Tim Russert.

Woke up a couple minutes ago. Switched to MSNBC out of my usual channel flipping impulsion because ESPN was blathering on about something stupid. There was this red bit at the bottom and they had some cardinal on the phone, which was all I could read as my vision is blurry. I see Tim on the picture talking but the sound is cut out so you can hear this guy on the phone. I can't stand guys on the phone on TV because the audio is horrible so I switch over to the History channel.

I roll over and it kind of dawns on me that there's only one explanation for the circumstances I just saw and I just feel this terrible feeling in my gut.

Tim was one of the last of the old guard journalists. He managed to be fair and respectful at the same time as reaching for truth above some phony "balance". He seemed to me to really care about the issues not just in a "my ideology better win" way or a "I'm getting paid to do this" way, but like the process of debate and the result of reasoned thought actually mattered.

There's not too many more like him today. I'm sure there's a couple here and there but I can't think of anybody his caliber that also had the visibility he did.

Fate can be unbelievably cruel sometimes. America can scarcely do without him in this highly obnoxious time of bleating surrogates and pretty faces who read paraphrased Reuters feeds off the teleprompter. But heart attacks in particular and nature in general don't seem to be cognizant of what society needs or wants.

He didn't look that unhealthy. I wonder if the weight of the job started to wear on him. Somehow it's easier to take if I imagine he would have welcomed the final rest but who knows. I feel bad for his family and friends and co-workers. I hear from all accounts he was a really helpful guy and nice to be around, but they always say that. Mostly though I feel sorry for myself.

On Sports, Entertainment, and Other Non-Important "News".

Caring about sports is a mainstay in my life. It's a meaningless pursuit that is nonetheless attractive. Sports reporting is about six times saner than normal news reporting, which seems counterintuitive when you realize how utterly meaningless it is.

But sports sports journalism, entertainment journalism, and sports entertainment and journalism are all kind of intertwined. Be prepared for a bit of a ride.

A-rod's agent says he's going to opt out of his contract. Okay. He's been booed a bit before. He probably would like the opportunity to "take" another team to the big-time. Winning a WS as a Yankee is almost expected. Winning one for the Cubs would make him a legend. Blame him? I'd take a pay cut for that shit. He's going to take a pay cut, I'm pretty sure. Even ownership as unwise as the Marlins' isn't going to pay him more. If the NYY's are stupid enough to let him go, he's not going to get that same deal elsewhere, not because they don't want him, but because they can't afford him.

But the controversy is this: Should he have announced during Game 4 of the WS? Sure. Why not. It's not "news" in any sense. It's only news because it got picked up. It may have even been leaked. Business does not stop for the World Series. Sounds like it may have even been a Y's leak. Shut up about it. If you are a reporter and this offends you DO NOT REPORT IT. If you do not want to talk about A-rod resigning, which IS a story, during the WS, DO. NOT. REPORT. ON. IT.

Don't whine about him not having respect for the game while you are not only reporting on this during the world series but WHINING ABOUT HIM FORCING YOU TO REPORT ON IT during the World Series. JUST. SHUT. UP. Leave it till Monday. Or Tuesday, the off day, whatever. Just chill out, report on the WS. What's that? The WS wasn't that exciting anyway? We'd lose money? Well gee. You rag on a guy for treating the game like a business, then act like a business. You have two choices. Stick to your principles, and be able to claim the high ground. Or abandon them for the money, and lose respect and the high ground. In sports reporting, I don't really give a shit what you choose. But it chafes my ass to hear you whining about reporting on it while reporting on it for the money.

You can just NOT report on it. Sure, you might take a hit in the ratings. But if respect means anything, then surely you'll carve out a nice niche rating? Surely if you're going to call A-rod "disrespectful to the game", you'd have shut up about it during the game? But no!

Look. It's like a kid working at McDonald's. I know what it's like. The job sucks. Just do it to get by, most of them. Maybe a couple really find their stride, but most of them just do what they have to do to get by to the next day. I don't blame them. I know what it's like, alright? But don't act like some sort of martyr. Don't act like you're forced to report on shit. If you have to do it to keep your job, just shut up and do it. If you're willing to take a stand, do that. But don't act like somehow you can do it both ways. If you're going to provide halfassed service and do whatever you think you need to do for the money, don't act like you somehow deserve respect for selling out. I ain't gonna hate you for selling out but I'm sure as hell not going to beleive that somehow you're on the moral high ground here fella.

Britney. Same thing. Don't whine about how everyone is talking about her, then do a story on her. Alright. I get it, you're "E". This is your thing, you exploit the market. But what about you, CNN? MSNBC? FOX? Whatever? Either you are a serious news organization, and above this sort of thing, or you are NOT. Either just do the celebrity masturbation to maintain profits and ratings, and fucking shut up with the hypocritic, self-righteous bullshit, or DON'T. TALK. ABOUT. IT. Whine about other's coverage, DON'T. COVER. IT. LEAVE. IT. ALONE.

Alright? And I'm sick of the lack of empathy. How everyone pretends that just because she's got all the money in the world, that that somehow makes her a horrible monster because she's fucked up. Well duh. She's a child star, she's been through a lot. I'm not saying that excuses her, but it doesn't make her the horrible monster (or the tragic hero) some make her out to be, alright? Yeah, she's got the money. She could work through this if she wanted to. I'm guessing she just really doesn't want her kids, can't really bring herself to say so, and is going to let K rais em. Fine, alright? Yeah she's got the money but she's obviously got problems. Whether she works through them or not is up to her. It's not as if there aren't disadvantages to the way she got where she is. And a lot of people who AREN'T stars like her, who didn't get to where she did through her talent or showmanship or whatever, lead lives not unlike hers.

She's the high profile case. She's an allegory for America. Okay. Whatever. But if that's how you're going to go with it, just go with it like that. But you don't. You just obsess over every little thing in her life. You give "advice" through random lawyers you invited on your show. That's not advice. Advice is private. You're filling air time and giving the public what they're addicted to. That's "E". That's not journalism. Stop reporting on this shit and calling yourself a serious journalist. That's all there is to it. You do entertainment news, you're just an entertainer. You seriously cover serious news, you get to be a journalist. You don't "deserve" the moniker of Journalist. You earn it. Don't whine about the lack of principles on her account and those around you when you obviously are willing to do whatever to keep the McDonald's reporting job, okay.

So yeah, I have empathy for Brit. Doesn't mean I give her a pass, doesn't mean I think she isn't ultimately the one in charge of what happens to her, but I can guess what she's been through, the trades she had to make for where she got in the world and in her business. She has got the money, which is more than most people got. But she also GOT there, which is more than most people got. And while she isn't the best person in the world, the best mom in the world, she did a lot better than a lot of people. And while she did choose the fishbowl, everyone around her chose to crowd around it. Either ignore her, or stop whining and pretending like you're the commonsense messiah.

Sports. Sports is entertainment. Don't read too much into it, alright? Don't worry about whether Brady runs up the score. It's a football game for the love of god. He's paid to do what he does. Do you want him to go out there with the idea that he's not going to hurt someone's feelings? Jesus.

Cheating. Bellichek "Cheated". Fine. He cheated just like every linebacker in the NFL cheats when he gets away with a hold, or a silly snap count, or whatever other tricks they use. Bellicheck got caught. Shut up about "Spygate." He's a winner, he looks for advantages where he can find them. I root against the Pats. But I have to admit I like the man. I like how his team has held up in the face of this fucking nonsense. And I've almost become a fan just because of how everyone is lining up to shit on his face.

When this shit first broke, the wind was blowing the other way. Everyone changed their opinions to fit the NFL rulings. You're all NFL flunkies and don't pretend any different. You lick ballsweat to keep your job. Fine. But don't pretend otherwise. What this guy did was no different than what the linebacker who knows how to hold and fuck with snap counts to draw offsides does. No different than the guy on 2nd base trying to steal signals. No different than any other act of gamesmanship in sports. It adds drama. It adds intrigue. You're not going to stop it. Perhaps the Pats were cavailer about it, but whatever. If they got caught holding, Penalize them. Take away a win. Or just shut up and stop acting so offended. I don't care which. Just throw the flag, call the foul, assess the penalty, say don't do it or don't get caught next time. Don't pretend like it doesn't happen or whatever.

The Pats are fucking cleaning up without the "spy" videos. Imagine that. Maybe it's because he's a fucking visionary coach that took a team that wasn't that good to dominant, dynasty status? I don't like the team that much because I have a soft spot for the underdog, okay? I want them to go 16-0 and then I want Indy to kidneystab them in the playoffs. Then Indy wins a meaningless game against whatever bullshit the NFC fields this year. But don't act like the Pats aren't good or that the Pats don't have class because they did what every fucking team does without getting caught.

And if running up the score is bad? Don't treat stats as important. Don't care about anything other than rings, and if you don't talk about anything other than that, the next generation of footballers won't give a shit about anything other than rings. And they'll play it safe when they're way ahead. But when you dicksuck all day long about most TD passes or whatever... of course when they play that shit opponent they're going to see how much they can get. They're competitors, they want to be the best. They want to break records. You get it?

Jesus. Just shut up. It's all sports entertainment. Take it for what it is. Laugh at the silly things, cheer for the exciting things. That's all you need to do. It's a game. It's fun. That's all it's meant to be. Just cheer, laugh, cry for your team.

Defending a guy you don't really like: It's called being fair

Larry Craig. The guy's name is going to be the setup for lame late-nite comedy for years to come.

But what did he really do? Why is he such a bad guy?

If you're the type of person who believes that dues having sex with is really THAT BAD, then you're either Larry Craig (in public), or you're not reading this blog (Larry Craig reads this blog).

Now let's be up front here: I don't like Craig. I don't like his politics. I don't agree with anyone who wants to give different rights to gay people than the rest of us get. Let them get fucking married already. Jesus. They want to form a family, why do you care? I think sushi is fucking gross but I don't throw a temper tantrum whenever a Japanese resturant opens up. I don't start a movement to constitutionally redefine food as a cooked meat product between two bread products. I don't go in there. I don't eat the food. If you think ass sex is gross, here's a tip:

DON'T FUCK PEOPLE IN THE ASS. DON'T LET OTHER PEOPLE FUCK YOU IN THE ASS.

If it's really that bad, just don't talk to the gay guy next door. Leave him alone. I know you hate the black and the mexican guy too, we just haven't been able to shout you down about the gays yet. Well, it's time. Shut the hell up about the gays. You faggot.

Thank you.

That said, what's being done to Craig is unfair. Sure, it's fun to do this story about Republicans casting themselves as the party of antiquated morals and all that high and mighty bullshit and then it turns out they're having sex with underage men who are not their wife. Or whatever. Yeah, it happens. Not always homosexuality, not always marital infidelity, sometimes it's just general scumminess about the way they treat other people.

And yeah, it's an important story. Hypocrisy needs to be exposed. We need to find a moral standard we can live with and I think we need to cut out the parts about what holes are okay to put things in and focus on the way we treat people, especially those who can't defend themselves.

But what really happened here? I'm not sure. Maybe if I'm making a decision to vote for this guy, I say, okay, there's a lot of circumstancial evidence against him: His creepy condemnation of Bill Clinton as a "dirty nasty boy", his almost reflexive condemnation of the Foley scandal not shared by other members of his party. And that's fine. But I think the way he's getting railroaded is unfair.

The press gave no credence to this story that this was a "coerced" confession. They make a HUGE deal out of this guilty plea thing, since they know they can get away with it. It's the law! That's the retarded fucking argument people who hate Mexicans use too. It's the law! They're here illegally! We ought to shoot them! They broke our law!

Well, yeah, it is the law, and blah blah blah should have known better blah. But he did the best thing he could for himself, really. Let's assume for a moment that you're Larry Craig and you know you're innocent. You just have a wide stance... and not on the issues.

Apparently you accidentally stumbled on the "gay code" for toilet sex. Now maybe this code is real, but it seems easy enough to stumble upon. Tapping your feet - not all that uncommon. I've been in there with guys humming. Okay. Enough of that now. What do I really do? Do I call my lawyer, risk this thing getting to court? If it does, with the Republican hypocrisy such a huge issue, and the Foley scandal still sore in our minds, isn't that going to get me out of a job?

But this cop is basically just giving me a speeding ticket, only with a bathroom, right? So yeah, just sign your name, check the box that says I plead guilty, pay the fine, whatever. The time and the struggle of fighting this shit will ruin me. The only hope is that nobody finds out, or you're suddenly unelectable.

And yeah, he is now. Nothing can be done for it. I don't want to see him re-elected because I don't like his politics. But I'm really not at all convinced about this bathroom thing that he's really a homo, which is REALLY the reason why his home state is going to dump him, and why the Republicans want him out, because they don't want to look like idiots when beating that anti-homo drum.

But I watch the coverage of this, I hear that damn tape a thousand times, and you know what? I'm not buying it. Even as much as I'd LIKE to believe another Republican got caught out being hypocritical, I don't buy this case. And despite what some people might think, the truth still matters to some of us. Yes it's "an important issue", but before you make an issue out of ANYTHING you need to get the facts right.

I listen to that tape and I do hear the traffic cop badgering the "suspect" into just paying the fine to make it to away. And his other behavior? Well, the circumstantial adds up, true enough, but...

Maybe he's really who he says he is. Maybe he is the conservative family man, ever think of that? If it was your white trash uncle instead of Bill Clinton, the whole cigar and fat girl show would be creepy and nasty to you and it would be incredulous that your hick uncle would be suddenly taken seriously on a national stage.

Maybe he's really repulsed and offended by the Foley scandal. Okay, 17 year old "boys" getting hit on by a guy - not the coolest thing in the world, but nobody sheds any tears when young girls get hit on by old men. It's normalized. But maybe he really got offended by it. Maybe that's what his reaction was about.

And a lot was made about his speech where he bypassed the misdemeanor plea and went straight to saying "I'm not gay". Well? Put yourself in his shoes, you've been called what I imagine to him is equivalent to a pedophile, do you really give a shit about the traffic violation-caliber misdemeanor? No, you're trying to stop this terrible terrible stigma of gayness from attaching to you.

So no, I'm not convinced at all. I don't like the guy, I don't like the politics of fear, I don't like his party. But I think it's shameful nobody is standing up and saying wait a minute, this is nonsense, this isn't justice. The Republicans should at least back their own. The Democrats, I guess, are just playing this by not saying anything and will sort of shoot darts at it down the stretch in 2008. But they SHOULD stick to their principles, come out and say that the whole idea of wasting police resources to catch people being gay in restrooms is fucking ludicrous, a waste of money, an invasion of privacy, and another tool of the state to oppress homosexuals.

Armenia, Turkey, and the Perils of the Politics of Convenience

So. Seems like this country mostly seems to believe the Armenian genocide actually happened. And since most of us don't give two shits about Armenia or Turkey, I say that makes us more or less a neutral judge of matters.

It's not even the politicians that are really contesting whether this happened. It's just this apprehension that Turkey is somehow a "vital partner in the War on Terror".

Let's get a couple things straight. Denial of the Armenian Genocide is a bit like Holocaust Denial. I'm not saying that it's improper to take a critical look at the official story - while many whine about "revisionist" history, the official tale is frequently a study in credulity. The point being that we seem to have a class of "official" tragedies and things like this where it's okay to say they may not have happened or even criticize people publicly for saying they did if it's politically inexpedient to do so.

The arguments against at least recognizing this seem absurd. "Who cares what happened back in World War 1?" Well, for one thing some of the soldiers and plenty of the people who were alive during that time might. Secondly, if it's old enough to be water under the bridge why are the Turks so riled up about it? Thirdly, we blast holocaust deniers, deniers of Japan's rape of Asia, etc freely. We don't worry about our relationship with Japan or Germany, two nations who mean a lot more to us than Turkey does.

The "ally in the war on terror" thing is a tenuous justification at best. Even if it were acceptable to not recognize such a horrible act as genocide because it's convenient not to (and it's not; in fact, it's despicable, and anyone who does such a thing or espouses doing it is a pretty horrible person and ought to think hard and long about what the important things in life are)... Turkey isn't that helpful to us, really. Sure, they're kind of "the sane one" in the middle east, their government is secular, but all that really means little. Their populace is largely set against the government, they're stretched out enough with their own problems, and their actual contributions to the lost cause that is Iraq and the "War on Terror" are really rather negligible.

We shouldn't go out of our way to alienate them but that mostly means not saying stupid shit or declaring them to be part of an "Axis of Evil" or whatever. Acknowledging that in the past their government did horrible things doesn't qualify. If they can't man up to the past, they need to be shouted down like Japan does whenever it gets in a revisionist mood.

So if we're going to be serious about Darfur, be serious about what happens in hellhole countries with tinpot dictators, if we are to maintain credibility for when the U.S. is forced to intervene in such humanitarian disasters as these, we must acknowledge the past for what it is and not mince around waiting for the politically expedient time to do so. Kudos to the Congress for having the balls to push this through, and shame on every slimy little appeasing worm who favors the expedient path over the upright one.

Especially Lou Dobbs. You're a snake, Lou. You run your mouth all day, you injure this country with your hogwash, and you know you only do it for the ratings. You're a shill, you're a worm, you're a traitor-in-spirit.

A Lengthy and Detailed Inquest into the Deporting of a Father of a Dead US Soldier:

There are no excuses, there is no rationale, there are no bueracracies or institutional inanities to hide behind. It's just simply despicable. Some things are not understandable, justifiable, or in any way conscionable. They're just wrong, and the people who try to do these things ought to really be ashamed of themselves and who they are.

Meanderings on Language, Society, and Relating to Others

The phenomena of speech and society are so fundamental, so intrinsic and form the very basis of our perception of the world around us that I suspect few people have really sat down and thought about them through a wide lens.

I had not even conceived of this idea until I read about the idea of "time-binding" by Robert Anton Wilson. The verbiage is rather strange, and probably, if one were to search for a suitable existing word, unneccesary, but it is my opinion that sparse use of inventive language can cause the neccessary disconnect between what we already "know" about a subject, and allows us to look at it from the view of someone who knows little about it, which allows us to appreciate it further. For something as fundamental as society and communication, this is a plus.

The jist of the argument for "time-binding" as a way of understanding communication, was that you could think of the normal course of natural selection as a fabric, flowing around in circles, slowly progressing as it spirals around and around. "Binding" this fabric would make those circles much shorter, and as such would drastically increase the rate of forward progress of the benefits of natural selection.

The problem with this is, of course, that natural selection is a mechanical process. Sometimes it is easy to look at the evolution of certain animals and almost get this phantom sense that evolution, as some sort of weird animist entity, "knows" what is beneficial. It doesn't. It may retry things it has tried before, it may try things that it doesn't even make sense to try at all. We can see current evidence of this with certain design flaws in our own bodies. Our appendix and gallbladder are well-known examples of superfluous organs, and the way teeth work is widely cited as "bad engineering" in the case against Intelligent Design.

So if evolution is dumb, sooner or later, if it was possible, it would make sense that if evolution could be faster by virtue of "knowing" what did not work before, and what might work in the future, and what has worked before but had not been needed in some time, those organisms with that enhanced ability would of course be much more responsive to their environment and much more likely to survive.

And of course this is the reason why complex organisms exist at all. Bacteria, as evidenced by extremophiles, are much more suited to surviving harsh conditions, waste less energy, and their sheer abundance does give them a striking advantage in the mutation lottery. But organisms which were more and more complex could "remember" what do do in this or that situation, "learned" strategies to survive in the lifespan of the individual orgasm, they were more and more successful in situations where some of the dumb, but more economical ones were unable to adapt quickly enough.

This development probably led to the actual presence of memory and ability to learn that some of the lower complex organisms have, such as reptiles and insects. Mammals that have evolved social structures are even more responsive to their environments, with the young being able to learn certain behavior and strategy from their parents, and thus those that survive long enough to rear young are able to impart useful information that has allowed them to make it that far. What to fear, how to hunt, how to avoid being seen.. simple, but important lessons that can take hold in a couple generations instead of over thousands or millions of years of trial and error.

And now we come to the meat of the thought, society and communication. Society, as I have already indicated with the lower mammals, provides a fairly rapid response, but has other functions too. Communication, of course, is an even more accellerated form of Society - Organisms are able to impart survival strategy to each other WITHIN their current life. A single generation can learn to adapt to a change in environment multiple times during its own life.

If we take a backward view to our ribbon of evolution, we can imagine the trial and error of evolution being cut neatly in half by the development of a very primitive memory, again by the next advance and again and again, until instead of a diameter of billions of years for the next cycle of advance to take place, it can conceivably take place every generation or so, depending on the challenges to the organism.

This is already a drastic improvement, but the true results of communication as "time-binding" are not yet apparent. Organisms can communicate threats and survival strategy to each other, but it is with the development of oral traditions that past threats no longer present, and possibly strategies no longer in practiced can be saved up for future generations. Add this to the idea that when enough bits of information can act as building blocks, inventing new ideas wholesale without even the trial and error process of discovering them the hard way, and the mental ribon model completely breaks down, the situation becomes very confusing indeed, and we arrive at the dawn of intelligence and "Man" as we understand him.

Of course, all this is very well and good, but the actual genetic mutation and evolution of the body is still very slow, and due to our complex construction, incdredible energy footprint, long gestation time, we are very vulnerable creatures even with our immune systems. But this time-binding, which by now is fully fledged into communication and human knowledge as we understand it, has given us various strategies to deal with the physical limiations of our bodies: Ships to sail ever deeper and rougher waters, and now underneath them, wheels and animal husbandry to make us faster on land, very recently baloons, gliders, and airplanes to propel us through the sky, and even shuttles to take us into outer space! All these obviously allow us to practice one of the oldest tricks of survival most effectively, which is flight. Being able to get away from that volcano or hurricane or plague or predator is always one of the easiest and safest ways to deal with a threat. But we have other strategies too: All sorts of weapons for dealing with predators, better architecture to deal with natural disasters, very recently devices which can enable us to survive even in fire and smoke, again recently antibiotics for dealing with plagues and contagions, and even medicines and repairative technology for our own bodies! Once, any kind of injury resulting in a broken bone or the loss of a body part was a death sentence for an individual, but no more.

All this, of course, in its particulars needs to be accessible and transmitted to the next generation accurately, so it can be thought that society for a long time served as the repository of good communicated knowledge. This started with simple oral traditions, grew into a "guild" layout of society, with each profession imparting its specific role to the next generation, to writing, which allowed for some cross-study, to the printed word, which allowed anyone to study any subject they desired, and finally to modern educational systems, which can train the child of an artist to be a nuclear physisict or the child of a biologist to be an airplane pilot.

An important idea probalby lost in all this mess is that of the "test" - the ability to jump ahead one rung in that ribbon of evolution, by evaluating whether a strategy will work before actually putting it to an often fatal real-world usage. Being able to mentally, mathematically or electronically or mechanically test an idea, or component of an idea, before spending resources or lives seeing if it really works allows us to almost cheat the world a little bit.

And now, of course, mathematics and physics are telling us things we never would have dreamed of about the universe beyond our world, the threats, challenges and opportunities it offers us, and fundamental things about the fundamental nature of matter, time, and space that we would have never dreamed up on our own.

I hope I have been able through this rambling treatise to impart some sort of sense of wonder at the mechanics of this most basic component of our humanity.