Masson's Blog
Apropos of nothing at all, I figured I’d mention that Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is one of the greatest movies of all time.
Patches O’Houlihan: If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.
Justin: What?
[Patches throws a wrench and hits Justin in the face]
Justin Bateman has a great role as sports commentator Pepper Brooks on ESPN 8 “The Ocho”.
Cotton McKnight: And the Average Joe’s beat the Germans in a *shocking* upset.
Pepper Brooks: I feel *shocked*.
(H/t Tim) – Obscenity law revolves around the elusive notion of “community standards.” MSNBC has a story up on a lawyer who planned to defend an obscenity case by using Google statistics to determine what our community standards *really* are; as opposed to what people *say* they are. The story points out some obvious defects in this sort of metric; but it’s still an interesting notion. A sense of shame and false notions about our proclivities versus those of our neighbors probably skews the “community standard” to a level more prudish than is actually prevalent. For example, long ago, I used to be under the laughable impression that masturbation was something rare in human society. Turns out, not so much.
I just stumbled across what is potentially another unintended consequence of the property tax revision; not necessarily good, not necessarily bad, just unintended. Capital costs of government buildings can be supported by local income taxes more easily than the operating costs. The operating costs, I believe, are more likely to have to be supported by property taxes. With property taxes less available, the trend for construction projects payable out of income taxes may be to try to reduce operating costs by incurring more up front capital costs — for example, more expensive, but more energy efficient construction materials.
Just a thought. I might be very, very wrong.
I’ve got nothin’. Taxes are bad. Government is too big. Beer is proof that there is a God and he loves us. If you look too long at the abyss, you’ll find the abyss looking back. E pluribus unum. Discuss.
Just thought I’d bellyache about our current approach to health care. For any policy makers advocating a market based solution to our health care problems, I suggest that job one is transparent pricing. Without that, any signals from the market place are going to be about useless.
The reason I bring that up is that today Amy went about getting a prescription filled on some heavy duty skin cream for Harper. Our normal pharmacy quoted us a price that was wildly inflated from the price that had been quoted two weeks ago at the same pharmacy. At a second pharmacy, the price was somewhere between the two. She asked a few different people for an explanation on the pricing. All they could do was mumble about “the computer” and “insurance.”
So, if I find myself suffering from a sucking chest wound, I’m going to have to do my comparison shopping in a hurry. I’m going to want apples-to-apples comparisons.
Or, you know, we could go about planning health care policy with a recognition that “the market” is a difficult fit for delivering health care services in some respects.
John Lucas, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, asks some questions about the Founding Fathers.
How from such a small pool of people were so many giants produced 250 years ago?
And with so many more to choose from now, why can’t we seem to find people of such stature today?
How did those people — John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and many, many less well-remembered delegates to the Congress and constitutional convention — come up with the framework of government that in the main serves us still today?
I think there were some unique qualities about the late 18th century that contributed to the availability of so many great minds. In particular, the Enlightenment philosophies that were prevalent at the time had to help – valuing observed truth over revealed dogma is a mindset that had to have helped. More important, in my opinion, is that society was less stratified when the country was that new: talent could rise to the top more easily. For example, Alexander Hamilton, one of the most important Founders, was a bastard child out of the West Indies who had proven himself in military campaigns and become a close aide to General Washington by the time he was in his early 20s (his exact year of birth is uncertain). While it’s not impossible that such a mongrel would rise so far so fast simply on his own abilities in today’s America, I contend it is a lot more difficult.
America at the time of the Founders was more like a start up company, where good ideas and hard work allow you to rise to the top rapidly. America today is more like a Fortune 500 company where you have to adhere to the established policies and procedures, rise through the ranks, and be good at corporate politics.
Just a theory.
Laura Misjak has an article in the Indianapolis Star about the troubles of ex-convicts in finding jobs once they get out. This is something I come across a lot since one of my collection clients is the county’s community corrections program. The people from whom I’m trying to collect in that situation are, by definition, convicts of one sort or another. Frankly, I have been impressed by the numbers who do manage to find work. The personalities of ex-convicts are pretty much as broad as the personalities of people generally, but one “kind” of convict I run across with some frequency is the guy who has really grown up because of the experience — just focused on working hard and extricating himself from the mess. (There are plenty who are still making excuses and complaining about how hard life is; possibly true, but irrelevant.)
Anyway, the article reports that the Indy City-County Council is looking at incentives to employers to get them to hire ex-convicts.
City-County Councilwoman Marilyn Pfisterer is trying to ease the way for those with felony records: She is sponsoring an ordinance to give businesses that hire them an upper hand when bidding on city or county contracts.
. . .
With fines, probation, child support and other costs, the average debt for those coming out of prison in Indianapolis is $28,000, Keesling said. In other words, finding a job is important.
“We’ve got to provide a person a fighting chance to do the right thing and this bill will do that,” he said.
The biggest problem I would have with this sort of legislation is if it would disadvantage potential employees who didn’t commit any crimes. If I were a law-abiding guy looking for work, I’d be pissed if I got passed up for a job because the government created a preference for convicts.
I don’t have any clue how such a thing would be implemented, but I would suggest something along the lines of an insurance program that reduces the risk to employers for hiring convicts – something that doesn’t necessarily give an advantage to employers for hiring convicts, but takes away the disadvantage.
In my ever so humble opinion, this article on religion in the Muncie Star Press is a jumble of vague language. I suspect the author is capable enough but is dancing around some uncomfortable truths.
The article says that Americans are “less dogmatic” about religious beliefs than they used to be but that might not be the case in Muncie.
[I]n Muncie, where Christian attitudes are dominant with limited voices from other religions, the path to eternal life continues to be in traditional beliefs.
Oh, so Catholicism? That’s pretty traditional – not like that Johnny-come-lately rabble rouser, Martin Luther. And don’t get me started on that radical John Calvin. Talk about your non-traditional iconoclasts. But, we don’t really get a hint from the article about what constitutes “tradition.”
Another winning passage:
Charlotte Overmeyer, associate pastor of High Street United Methodist Church, agrees with the importance of learning about other faiths and though she stands strong in her Christian beliefs and that path for eternal life, she doesn’t find harm in discussions alternative faiths. In fact, she, like some other religious leaders, would like to see more religious diversity in Muncie.
“Diversity is kind of exciting to me, to meet people of other faiths,” she said. “Can I listen to other people? Can I explore what other people believe? I’m not threatened by that. I’m glad for the discussion.”
I’m completely thrown by the phrase “that path for eternal life.” Which path to eternal life is that? Adherence to Methodist teachings? And what of those people of diverse faith? Are they off the path? And, if so, are they just on the planet to provide exciting discussions for true believers before they go to hell?
As to the central point of diversity, I think a certain degree of self-righteousness has to be built into the DNA of any religion, otherwise it doesn’t survive through the ages. I’ve found the notion of memetics to be helpful in thinking about religions and their component beliefs. With memetics, religions and other ideas act in many respects like independent organisms; using people as sort of hosts that assist in replication. Like any other organism, religions have to look out for their own integrity so they can be replicated from host to host in substantially the same form. A successful religion pretty much has to have a mechanism for rejecting foreign invaders — like white blood cells in the human body, equipped to destroy pathogens.
If a religion, as an organism, doesn’t have mechanisms built in to ensure replication in substantially its original form, it will dissipate and cease to exist in a recognizable form. Consequently, a successful religion is not likely to hold as a central tenet that any old religion will get you to heaven. There would be no impetus for people to pass the religion to other people intact. A religion that specifies that its adherents are going to heaven and adherents of other religions are going to hell has a competitive advantage in the ecosystem of ideas — up to a point. Once competing adherents start killing each other off, the religions start losing overall adherents. Sort of like when the white blood cells in the body get out of control, causing more problems than they’re solving.
The Supreme Court has issued another 5-4 opinion, this one addressing the Second Amendment which the Supreme Court has long dodged. Justice Scalia wrote the opinion, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy. I’ve only read the syllabus, but generally, it appears that the Court is recognizing an individual right to bear arms as opposed to one conditioned on being in a militia. To me, this has always seemed like the correct way to parse the text of the amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The Court decided that the prefatory language announces a purpose, but does not limit the scope of the right. The Second Amendment right is not an unlimited right to possess any weapon one chooses for any reason, but rather those in “common use” for “common purposes.” The gist of the opinion seems to be that people have to be allowed to have ordinary weapons for lawful purposes such as “self-defense” and laws that make those weapons useless for self-defense are unconstitutional. The court specifies that the opinion should not be read as casting doubt on prohibitions on possession of weapons by felons and the mentally ill. D.C.’s trigger lock ordinance was found to be unconstitutional because it rendered permissible weapons useless for self-defense in the home.
That was my take based on a quick reading of the syllabus. If you see something more reliable elsewhere, you’ll probably want to go with that. From the syllabus, anyway, it seems like a reasonable decision. I’ll have to read the dissents to see if they change my mind.
I’ll indulge here in a bit of a screed against “The Media.” The trouble with such screeds, of course, is that “The Media” is not monolithic and not all media is created equal. But there seem to be certain tendencies in the “mainstream media” (another amorphous entity) which I find objectionable. To drill down even further, my annoyance generally centers on “pack reporting tendencies in television and newspaper political news and punditry operations.” But that’s more of a mouthful than “The Media.”
One tendency is the “Christians are Republicans” narrative. Craig at Reverent & Free has a nice post that highlights James Dobson’s latest antics which contribute to that narrative. To maintain this narrative, you have to favor “the right kind” of Christianity and discount “the wrong kind.” Much of Dobson and his ilk’s power in the political discourse comes from “The Media’s” assumption that guys like Dobson are entitled to speak “for Christians.” After the Reformation, Christianity shattered into a million little pieces, making a centralized voice for the faith problematic.
The words and actions of Dr. Dobson illuminate further the problems that arise when politics and religion collide. Dobson’s interpretations of scripture are specific to his own particular sect of Christianity. Dobson was offended because Barack Obama dared give voice to a worship of Christ that doesn’t involve deference to the standard GOP issues, specifically same-sex marriage, abortion, and prayer in schools.
Will “The Media” get down in the Biblical weeds and try to determine who has the better of the argument vis-a-vis the teachings of Jesus? Of course not. If we’re lucky – something about which I’m not confident – they will at least avoid characterizing this as a battle between “real Dobsonian-Republican Christians” and “pseudo-Christian Democrats.”
My other recent annoyance with “The Media” comes from their discussion of “independent” political groups with particular focus on the Swiftboaters who attacked John Kerry in the fall. The general punditry discourse about the Swiftboaters has completely ignored The Media’s role in giving Swiftboaters power. On their own, the Swiftboaters were just spitting in the ocean; another bunch of cranks pissed off at Democrats, making spurious charges. But, The Media lent the group its power. It’s a little like a virus that invades the body and uses the body’s apparatus to reproduce itself. The discussion of the Swiftboaters has generally been devoid of analysis about how and why the Media allowed itself to be infected.