Well, small-D democrat anyway. American Kaiser Justin Weitz responds to my post on the random drug test ruling:

Whitlock feels that the Court ruled correctly, but the rule itself is simply stupid. Then again, the Supreme Court is supposed to rectify legal inaccuracies as well as logical problems. This law is illogical, and I think it's the Court's duty to overturn it. The law also stands on shaky legal ground because of the invasion of privacy required in its execution.

The important part is that because the law is illogical, Justin things the Court is obligated to overturn it. He actually makes it the subject of another post:

THE RIGHTFULLY UNDEMOCRATIC NATURE OF AMERICA: First, I'd like to say that the ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance was ludicrous, insensible, and nauseating. Bryan Preston attacks the idiotic decision on the basis of democracy, which I find to be an inappropriate point. Preston says that "republics such as ours are majority-rule entities--if the majority wants an innocuous phrase included in things like the Pledge, the majority should get its say." Democracy and freedom are two entirely separate items. While this Pledge ruling is both illegitimate and unnecessary, and is an example of judicial stupidity, the separation of church and state is not. According to this poll, 54% of Americans believe that the government should not avoid promoting religion. Courts generally need to ignore items of "national consensus" (something which the Supreme Court used as justification for the correct ruling about mentally retarded inmates on death row) and focus on issues pertaining to the law. If 99% of Americans were to decide that freedom of speech is an inherently bad idea, it would not change the constitutional and legal necessity, and it would not give the courts a mandate to overturn landmark free speech decisions. The beauty of our national republican system is that the judiciary operates outside the "real world" and is immune to democratic whims (or at least should be).

I think this is the nature of our disagreement right here. Justin views the powers and responsibilities of the Supreme Court in a much broader context than I do. I believe that our nation is, primarily, a democratic republic. He views it more strictly as a republic that should be immune to democratic whims. While I believe that our system ought to be resistent to them, I don't believe it should be immune to them. That creates a lot more problems than it solves.

The sort of government he describes is not that uncommon in Europe. There is a sense of the elitism among its government officials that they know better than the people that elect them. The death penalty (which I oppose) was illegalized over there despite the relative support of it among their people. Immigration is tolerated and encouraged despite the apprehensions of its people. By and large, though, their people put up with it. Over here, however, the quickest way for a representative to get to the unemployment line is for him to tell us how we're supposed to think. When our government tells us we should do something, our first question is "why?" For instance, while Europe and Canada adopted the metric system years ago, Americans were never convinced that it was necessary and we never did. No one went out on too far of a limb to ram it down out throats (which might, quite honestly, have been a good idea) because they knew the other party would be able to jump on that issue and tell the public that their opponents think they know better than the people do.

So, since our representatives are placing themselves more in the "delegate" role rather than the "trustee" role, who is left to determine whether the will of the people is correct. Weitz apparently believes that role should be left to the courts. I wholeheartedly disagree. I believe that it is the function of the courts only to decide whether a law is appropriate or inappropriate through the lens of the Constitution. The further off of that reservation they get, the more harm I believe is done. Weitz denounces the 9th District's Pledge ruling while lauding judicial activisim in the name of the republic. The same judicial activism that Weitz apparently would have lauded if the Court had struck down the random testing on the grounds that the law was "illogical" (in Justin's words) or "stupid" (in mine). We are in stark agreement as to whether or not random testing is a good or bad idea, but who are we to make that judgment? Who are we to say that the will of the people ought to be blithely invalidated? Once you say that courts ought to strike down laws for being illogical, you place your own perfectly constitutional laws at their discretion.

The Supreme Court has two basic limitations: they are installed by the executive and legislative bodies and their job is not to write or enforce laws, but only to interpret their meaning and how well they square with the constitution. To give the court the power to decide whether laws are a good idea or even whether or not they are just is to invalidate the will of the people in a way that they do not have any immediate recourse. At least in Europe, if the people are seriously discontented enough, they can vote a fringe candidate and get the politicians' attention a la Le Pen and Fortuyn. The best we can do is elect the party that says they'll install judges more to our liking, but the damage done in the meantime could be devestating and would, in the end, be irreversable since once appointed, the judges can still do whatever they like. They are immune. The same way that they are "outside the real world" in a way that Weitz likes, they are also immune to any consequences to their rulings. While this is good when it comes to standing up for the constitution (someone has to) it is a very bad idea when it comes to determing the basic virtues of laws.

Anyway, to get closer to the topic at hand, Weitz believes that there are right-to-privacy (ie illegal-search-and-seizure, ie Constitutional) issues with the random testing laws in question.I would argue that this is constitutionally permissable on the same grounds that employee drug testing is. If you don't want to be tested, then you can avoid getting a job with an employer that implements random (or regular) testing. Since I would consider a job for an adult to be more important than the chess club for a student, I would argue that if you're not protected from work-related tests, neither are you protected from ones involving extra-curricular activities. Since extra-curricular activities are not a right or obligation, then the argument can be made that they are entering an unwritten contract when they participate in extra-curricular activities: In return for the opportunity to be on the chess/baseball/football/cheerleading/band squad, you agree to testing. If you don't agree to testing, you can forego these activities and protect your own privacy. Since that remains an option, the search-and-seizure becomes a decision and not an infringement on your rights.

The ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance always struck me as more of a human interest story rather than a political one. It will be reversed in no time flat and life will return to normal. The ruling on vouchers, though, now that's news! The Supreme Court is, of course, the final word on the matter until they choose to hear it again, which one suspects will be a long time from now. The decision is, of course, celebrated by conservatives and denounced by liberals. It doesn't mean too much and is a small victory, but it does mean that the movement hasn't been killed in its tracks and that districts are free to experiment with it. If it works, it'll be kept. If it doesn't, then it won't move far beyond Milwaukee and Cleveland.

Over at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick lays out the best argument against the ruling that I have found to date. She fairly assesses both sides and explains why she's on the side that she is. Generally, I've thought that the constitutional arguments against vouchers were just bunk, but she does a good job of explaining where they are coming from and giving me a good opportunity to explain why she is wrong:

The tension in these religion cases is between those who believe the Establishment Clause merely bars the government from funding and promoting one single state-sponsored church and those who believe that government efforts to fund or promote any religion are impermissible.

I would restate my side's position as being the belief that the Establishment Clause bars the government from funding and promoting any religion or religions at the expense or other religions (or lack of any religion at all). Therefore, if vouchers were allowed for Christianity and Judaism but not Hinduism because Hinduism doesn't believe in one true and everlasting God, that would clearly qualify as a breach of the constitutional. If the government were to support certain schools that were Christian and Jewish but not schools that were Muslim because the Muslim schools teach discriminatory things, then that becomes iffy. The beauty of vouchers is that the government is not making the decision. The parents are. The only way that it strikes me as unconstitutional is if the government says certain schools can't be chosen due to their religious or ideological nature, which to my knowledge is not the case.

I believe much of Lithwick's argument is borne from ignorance of the mechanics of church-run schools. The primary goal of religious schools (at least the ones I've known about) is education. It is not religious instruction. That's what church and bible study are for. So because government money goes to St. Goode's Catholic Church for the services of St. Goode's Parochial School does not mean that the government is giving them money to push religion on Sunday mornings. What they are paid, and how they are paid, is not determined by the quality of their sermons but by parental satisfaction of the services that they supply at the school. Yes, yes, the church is still getting its grubby hands on government money, but in return for a service provided. A service, it's worth noting, that is not directly religious in nature.

Lithwick makes the subtle implication that the entire vouchers issue is, instead of an education movement, a religious one. She points out some 82% of schools in the area are Catholic and 96% of the students go to one of those schools. I am not Catholic. I don't agree with Catholic doctrine on a number of points. This is not a religious issue with me. Honestly, I don't care who teaches them or what religion they are from a public policy standpoint. I'd support vouchers if a majority of the schools Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu (I'll get to Muslims in another post). Those who do support vouchers as a religious movement are probably going to be very disappointed. The reason that so many of the schools are now presently Catholic is that right now private schools fall into one of a few niches: religious, elite, and military.

Religious schools provide Catholics, Jews, and others a chance to opt out of secular education. Because they are run by churches, they are not for-profit by nature and therefore they are an inexpensive for less wealthy parents to get their kids out of the public system.

Elite schools are as likely than not to be secular in nature. They supposedly offer a quality education at a very stiff price. It's for parents who want to keep their kids out of the grubby school nearby and are not comfortable sending their kids to a Catholic school. Because they are so expensive, there don't make up for much of the populations of schools out there. Most people can't afford them.

Military schools are for those who are either delinquints or planning to go into the military. It was always the threat my parents had whenever I misbehaved. They are less populated because they generally require its students to live on campus and therefore is considerably more expensive than a religious school.

Initially, religious schools will benefit the most from voucher programs at first. Elite are far too expensive and will immediately price themselves out of any voucher program that they can't explicity exclude themselves from. Military schools serve a special market and are also going to be unaffordable for those that benefit most from a voucher program. However, if the voucher program becomes big enough, you will see more and more private schools opening up that won't waste their time on religious indoctrination or military protocol and focus solely on what the parents want: education. Private schooling itself will no longer be a niche market and the schools will start serving the larger public who wants to get their kids out of a public school, but doesn't want to have to pay so much to do it. In Texas, we have a number of charter schools that are essentially private schools recieving public money because there is a big market here for unconventional academic programs. There is a school tailored to art students, another for aspiring medical professionals. In an ambitious voucher program, expect to see a lot of this sort of thing.

Lithwick might ask why we need religious schools if these others will appear. It's simple, because the religious schools are already there. They are completely set up and ready to go. They will be a good test to see if vouchers are really something worth trying or whether they will, for one reason or another, be a big giant flop. Without private schools, it will be hard to experiment and we would have to ask schools to set up for a program that might only last a couple of years before being shown to be ineffective and killed off. The importance of this ruling is that it will let such experiments take place. That's a start and something to celebrate

I ran across Anne Wilson's blog for the first time yesterday and it quickly earned a spot on my regulars list. What really interested me was this post of her reservations regarding school choice. There are two posts that raise three issues, I'll respond to them seperately.

Issue One: Liberal Catholic Schools

Why is [the apparent liberal nature of Catholic schools] important? Normally this would be an internicene Catholic fight, between the "AmChurch" Catholics who disagree with the Roman Catholic Church's stated positions on birth control, abortion, women priests, authority of the Pope, on one hand, and those who see themselves as "traditional" Catholics who determinedly adhere to the catechism. However, when taxpayer funds are involved, what would normally be an internal religious disagreement will in one way or another spill over into public policy.

As I understand it, there is not a particularly intricate way that the money is dispensing the money for the voucher system's beneficiaries, therefore I do not accept the premise that the government is necessarily involved. I hope not. The whole point of vouchers is to get the government out from in the middle of education disputes. The point of vouchers is for the government to let the parents decide. If the parents don't want sex ed, they need to find a school where the policy is not to teach it or, at the very least, the school makes it available for students to opt out of it. Different schools will adopt different policies. It does sound like there is a definite problem here, but I don't know that this will force the governments involvement or even make it worse. It might heighten the tension or it might make them more transparent if they try to recruit voucherites whose parents want to know what the policies are.

There are two "litmus tests" coming up that will show the practical effects of this unfortunate intermingling of religion and state. The first will come when a voucher recipient's parents decide that they want to remove their child from Catholic parish school sex education. Perhaps this is not so problematic if the child is not a Catholic (which is often the case in inner-city parish schools.) More interesting - what will happen if that voucher student is also a parishioner, whose parents object to sex education on Catholic religious grounds? Will there be two policies for students receiving public funding: one for non-Catholic voucher students, and one for Catholics?


The litmus tests questions are interesting, but again, I'm not sure they inherently involve the government. Catholic schools now are rife with non-Catholics so I'm sure many of them have policies in place. The non-Catholics either are or are not expected to take part in certain classes. Parents ought to know that going in and can make their choices accordingly. If a parent insists that their child get sex ed. and none of the Catholic schools offer it, then they'll have to stick in public schools. If they insist on no sex ed and the Catholic schools all insist on it, they'll have to homeschool. However, in no cases are any organizations left worse off than they were before. Catholic schools that don't want the headaches will simply have the ability to opt out. Those that do have the ability to take them. Those who don't want their kids indoctrinated with Catholicism (liberal Jesuit or conservative Orthodox) will be stuck in the same public schools they've always been stuck in.

I would be opposed to any program that forced private schools to accept the voucherites. None of them, to date, do. That leaves a lot of lattitude for both sides to find a school that more suitably matches their desires.

Another acid test will come when parents attempt to get vouchers for schools that (unlike Catholic schools) are not generally open to those outside the faith community; which require interviews with the elders and testimonies of faith from at least one parent; which require that parents adhere to codes of personal behavior (like the Christian school that dismissed the "stripper mom's" child because mom wouldn't find other employment), and last but not least, schools that teach strict creationism and the "young earth" view.

This is certainly a more problematic issue. However, whether schools are allowed to pick and choose who they will let in (and stay in) based on their doctrines or whether they won't, I view it as being better than the current state of affairs. If it's constitutional I do believe that private schools out to be able to discriminate. It should no longer be of the governments concern. They are merely subcontracting the school to teach the child. I would leave it up to the courts to decide whether or not there are constitutional problems with that. There might be, in which case more schools will opt out of the whole program. That would not necessarily be a terrible thing as it would help keep the more cultish schools out from the public sphere. I'm not sure I know the answer of which is really better, but that sounds like a healthy debate, not a problem the likes of which cast a shadow on the whole enterprise.

Issue Two: Attaching Strings

While highly conservative, I am not a voucher supporter, mainly because I think funding private schools with tax money will produce the same pressure to conform to unacceptable government policies that's already occurred in private universities and in religiously-run hospitals.

She is orrect to say that the government might apply pressure to conform to things such as Title IX. They did in the "private universities" link (that I strongly recommend). However, throughout the entire story, he could have easily opted out and lost the students who were there because of student loans. What Anne is suggesting, in effect, is that those students shouldn't be allowed to go there anyway just in case they might tempt the administration to do something it shouldn't (like sign off on Title IX culpability) just to keep them. That is something that schools out to consider before signing in to a voucher program, but nonetheless it remains their choice whether to accept the students and the pressure or not to. I don't believe we should "protect" them from that choice.

SCOTUS ruled that the programs are constitutional *if* there is "choice" between non-religious and religious programs. This will inadvertently result in discrimination against poor *rural* schools. Private schools are thick on the ground in many urban areas, but rural areas have very few private schools of any kind, and the distances between them are often prohibitive. Thus the only option offered to many who literally *are* trapped in poor rural school districts is home schooling. Vouchers also have the potential, however, to make home schooling more onerous.

I would actually like the voucher program to extend to homeschoolers. Any and all regulations will only apply in contingence with the money. So if homeschoolers were included, they would start getting the voucher money for supplies. If the government starts saying that "Your home school only has male students since you only have sons. We therefore request that you recruit some neighborhood girls. While we're at it, get certified in every subject that you teach." the parents can just say no. They'll stop getting the money, and they'll be no worse off than when they started. More realistically homeschooling will never be included because it raises a lot of questions and is ripe for abuse ("Oh yeah, we're homeschooling... gimme the money ") and as much as I'd like it, it's not practical.

In all of the above cases, remember: No one is being forced to do anything. There has not been a program developed yet, and I doubt such a program would be constitutional, that would deny any school the ability to opt out of the program.

Issue Three: The Muslim Quandary

Finally, while the vast majority of private schools in urban areas are Catholic parochial schools, other religious schools will also qualify - private Muslim schools, for instance. To refuse to do so would constitute "discrimination." Personally, I do not want my tax dollars to go to fundamentalist Islamic schools where girls are made to wear hijab and Israel is blotted out on the map. Of course, one could say that the government should *regulate* these private schools so they don't blank out Israel, but that again leads to an undesirable interference into private education itself - one which will eventually have more consequence for Christian schools than the madrassahs.

This is a relatively new wrench in my worldview of vouchers. Previously, the best they could throw at me was "David Koresh school" but I will say now what I said then: If the Muslim schools are educating, then I don't have a problem with it. What if they are miseducating, you ask? I still have to say the same. If parents want their children to be miseducated, I believe that is their prerogative. I don't like my tax-dollars going to it any more than Anne does, but if that's the price I have to pay to break the public school monopoly, I'll still support it. If they are raising terrorists, we can shut them down on criminal matters (which is what we would do if they were privately funded, so that has nothing to do with the vouchers themselves and would not afflict other schools). A better option would be to limit the vouchers to only those schools that accept people of different religions. More orthodox religious schools (including muslim fanatics) would opt out and our hands would be clean in that regard.

What is most important here, when it comes to education, is that the public school system's monopoly is broken. This is more important than any education issue that I can think of. For every one that she brings up that it creates, it solves several tangental issues. Want prayer in school? Go to a religious school. Want god to be nowhere in site? Find a secular school. Want a school that has a traditional curriculum? Go for it. Want a school with a mushy-mushy feel-good curriculum? Those will form, too. She's right that rural kids won't benefit, and though I'm uncertain of what is the best way to help them, they won't be hurt.

American Kaiser Justin Weitz chimes in on the court ruling regarding random drug testing for those who participate in extra-curricular activities. Throughout my years in high school, I never participated in any formal extra-curricular activities and while my high school years may not have been all they could be, I certainly enjoyed myself. People who use drugs are even more likely to enjoy their high school years (the effects won't really hit them to a degree they'll notice until a little later) and less likely to care about extra-curricular activities. Of course, a joint or two will make little difference to the band kid who gets kicked out of band because of it. Perhaps then, once kicked off, he'll make the most of his illegal-drug-user status and move on to the heavier hitting stuff. He's got more time on his hands, right? The publicization of his drug use will even make him more popular with the druggie crowd, too. It's okay, though, right, cause then all of his friends will know better then to even try drugs cause they might face the same fate as the fallen drummer boy who they now see hanging out with the cool kids smoking pot across the street from the school. Or, more likely, they'll cross their fingers and hope they're not tested, and if they do form a support group called Pot-Smoking Former Bandpersons Anonymous. Until they are infiltrated by the druggie-using-counter-culture who'll recruit them across the street, where they will then smoke pot and laugh at the other band members living their mundane, sober and clean lives.

I make light of the subject, but seriously, what are they trying to accomplish here? Presumably they want to keep people from using drugs. Will random testing really help accomplish this goal? Anyone who is scared enough of being randomly chosen is likely to be too scared to take drugs anyway. The risk-takers will just play the odds and hope they're not chosen. If they are, they are kicked off the team or band or the school paper. It will unlikely have a stigmatizing effect unless the school goes out of its way to publicize the students "disgrace," in which case my playful scenario above will become less playful and, in a less cute way, applicable. The kids' good influences will be angry with him and his bad influences will consider him one of their own. Other kids who are curious about drugs will have someone they know they can go to in order to find out more about getting them, and everyone loses. If it's not publicized, then it's likely only to have a punative effect on the student far worse than the pot he was smoking. The only ones who would likely learn from his example are the ones that would be unlikely to do drugs to begin with.

Texas has a no-pass-no-play rule that says if you don't pass your classes you can't play. The effect of this was that a lot of people would fail a single class, get kicked off the team, and then start making unrelated trouble that they wouldn't be making if they were on the team. When I was in school, I saw some very talented players who were never on the team because of this rule and were always in trouble until they were old enough to drop out, at which point I never saw them again. It became enough of a problem that they shortened the suspension from six weeks to three. The F's that these students got hurt a lot more in the long run than the weed they smoked while flunking. Either widespread casual drug usage is widespread or not. If it's widespread, then you're going to cause a great shortage of people in extra-curricular activities (which tend to bolster school pride and self-discipline) and create more of the apathetic, do-nothing youth that drives older people nuts. If it's not widespread, then isn't this a solution in search of a problem?

That being said, I think that the court made the right decision. There is no inherent right or obligation when it comes to extra-curricular activities. Since it's not compulsory, you're not forcing kids into a situation where they will be tested. It's not a right because there are a number of ways you can be disqualified from participating. You can be too slow for the football team, short for the basketball team, or interesting for the chess club. Extra-curricular activities are a choice and a priviledge. As such, the school has the right to impose any obligation (that doesn't involve discrimination) that they see fit. From a constitutional standpoint, the rule is valid. So, I must reluctantly admit, the Court's ruling is correct.

But the rule is still stupid.

When I got in to work this morning, the office was in a tizzy because an email had circulated about "Bill 602P" that would add a 5c tax to every email. I'd gotten it before a year or two ago from an intelligent friend that I would have liked to think would have been able to see through it. At the risk of being sued by a fraud for copyright infringement, I'll post it below in its entirety. In the interest of hanging on to my readers, I'll talk about it first and save them the trouble of skipping through it. Anyway, a brief synopsis:

In addition to raising the costs of stamps, congress is also considering in an unnoticed bill adding a 5-cent tax to every email sent to make up for lost revenue. It speaks of a lawyer that is fighting it without pay and a congressman that says the tax is just the begining and a newspaper that endorses the idea. The email suggests that the reader ask their representative to vote 'no' and, of course, forward the letter to everyone they know.

As hoaxes go, this one has an appeal because there has always been the fear that the government will find a way to take what used to cost us money (mail) and make it cost money again. Since it's going through email, it's send directly to people who would be affected by the changes and therefore would be more concerned (ie paranoid) about it. However, the idea itself is incredibly far-fetched when you think about it. Any vote that involved something that would tax people between $10-30 a month or more would not go unnoticed. You would not be hearing about it from an email. Generally, you can count on one party to be for something and the other against it. The only exceptions are when the government is giving money, not taking it, and even then one party of the other will line up against it. The hoaxers are obviously hoping that the readers wouldn't really think about it, and judging by their success, it paid off. It manages to do this, in part, by making the struggle a story.

The story of the hoax has a hero. His name is Richard Stepp and he is a DC lawyer who is fighting this on his own time. You respect him and admire him. You want to believe that there are people out there who would defend us like that, for not a penny. You ignore the fact that there would be a real movement against such a tax because it would hurt a lot of businesses and they have money and lobbyists. Stepp even has a law firm! It's got his name on it *(in some of the emails, it didn't make it through others)! If there was a Stepp who was a lawyer, he would have a firm and the firm would have his name on it. The other two names (Gorman and Berger) are Jewish, making it sound even more like a law firm.

The story of the hoax also has more villains than you can shake a stick at. Even better, they're targets that the people are already skeptical of! Complaints about the post office are endless, so it's not really difficult for people to believe that they would make up for lost revenue by charging for a service they don't provide. The second villain is Congressman Schnell, who not only supports the tax but wants another $20-40 surcharge on Internet access. Schnell has the advantage of even sounding like a creep (though this is both good and bad, more later). Congress in general are also culprits as they looked poised to pass the bill and may consider sinister Schnell's idea of yet another charge. The third villain is the media, which have largely ignored the story or, in the one case of The Washingtonian, endorsed the email tax. The poor Washingtonian, a real publication that focuses on human interest and not politics, has recieved so many inquiries they have this disclaimer permanently on their web site. The beauty of choosing the Washingtonian is that no one has ever heard of it, but it has a ring of "Washington insider" to it.

They also cleverly used a series of devices that buttressed its credibility. take this passage:

"The US Postal Service is claiming lost revenue, due to the poliferation of E-mail, is costing nearly $230,000,000 in revenue per year. You may have noticed their recent ad campaign: "There is nothing like a letter.""

The ad campaign's connection to lost revenue in this alternate universe is slight, but the mere mention of a familiar-sounding ad campaign ads to its credibility. People subconsciously think "And I thought it was just a commercial. They were really just trying to kill e-mail with it! Those sly SOBs..." Additionally, the letter slyly reminds the reader that those "SOBs" recently raised postage rates again -- and more than usual. Also, the assigning of a political party to Schnell in addition to a name make him seem more real. How can Schnell not exist, it says here he's a Republican. Cognitive dissonance supports the idea that the congressman, the letter, and the bill are real.

Unfortunately for the hoaxers, they made a series of mistakes in their work that rang several bells for me when I first got it. Their goal was ambitious (and their charge not-so-credible), so I won't fault them for that. Instead I will focus on the delivery. What first caught my attention is the name of the bill. Many people would notice that 602P isn't like most bill names that they might hear about, which begin in "HR" or "S" and are not followed by a letter. If they were to have simply made it HR2341 it most likely would not have stuck out in my mind. Another idea might have been to attach names to it. Make it the "Schnell-Harris Postal Compensatory Act" or "Schnell Amendment" to an HR or something. It's possible that the 602P was derived from the original Canadian and it wasn't changed when it was ported to the US. If true, it still probably should have been changed.

That brings me to the second flaw, the villainous Congressman Paul Schnell. While Schnell sounds kind of creepy and autocratic and that might help the reader get a vision of him, it also might raise some suspicion because it is an odd name and sounds like a villain. On the other hand, a county executive named Loy Sneary made a credible run for congress down here recently, and Loy Sneary screams "villain." So maybe not. It does seem to me that using a real congressman or one with a more generic name (Matthew Stevens, for instance, avoid Smiths or Joneses) One area that really did catch my attention was that they never attributed Schnell to a state. They simply said "Paul Schnell (R)." Leaving aside the partisan complaint that this bill would more likely come from a Democratic sponsor, putting Schnell in a big state where even its citizens don't know all the congressman would have been more prudent. As an added benefit, "Paul Schnell (R-NY)" or "Matthew Stevens (R-NY)" would leave Democrats saying "damn Republicans" and Republicans saying "damn New Yorkers" and he would keep his villain status. In any case, it's not all that common to see a party affiliation without a state. It's worth noting that the Canadian version of Paul Schnell is given both a party (Liberal) and province (New Brunswick).

It's worth noting that if they had gone with a real (but unrelated) bill and its real congressional sponsor, it could have taken much more time and effort to check its validity. The hoaxers weren't thinking that far ahead, though. Especially considering there are Schnells and bills in two countries. It's also possible that even if they had really tried, it wouldn't have lead to a substantial increase in people who fell for it. With a little tweaking, I would have been more worried as I was looking into it, but I still would have looked into it and discovered it as the hoax it was. It's still fun to think about, though. It had better be since I'm not exactly getting paid to.

Here is the email in its entirety (supplied by DataFellows.com and edited to the one my coworkers got):

Postage will go up the end of June 2002 from 34 cents to 37 cents.
It will be up from 9% to 12% rate increase.

But this isn't all. No more free E-mail! I guess the warnings were
true. Federal Bill 602P wants us to pay 5-cents per E-mail Sent.
It figures! No more free E-mail! We knew this was coming!! Bill
602P will permit the Federal Government to charge a 5-cent
charge on every delivered E-mail. Please read the following
carefully if you intend to stay online and continue using E-mail.

The last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the
Government of the United States attempting to quietly push
through legislation that will affect our use of the Internet.
Under proposed legislation, the US Postal Service will be
attempting to bill E-mail users out of "alternative postage
fees". Bill 602P will permit the Federal Government to charge a
5-cent surcharge on every E-Mail delivered, by billing Internet
Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed
in turn by the ISP.

Washington DC lawyer Richard Stepp is working without pay to
prevent this legislation from becoming law. The US Postal
Service is claiming lost revenue, due to the proliferation of
E-mail, is costing nearly $230,000,000 in revenue per year. You
may have noticed their recent ad campaign: "There is nothing
like a letter." Since the average person received about 10
pieces of E-mail per day in 1998, the cost of the typical
individual would be an additional 50 cents a day - or over $180
per year - above and beyond their regular Internet costs. Note
that this would be money paid directly to the US Postal Service
for a service "they do not even provide".

The whole point of the Internet is democracy and
non-interference. You are already paying an exorbitant price for
snail mail because of bureaucratic efficiency. It currently
takes up to 6 days for a letter to be delivered from coast to
coast. If the US Postal Service is allowed to tinker with
E-mail, it will mark the end of the "free" Internet in the
United States.

Our congressional representative, Tony Schnell (R) has even
suggested a "$20-$40 per month surcharge on all Internet
service" above and beyond the governments proposed E-mail
charges. Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored the
story - the only exception being the Washingtonian - which
called the idea of E-mail surcharge "a useful concept who's time
has come" (March 6th, 1999 Editorial).

Do not sit by and watch your freedom erode away! Send this to
E-mail to EVERYONE on your list, and tell all your friends and
relatives write their congressional representative and say "NO"
to Bill 602P. It will only take a few moments of your time and
could very well be instrumental in killing a bill we do not want
!!!!!"

"SAY NO!!!!!! to BILL 602P"

Eric points to a JSoda post about the Zen Experiment that I read a while back by Dutch sortablogger Adam Curry, saying:

I am very interested in the personal and social affects of TV: as with many of the things I bitch about here, I am concerned with TV as a substitute for real life. That said, like most things, TV in moderation can be diverting, entertaining, educational, even edifying. The key is moderation and selectivity.

It's very difficult to disagree with what he's saying here, and indeed I don't I do want to expound on it, though. What caught my interest with this post is his comments on the "social affects" of television. The general assumption (Zen Experiment was hardly proposing a novel concept) is that television generally has an isolating effect. Eric even (probably unintentionally) reinforces this point by using "diversion" as his first example. I would contend that rather than isolating people, it has done an astounding job of uniting them.

More on that later, but right now let's talk about me!! I've been in the new apartment for two months. When the roommate that watched cable moved out, the two of us that remained chose to cancel our cable service due to the increase in rent that two people pay compared to three. Even more interestingly, I did not even set up the television until two days ago, when someone was coming over and we wanted to watch some movies in the bedroom. The new TV we bought and put downstairs is still not even plugged in. From the way people speak, you would think that I would be less isolated than ever from the world around me. In fact, the opposite is true.

I'm not even talking about the news. I get that from the Internet. I'm talking about the TV shows. The fictional ones that we watch to take us to another time and place where a Democrat is in the White House, chefs can afford spacey apartments in New York City, and the most interesting town in the country is a stateless burg named Springfield. How has my (self-imposed) inability to watch these shows isolated me? Simple. Everyone else has seen them. My former roommate and I used to talk about President Bartlett, Mayor Winston, and those coffee-sipping friends in New York City. An ex-girlfriend and I had our first conversation about Frasier Crane and his family in Seattle.

The idea that television isolates us is a holdover from early technophobes who liked things fine the way they were when they were young, thanks. Many people used to say the same about the Internet a couple years back. Some still do. When I was young and very introverted, the television wasn't my escape from the world, it was my window into it. It allowed me to see things and conversations in a way that I never could before. Was it accurate? Was it real? No, but it was a start. Then the Internet (it was a BBS actually, but functionally the same in this regard) came along and suddenly I could start talking to people who couldn't make snap judgments about my appearence or demeanor. Suddenly, I could talk to a lot more people and become friends. I even started making friends with this wierd species called "girls." I can honestly say that television and the Internet helped me make the transition from an introvert to regular member of society within a year. It gave me a crash course in how other people live. Even if they don't really live like they do on TV or talk like they do on the Internet, it's still instructive.

I must admit, though, that for me personally it can be isolating at times. It had an effect on me. I was a late reader and books never really caught my attention. Television and movies, though, always did. They were also my gates into the world of creativity. I started creating episodes to my favorite serials and sequals to my favorite movies. Eventually I created my own plots with my own characters. Television and movies were my training wheels for what eventually became an hot-rod imagination that has, to date, produced one novel in its polishing stages, half of another novel still in its writing stages, two dozen short stories, three creative editing video productions, and enough ideas to keep me writing for three lifetimes if I completely developed every one of them. Creativity and imagination can become isolating when you spend time in your imaginary worlds instead of the real one. In that sense television has lead to my isolation, but I wouldn't give that back for all the money in the world.

Of course, maybe it would have all happened anyway. Maybe the ex-girlfriend and I would have had a very interesting conversation on the weather that would have compelled me to get her phone number. Is there any denying, though, that television has at least had some affect on bringing this country together? With the advent of television (and, to be fair, radio before it), suddenly citizens from coast to coast are watching the same television shows. People from New York City and Bismarck both know the Ricardos and later the Bunkers and later still the Cosbys. Many believe the electoral college is undemocratic these days. Why? They're looking at the national vote. Why? Presidential are now campaigning on national issues. Why? They are now running national campaigns with issues that transcend the issues of individual states. Why? Television is a big reason. Television isn't distracting us, it's engaging us. It's allowing the illiterate and literate alike a narrative on the world around them.

That is, of course, not to say that television is perfect or entirely beneficial. People watch too much television. Many people don't use it as a launching pad for the imagination or to learn anything new but just as a way of avoidance. We are becoming fat. We are becoming lazy. Our attention spans are getting smaller. These are concerns and they should be taken seriously. As in all things, the television is being abused by both its content suppliers and consumers. However, the idea that the casual watcher is just a more mild sinner than the outright addict is fallacy. Some television is not only not a bad thing, it is a great thing! The idea that we're all addicts unless we can completely turn off the TV misses the point: we have no reason to.

Eric shoots off some thoughts on marriage and cohabitation, citing an American Experiment Quarterly release on the benefits of marriage. I'm certain there are some feminists and ardent bachelors out there who will disagree with validity of the facts AEQ puts out, but I certainly can't disagree with them and applaud Eric for pointing them out. Rather, it's what he had to say about cohabitation that caught my eye:

I also think living together is the only sensible thing to do for people who are considering marriage

This is probably the only part that I strongly disagree with, and I only strongly disagree with the only. My friend Silk has told me that I have got to be the only person in the world who is against pre-marital cohabitation but not pre-marital sex. That's not an entirely accurate description, but my views on the two do seem to be a somewhat contradictory combination of idealism and realism to the point that I rarely preach to others to practice as I would.

I am, generally speaking against premarital cohabitation, but not on moral/ethical grounds as much as practical ones. To be sure, there are a number of practical reasons why two people would move in together before getting married. In theory, it only makes sense. You learn all about the male socks-carpet artistry and female restroom imperialism and can either choose to live with it or not. The argument then goes that couples getting married will then be better prepared for what lies ahead. Logically, it all makes perfect sense. It's the perfect try-before-you-buy argument. Unfortunately, statistics don't support this theory. The truth is that couples that live together are, in fact, more likely to divorce than those that don't live together.

However, I don't live my life according to the statistics of others. Behind every set of statistics there is a set of underlying reasons that may or may not match a study taking at face value. These statistics (often used by pro-marriage groups) suggest that if you love your boyfriend or girlfriend, you should marry rather than move in together because your chances of succeeding will then improve. That is counterintuitive, to say the least, and probably at the very least an incomplete analysis. The questions that immediately pop to my mind are "What kinds of people are more inclined to marry first? What kinds are more inclined to move in first?" The answer to the first question is, of course, marriage-minded people. The answer to the second is, by extention, less married-minded people. So then it becomes circular. Marriage-minded people will marry and likely stick through a marriage through the hard times because it's more important to their sense of identity. The others are more likely to be focused on their autonomous identity and therefore, during hard times (or boring ones), will simply jet. A marriage-minded person will be no less marriage-minded if they cohabitate first, so then the chances of a divorce would theoretically still be lower than non-marriage-minded people. So, by that logic, the cohabitation and divorce are not cause-and-effect but rather both effects of a different cause (the disposition of the participants).

So then, if you're marriage-minded, does it then make sense to go ahead and cohabitate first? Maybe, but quite.

I suspect that a big problem with many cohabitators is that they don't enter the situation with the same ends in mind. It's not a mile on the road to marriage, but rather a pit stop where many cars stall. If there isn't some sort of timeline it's easy to stay there indefinitely or until things fall apart (due to lack of mobility or more substantial problems). In case of a breakup, each of the participants then go into another relation with someone else, with whom they may or may not move in together with. The more partners they have, the more they can compare and contrast and critically evaluate their current roommate as compared to their last. Then a man is more likely to start looking for a woman who cleaned like Mary, would surprise him with midnight sex like Rhonda, cooked like Beth, and was as accomodating as Suzie. Eventually he decides Candace is enough, but during the marriage isn't as accomodating as he could be cause gosh darnit, she could be as patient as Tammy and flexible as Samantha.

This all sounds exceedingly hypothetical and, to be fair, can apply to any aspect of a relationship whether they live together or not. However, what begins to set in is the serialization of the mechanics of marriage. Except for a piece of paper and an oath to god and/or country, what is the procedural difference between cohabitation and marriage (until kids enter the picture)? There isn't terribly much. Marriage is largely symbolic, but the mechanics of it are the socks on the floor and the invasion of cosmetics on the bathroom sink. Many of the large attraction points that make a cohabitational (married or not) so much more poignant than a non-cohabitational one: waking up in the morning with your beloved by your side, opening a can of chicken soup when they are sick, knowing that they will be there when you get home from work or anticipating you being there when they do. It's not all roses of courses, but those are some of the magic moments that keep a relationship together while they adjust to the toilet seat that is up and the clothes that aren't where he's always kept them. As the joys become routinized, so does the nature of the relationship. As they become serialized, it becomes easier to start looking elsewhere.

I've never much cared for divorce statistics. They are, in my view, inherently pessimistic. A successful marriage lasts indefinately while unsuccessful ones can run in succession. If between three brothers, one marries only once, one marries twice, and the other marries five times, the marriage rate between them is 38% (if their final marriages were successful) even though one of them got it right the first time and another the second. My best friend's mother is on her fifth husband. She's a wonderful and very, very family-oriented. At the same time, people who get divorced tend to do so repititiously. If divorce rates were distributed randomly, everyone would marry twice. Instead you get people marrying once and five times. You get many in between, but once a person has divorced, it becomes easier to do it again. And again. Marriage-minded people become disillusioned and become unmarriage-minded. The same, I think, is true of cohabitation except that it's inherently easier to do that even more times because there are less messy legal issues involved. With each one, the marriage they seek (if they seek one) becomes less unique and special on an experiential level. Sometimes spiritual connections run deeper, more apparently however they do not.

There are a number of people who get it right the second time. Eric and my mother are included among them. Eric is obviously (by his post) a marriage-minded person and he and Dawn obviously share a special bond. Therefore, when he said they lived together before getting married my response was not "they shouldn't have done that" or "that means it may not last," because I recognize things do work differently for different people. Some people can rebound several times and come off from serialized cohabitation with a renewed sense of purpose. A lot, I'm interpret many of the statistics to say, apprently do not. Eric and Dawn found each other and hit the jackpot. I'm less inclined to gamble (even while it appears that I am taking a bigger one).

---

Since Eric is open enough to share his experiences, I'll share a little bit of mine. After three years with my ex-girlfriend, I started thinking about our future. I started contemplating an engagement ring, asked her parents for permission to propose and covertly started making plans. Moving in together was not an option, really. It would have actually solved some problems that were actually pushing me into engagement, but for a variety of reasons I looked directly at marriage. It was only then that I could really start to see some of the problems that we had (and that I had when I was with her). The more I contemplated, the more doubtful I became. We rarely ever argued and to this day are good friends, but if we had gotten married I know it wouldn't have worked out. If we had moved in together, I wouldn't have realized it so starkly. I might have shuffled in, one step at a time, to a perilous marriage and subsequent and painful divorce. For me, marriage was a leap of faith and it was not one I was willing to take, and the wondering why lead me to some answers that an easier transition would not have revealed until it was too late.

After the end of our fourth year, we split up. She has been with a mutual friend for over a year and he is right for her in many of the ways I wasn't. It's been a slightly more rough transition for me, but I am optomistic about my future and experiencing all the things I have yet to experience.

Eric Olson briefly registers his opposition to profiling on the grounds that Richard Reid and Jose Padilla weren't muslims. Well, Reid himself looks like he could be, but Padilla certainly doesn't and he still has a point. The danger of racial profiling is that the Islamists will find people who are not Arab to start doing their dirtywork. Additionally, there seems to be something inherently unAmerican (and, probably, unconstitutional) about narrowing the random searches to a single ethnicity. I would go further to say that while it may not be unconstitutional, the entire idea of random full-body searches seems unAmerican. However, I'm at a loss as to make alternative suggestions and it's clear that we must do something. So, if we're going to do this, why don't we do it right? Must we also search Vice President Gore and Congressman Dingle just so we can search Ahmed and Asaad? Maybe so, but it sure does seem like a waste of resources. Even so, if we check one out of ten people, that means we're only checking 1 out of 10 Arabs, and a fraction of those the most likely culprits (young Arab male). Do we check everyone? Even if possible, that would require an awful lot of resources, but it's also the only way we could check everyone that seems suspicious with impugnity. That's what it comes down to. If someone looks suspicious to airport security, they ought to be able to check him freely without having to worry about being sued. Most people who are suspicious are going to be Arab, which leads us right back to checking everyone or profiling. The first highly impractical and the second deemed unethical. That means we've got to try to find another way that doesn't involve intrusive full-searches. Until we do, however...

We can't ignore the demographics of what we're up against. The most likely culprits are Arab. All the political correctness in the world won't stop that. As Eric points out, though, they are not all Arab. Is that, however, sufficient reason not to resort to profiling? I'm not convinced that it is. We can't hold on to our freedoms and apply any fail-safe plan to contact this. What we can do, however, is apply various methods that will make their job harder. If we can stop them from using Arabs, we will have gone a long way to obstructing ambitious plots like 9-11. We will largely disqualify many of their most experienced personnel and they will have to resort to rejects like Padilla. Can you imagine them finding 20 such men (that are not rejects) for their next mission? I can't. We shouldn't stop at Arab men, as they will branch out and use whoever else they can. Most of them will be Arab, though. Most of them will be young. Almost all of them will be men. I fit two of the three criteria and if I was chosen for a full search on that basis, I would be much less inclined to object than if I was pulled aside randomly while more likely culprits are let through.

I'm still not comfortable with the idea of intrusive searches of anyone without some sort of probable cause. However, since most of the culprits are going to be Arab, young, and male, why not look there first?

FOLLOW-UP: Olson does agree with Michelle Cottle that it's associations (religious in this case) that determine likelyhood of being a terrorist. While that's true, it is impractical in regards to airport searches where you may not be able to tell whether or not they are Muslim, much less a radical. I don't they they wear "ALL NON-MUSLIMS ARE INFIDELS" T-shirts. We could probably employ some sort of service for constant domestic surveillance of Muslims and radicals, and that might be a good idea for organizations we can prove to be radical, but I don't know that this is an either-or situation and that monitoring its organizations so closely that we know whenever any one of them is going on a plane is particularly practical or desirable.

A RAWbservers reader (well, one of my best friends, but if I say "reader" it makes me sound bigger) sent me this article from The Independent. The lede:

Nine months after the attacks of 11 September, leading American political cartoonists say they are under intense pressure to conform to a patriotic stereotype and not criticise the actions of Mr Bush and his "war on terror". Those who refuse to bend to such pressure face having their work rejected, being fired or even publicly humiliated by the President's press secretary.

So basically, they're saying that if they write things that people overwhelmingly disagree with, they may not be supported by said disagreeing public. If they say mean things about the President, they might get [SHOCK] attacked by the president's press secretary. What kind of times are we living in?

It reminds me of how when after 9-11, a number of people were shouting that America deserved what it got and if it defended itself it would be just as bad (neigh, worse) than the terrorists. Then, when people shouted back they claimed that people were trying to censor them. Do they have any idea what censorship really is? Losing one's job for one's political belief or statements could be considered censorship. When someone is so out of step with a publications readership, is this such a terrible thing? I remember a couple years back that a New York shock jock lost his job when he made a joke about the James Byrd dragging incident. This could qualify as censorship, but I don't recall anyone coming to his defense or complaining about politically correct totalitarianism. I'm certain there were, but they didn't get very much press and were never taken seriously. John Rocker, whose job (and ability to perform that job) was not related by his racially insensitive topics, was nonetheless run out of Atlanta for sounding off to Sports Illustrated.

I can imagine in the 1970's a cartoonist who has always written racist material suddenly dumbfounded that the cartoons that made him popular before the civil rights movement were suddenly making people mad at him and being denounced by the president. "My black maid won't even speak to me anymore!" he'd complain, evoking the charge of censorship.

The article, of course, mentions Bill Mahar and Ari Fleishman's comments that people should "watch what they say." Is that totalitarianism? Mahar made some stupid comments (that he even later said he didn't mean), people objected and voiced their objections, and... nothing ended up happening. Mahar faced the threat of losing his show, but not because of censorship of the governments part but because of lack of advertisers. Companies didn't want to be associated with his comments or his show. Isn't that their right? Or should everyone be forced to support causes, personalities, and statements they disagree with? Should I keep buying the Houston Chronicle if, time and time again, they denigrated my views and myself for holding them?

Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury) survived the Reagan years. Ted Rall, perhaps the epitome of the offensive columnist, is still published in many places (despite not even being funny). Aaron Magruder (Boondocks)and Tom Tomorrow (This Modern World) are probably not going anywhere since they, unlike Rall and Trudeau, are actually entertaining. Many of these cartoonists are entertaining only if you agree with what they are saying.

One cartoon is described as Bush planes flying into the WTC entitled "Social" and "Security." Is this supposed to be humorous? Of course not. Is it really supposed to make you think? Does it make a very large point or take something and put a new slant on it? Not really. It merely (and lazily) depends on the reader to agree to a corrolation between our president and the terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans. Most people don't see the connection, don't like the comparison, and objected. They believe that the Administration (read: Americans) is not its own worst enemy. Rather, America's worst enemies aren't Americans at all, but rather the freedom-hating terrorists that have sworn our destruction.

Others, including many of the cartoonists, believe that the enemy comes from within. They believe that we are a totalitarian state waiting to happen, a nation that starves its poor, and creating hatred abroad by supporting dictators abroad and (over)zealously defending itself. Calling them "unpatriotic" would not be inaccurate. It's only now that patriotism is popular that suddenly being labelled unpatriotic is tantamount to censorship.

Robin Gerber may have a point about how the education system steers men towards one career and women towards another. Despite the progress that has been made, how many counsellers will look at a young man and say "I'll bet he'll make a great elementary school teacher!" or a young woman and say "She has 'auto mechanic' written all over her!" Gerber, however, undermines her entire point by choosing the worst possible examples and bullyworking the exact counterargument (it's all about personal choice) she seeks to rebut. As an example, she points to the fact that nearly all cosmetologists are men. Of course, that could be a product of a generational predisposition being perpetuated by reinforcing stereotypes... but come on now. Most guys who don't perform rarely wear makeup. Most women everywhere do. For every cosmetologist that work with performers, there are ten that work with beauty salons. At the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, I doubt I am going on a limb to say that an overwhelming majority of the clientelle of your average salon are women.

I used to work at a Supercuts as a sweeper and receptionist. The only mail hair-dresser there was a gay man. One might be able to argue that is due to gender bias in vocational training, but isn't the more obvious culprit that women are more concerned with personal appearence? There are of course many vain men out there but women, even non-vain ones, still spend much more time in front of a mirror prettying themselves up. You could argue that this is another example of cultural influence, but even if this is the case doesn't that mean that the "problem" extends far beyond school counsellers and our education system?

Guys, on the other hand, are more instinctively interested in how things works. Whenever I help a guy friend or coworker with his computer problems, he is much more likely to ask questions. The girl friends I help merely want it to work. These are people relatively uninfluenced by the vocational training Gerber describes as they are not IT professionals. Again, it may be cultural. Again, that really doesn't matter when it comes to the way Gerber wishes to attack the problem.

There are, of course, those women that are interested in mechanics. One friend of mine likes to refurbished broken down classic cars. There were certainly a lot of female techies-in-training at the UH College of Technology. Nothing was stopping them from pursuing computers because that's what they want to do. Maybe they weren't pushed into it like some of the men were, but they were certainly not held back. The answer, then, is not to tell counsellers to tell women to be mechanics and men to be cosmotologists, but rather to encourage people to think for themselves.

The idea that there is a systemic bias against girls becoming plumbers is foolish. Those who skip college to go into the workforce or vocational school ought to do what they are most comfortable doing. Even if the reason they are comfortable due to some abstract cultural suggestion. They have more important concerns than being trailblazers for a political cause that is of far more concern to champaigne liberals than the people it is purported to benefit.

The Nation and David Corn get so much wrong, I feel obligated to applaud them for getting something right. Corn debunks a number of theories regarding 9/11 including the McKinney theory and that wacko French book. A rather disturbing thought is that if Clinton were still president, there would be a number of folks on the right that would believe Clinton was behind it to burnish his legacy or something. Hopefully most of the reputable righties would just stress Clinton's incompetence (which they are doing now to a lesser extent). It's still something uncomfortable to think about.

"Did you do any fornicating this weekend?" -Richard M. Nixon, 1977

Newsmax reports that Gore campaign aide Chris Lahane attributes the popular vote going the Gore way to the 11th hour DWI charge levied against Bush. Dick Morris agrees. I've always thought that was at least a factor in the Gore surge, though I attribute Gore's victory more to the stellar Democratic turnout that I don't think many were expecting. In any case, Newsmax demands an apology. They point out, quite correctly, that the information was held by the Gore campaign and Democrats until the last minute so that it would have the effect that it presumably had.

C'mon, boys. Aren't we the ones that constantly stress the importance of personal responsibility? Did the Democrats use the information for maximum political gain? Probably, but I honestly wouldn't expect the Republicans do to much differently. That's not the issue, though. It would be one thing if the charges were unsubstantiated. However, they were documented fact. So do we blame the ones who handled a damaging charge to deliver the most damage, or do we blame the one who was guilty of the charges levied and was not upfront about it? It's not a very difficult judgment.

When the news broke, I was eating dinner with a couple colleagues with the Houston Review. Republicans and/or conservatives all of us. We were furious not with the Gore team, but rather with the Bush team. What took place in October was the cultivation of a serious series of errors in judgment. Obviously Bush screwed up with the DWI. However, the American public proved its willingness to forgive by all but ignoring probably cocaine use by Bush in his younger days. The more serious and substantial mistake, that paved the way for the damaging allegation's delivery, was the Bush team's refusal to go forward with it before hand. If Karl Rove didn't know about it, he should have. Every presidential campaign manager ought to know the dirt on his employer, even if it requires an independent investigation. They investigated all the potential VP picks even though ultimately none of them were chosen.

There are a lot of apologies due to those of us who supported Bush and had to deal with the last minute news and possible loss, but it's not the Gore team that owes us the apology.

AudioGalaxy has sold us out. What a bummer. About a year ago I lost all my mp3's and, via AudioGalaxy, I replaced my then-2,000 mp3 collection in the matter of a couple weeks. I'm up to about 6,000, including predominantly small and unsigned artists. Many of whom probably wouldn't even mind being on AudioGalaxy. That doesn't matter, though. Independent artists that aren't interested in being signed (under record company terms) are as surely an enemy of of the record companies as the services that give away their music.

Damn.

Andrew Sullivan complains that installing the most recent update of IE caused his home page to be the MSN site instead of his own. I wrote a special web page solely for the purpose of being my home page when I open it up. It seems like every time I install something net-related they ask to change my site. I'm generally on top of the ball but every so often I'll forget to uncheck the box or it won't even ask. It's annoying and a reason to hate Bill Gates (do we really need another), but suck it up, Andrew! It's easy to fix. Over. And. Over. Again.

Slate's Emily Nussbaum has an interesting column on online personals. I must confess to having used them before. I had moderate success with it (depending on your definition). I do believe that the stigma of meeting people online is overblown. The key is that people approach it honestly. They don't inflate their expectations or hopes and just see what happens. It works that way in offline meetings, too.

Eric Raymond of Armed'n'Dangerous has an outstanding post on the disturbing questions raised by the church scandal about homosexuality. I initially dismissed Eberstadt's article in the Weekly Standard as a reactionary interpretation of the facts specially aligned in order to fit a pre-concieved idea of homosexuality. Raymond raises some good questions that the public at large, myself included, are reluctant to confront.

He makes the obvious point that among gay men (though not lesbians), there is a chic for young-looking men. This does not mean that all or most want to have sex with children, but rather that the prevailing standard of attractiveness lends itself to younger looking men. This is obviously not unheard of in the heterosexual world. However, despite the media glamorization of youthful sexuality, pedophilia is less common statistically among heterosexuals. Could it be that the same thing that wires people homosexual also wires them more likely to be pedophiles? Could it be that there is something genetic in homosexuals to make them more dangerously interested in the younger lot? Is there something that makes them predatory? Raymond doesn't suggest this to be the case, but Eberstadt certainly does.

I reject it.

To explain why, let's look within the priest subsection of the gay community. Surely, if homosexuals are comparitively more likely to be pedophilic predators than heteros, homosexual priests are more likely to be than the gay public at large. The question is 'why?' Perhaps the priesthood attracts perverts. Perhaps Raymond and Andrew Sullivan are right that the celibate nature of the endeavor lends itself to attracting the sexual confused and troubled or even confuses and troubles normal people after a prolonged period of time. They both might be somewhat right, but I honestly don't believe that it is limited to the priesthood or even homosexuality itself. Might it rather be the dissonance between the mores of their environment and their sex drives? The only culture that comes to mind as sexually rigid as Catholicism is fundamentalist Islam. It's worth noting that pedophilia is much more common and public in the Middle East and other culturally conservative societies than it is here. Men and boys walk hand in hand. American troops complained of sexual advances by Middle Easterners during their service.

Is there any way to prove it? I don't have the data in front of me, but it doesn't take much observation to collect empirical evidence. What heterosexual men are most likely to be pedophiles? In many cases, it's those that are rejected sexually by our environment. The stereotypical child-porn case is generally overweight and nerdy. Generally, they are undersexed and socially awkward. It is by no means limited to this profile, but this certainly seems to be one case where the stereotype fits. People who are rejected by those their society suggests they become involved with, they will naturally look elsewhere. Some will look at girls. Some will refuse to take no for an answer because they've heard it one too many times. Some don't want to risk it in the first place.

Consider, for a moment, a couple movies that come to mind. One you've probably seen and one you probably haven't. I'll start with the former. In the award-winning film American Beauty, Kevin Spacey is a father in an unsatisfying marriage to a screw. When he busts out of his cultural cage, he does so in the form of a young friend of his daughter's. It is consensual and therefore not comparable to the cases of the priests, but it certainly strikes against the norms. Indeed, he had little to gain from the relationship to begin with except a brief reprieve from sexual frustration. Feeling already alienated from his surroundings, the distinction between an "unacceptable" sexual act, such as an tryst with someone approximately his age, and a "very unacceptable" sexual act, such as a tryst with an underage girl, became blurred. There is a parallel subplot with a similar theme in the movie. He was already playing out of bounds, what's a few more feet further out?

In the movie Happiness, the viewer sees a character that is married with a child descend into sexual depravity in the most dark manner. The character's depravity is well-explored, but the source of it is not. He is apparently impotent when it comes to his (generally attractive) wife. He has a mildly feminine demeanor and strikes the viewer as a somewhat compassionate man. Then he rapes a pre-pubescent young boy. That the writer made him sympathetic and place him in an unhappy and unfulfilling domestic situation is unlikely an accident. Rather it fits a broader pattern that seems familiar to most viewers. We are apalled, naturally, but on some level we feel pity for him (though not as much as for his victim). It isn't very much a stretch to consider the character a homosexual in a place where homosexuality is strongly discouraged (upper class suburbs). At some point he married and entrenched himself in a situation that lead to great sexual frustration. Eventually, being a weak person, the dam burst and he descended into the monsterous acts that were his undoing. By being homosexual in a heterosexual environment, he would already cross the line of acceptability to the "very unacceptable" range by cheating on his wife with another man. Already well out of bounds, what's a few more feet further out?

Let me be very clear that while the case of the character in Happiness evokes pity, it does not condone or excuse his behavior. A close friend of mine was sexually assaulted not very long ago and I've watched first-hand all that's involved in the rebuilding process after something like that happens. The young boy in the movie will likely not be the same again and the character deserves to rot in hell. I shouldn't have to say that, but I want to make sure that I draw a distinction between explaining how something occurs and proclaiming it natural or acceptable. Many who are in the same situation never come close to doing what he did, so his weakness is a much greater culprit than is his social and sexual alienation. Now back to the point at hand.

American Beauty struck a chord with Americans because on one level or another they could connect with Spacey's character, the central role of the film. Happiness never found an audience due largely to the extent of the sexually depraved content. Many men likely related to Spacey's unhappy marriage, his screwish wife, and his fantasies of the young girl nearly being realized. Most men, of course, do not actually pursue the young girls, but there is likely a corrolation between those who are not happy in their marriages and those men that find Brittany Spears more desirable than Nicole Kidman. In some cases, of course, pedophilia is the cause. In many, it might be the effect of continued denial of sexual urges over a long period of time. Spears might symbolize an escape to a time where they were more sexually active (or theoretically should have been or would like to do it all over again and be so). She is also wonderfully out of reach and therefore an innocent fantasy. Not only will they never have a chance at Brittany, they will never have a chance at anyone like Brittany. That way, they remain the faithful husband living in their sexual fantasies. If they started looking at women their own age, that might be more obtainable therefore they are counterintuitively more dangerous thoughts. Most of the these fantasies are innocent and never lead to anything. In some weak people or those under more stress they can bear, they may have disastrous results.

So what does this all mean? How does it relate to the priest scandals? Homosexuals are, by and large, under more sexual stress than are normal people. They constitute less than 5% of the population and therefore have a smaller pool of partners to choose from. However, those that live in high gay-concentrated areas would then be less likely to be frustrated and therefore less likely to be socially depraved. Gays in the suburbs, while usually not emulating the rapist in Happiness, are going to have a tougher time of it and therefore are proportionately more likely to be trouble. In other words, a morally weak and sexually frustrated gay in San Fransisco may be able to control himself where a morally weak and sexually frustrated gay in suburban or rural America would be more likely to succumb and become a threat to society. A morally weak and sexually frustrated gay in the priesthood, then, not only must deal with their private demons but are also placed in a culture where the release of the sexual frustration is clear and dangerous.

So what, if anything, does this mean policy-wise? Well, as far as the priest scandal is concerned, it suggests that the celibacy requirement is contributing to the problem. It also suggests that having homosexual priests creates a problem because it makes them that much further removed sexually from their culture. Some can handle it, others cannot. As these are matters of faith and not cold practicality, I'll let the theory speak for itself and avoid making suggestive conclusions as to what specific measures would be most beneficial for the church. It does present a disturbing conclusion as to whether or not homosexual Boy Scouts leaders are a threat. The Boy Scouts are generally a suburban and rural enterprise, and those who are gay are more likely to be frustrated and therefore proportionately more likely to be a problem than their heterosexual counterparts of the other gender. I've generally opposed the Boy Scouts policy, but this puts it in a new light. I will have to think about it further.

It does suggest, however, that the creation of so-called gay communities is a positive development rather than a negative one in regards to gross depravity such as pedophilia and child abuse. It also suggests that as gays become more prominant and less stigmatized, the incidents of gay pedophilic activity with likely begin to fall as they become more comfortable and less defensive about their sexual identities. There is still the so-called "pedophilic chic" of the gay community which is more prevalent there than in mainstream society. However, that may be as misleading as current vogue of anorexic women that the media throws at us when, poll after poll, men honestly prefer women with a little bit of meat on them. That, however, is another post entirely.

I had a busy weekend so wasn't able to post anything for father's day. Most of what I have to say on him has already been said a million times by a million people. He was my little league coach for several years, he was my tutor when I was a problem student, and he was always there when I needed him. I could go on, but instead of taking this day to talk about my love for him, I'll find a time when something truly special comes to mind and I'll say it when the feeling really comes to me, rather than in an obligatory post. That being said, I do want to share a few thoughts.

I take primarily after my mother (and my brother after my father). Anyone who looks at my mom and I can see that, except my hair and eyes, I am her son. Anyone who spends time talking to us can tell pretty quickly who I take after. My dad and brother are engineers. I work with computers, but my passion is writing and my mom was the editor of the local newsletter for several years. You get the idea. My relationship with my father has always been quite good, though. Perhaps because we compliment each other quite well (the same way mom compliments him). Occasionally, though, something will jump out at me and remind me that I am still, in many ways, like him. My mom tells me that we both brood. Neither of us are extremely outgoing (though I more than he). Still, though, he's generally a math person and I an English person.

It wasn't always this way. When I was young, I was going to be an engineer like him because my math scores were always higher than my English scores. I was a terrible reader. As I got older and became a better writer, I let my math skills go. Math went from being my best subject to one of my worst (next to science). By the time I graduated, I never wanted to take another math course again. I do enjoy a good puzzle, though, and I like to figure things out.

I was talking to my friend Polly today. She's trying to lose some weight and she was talking about her body fat percentage. I took PE in college and remembered a few numbers. Since then I've lost about 30 lb. and I wanted to know how much my percentage has gone down. I remembered some of the numbers but not others. I could have just looked the formula up, but I wanted to see if I could figure it out with what I remembered. I ended up spending half an hour plugging in numbers to see if I could figure the formula out.

I can imagine my mom watching me, wondering what the heck I am doing. Why not just look it up? Why waste time trying to figure out a math formula can can be obtained anywhere? Why? Because I am my father's son, too.

Apparently, Salon's romance advice columnist Cary Tennis is a fellow Typologist. Neato!

The New York Times is unquestionably the most influential paper in the country. As I was searching though the headlines on the web site, a thought occured to me. What if someone was reading the New York Times and was oblivious to all other news sources? Let's say a college student from 2102 was doing some research and chose to stick to the NYT archives. One thing that definitely occurs to me is that that this person would be absolutely dumbfounded to discover that Bush is most popular president in recent memory. They would see headlines that would continually insinuate that Bush is in trouble, his programs are unpopular, he is in this jam or that jam. The Times is running these headlines with Bush's popularity ratings hovering around 70%. Imagine, for a moment, that these numbers stick. Imagine further that he wins. The poor befuddled college students would read headlines such as:

"Bush's Popularity Among Conservatives Waning" (NYT, 3/8/04)
"Republican divided on Bush selling the out yet again" (NYT, 4/1/04)
"Bush squeaks through the primaries" (NYT, 5/4/04)
"Bush in danger of losing Massachusetts, Maryland" (NYT, 6/10/04)
"New scandal rocks Bush Administration, could hurt campaign (NYT, 7/8/04)
"Last months scandal on Bush having lingering effects, support waning" (NYT, 8/7/04)
"Esteemed Harvard professors criticize Bush for being stupid" (NYT, 9/10/04)
"Esteemed Harvard professors criticize Bush for being deceptively smart, evil" (NYT, 10/7/04)
"Bush voted down by 34% of Americans, wins election anyway" (NYT, 11/3/04)
"Bush urged to move to center to appease those who hate him" (NYT, 12/5/04)
"Bush sworn in despite losing black vote, six states" (NYT, 1/19/04)
"Bush now lame duck" (NYT, 2/5/04)

Just a thought...

Shortly after 9-11, The Onion wrote the following article:

U.S. Urges Bin Laden To Form Nation It Can Attack
WASHINGTON, DC? Speaking via closed-circuit television from the Oval Office Monday, President Bush made a direct plea to Osama bin Laden to form a nation the U.S. can attack. "Whether you take over an existing nation like Afghanistan or create a new breakaway republic called, say, Osamastan, the important thing is that you establish an identifiable nation-state with an army, a capital, and clearly defined borders," Bush said. "Maybe you could also sign some quick treaties to definitively establish who your allies are." The president then pledged $600 million to bin Laden for the construction of a state-of-the-art defense headquarters that the U.S. can bomb.

There is a lot of discussion about the temperary or permanent creation of a Palestinian state. It seems like where all this is supposed to be headed. William Safire makes a compelling case for why this is a bad idea (thanks to Jon Osterman for this one):

1. Statehood, even if qualified as provisional or interim, confers a degree of sovereignty. That means control of borders, the ability to make treaties, and to import arms from Iraq and by sea from Iran.
2. Partial statehood would give Arafat control of an airport. A plane loaded with fuel or explosives could hit a major Tel Aviv building within three minutes, too quickly for Israeli jets to scramble. Ritual condemnation would follow.
3. Any form of statehood would limit Israel's ability to search out bomb factories and arrest terrorist leaders. What is now a tolerable sweep into disputed territory would be denounced in the U.N. as invasion pure and simple. That would trigger European economic boycotts and draw Arab allies into a wider war.
Why, then, offer Arafat's autocracy this pre-emptive prize? State Department Arabists claim it would show "movement" away from solid Bush support for Israel and, in the still-dovish Shimon Peres's phrase, offer a "political horizon" to Palestinians. But some of us see recognition of an unreformed P.L.O. as offering a taste of triumph to jihadists from Netanya to New York.

What I mostly pulled from the article is the sense that we were merely setting up a state for the sole purpose of giving someone Israel to go to war with. It's hard to imagine how a war would not occur under these circumstances.

One again, life imitates Onion.

The Prof points out this Post article which talks about an alliance between U.S. Christian conservatives (and the Administration) and moderate and hard-line Muslims teaming up against abortion and for the family. When they caution that they view the fundamentalist Muslims as "allies" and not "friends," it's amazing that the reporters could hear them as they spoke out of their posterior orifices.

Where the United States and Sudan agree, we agree. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut from time to time. Even Sudan can be right in opposing certain UN charters that the Administration also opposes. So, when it comes to a UN declaration that makes of abortion rights as an international mandate, we can vote the same way because we happen to agree. Let's just be as quiet about that agreement as possible.

While there is indeed a strong case to be made that Muslims and fundamentalist Christians can be allies in the name of faith over atheism and values over amorality, any Christian who thinks the governments of Sudan and Iraq are even allies are out of their minds. Sudan's enslavement of Christians is well-documented, not to mention the atrocities they have committed in the name of faith. Actually, let's go ahead and mention it. These are people who have consistently used their faith not as an olive branch, but as a hammer to smash from existence anyone who opposes their ideas (which includes, might I point out, Christians). Even the most proselytizing Christians are overzealously seeking souls to save. One of the cheif tenets of Christianity is forgiveness. To the fundamentalist Muslims we are not teaming up with, we are beyond redemption. There is no olive branch, only the hammer that remains hidden behind their cloak solely because they know it is not big enough to smash us. Saying that fundamentalist Christians and radical Muslims are on the same side is like saying that the United States and Nazi Germany should have been friends because they both support the notion of family and are basically Christian nations.

There are, of course, more moderate facets of Islam that Christians can perhaps find some common ground with. Unfortunately, by refusing to discriminate between moderate Muslims and their radical counterparts, the fundamentalist organizations in the article are implicitly endorsing the latter as legitimate. While moderate and radical Muslims are both wrong in the eyes of Christianity, from a tactical standpoint there is much more to be lost by dealing with Islamist regimes with which our nation is at war with. Presumably we are overlooking our differences of faith because it is beneficial to the causes we mutually support. Even leaving aside the stark differences of ideas of family between the fundamentalists in the US and the government of Iran, they are not helping the cause. They are solidifying the association of religion, faith, and family with the Islamist hammer and not the Christian olive branch.

It is in spite of, not because of, these kinds of Christians that I am one.

According to Wired, Wal-mart is going to offer Microtel PC's with Lindows (a version of Linux that can run Windows applications). This is good news for Lindows, but the jury is still out on whether or not it's good for Linux. Reports that I've heard are that Lindows is not all it's cracked up to be and that they are not as far along as they have claimed. I've no personal experience with Lindows, but I've heard this from people who are general Linux boosters and are in the Windows-should-be-worried-about-Linux camp. The problem with a premature release is that people may try it out, have a lot of trouble with it, and then swear off Linux forever because they were dealing with an incomplete product. Linux has done an amazing job of catching up interface-wise, but they still lag behind.

My experience with Linux is that most of their releases are further behind than the boosters generally think. They test-run their products on people familiar with Linux so that when someone unfamiliar tries it out, they are more likely to get hung up. Linux is a great OS functionally, but they have a ways to go insofar as user interface is concerned. Many in the Linux community know this, but others are afficionados who don't understand what the big deal with simple user interface is. In their thinking, functionality is far more important. That's all true enough, but if Linux's goals are to take out Windows or become competitive, they are going to have to deal with a lot of blissfully ignorant users. Can Linux hold on to its functionality and become easier to use? Time will tell.

I've changed the name of the sight from "RAW Musings" to "RAWbservations" when I discovered "ESR Musings" which I am very, very loosely connected to:

I used to write for the Houston Review with and under Derek Copold, who is now the co-editor of The Texas Mercury. Though I don't know him personally, Barton Wong wrote occasionally for the Review and writes regularly for the Mercury. He also writes for a web site called Enter Stage Right, which has a blog called... you guessed it, ESR Musings.

So, for the sake of avoiding confusion and so that no one things I intentionally lifted the name, I'll just go ahead and change it now, before the tip jar I don't have makes me a bazillionaire.

The Hoosier Review points out this article about a book on education that states:

The increase in numbers appears to have reduced the average quality of a university education
...
A first crucial point is that education is a ?positional good?: that is, getting yourself tagged for high wages is not just about being educated, it is also about being better educated than the next man. To some extent, education is a race: if everybody runs faster, that may be good in itself, but it does not mean that more people can finish in the top 10%. In that sense, much of the extra effort may be wasted. In weighing the social benefits of higher spending on education against the cost, this needs to be borne in mind.

I remember several years back, Clinton and Gore suggested that we should make the first two years of college as mandatory as high school. Even though I was more liberal then than I am now, I remember asking myself "why?"

Now, it would be one thing if the two years were spent learning a trade. Generally, though, the first two years are largely spent in English, Social Studies, and Science courses with a minimal time spent on more specialized pursuits. While the argument could be made that Americans should know more of these things than they do, what they ignore in high school they will ignore in college. The net effect is that a 2-year degree becomes just as valuable as a high school degree is now except that it takes people out of the workforce two more years and costs a lot of money. A lot of employers use college degrees as filters. The general thinking is that if you are smart and diligent enough to get a degree, then you are better than the next man who didn't make it through. However, the more people have it, the more higher degrees will be expected to use as filters. It becomes a cycle.

I went to college and majored in IT and it's certainly helped me. However, given a four year apprenticeship I would probably be more qualified to do what I do than I presently am. In fact, many employers seem to agree. The demand right now is for higher-paying experienced professionals over recent college graduates. What got me my job was not my degree, but the 18 months I worked for a computer reseller in night operations. My industry is the exception, though. It's one of the few technical ones where you don't have to go to college to enter it. Now, when it comes time for promotions, graduates stand a very good change of passing over their more qualified peers because of that valuable piece of paper. The piece of paper is valuable, of course, because not everyone has it. When they do, we'll have to go back for more school to have a heads up on the competition. The cycle continues.

All of this would be good if it made for more qualified employees, but as mentioned above I doubt that it does. We need engineers and engineers need extensive education. We need auto mechanics and auto mechanics don't. It doesn't seem wise to insist on artificially narrowing the educational requirements of the very different fields.

In HR's comment section, "Steve" writes:

Definitely. The more those darn poor people get, the less there is for the good middle class folks. Class mobility sucks! They need to stay poor so we can afford our burgers.

Like Josh said, if the economy were completely zero-sum in the way you describe, then we would see no more expansion in the world's wealth since 1900 than something quasi-proportional to the population growth. It's a bit more complicated than that.

On the first point, the poor people are most likely to get the shaft under this system. They are least likely to be able to afford even nominal higher education and the most penalized by any system where 15 grades were universal (instead of 13) because even if they didn't have to pay the tuition at the local community college, they'd still have to pay for the books and living expenses that wouldn't be so problematic if they had a job as a journeyman somewhere. The middle class, on the other hand, can much more easily afford college, going through the motions, and coming out with a piece of paper much more valuable than the hands-on experience of their lower class peers.

On the second, I do agree that we should try to encourage education for those that it would truly benefit. Our false assumption now is that it benefits everyone when it clearly doesn't. Do you care if your plumber or auto mechanic is familiar with Kafka?

Thank God I live in America. Any time I hear about how our civil liberties are crumbling, I've always been compelled to ask "compared to what?" My word, this country thinks it's censorship if people shout back at you when you say something controversial. In Australia, they face "racial vilification trials" for calling a culture "the most primitive on Earth."

Tres Producer Eric Olsen wrote a lengthy response to my post below about teenage mothers (aptly titled "HOORAY TEENAGE MOTHERS"):

Absolutely nothing against Alex, but I have to say I don't agree. I say unmarried teenage girls
1) shouldn't have sex
2) if they do, they should use every means of birth control available to them
3) if this fails and they get pregnant and don't want to marry the father (and this means they would have chosen to marry this person even if they weren't pregnant) or the father doesn't want to marry them: get the abortion. This is what I would suggest to my 18 year-old daughter.

I agree with #1, might agree with #2, and disagree with #3.

1) In a perfect world, this would be the case. This is not a perfect world. However, #'s 2 & 3 do make it practical because if (read: when) they don't do #1 they have a way out. My problem with the conservative movement, as mentioned below, is that they don't provide them a way out that isn't demonized. They can either have an abortion and be labeled "irresponsible and/or evil" or not have an abortion and be labeled merely "irresponsible." It's no wonder many make the choices that they do. That isn't directly a response to Eric, but at least giving him credit for having a response to when #1 ultimately fails.

2) It depends by what he means as "birth control." He explicitly states that he is against using abortion as birth control. So he's saying that he is in favor of condoms, diaphrams, and birth control pills. Me too. The question is what happens if that fails, which brings us to...

3) First off, I am glad that Eric qualifies his statement with "if they're not going to get married." That's a start. That assumes he at least allows for a young couple that is in love to keep the child and stay within his moral paradigm. There we agree. I believe (and have explored moral context of this subject intensely) what except in rare circumstances, the guy is obliged to marry the woman. Eric was in a situation where a girl he did not love was pregnant and he was relieved that she had an abortion, though not entirely comfortable with the entire experience. He quite rightly refers to it as a mistake. I see it as one, too, but one that many, many have made. Unfortunately, once the pregnancy occurs, I believe abortion is compounding the mistake. Two wrongs, in my view, don't make a right.

Which is, in the end, what it really comes down to. Eric explains how he views personhood of the unborn. He says:

I do not believe a fetus is a person. I believe a fetus is a potential person in a three-way equation: fetus + mother + time=baby. There is no baby without all three.

I believe it is a potential person as well. I also agree that the further along the fetus is, the more of a person it becomes. However, once the ball gets rolling on that, I place more value on the potential than he does. To me, the glass is a quarter full under the fawcett and filling. To him, the glass is three-quarters empty and therefore you can remove it without losing a full glass of water. Then it becomes a comparitive question of when the benefits of removing the glass outweigh the... okay, this metaphor has gone too far.

Seriously, though, it does become a question of whether or not more is being lost potential-wise by keeping or discarding the fetus. He sees the potential of the parents being frittered away. Relating to his own experience, if the young lady had kept the baby, he might have married her, never met his current wife, etc. etc. I've thought a lot about "what would have happened if I hadn't made this mistake?" and the question of, if I could go back in time 10 years what would I tell myself. Would I warn myself not to fall for Ora* cause she was only going to hurt me? Well, if I hadn't fallen for Ora I never would have met Velvet, who changed my world for the much better. If I had struggled harder to save the relationship with Velvet, would I be the person that I am today?

If the baby had been kept and Eric would have stuck with her, it's very possible they would have had a happy ending. Or not. Maybe they would have gotten a divorce and ended up meeting Dawn and marrying her anyway. It's impossible to say. What is possible to say, by taking the path that he did, the potential child never actualized. Whether his or her parents would have been happy or divorced; whether he'd been attractive and charismatic or overweight and shy; whether she'd been queen of the prom or a bookworm who liked the read poetry surrounded by incense, life is invariably better to me than never having lived it. He won't be any of those things. She will never be whatever she was created to become and would have become without termination. That, to me, is impossible to ignore and nearly impossible to rectify.

*- Obviously not her real name, but I wanted to maintain privacy but still be able to talk about multiple exes and this seemed the most practical way of doing it.

When I first started this blog, it was mostly going to be an attempt to see if I could get it going. I wasn't expecting visitors or linkups until Jon Osterman surprisingly dug up one of my early posts and kindly reproduced it for his audiences. Since then several others have done me the honor. Now that The Prof has, there's no turning back. So I've added an email link to the left. I'll set up a bio soon. Till then, check out the playful one I've got with No-Lyfe Productions.

The Blogosphere turns out to be a very hospitable place. Thanks alot.

The Prof ominously links to this article about a spotlight in the yearbook about student mothers, saying "sure to upset some" and Andrea Harris says it makes her feel old.

Well, I'm in no danger of feeling old until I hit my next birthday in August. As someone to the right of center, I should be one of the