Microsoft recently launched what it apparently hopes will be a Google-slaying new search engine called Bing. The guys in marketing were apparently quite deliberate in choosing a name for their new search engine that could be conscripted into service as a verb, a la "googling." You can see this in an open letter to users, in which the Bing Team enthuses, "We sincerely hope that the next time you need to make an important decision, you'll Bing and decide."
I spot three problems with this potential verb. First, written in its presumed participial and past tense forms ("binging" and "binged," respectively) "to bing" is indistinguishable from "to binge." That's not the sort of ambiguity that I'd generally like to invite.
Secondly, the nearest English verb prototypes for "to bing" are probably "to bring," "to fling," "to ring," and "to sing," all of which are irregular verbs. You don't form the past tense of any of these verbs by adding -ed. No, you turn them into "brought," "flung," "rang," and "sang." Try those endings out on "to bing": "bought," "bung," "bang." And now see how you like substituting those into the sentence, "Last month, I googled Sonia Sotomayor maybe fifteen different times."
(Imagining "bung" entering the vocabulary as a past tense verb puts an inexplicably resilient smile on my face, I have to admit.)
Lastly, the participial form "binging," is just an unpleasant mouthful to spit out. It rhymes with itself in a cloying, ugly, nasalized guttural way. Those double -ng's are just too much damn work. We put up with them in "bringing," etc., because those are part of our native vocabulary, but no marketing manager is going to get me to use as demonstrably foul-sounding a word as "binging" just because it was the best he could come up with.
The Bing people were right to note that the verb form "to google" gives Google a word of mouth marketing advantage. The word makes for a pleasant mouthfeel. But on the Internet, these verbs spring up all the time, even when they aren't quite so easy and obvious, as long as the service is actually good for something; "to facebook," "to imdb," and even "to wikipedia," are all verbs I've encountered in real life. So I'm partially annoyed that Microsoft ever decided to make the verbiness of its search engine's name central to its ad campaign. Build a better product, and your users will take care of the linguistic bits for you. But what sends me over the edge is that, having decided that it coveted Google's verbiness, Microsoft couldn't come up with a name any less problematic than "Bing" in terms of precision, morphology, and phonology.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The Sotomayor Nomination
Yesterday, I came across this in an opinion piece by Ilya Shapiro posted on cnn.com, criticizing President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court:
Here's a lesson from the real world and the practice of law: past a certain point, additional intelligence provides only short-term advantages. Being smart means you'll pick up the concepts more quickly than others. It means you might be able to come up with cleverer or more intricate arguments, more quickly. But over the long haul, those benefits never trump experience in the trenches. Yes, the Supreme Court is a very important post, and an impressive intellect is an asset; but an astounding intellect is unnecessary.
Secondly, there seems to be something hypocritical (or at least dissembling) about Shapiro's admonition that Sotomayor "has not issued any important decisions or made a name for herself as a legal scholar or particularly respected jurist." To me, this reads as follows: "Judge Sotomayor has failed to leave a satisfactory smoking gun evidencing her liberal activism, which makes my job difficult, since I'm supposed to call her a liberal judicial activist. Therefore, I will paint her failure to stake out such liberal positions as evidence of her intellectual lethargy." In other words, had Sotomayor staked out any clever, novel, or interesting legal positions, Shapiro would be criticizing her for having taken those positions, instead of criticizing her, as he does here, for not having taken them.
Thirdly, Shapiro criticizes Sotomayor for commenting that judges make rather than interpret the law. If you read Shapiro's bio, you will see that he is a lawyer with an impressive-sounding resumé. This is surprising, because he is apparently quite a dim bulb himself. I attended a state law school, where I was taught by outspoken liberals and outspoken conservatives. Not one of them, regardless of their political persuasion, would have denied that in certain circumstances, a judge has the responsibility to make the law. "Interpreting, not making, the law," is something the public likes to hear about its judges, but it has never been the whole story.
Imagine this scenario: a criminal defendant has been tried in state court and found guilty of first degree murder. The jury deliberates, and votes 11-1 to impose the death penalty. A state statute provides that an 11-1 vote is all that is necessary to impose the death penalty. The defendant objects, saying that the state statute violates the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which ought to be interpreted to require unanimity in order to impose the death penalty. All the Due Process clause says is "No State shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." So which is it? Does the Due Process clause require unanimity or is 11-1 good enough? Either answer is plausible, but you can't support either one just from reading the Due Process clause. Say yes or say no, but your decision is not extrapolated from the meaning of the phrase "due process"; your decision gives meaning to the phrase "due process."
The take-away point is this: when the drafters of the Constitution or the legislation punt, the judiciary has to pick up the ball.
Lastly (for now), Shapiro criticizes Sotomayor for remarking that a Latina and a white man necessarily view the law differently. I actually can join Shapiro in being a little riled by this comment. Obviously she's playing to crude racial stereotypes here. Behind it is something like the ethnic imaginings typified in Jennifer Lopez romantic comedies: Latinas are all sassy hotel maids, and white men are all running for the U.S. Senate. You might as well say that black men and Sicilians necessarily have different views on the law—but then how do you explain Justices Thomas and Scalia? These are oversimplifications that should make us all blush, and frankly they're offensive.
On the other hand, by adding a little nuance, I don't think Sotomayor is very far from the truth. I think it's true to say that there are a lot of factors that influence one's view of the law (upbringing, religion, socioeconomic status, etc.), and many of those factors, statistically speaking, break along ethnic, racial, and gender lines. Because I am charitably-inclined, I'll spot her the benefit of the doubt, and assume that Sotomayor's comment was just ill-advised shorthand for the more nuanced version I've put forth.
[I]n over 10 years on the Second Circuit, she has not issued any important decisions or made a name for herself as a legal scholar or particularly respected jurist. In picking a case to highlight during his introduction of the nominee, President Obama had to go back to her days as a trial judge and a technical ruling that ended the 1994-95 baseball strike.Am I correct in reading this to mean that Shapiro's primary beef with Sotomayor is her lack of "brilliance"? I mean, he shrugs off criticisms of her demeanor (apparently on the grounds that any failing of Antonin Scalia's must not be a failing at all), but huffs and puffs that she is no "legal scholar," "respected jurist," or "judicial craftsman." Seriously, how important is brilliance?
Moreover, Sotomayor has a mixed reputation among lawyers who have practiced before her, some questioning her abilities as a judicial craftsman, others her erratic temperament, according to a piece by Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic, which itself has come in for criticism.
Such anecdotal criticism is to be taken with a grain of salt -- while Justice Antonin Scalia's bench-side manner is more vinegar than honey, even his detractors recognize his brilliance -- but it does need to be investigated. So, too, do certain statements she made in presentations at Berkeley and Duke, respectively, the former arguing that a Latina necessarily sees the law differently than a white man, the latter suggesting that, at least to some degree, judges make rather than interpret law.
Here's a lesson from the real world and the practice of law: past a certain point, additional intelligence provides only short-term advantages. Being smart means you'll pick up the concepts more quickly than others. It means you might be able to come up with cleverer or more intricate arguments, more quickly. But over the long haul, those benefits never trump experience in the trenches. Yes, the Supreme Court is a very important post, and an impressive intellect is an asset; but an astounding intellect is unnecessary.
Secondly, there seems to be something hypocritical (or at least dissembling) about Shapiro's admonition that Sotomayor "has not issued any important decisions or made a name for herself as a legal scholar or particularly respected jurist." To me, this reads as follows: "Judge Sotomayor has failed to leave a satisfactory smoking gun evidencing her liberal activism, which makes my job difficult, since I'm supposed to call her a liberal judicial activist. Therefore, I will paint her failure to stake out such liberal positions as evidence of her intellectual lethargy." In other words, had Sotomayor staked out any clever, novel, or interesting legal positions, Shapiro would be criticizing her for having taken those positions, instead of criticizing her, as he does here, for not having taken them.
Thirdly, Shapiro criticizes Sotomayor for commenting that judges make rather than interpret the law. If you read Shapiro's bio, you will see that he is a lawyer with an impressive-sounding resumé. This is surprising, because he is apparently quite a dim bulb himself. I attended a state law school, where I was taught by outspoken liberals and outspoken conservatives. Not one of them, regardless of their political persuasion, would have denied that in certain circumstances, a judge has the responsibility to make the law. "Interpreting, not making, the law," is something the public likes to hear about its judges, but it has never been the whole story.
Imagine this scenario: a criminal defendant has been tried in state court and found guilty of first degree murder. The jury deliberates, and votes 11-1 to impose the death penalty. A state statute provides that an 11-1 vote is all that is necessary to impose the death penalty. The defendant objects, saying that the state statute violates the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which ought to be interpreted to require unanimity in order to impose the death penalty. All the Due Process clause says is "No State shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." So which is it? Does the Due Process clause require unanimity or is 11-1 good enough? Either answer is plausible, but you can't support either one just from reading the Due Process clause. Say yes or say no, but your decision is not extrapolated from the meaning of the phrase "due process"; your decision gives meaning to the phrase "due process."
The take-away point is this: when the drafters of the Constitution or the legislation punt, the judiciary has to pick up the ball.
Lastly (for now), Shapiro criticizes Sotomayor for remarking that a Latina and a white man necessarily view the law differently. I actually can join Shapiro in being a little riled by this comment. Obviously she's playing to crude racial stereotypes here. Behind it is something like the ethnic imaginings typified in Jennifer Lopez romantic comedies: Latinas are all sassy hotel maids, and white men are all running for the U.S. Senate. You might as well say that black men and Sicilians necessarily have different views on the law—but then how do you explain Justices Thomas and Scalia? These are oversimplifications that should make us all blush, and frankly they're offensive.
On the other hand, by adding a little nuance, I don't think Sotomayor is very far from the truth. I think it's true to say that there are a lot of factors that influence one's view of the law (upbringing, religion, socioeconomic status, etc.), and many of those factors, statistically speaking, break along ethnic, racial, and gender lines. Because I am charitably-inclined, I'll spot her the benefit of the doubt, and assume that Sotomayor's comment was just ill-advised shorthand for the more nuanced version I've put forth.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Lip-Syncing and Musical Authenticity
It's not the sort of thing I talk about with you guys, but for the last three seasons, I have watched American Idol. This week was "Rock Week," but we can talk about "Whole Lotta Love" another time. What I'll talk about now is Paula Abdul's turn on the stage during tonight's elimiation show, performing a song called, "I'm Only Here for the Music." If you can YouTube it—well—I still couldn't really recommend it, but what you will see is a fairly intense dance number coupled with barely half-hearted lip-syncing. It's bad enough to make you wonder why she bothered moving her lips at all, when it was clear that the dancing, not the singing, was the focal point of the show. I got to wondering just that.
Why do artists lip-sync? Let's break lip-syncing down into it's two, even simpler components. Lip-syncing consists of: (1) not singing, but (2) appearing to sing.
There are perfectly good reasons why an artist might choose not to sing at his "live" performances. He might be sick. He might not actually be a very good singer. The choreography that the show demands might overtax his respiration, precluding vocalization. If you were a fan of a certain kind of music, and of the stage show that most often accompanies it, this last justification would be particularly forceful. Think about Britney Spears and her "Circus Tour" stage show.
But what purpose is served by appearing to sing? To the pop music concertgoer, is your enjoyment of the dance numbers augmented by the fact that the artist's lips are moving? To the afficionado of musical authenticity, would your opinion of Milli Vanilli be diminished if, instead of dancing and pretending to sing, they had just danced?
After Abdul's performance, No Doubt performed "Just a Girl," and Gwen Stefani was awkwardly as frenetic as she was in 1996: leaping, writhing like a tsunami was running up her spine, maybe almost actually throwing elbows at the audience as she made her way back up on stage after jumping down among them. Her painfully live vocals were not at all spot-on, but I can't help but feel like a part of her energy was inspired by the impossible-to-the-point-of absurdity "vocal" performance that Abdul had just given. It was a fuck-you. She was saying, "Here's what it really sounds like when you dance while singing."
Why do artists lip-sync? Let's break lip-syncing down into it's two, even simpler components. Lip-syncing consists of: (1) not singing, but (2) appearing to sing.
There are perfectly good reasons why an artist might choose not to sing at his "live" performances. He might be sick. He might not actually be a very good singer. The choreography that the show demands might overtax his respiration, precluding vocalization. If you were a fan of a certain kind of music, and of the stage show that most often accompanies it, this last justification would be particularly forceful. Think about Britney Spears and her "Circus Tour" stage show.
But what purpose is served by appearing to sing? To the pop music concertgoer, is your enjoyment of the dance numbers augmented by the fact that the artist's lips are moving? To the afficionado of musical authenticity, would your opinion of Milli Vanilli be diminished if, instead of dancing and pretending to sing, they had just danced?
After Abdul's performance, No Doubt performed "Just a Girl," and Gwen Stefani was awkwardly as frenetic as she was in 1996: leaping, writhing like a tsunami was running up her spine, maybe almost actually throwing elbows at the audience as she made her way back up on stage after jumping down among them. Her painfully live vocals were not at all spot-on, but I can't help but feel like a part of her energy was inspired by the impossible-to-the-point-of absurdity "vocal" performance that Abdul had just given. It was a fuck-you. She was saying, "Here's what it really sounds like when you dance while singing."
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
This is why I love Mike Leach...
Aside from how much he whines, he might be more entertaining than Spurrier.
From Mike Huguenin at Rivals.com (story):
Third, Leach was incredulous that Texas A&M quarterback Stephen McGee – who was a reserve for much of his senior season – was drafted in the fourth round by Dallas (and Tech quarterback Graham Harrell – who led the nation in passing – wasn't drafted at all): "The Dallas Cowboys like him more than his coaches at A&M did."
Fourth, after Texas A&M coach Mike Sherman talked on back-to-back days about Leach's comments on McGee, Leach let fly again, with tongue firmly planted in his cheek: "I've always known A&M had great players. The fact that they have the luxury to put a third- or fourth-round draft pick on the bench, to me, identifies what a truly great team they are. It's an honor for us at Texas Tech to have the opportunity to play them. There are numerous players on our team that will never get a look or play a down in the NFL, so you can imagine how exciting it is for me and them to go play a team the magnitude of Texas A&M and look over there on the bench and see third- and fourth-round draft picks."
Thursday, April 30, 2009
FCW: First Practise [Tag] Match
So, last Monday we had our first tag matches. For me, it was my first practise match. 10 minute limit. Steve would watch our matches and give critiques post-match.
I was working with three guys I never worked or trained with before. They were always in another ring. My partner was fine, but our opponents gave me a bit of worry. One of them was the moonsault guy and the other was the guy who may, in some ways, be the worst of the bunch. I've no doubt that he tries his best, he's just uncoordinated. Confusing his left with right. Positioning mistakes. Going waay too fast and not thinking fast enough to keep up with himself. We'll call this guy "J" to make this story easy.
Pre-match, I wanted to just take it as it happens, but J was plenty nervous. So I came up with a beginning. Being the heel, I would play around a little bit. Once we lock up, J, being bigger than me, would power me around. Push me down. Back me into the corner, etc. When we locked up again, I would out chain wrestle him down and work on his leg as agreed upon. I also pointed out that we need to pace ourselves and slow it down.
So the match starts, I play around a bit. We lock up and J puts me into a headlock. Completely bypassing the opening setup of our characters. He then starts calling moves, something he said for me to do, and none of these moves involve me taking him down and working on the leg.
So I follow and the the opportunity arose, I put him in a top wrist lock and told him to work it (to make sure he didn't reverse it 2 seconds later). I took him to his knees and held the lock. I told him to keep it slow, work the hold. He looked confused as to why he shouldn't reverse. I then told him to slowly power up (making him look good). Once he he regained his footing, I took him down and worked the leg. Elbow drops to the knee. Leg grapevines. I then dragged him to my corner for the tag. My partner came in and worked him over.
At some point, my partner hurts his knee (for real) and limping jumps over to tag me back in. By the time I reenter the match, J's knee has magically healed (Hogan-style) and he's on a blind, God-knows-what rampage. It was horrible. I tried to lead him into moves but he was lost.
In one spot: he called for me to give him a fireman's carry, a move where I drop to my knees and flip him over my shoulders. I drop down and, instead of flipping over my shoulders, he falls with all his dead weight on my shoulders, neck and head, nearly driving my face into the mat.
In another spot, he takes me down and tries to apply the figure 4 leg lock, but gives up half way and expects me to sell it. I shoot a "What the...?!" look at the supposed leg lock, then to Steve, then back to the leg lock. A classmate called it a "Figure 4 Lay There". I grab his unlocked leg, flip him over, and transition from a leg lock to a headlock which got laughs and cheers.
In the final memorable spot: He shoots me into the ropes and I tell him to bend over. Bouncing off the ropes I flip over him and school boy him into a pin. Kick out. I call drop toe hold, where you drop down and trip up your opponents legs with your own. I drop down. Trip the legs. And J falls RIGHT ON TOP OF ME.
I sold the "splash" but J didn't know what to do. 10 minutes ran out and the match was stopped without a finish.
Steve directly critiqued everyone in the match but me. As of now, I'm taking that as a positive. I did try some different things. Saved some spots. And suffered for others. Now I just need to have hopefully better matches with better opponents.
Note this to facebook as well.
I was working with three guys I never worked or trained with before. They were always in another ring. My partner was fine, but our opponents gave me a bit of worry. One of them was the moonsault guy and the other was the guy who may, in some ways, be the worst of the bunch. I've no doubt that he tries his best, he's just uncoordinated. Confusing his left with right. Positioning mistakes. Going waay too fast and not thinking fast enough to keep up with himself. We'll call this guy "J" to make this story easy.
Pre-match, I wanted to just take it as it happens, but J was plenty nervous. So I came up with a beginning. Being the heel, I would play around a little bit. Once we lock up, J, being bigger than me, would power me around. Push me down. Back me into the corner, etc. When we locked up again, I would out chain wrestle him down and work on his leg as agreed upon. I also pointed out that we need to pace ourselves and slow it down.
So the match starts, I play around a bit. We lock up and J puts me into a headlock. Completely bypassing the opening setup of our characters. He then starts calling moves, something he said for me to do, and none of these moves involve me taking him down and working on the leg.
So I follow and the the opportunity arose, I put him in a top wrist lock and told him to work it (to make sure he didn't reverse it 2 seconds later). I took him to his knees and held the lock. I told him to keep it slow, work the hold. He looked confused as to why he shouldn't reverse. I then told him to slowly power up (making him look good). Once he he regained his footing, I took him down and worked the leg. Elbow drops to the knee. Leg grapevines. I then dragged him to my corner for the tag. My partner came in and worked him over.
At some point, my partner hurts his knee (for real) and limping jumps over to tag me back in. By the time I reenter the match, J's knee has magically healed (Hogan-style) and he's on a blind, God-knows-what rampage. It was horrible. I tried to lead him into moves but he was lost.
In one spot: he called for me to give him a fireman's carry, a move where I drop to my knees and flip him over my shoulders. I drop down and, instead of flipping over my shoulders, he falls with all his dead weight on my shoulders, neck and head, nearly driving my face into the mat.
In another spot, he takes me down and tries to apply the figure 4 leg lock, but gives up half way and expects me to sell it. I shoot a "What the...?!" look at the supposed leg lock, then to Steve, then back to the leg lock. A classmate called it a "Figure 4 Lay There". I grab his unlocked leg, flip him over, and transition from a leg lock to a headlock which got laughs and cheers.
In the final memorable spot: He shoots me into the ropes and I tell him to bend over. Bouncing off the ropes I flip over him and school boy him into a pin. Kick out. I call drop toe hold, where you drop down and trip up your opponents legs with your own. I drop down. Trip the legs. And J falls RIGHT ON TOP OF ME.
I sold the "splash" but J didn't know what to do. 10 minutes ran out and the match was stopped without a finish.
Steve directly critiqued everyone in the match but me. As of now, I'm taking that as a positive. I did try some different things. Saved some spots. And suffered for others. Now I just need to have hopefully better matches with better opponents.
Note this to facebook as well.
Monday, April 27, 2009
The Stir-Man's Mega-Update
So, I've been locked out of facebook since....whenever was the last time I posted on facebook. The computers keep crashing here at the apt complex and they decided to install a internet protection program (K9) which blocks facebook. Maybe even worse, I got an okcupid email (as told to me thru lsu.edu) but I can't open it. All I know is that she thinks I look nice.
So, if any one of you could, please upload this entry to facebook and attach the usual names as my past posts. I think the only friend we don't have in common is Tommy Garza. Add'em and slap 'em on there. You can leave out the okcupid part.
FCW
So, our class has finished learning all the moves from the wrestling move/hold worksheet. Now we are either reviewing, cutting promos, and/or starting to have practise matches. Last Monday was our first practise match session. 6-minutes in length. Steve's only direction was show what you've learned. I didn't have a chance at a match along with a few other (ran out of time), but I saw some interesting stuff.
One guy tried to do a flipping springboard moonsault off the ropes onto another guy. The moonsaulter ended up landing on the guy on the back of his head/neck (he didn't completely flip over). It looked sick, but it seemed everyone was ok. The next class I found out the guy who got landed on broke off a part of his rib. The moonsaulter wasn't in class that day. I don't know what the hell that guy thought he was doing. It was the first practise match of a beginner's wrestling class. Some guesses are that the guy was/is a closet backyard wrestler. Completely stupid that the guy would take a chance like that, fuck it up, and hurt the other guy. As for the hurt guy, don't know if he'll be able to finish the class or not.
Protect your opponent. It's a law that's posted around the arena. That guy just wanted to look good, failed at it, and hurt someone. If I get paired up with this guy and he tries that shit, I'm moving. He lands on the back of his head in the ring and breaks his neck, I'll feel kinda bad but I'm not getting hurt cause of some guy with a reckless attitude.
The "main event" was between 2 guys who wanted to tear the house down, but tried waaay too hard and failed. They didn't communicate. Constantly got lost. One of these guys was Austin "The Mayor" from Canada. His practise match was alot like his training. Too intense. Too fast. Though he seems nice, he wants to be the best and prove it to everyone. But with all his intensity and selling, he forgets to communicate and even how to properly do moves. I'm a bit worried to work with this guy as well.
A couple Mondays ago, I was in class and, upon landing from a leapfrog, I must have rolled my ankle. Right afterwards, I knew it was hurt, but I thought it must have been only a slight sprain as it didn't hurt much. I redid the spot and continued. Once I stopped training and the adrenaline wore off, my ankle started hurting big time. I could barely put any weight on it and the walk back to the car was a long one. This was probably the worst pain I've ever been in. Now, for the most part, it's healed. Though I do still have some slight pain in certain positions. Back in action, I now wear an ankle support.
Three Thursdays ago, I made my FCW TV [taping] debut in a non-wrestling, acting role. I was a member of a protester mob against Steve and for a wrestler called Abraham Saddam Washington, who's working a heel/bad guy Barack Obama character. Washington was having a debate with Steve. Washington would answer his questions, but, when Steve tried to answer his, our protest group busted in the FCW arena and chanted "Washington!" throughout Steve's 30 seconds of response time. Rinse. Repeat. At the end, Steve confronted Washington face-to-face and Washington dropped acting as if he'd been shot. Our group pulled Washington out of the ring and towards the backstage area while chanting something.
A funny side story on this: 4 members of our group got to hold signs. During the end part where Washington is being pulled to the back by his secret service and us the protesters, I stole the sign from another protester (the blonde from class) and kinda charged the ring, pointing at Steve, yelling, "GET HIM BACK!", etc. I then made my way backstage holding the sign above my head, reversed so it could still be read.
Another side story: Afterwards, I looked at the sign I stole and saw that it said "Veto Keirn!". I crack a little smile as I realized that, with the little show that I put on, I did it with an incorrect protest sign. I'm pretty sure it should be "Impeach Keirn!". It would seem that I was up in arms about some bill Steve wanted to pass, I suppose the "Keirn Bill", and I wanted it vetoed.
The episode will air this coming Sunday at 6/5 central on Bright House Sports. If I can find someplace showing it online, I'll let you know.
The TV taping lasted from 7:30 till 10:30. They taped 3 episodes. I was there from 4:30 till as they wanted us there early to practise our roles. While waiting, I watched their heavyweight champion tape a promo. Took 2 tries. The first lasted 57 sec and the second was 1min 2 sec. The goal is to get as close to 1min.
Backstage were all the FCW wrestlers and several WWE/ECW wrestlers who still do the FCW show. Nattie Neidhart (Jim Neidhart's daughter). Alica Fox and DJ Gabriel. Harry Smith (son of the British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith), Tyson Kid (adopted Hart family member), Katie Lea, etc.
Afterward the taping ended, I was backstage shaking hands and watching some video of the taping (the wrestlers were watching their matches to review themselves). Harry Smith was showing some holds to another wrestler and asked me if I could help out, meaning have to holds put on me so the other guy could see the positioning. I said ok. He asked me if I was a wrestler. I just responded that I was in Steve's class. The holds were pretty tight and nothing that hurt much. I shook Smith's hand afterwards and went back to watching the video. A few minutes later, Smith came up to me and asked my name. I told him and he thanked me for helping out.
From reading wrestler books, I knew that letting another guy put holds on you is an iffy situation. The guy can push the limit, hurting you to make you "humble". While in a hold, I saw a guy walk by and shake his head, giving me that look that I was stupid to put myself in this position. Maybe I was, but Smith was a nice guy and didn't hurt me, even asking if I was ok. I'd like to think that by voluntarily asking for my name, that I got a little respect for myself from Smith.
Don't know how long I'll be out of facebook. Most likely a while as the liberry has it filtered as well. I know this is not what this site is for, but I'll try to keep updated through here (unless that's a problem). Whoever post this to facebook, maybe forward either the comments and/or the readers here so I can read them/respond. Also if everyone can keep me updated about everyone else as no facebook pretty much leaves me out the loop.
So, if any one of you could, please upload this entry to facebook and attach the usual names as my past posts. I think the only friend we don't have in common is Tommy Garza. Add'em and slap 'em on there. You can leave out the okcupid part.
FCW
So, our class has finished learning all the moves from the wrestling move/hold worksheet. Now we are either reviewing, cutting promos, and/or starting to have practise matches. Last Monday was our first practise match session. 6-minutes in length. Steve's only direction was show what you've learned. I didn't have a chance at a match along with a few other (ran out of time), but I saw some interesting stuff.
One guy tried to do a flipping springboard moonsault off the ropes onto another guy. The moonsaulter ended up landing on the guy on the back of his head/neck (he didn't completely flip over). It looked sick, but it seemed everyone was ok. The next class I found out the guy who got landed on broke off a part of his rib. The moonsaulter wasn't in class that day. I don't know what the hell that guy thought he was doing. It was the first practise match of a beginner's wrestling class. Some guesses are that the guy was/is a closet backyard wrestler. Completely stupid that the guy would take a chance like that, fuck it up, and hurt the other guy. As for the hurt guy, don't know if he'll be able to finish the class or not.
Protect your opponent. It's a law that's posted around the arena. That guy just wanted to look good, failed at it, and hurt someone. If I get paired up with this guy and he tries that shit, I'm moving. He lands on the back of his head in the ring and breaks his neck, I'll feel kinda bad but I'm not getting hurt cause of some guy with a reckless attitude.
The "main event" was between 2 guys who wanted to tear the house down, but tried waaay too hard and failed. They didn't communicate. Constantly got lost. One of these guys was Austin "The Mayor" from Canada. His practise match was alot like his training. Too intense. Too fast. Though he seems nice, he wants to be the best and prove it to everyone. But with all his intensity and selling, he forgets to communicate and even how to properly do moves. I'm a bit worried to work with this guy as well.
A couple Mondays ago, I was in class and, upon landing from a leapfrog, I must have rolled my ankle. Right afterwards, I knew it was hurt, but I thought it must have been only a slight sprain as it didn't hurt much. I redid the spot and continued. Once I stopped training and the adrenaline wore off, my ankle started hurting big time. I could barely put any weight on it and the walk back to the car was a long one. This was probably the worst pain I've ever been in. Now, for the most part, it's healed. Though I do still have some slight pain in certain positions. Back in action, I now wear an ankle support.
Three Thursdays ago, I made my FCW TV [taping] debut in a non-wrestling, acting role. I was a member of a protester mob against Steve and for a wrestler called Abraham Saddam Washington, who's working a heel/bad guy Barack Obama character. Washington was having a debate with Steve. Washington would answer his questions, but, when Steve tried to answer his, our protest group busted in the FCW arena and chanted "Washington!" throughout Steve's 30 seconds of response time. Rinse. Repeat. At the end, Steve confronted Washington face-to-face and Washington dropped acting as if he'd been shot. Our group pulled Washington out of the ring and towards the backstage area while chanting something.
A funny side story on this: 4 members of our group got to hold signs. During the end part where Washington is being pulled to the back by his secret service and us the protesters, I stole the sign from another protester (the blonde from class) and kinda charged the ring, pointing at Steve, yelling, "GET HIM BACK!", etc. I then made my way backstage holding the sign above my head, reversed so it could still be read.
Another side story: Afterwards, I looked at the sign I stole and saw that it said "Veto Keirn!". I crack a little smile as I realized that, with the little show that I put on, I did it with an incorrect protest sign. I'm pretty sure it should be "Impeach Keirn!". It would seem that I was up in arms about some bill Steve wanted to pass, I suppose the "Keirn Bill", and I wanted it vetoed.
The episode will air this coming Sunday at 6/5 central on Bright House Sports. If I can find someplace showing it online, I'll let you know.
The TV taping lasted from 7:30 till 10:30. They taped 3 episodes. I was there from 4:30 till as they wanted us there early to practise our roles. While waiting, I watched their heavyweight champion tape a promo. Took 2 tries. The first lasted 57 sec and the second was 1min 2 sec. The goal is to get as close to 1min.
Backstage were all the FCW wrestlers and several WWE/ECW wrestlers who still do the FCW show. Nattie Neidhart (Jim Neidhart's daughter). Alica Fox and DJ Gabriel. Harry Smith (son of the British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith), Tyson Kid (adopted Hart family member), Katie Lea, etc.
Afterward the taping ended, I was backstage shaking hands and watching some video of the taping (the wrestlers were watching their matches to review themselves). Harry Smith was showing some holds to another wrestler and asked me if I could help out, meaning have to holds put on me so the other guy could see the positioning. I said ok. He asked me if I was a wrestler. I just responded that I was in Steve's class. The holds were pretty tight and nothing that hurt much. I shook Smith's hand afterwards and went back to watching the video. A few minutes later, Smith came up to me and asked my name. I told him and he thanked me for helping out.
From reading wrestler books, I knew that letting another guy put holds on you is an iffy situation. The guy can push the limit, hurting you to make you "humble". While in a hold, I saw a guy walk by and shake his head, giving me that look that I was stupid to put myself in this position. Maybe I was, but Smith was a nice guy and didn't hurt me, even asking if I was ok. I'd like to think that by voluntarily asking for my name, that I got a little respect for myself from Smith.
Don't know how long I'll be out of facebook. Most likely a while as the liberry has it filtered as well. I know this is not what this site is for, but I'll try to keep updated through here (unless that's a problem). Whoever post this to facebook, maybe forward either the comments and/or the readers here so I can read them/respond. Also if everyone can keep me updated about everyone else as no facebook pretty much leaves me out the loop.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Too Many Friends
Stosh,
We were talking a little while ago about the extent to which going away to college does or doesn't provide an opportunity to reinvent oneself. I came across an article today in the New York Times Magazine proposing that social networking sites might actually make this more difficult, since it's harder for, say, a Facebook user to make a clean break with his high school buddies.
I quote liberally from a passage that resonated strongly with me:
So is the mythos of college as a place for self-reinvention totally contingent upon the inconvenience of keeping up with one's old friends? And do social networking sites disrupt that inconvenience to such an extent that self-reinvention becomes too onerous to consider?
We were talking a little while ago about the extent to which going away to college does or doesn't provide an opportunity to reinvent oneself. I came across an article today in the New York Times Magazine proposing that social networking sites might actually make this more difficult, since it's harder for, say, a Facebook user to make a clean break with his high school buddies.
I quote liberally from a passage that resonated strongly with me:
As a survivor of the postage-stamp era, college was my big chance to doff the roles in my family and community that I had outgrown, to reinvent myself, to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity. Can you really do that with your 450 closest friends watching, all tweeting to affirm ad nauseam your present self?As Sean rightly pointed out, the pressure of one's past can be shut out from the present just by unplugging from one's old friends. I think the reason why in practice nobody ever does this is because, unlike friends who fade away in the real world just because you fail to contact them, Facebook friends hang around until you take the affirmative step of un-friending them. Nobody wants to have to take a step to affirmatively sever a social tie, except in extraordinary circumstances.
So is the mythos of college as a place for self-reinvention totally contingent upon the inconvenience of keeping up with one's old friends? And do social networking sites disrupt that inconvenience to such an extent that self-reinvention becomes too onerous to consider?
Friday, March 13, 2009
Bride of Pseudoscience
It's in my nature neither to pay attention to, nor to write about stories as sordid and rubbernecky as this Rihanna-Chris Brown domestic violence story. But upon encountering this gem of a study, I couldn't help but bring it to your attention for your collective ridicule.
The Boston Public Health Commission surveyed 200 Boston youths between ages 12 and 19, "using the Chris Brown-Rihanna case to gauge their attitudes toward teen dating violence." All of the study participants had heard about the incident. Here are some of the results:
Secondly, how is the extent of a person's injuries relevant to determine their responsibility for them? I am right in reading that implication into the fifth statistic, aren't I? I didn't have to go to law school to figure out that the two issues are independent, but I did gor to law school, and we had this pointed out to us a lot of times in Torts. Just commonsensically though, if you step off the curb in front of an oncoming car, your injuries are your responsibility whether the vehicle runs over your foot and breaks your toe, or whether it sends you flying twenty yards and lands you in a full body cast. Liability and damages are independent issues.
Thirdly, and more in line with the presumed intent of the study, who are these 98 idiotic Boston teenagers wandering the streets thinking that a person isn't really to blame if he beats another person so badly that they wind up in the hospital? Are you kidding me? Newsflash, in case any of you happen to be reading: you actually are in control of whether or not you curl your hand into a fist, and hurl it with a high velocity into another person's cheekbone. Strange but true.
As irate as I am about this last statistic, you'd think somebody in the media would be talking about it as well. Wrong. See here and here. What's the most cited statistic culled from the study? I thought you'd never ask:
"Fight"? I just can't get too excited about 44% of youth thinking it's normal to "fight" with your significant other, in light of how broad the meaning of "fight" can be. It runs the gamut from simple disagreement, to heated argument, to knock-down-drag-out, to hurling a vase at the wall, to giving your better half two black eyes, and beyond. This continuum spans both acceptable and unacceptable behavior, so it's not very surprising that some kids think fighting is normal. If 44% had said that "physical violence" was normal in a relationship, I could see myself joining the chorus. But that's not what happened here. This study is plainly the unholy spawn of pseudoscience and tabloid publishing, so why are there people taking it seriously?
The Boston Public Health Commission surveyed 200 Boston youths between ages 12 and 19, "using the Chris Brown-Rihanna case to gauge their attitudes toward teen dating violence." All of the study participants had heard about the incident. Here are some of the results:
- 71% said arguing was a normal part of a relationship
- 44% said fighting was a normal part of a relationship
- 51% said Chris Brown was responsible for the incident
- 46% said Rihanna was responsible for the incident
- 52% said both individuals were to blame for the incident, despite knowing at the time that Rihanna had been beaten badly enough to require hospital treatment
- 35% said the media were treating Rihanna unfairly
- 52% said the media were treating Chris Brown unfairly
Secondly, how is the extent of a person's injuries relevant to determine their responsibility for them? I am right in reading that implication into the fifth statistic, aren't I? I didn't have to go to law school to figure out that the two issues are independent, but I did gor to law school, and we had this pointed out to us a lot of times in Torts. Just commonsensically though, if you step off the curb in front of an oncoming car, your injuries are your responsibility whether the vehicle runs over your foot and breaks your toe, or whether it sends you flying twenty yards and lands you in a full body cast. Liability and damages are independent issues.
Thirdly, and more in line with the presumed intent of the study, who are these 98 idiotic Boston teenagers wandering the streets thinking that a person isn't really to blame if he beats another person so badly that they wind up in the hospital? Are you kidding me? Newsflash, in case any of you happen to be reading: you actually are in control of whether or not you curl your hand into a fist, and hurl it with a high velocity into another person's cheekbone. Strange but true.
As irate as I am about this last statistic, you'd think somebody in the media would be talking about it as well. Wrong. See here and here. What's the most cited statistic culled from the study? I thought you'd never ask:
Of those questioned, ages 12 to 19, 71 percent said that arguing was a normal part of a relationship; 44 percent said fighting was a routine occurrence.This is the news that has us fretting thusly?:
The results of the survey, conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission across the city and equally among boys and girls, are startling for local health workers who see a generation of youths who seem to have grown accustomed, even insensitive, to domestic violence."I'm appalled. I'm appalled by the implication of these supposedly responsible adults that it is not "normal" to "argue" when you're in a relationship. Conflating disagreement with domestic abuse? Somebody should be ashamed. Woe to the teenager who buys into this crock of shit.
I think you'd have to be pretty jaded if you weren't startled by it," said Casey Corcoran, director of the health commission's new Start Strong program.
"Fight"? I just can't get too excited about 44% of youth thinking it's normal to "fight" with your significant other, in light of how broad the meaning of "fight" can be. It runs the gamut from simple disagreement, to heated argument, to knock-down-drag-out, to hurling a vase at the wall, to giving your better half two black eyes, and beyond. This continuum spans both acceptable and unacceptable behavior, so it's not very surprising that some kids think fighting is normal. If 44% had said that "physical violence" was normal in a relationship, I could see myself joining the chorus. But that's not what happened here. This study is plainly the unholy spawn of pseudoscience and tabloid publishing, so why are there people taking it seriously?
Friday, March 6, 2009
Sexting, Suicide, and So-called Sluts, but mostly just Sympathy
Three weeks ago or so, I posted a critique of Dahlia Lithwick's Slate opinion piece about teen "sexting." Today, MSNBC reports that a high school girl has committed suicide following her decision to send a nude photograph of herself to her boyfriend. Apparently, after Jessie Logan sent the picture, her boyfriend forwarded it to others, and it eventually made the rounds to literally hundreds of students. Jessie was harassed at school for months, and eventually hung herself in her closet.
I feel bad about this, I really do, but isn't it totally predictable? This is what teenagers are like. The idea that this "private picture" would have remained private is hopelessly naive. Boys who possess nude pictures of girls show them to their friends. This I know from experience, except that in my case, it was just a seventh grade friend of mine sneaking a Playboy into the back of the electronics lab. Teenagers love a victim, and they particularly love to call slut when it stands a chance of doing real damage.
Maybe there was a time when a girl could get away with this without major fallout. Like in the age of Polaroids. She could have snapped a photo and slipped it in her boyfriend's locker. Still, it might have been passed around among his friends, but no way it would have been seen by hundreds. It might have passed by word of mouth, but it would have just been plankton floating in the deep blue sea of the high school gossip, and most importantly, it would have been hearsay. She would have been teased, but she'd be able to plausibly deny having done it, and it would all blow over.
Digital media makes this sort of thing that much more dangerous because it's so easily copied and transmitted to others (and without sacrificing one's own copy). Furthermore, the ease of duplication makes the meme practically immortal for anyone who wants to get his hands on it.
What distressed me most was this passage:
Unrelated, but I wanted to welcome a new contributor, S. Not sure if you're going for anonymity or style on the name front. If it's the former, I need you to say so, because I don't want to accidentally "out" you by using your name, which I will most assuredly do eventually in the absence of specific instructions otherwise.
Also, good luck to Stirling at FCW.
I feel bad about this, I really do, but isn't it totally predictable? This is what teenagers are like. The idea that this "private picture" would have remained private is hopelessly naive. Boys who possess nude pictures of girls show them to their friends. This I know from experience, except that in my case, it was just a seventh grade friend of mine sneaking a Playboy into the back of the electronics lab. Teenagers love a victim, and they particularly love to call slut when it stands a chance of doing real damage.
Maybe there was a time when a girl could get away with this without major fallout. Like in the age of Polaroids. She could have snapped a photo and slipped it in her boyfriend's locker. Still, it might have been passed around among his friends, but no way it would have been seen by hundreds. It might have passed by word of mouth, but it would have just been plankton floating in the deep blue sea of the high school gossip, and most importantly, it would have been hearsay. She would have been teased, but she'd be able to plausibly deny having done it, and it would all blow over.
Digital media makes this sort of thing that much more dangerous because it's so easily copied and transmitted to others (and without sacrificing one's own copy). Furthermore, the ease of duplication makes the meme practically immortal for anyone who wants to get his hands on it.
What distressed me most was this passage:
The school resource officer at Sycamore [High School] said he tried to do something about Jessie’s case. He said he confronted the kids who were harassing Jessie and even took Jessie's case to the prosecutor to see if he could press charges. But he said that because Jessie was 18, there were no laws to protect her. He said he'd like to work with the Logans to have the laws changed.She was eighteen. She was so close to college, the part of your life where you really can, if you want to, reject everything that was ever said about your high school self, and start over fresh. You can reject the prudish but titillated clique that would torture you for something like this. You can lay down roots where they've never heard of you before. And you can conduct your naive, not-even-debauched forays into sexuality with relative impunity. Put it this way: I knew sluts in college, but I didn't know anybody with "a reputation." Even if a girl was objectively easy, she wasn't a victim of that fact; she owned it, and this was true to such a degree that (since, for me anyway, the centre hasn't held) it often registered more as a strength than as a weakness. Not in every case, but often enough to warrant my saying so.
Unrelated, but I wanted to welcome a new contributor, S. Not sure if you're going for anonymity or style on the name front. If it's the former, I need you to say so, because I don't want to accidentally "out" you by using your name, which I will most assuredly do eventually in the absence of specific instructions otherwise.
Also, good luck to Stirling at FCW.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Four reasons to wonder whether race plays a role in head coach hiring decisions
Sean,
Just throwing out a few reasons why I think it's plausible that racism plays a significant role in keeping black head coaches out of head coaching positions in FBS college football.
1. You're right that the kind of probabilistic reasoning that I was engaged in will never prove that a particular decision not to hire a black man is racially motivated. The fact that African Americans are represented in lower numbers among the ranks of FBS head coaches than they are among the population at large doesn't prove anything. But it does lead us to ask for reasons why such a disparity might exist. It could be that white guys generally possess qualities that would make them better college head coaches, just as nobody seems to bat an eyelash if you draw a conclusion that young black men must generally have qualities that make them better football players than young white men, since they are overrepresented on the football field. But I don't think that my concern has been answered just because other possibilities are plausible. Speculation is all we have at this point, but I'd prefer to answer the question with data, if it were available.
2. You write that you can't think of a single instance in which a head coach hiring decision stuck out to you as being racially motivated. I think it would be surprising if one had. Your observation is salient for what it is, but it doesn't preclude use of race as a "tiebreaker." That is, assuming that a black candidate and a white candidate are relatively equal in terms of merit, a hiring committee still might systematically choose the white candidate. As long as the true basis of the decision is hidden, no one could reasonably accuse that particular hiring committee of racism. But if the same methodology is applied at a number of schools, the numbers would begin to look suspiciously like the ones we in fact encounter.
3. Racism could be outsourced to smaller schools or less pressworthy positions. Everybody knows that hiring a new head coach at a major conference school attracts lots of press scrutiny. This is less true at mid-major schools or in the FCS, and also of coordinator positions, position coaches, and the rest, on down the line. If race is used as a factor at those levels, it is less likely to be detected since people are less likely to crunch those numbers. But the results would still be felt at the head coach level because policies like these would yield fewer qualified black candidates at the coordinator level, or as head coaches at mid-majors.
4. You write that it's inconceivable to believe that anything matters to a hiring committee more than W's. Actually, I think you mention something that could matter more to them: $$$. You write as though there's a one-to-one correspondence between wins and profits, and certainly that correlation is very strong. But money comes from other places; in particular, from booster fund raising. If the hiring committee fears that the boosters will not take well to a black head coach (which would not be an unreasonable concern here in the South), then they might pass over a more qualified black coach on that basis alone, unless the expected profits from his greater number of wins would outstrip the losses the school would suffer from decreased booster support.
Just throwing out a few reasons why I think it's plausible that racism plays a significant role in keeping black head coaches out of head coaching positions in FBS college football.
1. You're right that the kind of probabilistic reasoning that I was engaged in will never prove that a particular decision not to hire a black man is racially motivated. The fact that African Americans are represented in lower numbers among the ranks of FBS head coaches than they are among the population at large doesn't prove anything. But it does lead us to ask for reasons why such a disparity might exist. It could be that white guys generally possess qualities that would make them better college head coaches, just as nobody seems to bat an eyelash if you draw a conclusion that young black men must generally have qualities that make them better football players than young white men, since they are overrepresented on the football field. But I don't think that my concern has been answered just because other possibilities are plausible. Speculation is all we have at this point, but I'd prefer to answer the question with data, if it were available.
2. You write that you can't think of a single instance in which a head coach hiring decision stuck out to you as being racially motivated. I think it would be surprising if one had. Your observation is salient for what it is, but it doesn't preclude use of race as a "tiebreaker." That is, assuming that a black candidate and a white candidate are relatively equal in terms of merit, a hiring committee still might systematically choose the white candidate. As long as the true basis of the decision is hidden, no one could reasonably accuse that particular hiring committee of racism. But if the same methodology is applied at a number of schools, the numbers would begin to look suspiciously like the ones we in fact encounter.
3. Racism could be outsourced to smaller schools or less pressworthy positions. Everybody knows that hiring a new head coach at a major conference school attracts lots of press scrutiny. This is less true at mid-major schools or in the FCS, and also of coordinator positions, position coaches, and the rest, on down the line. If race is used as a factor at those levels, it is less likely to be detected since people are less likely to crunch those numbers. But the results would still be felt at the head coach level because policies like these would yield fewer qualified black candidates at the coordinator level, or as head coaches at mid-majors.
4. You write that it's inconceivable to believe that anything matters to a hiring committee more than W's. Actually, I think you mention something that could matter more to them: $$$. You write as though there's a one-to-one correspondence between wins and profits, and certainly that correlation is very strong. But money comes from other places; in particular, from booster fund raising. If the hiring committee fears that the boosters will not take well to a black head coach (which would not be an unreasonable concern here in the South), then they might pass over a more qualified black coach on that basis alone, unless the expected profits from his greater number of wins would outstrip the losses the school would suffer from decreased booster support.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
More on racism in college football.
Much has been made of the relatively small numbers of black head coaches in NCAA 1A football. While I remain skeptical of how much racism is a factor, I certainly concede that it's a possibility, and despite my skepticism, I generally don't make much of this discussion. The big difference between this case and the Auburn case is that even though fingers were pointed in both, nobody was targeted specifically, and since there's no target, it's hard to make a case one way or the other.
As evidenced by the last three Super Bowls, there are clearly good black head coaches (although it might be a stretch to assuming good NFL coaches are roughly equivalent to college coaches). Like the Auburn case though, I started looking for other instances in which possibly more qualified black coaches were overlooked. Several web searches later, I hadn't come up with anything substantial.
About 25% of Americans are black, so you'd expect around 30 black coaches based solely on that. Furthermore, only six coaches in division 1A haven't had college playing experience, and easily more than 25% of college football players are black. It wasn't always this high, but in 2001, over 55% of college football players were black. Honestly though, it's a little strange to be talking about racial breakdowns at all in my opinion. If it were that simple, we could also say that black players actually benefit from racism. Saying that blacks are more fit to become football players isn't entirely different than saying whites are more fit to become coaches.
Being an SEC fan, I rarely pay attention to up and coming coaches. Most SEC schools don't have the patience to take chances on unproven coaches, although it happens on occasion. Looking just over the major conferences, no recent coaching hires have stuck out to me, at least from a racial perspective. Most schools take a conservative approach and hire the most successful head coach they could land from Div 1A. Occasionally, a top coordinator gets a head coaching shot. For the most part though, new coaching blood comes from the non-BCS conference schools, and I don't really know where those coaches are coming from.
One thing that I have noticed though is that there haven't been many decent black coaches in the mid-major schools lately. I can list several of the most successful mid-major programs of the past few years, and none of them have had black coaches. On top of that, perhaps the two black coaches with the most impressive resumes were fired last season. I think I'd still rather have Tyrone Willingham or Sylvester Croom than Turner Gill.
Perhaps I'm naive, but it still seems strange to me that head coaches could be chosen by any other criteria than the number of games they would be expected to win. I know there are academic considerations, but race has nothing to do with that. If I'm an athletic director, the one thing I'm asking is, "How many wins can you get for my program?" With most football programs more than paying for themselves, more wins equals more money and more prestige for the university. If there's a coach that can get one more win every couple of seasons, or even every fourth season, than the next best guy, I don't care what his race is. As far as I'm concerned, if he's black, you even get good press coverage as a bonus.
As evidenced by the last three Super Bowls, there are clearly good black head coaches (although it might be a stretch to assuming good NFL coaches are roughly equivalent to college coaches). Like the Auburn case though, I started looking for other instances in which possibly more qualified black coaches were overlooked. Several web searches later, I hadn't come up with anything substantial.
About 25% of Americans are black, so you'd expect around 30 black coaches based solely on that. Furthermore, only six coaches in division 1A haven't had college playing experience, and easily more than 25% of college football players are black. It wasn't always this high, but in 2001, over 55% of college football players were black. Honestly though, it's a little strange to be talking about racial breakdowns at all in my opinion. If it were that simple, we could also say that black players actually benefit from racism. Saying that blacks are more fit to become football players isn't entirely different than saying whites are more fit to become coaches.
Being an SEC fan, I rarely pay attention to up and coming coaches. Most SEC schools don't have the patience to take chances on unproven coaches, although it happens on occasion. Looking just over the major conferences, no recent coaching hires have stuck out to me, at least from a racial perspective. Most schools take a conservative approach and hire the most successful head coach they could land from Div 1A. Occasionally, a top coordinator gets a head coaching shot. For the most part though, new coaching blood comes from the non-BCS conference schools, and I don't really know where those coaches are coming from.
One thing that I have noticed though is that there haven't been many decent black coaches in the mid-major schools lately. I can list several of the most successful mid-major programs of the past few years, and none of them have had black coaches. On top of that, perhaps the two black coaches with the most impressive resumes were fired last season. I think I'd still rather have Tyrone Willingham or Sylvester Croom than Turner Gill.
Perhaps I'm naive, but it still seems strange to me that head coaches could be chosen by any other criteria than the number of games they would be expected to win. I know there are academic considerations, but race has nothing to do with that. If I'm an athletic director, the one thing I'm asking is, "How many wins can you get for my program?" With most football programs more than paying for themselves, more wins equals more money and more prestige for the university. If there's a coach that can get one more win every couple of seasons, or even every fourth season, than the next best guy, I don't care what his race is. As far as I'm concerned, if he's black, you even get good press coverage as a bonus.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Racism in College Football
Much has been made of Auburn's decision to rehire former defensive coordinator Gene Chizik over Buffalo head coach Turner Gill. At first glance, this deal seemed a little dubious, considering Chizik's recent record as the head coach at Iowa State, but I neglected to make a first impression. After further researching Chizik, and remembering that he was the very successful defensive coordinator for Auburn's undefeated run in 2004, and he immediately followed that success by leading the defense of the 2005 national champion Texas team.
His career as a head coach has been rocky in the emerging Big 12 north, but it wasn't hard for me to justify hiring a defensive mastermind with SEC coaching experience over any MAC coach. Certainly, there have been some coaching gems to come out of non-BCS conferences, with Urban Meyer being the most notable. Still, Meyer was much more accomplished when he was offered the head coaching position at Florida than Turner Gill is now, leading Utah to an undefeated season in a stronger conference and a BCS bowl victory. On the other hand, there have also been some successful head coaches plucked from the defensive coordinator position at major conference schools (such as Oklahoma's Bob Stoops).
My conclusion: no grounds for racism charges.
I didn't stop thinking about it there though, especially when I recently stumbled across some Auburn students discussing the issue on a web site I frequent. Not being huge football fans, they didn't have strong opinions one way or the other about whether racism affected the hire, but they weren't happy with the reputation their school has received from the incident. Just looking at the argument before, I hadn't considered the apparently lasting effects that this issue would have on the reputations of the school and its students. I know that in the long run, this too won't last, but for the time being, the media has falsely perpetuated the racist southern stereotype at Auburn.
I don't think I've quite proved my point yet though. Going back to Turner Gill, I don't think he's a bad coach. I think it's entirely possible he's a better coach than Chizik. I'll be the first to admit that Chizik's head coaching career hasn't been the greatest success, but let's look at Buffalo. Gill gets a lot of respect for leading the Bulls to a MAC championship, but most people forget that Buffalo was hardly the best team in the MAC. In terms of overall regular season conference records, Buffalo was tied for fourth. They led their division, but four teams had regular season conference records as good or better than Buffalo's, and being in the much tougher division, those teams went through tougher conference schedules. The MAC western division went 14-4 against Buffalo's eastern division. Even Buffalo was 0-2 against western division opponents in the regular season before upsetting Ball State in the championship game.
Buffalo clearly didn't get any top 25 votes, but how well did they do in the computers? They finished at #60 in the Colley Rankings, fourth in their conference. In Massey, they finished at #76 (#68 MoV), third in the MAC. I'll definitely admit that Gill has improved Buffalo's program over the three years he's been there, but is a #60 finish in the Colley Rankings enough reason to think he could succeed in the SEC in the recently upgraded western division? Chizik on the other hand, while not the head coach, played a significant role in coaching two consecutive top 2 teams.
The correct choice remains to be seen. As it stands now though, I would rather stand with Chizik. He's done a great job so far pulling in an impressive recruiting class, always a difficult task for new head coaches. He also gets points for stealing offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn from Tulsa. Malzahn, a former high school coach, has achieved great offensive success in his stints at Arkansas and Tulsa. I just hope this racist reputation Auburn has acquired is soon to pass.
His career as a head coach has been rocky in the emerging Big 12 north, but it wasn't hard for me to justify hiring a defensive mastermind with SEC coaching experience over any MAC coach. Certainly, there have been some coaching gems to come out of non-BCS conferences, with Urban Meyer being the most notable. Still, Meyer was much more accomplished when he was offered the head coaching position at Florida than Turner Gill is now, leading Utah to an undefeated season in a stronger conference and a BCS bowl victory. On the other hand, there have also been some successful head coaches plucked from the defensive coordinator position at major conference schools (such as Oklahoma's Bob Stoops).
My conclusion: no grounds for racism charges.
I didn't stop thinking about it there though, especially when I recently stumbled across some Auburn students discussing the issue on a web site I frequent. Not being huge football fans, they didn't have strong opinions one way or the other about whether racism affected the hire, but they weren't happy with the reputation their school has received from the incident. Just looking at the argument before, I hadn't considered the apparently lasting effects that this issue would have on the reputations of the school and its students. I know that in the long run, this too won't last, but for the time being, the media has falsely perpetuated the racist southern stereotype at Auburn.
I don't think I've quite proved my point yet though. Going back to Turner Gill, I don't think he's a bad coach. I think it's entirely possible he's a better coach than Chizik. I'll be the first to admit that Chizik's head coaching career hasn't been the greatest success, but let's look at Buffalo. Gill gets a lot of respect for leading the Bulls to a MAC championship, but most people forget that Buffalo was hardly the best team in the MAC. In terms of overall regular season conference records, Buffalo was tied for fourth. They led their division, but four teams had regular season conference records as good or better than Buffalo's, and being in the much tougher division, those teams went through tougher conference schedules. The MAC western division went 14-4 against Buffalo's eastern division. Even Buffalo was 0-2 against western division opponents in the regular season before upsetting Ball State in the championship game.
Buffalo clearly didn't get any top 25 votes, but how well did they do in the computers? They finished at #60 in the Colley Rankings, fourth in their conference. In Massey, they finished at #76 (#68 MoV), third in the MAC. I'll definitely admit that Gill has improved Buffalo's program over the three years he's been there, but is a #60 finish in the Colley Rankings enough reason to think he could succeed in the SEC in the recently upgraded western division? Chizik on the other hand, while not the head coach, played a significant role in coaching two consecutive top 2 teams.
The correct choice remains to be seen. As it stands now though, I would rather stand with Chizik. He's done a great job so far pulling in an impressive recruiting class, always a difficult task for new head coaches. He also gets points for stealing offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn from Tulsa. Malzahn, a former high school coach, has achieved great offensive success in his stints at Arkansas and Tulsa. I just hope this racist reputation Auburn has acquired is soon to pass.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Letter to the Editor: Wired Magazine
It's not every day that I get to correct a major publication on some of the finer points of probability, so when the chance comes up, I take it. The full article is here, and the erroneous passage is contained in the fourth paragraph from the bottom of this page. I wrote:
"A Formula for Disaster" is a relatively informative article on one of the causes of the current financial mess, but it bears pointing out that one of Mr. Salmon's illustrations of the concept of mathematical correlation is misleading. In particular, Salmon writes, "And if Britney wins the class spelling bee, the chance of Alice winning it is zero, which means the correlation is negative: -1." It's true that this correlation is always negative, but the numerical value of the correlation is dependent upon the number of students in the class with Alice and Britney. In fact, the correlation of A and B will only be equal to -1 in the degenerate case where Alice and Britney are the only two students in the class. In general, assuming that every student in the class has an equal probability of winning the spelling bee (and that these probabilities can be accurately modeled as Bernoulli random variables), the correlation between A and B will be equal to 1/(1-n), where n is the total number of students in the class.Wired is one publication where writing in geekspeak might actually increase your chances of getting your letter published, so I went all out. Sean, would you mind checking my math?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Racist? Really?
Is this cartoon offensive?
I'm participating in a long-term survey conducted by politicshome.com, pursuant to which I receive one or two emails per week prompting me to answer a short series of opinion questions about the news of the day. This morning, the email contained the following sentence: "Today, we approach the delicate subject of race." I clicked the link, and was greeted with the above cartoon, along with some explanatory text:
This is what ran through my head when I saw the cartoon. I drew the conclusion that the cartoonist had in mind to intimate that the stimulus was such a poor bill that even a chimpanzee (on downers) could have drafted it. Which is pretty much what you would expect a New York Post cartoonist to say. So was it offensive? I thought that it was somewhat tasteless to take advantage of this lady's plight to make a relatively crass point about a totally unrelated political event, and particularly to do so in such a patently unfunny way. But tasteless isn't offensive. I clicked "No."
Still, I continued to think about it. After all, the email from PoliticsHome had primed me for a question about race. I am an intelligent and educated man, and I am by no means ignorant of the fact that the history of rhetoric regarding race in our nation includes not just a few instances of black men being lumped in with lower primates by people with political and eugenic axes to grind. So I sat a while and tried to spin a sensical interpretation of the cartoon that would play on that outdated and obviously offensive symbolism.
I couldn't come up with anything that made sense to me. For the cartoon to operate in that way, you would have to read it as blaming black people for drafting a shoddy bill, which doesn't fly, since Congress drafted the bill, and most members of Congress are white. Anyway, I finally decided, if there was an offensive racial interpretation to the cartoon, it was too subtle for me to detect, so I left my answer as it was.
It was only later in the morning when I came across editorials by Roland S. Martin and Keith Josef Adkins explaining what was purportedly offensive about the cartoon. Martin writes:
And now listen to Martin's explanation for why this connection is so obvious:
Adkins, on the other hand, didn't go out on a limb to say that the cartoon chimp represented Obama in particular, but did write, "I'm sorry, there's no way to interpret a cartoon like this except as racist filth." I just disagree. The cartoon clearly CAN be interpreted as racist filth, but only if the interpreter is predisposed to read racial animus into found cultural objects. I think it can be interpreted as just tactless and unfunny.
Look, I'm not accusing these two columnists, or the many people who agree with them, of manufacturing umbrage in response to the cartoon. I have no reason really to believe that they are being anything but sincere in taking offense to it. I suspect that this is just one area where different upbringings coax out wildly different interpretations of the same cultural object, and not a great deal can be done about that. So I recognize that it's possible to have caused legitimate offense without having intended to do so, and that maybe in such a case, an apology is warranted. But these cases of cross-racial misunderstanding are so common that it's time for both sides to start adjusting their expectations. As a white guy, I just don't have a radar for this stuff. If I offend somebody, it's not insensitivity or malice; it's just that I'm operating on a different set of symbols from the one that would help me avoid putting my foot in my mouth about these things. It's the same way that I can walk past a pile of dishes in the sink for days on end, as Katy steadily boils over in anger: to me, those dishes are not saying "Wash us!"
To finish up, I think it bears saying explicitly that white people generally don't assume that depictions of apes in editorial cartoons are representative of African Americans in general, or of President Obama in particular. Quite the contrary in fact. When I imagine a simian as a symbol for the chief executive, a president of a different vintage comes to mind. Anyone remember the Smirking Chimp?
I'm participating in a long-term survey conducted by politicshome.com, pursuant to which I receive one or two emails per week prompting me to answer a short series of opinion questions about the news of the day. This morning, the email contained the following sentence: "Today, we approach the delicate subject of race." I clicked the link, and was greeted with the above cartoon, along with some explanatory text:
The New York Post ran this cartoon in their newspaper yesterday, and it has sparked a controversy. The image is of a chimpanzee having been shot by police. The text reads: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." Do you think this is offensive?The media has been all atwitter with the story of the woman in Connecticut who was almost mauled to death by her friend's trippin' pet chimpanzee. After the attack, the owner called 911, and the police were dispatched, at which point they shot and killed the ape. The victim was so badly mutilated that the police thought she was a man when they came upon her body. The last I read, she was in critical but stable condition.
This is what ran through my head when I saw the cartoon. I drew the conclusion that the cartoonist had in mind to intimate that the stimulus was such a poor bill that even a chimpanzee (on downers) could have drafted it. Which is pretty much what you would expect a New York Post cartoonist to say. So was it offensive? I thought that it was somewhat tasteless to take advantage of this lady's plight to make a relatively crass point about a totally unrelated political event, and particularly to do so in such a patently unfunny way. But tasteless isn't offensive. I clicked "No."
Still, I continued to think about it. After all, the email from PoliticsHome had primed me for a question about race. I am an intelligent and educated man, and I am by no means ignorant of the fact that the history of rhetoric regarding race in our nation includes not just a few instances of black men being lumped in with lower primates by people with political and eugenic axes to grind. So I sat a while and tried to spin a sensical interpretation of the cartoon that would play on that outdated and obviously offensive symbolism.
I couldn't come up with anything that made sense to me. For the cartoon to operate in that way, you would have to read it as blaming black people for drafting a shoddy bill, which doesn't fly, since Congress drafted the bill, and most members of Congress are white. Anyway, I finally decided, if there was an offensive racial interpretation to the cartoon, it was too subtle for me to detect, so I left my answer as it was.
It was only later in the morning when I came across editorials by Roland S. Martin and Keith Josef Adkins explaining what was purportedly offensive about the cartoon. Martin writes:
If you haven't seen the editorial in question, it shouldn't take you long to figure out that the subtle message was clear: comparing President Obama to a chimpanzee.WHOA! Wait a minute! Seriously? I stared at the cartoon for five minutes, actively trying to suss out what was supposed to be racist about it, and I never, NEVER would have made this supposedly obvious connection. It makes no sense at all. President Obama didn't draft the stimulus bill; Congress did.
And now listen to Martin's explanation for why this connection is so obvious:
First, mixing the two stories [the chimp attack and the stimulus] is ridiculous. Yes, the chimpanzee incident and the passage of the stimulus bill have a lot of folks talking, but to put them in the same element just doesn't make sense.As to the first argument, about what percentage of the political cartoons that you read make a hell of a lot of sense? My hunch is that this number hovers between 20% and 30%. As to the second, I think it makes my point just as effectively as it makes Martin's own: if it is "left up to the reader to determine exactly who the cops are referring to," doesn't that imply that the reader chooses whether to interpret the cartoon in a way that he or she finds offensive?
Second, the cartoonist didn't hang a sign around the neck of the chimp, so he left it up to the reader to determine exactly who the cops were referring to.
Adkins, on the other hand, didn't go out on a limb to say that the cartoon chimp represented Obama in particular, but did write, "I'm sorry, there's no way to interpret a cartoon like this except as racist filth." I just disagree. The cartoon clearly CAN be interpreted as racist filth, but only if the interpreter is predisposed to read racial animus into found cultural objects. I think it can be interpreted as just tactless and unfunny.
Look, I'm not accusing these two columnists, or the many people who agree with them, of manufacturing umbrage in response to the cartoon. I have no reason really to believe that they are being anything but sincere in taking offense to it. I suspect that this is just one area where different upbringings coax out wildly different interpretations of the same cultural object, and not a great deal can be done about that. So I recognize that it's possible to have caused legitimate offense without having intended to do so, and that maybe in such a case, an apology is warranted. But these cases of cross-racial misunderstanding are so common that it's time for both sides to start adjusting their expectations. As a white guy, I just don't have a radar for this stuff. If I offend somebody, it's not insensitivity or malice; it's just that I'm operating on a different set of symbols from the one that would help me avoid putting my foot in my mouth about these things. It's the same way that I can walk past a pile of dishes in the sink for days on end, as Katy steadily boils over in anger: to me, those dishes are not saying "Wash us!"
To finish up, I think it bears saying explicitly that white people generally don't assume that depictions of apes in editorial cartoons are representative of African Americans in general, or of President Obama in particular. Quite the contrary in fact. When I imagine a simian as a symbol for the chief executive, a president of a different vintage comes to mind. Anyone remember the Smirking Chimp?
Federal Funds are Nothing New in Louisiana
Just quickly, I'm noticing that a lot of my more conservative Facebook friends are expressing their pleasure at the fact that Governor Jindal has indicated his willingness to forego the federal stimulus funds allocated to Louisiana in the new bailout package. Granted, Jindal has predicated his position on an abundance of caution, wishing to evaluate the "strings" that may be attached to the funds. But my friends seem to be approving Jindal's move on the more general basis that they oppose Louisiana's acceptance of federal money in principal. (Check out the comments to this blog post from the Huffington Post, for instance).
All I want to say is that as a matter of course, the budgets of every state, including Louisiana, include significant injections of federal funds. Famously, Louisiana long resisted increasing the drinking age to 21, until the U.S. threatened to withhold federal money for highway construction and maintenance unless the drinking age was raised. Louisiana quickly fell in line after that.
Anyway, if you oppose states accepting federal money in principal, you can't start and end your criticism with the stimulus package. There are veins here that run deeper than that.
All I want to say is that as a matter of course, the budgets of every state, including Louisiana, include significant injections of federal funds. Famously, Louisiana long resisted increasing the drinking age to 21, until the U.S. threatened to withhold federal money for highway construction and maintenance unless the drinking age was raised. Louisiana quickly fell in line after that.
Anyway, if you oppose states accepting federal money in principal, you can't start and end your criticism with the stimulus package. There are veins here that run deeper than that.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Indulge my Curiosity
The Catholic Church has been making a fair bit of news the past few weeks. On February 9, the New York Times reported that the Church is renewing the availability of limited and plenary indulgences for the first time since the Second Vatican Council. I won't try to give an exhaustive definition of "indulgences," but they apparently can shorten a believer's stay in purgatory, and played an important role in European history, as the impetus for Martin Luther's exodus from the church. Earlier, Newsweek reported that the Pope was making conciliatory motions towards a group of rogue bishops who formed the Lefebvrist schismatic sect in protest of the reforms introduced after Vatican II.
In isolation, these stories might interest me, but together I wonder do they constitute a trend under Pope Benedict XVI of backtracking on the Vatican II reforms.
Most famously, Vatican II got rid of the Latin mass. As a non-Catholic (and so from the outside looking in), it always seemed to me that this must have been a signifcant loss. Looking back at my own religious upbringing, I feel like I sort of missed out on the sort of ritualism and the incantatory effect that something like the Latin mass must have elicited. Right or wrong, I've always somewhat suspected that I would feel more religious if the clergy didn't expect me to be able to affirm that what they were saying made any sense.
I won't go any further down that particular rabbithole though for three reasons: (1) I'm not Catholic, so if I continue I'm bound to start sounding insipid and insulting, (2) ritualism comes with its own set of liabilities, just as an absence of ritualism does, and (3) it turns out that the end of the Latin mass was only the most visible, and by no means the most important, result of Vatican II.
The Newsweek article (which I cannot recommend highly enough) reports that Vatican II was the first time that the Church had recognized that "the human person has a right to religious freedom," and that it was this doctrine that incited Archbishop Lefebvre to split from the Church. To me this fact is shocking.
Sean, I wonder are the changes accompanying the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI being talked about locally, and how people feel about them. Are people even aware of the renewed availability of indulgences? NYT was reporting that it varied by diocese whether the priests were publicizing them or not. If people are aware of them, how do they feel about them? And how do people feel about conciliatory gestures towards the Lefebvrists? On the one hand, yeah, maybe schisms ought to be healed as a matter of course, but on the other, is the recognition of religious freedom negotiable?
In isolation, these stories might interest me, but together I wonder do they constitute a trend under Pope Benedict XVI of backtracking on the Vatican II reforms.
Most famously, Vatican II got rid of the Latin mass. As a non-Catholic (and so from the outside looking in), it always seemed to me that this must have been a signifcant loss. Looking back at my own religious upbringing, I feel like I sort of missed out on the sort of ritualism and the incantatory effect that something like the Latin mass must have elicited. Right or wrong, I've always somewhat suspected that I would feel more religious if the clergy didn't expect me to be able to affirm that what they were saying made any sense.
I won't go any further down that particular rabbithole though for three reasons: (1) I'm not Catholic, so if I continue I'm bound to start sounding insipid and insulting, (2) ritualism comes with its own set of liabilities, just as an absence of ritualism does, and (3) it turns out that the end of the Latin mass was only the most visible, and by no means the most important, result of Vatican II.
The Newsweek article (which I cannot recommend highly enough) reports that Vatican II was the first time that the Church had recognized that "the human person has a right to religious freedom," and that it was this doctrine that incited Archbishop Lefebvre to split from the Church. To me this fact is shocking.
Sean, I wonder are the changes accompanying the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI being talked about locally, and how people feel about them. Are people even aware of the renewed availability of indulgences? NYT was reporting that it varied by diocese whether the priests were publicizing them or not. If people are aware of them, how do they feel about them? And how do people feel about conciliatory gestures towards the Lefebvrists? On the one hand, yeah, maybe schisms ought to be healed as a matter of course, but on the other, is the recognition of religious freedom negotiable?
Monday, February 16, 2009
Puzzling Over Some Wacky Ideas about Teenagers, Sex, Technology, and the Law
For as long as I have been a reader of Slate, which probably goes back to around 2001, I have been a fan of Dahlia Lithwick's writing for the online magazine. Even before I'd settled on attending law school after graduation from college, I'd long enjoyed her Supreme Court Dispatches series, which summarized the facts of many of the more notorious cases on the Court's docket, the legal issues attending thereto, and often included transcriptions of the more raucous parts of the oral arguments. Good, good fun, to watch the Court, and especially to do so in the company of such an astute and professional Court-watcher as Lithwick.
Lately though, Lithwick's columns are falling short. A lot of her recent articles on Slate have been cross-published in Newsweek, and those articles have proven particularly lackluster. This weekend, she weighed in on what has become a trend in adolescent circles, namely "sexting," which apparently means taking nude photographs of oneself and electronically transmitting them to other teens. In a number of cases cited in the article, senders and recipients of the sext messages have been charged with crimes related to child pornography. Lithwick forcefully argues that such charges are inappropriate.
We'll assume for the sake of argument that the photographs in question actually qualify as prohibited child pornography in the prosecuting jurisdictions. It turns out though that this assumption may not be warranted in all cases. For instance, in Louisiana, the crime of pornography involving juveniles is governed by La. R.S. 14:81.1. Under that statute, a depiction of "sexual conduct" is required in order to cross the threshold of criminality, and "sexual conduct" is defined as "actual or simulated sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality, masturbation, sadomasochistic abuse, or lewd exhibition of the genitals." From this language, it's not clear that a simple nude photograph would be covered; cases would presumably turn on how "lewd" a particular exhibition of the genitals might be.
Anyway, like I said, let's assume that the jurisdictions in question have broader anti-porn laws, or that the photos forming the basis for prosecution are particularly "lewd." Why then should they not be prosecuted? Lithwick can speak for herself:
Lithwick quotes a police captain in a Pennsylvania case, who argues that the prosecutions are justified, saying, "Once it's on a cell phone, that cell phone can be put on the Internet where everyone in the world can get access to that juvenile picture." She then trivializes his argument, writing:
But again, Lithwick's rush to identify the victim throws her off the scent of what's really going on here. This is not an exercise in paternalism meant to protect the interests of emptyheaded would-be teen sexters. Child porn statutes are meant to shut down commercial activity in contraband, and it is reasonable in that light to enact laws that would curtail production of contraband, including small-scale production.
And besides, the prosecuted teens will ordinarily be benefited by the same procedural safeguard afforded to minors generally in the legal system: prosecution before a specialized juvenile court, with relaxed formalities. Imagine yourself as the juvenile judge before whom a sexting case is brought. You have wide latitude in terms of punishment. Do you really want to put a teen sexter in juvy, much less in prison? No! Your role is the same as it is in the vast majority of other juvenile prosecutions: to ensure the offenders understand the gravity of the situation, the reasons why their conduct is prohibited, and to scare them a little bit. Then you assign them a few hours of community service. In other words, teenagers are already benefited by regulations meant to ensure that their punishment reflects their relative level of informal culpability.
But here's where Lithwick completely loses me, and it's a matter of sort of general penology, rather than something specific to sexting:
Now obviously I make no claims to expertise in child psychology, and can't vouch for whether the push-pushback illustration accurately models a workable incentive structure for teenage girls thinking about sex. But it passes the smell test anyway. Even if it's wrong, it's at least on the side of common sense, so that I think anyone who would take the contra bears the burden of showing why such an incentive structure won't work. Certainly it's not as mystifying as Lithwick seems so hellbent on implying.
But then again, maybe Dahlia's right. I mean, gang initiates feel intense peer pressure to commit murder. So maybe we shouldn't be so hard on them.
Lately though, Lithwick's columns are falling short. A lot of her recent articles on Slate have been cross-published in Newsweek, and those articles have proven particularly lackluster. This weekend, she weighed in on what has become a trend in adolescent circles, namely "sexting," which apparently means taking nude photographs of oneself and electronically transmitting them to other teens. In a number of cases cited in the article, senders and recipients of the sext messages have been charged with crimes related to child pornography. Lithwick forcefully argues that such charges are inappropriate.
We'll assume for the sake of argument that the photographs in question actually qualify as prohibited child pornography in the prosecuting jurisdictions. It turns out though that this assumption may not be warranted in all cases. For instance, in Louisiana, the crime of pornography involving juveniles is governed by La. R.S. 14:81.1. Under that statute, a depiction of "sexual conduct" is required in order to cross the threshold of criminality, and "sexual conduct" is defined as "actual or simulated sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality, masturbation, sadomasochistic abuse, or lewd exhibition of the genitals." From this language, it's not clear that a simple nude photograph would be covered; cases would presumably turn on how "lewd" a particular exhibition of the genitals might be.
Anyway, like I said, let's assume that the jurisdictions in question have broader anti-porn laws, or that the photos forming the basis for prosecution are particularly "lewd." Why then should they not be prosecuted? Lithwick can speak for herself:
One quick clue that the criminal justice system is probably not the best venue for addressing the sexting crisis? A survey of the charges brought in the cases reflects that—depending on the jurisdiction—prosecutors have charged the senders of smutty photos, the recipients of smutty photos, those who save the smutty photos, and the hapless forwarders of smutty photos with the same crime: child pornography. Who is the victim here and who is the perpetrator? Everybody and nobody.Lithwick seems to be suggesting that, in these limited circumstances, child porn is a victimless crime. Of course, you could point to the analogous case of a drug deal: both the seller and the buyer can be charged with a crime. It's equally difficult in that case to identify a "victim," but nobody seriously thinks that a clearly identifiable "victim" is a prerequisite to a certain act being declared criminal. In the case of both illegal drugs and child pornography, the justification for criminalization is the same: when certain revenue streams cause aggregate damage to the physical, mental, or sexual health of the public, those revenue streams ought to be shut down.
Lithwick quotes a police captain in a Pennsylvania case, who argues that the prosecutions are justified, saying, "Once it's on a cell phone, that cell phone can be put on the Internet where everyone in the world can get access to that juvenile picture." She then trivializes his argument, writing:
The argument that we must prosecute kids as the producers and purveyors of kiddie porn because they are too dumb to understand that their seemingly innocent acts can hurt them goes beyond paternalism. Child pornography laws intended to protect children should not be used to prosecute and then label children as sex offenders.Parenthetically, I'll admit that Lithwick is right on when she says that registration as a sex offender would be an inappropriate punishment for teenage sexting. Those registries are supposed to identify criminal sexual deviants, and whether it's good behavior or bad, nobody ought to maintain that the urges that lead to teen-to-teen sexting are anything other than mainstream.
But again, Lithwick's rush to identify the victim throws her off the scent of what's really going on here. This is not an exercise in paternalism meant to protect the interests of emptyheaded would-be teen sexters. Child porn statutes are meant to shut down commercial activity in contraband, and it is reasonable in that light to enact laws that would curtail production of contraband, including small-scale production.
And besides, the prosecuted teens will ordinarily be benefited by the same procedural safeguard afforded to minors generally in the legal system: prosecution before a specialized juvenile court, with relaxed formalities. Imagine yourself as the juvenile judge before whom a sexting case is brought. You have wide latitude in terms of punishment. Do you really want to put a teen sexter in juvy, much less in prison? No! Your role is the same as it is in the vast majority of other juvenile prosecutions: to ensure the offenders understand the gravity of the situation, the reasons why their conduct is prohibited, and to scare them a little bit. Then you assign them a few hours of community service. In other words, teenagers are already benefited by regulations meant to ensure that their punishment reflects their relative level of informal culpability.
But here's where Lithwick completely loses me, and it's a matter of sort of general penology, rather than something specific to sexting:
Many other experts insist the sexting trend hurts teen girls more than boys, fretting that they feel "pressured" to take and send naked photos. Yet the girls in the Pennsylvania case were charged with "manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography" while the boys were merely charged with possession. This disparity seems increasingly common. If we are worried about the poor girls pressured into exposing themselves, why are we treating them more harshly than the boys?Allow me to retort with an example from physics. Suppose 10 pounds of force is being applied to an object, but you want the object to stay put. What should you do? Apply 10 pounds of force in the opposite direction. But if 100 pounds of force is being applied, 10 pounds won't be enough; instead you should apply 100 pounds. In other words, if you want to curtail girls sending naked pictures of themselves to boys, and they feel intense peer pressure to do so, a seemingly plausible course of action would be to push back harder, by increasing the applicable punishment to such an extent that it balances or overcomes peer pressure.
Now obviously I make no claims to expertise in child psychology, and can't vouch for whether the push-pushback illustration accurately models a workable incentive structure for teenage girls thinking about sex. But it passes the smell test anyway. Even if it's wrong, it's at least on the side of common sense, so that I think anyone who would take the contra bears the burden of showing why such an incentive structure won't work. Certainly it's not as mystifying as Lithwick seems so hellbent on implying.
But then again, maybe Dahlia's right. I mean, gang initiates feel intense peer pressure to commit murder. So maybe we shouldn't be so hard on them.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Retiring the Joker, a Test Case in Uncoverability
I just wanted to post a quick link that has some relevance to the concept of uncoverability that I was writing about last week.
Apparently, a group of folks (purporting to be fans of Heath Ledger and The Dark Knight) are petitioning Warner Bros. to have the Joker retired from further film adaptations. Quoting from the CNN writeup:
This has as much or more to do with the iconography that has grown up around Ledger and the Joker as a result of Ledger's death as it does with the unique quality of Ledger's performance, but I don't think that changes the truth of anything I've said here. Posthumously, Ledger's have become some very big shoes to fill, and, at least from where I stand now, it wouldn't surprise me if it takes a long time for another actor to try them on.
Apparently, a group of folks (purporting to be fans of Heath Ledger and The Dark Knight) are petitioning Warner Bros. to have the Joker retired from further film adaptations. Quoting from the CNN writeup:
Barbella said he thinks any new performance just won't be able to top Ledger's.Now obviously I'd be shocked if this particular campaign led to anything as official as a retirement of the Joker. But its proponents raise what appears to be a legitimate point: once this brand-renewal cycle for the Batman movie franchise runs its course, and some new upstart director gets it in his head to revive it again, would it be that shocking for him to voluntarily eschew the Joker character, given the outsize influence that Ledger had on the role? Imagine casting the Joker. Imagine directing the Joker. Imagine portraying the Joker for God's sake. Wouldn't you feel that what you were doing was somehow superfluous, and that somehow, the character was already locked down?
"He upgraded the character in a thrilling way," he said. "Although a lot of actors would love the chance to play the Joker, as Batman fans and now Heath Ledger fans, we think no one could ever perform it as well as he did."
This has as much or more to do with the iconography that has grown up around Ledger and the Joker as a result of Ledger's death as it does with the unique quality of Ledger's performance, but I don't think that changes the truth of anything I've said here. Posthumously, Ledger's have become some very big shoes to fill, and, at least from where I stand now, it wouldn't surprise me if it takes a long time for another actor to try them on.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Kucinich to Citi: "We Own You."
This morning I would have made my conservative father proud. While getting dressed, I quite literally yelled at Dennis Kucinich, who was appearing on CNN, "What are you, some kind of fucking idiot?" Kucinich was bemoaning the fact that Citi, after accepting bailout funds from the federal government, was applying a portion of those funds ($400 M) to become the name sponsor of the New York Mets' new baseball stadium.
Perhaps speaking as a sports fan, Mr. Kucinich's ire could be somewhat justified. I will be the first to admit that, say, the moniker "Minute Maid Park" lacks the magnetic hubris of the late, great "Astrodome." But do I want the federal government messing around with this stuff? No!
"We own you"? Really, Mr. Kucinich? Is that really what you meant to say there? Maybe people would be less put-off by you if only you were a bit less heavyhanded in your approval of actual, state socialism. I'm not the kind of person to make such a charge lightly; in fact, I don't think I've ever called any American politician a socialist, and where I come from, that's saying something.
Maybe it's worth belaboring the obvious on this point: Fortune 500 companies are not in the business of tossing hundreds of millions of dollars into marketing contracts without the prospect of a sizeable return. A part of any major corporate budget is marketing, and to go around clutching one's pearls because the titans of corporate greed failed to suspend their advertising budgets upon receipt of public funds just shows how ignorant (or vindictive) Kucinich and his ilk really are. Advertising is an easy target for these guys, because there's a popular perception that advertising is frivolous business, when really, I think that the perception of frivolity has more to do with the frivolous nature of the public that the ad business must appeal to, than with anything frivolous in the nature of the ad business itself.
Simply put, the money is not being "wasted" just because it's being spent on marketing. Did anybody accuse Apple of wasting money on advertising in the past several years? There are times when the better investment for the future of a business is advertising rather than maintaining jobs. To my knowledge, Citi has not been nationalized as a provider of unemployment benefits, at least not yet.
I don't want to be heard as saying that the mere fact that a large corporation spends its money in a particular way is evidence in itself that the expenditure is a good idea. After all, banks sank billions of dollars into subprime mortgages, and investment banks spent several billion more on the resulting mortgage-backed securities, and those have proven to be disastrous investments. But I think those cases are distinguishable. The mortgage catastrophe has an element of the sorites paradox: a large number of practically identical transactions, no single one of which would have sunk the ship, but whose aggregate effect was to do just that. Nevertheless, in order to be taken in by the logic that because one bad mortgage doesn't kill you, you ought to risk your entire business on bad mortgages required the banks to cultivate systemic ignorance in their employees and management as to one of the most basic functions of any lending institution: managing risk.
By contrast, Citi's purchase of naming rights is a one-off transaction. Sure, it could spell a net loss for Citi, but that's an inappropriate way to evaluate the wisdom of such a unique transaction on the front end. Citi has to evaluate the expected value of the transaction based on what it knows right now; not upon what it will know after twenty years, when the naming agreement terminates. And with a relatively limited number of similar transactions to draw upon, past performance isn't likely to be particularly helpful in this case. I see no good reason to stifle private investment just because a particular transaction happens to be relatively easy to mock.
I am no raving capitalist, but it seems disingenuous to me for the Congress to fail to regulate what the bailout funds could be spent on, and then fly off the handle, threatening hearings and bad press, when the funds were used to pay for perfectly predictable (if not necessarily palatable) expenditures like executive bonuses and advertising. The proper way to channel the funds as Congress intended would have been to attach the strings to the funds on the front end—take it or leave it—not to stage unwarranted attacks ex post. If Congress wanted to put quotas on the number of loans made by Citi and the rest, or on the number of jobs that corporate America should create, then it should have said so in the first place, and conditioned the bailout funds accordingly, since it has the authority to do so. But I seem to recall that Congress' forays into the home loan business had something to do with getting us into this situation in the first place.
Perhaps speaking as a sports fan, Mr. Kucinich's ire could be somewhat justified. I will be the first to admit that, say, the moniker "Minute Maid Park" lacks the magnetic hubris of the late, great "Astrodome." But do I want the federal government messing around with this stuff? No!
"We own you"? Really, Mr. Kucinich? Is that really what you meant to say there? Maybe people would be less put-off by you if only you were a bit less heavyhanded in your approval of actual, state socialism. I'm not the kind of person to make such a charge lightly; in fact, I don't think I've ever called any American politician a socialist, and where I come from, that's saying something.
Maybe it's worth belaboring the obvious on this point: Fortune 500 companies are not in the business of tossing hundreds of millions of dollars into marketing contracts without the prospect of a sizeable return. A part of any major corporate budget is marketing, and to go around clutching one's pearls because the titans of corporate greed failed to suspend their advertising budgets upon receipt of public funds just shows how ignorant (or vindictive) Kucinich and his ilk really are. Advertising is an easy target for these guys, because there's a popular perception that advertising is frivolous business, when really, I think that the perception of frivolity has more to do with the frivolous nature of the public that the ad business must appeal to, than with anything frivolous in the nature of the ad business itself.
Simply put, the money is not being "wasted" just because it's being spent on marketing. Did anybody accuse Apple of wasting money on advertising in the past several years? There are times when the better investment for the future of a business is advertising rather than maintaining jobs. To my knowledge, Citi has not been nationalized as a provider of unemployment benefits, at least not yet.
I don't want to be heard as saying that the mere fact that a large corporation spends its money in a particular way is evidence in itself that the expenditure is a good idea. After all, banks sank billions of dollars into subprime mortgages, and investment banks spent several billion more on the resulting mortgage-backed securities, and those have proven to be disastrous investments. But I think those cases are distinguishable. The mortgage catastrophe has an element of the sorites paradox: a large number of practically identical transactions, no single one of which would have sunk the ship, but whose aggregate effect was to do just that. Nevertheless, in order to be taken in by the logic that because one bad mortgage doesn't kill you, you ought to risk your entire business on bad mortgages required the banks to cultivate systemic ignorance in their employees and management as to one of the most basic functions of any lending institution: managing risk.
By contrast, Citi's purchase of naming rights is a one-off transaction. Sure, it could spell a net loss for Citi, but that's an inappropriate way to evaluate the wisdom of such a unique transaction on the front end. Citi has to evaluate the expected value of the transaction based on what it knows right now; not upon what it will know after twenty years, when the naming agreement terminates. And with a relatively limited number of similar transactions to draw upon, past performance isn't likely to be particularly helpful in this case. I see no good reason to stifle private investment just because a particular transaction happens to be relatively easy to mock.
I am no raving capitalist, but it seems disingenuous to me for the Congress to fail to regulate what the bailout funds could be spent on, and then fly off the handle, threatening hearings and bad press, when the funds were used to pay for perfectly predictable (if not necessarily palatable) expenditures like executive bonuses and advertising. The proper way to channel the funds as Congress intended would have been to attach the strings to the funds on the front end—take it or leave it—not to stage unwarranted attacks ex post. If Congress wanted to put quotas on the number of loans made by Citi and the rest, or on the number of jobs that corporate America should create, then it should have said so in the first place, and conditioned the bailout funds accordingly, since it has the authority to do so. But I seem to recall that Congress' forays into the home loan business had something to do with getting us into this situation in the first place.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
My Chemical Romance Covers Dylan: I Have an Opinion About That, and It's Not (Exactly) What You Think
I think it was Monday evening when Katy came home and told me that My Chemical Romance was contributing a cover of Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" to the soundtrack of the upcoming film, Watchmen. Before even hearing the song, I was nonplussed, and remained so afterwards. They tossed some verses, sped it up, applied their traveling circus style of buzzsaw guitar, lifted a riff straight out of Poison's "Talk Dirty to Me," and got it down to 3 minutes. And they missed the boat entirely.
I should probably start by saying that although not my cup of tea, the problem is not that My Chemical Romance is contributing the cover. Katy owns two of their albums, I've listened to them, and I don't hate them as much as I'd expected that I would. At their best, they sort of succeed as a dark-ish party band; in some places they actually sound like a successor to Twisted Sister, not great praise necessarily, but not all bad either. My biggest complaint with them is that it seems to me that their lyrics could benefit from another several drafts before hitting the CD press.
My problem is also not the problem that a Dylan purist might have. That is, I think that most Dylan songs can and should be covered. In fact, off the top of my head I can name several covers of his songs that kick his album versions in the teeth and don't quit.
Anyway, those paragraphs were tangents. My problem is not with My Chemical Romance, and my problem is not that the Dylanography is inherently untouchable. My problem is with the choice of song itself; I propose that "Desolation Row" belongs in a class of songs which I will denote "Uncoverable."
In fairness, it was practically inevitable that any attempt to film Watchmen would involve a cover of "Desolation Row," since the graphic novel actually quotes the song. In that connection, I can't help but be reminded of the making-of previews for Watchmen, in which the director says, more or less, "A lot of people think of Watchmen as the unfilmable graphic novel." It just strikes me as interesting that in order to film the unfilmable graphic novel, you have to cover the uncoverable song. Poetic, kinda.
I've heard the concept of uncoverability floating around before. On Last.fm, I remember someone complaining about Johnny Cash's cover of U2's "One," saying effectively that the song was so personal to Bono that any attempt to cover it becomes automatically crass. That's not precisely what I have in mind. I think that a song is uncoverable when the original recorded performance is so radically idiosyncratic that it forces the potential cover artist into a catch-22: either he copies the idiosyncrasy, in which case it swallows up his own contribution to the project, making the cover redundant, or he ditches the idiosyncrasy, in which case everyone wonders what was the point of performing a song whose most interesting aspect has been extracted.
The best relatively contemporary example that I'm coming up with is Bush's "Glycerine." Uncoverable I say. Why? Because the arrangement is completely anomalous, and yet it works so well that a casual listener could hear the song a hundred times and never notice what it is that makes the music so haunting: no percussion. Only vocals, fuzzed-out electric guitar, and a string section. If you were inclined to cover "Glycerine," what would you do? Jettison the attributes that make it sui generis, by incorporating drums? Or play it straight, omit the percussion, and allow the song itself and its history to overpower your performance of it? (The tragic choice might be avoided through schtick, say, by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, but I have in mind serious covers, and not parodies).
So what is the radical idiosyncrasy of "Desolation Row"? I suggest you download it from iTunes and see for yourself, but failing that, read on:
First, at 11 minutes, 20 seconds, it is a radically long song, even for Dylan. The first 9 minutes or so are comprised of a sequence of verses featuring characters from and allusions to various works of art, literature, fairy tale, mythology, scripture, and history. Cameos are made by Romeo and Juliet, Cain and Abel, Cinderella, Casanova, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and the Phantom of the Opera, among others. Neither the melody nor the arrangement changes appreciably during this section, though changes in diction and emphasis will help to keep you interested. Each verse is essentially self-contained and unrelated to the others.
The other thing worth pointing out is that, while there are emotionally touching standouts (like the Ophelia verse), between one-quarter and one-third of the verses are absolute garbage from the perspective of being well-written or interesting or insightful. In particular I'm thinking of the verses beginning "Einstein disguised as Robin Hood..." and "At midnight, all the agents..." (Interestingly, that latter verse is the one quoted in Watchmen). It's perplexing then, at first, that those verses are there at all, since the song is already too long, and nobody would miss them if they'd been omitted, since they bear no real relation to the other parts.
Then, after all these verses, there is a harmonica interlude, and after it, a final verse, wherein we learn that the foregoing verses were all contained in a letter received by the speaker. The final verse is the speaker's response, and he's having none of it; in fact, he's bored, effectively mocking the audience for any enjoyment it might have derived in the previous ten minutes:
And that's why it can't be covered. Now that "Desolation Row" is a classic, chutzpah and charisma are no longer required in order to get away with it. But it's the chutzpah and charisma that made it a classic in the first place. The reasons that undergird your desire to cover it are the very reasons why you'll never be able to bring anything to it that is new or interesting or relevant or really very good at all. You shouldn't bother trying.
I should probably start by saying that although not my cup of tea, the problem is not that My Chemical Romance is contributing the cover. Katy owns two of their albums, I've listened to them, and I don't hate them as much as I'd expected that I would. At their best, they sort of succeed as a dark-ish party band; in some places they actually sound like a successor to Twisted Sister, not great praise necessarily, but not all bad either. My biggest complaint with them is that it seems to me that their lyrics could benefit from another several drafts before hitting the CD press.
My problem is also not the problem that a Dylan purist might have. That is, I think that most Dylan songs can and should be covered. In fact, off the top of my head I can name several covers of his songs that kick his album versions in the teeth and don't quit.
Anyway, those paragraphs were tangents. My problem is not with My Chemical Romance, and my problem is not that the Dylanography is inherently untouchable. My problem is with the choice of song itself; I propose that "Desolation Row" belongs in a class of songs which I will denote "Uncoverable."
In fairness, it was practically inevitable that any attempt to film Watchmen would involve a cover of "Desolation Row," since the graphic novel actually quotes the song. In that connection, I can't help but be reminded of the making-of previews for Watchmen, in which the director says, more or less, "A lot of people think of Watchmen as the unfilmable graphic novel." It just strikes me as interesting that in order to film the unfilmable graphic novel, you have to cover the uncoverable song. Poetic, kinda.
I've heard the concept of uncoverability floating around before. On Last.fm, I remember someone complaining about Johnny Cash's cover of U2's "One," saying effectively that the song was so personal to Bono that any attempt to cover it becomes automatically crass. That's not precisely what I have in mind. I think that a song is uncoverable when the original recorded performance is so radically idiosyncratic that it forces the potential cover artist into a catch-22: either he copies the idiosyncrasy, in which case it swallows up his own contribution to the project, making the cover redundant, or he ditches the idiosyncrasy, in which case everyone wonders what was the point of performing a song whose most interesting aspect has been extracted.
The best relatively contemporary example that I'm coming up with is Bush's "Glycerine." Uncoverable I say. Why? Because the arrangement is completely anomalous, and yet it works so well that a casual listener could hear the song a hundred times and never notice what it is that makes the music so haunting: no percussion. Only vocals, fuzzed-out electric guitar, and a string section. If you were inclined to cover "Glycerine," what would you do? Jettison the attributes that make it sui generis, by incorporating drums? Or play it straight, omit the percussion, and allow the song itself and its history to overpower your performance of it? (The tragic choice might be avoided through schtick, say, by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, but I have in mind serious covers, and not parodies).
So what is the radical idiosyncrasy of "Desolation Row"? I suggest you download it from iTunes and see for yourself, but failing that, read on:
First, at 11 minutes, 20 seconds, it is a radically long song, even for Dylan. The first 9 minutes or so are comprised of a sequence of verses featuring characters from and allusions to various works of art, literature, fairy tale, mythology, scripture, and history. Cameos are made by Romeo and Juliet, Cain and Abel, Cinderella, Casanova, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and the Phantom of the Opera, among others. Neither the melody nor the arrangement changes appreciably during this section, though changes in diction and emphasis will help to keep you interested. Each verse is essentially self-contained and unrelated to the others.
The other thing worth pointing out is that, while there are emotionally touching standouts (like the Ophelia verse), between one-quarter and one-third of the verses are absolute garbage from the perspective of being well-written or interesting or insightful. In particular I'm thinking of the verses beginning "Einstein disguised as Robin Hood..." and "At midnight, all the agents..." (Interestingly, that latter verse is the one quoted in Watchmen). It's perplexing then, at first, that those verses are there at all, since the song is already too long, and nobody would miss them if they'd been omitted, since they bear no real relation to the other parts.
Then, after all these verses, there is a harmonica interlude, and after it, a final verse, wherein we learn that the foregoing verses were all contained in a letter received by the speaker. The final verse is the speaker's response, and he's having none of it; in fact, he's bored, effectively mocking the audience for any enjoyment it might have derived in the previous ten minutes:
All these people that you mentioned,And that's when it hits you that the radical idiosyncrasies at work in this song are the peculiar chutzpah that it must take for an artist to pull this sort of time-wasting, tear-jerking prank on his audience, and the charisma it takes to make them feel satisfied even after the rug has been pulled neatly out from under them. Dylan knows that he can string you along until the end, maybe move you to the brink of tears, or convince you to sing along, just by employing that timeless, nasal/gravel/gargle he calls a voice (maybe the closest we modern English speakers can come to hearing Beowulf sung), sprinkling some good lines and verses in among the bad ones, and mostly by appealing to the audience's ego: "I've heard of Ophelia!" It's Menippean satire meets the Shaggy Dog Story. It's the take that makes you love getting took.
Yes I know them—they're quite lame.
I had to rearrange their faces,
And give them all another name.
Right now I can't read too good.
Don't send me no more letters, no,
Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row.
And that's why it can't be covered. Now that "Desolation Row" is a classic, chutzpah and charisma are no longer required in order to get away with it. But it's the chutzpah and charisma that made it a classic in the first place. The reasons that undergird your desire to cover it are the very reasons why you'll never be able to bring anything to it that is new or interesting or relevant or really very good at all. You shouldn't bother trying.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Congressional Representation for D.C.: Why the Constitution isn't Really such a Big Problem
The District of Columbia presently has no representation in the Congress of the United States. Why not? Because of the Constitution. Art. I, Sec. 2 of our founding document provides:
There is now a bill in the works to allocate one seat in the House of Representatives to D.C. (No plans for the Senate yet, apparently). The problem is that the bill is almost certainly unconstitutional. Like I pointed out above, the Constitution says if you're not a state, you can't be represented in the House. Not even an act of Congress can change that. It will take a constitutional amendment to properly get D.C. into Congress, just like it took the Twenty-Third Amendment to allow its residents to vote for President.
(There is an interesting Supreme Court Case, Tidewater, holding that Congress could constitutionally treat D.C. as a state for purposes of diversity jurisdiction, even though the text of the Constitution says that diversity jurisdiction only applies to cases and controversies "between Citizens of different States." Tidewater is probably distinguishable though, because the question involved there was not nearly as politically fraught as this one is. A court has inherent authority to determine the limits of its jurisdiction, which is all that the Supreme Court did in Tidewater; courts will tread much more lightly on the turf of the legislative branch.)
Anyway, I was reading today an argument from someone fretting the unconstitutionality issue, but urging the passage of the legislation anyway. His argument was that although the measure would be overturned in court, the legal turmoil would publicize the plight of D.C. residents, laying the groundwork for a later constitutional amendment. I have a better idea. Pass the unconstitutional law and don't sweat it; it will not be overturned anytime soon.
Just because a law is unconstitutional doesn't mean that Joe Schmoe can file a petition in U.S. District Court to have it declared unconstitutional. You have to overcome an initial showing that you have "standing." In general, that means that you have to show that the unconstitutional law is causing you a particularized harm, and that an order from the court will be effective to cease that harm. Now I ask you, who has standing to argue in court that the D.C. representation act ought to be declared unconstitutional? I've come up with two scenarios, both somewhat implausible.
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States...Since D.C. is not a state, its people are not constitutionally authorized to elect a member to the House of Representatives. (Art. 1, Sec. 3 makes the same rule applicable to the Senate). If you wonder why this is such an affront, think about every income tax increase, declaration of war, imposition of the draft, etc., in the history of the United States, and recall that the residents of D.C. had no voice in the authorizing legislation, but found themselves just as subject to it as did the citizens of any state. It's practically imperialistic.
There is now a bill in the works to allocate one seat in the House of Representatives to D.C. (No plans for the Senate yet, apparently). The problem is that the bill is almost certainly unconstitutional. Like I pointed out above, the Constitution says if you're not a state, you can't be represented in the House. Not even an act of Congress can change that. It will take a constitutional amendment to properly get D.C. into Congress, just like it took the Twenty-Third Amendment to allow its residents to vote for President.
(There is an interesting Supreme Court Case, Tidewater, holding that Congress could constitutionally treat D.C. as a state for purposes of diversity jurisdiction, even though the text of the Constitution says that diversity jurisdiction only applies to cases and controversies "between Citizens of different States." Tidewater is probably distinguishable though, because the question involved there was not nearly as politically fraught as this one is. A court has inherent authority to determine the limits of its jurisdiction, which is all that the Supreme Court did in Tidewater; courts will tread much more lightly on the turf of the legislative branch.)
Anyway, I was reading today an argument from someone fretting the unconstitutionality issue, but urging the passage of the legislation anyway. His argument was that although the measure would be overturned in court, the legal turmoil would publicize the plight of D.C. residents, laying the groundwork for a later constitutional amendment. I have a better idea. Pass the unconstitutional law and don't sweat it; it will not be overturned anytime soon.
Just because a law is unconstitutional doesn't mean that Joe Schmoe can file a petition in U.S. District Court to have it declared unconstitutional. You have to overcome an initial showing that you have "standing." In general, that means that you have to show that the unconstitutional law is causing you a particularized harm, and that an order from the court will be effective to cease that harm. Now I ask you, who has standing to argue in court that the D.C. representation act ought to be declared unconstitutional? I've come up with two scenarios, both somewhat implausible.
- Imagine that after the D.C. Representative is seated, he votes to enact a new federal criminal statute. The measure passes the House by one vote, is passed by the Senate, and signed by the President. Later on, a criminal defendant is indicted under the new measure. The defendant brings a motion to quash the indictment, arguing that he didn't violate the law because there was no law; the bill was never properly passed by the House of Representatives. It was only considered to have passed because of the improperly seated Representative from D.C., whose vote should not have been counted. Now, the issue really is whether the law authorizing a seat in the House for D.C. is constitutional, and the criminal defendant can clearly meet the burden of standing. The situation is implausible because it relies on the bill passing by one vote; otherwise it makes no difference how the Representative from D.C. voted.
- The Constitution gives the members of each house the authority judge the "Qualifications of its own Members" (Art. 1 Sec. 5). They can and do sometimes refuse to seat members, as you may recall from part of the Rod Blagojevich scandal. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the House could refuse to seat a Representative from D.C. on the grounds that his election would have been unconstitutional. If they do so, his recourse is to sue in federal court to have his election declared valid, at which point, the court will have to decide the issue of whether the statute authorizing his election was constitutional. The reason this scenario is implausible is that, assuming the D.C. Represenatation statute passed the House in the first place, it's doubtful that the House members would then turn around and refuse to seat the elected representative. It would take a big shift in the makeup of the House for that turnaround to occur; by the time it does, the congressman from D.C. may already be pretty well entrenched, and the political fallout from the challenge might outweigh the political gain.
Pass this statute because it's the right thing to do for the residents of D.C., and because it stands to actually do some good long before anybody racks up the standing to have it declared unconstitutional.
Monday, January 26, 2009
WrestleMania 25: Chris Jericho vs Randy "The Ram" Robinson
So The Wrestler still has not appeared on Baton Rougean shores as promised, missing its Jan 23rd opening date, but the hype just got taken to a whole 'nother level.
As I have gathered while trying to remain spoil-free, the movie revolves around an aged, down-and-out wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, who finds himself with no family, friends, or career. Robinson goes on a journey to reconnect with his daughter and get a shot at "the big one".
I've no idea what happens at the end of The Wrestler, but it appears Mickey Rourke/Randy "The Ram" will get his final hurrah not at the end of the film, but on "the grandest stage of them all", WrestleMania, against current super heel Chris Jericho on April 5th.
This just might be the biggest thing to hit wrestling since Hulk Hogan vs The Rock at WrestleMania X8. First, we have a wrestling related movie that serves some justice to the industry, unlike David Arquette's Ready to Rumble. Then it's actually recognized as being a pretty good movie, not only by wrestling fans, but critics, too. And now we have Mickey Rourke bringing his character off the silver screen with Randy "The Ram" Robinson getting the opportunity to perform at WrestleMania in Houston.
For the movie, Rourke was trained by WWE Hall of Famer Afa "The Wild Samoan", so Rourke is suppose to have had serious wrestling training, unlike Jack Black's Nacho Libre. According to Afa, Rourke deeply impressed him and can be considered "one of the boys".
But can he successfully bring Randy "The Ram" to WrestleMania?
Non-wrestlers' wrestling matches tend to be fairly safe and non-eventful beyond the name value. Though Rourke and the WWE can go this route, it would be a poor choice. Likely the promotional main event of WrestleMania, all eyes will be on this match, fan and non-fan alike. As such, WWE needs to book this match to properly hide whatever faults Rourke may have due to his lack of experience while giving the audience a big main event match in content that matches the forthcoming media blitz. In terms of The Wrestler and the character of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, it's important that Rourke and the WWE step up to give a proper closing chapter to "The Ram". Much like Rocky Balboa, Robinson manages to find himself in the main event at a major promotion. It's not a matter of winning or losing. It's about going the distance and ending your career with satisfaction. Robinson has this chance.
So the stage is set for potentially one of the greatest WrestleMania matches/moments of all time. It's in the hands of Vince McMahon, Rourke, Jericho, and Rourke's insurance company. Let's hope everything works out.
Thank the Jesus that Nicolas Cage dropped out of the movie.
As I have gathered while trying to remain spoil-free, the movie revolves around an aged, down-and-out wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, who finds himself with no family, friends, or career. Robinson goes on a journey to reconnect with his daughter and get a shot at "the big one".
I've no idea what happens at the end of The Wrestler, but it appears Mickey Rourke/Randy "The Ram" will get his final hurrah not at the end of the film, but on "the grandest stage of them all", WrestleMania, against current super heel Chris Jericho on April 5th.
This just might be the biggest thing to hit wrestling since Hulk Hogan vs The Rock at WrestleMania X8. First, we have a wrestling related movie that serves some justice to the industry, unlike David Arquette's Ready to Rumble. Then it's actually recognized as being a pretty good movie, not only by wrestling fans, but critics, too. And now we have Mickey Rourke bringing his character off the silver screen with Randy "The Ram" Robinson getting the opportunity to perform at WrestleMania in Houston.
For the movie, Rourke was trained by WWE Hall of Famer Afa "The Wild Samoan", so Rourke is suppose to have had serious wrestling training, unlike Jack Black's Nacho Libre. According to Afa, Rourke deeply impressed him and can be considered "one of the boys".
But can he successfully bring Randy "The Ram" to WrestleMania?
Non-wrestlers' wrestling matches tend to be fairly safe and non-eventful beyond the name value. Though Rourke and the WWE can go this route, it would be a poor choice. Likely the promotional main event of WrestleMania, all eyes will be on this match, fan and non-fan alike. As such, WWE needs to book this match to properly hide whatever faults Rourke may have due to his lack of experience while giving the audience a big main event match in content that matches the forthcoming media blitz. In terms of The Wrestler and the character of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, it's important that Rourke and the WWE step up to give a proper closing chapter to "The Ram". Much like Rocky Balboa, Robinson manages to find himself in the main event at a major promotion. It's not a matter of winning or losing. It's about going the distance and ending your career with satisfaction. Robinson has this chance.
So the stage is set for potentially one of the greatest WrestleMania matches/moments of all time. It's in the hands of Vince McMahon, Rourke, Jericho, and Rourke's insurance company. Let's hope everything works out.
Thank the Jesus that Nicolas Cage dropped out of the movie.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Hate Food, Lose Weight
Katy and I started the South Beach Diet on January 12. I've been making an effort to work out at least every other day since then. So far, over a week and a half, I've lost 4.5 pounds. So that's progress.
But I have this inkling, this sort of tickle that arises from the junction of my meager education in physics, biology, and nutrition, and it tells me that I'm being hoodwinked by this diet. My intuition, aided by whatever foundations I have in science, tells me that the weight loss/weight gain inequality is actually much simpler than all this. I'm internally convinced that the rule of weight loss is that you lose weight when, over an extended period of time, your daily caloric output (metabolism plus exercise) exceeds your daily caloric intake, and it makes no difference where the calories come from.
Stirling, is this right? I mean, I know the diet is working, because I've been steadily losing weight. But I'm beginning to wonder if the particular way that this diet moderates my caloric intake is by making sure that there is nothing in my apartment that I would actually enjoy eating. I haven't had a Coke, or a potato chip, or a cookie, or a cracker in a week and a half. When I go to Subway for lunch at work, I have to get a salad instead of a six-inch sub because the bread has too many carbs. The only things I own are vegetables. And if I have to eat one more spoonful of ricotta cheese mixed with Sweet n' Low, I'm going to go completely apeshit. It is amazing how much variety your life seems to lose when you no longer have free reign over what you eat.
There are some upsides. For instance, I'm learning to cook things. I poached a salmon last night, and even though it didn't come out particularly tasty, it was still an accomplishment. And I can make a killer ham and mushroom omelet now. Breakfast has actually become my favorite meal of the day because the diet doesn't modify a typical breakfast menu very much—except that I would like to be able to have a slice of toast with my omelet, or a Pop Tart if I'm in a hurry.
Admittedly, I'm only in "Phase I" of the diet, which is the most draconian of the three phases. Starting next week, I'll be able to eat whole grain breads at lunchtime, and oatmeal for breakfast. But I don't think I'm supposed to have potatos again for the rest of my life. Seriously, Stirling, does carb-counting make sense, or does this diet only work because it makes me loathe the foods I eat?
But I have this inkling, this sort of tickle that arises from the junction of my meager education in physics, biology, and nutrition, and it tells me that I'm being hoodwinked by this diet. My intuition, aided by whatever foundations I have in science, tells me that the weight loss/weight gain inequality is actually much simpler than all this. I'm internally convinced that the rule of weight loss is that you lose weight when, over an extended period of time, your daily caloric output (metabolism plus exercise) exceeds your daily caloric intake, and it makes no difference where the calories come from.
Stirling, is this right? I mean, I know the diet is working, because I've been steadily losing weight. But I'm beginning to wonder if the particular way that this diet moderates my caloric intake is by making sure that there is nothing in my apartment that I would actually enjoy eating. I haven't had a Coke, or a potato chip, or a cookie, or a cracker in a week and a half. When I go to Subway for lunch at work, I have to get a salad instead of a six-inch sub because the bread has too many carbs. The only things I own are vegetables. And if I have to eat one more spoonful of ricotta cheese mixed with Sweet n' Low, I'm going to go completely apeshit. It is amazing how much variety your life seems to lose when you no longer have free reign over what you eat.
There are some upsides. For instance, I'm learning to cook things. I poached a salmon last night, and even though it didn't come out particularly tasty, it was still an accomplishment. And I can make a killer ham and mushroom omelet now. Breakfast has actually become my favorite meal of the day because the diet doesn't modify a typical breakfast menu very much—except that I would like to be able to have a slice of toast with my omelet, or a Pop Tart if I'm in a hurry.
Admittedly, I'm only in "Phase I" of the diet, which is the most draconian of the three phases. Starting next week, I'll be able to eat whole grain breads at lunchtime, and oatmeal for breakfast. But I don't think I'm supposed to have potatos again for the rest of my life. Seriously, Stirling, does carb-counting make sense, or does this diet only work because it makes me loathe the foods I eat?
Friday, January 16, 2009
Artists Offer Mindblowing APYs on Colossal Certificates of Deposit
Marcel Salathé and Anthony White are a pair of artists undertaking a somewhat perplexing experiment involving art and economics. They take a canvas, paint words on it promising to pay a certain sum of money to the person who returns it to them, provided that person returns it during the month denoted on the painting. It looks like this.You can think of it sort of like a certificate of deposit, except that it's on a square yard of canvas, and, if the maturity date expires, it won't roll over into a new CD; instead, you can't redeem it at all after that date.
My expectation would be that the novelty of a giant certificate of deposit that you can hang on the wall of your urban loft-style apartment with exposed ductwork would make these paintings sell at higher prices than CDs of the same face value that you purchase from your bank. Effectively, the artists ought to be able to offer a lower annual percentage yield (APY) than a bank does, because of the purported aesthetic value of the painting. In practice, this expectation has not always been borne out.
The series so far consists of six paintings, four of which have been sold. The maturity dates of two of the four sold paintings have passed (Bond Nos. 1 and 3). Bond No. 1 is pictured here to my left. Bond No. 1 promised $1,063 if it was returned during February 2008. The piece was sold at auction for $1,286. The painting was not returned, and so the artists netted $1,286. That's a good result for them. Not only did they sell a promise to pay $1,063 for more than $1,063, but the promise lapsed without being enforced. Not bad.
To my right now you'll see Bond No. 3, which promised $1,392 if returned during October 2008. Bond No. 3 was sold at auction on April 29, 2008 for $960, and was returned to the artists in October 2008. The artists then paid the returning party $1,392, and auctioned the painting again on eBay, where it sold this time for $242.50. All told, the artists netted a loss of $189.50 on Bond No. 3.It seems to me that Bond No. 3 was worth well more than $960 when it was purchased, and that the reason it sold for so little must have had to do with the thin market (i.e., the fact that not many people knew about the auction). If you bought a CD for $960 that promised a return of $1,392 in five months, its interest rate would be 89%. That comes to a 144% APY. For comparison, if you buy a six-month CD from Chase today, it will buy you a measly 0.25% APY. Bond No. 3 was a steal at $960.
After Bond No. 3, the artists apparently learned their lesson, and stopped auctioning the paintings. Instead, they placed a fixed price on them. Bond No. 6, pictured at the top, lists for $2,699, and promises $3,658 if returned in November 2011. The comparable CD would have an interest rate of about 10.4%, for roughly an 11% APY, nowhere near as crazy high as Bond No. 3, but still a much, much better rate of return than would be available from a bank right now. In fact, an 11% APY is higher than you'd ordinarily expect in a decent year from stocks (and Lord knows we may be waiting a long time for another one of those); on a guaranteed investment 11% APY is mind-blowing. I say buy it if you have the cash on hand.
But doesn't this seem strange? Like I said above, the aesthetic value of the art ought to mean that the artists should be able to offer lower yields than banks. Instead they offer higher ones. It's almost like the aesthetic/novelty factor actually makes the painting worth less than a traditional CD. Are Salathé and White making a paradoxical or ironic statement about art values? Or are they just not performing the calculations that would tell them that they are grossly undervaluing their work?
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Marvelous Word Clouds
Just wanted to post a link to http://www.wordle.net/, which uses a Java applet to generate marvelous word clouds, either made from text you enter on the site, or text it imports from a blog you direct it to. To the right, you'll see the word cloud it generated when it crawled our site. In other news, we are huge nerds.
I also tried it with some of my old papers from college. Here's the cloud Wordle generated for my paper, "Beauty is Truth: Modern and Medieval Notions of Historicity in The Lord of the Rings."Wednesday, January 14, 2009
I haven't beaten FFXII, and let me tell you why...
Stirling,
I haven't beaten Final Fantasy XII. I've progressed as far as the City of Archades, and my game is saved in there somewhere.
That game puts me at odds with myself. On the one hand, the game is beautiful. The setting of FFX may be prettier in itself, but XII's attention to detail (and controllable camera) take it to another level. Also, the storyline is much, much deeper than that of any RPG I've ever played. It's full of intrigue, diplomacy, espionage, and statecraft, and all of its mysteries are only slowly revealed. Trying to keep track of the competing motivations of each of the characters reminds me of reading Balzac or Dostoevsky. And unlike in FFX, the voice acting adds to the appeal of the game.
But it has its own set of problems. Like FFX, it suffers from Yellow Brick Road-syndrome: the mini-map makes it so easy to determine where you need to go that you never really end up exploring. You just follow the Yellow Brick Road from the beginning of the game to the end.
Also, the characters are not very distinct from one another in terms of their abilities. There's nothing stopping you from making Basch a wizard, or Fran a tank. Just acquire the relevant licenses from the license board. Somewhat related to that concern is this: I can't remember a single instance in the entire game where I had to change out my party members. At first, you might think it's nice to only have to deal with the characters you like. But every time you go to the menu, you'll be reminded, like I am, that you're wandering the world of Ivalice with three characters above level 40, and three characters around level 12. This is aggravating, and a better-designed game would give you some sort of incentive to try different party combinations. But since each character is so customizable, there's no incentive to change party members to access new abilities. And since party makeup has no effect on in-game dialogue or cut-scenes, there's no incentive to change out party members to try to learn a different side of the story. Despite the fact that I've never used Balthier in battle, he keeps showing up alongside me, making quips and casting foreshadows.
You complained about the bosses and the random battles being too hard after a certain point. I agree with you about the bosses, but I actually never found the random battles to be too difficult. The only exception I've found is in the Jungles where the Viera live, there's a monster called a Hellhound that's obscenely tough for the stage in the game where you face it. Other than that, I didn't have too much trouble with random encounters. Bosses and Marks are another story. Marks especially so, but that may only be because I'm impatient and try to defeat them as soon as they show up on the bulletin board.
But I think what I may dislike the most about FFXII are the gambits. Because FFXII isn't turn-based, gambits are a necessary evil; although you can give specific instructions to your characters, to do so is so cumbersome that most of the time, you'd prefer to give them some AI governing what they do when you're silent. I always have equipped Attack Enemy with Lowest HP, and it gets you through random battles nicely. You can also equip Cure Ally when HP < X%. That's another one you'll appreciate if you've ever played RPGs before. But to give you an idea of how fickle gambits can be, I'm well over 40 hours into the game, and I still can't tell my characters, "If you're ally is poisoned, use an Antidote on him," with gambits.
The genius of turn-based RPGs is that slowing the action down allows one player to realistically simulate a strategy that might reasonably be adopted by three or four playable characters. It's not necessarily a non-starter to try to implement a realtime game experience if you supplement it with character AI (Baldur's Gate did a good job on this front); but if you do, the AI needs to be robust. FFXII's gambits fail miserably. You cannot implement a winning strategy against any substantial boss in FFXII using gambits alone. You always have to burst in with specific instructions, in which case the action freezes while you navigate the command menus, and you're left wondering what was gained by switching from turn-based in the first place.
The last thing I don't like about gambits is that they distance the player from the action. It used to be that you would deck your characters out in weapons, armor, etc., and then head out to smite some evil. Once you were in battle you were essentially at the mercy of your equipment if it was suboptimal, but you could limit the fallout by making wise commands. Gambits take your battle commands and make them more like weapons and armor and relics in that respect, since you're sort of stuck with the ones you have equipped. Admittedly you can disable gambits or override them with specific commands, but those are just small exceptions; most of your time in FFXII is spent watching your characters instead of playing them.
For all its faults, and I know I've been really hard on it, it really is a game that's worth playing, and maybe even worth loving. Somebody with less traditional tastes than I have might even be able to prefer it over the rest of the series.
Oh, and we haven't signed up for HD satellite service yet, because the HD-DVR receiver costs more than we want to spend right now.
I haven't beaten Final Fantasy XII. I've progressed as far as the City of Archades, and my game is saved in there somewhere.
That game puts me at odds with myself. On the one hand, the game is beautiful. The setting of FFX may be prettier in itself, but XII's attention to detail (and controllable camera) take it to another level. Also, the storyline is much, much deeper than that of any RPG I've ever played. It's full of intrigue, diplomacy, espionage, and statecraft, and all of its mysteries are only slowly revealed. Trying to keep track of the competing motivations of each of the characters reminds me of reading Balzac or Dostoevsky. And unlike in FFX, the voice acting adds to the appeal of the game.
But it has its own set of problems. Like FFX, it suffers from Yellow Brick Road-syndrome: the mini-map makes it so easy to determine where you need to go that you never really end up exploring. You just follow the Yellow Brick Road from the beginning of the game to the end.
Also, the characters are not very distinct from one another in terms of their abilities. There's nothing stopping you from making Basch a wizard, or Fran a tank. Just acquire the relevant licenses from the license board. Somewhat related to that concern is this: I can't remember a single instance in the entire game where I had to change out my party members. At first, you might think it's nice to only have to deal with the characters you like. But every time you go to the menu, you'll be reminded, like I am, that you're wandering the world of Ivalice with three characters above level 40, and three characters around level 12. This is aggravating, and a better-designed game would give you some sort of incentive to try different party combinations. But since each character is so customizable, there's no incentive to change party members to access new abilities. And since party makeup has no effect on in-game dialogue or cut-scenes, there's no incentive to change out party members to try to learn a different side of the story. Despite the fact that I've never used Balthier in battle, he keeps showing up alongside me, making quips and casting foreshadows.
You complained about the bosses and the random battles being too hard after a certain point. I agree with you about the bosses, but I actually never found the random battles to be too difficult. The only exception I've found is in the Jungles where the Viera live, there's a monster called a Hellhound that's obscenely tough for the stage in the game where you face it. Other than that, I didn't have too much trouble with random encounters. Bosses and Marks are another story. Marks especially so, but that may only be because I'm impatient and try to defeat them as soon as they show up on the bulletin board.
But I think what I may dislike the most about FFXII are the gambits. Because FFXII isn't turn-based, gambits are a necessary evil; although you can give specific instructions to your characters, to do so is so cumbersome that most of the time, you'd prefer to give them some AI governing what they do when you're silent. I always have equipped Attack Enemy with Lowest HP, and it gets you through random battles nicely. You can also equip Cure Ally when HP < X%. That's another one you'll appreciate if you've ever played RPGs before. But to give you an idea of how fickle gambits can be, I'm well over 40 hours into the game, and I still can't tell my characters, "If you're ally is poisoned, use an Antidote on him," with gambits.
The genius of turn-based RPGs is that slowing the action down allows one player to realistically simulate a strategy that might reasonably be adopted by three or four playable characters. It's not necessarily a non-starter to try to implement a realtime game experience if you supplement it with character AI (Baldur's Gate did a good job on this front); but if you do, the AI needs to be robust. FFXII's gambits fail miserably. You cannot implement a winning strategy against any substantial boss in FFXII using gambits alone. You always have to burst in with specific instructions, in which case the action freezes while you navigate the command menus, and you're left wondering what was gained by switching from turn-based in the first place.
The last thing I don't like about gambits is that they distance the player from the action. It used to be that you would deck your characters out in weapons, armor, etc., and then head out to smite some evil. Once you were in battle you were essentially at the mercy of your equipment if it was suboptimal, but you could limit the fallout by making wise commands. Gambits take your battle commands and make them more like weapons and armor and relics in that respect, since you're sort of stuck with the ones you have equipped. Admittedly you can disable gambits or override them with specific commands, but those are just small exceptions; most of your time in FFXII is spent watching your characters instead of playing them.
For all its faults, and I know I've been really hard on it, it really is a game that's worth playing, and maybe even worth loving. Somebody with less traditional tastes than I have might even be able to prefer it over the rest of the series.
Oh, and we haven't signed up for HD satellite service yet, because the HD-DVR receiver costs more than we want to spend right now.
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