Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau

If drugs were legal and criminal organizations started going bankrupt, would Congress provide crime subsidies to keep the criminals busy so the cops and prison guards have something to do?

By Thoreau

We have in the catalog a list of courses, and above that list of courses it says something to the effect of “The Physics Department offers a special concentration of courses that satisfy some* of the requirements to become a science teacher.”  Except that:

1)  A few years ago we learned that they don’t satisfy the requirements for a degree.  You can take these classes, and they may be great preparation for science teaching, but nobody ever got the administration to do the paperwork that says “Students who take these courses get a bachelor’s degree.”

When we learned about this more than a year ago, it was thought to be a bureaucratic oversight, and various people said they’d look into it.  More than a year passed.  I was appointed to chair the curriculum committee.  I said “Well, I should look and see if anybody ever corrected that bureaucratic oversight.”  Not so much because I’m passionate about teacher prep (generally, people who get enthusiastic about teacher prep drink a lot of kool-aid) but because I have a few good students in my classes who want to be teachers and if fixing a simple bureaucratic oversight will help them, might as well send the necessary memo and get it fixed.

That’s when I learned the other problem.

2)  These classes might not even satisfy the requirements for a teacher.  Or maybe they satisfy the middle school teacher requirements but not high school.  Or vice versa.  Or neither.  We’re not sure.  People who are enthusiastic about teacher prep are looking into it and will get back to me at some point.

Given the level of weirdness around it, I’m dropping the matter until somebody comes to me with a solution (and proof that the solution is in fact valid).

*In California it’s impossible for a degree to satisfy all of the requirements, since you need at least a year of  college after the degree.  We’ll leave aside for now whether that has led to better teaching.

By Thoreau

As I started speculating on last week, there are very few wealthy and liberal democracies that have a government structured anything like ours.  For starters, strong second chambers are a rarity, except among (some) federal systems.  Even wealthy liberal democracies with substantial federalism (e.g. Switzerland, Canada) tend to have parliamentary systems.  We are taught in high school civics that every piece of our structure is a necessity to ensure that the system stays in check.  Clearly, however, there are wealthy, liberal, and even federal democracies that work with different structures.

The obvious lesson is that there’s more than one way to run a liberal democracy.  (Duh.)  Hence, the lessons about how important each piece of our system is aren’t entirely correct.  The less obvious aspect to ponder is why so many places, given the choice, have chosen to go with the parliamentary model.

I’m tempted to think that it has something to do with the fact that so many of the older liberal and wealthy democracies around today started off as (and often remain, on paper) monarchies of some sort.  In a monarchy, the monarch is Head of State, so the democratic element comes via a Prime Minister, not a President.  Of course, there’s no reason why some country couldn’t just say “You know, we’re going to elect the head of government, and still have a hereditary head of state!”, but historically those systems started off with monarchs who had real powers (not just ceremonial), and the commoners were represented in a parliament of some sort.  However, this theory fails because even countries that either didn’t start as monarchies or made a clean break with monarchy have still (mostly) chosen parliamentary systems.  In fact, even some wealthy, liberal democracies that we helped set up (e.g. Germany, Japan) decided to go with parliamentary systems.

At this point, one might say something about how the US system hasn’t worked out in a very liberal or democratic way.  Sure, I have criticisms along those lines, but (1) if you grade on a global curve, the US still does better than a gentleman’s C and (2) many European countries had colonial empires and parliamentary systems at the same time, so it’s not like parliamentary systems are insurance against empire-building.

So, why is it that so many countries favor and get good results from a parliamentary system?

By Thoreau

Frankly, life is cheap, most notably to Serious People.  And among the Serious People there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their foreign policy.  So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

That’s some pretty outrageous stuff, isn’t it?  Fortunately, though, it’s just a riff on what a Serious Person said, so it’s rooted in good, Serious stuff.

By Thoreau

One of our admirers posted a most interesting graph:

The date is taken from here.

As those corners were turned and Spinal Tap drummers were killed, it actually became more and more expensive to keep all of these armed government employees and contracting firms in the field doing whatever the fuck it was that they did for the ostensible purpose of defending “freedom.”  Seriously, we could have just taken a fraction of the aircraft used for the ritual slaughter of unclean foreigners, and re-tasked them with dropping bushels and bushels of $20 bills over various defense contractors in northern Virginia.  It would have been cheaper, less wasteful of human life, just as lucrative for the bloody-handed profiteers, and with the right wind you might even get some trickle-down effects.  Or we could have dropped gold bricks, delivering just as much money but in a manner that is pleasing to Ron Paul.

The next time a politician insists to you that we need to send some armed government employees to kill assorted foreigners right now OR ELSE DOOM WILL FALL, just write a check to DynCorp or Xe or whoever instead.  Fiscally, it will have the same effect, but nobody has to die in the process.  Or, more accurately, borrow the money from China and then write the check.  And when China shows up to collect on the debt, point them in the direction of the defense contractors, and make some popcorn.

By Thoreau

In many ways it’s great living in a futuristic technotopia where all of the world’s information is available via a small pocket-sized device owned by billions of people around the world.  However, I just realized that as recently as 10 years ago, hardly anybody would say “My phone is running sluggish, maybe I need to reinstall the OS.”  A phone used to be something that sat there on the desk and was used.  It might break, but it didn’t need software upgrades or run slow.  Even mobile phones mostly just made phone calls.  Now, we worry about applications eating up memory.

This is one reason why I’m less than enthused about the idea of computer-operated cars that make the driving decisions and avoid collisions while you sit there passively.  If you download the wrong files to the car’s entertainment system, and the whole system starts running sluggish, will driving with it be the equivalent of driving drunk today?

I try hard to keep a feminist perspective in mind because, as a man, I have to – it’s easy to to make conveniently sexist assumptions otherwise. (”Convenient” for a dude.) But for the life of me, I can’t read a crime into even the details of the accusers’ own statements in the Julian Assange case, as reported by Angella Johnson in the Daily Mail late last month. (Via Fabius Maximus, via James Fallows.) The recap of the statements to Swedish police is commendably lengthy and detailed, so I won’t excerpt. Please read it. Tell me how far off-base I am. There’s no direct accusation of coercion at any point. This becomes frustratingly ambiguous in the “Sunday morning” section:

One source close to the investigation said the woman had insisted he wear a condom, but the following morning he made love to her without one.

Whose phrasing is “made love” here. The reporter’s? The source? The accuser? I’ve known a number of sexual assault victims: none of them would characterize what happened to them as “making love.” Is this sloppy writing by Johnson, careless phrasing by the source, or an accurate indicator that what happened when Assange and Ms B woke up was, at that moment, consensual?

The legal bones of contention between Assange and his accusers appear to be

* condom use
* the women’s insistence, after they realized they’d each had sexual encounters with Assange, that he get immediate STD tests and give them the results

The second seems like an intriguing basis for the possible development of 21st Century tort law. And, hey, Sweden is a sovereign country. It can criminalize whatever it wants. The first seems a little trickier. If a woman says, “I’ll only have sex with you if you use a condom” and then you force unprotected sex on her, that’s obviously rape: you forced sex on her. If a woman says, “I’ll only have sex with you if you use a condom” and you say okay, but then secretly slip it off in the dark and she somehow doesn’t notice, I suppose we’re on the frontiers of theory: this is more a matter of fraud than force. I think there’s a strain in feminist legal theory that would have no trouble calling this rape because the woman gave a prior refusal to what actually takes place (unprotected sex) and would have stopped the act if she knew what was going on. At the very least, the fraud itself is clear, even if we don’t agree on its import. (Is it a crime? Is that crime rape? Is that rape the same degree of offense as forcible rape?

By the time you get to, “Last night I said, only with a condom, but this morning we ended up having sex without one by mutual agreement, but you should’ve honored my previously stated wishes over my later acquiescence” we’re either no longer talking about a crime, or we’ve gone beyond the limits of my feminism. Which is it?

Before my coblogger gets ahead of the evidence, let me state that the official position of Unqualified Offerings is that we simply do not know whether Cellist Mike Edwards, cofounder of Electric Light Orchestra,was Al Qaeda’s Number Three leader when

the 94 stone bale [of hay] careered down the side of a steep Devonshire field before it smashed through a hedge and onto the road.

The 62-year-old died instantly in the accident on Friday afternoon.

By Thoreau

I finally saw Avatar (and in 3D, the way it was meant to be seen).  A lot has been said about how one message is that ultimately what the indigenous people REALLY need is the help of a white guy.  There are various rejoinders that have been made (e.g. the corporate/military characters are villains and are not afforded any character development that might make us sympathize), and others have debated whether it’s wrong to make a movie that can be interpreted as “What they really need is a white guy.”  I want to go in a different but related direction, concerning the savior from the colonialist group:

Jake Sullivan lived in human culture and become a great warrior among humans, but ultimately he becomes an outsider, adopts a form that has human and Na’vi DNA, and becomes a warrior in that culture as well.  A parallel to consider is the half-elves of fantasy.  In the Silmarillion, for instance, it is stated that the reason Earendil succeeded in getting the Valar to save the humans and Elves of Middle Earth from Morgoth is that he was of both races and could plead for both.  In the Shannara books, most of the main heroes are of mixed human and Elven ancestry.  Tanis Half-Elven is one of the heroes of Dragonlance, and the books address the challenges he faces as a character of mixed race, but also the better perspective that it gives him.  In the Forgotten Realms novels of R.A. Salvatore, Wulfgar is born human but raised among dwarves, and ultimately returns to his human tribesmen to claim the mantle of leadership, an example of a character of mixed background claiming the leadership mantle of a less technologically-sophisticated group.  (Much could also be said of Drizzt Do’Urden and his background, but he is treated somewhat differently than most of the examples I’m thinking of.)  In Robotech, the fate of humans and Invid is decided by the pleas of Sera and Marlene/Ariel (Invid who take on human form and learn more about humans).  Indeed, Superman, born on Krypton and raised on Earth, saves Earth from  Zod.  No doubt numerous other examples could be found, but I mostly stopped reading fantasy in college (due to other demands on my attention, not due to reduced enthusiasm).

Again and again in fantasy, sci-fi, and other genres with geek fans, a theme is that the ultimate savior will be one who has a mixed background or has experienced both sides.  Of course there are many differences between the examples I gave and Avatar.  Not all of the examples involve a technological superior group fighting against “noble savages.”  In some of them it isn’t even the races that are at war.  (e.g. Humans and Elves were usually allies in Shannara.)  Still, again and again, fantasy and sci-fi writers have characters of mixed ancestry and/or upbringing deciding the fate of both groups, sometimes even assuming leadership of one group or the other.

Now, fiction is often written to explore ideas that have relevance beyond the story at hand, which makes Avatar fair game for analysis of colonial themes and also makes the half-elf theme fair game for comparison with real conflicts.  How often do turn-coats not only decide conflicts but also become leaders?  Certainly many battles have been won with information obtained from defectors or informants, and many armies have acquired technology with help from defectors.  Defectors have been used for propaganda value (willingly or otherwise).  And certainly there are refugees who fight for their new country after fleeing from an evil leader.  However, I am struggling to think of defectors or mixed-background people who have led the charge on the field, especially for a victorious underdog.  And often people who are of the same ethnic background as the other side in the conflict will be treated with prejudice by the side that they live among, even though they are loyal to the people that they live among (e.g. Japanese internment).

So, it is interesting how common the theme of “All will be decided by one who is of both worlds” is in stories, despite its limited applicability in real life.

EDIT:  The more I think about it, the more I see parallels (with twists) between Avatar and the Invid episodes of Robotech.  There is an indigenous resistance…but they’re human.  The colonizers are after natural resources (protoculture), but the resources are of alien origin.  And the invaders are actually fallen Noble Savages (the Invid started as a peaceful race in harmony with nature, before getting involved interplanetary conflicts and having to develop crab-like robot fighters.  There’s a savior from another world…but he’s actually a human raised in space (Scott Bernard).  And in the end, it’s the intervention of invaders-turned-native (Sera and Marlene/Ariel) that decides everything.

By Thoreau

GE is hoping to sell nuclear reactors to Vietnam. Some day, I’m sure US companies will be selling nuclear reactors to Iraq.  And so it goes.