In Memoriam

Other people have done a far better job of eulogizing the genius of Ray Charles far better than I could, which is why I haven't added anything in this space. Of far less national note will be the death Sunday night of Ralph Wiley, 52. Mr. Wiley was a sportswriter, for many years of Sports Illustrated, in the last several years for ESPN.com's Page 2. Mr. Wiley happened to be one of my two favorite sports columnists (with Page 2's Bill Simmons) and one of my five favorite columnists in any discipline.

I admired his keen observations on sport, the way I admire in any sportswriter the elusive ability to see things mere mortals can't, the sorts of things that coaches and scouts are payed handsomely to see; I admired the way he saw things correctly more often than not, which isn't quite the same thing. The aspect I admire about Page 2 as a sportswriting venture in general is the way it acknowledges in its functioning the way sport intertwines with the rest of everyday life, which makes it particularly appealing to myself as a semi-casual fan (after basketball, I am at best an infrequent watcher of tennis and football). What the best sportswriting captures to me isn't merely that particular vision, but the intuition of what that vision says about the human, what we can learn - not in a soppy way, but in an observational one - from these men, who push one aspect of the human endeavor to its bleeding edge. The example I return to trying to explain this to people is from last year's NBA playoffs, when in the first game of the Sixers-Hornets series, Allen Iverson scored 55 points. His face, contorted in joy and exhaustion and pain and defiance, said something to me, about the way all those emotions could concentrate in one moment of hard-won victory. Ralph Wiley was excellent at communicating just this sort of information - not pure brain information, see, but human information, the way a kid's demanding father and the hitch in his backswing all intuit something about his person, the way you can see in a man's eyes if he will stand up or lie down, and what he believes about his ability to do so. The look in a man's eyes when he realizes he has done a thing he said he could do, but didn't actually beleive that he could.

Most of all, I respected and admired Mr. Wiley's way with words, his casual eloquence, above all the way he spoke in his own language without hesitation, used personal phrases and slang in such a way that they seemed obvious elements of the lexicon. He did coin "BillyBall", for one.

His last column, a typically broad endeavor that ostensibly dealt with the NBA Finals but which roamed off to topics of coaching and race in America, had an opening sentence that seems a particularly fitting thing to say on the occasion of his early death.

"All a man's got is the integrity of his work."

RIP, Ralph Wiley

Blogging the Finals

In retrospect, my hesitance seems foolish, because I knew that the Lakers had been lucky to win Game 2 - the Lakers haven't played better basketball than the Pistons in any of the four outings so far. I was unable to watch Game 3, but while it convinced me that the Pistons might well win the series, I didn't take it to be saying much about the Lakers because anyone can get blown out on an off night. But this evening, a close game exposed the Lakers in all sorts of ways that made them seem small and sad.

(1) Shaquille O'Neal played a brilliant game and his team lost. The one thing he did wrong was miss free throws, but you know that's going to happen. What his team did wrong is not let him play an even more monstrous game. If he's going off, why not just give him the ball on every play? If he's able to set up in the paint, he's either scoring or going to the free throw line. That's automatic; watching Ben Wallace defend Shaq deep under the basket is like watching a video game (like, say, NBA Live - he just unwillingly glides backwards and gives up the dunk. Nothing to be done. And why the hell can't Shaq's teammates realize that he's the one unstoppable option they have, and why the hell don't they do anything about their habit of forgetting about him for five minutes at a time? If Shaq gets 50, maybe the Lakers won tonight.

(2) There's not really much room to fault Kobe; he needs perhaps a more finely tuned sense of when to force it and when to give it up; the key being that he give it up to Shaq, since none of his teammates can make baskets. This doesn't take away from the brilliance of Kobe's game; I wonder what Jordan would've looked like if he got triple-teamed every time he drove and didn't have a real teammate to pass to.

(3) Gary Payton's first quarter showed that he hasn't devolved nearly so much as everyone thought. Yes, he's no kind of Glove anymore, but he can dish the ball out and he's still a fine scoring guard when posting up and slashing to the basket. But he doesn't want to disrupt the structure of the Lakers offense, which is not remotely designed for a player with Payton's strengths, and so for the most part he struggles, regardless of whether he's playing the 1 or the 2.

(4) Phil Jackson was exposed perhaps most of all. It's often been said that he's more a manager of talent than a coach and to a certain extent I bought into the hype, but the fact is that Jackson has always used, highly effectively, a potent offensive system. The Triangle, a halfcourt offensive set so complicated that Jackson and Charley Rosen have authored a book on it (which I haven't read, though I'm curious) is extremely effective when it is supplied with intelligent, versatile, and skilled offensive players; one of its tenets is the idea that anyone can play any spot in the Triangle. But on these Lakers, there aren't many guys who are familiar enough - or, frankly, skilled and confident enough - to actually play the Triangle effectively. What confuses me about Jackson is that he's kept his lineup the same and kept his offense the same. Now it's certainly commonplace that a coach should stick with the players and plays that got him to the championship round, even if they're struggling, but Jackson's starting five and the Triangle aren't responsible for the Lakers being in the 2004 finals. Gary Payton ran the team as its only constant during the regular season, playing effectively in an offensive scheme that compromised the Triangle with his personal preferences, and the playoffs have been entirely about Shaq, Kobe, and Karl Malone's defense. With Malone so hampered as to be useless, I don't understand why Jackson doesn't run with Shaq and a small rest-of-team, relying on Fisher, Payton, Kobe, and George as his main unit; these are the Lakers best players (well, George is questionable, but there's also Walton and Medvedenko for when Devean doesn't want to drive the ball). And why on earth doesn't Jackson loosen up his offense? It hasn't worked so far; the only consistent offensive success the Lakers have had derives from pounding the ball into Shaq and letting him fly solo. Switch over to a more meat-and-potatoes offense, let Payton and Kobe work of screens and postups, and I think the Lakers have a better shot of taking a game here and there. That doesn't change the fact that the Pistons are better coached, more athletic, longer, deeper, more versatile, and (most shockingly) more unflappable and confident. I thought that tonight at last the Lakers would flip their switch and bring it, but Shaq (and Kobe, to an extent) were the only men on the floor for the Lakers tonight.

(5) I love Rasheed Wallace's turnaround jumper, always have. I love the way his spin is so quick and his fadeaway so profound that at the moment of release his body is at a 50 degree angle to the ground and it seems like he should fall over, but he doesn't. The ball leaves his hands so smoothly it's like he barely moved his wrists, he just willed it to fly straight and true. I also loved that Sheed got passionate tonight and played a monster game and went the last quarter and a half sans headband. He looked naked without it, but it made him seem even more intense and focused on the game.

It's Been Like Blao

On Saturday the Virginian graduated from the University of Chicago; on Sunday morning I helped him load his things into a van and then bade him a good trip to his home. Congratulations; I'm going to miss you, but I look forward to keeping in touch, both here and (hopefully) in more informal fora.

It's an odd thing to have spent this past year living with two people who became so quickly some of the most important people in my life, and certainly gave me the best living situation I've had in college; and now I'm not going to be living with either of them, presumably ever again. Although strange things do happen. One of my new roommates is a good friend, and the other fellow seems nice enough, but I'm going to miss the dynamic of this past year. It was probably my healthiest socially - in some very odd ways - and probably my least fulfilling academically, at least in terms of feeling like I was honing in on some goal of study. I'm doubting whether I ought to be a philosophy major, not out of distrust of the discipline but for more pedestrian concerns. I ought to make use of my advisor, but I seem resistant for some reason.

I'm very much looking forward to this Wednesday-Sunday, during which time I will be camping in the far reaches of Wisconsin with a most lovely companion. On my return I will undoubtedly undertake yet again the notion that I can reinvent and reorient my life during the summer. It hasn't happened yet.

More NBA

I really need to keep reminding myself that the Lakers will probably win in six/seven, reminding myself that the Pistons aren't going to quite be able to go the distance...but it's a tempting thought. (Last night watching the game one of my roommates asked me if I liked the Pistons or just disliked the Lakers. As a Celtics fan, I have historical reasons to dislike both teams, but the real answer is that I don't like theseLakers and I really like these Pistons - because I really like Rasheed Wallace and Larry Brown, I like Rip Hamilton's facemask, I like Ben Wallace, I like the defence, I like the scrappiness, I like that Tayshaun Prince is my weight but has arms like an octopus.) My two thoughts for the day on basketball are:

(1) The Pistons had that game last night. Everyone is complaining about how they should've fouled Shaq when he caught the inbounds pass with ten seconds left, and maybe so, but: when Detroit was still up six, Shaq caught the ball in the post and I yelled at the TV to "let him score! Don't foul him, just let him dunk it!" Even if the Pistons weren't able to score on the next possession (and they weren't), there wasn't enough time left for the Lakers to overcome a four point deficit. But Ben Wallace fouled Shaq, who dunked it anyway (duh) and got the three point play (because Shaq's right: he does make foul shots when it counts, or at least when he decides that it counts). What Detroit needs to do is not shake their heads and think "Damn! We could've had that!" and get down about it, they need to pound their chests and say "Damn! We almost took it from them!" They're facing up against two of the best players in history (and had to cope with an amazing coming-out demonstration by Luke Walton, who deserves his own verbiage some other time) and it required Kobe submitting a superhuman final seven minutes to lose. If Kobe can bring it every night, the Pistons are done anyway, but they can't assume that he will because he very well might not. Kobe's reaching for Jordan's status right now, but (a) he's not there yet, and (b) I'll take either of Jordan's supporting casts with the championship Bulls over the Lakers not named Shaq or Kobe (or Luke Walton!)

(2) Also, yesterday Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, LeBron James, and Carmelo Anthony were convened by Jim Gray (hack) to talk about bullshit Jim Gray things. Like greatness and rivalries and Magic v. Bird and LeBron v. Carmelo and the state of the league. Anyway, at some point Bird said the following:

"I think it's [having white stars] good for a fan base, because, as we all know, the majority of the fans are white America...And if you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get them a little excited. But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever. I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American...The one thing that always bothered me when I played in the NBA was I really got irritated when they put a white guy on me...I still don't understand why. A white guy would come out (and) I would always ask him: 'What, do you have a problem with your coach? Did your coach do this to you?' And he'd go, 'No,' and I'd say, 'Come on, you got a white guy coming out here to guard me; you got no chance.' For some reason, that always bothered me when I was playing against a white guy."

And apparently some people are offended by this. Which is a load of crap. Bird is absolutely right on every point: he doesn't say that having white stars is good for the fans, he says that they'd be good for a fan-base - having white stars would make the league more popular. And he's right. The disconnect between the players on the floor and the people in the stands is startling sometimes. Before the game last night, the Staples Center played Van Hagar's "Right Now" before introducing the home team, and I thought: "Hmm...I wonder how many guys who are gonna be playing tonight are really into pop-metal?" They're by and large black men under thirty, whereas the fans are by and large white men over thirty, and there's a disconnect there; the freaking Detroit Pistons play in freaking Auburn Hills. The only exception to the three-and-four-year-college-players-don't-get-taken-early-in-the-draft rule (which in itself is idiotic) is when there's a highly touted white kid like Keith Van Horn or Raef LaFrentz, both of whom have carved out nice careers and both of whom haven't remotely lived up to the hype created to justify their high picks. Teams want a superstar, but they'd really love it if they could get a white superstar. That's just facts, that's just what's good for business - not, and Bird never said that it was - what's good for basketball. It's like when Marc Cuban said the Kobe scandal would be good for the NBA; he was right, interest in the season has increased and people are talking about it. That doesn't make it an intrinsically good thing, or a good thing for the game of basketball.

He's also right that basketball is, has been, and will continue for the forseeable future to be a black man's game. Why isn't at issue; it is. Make a list of the best five, or ten, or twenty-five players in NBA history. Depending on length, the only non-African-American on that list is going to be Larry Bird himself. (Go above ten and you'll quickly have to recognize Bill Walton [white guy] and Hakeem Olajuwon [black guy from Africa], maybe Tim Duncan [light-skinned black guy from the Virgin Islands].)

As to getting annoyed when a white guy was brought out to defend him: it's an odd thing to say, and I frankly don't know enough about the league's rosters in the 1980s, but I suspect most of the white guys in the 80s were pretty lame, especially the ones not named Kevin McHale and not big enough to defend Bird. I mean, there weren't any Europeans around back then, and there weren't nearly as many athletic 6'10" swingmen as there are today. So can you imagine why (in today's terms) a coach would bench, say, Kevin Garnett and let Larry work his stuff against, say, Mark Madsen? Of course, it also needs to be said that Bird was and undoubtedly remains a cocky S.O.B., the sort of guy who routinely announced that he'd have a forty point game or walk over to the other team's bench just before the tip and point to the place from where he'd take the game winning shot. Thing was, he tended to be right. Still does.

Things I Didn't Learn in U.S. History

This is troubling in the extreme. I certainly don't remember ever learning the idea that the president of the United States could choose to break the law willy-nilly, since the authority to do so is "inherent in the president."

No. No it isn't. I don't care if you're talking about the prosecution of a war or the defense of the nation or the theft of a twinkie: the authority to set aside the law is not inherent in the president. If it were, then we wouldn't have a triangular system of checks and balances. Modern opponents of what they gleefully term "judicial activism" ought, for consistency's sake, to equally condemn e.g. Andrew Jackson for driving the Cherokee out of Georgia in defiance of the Supreme Court. "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it," ought to be remembered as a low-light in American history. If the president can inherently set aside the law, that makes him essentially a king-in-waiting. Recall how during the Clinton presidency the phrase "rule of law" was bandied about like a talisman by right-wing spokesmen? Dozens of millions of dollars were expended on a witch-hunt which concluded that, in the end, the president had lied under oath about consensual sex with another adult: but he committed perjury, and therefore deserved punishment. The law is the law, even for the president. Remember?

The authority to set aside the laws is inherent in the president? No. It's not. Find the passage in the Constitution and I'll acquiesce. Find the legal precedent and I'll concede - and then argue that the Constitution is wrong and the any such precedent ought to be ignored. Giving the president such authority - even in the most extreme of times - quietly dismantles the fundamental basis of how our country is supposed to function. Presidents are executives and executives alone. They can ratify laws, but they cannot create them and certainly not choose to break them.

Josh Marshall has an excellent discussion of Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, the gist of which is that: A president may find himself in a situation where he feels that for the good of the country he must break or bend an existing law, or exert authority in a way he is not empowered to do so. But inherent in this capacity is the requirement that the president must know that what he is doing may be illegal and that he (1) owes the public an explanation for his actions, perhaps even an apology, and (2) must be subject to the appropriate punishments should be judged unsympathetically. If I hunt down and kill a serial murderer in the belief that I must behave that way for the health of my community, the health of my community is equally dependent on my answerability for having broken a fundamental law.

The United States has ratified international treaties which state that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture," and that orders from superiors "may not be invoked as a justification of torture". That's pretty damn clear.

The one other issue which troubles me is the definition of torture, which seems to legally rest in the mind of the inflicter and not the body of the inflictee. The federal torture statue defines torture as any act intended to "inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering," and the same DoD report (prepared by general counsels who should goddamn well know better than to say things like "the president has the right to break the law") states (courtesy of the above link):

"The infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture," the report advises. Such suffering must be "severe," the lawyers advise, and they rely on a dictionary definition to suggest it "must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure."

I don't know much about legal definitions of torture, but as a common sense application this seems foolish. Who is supposed to judge where the sufficiency line of physical/mental suffering is crossed? When we're splitting hairs about what is really "severe," then who is to say what the mind of a putative torturer contained at the moment of his ministrations? Can't he claim that yes, he intended to inflict pain, but not severe pain?

On A More Partisan Note...

I don't like Michael Moore. Granted, the only movie of his that I've seen is Bowling for Columbine. I've skimmed Stupid White Men. I'm clearly basing this opinion on his interviews and televised appearances, therefore - lots of the things that come out of Mr. Moore's mouth seem too reactionary even for my taste, and I can't support a guy so un-pragmatic as to boost Ralph Nader in 2000. But Bowling for Columbine really cemented my dislike and wrapped it all up in a nice package. There was:

(1) The distortion of facts, both overtly and by omission.
(2) The way Mr. Moore presents himself as an Average Joe voice of the people and then spends long portions of the film using his power in the editing room to make average Americans who undoubtedly aren't nearly as well read as he is sound like idiots as a method of discrediting them. I have particularly in mind the scenes with the Michigan Militia and the small-town policeman relating the story of the dog which shot its owner; Mr. Moore seems to like to let his camera run just long enough for the subject the make himself sound like a buffoon and then cut away as if that was all you needed to know for a judgment.
(3) The flashier and emptier of his attention-getting tactics.
(4) The painfully didactic and heavy-handed cartoon history of America.

On the other hand, Mr. Moore does exhibit a positive flipside - he publicizes facts the mainstream media won't talk about, he does seem to genuinely want to stick up for the little guy, and in particular some of his stunts are meaningful and effective, frequently getting interviewees to say shocking things. (In Bowling for Columbine, see especially the Kmart sequence and the Charlton Heston interview, where Moore is a little nasty but Moses espouses some astounding and unpleasant beliefs.)

According to Roger Ebert's Cannes coverage, Fahrenheit 911 has toned down a lot of the things I happen to dislike, gone for less flash and more interviews, etc. I'm not sure if Kos is right that this is the best anti-Bush ad possible, but it's pretty friggin' great. It serves as a prime example of my divide about Mr. Moore's stunts - going around with Armed Forces recruiters trying to hand congressmen promotional materials for their children = cool, riding around in an ice cream truck reading the Patriot Act to congressmen = eye-roll. I don't like the trailer's pause on John Ashcroft's flabbergasting "Let the Eagle Soar" - I mean, I did send the link to all my friends when it first came online, but I don't think it serves any purpose in a serious movie other than to try and make Ashcroft look like a fool. What puts this trailer (and, I hope, the move) over the top is the footage: interviews with U.S. Congressmen, footage of businessmen at conferences talking about how to profit from the Iraq war, and most of all footage of President Bush. Things I've read about but never seen because this stuff gets buried, now live and in 3D. Classic G.W.Bush like:

"Some call you the elites. I call you my base."

and

"[Call for unity in the war against terror]...Now watch this drive."

This stuff looks just dreadful on tape because it's exactly counter to the image President Bush has carefully cultivated for himself.

I'm a little bit excited.

Knute Rockne - All American is a Fine Movie

It's been a little odd for me observing the various reactions to the death of Ronald Wilson Reagan. My first awareness of politics was the: the United States had a boss called the president, currently the president was named Reagan, and my parents thought he was a very bad man. I've seen a lot of people on the internet who tend to have my political leanings struggle with emotions like "I really oughtn't feel glad that he's dead, and yet I have such a vested dislike for him..." I basically work the problem by noting - perhaps with the benefit of personal removal from the Reagan era, since I was too young to have firsthand experience of it - that my issue is with the man's politics and not the man, and furthermore that as long as he thought he was doing the best things he could for his country (and no one would dispute that he did), he has my respect.

Also: I have never seen an entire Ronald Reagan movie. In fact, the only movie I've seen with him in it isn't his movie; I've watched about two-thirds of Knute Rockne, All American in which Gov. Reagan plays George Gipp. It was very late at night and I was perhaps not entirely sane while watching, but I thought Gov. Reagan displayed a great deal of charisma, which he obviously kept during his political career - although my favorite parts of the movie were towards the beginning, when Knute Rockne was still a player and Notre Dame developed the forward pass as a potent offensive weapon, revolutionizing football and crushing the Army team.

(Incidentally, I refer to Gov. Reagan by that title for the reasons enumerated in the discussion here. Multiple parties [co-bloggers, girlfriends] have pointed out to me that the same logic of "there's only one President at a time" should leave him as "Mr." since there's only one "Governor [of California]". I maintain my position since the notion of the implied specific in Governor can be stretched indefinitely - to, for example, [Junior] Senator [from Massachusetts] Kerry"; so at some point we'd need to start calling everyone "Mr." and that's another discussion.)

So re: the late Gov. Reagan, the thing that interests me is that the last president who died within my memory was Richard Nixon, and the occasion of his death as I recall it was clouded by the fact that many Americans regarded him with resentment and dislike. The blemish of Watergate was powerful, and blemished the fact that he was such a fascinating, brilliant, idiosyncratic figure. For all the negative things about him, something compelled e.g. my grandfather (whose favorite president was Harry Truman) to vote for him. (On second thought, my grandfather's presidential estimations, thought liberal, were themselves idiosyncratic. He hated FDR, which is why he never mentioned serving in his [FDR's] funeral procession. He also loathed Al Gore and was a vehement Bradley booster. I think he liked the cockiness evident in an advertising campaign that trumpeted: "Rhodes Scholar. NBA All-Star. U.S. Senator. Basically the guy you hated in high school.")

Gov. Reagan, on the other hand, is supposed to be universally beloved. Eulogists fondly remember him as the most popular president of the modern era. Which is where my problems really set in. I have respect, by and large, for the man, but distaste for many facets of his legacy, and a greater distaste for the distortion of the truth which accompany his death. Procrastination in composing this post has rendered obsolete many of the points I originally intended to make. But he was not, in fact, the most popular president of the modern era. The last years of his presidency were darkened by the Iran-Contra scandal, which to my mind was a far more serious matter than Watergate (if for no reason other than that I think international scandals are always more serious than intranational ones). He followed what was then the biggest tax cut in U.S. history with what remains the biggest tax increase. His major contribution to the ending of the Cold War was not, in my (admittedly currently underinformed opinion) spending the Soviets into oblivion, but sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev like sane men and talking about how not destroy the world. In a NYTimes essay, Mr. Gorbachev (how on earth do you address the former leader of a collapsed political entity?) agrees with me.

Much of the previous paragraph is of a piece with the sort of instablogging practiced by Atrios, Kos, and others on this site's blogroll, which The Virginian tends to dislike as a style because of the skewed snark : serious political content ratio. My defense of those sites is that they stem from the constant persecution of Gov. Clinton during his presidency, and the vengeful notion that if one president could be subjected to such intense and constant critical scrutiny, so should his successor. I'd lay a hundred bucks that if Gov. Clinton died tomorrow, no television news broadcast would observe that, according to Gallup polls, he had the highest average approval ratings of any two-term president since LBJ. (G.H.W. Bush crushes all the post-Kennedy competition, but he couldn't win re-election. Odd.) No one's going to be stepping up and naming things after Gov. Clinton any time soon, where the last decade has seen a scary binge of naming and renaming shit after Ronald Reagan, including a skeezy deal wherein National was going to be renamed for the Gipper while the Justice building was going to be named for Robert Kennedy, the latter half of which deal took far too long to go through. Naming things right and left after a living individual strikes me as somewhat creepy, although obviously the genesis was the weird sort of death-in-life Alzheimer's imposes upon the late-stage sufferers.

I think what I'm trying to say is that it angers me when a man is made more than he was, when things untrue are attributed to him, when the inevitable deficits that everyone has in some way are glossed for purer adulation, when a man's legacy is distorted to be co-opted for personal and political gain. A man's legacy ought to stand on its own, and - regardless of my distaste for his policies and methods, as well as my often virulent attitude towards his defenders (Dinesh D'Souza, I'm looking at you) - Gov. Reagan's life needs no embellishment. Requiescat in pacem.

[That was too long]

[Shakes Head]

So, via Atrios (it's a ways down the page by now), I was pointed to this site which apparently is a sign up page to disseminate right-wing Spanish-language material to interested parties. The issue at hand is that the page has employment boxes with only four options: Armed Forces, Teacher, Senior Citizen (I was unfamiliar with the idiom "Persona de la Tercera Edad," but then I never claimed to know Spanish), and Rancher/Farmer.

(The Virginian wondered whether the whole thing might be a hoax. The URL is a little odd, but if it's a hoax it also fooled the Washington Post. Several people on the Atrios comments thread signed up, so I can wait and see what they report.)

Now, this is an issue near and dear to my heart. When I was applying to colleges, I figured I might as well check out Dartmouth (not that I probably had much chance of getting in) despite my skepticism about its historical political leanings. I didn't want to be on an aggressively liberal campus either, but I'll take that over a student paper defined by the ministrations of Dinesh D'Souza and Laura Ingraham (where Chicago falls as a campus on the political spectrum is an issue for another post). On something of a whim, I informed Dartmouth that I'd like some materials, and that I happened to be interested in what they had to say to Hispanic applicants (I wasn't, but comedy can strike from an unexpected source). So I received some information from Dartmouth which included a letter to me, in English, addressing me specifically as a Hispanic or Latino or whatever the preferred term was at the time. Letter was only in English, not Spanish - ok. And they also sent a letter concerning the same topics to my parents. In Spanish. No English. Because the parents of a potential Hispanic applicant don't speak English. Right. (Incidentally, UCLA sent me similar materials, but they did it the right way: everything was bilingual.)

So my initial reaction to "Abriendo Caminos" was: "Good Lord, these people are so ridiculous." And clearly, not having even an "otro" box to check is an oversight. After all, what about the maintenance men, maids, babysitters, and restaurant employees out there? The outrage over at Atrios, of course, is that there aren't any boxes for lawyers, businessmen, doctors, etc. After about ten minutes though, it occurred to me - any white collar individuals who are eligible to vote for president are also (I have to assume) literate in English. (Except perhaps for small business owners.)

I harbor some suspicions about the legitimacy of this website, but I also (while finding it offensive) don't think it's quite as horrendously so as it appeared at first blush. Still, I think someone ought to get fired over this. Of course, in the world of Bush, no one ever gets fired for making a mistake. They just resign to spend more time with their family...

Kandyland?

It appears that I've screwed myself over in several avenues regarding my future academic pursuits. Not due to poor grades - due to absent mindedness, laziness, and apathy. I'm not at all happy with myself about this.

Memo to self: at some more reasonable hour, write a post about modernism and aesthetics.

I spent this evening at a fine bar named Guthrie's, which among other commendable qualities has a stock of board games for the usage of its patrons. Games played included Scrabble, Clue, Candyland, and a bastardized trivia session using the questions from a game without instructions. I continue to be baffled by my relative shoddiness as a Scrabble player. My verbal intelligence, standardized testing and anecdotal evidence would indicate, is fairly strong, and yet I routinely get schooled at Scrabble. Ms. Jones equates her skill at Scrabble with her skill at crosswords - another arena in which I'm fairly weak. Perhaps it's the imaginative/spatial element of both that stymies me. I've never tried my hand at Boggle, but I'd probably suck. This is all in fact a preamble to my thoughts on Candyland.

Candyland is, admittedly, a game to be playable by children who are barely (if at all) literate. Its rules must therefore be simple, relatively nonverbal, and the game ought not to require much in the way of skill or strategy. I had also never played Candyland before this evening. Although I fared decently, I didn't enjoy the game at all, because I had nothing to do with it. I was a passive participant in a series of events entirely determined by the shuffling of a card-deck. And it occurred to me that I don't enjoy, or even understand the enjoyment, of a single game of chance. The idea of playing a slot machine for any extended period of time bores me. Due to the late hour, I'm failing to come up with other examples of games which rely most heavily on chance, but I'm sure there are many to be found among the youth-oriented games of Milton Bradley et al. Why would a person engage in an activity in which he played no effective part? I'm not speaking of passive media consumption, but the gathering of a group of people to sit around and pretend that they have something to do with the events unfolding inside their circle.

The allure of money - and the attendant thrill not only of gaining it but of losing it, depending on your nature - is obviously powerful for some people (although most truly-random gambling situations, like the roulette wheel, concern brief events which rely upon repetition to create the promise of future success. Maybe the ball landed on Red 32 this time, but the game's starting over in a second and who knows where it's going to land?! I can't imagine anyone but the most pathologically desperate gambler laying money down on the outcome of a game of Candyland). Similarly, small children may derive pleasure from the colors, the activity of moving their pieces, the sugary overtones of the game - although I wonder if I would've found that rapdily boring as a child. I was an odd child in some respects, and for one example I remember Tic Tac Toe losing much of its lustre when my father explained to me that above a certain modest skill level the game was essentially unwinnable, a fact I learned long before I actually achieved that level of facility.

I don't particularly understand gambling, but I understand gambling on sports or poker much more than I understand gambling on roulette, to return to a previous example. Sports gambling posits that (a) there are overall predictable forces at work in a contest and (b) that I have enough understanding/insight into the contest to predict its outcome (I still feel confident that the Pistons will win the series, incidentally, despite their loss tonight). Poker or any number of other games even more directly involve betting on my skill at whatever is relevant. I can't imagine betting on roulette more than once or twice. I can't imagine ever wanting to play Candyland again, unless it was with a small child for whom I held a great deal of affection. I don't get games of chance. Perhaps I just have insufficient belief in the small scale powers of luck. Over long periods of time I waver between believing in karma vs. chaos; over short periods of time I just don't buy that there's any such thing. But maybe that's just because I have bad luck (despite doing alright at Candyland, I was in last place when the game was decided, because other people had the luck to get cards which enabled them to jump long distances ahead of me; the one such card I received actually reversed my progress).

Also: Candyland's board has such an intense focus on alliteration that it posits King Kandy as lord of the Candy Castle. Way to confuse the kids about spelling, guys.

Basketball

Avoid if you're uninterested in basketball

So a long time ago, at the beginning of the season, I made a series of predictions about what was going to happen, who was going to go to the playoffs, etc. Adjusting for several major trades, I'd rate myself at about 60% correct (which is, in my opinion, just on the right side of respectable). Other than not realizing how awful the Celtics were going to become under Danny Ainge this year, my biggest error ends up having called the Spurs to win the championship. I really thought they were going to do it. And if Derek Fisher doens't make that improbably shot with 0.4 seconds left in Game 5 of the Lakers series, they probably do (I want to try catching and shooting in 0.4 seconds; I'm skeptical).

So, starting with the East, here's my take on the Conference Finals -

Detroit is going to win in five or six. Probably six, but that depends on Jermaine O'Neal proving for once and for all that he's made the leap into greatness. Because he's going to match up with Rasheed Wallace, who is longer, at least as strong, probably quicker, and a lot more experienced (if less intrinsically stable). And if Jermaine can outbattle Rasheed, there's still Ben Wallace, probably the best off-the-ball defender in the league, hanging around. Jeff Foster, the other Pacers bigman, is probably not going to occupy a lot of Big Ben's attention. O'Neal may prove better than one Wallace, but not both of them. At point, Chauncey Billups ought to just devour Jamaal Tinsley. And I think the Pistons have a matchup advantage at the wings as well. Say Artest matches up with Tayshaun Prince, shuts him down. There's NO WAY Reggie Miller can keep up with Hamilton. So Artest matches up with Rip: he's not going to shut him down, just slow him up a bit, and Tayshaun is just going to smother Reggie Miller. I don't think Miller can defend Prince better than adequately, and Prince's wingspan will just take Reggie out of the game. This might all be moot (or at least subject to change) if Miller is benched in favor of Al Harrington, but the latter Pacer hasn't played well, and I don't have any clue of what happens when Prince drags him to the perimeter.

I'm not laying out a games prediction on a series that's already begun, but the Lakers are winning this one. Sam Cassell's foot just hurts too much for him to explode the way he has all season, which means that it's on KG and Latrell. Only one of whom showed up to play last night. If KG doesn't shrink into oblivion, and if Wally gets his shit together, I believe they can score with the Lakers - especially on the run. But I don't see them being able to defend LA...there's just too many weaknesses. No one on the Wolves can stop Kobe, unless Trenton Hassell has the game of his life. Shaq is going to toy with whatever big man the Wolves send at him; Olowakandi is probably the best option, but he's not stopping the Diesel. And when the Wolves overcommit on doubleteaming Shaq and Kobe, the other guys spot up and knock down the jumpers. If I were Flip Saunders, I'd say: Fuck it, the one way they're NOT going to beat us is with Shaq (since he's the most dependable Laker weapon, when he wants to be. And right now he wants to be). And then I'd go well at KG and tell him he's going to guard Shaq. Yeah, he gives up a lot of weight (has an edge in wingspan, I'd say). Yeah, he's not as strong. But KG is clever, he's a good defender, he's going to do as good a job or better on Shaq as Olowakandi is. He just needs to believe (like Webber, like the other O'Neal, like Duncan and Rasheed) that it's his job and his place to step into the middle and start bodying with O'Neal. And let's say he doesn't stop him? Well, if KG's playing center, the Wolves have a smaller lineup, which means a faster lineup, and in Minnesota's case a more effective offensive lineup on the floor. Even if Shaq still gets his, wouldn't it be better to be able to match that with some steady contributions from (the surprising) Fred Hoiberg? Plus, I really want to get to watch Mark Madsen play Karl Malone. It's just a funny idea.

In An Interstellar Burst...

As best as I can tell my previous post happened on March 25th. That's quite a hiatus. Although I certainly continued to spend far too much of my time on the internet in that period, I otherwise sort of retired from online life - no AIM, no blogging, no LiveJournal, no nothing. Such an experiment (not that I began it as a conscious experiment) would undoubtedly be more successful if I could similarly walk away from the websites I tend to read, but...

In any case, at least one person has expressed regret that I refrained from posting even when The Virginian resumed the blogging, so here we go. In particular, I'm somewhat curious to see what amount of coherence or balance will be maintained as I continue to be an undergrad at Chicago, and my associate heads off to graduate school.

A few comments on recent posts:

(1) I highly recommend this website; I've rather enjoyed trying to figure out how the parents of people I've gone to school with have distributed their money, and checking whether or not I was surprised by the results. People I've gone to school with tend to not donate much money to just about any cause as of yet, although that hasn't stopped either my high school or the institution where I did eighth grade from hitting me up for cash I don't have. If I ever donate money to one of my former schools, UHS will get some. Cathedral will not. (Among other reasons, Cathedral is far more aggressive.)

(2) As The Virginian states below, I do not care for square-toed shoes (or squares in general; I have a decided negative preference towards boxy automotive design, boxy architecture, boxy people, and boxy clothing). My position on ties and collars is not an equally vehement affirmation of the joys of the wide collar and the Windsor knot - I merely don't object to the wide collar, think in certain situations and on certain people it is flattering, etc. And when confronted with a wide collar, it is necessary, lest one risk looking entirely foolish, to respond with an appropriately beefy (but not boxy) tie knot - namely, the Windsor. I myself have only an intellectual knowledge of how to execute the Windsor, relying on the more pedestrian four-in-hand, since my personal shirt collars tend to be sufficiently narrow in angle. As to the neckerchief, though: no. An ascot is one thing (and in this day and age I'd certainly feel inclined to mock anyone I saw wearing an ascot for non-theatrical/ironic purposes) but a neckerchief demands an equally piratical puffy blouse. Just unbutton your damn shirt and let it go. Or, like me, you could sport what my roommates charmingly refer to as my "Jesus bling".

No, You're Not

Re: spanking - according to my parents' testimony, I was spanked twice as a child. Both incidents occurred well before the period whose memories I still retain, both times the "spanking" was a single swift smack on the behind, both times this was sufficient to shock and dismay me (because it was so rare, I never expected it), both times it was sufficient to make my parents feel guilty (feeding their initial resolution that I was not to be spanked). Now, this is also no doubt aided by my parents' testimony that I was an excessively obedient, good tempered, un-trouble-causing little kid, and I'm not going to get up and say that I was that way (which, within the period of my memory, is certainly an accurate description, and I have no reason to believe that I was by way of contrast a hellraiser of a two-year-old) because I was never spanked.

But the point is, I've lived and made friends for an extended period of time in both Massachusetts and northern California, and while I never took a poll, my memories of discussions lead me to believe that anyone who was spanked w/regularity would have been in the extreme minority. Now, these are odd places. They're both (at least socially) rather more liberal than the national average. So I'll posit that these places, both more susceptible to social change than, say, the South, were probably on the leading edge of the changes The Virginian describes. So I'd say that he's more of a regional anomaly than a national one - since I think it's also fair to say that the southern states are going to be on the trailing edge of whatever social change I've just glibly posited the north and west are pioneering.

Look Pa, I Learneded Something!

I'm about two-thirds of the way through my final assignment (an 8-10 page paper) of the quarter. It's very late, I'm tired, and I'm might not going to go to bed until this evening, which will be the second time in five days that I go 24 hours without sleep, an occasion to which I am unsued and react poorly. Hopefully, I'll find some time to sleep, and also the vaguely interesting things I have planned for my day will distract me from the desire to collapse.

The thing, though, is that I don't mind. First of all, I've been working my way through a half-gallon of chocolate milk, which is excellent paper-lubrication. Second of all, I'm interested in what I'm writing about. Third and most importantly, I feel like I'm actually learning something in writing this paper. I didn't carefully read the essays I'm writing on the first time around, so I've had to imbibe what seemed relevant and then spin it back out in a manner that was both coherent and pit them against each other. For the first time in at least a year and a half I honestly don't know, two-thirds of the way through, what my conclusion is going to be. I'm going to have to swig some chocolate milk and actually think about it, make up my mind, allow the things I've written to persuade me. This isn't going to redeem the past quarter, but up until tonight the best thing I had to show for the previous ten weeks was the development of high facility at throwing sharp objects into horizontal surfaces, as well as an appreciation for how much easier that is as compared to throwing the same sharp objects into vertical surfaces (though I'm improving at that as well). This is kind of cool. I might be wrong (about what I write in my paper, not my enthusiasm about being interested in it), but I'm just the slightest bit excited about working out my ideas, and I feel a little less jaded.

Also: I've been listening nonstop all night to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness for the first time in a long time. Smashing Pumpkins were my first Favorite Band, and still the ones closest to my heart.

Youth is wasted on the young.

The System Has Become Interactive

Last night I took a break from paper-producing to have dinner with a friend's parents, who subsequently took us to see the Blue Man Group, which they had been quite interested in doing. I was considerably less enthused, but I wasn't about to turn down some free (for me) entertainment. I hadn't been looking forward to the show that much because I tend to be less enthralled than others by physical antics (I was maybe one of three kids in grade school who didn't think the Cirque d'Soleil was cool beyond belief). So, first off, I should say that the show was great, I laughed a lot, it was funny and clever and a good (albeit quite expensive [though, thankfully, not for me]) time. But I had a couple of thoughts relating to the show...

(1) There was a mostly gentle, sometimes more forceful, undercurrent of social commentary to the show. I don't know very much about the Blue Man Group's history, other than what was explained for me in the Playbill, but it appears that they got started putting on Happenings around New York City in the late 80s. I sort of felt like some of the more critical elements of the show seemed like gestures towards the politicized aspect of doing something like a Happening, and maybe half-hearted ones. I feel this way because of the three major segments of the show in this vein, I only thought one was really clever - a voiceover/video presentation about a "nearly invisible network that connects millions of people, a system so vast and complex that no one can estimate its size," etc., etc. That system is...plumbing. (All information in this system, no matter where you are in the system, flows AWAY from your interface terminals. When there is an informational clog, and data starts flowing out of your interface terminals, the system has become...interactive.) What I liked about this was that it had a subtlety to it - you could just take it as funny, without any particular critical content - and it was inventive. The other two such sections of the show were (a) the Blue Men interacting with another voiceover/video presentation about how to be a Rock Star in the modern age (hint: lots of choreography, little talent), and (b) an explication of the nature of the Internet Coffee Shop, where people drink their coffee and communicate with people who aren't there while ignoring the people at the next table (walking home from the show, we passed such a coffee shop, and noted that in fact people were in physical conversation with each other, in defiance of the Blue Men). While both these segments were funny, I found them less satisfying than the plumbing thing because they were both so...obvious in their critical target. No one needs to have it pointed out to them that pop music at the moment is dominated by an emphasis on choreography. The NYTimes can't go two weekends without another item on the prevalence of lip-synching - and yet, as those same items point out, no one much seems to care. If they did, it wouldn't be popular at the moment. No one needs to be informed of the potentially isolationist tendencies of internet use, of the vague ridiculousness in public internet use. The last six to eight years have seen an argument between studies proving or disproving the antisocial influence of wasting hours online. This was the difference between when Seinfeld (as opposed to the slightly different animal that was Seinfeld) is great as opposed to amusing: the difference between revelation and recognition. Telling people things they already know is easy, and might get laughs, but...it's not nearly as satisfying as showing them something they haven't seen before.

(2) I had things to say about audience participation, but this has gotten sort of long and I'm hungry, so I'll post that later (if ever).

Busy; Also, "Marriage"

We're heading into finals week here at the University of Chicago, which means that the impetus to post becomes sparse as the impetus to bury oneself under a ton of sand and papers becomes all-consuming. I envy The Virginian, who will be done with his work a full two and a half days or so before I am...but anyway.

Since I was trying to think of something to throw up here as a stopgap, I remembered that at one point I indicated I would post on gay marriage, or as it's fashionable to refer to it in some circles, gay "marriage". I guess I've got the monopoly on gay marriage posting here, because as my blogging-cohort told me, "I've already written a post on abortion; I don't wanna touch that with a ten-foot pole." I imagine the Virginian overestimates both the size and the reactionary tendencies of our readership, but in the interest of filling space:

It has become apparent over the last two months that the Virginian and I unexpectedly share pretty much the exact same position on the issue: the federal government should not be in the business of handing out anything called a "marriage". The federal government should be in the business of handing out domestic partnership contracts to any pair of people who desires one (and frankly, I don't care if they hand them out to three or eight people either), and marriage should be left as an institution of religious organizations. We have seen no argument in favor of restricting civil marriage to heterosexuals that does not reduce in the end to an appeal to this country's Christian-normative foundations, and those are not foundations which we feel can dictate policy. If the Catholic church doesn't want to marry gay people, that's the Catholic church's business, but the federal government can't parade around these Defense of Marriage mockeries and pretend that civil marriage still exists as anything other than a contract which is relatively easy to get out of. U.S. Gov. Out Of My Wedding Ring, I say.

Yeah, I Live Here Too

I don't entirely disagree with my comrade's post on the CIA, but I have several points to make.

(1) Yes, it is (I would imagine) understood that the point of having a secret intelligence agency is that, when it's working, you don't know that it's working. The CIA is a mysterious piece of machinery under the hood of my car, or inside my computer - I barely knew it was there until it started acting up. That doesn't mean, however, that the CIA should be exempt from public scrutiny. Whether current investigations are proceeding in ideal fashion or not (and I frankly haven't been paying enough attention to have an opinion), I believe that public investigation of CIA failures not for the purpose of assigning blame, but for the purpose of assessing what went wrong and how such catastrophe can be averted in the future is necessary. The CIA may be an exemplary organization and my understanding of its inner workings is nonexistant, but: if I were informed about a theoretical government office which had important work to do in secret, which was frequently successful but occasionally un-, and which was never held up for public investigation of how its failures came about, I might worry that such an organization would shrug off its periodic failures as inevitable without attempting to learn from such events. I'm not interested in getting people fired; but I'm not enough of an optimist in human behavior to assume that even the CIA would change its ways without being told to by a more powerful body to whom it's answerable.

(2) By the same token, most people who have either being paying sufficient attention over the last few years is probably aware of two facts: (a) Any attempt to blame the CIA for failure to discover WMDs is pure political hogwash, since it has been readily apparent from the beginning that the CIA was not a big booster of the intelligence upon which our administration siezed, and it certainly did not endorse the fashion in which that intelligence was used, and (b) the CIA can't reasonably be blamed (from Pacepa's list of current indictments of the agency) for failure to anticipate 9/11. On that mark, here's an interview from Salon, and here is the only worthwhile piece of investigative journalism Time has done in years.

(3) The upshot of the two links just posted is that, as regards 9/11, the blame cannot be laid at the feet of the CIA, or any other individual intelligence agency, but we can reasonably postulate that had the various national agencies been willing and able to fully share both their intelligence and their suspicions, they might have more successfully anticipated what was coming - this is, after all, the ostensible reason we have a Department of Homeland Security, mismanaged and laughable as its actual incarnation might be. And also, as Time so ably points out, it was the administration that ignored the entire possibility of Osama bin Laden as a threat until days before 9/11, it was the administration that disregarded the advice of the departing Clintonians, who had all become frightfully obsessed with Al Qaeda - which is why partisan critiques of Clinton that claim he ignored the terrorist problem make my blood boil. But that's for another post.

So, returning from digression, I understand Ion Mihai Pacepa's concerns (and, more locally, The Virginian's), but I believe that (a) perceptive individuals who have been paying attention to the news over the last few years (and in that category I hopefully submit there ought to be the sort of people thinking of becoming CIA assets) will recognize that many of the current attempts to scapegoat the CIA are political posturing, and (b) public scrutiny of our intelligence agencies is in fact necessary, although such scrutiny can be co-opted for political gain and clumsily utilized.