The Raiders Return to National Television:

After some well-deserved time away from national broadcast, the Raiders are back: they're the second game in ESPN's Opening Monday Night Doubleheader.

I checked the calendar, just to be sure.

I'm happy with the scheduling -- Denver at home is definitely a winnable game -- but what are the NFL and ESPN thinking? Giants hosting the Skins in the Thursday night opener? Good call -- the defending champs and a good division rivalry against a Washington team that has the potential to be a playoff team again this season. Sunday: Chicago at Indy. Not quite as interesting a year removed from the Super Bowl, but it's nice to get a good look at a potential Super Bowl team early in the year.

It's the Monday games that baffle me. Minnesota at Green Bay I can see, though it's probably not a good sign when the game is more notable for its absences (Brett) than its presences (AP). Still, could be interesting.

But Broncos @ Raiders? I'd be lying if I said I expected either of those teams to be better than "adequate" ("competitive" seems to be NFL parlance for "adequate"); more likely, one or both could be "mediocre" (and there's always the possibility that either or both could challenge to root KC out of the cellar). No amount of rivalry can shore up a game between two genuinely bad teams trying to figure out what went wrong and how to make it right.

Again, though, I like the scheduling: this is an eminently winnable game for the Raiders, and starting the season with a W rather than multiple Ls is always a good thing (this also somewhat calms my fears that the NFL would stick it to the Raiders with the early schedule -- hey, at least they're not hosting the Pats opening weekend!).

An Eventful Few Days:

My mother is back home from her visit, and I've spent the last couple of days finishing off the proof edits for my first peer-reviewed article (finally will be in print in June -- very exciting!) and tying of the first step of a project that I'll be working on bit by bit over the coming months. A relief to have it done, but the backside of that relief is refocusing on the various other projects that were put on hold as this one heated up and demanded progressively more time.

Now, I'm trying to work through a migraine as long and as best as I can before the remainder of the day is lost. Ugh.

"A Victim Treats His Mugger Right"

This story is worth reprinting in full, for anyone that didn't catch it on NPR:

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?'"

Diaz replied: "If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me ... hey, you're more than welcome.

"You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help," Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

"The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi," Diaz says. "The kid was like, 'You know everybody here. Do you own this place?'"

"No, I just eat here a lot," Diaz says he told the teen. "He says, 'But you're even nice to the dishwasher.'"

Diaz replied, "Well, haven't you been taught you should be nice to everybody?"

"Yea, but I didn't think people actually behaved that way," the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. "He just had almost a sad face," Diaz says.

The teen couldn't answer Diaz — or he didn't want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, "Look, I guess you're going to have to pay for this bill 'cause you have my money and I can't pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I'll gladly treat you."

The teen "didn't even think about it" and returned the wallet, Diaz says. "I gave him $20 ... I figure maybe it'll help him. I don't know."

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen's knife — "and he gave it to me."

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, "You're the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch."

"I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world."

Sex with a Picnic Table? Say What?

Evidently, one can indeed have sex with a picnic table.

Which part of this sounded like a good idea at the time?

On Snow, Heaters, Alternative Energy, Visits and General Timing:

This is how the last few days have been going over here:

- Last Wednesday, it snowed. No biggie; we've had a few snowfalls this winter, though no actual snow to speak of (it always melts as soon as it touches down) since November. This doesn't change much late last week, but it is snowing more or less consistently every night and into the morning beginning Wednesday morning.

- Saturday, unnoticed by us, the heat goes out in the building. We must've had ours turned off already, or it happened to die out after we went to bed -- or we simply didn't notice. All possibilities.

- Sunday morning -- Easter Sunday -- we notice. Too bad there's jack squat we can do about it, so we make do.

- Monday -- a holiday. Damn, this sucks.

- Tuesday -- my mother flies in to visit her granddaughter (oh, and to say hi to us, too). Still no heat, but to add insult to injury, the snow is now starting to stick, and better than 3" have accumulated overnight. Still not that fun, but still we make do, and hey, the snow all melted off by the afternoon, so maybe this is a good sign?

- Wednesday -- not only is the heater looking to be broken (at least that's what the nice gent who can't seem to fix it says), but oh by the way, your solar panels may be shot, too. That would explain the total lack of hot water since some time Saturday. Still cold, but now I'm finding it exciting to dress in layers indoors. Too bad it snowed again last night -- but this time, it's not melting off nearly as quickly as it did yesterday; it's still out there, mocking us, laughing.

A week in review.

Edit: seems the nice chap underestimated his own abilities, or overestimated the extent to which the devil was lying. In any event: we have heat.

Neat!

A Prescription for Peace (long):

I grabbed this from my Information Clearinghouse Newsletter (which is well worth subscribing to; grab some grains of salt and get a few extra perspectives on the major news events of the day), and thought it worth reprinting in its entirety. The original can be found here:

In looking back at that of my own education, I have come to the conclusion that much of what I learned was a matter of propaganda. And I am sorry to say that it wasn’t until “that sorrowful day in September” that I decided to take a serious look at the history of our country, and it was that which has made all the difference, that which no doubt changed my life. As a result, I began to understand the sacrosanct privilege of being a citizen of a democratic republic, what it means to suffer “the swift retaliation” of those incapable of understanding the irrefragable duty to question one’s country, what has no doubt become a determined need to challenge the insanity of a nation having apparently gone mad in an outrageously absurd rush to war.

Then, after having spent forty years as a psychologist teaching at the college level, my sentiments have not changed; we, as teachers, have done a terrible thing. We have chosen to mislead our students. We have led them to believe things that are simply not true. Rather than educating them, arming them with the knowledge necessary to understand “the realities of the life,” we have inadvisably placed an inordinate emphasis upon preparing youth for the workplace, essentially training them to become robot-like cogs in the machinery of mankind. Rather than vesting them with the power to think for themselves, the power to reason in a critical manner, the sagacity to understand the complex nature of the moral dilemmas set before us, we have, through the power of propaganda, chosen to domesticate our youth, deciding that it is preferable that they become flag-waving patriots, loyalists, apologists chauvinistically pledging their allegiance to the Fatherland. This, paired with a combat-contingent reinstatement of the military draft (H.R. 4752: Universal National Service Act of 2006) coupled with President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act (Section 9528) that has apparently given military recruiters (who quite often do not tell our kids the truth) the nearly unprecedented right to roam the halls of our public schools demanding the name, address, and telephone number of each and every student in the country….…. and we may well be looking at a lead-up to that which occurred in the 1930’s as Adolph Hitler “brown-shirted” the youth of Germany assuring there would be a ready supply of soldiers to serve in combat.

Decidedly, such is no way to raise children unless we, as a people, have decided that we do not want our children to possess the soundness of mind, the skills, necessary to carry out the astonishingly difficult task of maintaining the cumbersome complexities of a democratic republic.

Consequently, as a counterbalance to the many myths (fictions, fantasies, and fabrications) taught in our public schools, I am proposing that youth be taught to respect the wonderful elegance of peace, love, and justice, that our children understand the terrible dreadfulness of war, hate, and injustice, that they appreciate the gravity, the paramount import, of facing the reality of the world in which they live, that they develop the character, even the wisdom, to realize that:

1.

Every human being is sacred, that regardless of one’s sex, race, status, economic condition, creed, color, nationality, religion, or sexual orientation, nothing is of greater value than that of protecting the right for everyone to be treated with respect.

2.

Each and every human being is first, and foremost, a valued member of the human family, and then, and only then, a citizen of any particular nation, that reversing the order of these will, without exception, distort one’s relationship with his fellowman leading to an increased likelihood of mutual misunderstanding, conflict, and, in the long run, war.

3.

Peace is a far better thing than war, that each of us, as human beings, has a moral responsibility to use our energy and talents to move the world toward peace, love, and justice, and thus away from that of war, hate, and injustice.

4.

From the very beginning our country has been enmeshed in violence. First, there was the decision to go to war with the British Empire. Then a near-genocidal attempt to destroy the American Indian, the original inhabitants of our country, followed by a centuries-long exploitation of the Black race. Along with this, our country has a time-honored tradition of conflict with a multitude of others: threatening to destroy our adversaries (nations unwilling to align themselves with that of our interests) through the use of an arsenal of deadly (many of them nuclear) weapons; willingly participating in the overthrow of numerous popularly elected governments unwilling to abide by our rules; demanding that other countries allow us the right to exploit their natural resources in order to maintain our own standard of living; has been, and perhaps still is, involved in the trafficking of drugs around the world; assassinates foreign leaders, aids terrorists, and supports “death squads;” has committed a multitude of crimes against humanity; has allowed the CIA, an organization much like that of the Mafia, to terrorize the world; kidnaps suspects and tortures prisoners; imprisons more of its own people than any other country in the world; is the only nation in the West that kills it’s own people through the use of the death penalty; is an international pariah, a true maverick, refusing to work with the rest of the world in order to resolve problems confronting humanity; has a long and varied history of aligning itself with a rather vicious assortment of dictators, tyrants, and despots willing to do our bidding at the expense of their own people; and, as such, is increasingly beginning to resemble the fascist movements of Adolph Hitler in his nascent 1930’s attempt to take over the world.

5.

Capitalism, an economic system in which it is assumed that self-interest (exclusive concern for one’s own family and personal welfare) is an undeniable good, that greed can (and perhaps should) be tolerated, that one ought to be allowed (and perhaps even encouraged) to make as much money as possible, that the right to own property is inalienable, and that equality (the relatively equal distribution of goods among folks) is, for the most part, of little or no value, and that capitalism, as an economic arrangement, is in no way preferable to that of socialism, an economic system that cherishes a relatively high degree of equality amongst its citizens (the right for everyone to share in and to have access to “the basics of life”), while simultaneously encouraging individuals to overcome the temptation to be indolent (lazy and/or unproductive) by mandating that each has a moral responsibility to share with others, as indicated by Karl Marx’s aphorism, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” the early Christian communist (communalist) expectation that each share his/her belongings with others, along with the prophet Jesus’ (Mark 10:17-27) advice to “the Rich Young Ruler” concerning what must be done in order to be saved, what one must do in order to inherit eternal life…… “Go and sell all of your possessions, and give the proceeds to the poor, and then, and only then, will it be possible for you to be saved,” but, as we are told, since the Rich Young Ruler had great possessions, he (like many of us no doubt would) in fact did leave with a saddened and grievous heart……. much like that of “the camels of antiquity;” it is a very difficult thing for those with money to humble themselves to the point of crawling on bare knees through the “proverbial eye of a needle!”

6.

From the very beginning, the United States has been a class-based society in which the government, for all practical purposes, has served the interests of the rich, and more or less been forced to tolerate the poor, while allowing those of the middle class, those who happen to work for a living (sometimes referred to as “wage slaves”), to remain eternally nervous out of a deeply-ingrained fear of losing their jobs thus enabling those in power to maintain control over workers, folks with seemingly little, or no, concern for those at the bottommost levels of society, those (the indigent poor, those of color, others “down on their luck,” Viet Nam and Iraq War veterans, and those who are mentally ill) with little or no opportunity to make it to the top….… no matter how hard they try.

7.

The United States of America, as well as Israel, by virtue of their eagerness to go to war, their apparent willingness to plunder and pillage other lands have, without question, become the most hated of nations in the world, and that the President of our country, George Walker Bush, due to having formulated a preemptive military policy (one that mandates a right to destroy any nation threatening our right to control the world) paired with that of a foreign policy that shows very little respect for that of other nations, has become the most hated man on Earth.

8.

The citizens of our country ought to be ashamed of having allowed the phrase, “In God We Trust,” to have been placed upon our coins, the very emblem expressing an assiduous craving to consume, even to devour, more and more things, a hypocritical tendency to say one thing, but to do another, the fact that our nation has, for all practical purposes, never placed its faith in God, but rather in something much more tangible; an unrestrained need to generate more and more wealth (that of an increasingly large gross national product), individual and corporate assets protected by a military arsenal ready and willing to destroy any nation audacious enough to interfere.

9.

Organized religion has become an astonishingly complex problem for nearly every nation, that, along with the good, it is rather evident that religion has become one of the primary, if not the primary, cause of war, violence, and death, that it would be much better if individuals were less inclined to be religious, less inclined to regard themselves as “masters of the universe,” folks so ethnocentrically predisposed that they seem to have little doubt that they have received the divine right to determine who it is that will go to Heaven versus who it is that needs to be punished in Hell, a people so terribly arrogant that their lot in life would be much improved if they were willing to relinquish such piety, replacing it with something much more genuine such as an authentic interest in serving the legitimate needs of the human family.

10.

The rights of citizens, as indicated in The Bill of Rights, were not given to the people, rather such rights have always been earned, essentially taken from the firm grip of a government never inclined to give freedom to its people, either through the power of the law or through an unrelenting willingness of folks to engage in acts of civil disobedience, suggesting that teachers have a responsibility to make sure that students not only understand the principles of civil disobedience, but that they might have an extended opportunity to learn how to implement (to carry out in an effective and efficient manner) well-intentioned acts of civil disobedience.

11.

It is important that one be honest, that one be honest with God, himself, as well as with others, that one summon the courage to tell the truth, a realization that veracity must not be compromised, a rather simple recognition that the most dangerous thing one can do is to tell the truth, to say that which nobody wants to hear, a resolute willingness to be a maverick (even that of a whistle blower), to be one who can be counted on to tell the truth regardless of the consequences.

12.

It is important that one be a man or woman of integrity, one who is governed by one’s conscience, the rudder of one’s soul, that which empowers the human spirit, impels an individual to live in such a way that one’s values affirm the sacredness of life, that which directs an individual to treat others in a manner that one would like to be treated, that which sets in motion an empathic resolve to make sure that “the least of us” are treated with respect, a precondition for that of self-respect.

13.

It is important that one have humility, an inner power manifested by those who understand that they are no better than anyone else, a rather calm and unpretentious realization that one’s accomplishments are of no special significance, no doubt the only known cure for those shackled by the chains of conceit so terribly central to that of arrogance.

14.

It is important that one have the faith to doubt, a simple recognition that no one, no human being, has “a direct pipeline to God,” that no one can authoritatively tell another what he or she must believe, that, like it or not, no human being has the capacity to comprehend “the truth of God,” that, as a human being, one has no choice but to face the fact of “ontological uncertainty,” the fact that truth (the perfect knowledge of God) is necessarily “off limits” to man, that although one has an existential responsibility to search for truth, one must do so realizing that what is searched for will never (can never) be found, leaving one with little choice but to accept the fact that whatever one is able to find will emerge only if one has the fearlessness to question anything and everything (God, one’s church, one’s parents, one’s nation, the law, society, others, but, most importantly, that of one’s self), that nothing should be taken for granted, that skepticism (the willingness to question) should rule the day, that answers, in and of themselves, are of little value, whereas the great questions of life represent the engine of knowledge, that if one is to muster the courage to search for truth, it is essential that one appreciate the perilous nature of such a journey, realize that such a trek requires the absolute courage of one’s convictions, the sureness of self, the existential capacity to confront “the incredible incomprehensibility of eternity.”

15.

It is important that one become self-reliant, that one develop the skills necessary for self-governance, that one develop the capacity to think things out for one’s self accompanied by a firm resolution that one must never allow one’s self to become a servile slave of the status quo, that one must resist the temptation to go along with the crowd, to become “a good ole boy,” an organizational man, or that of a team player.

16.

It is important that one develop the defiant power of the human spirit, a tenacious, absolutely indefeasible, willingness to overcome any and all odds, an inexorable unwillingness to allow anything or anyone to “keep one down,” an ontological resolve to surmount the “tough times of life,” a courageous commitment to respond to tragedy by saying “yes to life.”

17.

It is important that one find meaning in life, an ontological reason for which to live, an existential willingness to move beyond the superficial pleasures of life such as that of money, power, reputation, status, success, and the acquisition of things, an effort to acquire a transpersonal interest, a willingness to give one’s life for something greater than one’s self, a resolve to live one’s life for God, for one’s children, a beneficent cause (such as that of Martin Luther King’s commitment to civil rights), or perhaps even a career that might enable one to serve the best interests of mankind.

18.

It is important that one develop an empathic concern for others, the willingness to place one’s self into “the shoes” of another person, the capacity to view the world from the perspective of folks unlike one’s self, even those of a foreign nation, a resolve to overcome the narrow-minded confines of one’s own cultural conditioning demanding that we glorify the deeds of our own nation, while simultaneously damning those of our enemy, a blind presumption that we, as a nation, are always right whereas our enemy is, without question, always wrong, a programming that has taught us to live our lives according to the Lex Talionis (red in tooth and claw) Law of Retribution, that there is nothing wrong with that of hating one’s enemy, that during a time of war we should be proud of a willingness to kill the enemy, that any effort to place ourselves in the shoes of an enemy (to want to understand, and therefore forgive, him as a human being who is in no way different from that of ourselves) has become equated with that of having become an apostate, a turncoat, a traitor, a disloyal American willing to collaborate with the enemy, an arrogance so profoundly ignorant that we, as citizens, seem to be left with little choice but to follow the Machiavellian edict to simply “do away with” those we have been taught to hate.

19.

It is important that we develop an appreciation for the fact of death, the fact that each and everyone of us will one day die, an existential reminder that if we are to be good stewards of our lives, we must live each day as if it was our last day on Earth, that, because we have only a limited amount of time to get done “what must be done,” we must take seriously the imperative that we live a good and decent life, for without such an inclination, we will certainly miss the mark, miss the existential responsibility to make the most of our lives.

20.

Finally, it is necessary that we comprehend our responsibility in regards to the future, in regards to those who will populate the planet once we die, the mandate that we respect, that we have a true reverence for, life, that we honor and respect the needs of those who will follow in our footsteps, that we be willing to defend the Earth from the awful onslaught of progress, that we, as a people, be willing to live with less, that we put an end to the practice of plundering and pillaging our planet, that we understand that anything less than this may well lead to the decimation, perhaps even the annihilation of, the human race.

Clearly then, a partisan approach to anything results in children having little choice but to believe what they have been told, what has more or less been collectively “crammed down their throats,” effectively depriving them of an opportunity to know “the facts,” the facts, of course, being the essential ingredients, no doubt the bedrock, of truth. Even though Christians (primarily those of the religious right/the fundamentalists) have done a great deal to muddy the “waters of truth,” the prophet Jesus (in John 8:32) promised that “the truth will set us free,” that an awareness of the facts, an informed understanding of the way things are, a thorough “sifting of the chaff from the wheat,” will provide a solid foundation from which to launch a search for truth, a place from which to begin, a progressive opportunity to figure out what should be discarded, what ought to be retained, and what needs to be added in order that youth might be educated in an objective and honest manner.

Rather than allowing ourselves to be filled with fear, the fear of loosing our jobs, afraid that someone might be a bit upset by what we say or do; let’s reverse course. Why not strive to “upset a few apple carts,” strive to teach the things that nobody wants to hear, demonstrate the courage of our convictions, risk the consequences of telling students “the truth.” Otherwise, if we choose not to do such a thing, we will be forced to face the fact that we have become “partners in crime,” willing participants in having chosen to lead our sons and daughters down the “yellow brick road” of arrogance, which leads to inhumanity, war, and then to death. Thus, I believe that we must demand that we teach our students “the truth,” demand that we teach each and every side of each and every issue, enabling students to transcend, to move beyond, the bondage of personal and collective bias, to move beyond a self-inclined willingness to bask in the twilight of social and cultural ignorance, demand that we do our best to set humanity free from the shackles of self and society in order that we, as a people, might one day thirst after righteousness, that we might be more inclined to love God, our neighbor, and perhaps even that of our enemy, placing us on the firmest of ground, the freshly prepared path of peace leading to the promise land of life, liberty, and justice, not just for us, but for all of mankind.

No doubt something for all of us to consider since it is our very own children, that of the next generation, who will one day inherit the future, and thus govern our nation. Accordingly, it is imperative that we ask who will be most qualified, most able, to take the reigns of leadership; statesmen eager to build a democracy committed to peace, love, and justice, or another bunch of thugs anxiously awaiting their turn to rule the world with the “shock and awe” of their most recently developed weapons of death?

DeAngelo Hall Now a Raider:

In case anyone missed it, former Falcons' cornerback DeAngelo Hall is now a Raider.

It's hard to have a solid feeling on this one, because my opinion of this move will be formed on the field, naturally, and, more specifically, on the other side of the field:

What will happen with Nnamdi Asomugha?

If Al works it so that the Raiders have Asomugha and Hall long-term, then I'm thrilled with this trade.

If it works out that Nnamdi moves on, whether via free agency after this season or via trade (both of which I consider distinct possibilities, sadly), then I hate it.

Hall is immediately the league's best #2 corner, but he's not nearly as solid a #1 as Asomugha is. In fact, I'd put Asomugha on par with anyone in the league right now, and would claim that he is the best cover corner in the NFL. A bold claim for someone who has never made a Pro Bowl outright, and who had but one INT last season.

Here's what shows Nnamdi's greatness, though: fourteen games last season, Asomugha had been thrown at twenty-seven times.

Let that sink in. Opposing quarterbacks attempted fewer than TWO passes per game against him last season. Incidentally, in that span, only nine balls were completed, which means a) that his success percentage (66.7%) was second only to Charles Woodson (70%) in that span, and b) that opposing WRs caught almost 2/3 of a pass/game against Asomugha.

The fact that he even HAD an INT is pretty amazing.

Two balls per game, less than one catch per game. If there's a more telling stat for the success of a shut-down corner, I'd love to see it.

So let me come back to where I was a few lines above:

Asomugha/Hall long-term -- love it.

Hall/someone else -- not a fan.

Moses Tripping on Sinai?

Found this interesting little article courtesy of Pillage Idiot.

Further commentary from me unnecessary.

B'oh!!

Well, now my bracket is well and truly boned.

West Virginia 73:67 Duke

Duke at one point missed fifteen consecutive three-pointers. This means that they kept trying to hit threes.

For a bunch of smart kids, they played awfully damn dumb in the second half. West Virginia, on the other hand, was awesome after halftime.

Still, this picture sort of sums it up:



Damn Duke.

NCAA Tournament: Round 1:

Boy, my bracket took a much-expected beating. Once again (I swear it's freaking annual), I lost one of my Final Four teams in the first weekend.

Damn you, Vanderbilt! Took a flier on you, and what does that get me? Screwed, that's what. I'm in second place in my bracket in terms of points and picks correct thus far -- but losing Vandy means that I'm dead last in terms of possible points.

B'oh.

That's right, "b'oh" -- that pick was sufficiently stupid as to not even entitle me to the correct expression of exasperation.

Couple of days ago, I predicted that I'd say something like the following:

"I picked X, Y, and Z, all of whom got their butts whipped.

"Damn, that was stupid."

Well, after only the first roumd, I can fill in those blanks with three of my Sweet Sixteen:

"I picked George Mason, Connecticut and Vanderbilt, all of whom got their butts whipped.

"Damn, that was stupid."

Check back Monday to see what stupid picks I lose out on in Round Two.

Optimus Prime Dancing and ... Dying?

I can't even begin to guess at the amount of time that must have taken.

And who among us can forget Transformers: the Movie. The The REAL Transformers movie, not that piece of shit Michael Bay atrocity.

"Behold as I scar a generation of children!":



Both videos courtesy the Transformers Live Action Movie Blog.

William Faulkner and the Limits of History:

At some point down the road, I want to teach a class called something like "The Limits of History," in which we'd look at various theories of and approaches to history per se and see what particularly brilliant theorists and writers have had to say about the matter. Some of it would be on the syllabus "because it has to," like some Hegel and Heidegger, but if I ever get to do this, it'd be hard not to turn it into a William Faulkner on History course.

I know, it's been done, but not often enough. The immediate prompt for this is Absalom, Absalom! (which I finished some time ago, but am just now getting around to thinking about again). There have been plenty of people who have written about Absalom as an approach to the study of history, in the sense that it deal openly, if not necessarily explicitly, with all manner of historiographical problems: how is history to be narrated, how do you account for and perhaps filter ideological biases, what can you do when the narrative relies entirely on metaphor in parts, the problem of interpretation, and, perhaps especially, the question of reconstruction in the act of narration, which brings in the is-is not question of reconstruction itself.

There are also any number of performative issues that can be piggy-backed onto the question, the most prominent of which, I think, is the problem of narrative as both mediator and creator, two different types of performative agency. Is the telling for the tellers, or for the hearers? Who, exactly, is the audience within the narrative, and how does that impact the assumed external audience? Is there a difference in asking this question within a novel, and directing it outward from within the context of a historical narrative?

The title I have in mind, though, is "The Limits of History," meaning I'd not focus so much on what history is -- or even what it is not -- but on what it can and cannot accomplish, as well as the foundational moment of history per se, which I think can be very profitably explored from within Faulkner's written world: did the present ever truly separate itself from the past? If not, what is history that it can be thought of as such? More to the point, how do we read a reconstruction of a past that is always with us, and how do we assign and articulate the point at which the present diverged from the past?

The principal texts I'd have in mind are, of course, Absalom, Absalom!, The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying, which remains my favorite of the three).

The principal text from the historical side? The Limits of History. What else? Limits is a peculiar book, and the premise and argument are certainly disputable, but it offers a marvelous way to look at history, and at the continual series of "more adequate" histories being produced and ask, "Why? To what end? For whom?"

Just what is history? What are its limitations? What does it mean to reconstruct it? And when does the past become the past, anyway?

My Bracket:

I've filled out my NCAA Tournament bracket, and I expect to be wrong on, oh, better than half of my picks over the 63 games -- if it's even as close as 32-31 off, I'll be pretty happy, what with not having watched ANY college basketball (excepting the tournament) for the last four full seasons.

I've got a rather nice Final in mind -- would love to see it come through (you can probably guess which teams I ran through, given where I'm from and my home conference, so to speak).

I'll probably laugh at myself here starting this weekend.

"I picked X, Y, and Z, all of whom got their butts whipped.

"Damn, that was stupid."

The World's Five Most Horrifying Insects:

Not sure whether I'd make this top five, or whether I'd personally make some substitutions, but take a look-see.

My favorite bit, from #3, the Africanized Honey Bee:

Regular bees will give you about nine seconds of being too close to the hive before deciding you're a threat and then attacking you. So it's pretty easy to just walk past them without any screams. And if you do get them after you, they'll consider you to be 'chased off' after about 300 feet.

Africanized bees do not roll this way. They give you half a second of being too close before they decide it is time to completely fuck your shit up and empty the entire hive--tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of angry, angry bees. When you run, flailing and crying and soiling yourself while screaming "JESUS CHRIST I'M COVERED IN BEES," they will chase you for over half a mile.

But those Japanese hornets are just nasty little bastards.

Heading Toward One Million Terrorists:

Aren't you glad to know that our skies are safer now that close to one million names are on the terrorist flight watch list?

If ever there was a haystack . . .

(Found this story courtesy of Waldo.)

Gay-Bashing Videos:

I'm occasionally astounded at the depths of ignorance that people can come up with. Check out the clips hosted at Vivian J. Paige.

Occasionally, someone goes out and shifts the bell curve so far toward the shallow end that your more quotidian dumbasses actually seem smarter by comparison.

NFL Labor Unrest: Is There a Lockout Looming?

All fans of the NFL or any of its member clubs knows how close the league came to a shutdown in 2006, when the CBA had to be redone and extended. The situation was ugly, it was protracted, and there was almost no sign that the season and agreement would be salvaged, until the most unlikely of owners -- Al Davis -- stepped in and used his leverage with the union and what capital he had with the other owners to get a deal done and get the season saved. The way 2006 went for his club, Davis needn't have bothered, but he was the acknowledged linchpin of that deal, which now is in jeopardy from all sides.

If leaving no one happy while giving everyone something is the hallmark of a great compromise, then the 2006 agreement must rank up there among history's all-time greatest compromises, because all parties left that table seemingly angrier than when they sat down. Much to the surprise of few, the feeling right now is that the owners will opt out of the agreement later this year, which will result in several possible steps:

1. Owners opt out, somewhere between now and November.

2. Stated salary cap increases are triggered for 2009.

3. Absent a new deal, 2010 will be a cap-free season.

4. Absent a new deal, the owners will probably try to lock the players out of taining camp, threatening the 2011 season (and possibly beyond).

There have been a few blog postings about this, includuing these three.

The story started moving this week when ESPN.com published this article on the matter. Reading the article, a couple of things leap out at me. One, the most obvious, is that both sides are acting like spoiled children about this. As AJ, a Texans fan put it, we're talking about "a bunch of ridiculously rich owners, and players who think that 60% of a multi zillion dollar pot and franchise tags guaranteeing an 8 million dollar salary are unfair." Point fairly taken, and if there is little enough reason for sympathy normally, it needs to be said that the players could not have chosen a worse time to make the complaints they're raising. Two, this is more than an easy case of "labor v. capital"/dialectical materialism, but is more a reflection of broader societal and legal trends.

First, look at what the players are complaining about, but look at the principles they're arguing for, and the tactics they're alternately advocating or declaiming, rather than the numbers.

One. The players union is going to decertify rather than permit a lockout. I'm puzzled by this course of action, for reasons that Jeffrey Kessler, a union attorney, raises in a short statement (all quotations from the ESPN article linked above):

The NFL's union, according to Upshaw, will counter with decertification, which means it will give up its role as the official labor organization of NFL players and become a trade association.

"How can they lock us out if we are not a union?" Upshaw said.

Jeffrey Kessler, a union attorney who was a leader of the court fight that led to the 1993 restructuring of the NFL, added: "If you lock out players who do not have a union, it is an antitrust violation."

I'm genuinely puzzled here, and if someone can clarify for me how a union voluntarily decertifying itself doesn't rule out the hoped-for antitrust violation, I'd love to hear how. I understand that the players cannot be locked out unless they have a formal union; what I don't understand is how that union can abjure its duties and formally cease to exist, while still demanding the rights and privileges afforded a union. It'd be something like a lawyer willfully renouncing his bar certification and then petitioning the court to let him try a case anyway; it just doesn't make sense to me.

Two. The players are crying "collusion" over the owners collectively lowering the debt ceiling from $150 million/team to $120 million/team. You thought student loans were bad? The players are asking to be paid via debt-leveraged financing. I'm willing to be told why this makes sense, but on its face, it's a ludicrous complaint. The league will carry nearly $1 BILLION less in debt, and the players are upset? Yes:

For the players, any reduction in owners' power to borrow money is bad news. They believe that many bonuses and salary increases come from borrowed funds. And they argue that the reduction in borrowing power is part of a "collusive agreement to suppress player salaries and [is] especially targeted at suppressing the amounts of signing bonuses."

Have none of the players or their representatives been paying attention to the economic downturn that was caused in part due to debt-leveraged financing? The players may have a legitimate point, insofar as the alleged collusion, but it gets lost somewhere when they neglect to take stock of the current political and economic climate. With all due respect to the gentlemen that I do enjoy watching on fall Sundays, the depression of debt-leveraged purchases in the form of signing bonuses is not exactly a sympathetic issue at the moment. If nothing else, this is a big PR failure for the players, one that the owners should take a common-sense approach to rebutting and profitting from. "Hey, we're talking about staying solvent, they want to be paid from red ink. How's that supposed to work?" The league may already be moving that way, since they have the better formulation of the issue:

NFL officials dismiss the players' claim of collusion.

"This is part of our overall fiscal planning at a time when the economy is in turmoil," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "It will have no effect on the league's financial obligations to players under the collective bargaining agreement. Those obligations are determined by revenue, not by debt."

That will be difficult for the players to refute.

Three. The players give the impression that they're trying to mislead in the way they talk about the issues at hand. For instance:

What prompted this sudden battle after years of mutual prosperity?

Upshaw said, "[The owners] just don't like what they agreed to in March of 2006."

Added Kessler, the players' attorney: "The problem is that the owners could not agree among themselves on how they would share their revenues. The high-revenue teams do not want to share money they earn in their markets, and the low-revenue teams are unhappy about everything. So they find a place to agree -- they try to get it back from the players."

Let me make sure I'm clear on this: the owners are divided amongst themselves, but they can come together to resist the players? Meanwhile, the players are so poorly led themselves that they cannot capitalize on the division among the owners?

Poor leadership, and maybe bad lawyers.

This is not to let the league and the owners off the hook, mind -- far from it. I may have issues with the players' specific claims, which are sufficient to turn me toward siding with capital, as opposed to my natural inclination to side with labor, but I have a more philosophical objection to what the owners are saying and how they're handling the process.

Here's what the owners are complaining about: it seems that the judge who has been handling most of the NFL cases for the past decade plus called the players lawyers into his office and had a coffee chat with them before proceedings in one of Vick's cases, a case which was ultimately decided in Vick's favor, entitling him to retain $19 million in bonuses. Nevermind the fact that:

Doty's ruling for Vick, which allowed the player to keep $19 million in "earned" bonuses despite his incarceration on dogfighting charges, was not a big surprise to legal experts who studied the intricacies of the bonus clauses of NFL contracts. Doty has ruled for the league and its owners in a number of other disputes.

So Doty judged the case correctly, according to those familiar with these sorts of proceedings, and the losers are crying "foul" -- and "collusion"? That's a bit more than sour grapes, and this is where the CBA becomes about more than football, and about more than labor/management relations:

This is case is starting to take on the ugly hue of a farcical rendering of the current American popular disdain for "activist" judges.

Look at what the league's owners are saying, through their lawyers:

But the NFL executives and lawyers think they were slighted by not being invited into the gathering, and they weren't amused. . . . In papers filed in court after Doty ruled in Vick's favor, the NFL and its owners accused Doty of "bias" and violations of the code of conduct that governs federal judges.

These are not minor allegations. Violating the code of conduct could be potentially career-threatening, so to toss that out casually in the hopes of scoring an advantage during the next proceeding borders on the unconscionable.

As to the claims of bias, here's the basis:

The owners are particularly angry about comments Doty made in a recent Sports Business Journal interview, in which Doty said, "[NFL owners] pretend they're getting beaten around. Well, they did, initially, but they had a position that was not legally sound … I think if you ask Paul Tagliabue [former commissioner], he would say, 'the whole thing has come out our way.' Because even though the owners complain about it, all they've done is make tons of money."

These statements, the owners say, demonstrate Doty's bias against them and in favor of the players. Upshaw and the players reply that Doty was talking only about the earlier litigation that led to the 1993 agreement and that there is no indication of bias in any of the statements.

No mention as to whether Judge Doty or David Doty was interviewed for that piece, which is somewhat surprising, given that a lawyer wrote the ESPN article (for a sports readership, yes). That would make a considerable amount of difference. Were Judge Doty so casual about speaking about his personal opinion in a series of cases that has not yet concluded and may come back before his bench may be improper, and it may be grounds to move for recusal.

Recusal, maybe. To go further and accuse him of "bias" -- even if those were Judge Doty's comments, and not David Doty's comments -- is to accuse him of totally lacking intellectual and professional integrity. It is, in short, to attack the bench, and t's an attack on the bench by the side that's testy that they lost a case.

The NFL called David Doty an "activist judge." Do you think that the players and their lawyers are going to forget that?

Let's analogize from the NFL. When Seahawks guard Steve Hutchinson hit the market as an RFA, the Vikings signed him to an offer sheet that contained a contractual clause that Seattle couldn't match. It was called a "poison pill."

The owners, through their lawyers, have tossed a poison pill into the proceedings, and they, frankly, should be ashamed of themselves. This will linger in and taint the memories of all parties involved in these proceedings for the next several years, and the owners have now lain down the gauntlet of alleging "bias" whenever a court ruling goes against them. They've thus impugned the integrity and, I have to think deliberately thrown a monkeywrench into the process, trying to alter the rules of the game in the middle of the third quarter, as it were. And that's exactly what they're doing: trying to change the rules in the middle of the game:

Although the owners based their recent legal action on Doty's ruling in favor of Vick and his bonuses, there is clearly more at stake. In papers filed in Minneapolis, the owners' attorney, Gregg Levy, made serious charges. Levy and the owners clearly are frustrated with Doty's rulings over the years, asserting that "the time has long since passed to put an end [sic] this court's supervision of labor relations in the NFL."

Translation: take your "activist" judges out of the picture and just let us handle it. Too bad it's not going to work that way, in all likelihood.

As little use as I have for some of Kessler's usual line of hogwash, he did have one comment worth pointing to positively:

Attorney Kessler and the union leadership are outraged over the owners' attack on Doty. They say in court papers that the NFL attack on Doty "indicates that the [NFL] lawyers have lost control over their … disgruntled clients."

It sounds like hyperbole, but it's not: if the owners' lawyers were unable to prevent them openly questioning the integrity of the judiciary before which these issues are to be decided, then they definitely have lost control of their clients. The NFL needs to fire anyone on their legal staff involved in that decision, and I mean yesterday, and censure whomever was stupid enough to lean on them to say that. Then they need to hire better lawyers, lawyers brave enough to do their job and tell their clients "no" when they're making a grave mistake. The owners' lawyers failed them, and the negotiations will be negatively impacted as a result.

The players and owners are jointly at fault in leading to this impasse, and now that it's a question not of coming to an agreement, but of "face," of which side will blink first, we fans are going to catch the worst of it. We're the ones who are going to pay for the greed and power plays that are gripping the league behind the scenes, and, if the fans have to pay too steep a price -- such as the loss of part or all of a season -- the owners and the players will catch some much-deserved blowback, perhaps in the form of a "market correction." If so, they'll have only themselves and each other to blame.

Now, back to where we all started, with Al Davis: anyone know the over/under on whether Lane Kiffin is fired before the owners opt out?

"He Drove A Car Till He Died."

Found this while tooling around earlier: Henry Rollins on Wal-Mart.

Hilarious stuff.

Accident Ruins 800-Lb. Man's Date:

This is the best headline I have ever encountered.

With regards to the story, good on him for losing that much weight -- it's a phenomenal amount to have lost, and good on him for what appears to be a pretty good sense of humor about this.

But still, that's a fantastic headline.

Evidently, Gene Simmons Was Too Expensive:

Thanks to shaawano for the tip on this one.

I find this commercial hilarious, for all of the regular ridiculous reasons, and for one that's not so obvious:

The vocalist. A poor man's Shagrath with no power to his vocals. Nevertheless, an adequate aping of Shagrath's stage presence, though pretty well a fourth-rate ripoff -- and if you're aspiring to be a fourth-rate Dimmu Borgir, who even at their peak were no better than a second-rate band themselves, well, you should perhaps rethink your career options.

On a side note, the actual Dimmuborgir is incredible. The "Dark Castles/Dark Fortresses" (any translation that renders "Dimmuborgir" "dark towns" is incorrect) is a lava formation in the north of Iceland, around Lake Myvatn, that resembles a series of dilapidated castles/fortresses. Extremely impressive, particularly in the dead of an Icelandic winter, as when we were there. The link I included has some decent pictures, though I've seen very few that do the formations any real justice.

Arthur Phillips: Prague

Much of the critical commentary I've seen for Arthur Phillips' Praguepraise it for being a remarkable first novel.

Don't believe a word of it.

It's a remarkable novel, period.

Phillips takes a strange setting for a novel so titled -- Budapest -- and follows five North American ex-pats as they seek themselves and their futures in a city in search of itself and its future. It sounds kind of trite, and were the execution less masterful, probably would have been, but Phillips spins a remarkably complex and nuanced tale. He manages somehow to be bluntly, even brutally honest with his characters, floating between "too compassionate" and "utterly devoid of compassion" in his treatment of them, but never quite hitting either pole. The characters live and breathe on their own, and it's easy to picture the interaction in the cafes or the smoky basement jazz bar.

That there's more going on than meets the eye is driven home by the spectacular second chapter of the novel, "the Horvath Kiado." Ostensibly the story of the Horvath Publishing House, based in Budapest for the best part of 200 years by the time the action in the remainder of the novel takes place, the chapter is an exquisite allegory, the consummate example of the "novel within the novel."

I've had this book on my shelf for a few years, but only recently sat down to give it a read. It's a shame that I waited so long, because I could have enjoyed it a long time ago.

Anyone in search of a great novel could do far worse than to sit down with this one.

So What Drugs Do You Contribute to the Water Supply?

I knew that things like estrogen and caffeine and some other medications were in drinking water supplies, since they're removed from the body essentially whole in the urine, rather than being broken down, and I knew that most water treatment systems do not remove them sufficiently. Still, I was somewhat impressed to see that there are apparently quite a few more than I was aware of.

The notables:

-Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

-Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

-Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

-A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water. Is it wrong that I thought, "that explains a lot"?

-The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

-Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

And what good news article these days would be complete without a gratuitous reference to 9/11:

Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.

What the hell? I tried to think up something, anything that would make this claim rational and reasonable on its face, but I drew a total blank.

My hometown of Virginia Beach is one of the surveyed locales that claims its water came back clean. Bollocks. I don't believe that for a second. But here's the bonus:

Another issue: There's evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.

Since I'd wager that four out of five dentists couldn't tell the difference between VB's finest tap water and a glass dunked in a municipal swimming pool, this is fantastic news.

And, in a rare case of actually getting the point:

For several decades, federal environmental officials and nonprofit watchdog environmental groups have focused on regulated contaminants — pesticides, lead, PCBs — which are present in higher concentrations and clearly pose a health risk.

However, some experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body.

So, next time you go take a whiz, what will you be dropping off? I'll do my part to contribute a few chemicals a couple of times a day.

Austin Sarat and Christian Boulanger, eds.: The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives

The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives (The Cultural Lives of Law)is a remarkable and necessary consideration of capital punishment as both the mirror and the reflection of the cultures and bodies politic that retain it.

This is an impressive collection of essays that does much to bear out its stated goal of exploring the "cultural lives" of capital punishment. The editors and essayists take "cultural lives" to mean "capital punishment's embededdness in discourses and symbolic practices in specific times and places." (1) Taking their overall philosophical lead from David Garland, whose works are cited in nine of the fifteen essays and five of the six dealing with Europe and the Americas, the editors and contributors sought to put together a collection that considered the ways that punishment and culture interact and are connected, the ways in which punishment derives legitimacy and meaning from culture and the ways in which punishment defines the lines and sides in socio-cultural and political battles, including but not limited to the famous "culture wars."

The book is divided into three broad geographical areas. The first is Europe and the Americas, with essays concerning Germany, Mexico, Poland and the United States, along with two essays dealing with comparisons of portrayals of capital punishment in European and American films and the European "missionary zeal" directed toward the U.S. In the second section, Central/South Asia and the Middle East, there are essays concerning the Soviet memory and the conflicted approaches to capital punishment in Kyrgyzstan, India, and a particularly interesting pair of essays on Israel and hte Palestinian Authority. The final section concerns "Asian Values," with essays on Japan, China, Singapore and South Korea.

The breadth of approaches taken is extensive for a single volume, and each of the essays has something to recommend it, though they can at times oversimplify issues for the sake of brevity in such a way that may be confusing to readers without an extensive knowledge of the death penalty from a particular national or comparative perspective.

The other major hole in the book is the near-complete absence of religion; it would seem natural that some contributions on the cultural lives of capital punishment from religious perspectives could have been included, and would have made the volume a truly well-rounded contribution. As it is, religion is conspicuous by its absence, and this absence is the greatest weakness of the volume.

Anyone interested in understanding more about approaches to and apprehensions of the death penalty worldwide would do well to read this book.

Bush to Veto Bill Prohibiting Torture:

Seems the Sociopath in Chief just can't bring himself to sign a bill that would prohibit him from authorizing torture.

Let's see. Apparently, the CIA has acknowledged that they're currently prohibited from torturing, except under the express instruction of the Sociopath in Chief or his AG. The Y! news link states that the CIA is limited to the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual, and that the Army itself stopped using excessive methods in 2006.

So let me get this straight: It's necessary to do, but it officially is not being done. So either a) it's being done in secret and it's being covered up -- hopefully only temporarily or b) it's not actually necessary, but the SinC and his buddies have found a nice, publicly acceptable reason to "get medieval on they asses," and so they are.

Or, of course, it's both.

Makes me proud.

Playing Around Online:

Surprise -- the FBI has continued to illegally spy on Americans. WOO HOO! FREEDOM!

Cloned food may soon have to be labelled. Objections? Only from agribusiness. Seems that the "free market based upon consumer's choice" really means "only if they choose in a way that profits us."

Arizona lawmakers are toying with the idea of allowing students and teachers to pack heat. This is a brilliant idea. I love the fact that Napolitano (and Kaine, twice) has had to veto legislation that would permit people to carry guns into bars and restaurants where alcohol is served.

...

Seriously?

Oh, and, apparently, blogging is good for you. Score!

Clinton's Campaign Lies and Distortions Continue

I've not exactly been shy about the fact that I dislike Hillary Clinton intensely. Here's a little more fuel on that particular fire:

"This is an election news update with a major news story reported by the AP. While Senator Obama has crisscrossed Ohio giving speeches attacking NAFTA, his top economic advisor was telling the Canadians that was all just political maneuvering. A newly released document from the Canadian government shows that Obama’s senior economic advisor met with the Canadian Consul General and made clear that Obama’s attack on NAFTA were just, quote, “political maneuvering,” not policy. Political maneuvering, not policy. In fact, the document shows that Obama’s advisor also assured the Canadians that these attacks against NAFTA would not continue. Obama would not want to be, quote, “fundamentally changing the agreement.” As Senator Obama was telling one story to Ohio, his campaign was telling a very different story to Canada. How will Ohioans decide whether they can believe Senator Obama’s words? We’ll find that out on election day. Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President."

I've chosen to refrain from using this word to describe Hillary Clinton here -- and I just checked to make sure that was true -- but it's coming now:

You deceitful bitch.

Thanks, Texas and Ohio, for making it possible to speculate that "the bitch is back" (see that -- a two-fer!) -- at least back enough to resume being a royal pain in the ass. And thank you, Hillary, for proving me correct and making sure that anyone paying attention knows that you truly are taking a page out of W's "Lessons I Learned from the USSR" playbook and continuing along the path of fake news. Wonderful.

You deceitful bitch. (Third time's a charm, and I'm done.)

This is, of course, only one of two big stories about Clinton at present -- the second being that she slapped a lil' blackface on Obama.

On the off-chance you haven't seen the still:



And the strongest series of refutations I've seen in response to Clinton supporters trying to wave this one off.

So we've had Bill turning on the black Southern vote, and now we have blackface on the leading candidate. Nice.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, what kind of dumbfuck question was Russert trying to foist on Clinton and Obama? "Reality" my ass. (Check the second video linked in the Wired article or watch the clip here. The stupidity is about 2:40 in.)