Ann Coulter Just Isn't Funny Anymore

I have to admit, somewhat shamefully, that there was a time that I liked Ann Coulter. But then I read her first book... well, the first half of it anyways. I couldn't bring myself to continue. She's just so negative and abrasive. Not that there is anything wrong with trashing democrats, but her style is just so unconstructive that I don't find anything useful in anything she says. It's as if she feels that because her enemies get away with talking that much shit, that it's OK for her to do it. She has become what she beheld (as Cavil would say), and as such, is as worthless in public dialogue as the democrats she despises so much.

Henry Rollins has a much less polite way of saying this though. And much more entertaining. Be warned though, this video is NOT for everyone.

So what was all the fuss about, again? (Padilla)

If you haven't heard, Jose Padilla has just been convicted. By a civilian court.

See? The system works just fine. Sure, you may not be able to use some sources you would otherwise been able to, but that's a small price to pay to keep some semblance of the rule of law in place.

Seriously, that whole idea where the executive gets to declare anyone inside the US an enemy combattant and disappear him/her can NEVER be the way it works in this country. I don't know what the hell the administration was thinking, and I'm glad that the Court agrees. I only regret that the administration blinked and backed down before we could get a ruling.

It's sure not like the Good Old Days

Only a Jackass Would Delete this Scene

Free Love in Bloomington

So I was feeling like shit today [Friday] (the price I pay for getting drunk off 151 on a worknight), but I gathered up the will to drag myself off the couch and go to Hairbanger's. Great show--as always--and it was good to see the 0L's beginning to integrate with us. One thing about me though, is as much as I like good shows, I fucking hate crowds. I hate having the mob press in on me, and I hate it when people try to walk through me instead of around me while they're on their way to wherever. To me, the crowd is really one single entity instead of individuals. Unless, of course, you do something to stand out.

Halfway through the show, we moved up to close to the stage, and I started to get a bit more relaxed and into the mood. And, I started to notice a certain regularity in the incidental contact I was getting from the stern quarter. Hmmm. Worth a glance. So I quickly survey the scene. There's a dancing couple right up against my back and they're pretty into it. The girl is OK looking, and the guy is a dirty long-haired hippie in a tank top. Ew. So anyways, I evaluate the situation to be accidental, albeit repeated, contact from an apparently drunk girl. No big deal. And as the night goes on, I notice that others around me are getting "bumped" into as well, but I'm clearly getting the brunt of it, and the duration of the contact is getting longer. At one point, I turned around and made eye contact with her. She smiled and said something--I couldn't hear, but I assumed to apologize--so I just said it's cool and directed my attention back to my group and the band. But immediately after, she backed into me again. This continues for a few minutes, and the contact is lasting long enough that we are clearly out of the "bump" side of the spectrum and into the "grind" side. I'm slightly annoyed, but not really, because there are much worse things that could happen to me than having a girl grind her ass against mine. But it's awkward because I can't really reciprocate, because she's obviously with this dirty hippie guy...............

Girl grinding on me...not an accident...but still dancing with her date? Still dancing with the dirty hippie. Wait, hippie--

...And then it hits me.*




Ew.

So now I have to try not to wonder too much about why they apparently thought I was a comparatively good bet.

Sigh. Fucking hippies.

*To better illustrate this moment, recall the scene from The Hunt for Red October where Jack is shaving and thinking aloud, trying to figure out how Ramius intends to deal with the crew that are not defecting with him: "...they'd have to want to get off. How do you get a crew to want to get off a submarine? How do you get a crew to want to get off a nuclear sub---?"

Razor is coming!!!

Jack, I want to transfer a detachment of marines to Galactica, and I want you to hand pick them. Completely reliable. Completely loyal. Razors.

Resurrection Ship, Pt. I.

It's going to be very nice to see Admiral Cain again. And with a name like Razor, with the meaning that the term carries, it's going to be one hell of a ride. Apparently the episodes/movie/telemovie/whatever is going to span a rather large timeframe, but it seems obvious that at least some of it will be dedicated to the story of the Pegasus before it met up with Galactica. The Pegasus crew was interesting, to say the least. On the outside, they had the look of a well-polished, well-disciplined, professional military machine. But when you got right down to it, they were more of a barbarian horde than a military unit, in the sense that we use the word. The fabric that held them together wasn't discipline, duty, or honor. It was fear, and rage. Cain nurtured that emotion, and then directed it to suit her purposes...or what she thought were humanity's purposes.

My prediction is that Cain and Adama aren't going to be as different as we think they are. Both of them had to face a situation where they thought they would lose control, and they knew the stakes were too high to allow that to happen. Both of them resorted to manipulating the emotions of the people to give themselves a fighting chance. Adama chose hope--and he had to lie to create it. Cain chose fear and rage. Two sides of the same coin, really. The difference is that control through fear gives you a lot more latitude with the measures you can take before your leadership is compromised, and using rage requires there to be outlets to prevent that rage from compromising your own control. Not everyone wants to go, or is even capable of going, that far. Adama wasn't. Roslin wasn't. Cain was.

And of course, there was a price to be paid for that style of leadership. It cost them their humanity. But it's not an answer to paint the world in black and white and condemn Cain and the Pegasus for that, because--and this is what I love about Ron Moore--there is no right answer. In spite of how distasteful Cain was, the fact of the matter was that the fleet really was safer with her than without her. There is no way in hell that there ever would have been an occupation under Cain--because there wouldn't have been any democracy. We've been raised to believe absolutely in democracy, but the truth is that democracy led to the wrong result, and the consequences of that mistake were staggering, and could have cost everything.

I think Razor is going to continue to challenge our values and assumptions, and once it has torn down that facade, it's going to tell a very different story about how people have stepped up to face the challenges of war, replete with great triumphs and terrible costs (some of which we already know about...the Scylla comes to mind).

Now I just have to wait until November....

Yet Another Video Post

Natural Predation at its Finest

Sorry, no imbed allowed on this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g5BoU8dKZ4

This is just a great clip all around. It's got everything. An ambush. A takedown. A counterattack and reversal of fortune. And even a surprising little twist in the middle--too bad us soon to be lawyers couldn't help them sort it out, though. I really thought the lions had earned an a property right they could have sued upon....

Closer than I'll ever need to get

The most shocking thing about this besides how insane these guys are is how small the funnel appeared to be on the ground. I thought even these "ropes" were pretty big on the ground, but then again, this is the first video I've seen that was actually close enough to provide an accurate sense of scale.

PS: For anyone who wants to do this, please approach from the side or behind, not from the front. These guys were fucking DUMB.

Crappy Video.....Awesome Lyrics

Well, I was down in Southern Watch
Flyin' my F-16
When lead called for a picture
And AWACS called back clean
But I saw a contact on my scope
and it was runnin' hot
And although I wasn't targeted
I went ahead and shot
.
.
.
Now oil's a buck a barrel
And it's all because of me
'Cause I'm the motherfucker
That started World War III.

For Pete, Amanda, RJ, and Blake

The Rifleman's Insight

Without me, my rifle is useless.


Without my rifle, I am useless.

Heroes

One of the most aggravating things about colossal crimes is that the person least deserving of recognition is just about the only person who gets any. The Joel Myricks of the world deserve more credit than the Dylan Klebolds. Let's reverse the trend.

Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, was a professor of engineering at VT. When the shooting started outside his classroom, Professor Librescu barricaded the door, preventing the shooter from entering the classroom as his students escaped out the windows. The perp fired through the door, fatally wounding Librescu. Let him be remembered.

The Mea Culpa: An Obsolete Ritual?

When this whole Imus thing started up, I didn't think it would be something that would get my attention. I don't have any particular interest in the show, and I'm not the least bit surprised that someone who makes a living off throwing insults around went too far. It was just one more case of someone making a major gaffe in public, pissing people off, and humiliating himself. Given that this was a racially-charged gaffe, it wasn't the least bit surprising that those leading the charge would not be satisfied by anything less than Imus' termination. What grabbed me were comments in a story to the effect that the public apology was becoming irrelevant in general. Two samples:

"I don't care about an apology," said Angela Burt-Murray, editor in chief of Essence magazine. "You're not a child on the playground. You're an adult who needs to take responsibility for his actions. And there need to be consequences."

This, to me, is an instant gratification culture gone mad. To Burt-Murray, I ask, What qualifies as 'taking responsibility' for the words one has spoken? In my mind, taking responsibility usually means righting whatever wrongs have been inflicted on others, and accepting the consequences you have created for yourself. When the wrongful act is speech, and when the wrong inflicted is offense, what means other than an apology is needed to right it? It's not like there is a physical injury to remedy by, say, paying someone's medical bills, or property damage to be remedied by replacing or repairing said property. And to the extent that the wrong inflicted is a harmful idea propagated through society, what remedy besides negating that idea is necessary? For most speech-related "offenses," a public mea culpa should right the wrongs caused.

Which brings me to consequences... Apparently, when Burt-Murray says "consequences," she means artificial rather than natural. After all, the natural consequences are the harms caused by the conduct, both to the individual and the injured. In this case, the consequences are Imus' humiliation, a loss of audience and revenue for his program, private offense, and, perhaps, a public harm flowing through the marketplace of ideas. Now, in the case that the offender is able to remedy the harm caused to others, what role do artificial consequences have to play? I argue none. The function of artificial consequences should be, to borrow economic lingo, to internalize externalities. If it was the case that someone committed a wrong upon others that s/he did not, or could not, remedy his/herself, then artificial consequences should be imposed to close the gap (E.g., an action in tort against someone who did not pay up). By forcing would-be wrongful actors to pay face the costs of their actions, the wrongful conduct is deterred. That should be enough. Going beyond that level of consequence is simply vindictive, and that's why this comment bothers me. It isn't about righting a wrong--by definition, it's punitive. And when the implied consequence sought is the termination of one's employment, the punishment quite simply does not fit the "crime," so this is outside the realm of deterrence. It's being done just to hurt him. It's anger, not reason.

Cohen was careful to note that there ARE times when apologies are meaningful. When you're in a fight, for example, and you say something hurtful at the height of passion, your apology means something.

Or when your apology has real meaning, such as recent official apologies for slavery by the Virginia Legislature and the North Carolina Senate.

Or when the person apologizing shows real, undeniable remorse and a clear intention never to repeat a similar offense again. Few people believe that about Imus, Cohen says.

This snip came after a few paragraphs about how meaningless public apologies are. The last part of this almost makes sense, but I question why it is only an "intention" of not repeating the conduct that is necessary. A meaningful apology to me is one that leaves the injured person with no doubt that the conduct will not occur again. After all, the recipient has an interest in preventing harm to him/herself, but has no interest in a 3rd party's mental state. With this criticism in mind, I'll now go to the beginning of these remarks.

The examples of meaningful apologies this guy gives are bunk. An apology for something done at the height of passion will be meaningless in most situations. Take Michael "Kramer" Richards, for example. Looking at his breakdown/rant, it's hard not to conclude that those were his true feelings that came out, and that he was suppressing them in public until the "real Kramer" broke through the shell. We don't consider him to be genuinely remorseful, because we think he really meant what he said. We also don't have any confidence that he won't engage in any racist conduct in the future for the same reason. Your typical domestic "fight" isn't much different--those are suppressed feelings coming out too. The speaker might be sorry about having said what he/she did, but a retraction of the statement itself would be a lie in the vast majority of cases.

And as for an official apology from a legislative body, all I can say is 'what the hell are you smoking?' How can the public remarks of any politician be understood to be 'genuine remorse' rather than political interest? How can any person be genuinely remorseful about something someone else did? What meaning does an assurance that something won't happen again mean when the people we did it are long dead, and the legal system that permitted it had been altered long ago? To quote an old chain letter, "he's not familiar with the problem."

As for myself, I think that the public apology deserves to have a role in our society, especially since so many of the harms society gripes about are emotional, rather than tangible. Emotional harms can't be remedied by compensation, nor can they be remedied by revenge. If an emotional harm is significant enough for us to pay attention, the best that can be done is for us to have an assurance that it won't happen again. Having a public apology to "dissect" for significance and sincerity is the best way to get that assurance.

(But as for conduct resulting in tangible harms, then yes, talk is cheap. Pay up.)

Doll Face

Doll Face

Too cool not to share. Even if it's a little cliche at this point, it's a really original way to send the message (at least I think so).

Buy the Sizzler, close the Straits

It's bad enough when your principal adversary develops a weapon that threatens your most important assets. It's even worse when that (former) adversary sells that weapon to likely future adversaries, and when similar weapons in development are likely to be widely exported. But when the Navy is unwilling to do anything to ensure that it can counter this threat at some point in the future, it's just beyond disturbing.

I'm absolutely shocked at this article, which states that the Navy has declined to allocate funds to develop it's own versions of these weapons to use in testing to develop a countermeasure. Apparently, they've got too much of a hard-on for their new shipbuilding projects to deal with the cold, hard reality of the fact that we are vulnerable now, and that we are becoming more vulnerable every year. Having a new carrier class or destroyer class won't change that fact... our enemies will just have newer, more expensive targets to blast away.

Misguided Outrage

In response to the sentiment being expressed by some on the blogonets that the fine American institution of drinking to excess at universities is to blame for the despicable conduct of one individual:



[For the record: To the extent that this is a response to Doug, it is limited only to the sentiment expressed by his rationale, and does not reach the issue of how he allocates his own resources.]

[For another record: spot the scene that shouldn't have been included and tell me what it is, where it's from, and why, and you win a cookie!]

[And for another record: I also object to the suggestion that people, in their ordinary social interactions, should be "lovable." What a bunch of peace, love, and happiness tree-hugging hippie crap! Oh, and so I don't disapoint those waiting for the Kevin Smith reference--you love the cock!]

So this makes sense to anyone stumbling in here, a "short" recap:

Steven broke Dizzy's nose by applying some kind of force (there's a dispute about whether it was a "punch," "hit," or something else (not that how it it characterized should make a difference to anyone but the neanderthals. See, e.g., comments 12-13.)) in an apparently drunken dare. Steven, instead of apologizing profusely and offering to pay all her medical expenses, made fun of Diz on her blog and on Facebook, which served no function other than to make himself look even worse and to piss off the person who is in the position to press charges and/or seek action from the law school administration.

Then, Doug overreacted and decided to use this one person's behavior as a reason not to throw a party this year--calling irresponsible drinking the "proximate cause" of the incident. Apparently, Doug forgot the "intervening human act" part of proximate cause from Torts, but I digress... Then, sensing that the time was right for even broader blame-slinging, Corey commented (and this is so ridiculous that I'll post it in its entirety)

Stop drinking. It is boring as hell. You are all smarter and more lovable when sober.

In general, this law school has disappointed my optimistic 1L expectations about student engagement with each other on problems of law, politics, and society. People were drunk at my orientation and I should have known then. I found hope in the few wonderful people I met on my way out the door so I stayed. (Even though not all of them did.)

All my friends have provided the counterweight that kept me here and kept me optimistic. And to be honest, the excessive drinking the rest of you did actually helped me, because see... I was studying and spending time with people I love instead.

But if people are going to hit each other and then get ugly over it, then I am done, out. May I have my diploma please?

And yes, this is moralizing, and might anger many. But maybe some moralizing is called for. People are getting hurt.

Peace and better luck next semester for those who have to stay.

Pete has already weighed in on this nonsense.

Words Fail Me

Please remain in your seats until the end.

Boston Follow-up

This is too good not to share.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1741589

Boston: The Stupidest City on Earth

"So we've got a huge terrorist plot theory and a serial hoaxer theory. Top notch!"


Most of us have probably seen the headlines by now about how the Boston PD managed to mistake an [Adult Swim] guerrilla marketing campaign for a citywide terrorist bomb plot.

Yesterday, this was funny. You figure some stupid residents saw one of these things and called the police without pausing for a moment to think...and of course the police had to follow up on it at first. The punchline, of course, was that after they responded to the first "device," they didn't stop. These fucktards kept at it all day, shutting down the city and causing a major panic. As someone who wasn't inconvenienced by their fuckup and who doesn't pay taxes to them, this is hilarious to me. The fact that this same campaign was carried out in (I think) 9 cities makes it even funnier. (It's also solid empirical evidence that Boston is collectively stupider than those other cities.)

But by last night, they started calling this a "hoax." That's right. Not their mistake, but a hoax. Who are they kidding? American Heritage Dictionary defines "hoax" as "an act intended to deceive or trick." Was deception the intent? Is it reasonable, even for a moment, to believe that the marketers intended to promote their programming by making people think there were bombs planted in the city? Or might there be a more reasonable explanation, say, to get people asking about who the depicted characters were and thus increasing viewership? Of course not. So, there's one of two things going on here. Either these guys are SOOOOO dumb that they assume that because they thought these were bombs, that it must necessarily mean that the intent was for them to believe they were bombs (i.e., they're too dumb to realize that they're dumb enough to be wrong unless they were tricked), or to give them a little more credit, this is a deliberate CYA strategy intended to draw attention away from the incompetence of city hall and the PD.

And now this morning, it gets even less funny. These fucktards are going so far to cover for their own mistakes as to arrest and charge the two guys that posted the ads, and are planning on going after Turner as well. Charge them with what, exactly? Apparently, they are using this statute:

a) Whoever possesses, transports, uses or places or causes another to knowingly or unknowingly possess, transport, use or place any hoax device or hoax substance with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons shall be punished by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two and one-half years or by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than five years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

Which, appropriately enough, has this definition:

(b) For the purposes of this section, the term "hoax device" shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine. For the purposes of this section, the term "infernal machine" shall mean any device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion, whether or not contrived to ignite or explode automatically.

I've added emphasis to make the impropriety of this charge immediately obvious. First of all, there is an explicit intent requirement. Which makes sense, considering that the definition of hoax includes intent. And just as damning in my opinion, is the reasonableness requirement. There's no way in hell that a reasonable person would believe these ads to be IED's. You look at the BS that comes up in the news reports, and they mention that it had "wires," "circuit boards," and "batteries." Shit, so does my cell phone and my laptop. If I set one of those down somewhere, am I committing a hoax? Don't leave our old VCR for the garbage truck! That's a "roadside bomb hoax!" There are of course, at least two important ways to distinguish an actual explosive device from other electronic devices: the presence of explosives and detonators. A reasonable person would only believe an electronic device to be an explosive if he/she saw such a component (or something that appeared to be such a component). Of course, these ads had nothing of the sort. Still, I have to admit that people are fucking stupid and it's entirely possible that the court might get 12 people whose heads are up their proverbial asses. Even so, there is NO WAY they can get around the intent requirement. No good faith argument, no probable cause. And to me, that means if this doesn't get dropped, someone needs to be disbarred.

Cool video of the "suspects" setting Boston up the bomb.