How I feel:

Thank goodness I can go to TEXAS (via Richmond) in 4 minutes. Otherwise, this might happen.

I found it here:

See y'all down south!

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Genocide tangent

This is amazing to me.

H.CON.RES.21: Calling on the United Nations Security Council to charge Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and United Nations Charter because of his calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.

This passed the House 411-2 on June 20. Only Kucinich and Ron Paul voted against it.

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Outlook Neophyte Seeks Accomplished Emailer

Dearest HON, can you help me navigate the cruel ways of Outlook?

So, I need to save about 600 emails onto our network drive. I selected all the emails, and entered "Save As" and saved it onto my desktop (which I can easily move onto our network drive later). However, the file I saved was actually a consolidated "notepad" file. It has all of the emails, but unfortunately, it appears that I need to be able to save as individual emails. Is this possible?

Please, please, please don't tell me that I need to individually save each email. My sanity would greatly appreciate that...

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Genocide and Iraq

I thought mathgimp's post was pretty interesting, and it got me thinking (again) about definitions of genocide and war crimes. More on that after the jump.

But, as an incentive for participation the first person to post or comment today (that's not mathgimp or I) gets a round of drinks on me, either in ATX this weekend or the next time I see ya round the District. We've had 369 unique visitors to the blog, which is pretty rockin' - yesterday alone we had 52. Who are you people? Why don't you write things?



Before obsessing about whether people validate me by visiting my blog, for a very long time I was fascinated with the way that genocide is defined and deployed. I wrote a paper about it but the paper's saved on my home computer, so I'm going to ramble instead. What follows is a roughly synthesis of my thoughts on genocide, Iraq, and war crimes.

I've always found the UN definition of genocide kind of strange. Let's read the definition backwards. The following are acts of genocide:

• Killing members of the group


• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group


• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part


• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group


• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Under this part of definition, when you're just evaluating action and effect, the sanctions in Iraq, the famine in Bengal, the occupation of Ireland, and some of the "more debatable" genocides like East Timor certainly qualify, but really, any war or skirmish or border clash does as well. As mathgimp points out, there is a tricky distinction between war and genocide, which is where part one of the definition comes in. It says: "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Cool. So, when you're thinking in terms of the Holocaust, this definition makes perfect sense. Hitler wanted to destroy the Jews (genocidal intent), and so he employed a vast array of genocidal actions to fulfill his goal.

Things get more complicated, though. There are easy criticisms of the definition, such as the fact that political and social groups aren't covered, and probably should be. Would it be genocide to kill all of the Republicans or Democrats in the US? Gay folk? The bourgeois/intelligentsia (one of the populations specifically targeted in CambodiaCambodia)? Additionally, the phrase "inflicting on the group conditions of life that.." does not specifically condemn environmental or indirect actions that target a specific group and lead to their extermination (like sanctions: see, for example, former US AG Ramsey Clark's arguments that the Iraqi sanctions in the 1990s were genocide).

Before we talk about Iraq, though, we have the troubling notion of intent, which is considered the most important part of the UN definition of genocide. Ya gotta have genocidal intent to commit genocide. Hitler's intent was obvious: the complete eradication of Jews from Europe. Same is true of Rwanda: Hutus mobilized to directly target and kill every Tutsi in Rwanda, leaving up to 1 million dead in 100 days. But what if you have a would-be genocide, but with more complex motivations? The Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot, wanted to "restructure Khmer society." The Indonesians wanted to "civilize" the East Timorese, and bring them back under control. In my mind, genocide occurred in East Timor and in Cambodia, but had multiple layers of intent. Much like British occupation of Ireland, the ruling parties were perfectly willing to sacrifice 20 or 30 percent of the population to achieve their grander goals of assimilation and control. The definition of genocide should be elastic enough to describe more than the Holocaust, but probably should be narrow enough to exclude slavery, abortion, class warfare, etc. Somewhere in between fall the interesting and horrible examples: are sanctions a genocidal act? Did Indonesia intend to "civilize" the East Timorese, or to murder 1/5 of the population?

And, of importance today, what in holy hell is happening in Iraq? Using the word genocide in relation to Iraq isn't unique; Saddam Hussein was executed for committing genocide against the Kurds, Ramsey Clark, amongst others, labeled the US-led sanctions policy of the 1990s as genocide, and Samantha Power (who is, to my mind, the world's foremost expert on genocide) has warned that the current violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites demonstrates genocidal intent. Indeed, Republicans (such as John McCain) argue that the US should remain engaged in Iraq in order to prevent genocide - an argument that Samantha Power critiques in her LA Times editorial back in March.

What's less clear to me is whether the US and allied forces are currently engaged in genocide, which is the argument made in yesterday's article. The author makes the argument that civilian deaths were avoidable, that the occupying forces did not take reasonable steps to preserve the quality of life of civilians, and that lots of people are dead and displaced. He says that the "Iraqi Holocaust" has reached 3.5 million deaths, which is comparable to the 5-6 million victims of the Jewish Holocaust. Hault. Stop. Back up. It's different, different, different. I am NOT proponent of Holocaust uniqueness, but numerical comparisons DO NOT make it genocide. The Holocaust was characterized by the systemic eradication of a group based on ethnic, social, and religious characteristics. In Iraq, we lob bombs and don't care where they go. There is not systemic eradication. The author says we're waging a war that disproportionately affects Muslim women and children, which is true: the US has a policy of hostile indifference towards quality of life. If the entire country would just be democratic already, then we would stop bombing and let folks live. It's not our intent to exterminate everyone in the country, but it is our intent to show that we're willing to. I'm not convinced that our actions there, as horrendous as they may be, are actually genocide.

The second point Dr. Polya brings us closer to the truth, and to an actionable argument. The US has violated Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War. Despite the fact that the Convention is a quaint little document, we signed and ratified it. We owe it to the people of Iraq, and any other countries we choose to invade, to follow its precepts as a doctrine for occupying another country.

So how do we hold our government accountable to the Geneva Convention? How can we condemn and punish the actions of nations that refuse to adhere to international law? How can we nuance the debate in the public arena WITHOUT using genocide as a trump card? We need to develop language that allows us to label, condemn, and punish events like human made famines and violent occupations without to reverting to the term genocide. Our willingness to apply the term where it doesn't belong is a failing of the language we have to discuss atrocities: we have "war" (which ain't no thang) and "genocide" (the ultimate horror) and nothing in between. Enriching our understanding, use, and persecution of crimes against humanity might preserve the label of genocide, while allowing more room to condemn, punish, and work to change atrocities that aren't genocide.

A unique spot international law and international morality should be reserved for condemnation of genocide, but that does not absolve us of our obligation to condemn outrageous acts of war and oppression that do not fit our definition.

If what's going on in Iraq IS genocide, then we need to work hard to change the definition in the UN, or to prove why the actions of the US and allies meet the current definition. But it's not just a numbers game. And accusations of genocide should not be the "nuclear option" that the left or the humanitarian community resorts to because we can't figure out how else to describe the depth of our horror at the situation.

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Famines, Wiki Wierdness, and Iraq

I found a number of links while I was looking into nuraido's post (below). What with my fascination with Irish history, along with my long-held belief that the British were worse to the Irish than they were to the Indians, I was surprised to find out what I did. After the jump, I'll tell you what the hell I'm talking about, and then ramble for a while. Very exciting!



The Bengal famine occurred in 1943, and killed an estimated 3-5 million Indians (numbers vary from site to site), although I'm not sure what percent of the population this represents. This is about twice as many deaths as in Ireland during the Hunger, but pales in comparison to Stalin's 5 year plan (7 million in the Ukrane in 1933).

As the Bengal Famine occured during World War II, and particularly due to the proximity of Bengal to the Eastern front, the war clearly must have had some effect on the famine. However, it was not the ultimate cause. From the few articles I have read, this was an almost entirely man-made disaster. Amartya Sen won the Nobel prize in Economics in '98 for his work on the idea of man-made famines, and lived through this one.

For comparative purposes, the Irish Potato Famine killed on the order of 2 million people (about 20% of the population), and displaced another 2 million. The origin of the famine was not directly man-made, but caused by a mold introduced to Europe around that time. Both famines lasted for multiple years, and affected an almost entirely impoverished population.

I most certainly have not read enough about this to make any kind of intelligent statement about the causes of the famine in Bengal. From what I gather thus far, though, it would appear that there was a relatively mild food shortage. Inflation and unemployment in the area made rice unavailable to virtually everyone, and the local government was (as far as I can tell) ineffective to the extreme. Many of the above sites put the blame more on the local Bengal Ministry than on the British.

There are, however, many parallels between the Indian and Irish famines. The British government did absolutely nothing useful in preventing the massive death tolls in either situation. In both cases, regular food shipments out of the affected regions were required. So, I may need to revise my statement about the relative evils inflicted on both colonies. More reading to do.

I bring this up only because there are many smart readers of this blog. So, a couple of questions. First, have you ever heard of this? Second, can you point me to good, and complete, sources to understand this better. Of course, while there are many smart readers, there are very few commenters. Oi! Comment!

As a complete aside, I always find the internal Wiki links somewhat fascinating. Here's a block from the article on the Bengal Famine:

Severe food shortages were worsened by the Second World War, with the British administration of India exporting foods to Allied soldiers. The shortage of rice forced rice prices up, and wartime inflation compounded the problem.

I would think the food shortages that occured during WWII, the British administration of India, rice shortages during the Famine, and wartime inflation would be the most interesting concepts in these two sentences. The links were for "the Second World War" (valid), "Allied" (a bit useless), "price" (a definition of this bizzare concept of monetary value), and "inflation" (again, a definition). What the hell?

I spent virtually no time looking into nuradio's actual question. But, I'm of the opinion that Iraq is a war zone, plain and simple. Hunger is a problem, as is adequate health care. However, both of these are (in my opinion) caused by two factors. The first is the idiotic and unnecessary invasion that involved demolishing the infrastructure, coupled with a civil war which harms many civilians, and our (very poor) response to that civil war. I'm unclear on how many civillians we kill nowadays, vs. how many are killed by insurgents. The second factor is that Americans consider the plight of the Iraqis irrelevant. Not in the "they should be exterminated" sense, but in the sense of doing the minimal amount of work to "alleviate" their suffering. While I think this is remarkably callous on our part, I don't think it approaches the intentional extermination of a people (Hitler, Rwanda, etc), nor does it qualify as a working a people to death (i.e. Stalin).

While my response may not be a wonderfully well thought out idea (or a well presented one), I don't buy the genocide argument in Iraq any more than in any other war between two nations. This war is remarkably stupid, illegal under international law, and remarkably poorly prosecuted. War is a generally bad idea in many cases, and was a remarkably bad idea in this case. It's not genocide, though, in my opinion. Just more pointless death.

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Iraqi Holocaust?

Read this article, and let me know your thoughts.

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Good morning

Hope you're all doing well. I heard from Tommy and Joey at about 8 am, and they were in Iowa, about 2 hours out from where ever Dean is getting married. They are administrating an early morning poetry quiz to everyone in their phones. Just as a warning. The answer is after the jump.

Robert Frost. Unless they change the question.

In other news, I was delighted upon waking to find someone had posted a reply to my "Ann Coulter is an evil, evil woman" post, and even more intrigued that it was in Portuguese. I felt an overflowing of warmth toward humankind - hatred of the spawn of Satan knows no linguistic boundaries. Sadly, upon googling the comment, it was an ad for t-shirts.

So, I've turned on comment moderation. Basically, it means that we (all of us admins) can post whatever comments we want to. Anyone that is not a member of the blog has to have their comment approved by one of us before it gets posted. There's now a handy little tab under settings called "Moderate Comments." Remember that any of you can give anyone admin privledges any time you want (in fact, I think we should start inviting more people to at least read the blog, but we can talk about that this weekend). I'm inclined to allow all posts that aren't trying to sell us something through, but I'm open to suggestions about that. I just don't feel like getting more spam comments.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Love
me

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Ann Coulter is an evil, evil woman

Holy God. After the jump, letter from Edward's campaign.




Dear Friend,

Yesterday, Jonathan told you that the folks who benefit from the status quo are attacking John personally because they don’t want the country to hear his message.

And you know what happened when we called them out? The attacks started pouring in.

That same day, the Ann Coulter-wannabe Michelle Malkin blasted John on her blog. Fox News has been bashing him around the clock. And Coulter herself said, “if I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.”

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Responses to Lloyd

We have a new friend named Lloyd, who had this to say regarding the Duke Lacrosse case and the editorial I posted yesterday. I had a few comments about Lloyd's take on a few things, so I figured I'd chat for a couple of minutes. I took the liberty of pasting Lloyd's post at the bottom of this email so that I could link to various parts of it, but his original comment is preserved in its entirety.


Hey, Lloyd –

Thanks for stoppin’ by. I can only assume that you’re Stuck in Maryland like the rest of us, and I’d like to extend my sincere condolences. I’d also like to encourage you to take a course on reading for context. I have a few of my own points to make, but mostly I just want to defend Ms. Ream with her own article (which, despite your lengthy post, I think is pretty damn good.)

Your first argument : The Duke players are upstanding, they didn’t falsely accuse anyone else, and they didn’t plea bargain, something that the DA did was illegal but I’m not sure what.

You’re simply not responsive to Ms. Ream’s article. She’s not interested in discussing the legal context of the case, she’s interested in the moral context. Surely we, as civilized people, can agree that “musing about bringing in more "strippers" and cutting off their skin while ejaculating” is not upstanding, moral behavior. It’s gruesome, it’s chilling, and it is a pretty damn low bar for acceptable male behavior.

Moving on. I followed the media coverage of the case pretty closely, and never heard about death threats from “radical feminists and racists blacks” or about the extremist feminist and black political groups that “heaped…unjust persecution.” Could you point me in the direction of some articles? And you’ll be relieved to know that your boy did not, in fact, lose his job on Wall Street, but instead landed a job a Morgan Stanley paying him well into the six-figure range. (This is why citing your sources are a good thing, Lloyd. The internet knows most things.) Oh, and who’s the evil tyrant divested of power? I’m just kinda curious.

Here’s the funny thing about legal precedent: cases need to go to court in order to set one. Smed and Shween might be willing to chat with you about that later, but in the mean time here’s what Wiki has to say.

Lessing is not a word. Just FYI.

I kind of love this paragraph, so we’re going to address a lot of it sentence by sentence:

I find it a little strange that you feel so strongly about stripping, but it's completely irrelevant. Ms. Ream does not take a position on stripping one way or another. She draws the line at mutilating the body of strippers while masturbating, suggesting that strippers use broomsticks as sex toys, and racial slurs. Again, seems to me to be a fair line to draw.

You seem to believe that strippers engage in immorality, and thus cannot be sexually assaulted. But strippers can be raped. Prostitutes can be raped. And strippers who have three children have remarkably little choice as to whether to go back to work the next day. Such is life.

It warms my heart that you have an emotional connection to the Duke Lacrosse team (just curious – would you let them date your sister or babysit your kids?) but even you cannot possibly know whether the men accused have stopped hiring strippers. The public statements made by the Lacrosse players were part of a highly sophisticated PR campaign. It is good PR for the boys from Duke to say that these types of allegations hurt poor and minorities and actual victims of sexual assault. It is good PR for them to, sheepishly, apologize for their behavior and say it will never happen again. It is good PR for them to, looking a little woeful, question the sanity of the accuser.

What political agenda was the accuser advancing?

Good lord, your post just keeps going. Most of it is unfounded rambling. Who says people hate the gender of the stripper? And, again, if you refer to evidence, cite evidence, otherwise I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your paragraph about the evidence in its entirety is eloquent, but thou dost protest too much: the good folks at the Charlotte DA’s office agreed with you. Due process was served. The system worked. The case did not go to trial. Charges were dropped. Those are your constitutional rights.

I think the rest of your post is answered by Ms. Ream’s discussion of two topics you overlook altogether: the imperfection of memory in the wake of traumatic events, and that: “it is underreporting, not false reporting, that poses the greatest risk to our families and our communities.”

Experiencing violence or trauma of any kind can cause dissociation and fragmentation of memory. This is particularly true in cases of rape and sexual assault, because of the intensity of the physical and emotional violations.

Does this mean that women falsely report instances of rape? No more than any other crime. About 2% of rapes are falsely reported, which is the same amount of made-up car burglaries or physical assaults. (There are men’s rights groups that say the numbers are much higher, but those numbers are based on the number of reported cases that do not go to trial, which is different than a false report.) When men are falsely accused of rape in our society (at least, the rape is decided to be false in the courtroom of public opinion), we get screaming headlines and furious editorials (like yours, Lloyd) and talk shows dedicated to the phenomenon of false rape. The reality is that 84% of rapes are never reported. 98% of sexual assault survivors will not see their attacker imprisoned.

Second to last paragraph: to what misdeeds should Ms. Ream publicly confess? That of writing an editorial? What agenda is she pushing here - that of rape survivors being able to report their rapes and be treated respectfully? And, finally, do you really believe that white male athletes attending a Top Ten University are a “group” that is “selected out unjustly for selective and unfair treatment?” Really, Lloyd?


Lloyd's comment:

Having read this article by Ms. Ream, it appears that she cares little for the truth. It also appears that she does desperately care about pursuing and agenda even when doing so will cause significant damage to others.

Ms. Ream wrote: But praising the players as "outstanding" and "upstanding" young men, as the Duke Lacrosse Booster Club did in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, is a reminder of just how low the bar has fallen when it comes to acceptable male behavior. Perhaps she doesn't think that telling the truth, even when there are serious negative consequences to yourself and your family isn't considering updstanding. That's what happend to the 3 young men from Duke that were falsely accused. They could have succumbed to the incredible and illegal pressure put on by the DA and police to falsely confess and receive a plea bargain or even better to false accuse a teammate. Instead they stuck to the truth, that nothing happened. It cost their families their life savings and millions in debt. It cost one a prestigious job on Wall street. It cost all three a year of their life wasted on defense and a transparently false allegation. They incurred death and physical threats from radical feminists and racists blacks and other extremists. They still fear some wacko either too lazy to research to find the truth or too wrapped up in their personal agendas will kill them or their families falsely believing that nothing happened. They risked spending most of the rest of their lives behind bars for by telling the truth. But by steadfastly doing so along with 44 of their former teammates, they helped topple an evil tyrant from power and set an important legal prescedent for those victimized by prosecutorial misconduct.

Furthermore, despite the unjust persecution that was heaped upon them by extremist feminist and black political groups, they refused to stoop to the same level. The conducted themselves with dignity. They expressed fears that this case would hinder those who truely had been sexually assaulted from coming forth or if they did from being treated fairly by the legal system. They expressed regret that thousands of others, mostly minorities, did not have the financial resources to adequately defend themselves from prosecutorial and police misconduct as they themselves did. One young man even announced that he wished to become a defense attorney to help protect the rights of those falsely accused.

I will agree with Ms. Ream that hiring strippers and watching women strip for money is not a moral activity. I was pleaed to have seen where the 3 young men publicly apologized for this behavior and did not repeat it. But I would have to conclude that anyone who willingly takes their clothes off for money is engaging in immoral behavior. It should be noted that while the young men have not returned to the activity of hiring strippers, that the accuser was back stripping in the club a few days after claiming that she was violantly and brutally gang raped. Furthermore, while I find the behavior of 2 consenting adults of legal age intering into a monetary transaction for one to take off their clothes for the other, I do not find it near as morally reprehensible as purposely spreading vile and malcious lies against innocent individuals to advance a political agenda. I would add, that the agenda may have great merits in many instances, only adds to instead of lessing the moral reprehensibleness of the act. I believe that Ms. Read has engaged in such an act. In the long run I believe that this behavior will be very harmful to the cause of obtaining full and fair treatment of women by the legal system. It certainly will have a much more detrimental affect than some college kids having a few strippers entertain at a private party. Both are bad, but one is a much larger and more detrimental affect.

I would add that becoming a stripper nor hiring one necessarily makes one a hater of the gender of the stripper. This is a ludicrious charge. In fact evidence showed that one of the young men went to extraordinary lengths to insure that the strippers were not abused in any manner nor vicitmized. However that didn't stop the strippers from pulling a quick scam to extract more money from the Duke boys and leave much earlier than promised. Nor did it stop one stripper from what appears to be an attempt to extort a great deal more money from false rape allegations. Unfortunately for her she chose 3 individuals from an illegal lineup that refused to be extorted.

If one takes the time to review the evidence in it's entirety, there can be no doubt that the accuser flat out lied and that absolutely no crimes were committed against her at the Duke Lacrosse party. Ther is extensive evidence from over 40 plus consitent statements from those attending the party, 3rd party witnesses other than the party goers, the other stripper, DNA, video, photograph, cell phone, credit card, medical exam, and much other forensic evidence to back this up. The only evidence against the boys is the word of a noncredible excon stripper who had a history of filing dubious charges at best. There exist no reasonable doubt to presume that the 3 accused and all attending the party are not completely innocent of any alleged crimes by the accuser.

Perhaps Ms. Ream should follow the upstanding example of the 3 Duke Lacrosse players and publicly confess her misdeeds and refuse to do them again. She could follow up by pursuing fair treatment for all by the law, including upholding due process and innocent until proven guilty. Obtaining fair treatment for women does not need to come at the expense of robbing innocent men of their constitutional rights. Nor can fair treatment truely be achieved for anyone as long as certain groups are selected out unjustly for selective and unfair treatment.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." This is a motto that everyone must learn to live by. We all need to strive with all our might to achieve fairness and justice for not only women, but for all of mankind.

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To all the law students out there

Is this an elaborate hoax? And other questions...


So, I found this site, which leads here, an apparently legit law firm. Go ahead, read it. Really, all of it. Did you read all of the bullet points of the last link? Particularly the third from the bottom? Particularly the number? Seriously? For pants?

So, my first question for the legal brains is this: Is this story legit, and if so, does this point to a problem in our litigious society? And more to the point, how can I get in on the profitable decay of our legal system?

Second question: Regardless of the legitimacy of this story, would you personally take this case, to win the guy with the pants his money (under the assumption that you could choose your own cases)?

Finally, I found this. Under the assumption that your firm took such a case (where you had no input in whether the case was taken), how boring would writing this brief be? Pages 5-16 blow my mind. In the end, physics/math may have an equivalent level of busy work, but it just seems amazing to me.

The first two questions are the ones I'm actually interested in. I suspect the answer to the last one is "really boring."

PS: What's up with the guy who commented on nuraido's post? Where'd he come from?

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Tragedy Strikes New York/Japan/the World

This is so horrible that it prompted me to make my first ever blog entry; perhaps my invitation to post will be rescinded after this.

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Politics TV - top 10

It's hard to believe that these are the image events that dominate our political process. Just very odd.



Oh, and I really, really want an iphone.

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"Cheers can't drown out painful truths" - Duke Lacrosse rape trial.

This Chicago Tribune editorial was written by Anne Ream, who is an advocate for survivors of sexual assault (and often does work for DCRCC). I thought the article was good enough to post in full.

Cheers can't drown out painful truths
Public brawl over rape allegations reminds us of the price women sometimes must pay for being heard

By Anne K. Ream

June 17, 2007

Supporters of the Duke University lacrosse team are in a celebratory mood. The team excelled in last month's NCAA tournament. And just last week, the prosecutor who filed rape charges against three of the team's players was himself put on trial, accused of ethics violations in pursuing a case fraught with problems.

The young men who narrowly lost to rival Johns Hopkins in the NCAA championship game are indeed gifted and resilient athletes. But praising the players as "outstanding" and "upstanding" young men, as the Duke Lacrosse Booster Club did in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, is a reminder of just how low the bar has fallen when it comes to acceptable male behavior. Legal vindication is not moral vindication, no matter how hard a PR campaign works to make it so.

We may never know everything that occurred on the night of March 13, 2006, when the Duke lacrosse players threw a team party at an off-campus house. But what we do know is troubling enough.

Photos taken at the party show two young women, hired to perform by the players, dancing at the center of a group of largely drunken and leering men. The North Carolina attorney general's report details how one of the lacrosse players held up a broomstick during the night's events, suggesting that the women use it as a "sex toy." Another player sent a chilling group e-mail just hours after the party, musing about bringing in more "strippers" and cutting off their skin while ejaculating. Witnesses reported hearing racial slurs lobbed by partygoers.

To be fair, individual acts do not implicate the entire lacrosse team. Misogyny is not illegal. And none of these ugly events constitutes a criminal act. But they stand as a testimony all their own, a window into a world where "good" men engage in troubling -- and sometimes troubled -- behavior.

The statement that "boys will be boys" has become an all-purpose justification for male behavior that is boorish, bad and at times even brutal. The degradation of women has been normalized for so long that it seems we have ceased to see what is right before our eyes.

Yet the words and images that came from the residence of the captains of the Duke lacrosse team demand to be addressed, as does the prosecutor's possibly criminal mishandling of the case. They speak volumes about the climate in the players' house. So what does our silence in the face of these truths say about us?

We talk endlessly, exhaustingly, about "moral values." But we talk little of valuing women, particularly when they are young, poor and black, as were the women hired by the Duke lacrosse players.

Nowhere was this more apparent than at the news conference two months ago when North Carolina Atty. Gen. Roy Cooper dismissed all charges against the players, taking the opportunity to muse about the mental stability of the young woman at the heart of the case. Later that week, when the mother of one of the lacrosse players appeared on "Good Morning America" and insinuated that the accuser ought to lose her children, she left little doubt about who was being tried in the court of public opinion.

Every public rape case exists in two spaces: In the practical, "law and order" world, where it works its way through an imperfect system; and in the public imagination, where it exists symbolically, a Rorschach test of our values and beliefs. It is not only the specifics, but also the symbolism, of the Duke case that remain troubling. Both serve to remind those who come forward with rape charges that they may pay a steep and very public price for the chance to be heard.

Millions of rape victims, most of whom never report the crime -- much less see legal justice -- must have watched silently as this case unfolded, thinking about how they might have fared under such scrutiny. That the accuser gave conflicting statements to the police is not unusual. A victim's statements, particularly in the wake of a traumatic attack, can be confused and inconsistent. Memory is resolutely imperfect over time and under the duress of repeated questioning.

Our cultural response to rape leaves its victims in the cruelest of double binds: They must choose between coming forward, which carries the risk of being blamed, and remaining silent, which carries the risk of isolation. It is a silence that damages more than the victim. It strikes a blow to our public safety as well, because unreported sexual violence allows perpetrators to violate again.

The myth of the "false report" of rape must be replaced by this truth: It is underreporting, not false reporting, that poses the greatest risk to our families and our communities. It is silence that is the enemy of change.

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Why I shouldn't be allowed out of the house

On my way back from my afternoon break, as I attempted to re-enter the building, I tried to push the door open for about 30 seconds until the 5 people behind me were like "uh, i think you should try pulling it." (Yes, I have walked through those doors 3 times a day for the past year).

Then, I put my phone on the metal detector and it somehow got stuck inside the machine, so the 5 people behind me were held up again as the security guard had to use his night stick to push the phone out. And so the same 5 people felt the need to tell me how important it was to tie my shoe so I didn't hurt myself or others.

It was a very difficult and complicated minute and a half.

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New Study Suggests Firstborns are Smarter

Newsweek reports what I have long suspected: first borns have higher IQs.

Interestingly, I think pretty close to everyone that writes on here is the first born. My condolences to Joey (and Tommy and Storki, but they never write).

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Blog hack shout outs

I keep posting boring updates to get y'alls opinion about things. I figured I would keep a running post of the changes I make to the blog and where I steal the hacks from, both as a shout out to the folks who wrote the hack, and so interested people can track back.

First, props to the following blogs:

Hoctro's Place
Beautiful Beta
Hackosphere
Tips for New Bloggers
Singpolyma Technical Blog



Hacks I've used:
For the three column template, I mostly copied this hack from Tips for New Bloggers. They also have a handy html color chart.

Probably my favorite hack is the "Expandable posts with peekaboo view" by Ramani at Hackosphere and Hans at Beautiful Beta. The recent comments widget and recent posts widget were stolen from Beautiful Beta as well, as was the cool social bookmarking toolbar

Beautiful Beta also fixed the commenting problem (the really irritating, grammatical nightmare of "1 comments"). Additionally, I stole the drop cap and the pullquote from him (and then an additional style tip from BlogU).

The cool hack for peekaboo comments came from Singpolyma

If we ever have expand/collapse link lists, The code for the expand/collapse link lists are from here, so here's a pre-emptive shout-out.

We now have tabs for each author and their posts, thanks to Hoctro! This is simply amazing. I love it. We also got the "contents by category" stuff from him.

The Blog Calendar is from Phydeaux3 - you can get it here!

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Delicious Roundup!

For all you losers who didn't get a del.icio.us account, you missed out on a lot of cool links this week. Seriously, get an account. mathgimp, nuraido, forgottenfodder, Kikiz, and shweenerator all have one. Which makes us awesome and smart. Ergo, you are a tard. After the jump, you can see why...

For those of us who do have a del.icio.us account, we are very cool. And I mention your links below. After the jump, you can feel important!

For starters, all three branches of our government demonstrated their commitment to crazy this week.

We'll begin with the judiciary.
A Nebraska judge declares the words "rape", "sexual assault", "victim", "assailant", and "sexual assault kit" inappropriate in a rape trial. Rape will now be referred to as "intercourse," and Nebraska judges as "mouth breathing imbeciles." It turns out Supreme Court judges are also jackasses. And sometimes crazy.

Not to be out done, the Executive branch also made some bizarre headlines.
The Washington Post realized Bush doesn't care about laws. Also, the Justice department is done with the whole race problem, and has decided to focus on the War on Christmas or some crap. Best of all, Cheney went ahead and recused himself from the executive branch all together! That wacky, wacky separation of powers...it really was just a myth all along!

And, as always, you've got to love the legislature. The Senate took the spotlight this week.
Virginians LOVE their guns. And putting their congressional aides at risk for jail time. Also, Obama proves he's not above the good clean fun of bizarre racist propaganda.

Beyond the Beltway, many birds have suddenly vanished. This coupled with the bees means soon, telling our children about sex will be called the "Llamas and Sea Sponge" talk. Animals that abandoned sex billions of years ago figured out they really still wanted to get some. Icebergs are freaking awesome. And, apparently, homosexuality is signified by your hair. Which begs the question, what does my cowlick say about me?

On the random but awesome note: Math is cool. (This one wasn't posted by me, amazingly). Sometimes, passive agressive people are funny. And, finally, John likes Opera. To be honest, it's pretty heartwarming.

Did we find this post amusing? I'm thinking about doing it on a weekly/bi-weekly basis...

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What Is Joey Doing Today?

If you want to know, this guy is walking around livestreaming the conference with a mobile camera taped to the bill of his baseball cap. Earlier, I was sitting directly behind him, watching both the live conference and the slightly delayed feed. Trippy. Also, the entire room just started yelling at John Kneur, an Assistant Secretary of Commerce and head of The National Telecommunications Administration, the folks who run ICANN, which are basically the people who run the Internet for mishandling the extension of broadband and public access. It's awesome.

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Sweet home goreobama

Hrm... thoughts?
Surely you all have comments on these things!

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Google Text

Is the most amazing thing ever, and it's capable of more than we've ever dreamed:

http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/sms/

Some of my favorites: translations, questions and answers, and flight information.

As Smed says: "Google is my master, and I'm ok with it."

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Aliens don't do drugs

It's true. Watch this ad. It's amazing. I swear.

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Updates (cont)

About yesterday's updates (below):

I think I fixed the margin problems that firefox was having - can you let me know if it messes up in your browser? You should see 3 columns: Bookmarks on the left, posts in the middle, and then delicious links on the right.

Week's almost over. Thank goodness!


1. The three-column layout. Greg and I thought it might look nicer, but I'm open to feedback. Is it too crowded now? Do we need borders separating the different sides? Do things need to be spaced out more?

2. The social bookmarks buttons:
I think it's a great tool, but it's a little big right now. I can't really make it smaller without doing some boring stuff, but you guys can let me know if you think it should stay or go, and I might modify it later.

3. Any other customization stuff?

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Interesting watching

From David:

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This is SO COOL!!!

Check this out.

We can have gchat ON OUR BLOG.

What do you guys think?

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A Top 50 I actually agree with...

Here's popmatters breakdown of the top 50 DVDs of all time...

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/series/284/
Yes, I should just delicious it, but I can't install plugins on my work computer. I need to speak with this mysterious "administrator" to get that kind of power

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I'm Going to San Francisco

So my job is having me travel a lot. Last week I was in Boston (and none of you jerks from the East Coast came to visit), and I was supposed to leave on Thursday to go to Indiana. Turns out I'll be leaving tomorrow morning to go to San Francisco and then drive up to Palo Alto on Thursday. We decided this twenty minutes ago. Wheeeee!

P.S. Is anyone cool in the Bay Area right now?

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Fair trade - draft one

Found a job prospect doing marketing and community outreach for a fair trade chocolate company here in DC. You have to write a 200-word essay about your understanding of fair trade. This is my first stab at it. It kinda sucks, but how can I fix it? Thoughts? Comments? Help!
Thanks!
Kel


The fair trade movement creates sustainable and ethical relationships between producers (primarily in the South) and consumers (primarily in the North). Fair trade enterprises are an economic corrective to capitalist exploitation of the South by transnational corporations. Producers, who often operate within cooperatives, are provided a high standard of labor and human rights, operate in an environmentally sustainable way, and ensure that producers receive a fair price for their product. Fair trade allows growers and producers to actively participate and make decisions about their products and short- and long-term strategic planning. Additionally, fair trade enterprises emphasize education, self-sufficiency, and gender equality.

Third party labeling and certification provide external legitimacy to fair trade goods, which protects against the exploitation of farmers and producers, and assure consumers that they are buying legitimately ethical products.

In short, fair trade provides a way for the North to engage in responsible trading relationships with the South. The fair trade industry provides consumers with the opportunity to enjoy some of their favorite things in life (like chocolate!) in an ethical and sustainable way.

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JANICE LIVES!!

My morning was clearly not as frustrating as Kellie's, and not nearly as blessed as Smed's.

But I will say that I spend at least 8 hours a day sitting next to someone I believe was the basis for the Janice character on "Friends." When Janice came into the scene, we all laughed, reveled in Chandler's pain. We were blissfully unaware that JANICE ACTUALLY EXISTS.

She lives on your block, she shops at your mall, and yes, she works in the cubicle next to you. She regales you with stories from J-Date, she wows you with photos of Long Island, and of course, she soothes you with the dulcet tones of a laugh that Fran Drescher would be proud of. Her favorite phrases? "Hello, dorkdom!" "Wow, you're pretty low on the cool meter." "Like, like, WHATEVER!"

You remember Janice and Joey's Day of FUN?! Oh yes, that's my day, but on constant loop.

People, I implore you to distract me from this hell.

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I <3 NY

Commute description from 4 hours north of the district...

7:45 Alarm goes off. I snooze.
7:55 I roll out of bed.
7:56 I pick out my business casual outfit for the day. Pretty easy, since lawyers wear basically the same thing every day. I get dressed and look instantaneously professional.
7:58 brush teeth, make myself up, etc.
8:05 Stroll down the block. To my delight, the B train pulls up at the exact moment I descend the subway stairs.
8:30 Arrive at work.
8:31 Pick up my first of four cups of coffee for the morning.
8:35-12 Write a brilliant report on Claim Trading in Bankruptcy. BRILLIANT.
12:10 Blog post interrupted because partners want to take me out to lunch. I suppose the lean cuisine will be eaten another day.

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I hate the DC Metro.

Below is the chronology of my morning. For those unfamiliar with the DC Metro, you are blessed, and also might want to refer to this handy metro map, brought to you by my sworn enemy: the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority.


7:30: Stumble out of bed. Think "my head hurts. Stupid Kellie. Too much drinking, too little sleep. It will be a long day." I am a prophet.

7:40: Think "where the fuck is my travel mug? Do I have time to care? Which is harder: commuting with no coffee or trying to look?" Decide to forgo the great coffee mug hunt. There is coffee at work.

7:50: Get in my car. Drive to the metro.

7:58: Think "Why are there nearly 200 people standing on the platform?" Brain is fuzzy (see above). Decide it doesn't affect my life.

8:04: Find out some vague information about a delay between West Hyattsville and the Tot. Decide it doesn't affect me.

8:20: Train comes. Hooray! Will be on time to work. Will be able to buy coffee.

8:25: We stop in a tunnel between PG Plaza and W. Hyattsville. I start sudoku. I'm doing the nervous "I'm about to be late and won't be able to get coffee or smoke a pre-work cigarette" fidget.

8:50: We leave our tunnel home, and REVERSE back to PG, where they unceremoniously kick everyone off the metro. We are herded like well-dressed, commuting sheep up the escalator to the bus platform, where approximately 1,000 people stand waiting for buses. It's about 150 degrees. No air is moving, but there are plenty of bus fumes to inhale. I call my boss as it slowly dawns on me that I won't, in fact, be at work in the next 10 minutes.

9:00: The number of people on the platform continues go grow. It's beginning to remind me of Christmas sales at Walmart.

9:10: I've watched 2 buses that are Tot-bound come and go. I've watched men in Armani suits push aside old women and young mothers with strollers to get on buses. I realize I will never get on one of these buses. I am going to die here. Even if I could physically get onto a bus, most are not going to the Tot, or to DC, but instead to lovely places like Twinbrook and Shady Grove, which makes no fucking sense to me. All 1,000 of us work in DC. There is an imminent danger of a bus being hijacked. The good folks at the Metro seem to care not at all. I'm getting a little panicky.

9:11: I call John. He has to be at work in DC at 10:30. We devise what we consider to be a very reasonable plan: drive to the Tot, park, problem solved.

9:15: I buy an iced coffee from Starbucks. Desperate times...

9:36: My knight in a shining Civic picks me up.

9:45: We arrive at Fort Totten.

9:46: There is no parking at the Tot. At all. None.

9:47: We have a mutual breakdown.

9:55: We arrive at Brookland/CUA. There is no parking there either. We park on a
side street, in zoned parking, where John will almost certainly get a parking ticket. Decide we will mail the ticket to the good folk at the metro.

10:20: Arrive a Gallery Place/Chinatown. I wasn't thinking, and so thought it would be best to take the Green to the Blue and Orange at L'Enfant. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It's a 20 minute wait until the next train. I decide to take a cab.

10:40: Arrive at work. Sweaty, almost 2 hours late, exhausted, frazzled, and with my faith in the WMATA completely destroyed.

WTOP has this to say about the whole thing. The article makes no sense. You CAN'T exit without paying. Your metro card won't work next time you try to ride the metro. It'll freak the fuck out and think you didn't pay and not let you in. Then you have to illegally swipe yourself out then in, or talk to a station manager. That's going to take at least twice as long for everyone they ushered through those gates.
These people are idiots.

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Confused

OK, so first of all, the instructions on this blog are in Dutch. This is regrettable, highly irritating and confusing. I have many things to say, none of them nearly as exciting as smed and tommy's scintillating drunken gchat. Let's make a list, kids.

1. I live for free in a 17th century house by myself on a canal in central Amsterdam. In the crisp summer mornings, the sun glints off the water and I bike over gently sloping canal bridges. Suck it, biatches.

2. My recent blog addiction, supplanting Daily Kos: digbysblog.blogspot.com/

3. Two links: "Words in a Time of War," a recent commencement speech delivered to the Dept. of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. A depressing piece in the New Yorker about the Abu Ghraib scandal (they knew, they knew, they knew, they didn't care, and they fired the ones who told them).

4. Books I've read recently and recommend:
-Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
-The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon (a very nice airplane)
-The MLK trilogy (pillar of fire) by Taylor branch. The first one is mind-blowing. The second is great but not as good as the first. The third one isn't sold in The Netherlands.

5. Time to go outside. I might drink wine in the vondelpark today.

6. Kel, how the hell did you convince us all to write on a blog? This is ridiculous.

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New fun stuff

The strange orbital thingie at the bottom of the blog is a visitor tracker.
Kinda cool.

We've had four unique hits in the last hour! We'll beat out our competition in no time.

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Sad Haiku

Gchat hates Kellie
Technical Difficulties
Make her so lonely

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I'm never pissing off any of my female friends. Ever.

Warning: This is kinda gross.

So, Kellie forced me into joining this blog. My first contribution is this: I was reading the BBC earlier today and this was the most popular story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/4253849.stm

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He really thinks this hat is a good idea.

I have a fantastic memory for random facts (trivia and the like) for a few minutes. Names don't count; they're gone in about 2 minutes. From a few minutes on, I can remember random ass facts. But not names. (This was funny). But, once you hit about the 5-10 year mark, it's gone. Wierd. Which I speeled wrong. Pwned.

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Greg's gettin' churched...whatev. I mean, obvi.

Shween, Greg and I rock your socks, because we are going to New York

So, for the rest of the weekend, die in a fire, and the blog name is inappropriate. We have escaped from Maryland

Greg says I am what's wrong with America, and I hate our freedom.

Remember, he is straight off the boat. From Singapore.

I am, however, down with the brown (much love, Shween!!!!)

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Ron Paul is still a Libertarian

People are obsessed with him right now, including folks on the left who are enamored with his anti-war, anti-Patriotism, pissing-off-Rudy ways. Even Stephen Colbert doesn't know what to do with him:


I just thought that it was a good time to remind people that there are LOTS of reasons a libertarian probably shouldn't be president. This website does a nice job of outlining some of them.

And the Pluto anti-defamation league has to spend an entire weekend with the Pluto is stupid league, but will issue an offical response to their slander and lies on Monday.

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The Pluto-Is-Stupid-So-Keep-Defaming-It League

We believe that Pluto should be demoted to a dwarf planet (also known as an irrelevant retard planet [citation needed]). In the event of a grassroots movement to elevate any dwarf planet to true planetary status, we believe that Eris (the best dwarf planet) should be promoted in lieu of Pluto. After the jump, irrefutable evidence that Pluto is stupid...



The two dwarf planets are similar in many respects. Both are quite small and lightweight. Both Pluto and Eris exist in the Kuiper Belt . I mention this only because they are not in the Oort Cloud , which is more fun to say. This is very disappointing to me.

While the two dwarves have much in common, there are significant differences that suggest the utter worthlessness of Pluto, and the total awesomeness of Eris. To begin, we will address the absurd arguments as to the promotion of Pluto to planet status.

I'm not a scientist, and I have little interest in why or why not these guys collect grant money to classify, reclassify, and declassify objects in our solar system willy-nilly.

Scientists are the coolest people in the world. The should be allowed to do whatever they want.

However, as a child raised in a pre-September 11th world where Pluto was most definitely a planet, I have multiple reasons for wanting it to stay that way.

September 11th changed everything, except for the worthlessness of Pluto.

1. Building models is fun. We got to build lots of models of the solar system when I was little, using Styrofoam balls (before the CFC crisis), a basketball for Jupiter and a pea for Pluto, etc. I think that Pluto's inclusion both illustrates the sheer size of the solar system, and also teaches kids the value of including the little guy - not just cutting him out of our solar system and letting him drift without a family or a home.

As should be clear, the demotion of Pluto does not affect the enjoyment of model building. Hell, it doesn't even ban the construction of models that include irrelevant planets like Pluto. Pluto can (and probably will) continue being included in solar system models, constructed by people who do not understand the worthlessness of Pluto.

It is also interesting to note that the pro-Pluto camp do not argue for the inclusion of Eris in these models. They support one minority, while keeping another down. Such callous disregard for the feelings of other dwarf planets shows the moral depravity of Pluto supporters.

2. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles/Pizzas. Pluto's the most versatile planet in that mnemonic device. Also, I'm not really sure how to rewrite it so kids can remember the planet names, but I think the scientific community has that ethical obligation to our children and our educational system.

There are many possible changes to the mnemonic that work fine without Pluto. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nuts, for example. True, it can be interpreted in a dirty and fairly disturbing way, but it's the first one that came to mind. Perhaps we should consider the mnemonic with the promotion of Eris. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Eagles, for example. The inclusion of eagles makes it more patriotic! Although the suggested eating of said eagles probably negates the patriotism.

3. Pluto has popular culture currency. Although, to be fair, Disney kinda sucks.

Pluto (the dog) has always sucked (as has the ex-planet). Renaming Pluto after Astro from the Jetsons would add greatly to the pop-culture argument. While Eris doesn't really have any connection to popular culture, at least it is untainted by popular culture that sucks, unlike Pluto.



While some of these arguments would validate the promotion of a dwarf planet, none suggest that Pluto in particular should be promoted. Perhaps we should consider the advantages of elevating Eris to the list of planets, while keeping Pluto down where it belongs.

(1) Eris is bigger than Pluto. As a Texan, bigger = more awesome. Oklahomans may have a difficult time with this concept.

(2) Pluto is the Roman god of the underworld, while Eris is the goddess of strife. As Americans, we all love war, and hate the devil. Thus, Eris is better.

(3) Additionally, there are only two planets named for females (Venus and Earth). Isn't it time for the evil planetary patriarchy to recognize the contribution women make to our solar system? Even dwarf-planet women. An elevation of Pluto would simply reenforce the status quo, and also suggest that size doesn't matter in men. Is that what you really want, ladies?

(4) Eris kinda sounds like eros, which is kinda hot. Pluto is stupid sounding.

(5) Oort cloud! Hee hee.

(6) Puto and Eris both have moons: Charon and Dysnomia, respectively. In mythology, Dysnomia was the demon of lawlessness . Charon, of course, was the ferryman across the river Styx , who had to be paid by the dead. The implication is clear: those who wish to tax the dead (both rich and poor alike) support Pluto, while those who wish to fight the encroachment of big government prefer Eris.

(7) The name Dysnomia kinda looks like insomnia too, which suggests Eris stays up late. Charon sounds kinda like charred, so Pluto must overcook steaks. Why support a morning planet that can't cook?

(8) Pluto is the Water Chestnut of the universe.

(9) The eccentricity of a planet tells you how elliptical the orbit of the planet is. It also tells you how interesting it is, and how fun to hang out with (obviously). Pluto has an eccentricity of 0.248, whereas Eris has an eccentricity of 0.442, as shown here . As is obvious, Eris is cooler than Pluto. For those who argue that eccentric people are just crazy people who are rich, please note that there is no money in space.

(10) Pluto hates our freedoms.

As should be abundantly clear at this point, Pluto should not be elevated to planetary status at all. In fact, a pre-emptive attack against Pluto may be necessary in the near future, coupled with the imprisonment of all Pluto-supporters.

While we have not definitively shown that Eris deserves to be promoted, we have certainly shown that it kicks ass, and is better than stupid Pluto.

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Gchatting after a Law Firm Event

This post will be the last thing I do before I crawl under my desk today and die at work.


12:47 AM Thomas: hey
me: tommycwhy eoyou
you silence me
Thomas: sorry im on a conference call
haha you're drunk
me: haha you suck
12:48 AM oh a conferencce call you are ver yimportnat
youi're the most iposrtant'
Thomas: i know. many people know me
me: typing is so hard
Thomas: i understand
ive always thought so
me: i have one eyh closed
Thomas: i do that when im drunk too!
12:49 AM me: you ca n't evevn talk brfause you are on a conference call
Thomas: i know
i would much rather be talking to you right now
me: what areyou doing??
12:50 AM Thomas: trying to do lab placements for VBI
me: oh erights
with vixcctor/z?
Thomas : josh and babb
me: oh that is niot important
12:51 AM Thomas: haha it kinda is
and im the connecting force between them
without me they are nothing
[content deleted so that we all stay employed and un-lawsuited]
12:55 AM me: okkki have to go to bed
feeel lie shite and i am su e it wil bre worze in the morning
Thomas : aww =(
i understand
me: how's that for grammar
Thomas: hopefully we can talk longer soon
me: ok well i iw lll talk to you soon'
Thomas: night night
good luck tomorrow
me: godnight
thx gbnye
12:56 AM Thomas : god night to you too

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Happy Friday!

Hey, everyone -

Welcome to the end of the first fully-functional week for the blog! Keep blogging, posting, and ranting. Tell your friends. Tell me of problems or ideas you have.

Remember, my faithful blog authors, that any musings or queries or concerns you pose either in a post or on a blog, I answer on the FAQ page. There's a link conveniently located on the sidebar under "our stuff." Shween, my love, I'll post step by step instructions for opening a delicious account shortly.

Also, if you're going to post links, please either use html tags or use the link icon in the toolbar so that it becomes active and not just a random garbled url text.
[e.g. the difference between: http://consumerist.com/consumer/technology-is-awesome/baby-monitor-monitors-international-space-station-rather-than-baby-268600.php;
AND:
Read this cool story about a baby monitor that shows video of the space station!

Finally, you should digg Joey's stories. In exchange, Joey should open a delicious account, post links to his stories there, and we can easily see the new stories on the blog, and thus digg them. Everyone's happy.

Love
me

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copyright law be damned!

check this out.
http://www.readprint.com
now if i could only figure out how to join delicious...

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Russia Has Ninjas!

A Russian ex-military man was caught ravaging the Italian countryside dressed as a ninja:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6746051.stm
Yeah. Who else wants to move back with Tommy?

Type rest of the post here

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Help Joey Test Out Digg

So part of my new job as a reporter is figuring out how to drive traffic to our site. I'm experimenting with Digg.com, and you can help by voting for one of my stories. As a bonus, it's actually a kind of cool story, you know, if you're interested in how secondary markets for virtual goods affect online worlds. Yeah? Yeah! Feel free to tell your friends. Also, I promise I'll never do this again.

You can Digg the story here: http://tinyurl.com/36qz8l

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Pluto Anti-Defamation League

The BBC reports today on an article just published in Science that once again seeks to demean and demote Pluto.
I'd like to announce the beginning of the Pluto Anti-Defamation League.

I'm not a scientist, and I have little interest in why or why not these guys collect grant money to classify, reclassify, and declassify objects in our solar system willy-nilly. However, as a child raised in a pre-September 11th world where Pluto was most definitely a planet, I have multiple reasons for wanting it to stay that way:

1. Building models is fun. We got to build lots of models of the solar system when I was little, using Styrofoam balls (before the CFC crisis), a basketball for Jupiter and a pea for Pluto, etc. I think that Pluto's inclusion both illustrates the sheer size of the solar system, and also teaches kids the value of including the little guy - not just cutting him out of our solar system and letting him drift without a family or a home.

2. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles/Pizzas. Pluto's the most versatile planet in that mnemonic device. Also, I'm not really sure how to rewrite it so kids can remember the planet names, but I think the scientific community has that ethical obligation to our children and our educational system.

3. Pluto has popular culture currency. Although, to be fair, Disney kinda sucks.

4. Post-script: Apparently I'm not very creative. Other people have blogged about this at length, about a year ago.

On the mnemonic

Another blogger held a contest to come up with a new mneumonic, which could a) protest the demotion of Pluto (hooray!), describe the lonely 8-planet system, or include the new 3 dwarf planets. Fortunately for the future of astronomy, the protest mnemonic won: My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums.


The Economist weighs in on the controversy, although the facists advocate killing Pluto

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Open letter to tourists

Dear D.C. Tourists:

Welcome to Capitol Hill! I'm actually glad that you've decided to take your family here this summer. It's beautiful here this time of year, the entire Capitol Complex is lovely, and seeing the Constitution and Declaration of Independence sure beats your kids playing video games all summer. As someone who will be sharing the city with you this summer, I just have a few small requests.

One: Please continue to wear your Hawaiian shirts, fanny packs, khaki shorts with long-sleeved shirts tucked in, and visors. If you haven't arrived with these items of clothing, then your family should at least all wear the same color shirt (neon colors work nicely). Any of these outfits make it easy for folks like me to identify you from a distance, stay as far away as possible, and thus give you all the room you need to make your visit happier and your family time more intimate.

Two: The map from National Treasure really, really isn't on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Sorry. I could tell you it was, but that would be enabling your strange fantasy. And, no, the guards probably won't make an exception for you to just "take a quick peak," even if you did drive Betty and the kids all the way from Idaho. Sorry.

Three: I think it's fantastic you want to talk to your Senators and/or Representatives. I think more people should. Become involved, voice your concerns, develop a relationship with your elected officials. However, when I am outside of my building, listening to my ipod, smoking a cigarette, and not making eye contact with you, it is difficult to mistake me for a Capitol Hill information booth staffer. I don't mind telling you where buildings are, or giving you directions to the metro.

However, there are 100 Senators and 435 Representatives. I don't know where your Member's office is. I have absolutely no idea if they're in town right now, or if they have time to see you. Maybe, before you sailed up the Atlantic coast from Florida in the fishing boat you bought for retirement, you should have given your Senator a call to see if (s)he'd be around. Just a thought. You'll have a nice time in the district anyway.

Four: Metro etiquette. I'm going to break this into several parts.

a) The metro is hard to navigate sometimes. The maps help, but no one minds answering your questions. Really. However, knowing the stop you want, the area of town you want to get to, or at least the name of the restaurant where you're meeting your "high-school-sweetheart-I-haven't-seen-in-15-years-I-wonder-if-he's-fat-now" helps me a lot when I'm trying to give you directions. It's great that it's somewhere near Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania happens to be a long street, with lots of restaurants. I really, really would help you if I could, but I also don't want to talk about what an amazing quarterback Gerald was when he was 17. I don't know why he divorced Marlene. I just want to listen to Wolf Parade. That's it.

b) One of my favorite things about DC is that people move from place to place as quickly as I do. I don't believe in standing still on metro escalators. If I'm on the metro, I'm either late for work, or I want to go home. So, particularly during rush hour, PLEASE pretend like the left side of the escalator will spontaneously burst into flames if you spend more than 2 seconds on a given stair. The left is for WALKING. If you want to stand, that's what the entire right half is dedicated to. I have nothing funny to say here, but seriously, people. LEFT=walk. RIGHT=lazy. Choose a side, embrace the side, but please don't stand on the left.

c) On a related note, I know that when a few hundred people are getting off the metro, and 50 of them belong to your party, it's scary and nerve racking and you want to be able to count heads as quickly as possible. PLEASE, though, do not do this at the very top or bottom of the escalators. Back up 10-15 feet, and then congragate. Again, nothing funny, but we'll like you so much more if you do this one simple thing for us.

d) I bet that your children are adorable, brilliant, and that they're very excited to be on vacation and to meet new people. I think that's fantastic. However, when I'm on my way home, I'm really tired, and need to retreat into what I like to call my "metro bubble of aloneness." I don't take up much space, I don't talk to anyone, I put on my headphones, and I read. It's REALLY hard to bother me. What does bother me, though - a lot - is hearing this conversation screamed:

50-year-old woman, top of her lungs, to entire train: "Jimmy is collecting people from all 50 states! What state are you on now, Jimmy?"
8-year-old boy: "Alaska, Mommy!"
Woman: "Hear that? he needs Alaska! Who on this train is from Alaska? Anyone? Anyone? Come on! DC is the great melting pot. Fine! Alabama? Really? No takers? Well, don't worry Jimmy, we've got an entire alphabet to get through!"
Boy: "I love long metro rides! I can sing all the states in alphabetical order, wanna hear?"
Woman: "Listen to him! My boy's going to be president one day!"

Good lord.

I think that's it. Generally, you're all very nice people, who make working on the Hill more interesting. Just please, please, don't be the typical tourist.

Thanks!

Love
Me

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DC Rape Crisis Center

Many of you know that I recently started volunteering at the DC Rape Crisis Center. Working at the Center has been a powerful and rewarding experience for me. The Center is starting a "Dollars for Doers" initiative, and I was hoping you'd take a few minutes to read about it.

I know that many of us are short on funds right now, and if you're interested in volunteering or helping in some other way, please let me know and I'd be delighted to talk your ear off about it. I would also be happy to send you the letter in a word document or pdf if you have family or friends that would be willing to donate.

Thanks for your time and support!

Love
Kel

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Cheap High

2 Excedrin washed down by a can of Diet Coke. I feel euphoric right now. Seriously, weird smile on my face. Love for humanity in general.

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Fixing stuff...

Updates: Del.icio.us is not workin' right. I'm trying to figure out why. seems to be fixed? Let me know of more problems.

The links to FAQ don't work, but will soon. should work now. Anyone find more bugs? If I'm going to fix things, you guys should write stuff to entertain me =)

Earlier today...
First of all, because I am amazing, I figured out how to get the read more link off of the bottom of short posts. (I stole the hack from hackosphere, which rocks my world).

Since only Greg, Rhonda and I are stuck in Maryland, should I change the title?

Joey is going to start a delicious account...all of the rest of you should too, and I'll add ya to the sidebar.

I'll play around with colors today. I'll try to find a light purple color scheme that meets everyone's needs (Ms. Medway).

Also, I updated the FAQs to explain how to use the amazing "read more" feature.


Have lovely days!

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A Book Review slash Dating Tip

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nicholas Flynn

So I just got finished reading the above-titled book. It is a memoir about Flynn, describing his drugged-up adolescence to his lengthy stint working at a homeless center to his present day life. At the same time, he weaves in the story of his father’s troubled existence. His father, ironically (Is anything actually ironic? I’m having some Alanis-esque trouble here, folks) ends up sleeping at, you guessed it, the homeless shelter where Flynn works.

In the end, I was happy to have read this book. But really, it took me till the end. For the first 4/5 of the book or so, I had the following assessment: yes, this is well-written, but if I am going to read yet another entertaining, yet depressing, memoir, I would rather be reading something by David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs. (On a side note, I am blown away that Microsoft Word recognizes the word “Sedaris” and does not give it a red squiggly.) Flynn's book just didn’t have enough of a story to captivate me: boozing, drugs, unhappiness; rinse and repeat.

Even though the plot didn’t really do it for me, the writing was absolutely beautiful. Really poetic. Dare I say: very PO-MO. He uses unique writing techniques to grab your attention and keep the story moving. I am a sucker for things like that, and it kept things fresh and also kept me reading.


More witty literary commentary and advice on how to get laid, after the jump!

(Haha, just joking. That would involve me knowing how to insert these magical "jumps." "Please help me," Smed pleads as she looks pointedly at mathgimp.)

The end both surprised me and prompted me to contemplate interesting ideas about family forgiveness that I think would be useful for most of us to think about, me more than anyone. Nicholas Flynn admits at the end of the novel that he wrote it in the same style as Moby Dick. He circles his father like Ahab circles the whale, but neither of them really reaches his target until the very end of each book. So the focal point of each book (the father and the whale, respectively) shape the book even though they are not really present for most of the story. We only get to know each main character under the shadow of what they are chasing after or running away from, however you want to look at it.

Nicholas Flynn is an amazing person, and he has put together a very readable account of his not-so-happy life. It only took me a few days to read, and I would recommend it. It gets the Smed Seal of Approval. Bing!

But let’s get to the important part. This book is an INVALUABLE commodity to strike up conversations with attractive and literate strangers. Here is all you have to do. Even if you don’t want to read this book, buy it anyway. Trust me on this one; it is an investment in the future of your love life. Take the book everywhere with you. I, for instance, took it to a coffee shop, Central Park, and Chipotle. Then, lay the book out beside you, face up. Don’t actually read it, that will ruin the effect. I GUARANTEE you that someone of the opposite sex will come up and say something like this: “Isn’t that an interesting title!” Ok, I can’t exactly guarantee this to my male readers, but I am fairly certain some interaction will occur.

OK, now you have to respond intelligently to this potential love match. If you haven’t actually read it, and are just using the book as a love-prop, I recommend you say the following: “Yeah, great title huh? And it’s actually really engrossing. About a man working at a homeless shelter - and get this - his father is homeless. Written in a stream of consciousness, but in a good way. True story, too.”

You can all thank me when you are happily dating (or at least sleeping with) that good looking person from the coffee shop with whom you have been wanting to strike up a conversation.

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If all the cool kids are angry....

So, I guess the cool thing to do is be angry. Well, I've got a few things I hate. After the jump: Irish History, math, and some other sundry crap...


First, I can't stand books on Irish History. All of the ones I have either end in 1860 (at the end of the Great Hunger) or start in 1900 (at the beginning of the sustained nationalist movement). So, I don't get a good picture of the transition there. To me, it really seems relevant that 2 million people died during the Famine, as the Queen and Parliament did nothing. That seems both remarkable, and very relevant to the later troubles. Without starting around the time of Cromwell (maybe even earlier), it seems like you can't get a good picture of what exactly the English did to the Irish. Maybe I'm way off base, but the British oppression seems relevant to understanding Irish history, and the origins of Irish Republican movement.

The real problem with the modern Irish histories I've read is that they always come across as biased and revisionist to me. This makes sense, if you start at 1900, because the British were SERIOUS assholes pre-1900 (which also pisses me off). For example, no Catholic could vote (i.e. 80% of the population were disenfranchised), and a Catholic could not hold public office. The Property act forbade Catholic landowners from willing what little land they owned to their eldest son, but had to divide it between all sons (not daughters, which also pisses me off, but isn't too relevant to my point), unless one son became Anglican, in which case he got it all. Of course, a Catholic couldn't inherit Protestant land. This eventually meant that the Irish owned only about 5% of their own island by 1900.

Post-1900, the British were just regular assholes. They rescinded most of the Penal Laws (some before the Famine), and attempted some `welfare' projects. However, most of the books I read don't mention the wrongs of the British. They talk about the glories of late 19th century Ireland, with property ownership on the rise (now that the Irish could buy property), or the apparent evils of the Catholic church (which suddenly started spending money on churches now that it was legal). They pay only lip service to the fact that all of these `changes' in Irish culture came about because real Irish culture suddenly became permissible. These post-1900 histories are probably pretty good books, but I get so pissed off when I pick one up.

On that topic, I really hate the British in the colonial period. What assholes.

To be fair, I'm not a huge fan of the Catholic church either. I just really like the Irish. And dislike the British.

And, because no post would be complete without some sort of nerdness: I currently hate the Edwards-Doi model for the time-dependent behavior of the Gaussian chain. The little bastard keeps acting wonky. I know on physical grounds that <[R(t)-R(0)]^2>~6Dt, so why does it give me O[ t^(1/2) ] as t->0. What an asshole. For now. Once I figure out what I'm doing wrong, I won't be angry anymore.

As an aside, I really hate that the number `zero' (above) comes out looking like the letter `o' on this blog.

And Maryland rain pisses me off. I had to leave work half an hour early today (because I walk), because the rain looked so bad. I get home, and there's all this lightning, but no real rain. Just a boring drizzle. Bah.

Also, I hate Water Chestnuts.

And GChat jerks.

And the British. Again.

Ahhh. I feel better.

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Anger Makes You Think Better

"A recent study by psychologists at the University of California Santa Barbara found that Anger Fuels Better Decisions in 3 experiments designed to determine how anger affects our thinking. The study demonstrated how raised levels of anger increased the ability to distinguish between strong and weak arguments. In other words, when certain anger thresholds are met, decisions are filtered differently based on perceived notions about strength of arguments. The antithesis being that when we are not angry, we are more likely to consider many, and sometimes even weaker arguments."

There's a longer article here about the way we think and intelligence seeding for the future. Also, as a shameless plug, I blog every day here about virtual worlds. Some stuff is cool, some is real industry heavy and geeky. Right now you can read about Playboy's Second Life island and censorship in China. All on one page!

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Invite your friends!

Get them to read! Post! Comment! Argue!

It's easy. Click here:

Fill in email addresses, and have them start readin'

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"Shout on Washington!'

It has come to my attention (many moons ago) that in our hyper-driven, calorie conscious millennia there remains an evil that still lurks among us undetected... and that is the nefarious water chestnutt. You know, the slightly salty, somewhat crunchy translucent items that occupy many a Chinese delicacy? My primary problem with water chestnuts is that they in no way, shape or form resemble traditional chestnutts and, therefore, should not have the benefit of sharing a name with a delicious treat whose smell is akin to delightful holiday memories and warm woolen slippers on ones socked feet.

Read more from our newest blogger on the dangers of water chestnuts after the jump (just click Read More!)

It has come to my attention (many moons ago) that in our hyper-driven, calorie conscious millennia there remains an evil that still lurks among us undetected... and that is the nefarious water chestnutt. You know, the slightly salty, somewhat crunchy translucent items that occupy many a Chinese delicacy? My primary problem with water chestnuts is that they in no way, shape or form resemble traditional chestnutts and, therefore, should not have the benefit of sharing a name with a delicious treat whose smell is akin to delightful holiday memories and warm woolen slippers on ones socked feet. Chestnutts roasting on an open fire brings a tear to my eye, and I don't even celebrate Christmas! Simply the idea of water chestnutts, however, instigates within me the same gag reflex I have at the dentist when a tongue depressor is being ritualistically shoved past my uvula. In addition, 'je deteste' water chestnutts because they seem to be space fillers for negligence on the part of Chinese-to go restaurants. Whenever I order my favorite Pick Up Stix house special chicken with vegetables I would find one (only one!) anemic, suffering piece of broccoli, a shred of baby carrot or two, and an overwhelming sea of distasteful water chestnuts! And we wonder why Americans are among the most unhealthy people on the planet...you would be obese too if instead of delicious vitamin and mineral friendly vegetables you were conned into ingesting what is likely the bastard red-headed step child of starchy potatoes! I mean, the essential nutrients are in the name....they don't push the word water ahead of chestnut for nothing! I understand our bodies are almost 75% agua, but I for one have never heard of anyone running a marathon and recharging their body by guzzling a steamy jar of floating yellowish pickled by-products. But Sarah, some friends have jostled me, the crunchiness of the water chestnutt is what makes it good!My response is then to point out that we live in a world that is not hurting for crunchy, textured, independent entities. Why, you could always chew on a piece of cardboard, or enjoy a handful of toothpicks in your mouth...guaranteed your body would thank you more than it would after eating a single wicked water chestnutt. Okay, I guess I'm being a bit hard on the lowly water chestnutt, after all it probably gets no respect from the other members of the vegetable hierarchy, but maybe if it stopped posing as a vegetable or Christmastime snack and instead admitted it's malevolent faux-potato origins it would be accepted....until, then though, join me in the campaign to stamp out water chestnutts forever! If you order Chinese food make sure to tell them you don't want water chestnutts sparking anti-american sentiment in your noodles! Tell them your body shall not be corrupted by treacherous charlatains any longer! Eat tofu! Drink water! Enjoy leafy greens! And above all, do not accept weakness on behalf of your food...instead, march on the Capitol and remind them that what this country stands for is not betrayal but recognition of our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of nutrients!!


Kikiz

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