Downers Grove to attend a three-day training course. Perhaps it was there because Sun Microsystems thought that a location by an expressway interchange near the geographic center of Chicagoland would make it maximally convenient, or perhaps it was just the best real estate they could find to fit their requirements; in any case it required a commuting ordeal since neither the mass-transit nor the expressway systems are designed to easily move people (especially city dwellers) in that direction. That commute was excruciating–even though I was the driver only one of the three days! How do people do that every workday? I’ll have to remember that if I start to gripe about the walk to/from the train…even on a bitter cold day, it’s still better than being stuck in rush-hour traffic.

I found it interesting that our neighborhood seemed like such an urban oasis at the end of each day; it was something that went beyond the usual relief of finishing a workday. Liz sometimes laments that we seem so far away–no doubt, this neighborhood lacks the buzz of Lakeview. Yet, as quiet, residential, and lacking in the cultural amentities (read: lots of nearby bars, restaurants, and shops) as our street is, to me it feels distinct from the ’suburbs’ for reasons I couldn’t quite explain. It’s something more than just the green light poles and our determination to not be suburbanites. As I gazed out the living-room window today in that half-relaxation, half-procrastination reverie that so often pervades a Sunday afternoon, I saw a clue that solved the puzzle at least somewhat.

A mature horse chestnut tree.

Now it’s not only cliche but somewhat unfair to disparage the suburbs for the saplings and adolescent trees that demark new and recent developments, as that distinction will fade with time. Yet the maples and horse chestnuts that line our street mostly have two-foot-wide trunks and are taller than the two-story bungalows, which indicates that the area has had time for the natural comings and goings of the residents to establish a dynamic. These trees are set in front lawns that seamlessly merge from one to the next, forming a common space that neighbors mow without regard to property lines and the local kids use as one big play area. These trees line a street that is less dense with cars than our old area of two- and three-flats yet still requires careful navigation since it predates the dominance of the car culture. These trees stand in front of houses that are generally similar in appearance due to their era of construction yet are all subtly different in their brickwork and dormers and such. These trees are wayposts for walks to restaurants and shops that are fewer in number and farther away than we had in Lakeview yet still exist as unique institutions.

Contrast this with what I witnessed on this week’s suburuban jaunts. The suburbs are filled with similar-looking houses on lots designed to exude a sense of ‘my property’ (and still will be when the trees mature), placed on streets designed to maximize convenience for vehicles. Each morning many denizens of the suburbs climb into their cars, drive down industrial-sized roads and highways lined with strip malls and chain restaurants that repeat every few miles to reach gleaming–yet jarringly quiet–commercial parks that look almost identical to the ones by the next interchange. Almost everything about all of that just screams out separation and commoditization: people giving over their lives to mass-produced houses and offices and meals and culture, spending great amounts of time isolated within cars and fences. Almost everything has been built to the purpose of minimizing costs and maximizing repeatability.

Our new neighborhood shares with the suburbs a focus on the residential life, no doubt; we’re still learning the dynamics, and perhaps the extra effort required to take advantage of the North Side/Downtown culture will lead us to spend more and more time inside our property lines. Yet this area exudes a sense of distinctive place that is still sorely lacking in much of the sprawl that lies beyond the city limits; the eight miles that separate Norwood Park from Lakeview seems to hold more variation and personality than the 22 miles of bad road from here to Downers Grove. A quick look at the tree in our front yard is a reminder that no developer can simply create that urban personality from scratch, and being part of it may be worth the cost of fewer square feet or a bit more on the mortgage payment.

With the exception of overcast rather than clear blue skies, everything else about our afternoon at Wrigley seemed to come together nicely. Public transit moved fairly smoothly all the way to the ballpark. Carlos Zambrano, the only truly consistent star the Cubs have had in 2006, was the starter. The team picked yesterday to finally surrender a game to the Cardinals–I figured there was no way the division-leading Cards were gonna go 0-for-Chicago this season–so that burden of expectation was relieved. Our upper-deck seats had a good view, we were near the premium-beer stand, the temperature was pleasant, and there were some sightings of the Blue Angels to add a little spice.

We certainly got our money’s worth. Cubs-Cards is always a festive experience, and this one had not only plenty of action–nine runs on 18 hits means a goodly amount of activity yet not quite a boring slugfest of sloppy pitching–but an extra inning to boot. Big Z was a bit shaky for the first two innings, but got out of major jams to turn in a very impressive seven innings. Too bad the bullpen couldn’t hang on to a one-run lead…twice. Yet, that did set up perhaps the most spectacular combination of play and situation that I’ve ever personally witnessed: Juan Pierre going back on a Pujols drive, checking the wall, checking the ball and backtracking further, checking the wall again, and finally leaping into the ivy with exquisite precision to snag the ball just under the basket–turning a game-breaking, bases-loaded double into a long, loud third out. The stunned buzz of ‘did I really just see that?’ was palpable; too bad the play came for a Cubs team that has been reduced to merely the role of spoiler. At least that play plus Nevin’s game-winning single an inning later kept Z’s outing from being in vain.

Like most today, I awoke to hear the breathless news of a disrupted plot to blow up London-to-USA airliners. My thoughts were not of fear, but more of commendation. Kudos to the investigators, it’s good to see some of the work is actually done by competent people. It was gratifying to hear about it in the planning stages rather than after the fact. As much as the crackdown on carry-on baggage and general pre-boarding security is going to make air travel much more painful (although, sadly, whether that will really prevent any tragedy is arguable), can you imagine how much worse it would be if the authorities were scrambling to impose a solution if we were counting victims rather than suspects?

However, my mood quickly turned to annoyance (not difficult at 7am on a Thursday) when, instead of a useful weather report, I was switched to a press conference from Michael Chertoff and Alberto Gonzalez. Okay, fine, raising the alert level, instituting tigher policies, and telling the public the reasons why was perfectly fine…but then it degenerated into an irritating spew of self-serving puffery and fearmongering. It’s one thing to specify what actions various agencies are taking to address the situation, but it’s unnecessary to repeatedly mention that it’s the Bush administration acting to keep us safe. Giving credit to the investigators who discovered and foiled the plot is good, and while the nature of the plot certainly warranted American involvement it seems a bit presumptive for DHS to take much credit for British agents rounding up British nationals on Britsh soil to disrupt a activity to be instigated from a British airport. Finally, given the nightly news and events stretching back the last, I dunno, 25 years or so, it is really unnecessary for department heads to lecture us on how there are Islamic radicals out there who dislike us and want to cause us ruin; that was pretty well-established on Sept. 10, 2001–9/11 didn’t Change Everything in that regard, it’s not news.

Yet the nadir of my mood happened just a few moments later, for in the time it took to turn of the radio and walk downstairs, my mind wheeled to two thoughts in rapid succession: how much will the Republicans try to turn this into a rallying point for their election drive? can Democrats effectively parry with ‘why are we still dallying in an Iraq misadventure when the real threats to our national security are elsewhere’? Yeah, I’m a cynic, but the ease with which my thoughts moved in that direction almost made me feel the need to go back up and take a shower again. Sad, it took all of 25 minutes on a dreary weekday morning to show what a nasty, screwed up state our public affairs are in.

(Of course, it didn’t take long for the first question to be answered. Or the second.)

Reading list
Notable quotes

U of I ugies troll through the camputown bars. One decided to relieve himself on a frat house bush. Campus cops give tickets. Why does such a mundane item rate a story in the Tribune? Apparently because one of the yahoos was tracked down via the current fashionable boogeyman, MySpace.

I suppose the reporter and editors thought it might be a nice cautionary tale to remind people that the internet really is a public place where people who you’d rather not have your information can readily find it. That’s fine…but this one quickly degenerates into a mess of ‘wha?’

First off: did the incident really rate signficant police involvement?

Second: isn’t taking the kid’s phone pushing the limits a bit?

Third:  was this such a dastardly crime that it required extensive police work to hunt down and nab this fugitive from justice?  I suppose that’s a good sign that the campus is a nice safe place, but I wonder if the extra $195 in fines was really worth the use of time and resources.

Finally, what a doozy:

Gartner, a U. of I. junior studying crop sciences, admits he lied but said he was shocked to learn that he was booked by Facebook.”I had no idea that old people were wise to Facebook. I thought they referred to it as a doohickey that kids play with,” he said. “I got bone-crushed.”

Truly, the next great criminal mastermind.   ‘Doohickey’?  ‘Bone-crushed’?  Way to make the old alma mater, a true bastion of higher learning, seem like a haven for hicks!  Further, when I was in college–which was still my late teens–as much as I may have felt there was a cultural/generational gap from the powers that be, I don’t recall ever thinking of University officials or police officers as ‘old people’; moreover, I certainly don’t think I ever thought they were somehow incapable of understanding something like the world wide web (which was vastly more unknown to the wider public at the time!).

Ugh!  Someone please tell me I’m objectively entitled to gripe about such things and not simply getting old…

Like others of a scientific bent, I was definitely heartened to see that the fight in Kansas over science education standards appears to be heading back in a sane direction. Yet one wonders if it’s just a temporary victory like those of recent years. How sad it is for the young Kansans who simply deserve a decent education that their elders keep bickering over ideology and can never seem to reach a lasting accomodation–that’s what we oughtta be teaching the kids these days, huh?

Anyway, for all the intrigue, there’s one broader element that I haven’t seen anyone pick up yet. Several places have pointed out this little item

Connie Morris, a conservative Republican running for re-election, said the board had merely authorized scientifically valid criticism of evolution. Ms. Morris, a retired teacher and author, said she did not believe in evolution.“It’s a nice bedtime story,” she said. “Science doesn’t back it up.” (Evolution’s Backers in Kansas Start Counterattack)

He believes man and dinosaurs inhabited the earth together and has offered a $250,000 reward to anyone who can offer him satisfactory proof of evolution.

In both these examples, the obvious bit of astonishment is the ability of such people to look at the available information and claim that ’science’ is unable to provide anything to ‘back up’ its claims. If you don’t like the consequences of a theory and want to hold out to see if your pet theory can be vindicated later, fine, but I can’t begin to comprehend what sort of twisted understanding of science and evidence is required to look at what’s currently available and simply dismiss it as completely basis.

Yet an even sadder aspect occurred to me. The two people described here have proven to be relatively successful and productive, so in general they would seem to have a basic grasp of how to analyze the world. So it would seem that perhaps it’s not that they can’t understand the more usual meanings of science and evidence, it’s that they are refusing to believe what’s currently available; I highly doubt there is any evidence from theory or the fossil record that would provide any sort of ’satisfactory proof’ that it’s not just a bedtime story. (Maybe an elixr that extends the human lifespan into the millions of years, combined with a time machine??) That would seem to me highly hypocritical, as they’re trying to used some debased form of the other side’s argument while simultaneously refusing to honestly enter the debate. Their arguments stem from a rock-solid faith that they have The Answer, so why is it so difficult to openly admit to us (and themselves) that they see absolutely no point in bothering to debate any further or brook any deviation from their ideas? Perhaps they’re afraid to look arrogant or backwards, but shouldn’t such issues of perception be irrelevent given the absolute correctness of their positions?

Reading list
Notable quotes

Cubs land Izturis, send Maddux to LA

Always sad to see a great player traded, especially one who genuinely seemed to like the team and fans, but such is pro sports.  It’s not like the Cubs are going anywhere this year, and unlike the fiasco during his first exit in 1992 this time his leaving would appear to be helping the team for the future.

I noted while watching the game on Saturday that the fans gave him two ovations, one for a perfectly executed sacrifice bunt in the sixth and then a larger one (prompting the cap tip) as he walked off the mound as Baker relieved him one batter into the seventh.  They paid homage to not only his skills and execution in that game, but also that they were seeing a Hall-of-Famer leave the field in Cubbie pinstripes for what was quite possibly the final time.

Hence, the Wrigley crowd exhibited an understanding of 1) how the game is supposed to be played, 2) its history and a particular player’s place therein, and 3) the business realities of the sport.  Not bad for a bunch of yuppies who know nothing of baseball and just go to that ballpark for the beer and sunshine, no?

It’s about time I came out of my moving-induced hiatus. My too-long list of starred items on Google Reader, along with more Delicious bookmarks, attest that I wasn’t offline but simply not struck by the muse. I’ll start with something easy, poring over those items to see which of the more eclectic ones still strike me as notable (a clip-show entry, if you will)…

• On eBay, an Atheist Puts His Own Soul On the Auction Block
  Interesting tactic in the pursuit of religious understanding. Nice to see not everyone that uses an eBay gimmick does so purely for publicity.
• Shaving technology: The Cutting Edge
  I’ve long been amused by the breathless advertising for the astounding technology in the latest razor, but finally the Economist shows us that blade tech is outpacing Moore’s Law for microprocessors. Brilliant.
• World’s Greatest Tool: Duct tape?
  Is there any question? I had no idea that ‘duck tape’ was the original name, I thought it was just a cute brand name.
• Galaxy-chasing nebula caught on camera
  I’d just link to the image–it’s fascinating on its own–but the humor is lost without the surrounding article.
• Pouring ketchup: The full technical explanation
  I…can’t improve on this. The title and diagrams say it all.
• Barenboim hits out at Musak - Hell is Other People’s Music - A Sour Note on Modern Times
  Three different angles on a common theme: cut the commericialized crap already!
• Coffee makes us say ‘yes’
  And here I thought it just helped make the transition from saying ‘mmgrph’ to something more intelligible…
• Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974
  Uh…wow. It wasn’t just the clothes, but the food too. How did America survive the ’70s??
• 4178°- Chicago Architecture
  Nifty little ‘fly-around’ some of the downtown buildings
• The best accidental discoveries
  Hooray for serendipity!
• Middle-class peeves cost more money than exists
  Snarky deconstruction of the cost-of-X meme.

• Dung under pressure makes gas; Op-Ed Contributor: A Load of Manure And why not? Coal and petroleum are byproducts of decayed and digested biological matter, no? Maybe it will cause other issues, but it’s certainly good to at least explore possibilities–even ones that the researchers would have a difficult time explaining to people without generating smirks and shudders. If only we could somehow find a way to turn the BS coming out of politicians’ mouths into the real thing we could achieve the energy independence they blather on about.
• An Imam in America: To Lead the Faithful in a Faith Under Fire Nice in-depth piece that reveals how the experience of the newly arrived Muslim culture is probably mirroring the history of pretty much every distinct cultural/ethinc group to hit American shores–Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, etc.–in the last 200 years. Fears and prejudices forced these groups into enclaves for decades until they naturally developed the ability to assimilate, or at least engage, with the dominant culture. I wonder if these latest newcomers will be afforded that luxury when the nightly news shows fanatics hijacking the name of Islam to wreak death and destruction.
• Schools Avoid Class Ranking, Vexing Colleges Okay, class rank shouldn’t be the defining characteristic of a high schooler, but that doesn’t mean the statistic has no value. Sure, it can be abused, but so can pretty much anything. Singling out one aspect of life to excise almost never, by itself, solves any problem. Just ask France how effective it has been to officially pretend that distinctions in culture and economic class don’t exist.
• The House’s Catholic Democrats Detail Role Religion Plays A relatively pedestrian bit of political posturing except for this breathtaking quote from the Family Research Council:
  

  What is at the core of being Catholic is the life issue, and that’s something the pope has never strayed from. While other issues are important — such as helping the poor, the death penalty, views on war — these are things that aren’t tenets of the Catholic Church.

  I’m no scholar of the Bible or canon law, but I’m pretty sure that the New Testament and many centuries of Catholic teachings are fairly explicit on the importance of peace and helping the poor. Wonder if the pope has been informed that, in fact, Catholics have been laboring under a collective delusion regarding their priorities for nearly two millenia but that an American PAC is ready to set things straight.

• Stylish shortcuts
  Passages through downtown with a bit of style and a lot of protection from the weather.
  (tags: Chicago geography architecture)
• The list gets longer on shortcuts
  A few more passages, hidden in plain view
  (tags: Chicago geography architecture)
• Birthing Pains
  A succinct examination of the latest ethnic group trying to stake its claim in the local power structure. We decry such sectarian struggles when exhibited by Them in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, but the only improvement from Us is in the choice of tactics.
  (tags: Chicago politics)
• Hubble’s Largest Galaxy Portrait Offers a New High-Definition View
  M101 — Ooooh!
  (tags: astronomy galaxy)

• Satire in the legislative ranks
  Good to see that some of our politicians at least still have not only a sense of humor but the sense to realize that the public interest demands legislation based on something more than ‘I just don’t like X’.
  (tags: USA politics satire)
• turning down big bucks
  Wait, turning down a potential windfall from Hummer because they don’t want to be associated with gas-guzzling aboniations? I thought all those lefty types were relativists with no values to guide their lives!
  (tags: USA society values)
• NSA searches for advanced data mining tech
  Actually, I hope the NSA has some success here. Striking the proper balance between civil liberties and police powers would be much easier if we had confidence that government agencies could actually get something useful from all the info they claim to need.
  (tags: USA government civil liberties technology)
• An avalanche of goodwill
  Nice to see Joey Cheek get some well-deserved recognition. After watching Bode Miller act like he didn’t care while Shani Davis and Chad Hendrick act like petulant children, at least its good to know that some people still appreciate the privileges and honors we often afford our athletes.
  (tags: USA sports society)
• Court gives meth addicts way out
  So, is this an example of good values or going soft on lawbreakers?
  (tags: USA law society)
• Saddam ‘calls off hunger strike’
  Calling off a hunger strike for health reasons?!? WTF? I thought the whole point was to cause health problems that would lead to sympathy.
  (tags: international law)
• Pension reckoning,
  A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall
  The Feds have the deficit, we’ve got our pension problems. Either way it’s gonna be a mess. How long until our legislators can no longer play with the appropriations numbers to ensure that the reckoning happens after they’re safely retired from office?
  (tags: Illinois politics)

I find the continued dustup over the Danish editorial cartoons attacking Muhammad to be distressing on two very separate counts

• To take offense when someone takes potshots at your culture and religion is certainly understandable. Yet the proper responses would seem to be denunciation, responses in kind, shunning, or simply ignoring the things altogether (especially when they are a juvenile and ham-fisted as these particular cartoons seemed to be). To honestly believe that the appropriate response is to riot, to threaten violence and death–in short, to proclaim that that your beliefs are so inviolate that no one should be able to even think about considering doing or saying something that offends your particular sensibilities–is pathetic. That others will take the oppoutunity to to manipulate events to advance their own agendas is despicable. Funny (in the gallows-humor sort of way) how a number of the protestors decided to add ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’ into the mix despite that neither country had anything to do with the cartoons’ publication.
• Yet the direction the debate has gone on this side of the Atlantic has been even more inexplicable to me. When I saw that the Daily Illini decided to publish the cartoons, I had to shake my head, and while I don’t think that the suspension of the editors was the required response, I can’t say I was surprised.

  Regarding the publication decision, my question is: Why? What will be accomplished? The usual, knee-jerk answer has been along the lines of ‘To prove a point’ or ‘To support free speech’. However, to my mind these are extremely unsatisfactory…

• Freedom of the press is not seriously under attack in the U.S. The current administration is playing dangerous games in the arenas of separation of powers and civil liberties (particularly privacy and probable cause), and PC zealots continue to cause problems on various college campuses, yet I can’t see that First Amendment rights are really threatened. For an editor in Tunis or Baghdad or Islamabad to order publication would have been a bold stand for principle, but it’s not as dramatic for someone safely ensconced in the halls of an elite American university.
• The contribution to debate and understanding is minimal. In an environment well-qualified to promote sociopolitical discussion and turn it into usable action, the publication of these cartoons may have been useful to find ways to bridge the gaps; however, as someone who spent many years on the Urbana campus, and even read the DI occasionally, the UofI and the DI fail to measure up. Moreover, these cartoons in particular aren’t very enlightening about any new insight on Western views of Islam, so their publication–especially now, given recent events–is merely provocative. The small Muslim communities here are most likely to see the publications as not only offensive but gratuitous attempts by already-privileged people to play at being the Principled Reporter, while the more dangerous throngs overseas are unlikely to know or care.
• The virtue of press freedom is being misconstrued.Freedom of the press is a limitation on the state, designed to prevent criminal sanctions against a person for the mere fact of saying or publishing something. I’ve noticed segments of the punditry trying to extend this to mean that it allows–nay, demands–that any idea be put out there, unfettered and without consquences. Perhapps canning the DI editor was an overreaction, a pandering to interests who can’t handle public controversy…but he’ll be able to move on with his life, and the incident may actually make his services more attractive to some publications. Yet I find the hand-wringing that such events will pressure people into ’self-censorship’ to be disingenuous. Indeed, in some ways such pressure was the rationale behind removing the government from the editorial process: let any idea be available, and in so doing let the public decide which ones should thrive and which ones should be pushed to the margins as being undesirable or offensive or just plain wrong.

Faced with such incalcitrance in the thinking of so many people on all sides of debates like these, it’s sometimes a wonder that any sort of detente is possible, no matter how uneasy. The only hope is that those who not only hold more extreme views but who are willing to take provocative actions appear to represent a small minority.

For the masses who probably don’t check my del.icio.us links with regularity…

• Giant Telescope Will Peek at Past
  I happen to know from seeing things in grad school that DARPA and individual military branches fund research all the time with essentially no strings attached. I suppose some trepidation over the source of funding isn’t completely unjustified, but might it come from a more general public misunderstanding of the value of pure research–investigations that aren’t targeted at any particular goal other than knowledge? Yes, I firmly believe that even the DoD sometimes acts without ulterior motives.
• How to fold a fitted sheet
  This has been an issue in Bartonia for years. And people say the Web is useless!
• ‘Sleeping on it’ best for complex decisions
• Little-known feline ailments
  Surprising that these are considered ‘little-known’, since any cat owner will have seen several of them after only a short while.
• Chicago Restaurants, Chicago Menus, Ratings, Reviews, IL Restaurants Guide
• Restaurant Place: The Restaurant Menu Directory (Chicago)
  Really, unless your restaurant (1) doesn’t a website (nowadays??) and/or (2) is always changing the menu, I think there’s no excuse for not having the menu available in a format like this. Ooh, how about RSS feeds for those spots with frequently changing menus? Knowing that restaurant X just got a fresh shipment of Y for tonight’s specials would help drive business from people like us who often find themselves indecisive on a Saturday night.
• The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005
• Illinoize
  Especially being an election year, this site provides some interesting reading for Illinoisans who are either political junkies or who just want a view of what’s going on that’s less parochial than the local news outlets. Posts come from all corners of the political-cultural map, which can be a bit jarring or head-scratching but is probably a good thing overall.