I blogged your mom

Teaching Deviance and Safe New Years Eve Plans

2009-12-31T11:42:00.002-06:00

As a teacher of crime and deviance, one of the biggest yet most basic points I try to get across to my students is that the two are not the same. That is, not all crimes are deviant and not all deviant acts are crimes. It sounds like a basic and obvious point, which it really is, but it's so important for how we make laws and use the limited resources of our criminal justice system. It's equally important for understanding why certain crimes tend to be committed by certain people and why some communities barely look askance at crimes that shock other communities.

The most obvious example of this concept is speeding. Speeding is a crime, yet it's not at all deviant, seeing as roughly 99% of our population does it (I just made that number up, but I would not be surprised if it were true). But I think a more illustrative example is drunk driving -- it's certainly illegal, and in most places it's also fairly deviant. But even for something so obviously dangerous and risky, there are still varying shades of deviance attached to it (even though it's illegal throughout the U.S.).

For instance, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas almost always fill out the list of top 5 states for DUI arrests. Now this could be because DUI enforcement is stronger in these states, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it more likely stems from the fact that we here in the Upper Midwest like our alcoholic beverages. Also, we tend more rural with far fewer taxis or dependable forms of public transportation.

As such, while drunk driving is still illegal, and probably still seen as pretty deviant by many people around here, it's probably less deviant in the Upper Midwest than it is elsewhere. So while the legal regulations on drunk driving are pretty uniform across the nation (all 50 states now have a BAC limit set at .08), the social regulations on drunk driving are probably weaker around here. And given that social pressures tend to be much more effective in limiting criminality than are legal regulations, you have people more likely to drink and drive yet face the same legal sanctions as they would in a place where it's less socially acceptable.

Now, I'm certainly not saying that it's socially acceptable around here to drive with a BAC of .708 as they do in South Dakota, but if you live in the Upper Midwest and are heading out to a party tonight, you should probably be a little extra cautious about drunk drivers...

Lazy Blog Post

2009-12-30T15:40:00.002-06:00

Don't have much time to write today because I'm busy working on funding proposals and taking care of a dog that had to have surgery (yes, I provide my dog with the medical care I myself cannot afford).

So in the interest of posting yet not spending time on something, please do check out the craziest shit said in the media in the past year. Not too surprisingly, Glenn Beck tops the list. S read it, and then remember that thousands of people actually listen to that guy. Then go take a long, long shower...

If You Can Read This, You're Probably a Robot

2009-12-29T18:31:00.005-06:00

0101010101101110011011000110010101110011011100110010000001111001011011110111010
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001000000111011101101001011011000110110000100000011010000110010101101100011100
0000100000011110010110111101110101001000000111010101101110011001000110010101110
010011100110111010001100001011011100110010000100000011101000110100001100101001
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11100110110111101101111011011100010000001110100011011110010000001100010011001010
01000000111001001101111011000100110111101110100001000000110111101110110011001010
11100100110110001101111011100100110010001110011001000000110001001100101011001100
1101111011100100110010100100000011101000110100001100101011110010010000001100011
01110010011101010111001101101000001000000111100101101111011101010111001000100000
0110011001101100011010010110110101110011011110010010000001101000011101010110110
101100001011011100010000001110011011010110111010101101100011011000010000001110
111011010010111010001101000001000000111010001101000011001010110100101110010001
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110001101101100011000010111011101110011001011100010111000101110

Find a translation here.

Put Bert in the Hall Already

2009-12-23T09:42:00.002-06:00

Don't have much time to blog today with end of the semester work to do, but I did want to link to a great article by Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnaski arguing again why Bert Blyleven should be in the Hall of Fame.

Bert gets no love from the selection committee because he was never a Cy Young winner or MVP candidate or collector of any of the big awards that make a choice obvious. But if you take a minute and look at what he actually did, he was easily one of the best pitchers of his era, and clearly one of the best pitchers of all time.

Besides, if nothing else, Bert leads the league in sexually inappropriate comments during telecasts, and that's gotta count for something...

That's Not America!

2009-12-22T12:00:00.002-06:00

Once, when Homer Simpson was running for Springfield Sanitation Commissioner, he was decrying that sad state of the world by exclaiming "That's not America! That's not even Mexico!"

And that seems to be a pretty common belief in the U.S. -- that we may not be that great, but shit, look at how bad Mexico's doing. We can't be doing that bad...

But once again, the people we look down on have shown us up as Mexico City recently legalized gay marriage. Not some bullshit "partnership" thing, but full-on marriage with all the attendant rights and responsibilities.

But meanwhile, here in enlightened America, things could only be going so well...

How Much Would Universal Healthcare Cost?

2009-12-18T09:58:00.002-06:00

My guess is it would be far less than $57,077.60 a minute (and by "guess," I mean "know for a fact").

Yet that staggering amount is what we pay for the war in Afghanistan. Not both wars, just the one in Afghanistan. You know, the war that's taken us longer than both World Wars and is nowhere near being a complete or achieving anything approaching success.

It never ceases to amaze me how we just simply cannot find the money to pay for the medication people desperately need and yet cannot afford, but if we're gonna go kill some people, we always have the money. Even if the reason we're killing people has pretty much no basis in reality. Or no basis at all.

Anyway, just a little something to remember every time you hear a politician or right-wing blowhard tell you that sure, in an ideal world, people wouldn't die from easily cured diseases simply because they couldn't afford the cure, but we just don't have the money for that. Or maybe we'll all be lucky enough to contract deadly diseases that can be cured by bombing defenseless people...

The Most Happiest of Anniversaries, or Lisa, It's Your Birthday

2009-12-17T10:33:00.003-06:00

Today marks the 20th anniversary since the Simpsons first aired on a fledgling, never-to-survive network called Fox.

It's almost impossible for me to summarize how big of an impact the Simpsons has had on my life; after all, I was 7 years old when it debuted and have been a super fan since day one. I literally do not remember life before the Simpsons.

And of course, I'm not the only one like this -- my entire generation can be defined through the Simpsons, from their character arcs, to their showdowns with Cosby and the Bush White House, to their irony-laden cynicism that has effectively taught my generation to never believe in anything ("Oh, it's just nonsense words -- you know, like rama lama ding dong, or give peace a chance.")

I don't think I have the time or space to explain what the Simpsons means to me and how it's effected my life, but I will take this angle: I once read an interview with Matt Groening in which the interviewer asked him why a television show (he already had a fairly successful daily comic strip, Life in Hell). Groening said it was because of the ubiquity of television. He wanted to make something that could reach out to the kids in the middle of nowhere, the kids who couldn't run down to the local alternative book store to read up on the latest underground works, because those don't exist in their town.

And this is really what the Simpsons was to me. While obviously a lot of people and ideas had an impact on the person I came to be, the Simpsons was really the first thing I can remember that consistently told me "Life is absurd. The people who control your life and run most every institution are idiots at best, and usually corrupt hypocrites. Just because they have power doesn't mean you should trust them, and in fact, probably means you shouldn't. Also, laughing at the failings of others is a sure fire way to make yourself feel better."

And I'd be willing to venture that is the most important lesson I've ever learned in life...

Insert Stridently Leftist Slogan Here

2009-12-16T10:40:00.000-06:00

A recent study released by the New Economics Foundation has quantitatively demonstrated that hospital cleaners are far more valuable to society than banking executives.

They found that for every pound earned in wages, those who clean hospitals created 10 pounds worth of social value, while for every pound generated by bank executives about seven are destroyed through their reckless speculation and the stress on the financial system they produce.

Not to be so radical as to point out that Marx demonstrated this principal damn near 200 years ago now, but it does seem to still be true that people who actually do something for a living create value, while people who do nothing but push money around and get giant salaries and bonuses don't really create anything worthwhile...

Not To Say This Is a Little Shady, But...

2009-12-15T12:15:00.001-06:00

If you pay attention to the news from Iraq and Afghanistan, besides being about 90% more attentive than the rest of the nation, you may have noticed that the number killed by coalition airstrikes always seems to be 30 people.

Why is this? Well, one answer could be that the military has developed a special 30-person killing bomb that works remarkably well.

Or it's because, according to leaked military memos, any action which would likely kill more than 30 people requires approval from the highest echelons (specifically, according the memo, either Bush or Rumsfeld had to sign off on it from the get go). So if you were a commander on the ground who wanted to get things going, 30 was the highest plausible number of deaths you could report without having to go through mounds of red tape.

I'm not a sociologist of organizations, but I'm sure there's a term for this kind of thing that explains it quite well. But even without that, you can see how this kind of policy has all sorts of latent effects. Probably the most important, though, is that there is likely a greatly under-reported number of civilian deaths, as you can't report more than 30 people dead.

I don't want to be so radical as to suggest that maybe this is somewhat intentional, but I'll let you draw your own conclusion...

When Does Something Officially Become an Affront to God?

2009-12-14T11:05:00.001-06:00

(click on graphic to enlarge)

From the handy blog Graphic Sociology, here's a nice little graphic showing the changing attitudes toward gay marriage over the past 10 years or so in America.

While we're all pretty familiar by now with all of the arguments surrounding gay marriage (you know, human dignity vs. being an asshole), what this graphic really demonstrates is how things that were once non-issues can suddenly become pressing matters. Note that outside of Sarah Palin's Alaska, no sate had any law regarding gay marriage just a decade ago. Now nearly every state has some form of legislation, whether it be legalizing or banning it.

If nothing else, it does kind of take the air out of the "tradition" based arguments -- after all, it's hard to imagine that hetero-only marriage is such an important tradition if no one had ever bothered to take legislative action on it before 10 years ago. One decade of hyper-politicized legislation does not a sacred tradition make...

UPDATE:

Another handy graph from the NY Times notes that only 25 states have laws banning cousins from getting married. So, just for the record, far more states think it's more important to make sure two dudes can't get married than to make sure two cousins can't get married.

What To Get The Person Who Has Everything This Christmas, Part II

2009-12-11T09:15:00.002-06:00

How about the Flaming Lips silver fetus christmas ornament? As frontman Wayne Coyne points out, it's guaranteed to "give off vibrations that help all humans progress toward an intelligence explosion." What more could you want?

Check out Wayne shilling it here, and note the sweet traditional Christmas skulls sweater:

No Wonder I Can't Get Money for My Dissertation

2009-12-10T15:30:00.000-06:00

I'm currently in the midst of trying to find someone to pay for my dissertation studies, which is neither an easy nor fun process. In fact, the only things that differentiate it from begging on the street for money are that 1) I get to do it from the comfort of my home, rather than the discomfort of a street corner, and B) it's slightly more socially acceptable.

But otherwise, there's very little difference, as I scramble daily to find the best way to beg people with lots of money for a small portion of that money such that I may one day have a job.

And it's really annoying and difficult to do, especially in he middle of a recession. And now I find out that the National Science Foundation, one of the biggest foundations offering funds to lowly peasants like myself is losing a bunch of its money due to its employees internet porn addictions.

Not only does this mean there's less money available, but it makes the process all the more degrading; I mean, it's one thing to beg money, but it's a whole different ball game to be forced to beg for money from internet porn addicts...

...And Again, I Really Love Minneapolis

2009-12-08T15:21:00.002-06:00

Don't have much time to write today as I'm busy getting actual work done (a rare event unlikely to be repeated), but did get a delightfully unexpected dose of good ol' Midwestern neighborliness as we're having our first big snowfall right now, and some older gent who've I've never met just got done shoveling my front sidewalk.

Try getting that in your fancy-pants big-city New York...

What To Get The Person Who Has Everything This Christmas

2009-12-07T17:41:00.000-06:00

How about 100 year-old Scotch from the depths of the arctic?

The scotch, from McKinlay and Co., was shipped shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton (Ernie Shacks, as the ladies called him) as part of a 1909 expedition. It was discovered by scientists currently working on the Nimrod Expedition underneath a hut they had set up. Well, that's their story at least -- I'm assuming they were desperately searching the ice for anything to dull the inanity of a vast, snowy wasteland and stumbled upon the find of their dreams.

The biggest catch, though, is that the current incarnation of McKinlay and Co. will only be able to recover a small portion of the lost scotch under conservation guidelines agreed by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations. They want it to test it and see if they want to recreate the old scotch.

But I say the skip the re-creation and just sell the world's most exclusive and well-aged scotch their is...

Uncreative Friday

2009-12-04T11:02:00.001-06:00

Too much to do today to blog, so here's an especially amusing webcomic I came across:

How Are You Set on Trent Reznor Banjitars?

2009-12-01T12:01:00.003-06:00

Opting not to go the KISS route and release the same album for 20 years while on a never-ending retirement tour, Trent Reznor is apparently pretty serious about the break up of Nine Inch Nails. So much so that he's selling most of his equipment on ebay.

Of course, most of it is already prohibitively expensive (as I assume it tends to get whenever the seller is famous), but there are some pretty sweet instruments tucked away in all of it, like the above custom-made banjitar (which is currently available for the low, low price of $1,690).

I guess you know what to get for the mid-90s industrial goth fan on your holiday shopping list...

Oh Outrage Fatigue...

2009-11-25T11:42:00.003-06:00

The September 11 attacks (often referred to as September 11th or 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.

2,976 victims and the 19 hijackers died in the attacks. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 90 countries. In addition, the death of at least one person from lung disease was ruled by a medical examiner to be a result of exposure to dust from the World Trade Center's collapse.

That's the first two paragraphs of the wikipedia entry for the September 11 terrorist attacks. Just wanted to be clear.

And if you're reading this, you probably know all that. In fact, I would be willing to bet you could give all sorts of more information and details and would think it were laughable if someone didn't know about these attacks.

But that would put you far ahead of Bush Jr.'s former press secretary Dana Perino, who just recently claimed there were no terrorist attacks during Bush's presidency. Go ahead: click on the link and watch her say it.

Let me repeat that to be clear: Mz. Perino apparently does not count the attacks of September 11, 2001 (well over 9 months into Bush's first term) as terrorist attacks. Apparently they were friendly misunderstandings.

Of course, Dana Perino makes her living lying out of her ass. And once again, maybe this was just a really, really stupid mistake.

But I highly doubt it. This is just another example of how the right-wing attempts to re-write history to make it fit their pre-conceived notions. Because of course her completely-wrong assertion about never suffering a terrorist attack under Bush wasn't just a mistake, it was to illustrate how strong a defender of the homeland Bush is, as opposed to that queer-o-sexual, Muslim terrorist currently in the White House.

And, of course, it doesn't matter that Bush was warned months in advance of the worst terrorist attack on our nation in the past 60 years, and then did nothing to prevent it. And then took actions to make matters worse and another attack far more likely.

No, like Reagan, Nixon, and all the other fuck-ups ahead of him, he must've been a brilliant and noble man, so surely something as inconsequential as the fucking objective truth shouldn't inconvenience your narrative at all...

Controlling the News Through Poor Infographics

2009-11-24T12:59:00.002-06:00

The above image has been making the rounds on the ol' interwebs for the past couple of days. As you can see, it's a handy Fox News breakdown of who Republicans support for the next presidential run. And as you also might see, if you have 3rd-grade level math skills or higher, the pie chart adds up to 193%, an amazing feat.

This is a great example of not only the shitty, hurriedly-slapped togetherness of most everything the 24-hour news stations do, but also a great example of Fox' repeated "errors" that make their chosen politics and positions look better. Fresh off the flap over their twice in as many days doctoring crowd footage to make various Republicans look more popular than they really are, you now have this pie chart.

And sure, it could just be a stupid error of someone not knowing what they're doing, or it could be a conscious attempt to misuse graphics to make it look like all three of them are wildly popular. And granted I would like to think it was a failure, but we are, after all, in a nation where a large percentage of the population is insulted by the the teaching of scientific fact to their children, so I'm not too sure they would be that quick to notice obvious math errors...

Nerdgasm: Jason Segel + The Swell Season

2009-11-23T13:00:00.002-06:00

If you're a fan of Irish/Czech cutesy (former) couples folk music and underrated sweetly awkward comedy, than you'll love Jason Segel serenading the audience at a recent Swell Season gig in L.A.

Turns out that the number in the video is actually his phone number...I got his answering machine, so try it while you can.

A Public Service Announcement

2009-11-19T14:39:00.001-06:00

Don't Not Do It Because It's Wrong, Don't Do It Because You Don't Need To

2009-11-17T11:16:00.003-06:00

Recently 3 Tennessee football players were arrested on charges of armed robbery. As of yesterday, two had been dismissed from the team and action was pending on the third.

This is absurd for multiple reasons (how much money do you need when you're going to college for free?), but the most pertinent is this: you don't need to do it. Unless you're just in it for the thrills, there are far easier ways for a football player at a major Division I school to get money.

And no, I'm not talking about the indignity of work-study or even a real job. No, you simply get a wealthy booster to give you thousands of dollars under the table. Like this guy:

That's a photo (which was quickly removed) from Kenneth Page's myspace page. Page, a recent high school grad and high-ranked recruit of the Clemson football team, somehow got his hands on thousands upon thousands of dollars in fresh bank bills (in case the resolution isn't very good, those are twenties).

Now one might ask how an unemployed recent high school graduate would come into possession of such a large amount of cash. Perhaps he went trick-or-treating in a really nice neighborhood that gives away thousands of dollars in fresh-from-the-bank bills instead of candy bars...

Or, perhaps, a Clemson booster wanted to make sure their new recruit was happy and well taken care of. Not to make the wild accusation that these supposed amateur athletes occasionally make some good money for being "student" athletes, but it would seem to be a plausible explanation.

Which is what makes the Tennessee case so crazy. Major college athletes don't need to avoid robbing banks because of the legal fallout, they don't need to rob banks because there are plenty of people willing to give them large amounts of cash just because they play football for a particular university. And given the choice between armed robbery of a bank and getting thousands of dollars for free, I would probably choose the free money. But then again, I was busy spending my time in class instead of running football drills, so maybe they just missed that day in logic class...

And Jesus Said "Come to me, and I will give you rest...unless you're a homo"

2009-11-16T10:41:00.004-06:00

As a life-long Catholic and someone who tries to follow the scriptures, there's often a bit of cognitive dissonance to work through. Sometimes it's particular bits of theology I can't agree with (I'm still looking for that part of Christianity that actually says gay people aren't people) and sometimes it's extremely embarrassing things my church has done that I can never condone (hiding the sex crimes of multiple known child abusers).

But this week the American church has really upped the ante of reprehensible/hypocritical anti-scriptural behavior. In two different ways, nonetheless.

Hot on the heels of a national announcement by American bishops that they would not support health care if it included any money that could possibly ever be spent near an abortion provider, Catholic Charities has announced they will stop all work in D.C. if it legalizes marriage.

Yes, that's right -- if the District of Columbia says it's ok for people who love each other to get married, Catholic Charities will respond by no longer housing or feeding the homeless. Because that seems like a proportional punishment. After all, there's no better way to make a political point than by punishing the poor and downtrodden.

If I remember correctly, the sermon goes "Blessed be the poor, unless of course, they can be easily used as political pawns in a war over semantics. In that case, fuck the poor."

People often misinterpret the role of infallibility in the Church. Not everything the Pope says is infallible; it is actually only special declarations that are deemed infallible (such as the Virgin Mary being subsumed bodily into Heaven). There's actually a pretty big out for when the Pope (or conservative asshole Bishops) are wrong. Called sensus fidelium it means literally "sense of the faithful." While it's a bit more complicated than this, it's essentially a smell test. Meaning that even in a Chruch as rigid and hierarchical as Catholicism, it is still recognized that if you honestly don't believe the Church's doctrine matches with what God really would proscribe, you can faithfully disagree if that doctrine just doesn't smell right. It's also the only nod toward some form of democracy in the Church, as a big enough groundswell of the faithful can actually change Church doctrine.

And these two recent events would be great examples of a sensus smell test -- no matter what tortured scriptural logic you can come up with to condemn homosexuality, I don't think any truly faithful person can agree that God would want you to punish the homeless as a result...

It's Ok When We Do It...

2009-11-10T14:45:00.002-06:00

I've been reading up on the Arab world a lot lately, and I'm really struck by how similar it is to the Christian world, in pretty much every way. Oh sure, the specific details differ, but overall, they're pretty indistinguishable. They both have their fanatics and their hypocrites, their crazy rites that really make no sense, they both blame women for all of men's faults, they both have sect splits over the most minor of differences, etc. Hell, they have the same deity and many of the same prophets.

And of course, even though both of their religions strictly and explicitly forbid killing, they both have managed to find some loopholes that make it ok as long as you're killing the right type of person. And here agin they're similar, as the right kind of person just happens to be anyone who isn't part of their religion (or who is part of it, but can be found to be not good enough).

One of the biggest contemporary resonances, however, is how the other side is nothing but bloodthirsty killers while your own side is nothing but pious and virtuous warriors for good. Glenn Greenwald has a great example of this as David Brooks decries Muslims for being so vengeful and murderous.

Yes, the same David Brooks who cheerleaded the nation into war (against two separate Muslim nations, nonetheless), who mocked those who called on a cease-fire between Palestine and Israel, and who wants to send more soldiers to Afghanistan, ostensibly based on how well that effort is going thus far -- you know, having lasted longer than both World Wars and yet having made essentially no progress, unless you count trading the Taliban (murderous religious-fanatic drug dealers) for the Karzai government (murderous secular drug dealers) as progress...

But yes, Muslims are the ones who enjoy war, Mr. Brooks. You merely think we should constantly be at war and measure all world leaders by their willingness to go to war. Perhaps I'm just not smart enough to parse out the subtle difference between the two...

Why "Reality" Rarely Bothers Us

2009-11-05T10:02:00.002-06:00

A recent study by UNC and Northwestern sociologists explained why some people still believe Saddam was responsible for 9/11 despite the fact that both the 9/11 Commission and former President Bush both admit there was never any connection between the two.

The authors of the study point to what they call "motivated reasoning" -- that is, when we believe something, we tend to seek out evidence that confirms it and ignore contradictory evidence, no matter how strong or matter of fact it may be (this may be the same reason why so many Colbert viewers think he's actually a conservative).

Also of interest, one of the authors of the study, Andrew Perrin, was interviewed a long while back by your humble li'l blogger for the inaugural Contexts podcast. In the interview he discusses how polls of he electorate around political races are a "productive fiction." Interesting stuff, and not just because you get to hear my sonorous voice...

PlayDoh Apparently Much Cooler Than I Remember

2009-11-04T14:44:00.003-06:00

This is from a series of ads for PlayDoh that ran in Singapore before a Hasbro America rep found out and demanded them pulled.

Frankly, I think they do a better job selling it than the ability to make a long tube in the shape of a crescent moon, but I guess that's why I'm not in advertising.