The Raven

Death and Blogs

Fri, 16 May 2003 22:22:34 GMT

In this case, it's us. The Raven bows out now, and hopes you've enjoyed reading this Weblog as much as we've enjoyed writing it.

For now, it's time to focus on other things. When the urge to write becomes overpowering, we'll be back. Until then, surf well.

Best regards, The Raven

The Tax Man

Fri, 16 May 2003 17:33:20 GMT

Maybe the Beatles said it best:

Let me tell you how it will be,
There's one for you, nineteen for me—
Cause I'm the tax man,
Yeah I'm the tax man.
Should five percent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all—
Cause I'm the tax man,
Yeah I'm the tax man.
If you drive a car I'll tax the street.
If you try to sit I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat.
If you take a walk I'll tax your feet.
Well I'm the tax man,
Yeah I'm the tax man.
Don't ask me what I want it for
If you don't want to pay some more—
Cause I'm the tax man,
Yeah I'm the tax man.
Now my advice for those who die:
Declare the pennies on your eyes—
Cause I'm the tax man,
Yeah I'm the tax man.

And you're working for no one but me.

We noticed that last night that the Senate just squeaked by a $350-billion tax cut bill, which trimmed down the $550-billion cut proposed by the House, and is less than half of Bush's original $725-billion reduction. The Senate proposal has yet to be delivered, however: Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio), who led the fight to keep the bill's cost to $350 billion, said, "There are going to be some difficult days ahead. We're in the playoffs now, but the World Series is what comes out of conference."

There are some nasty provisions in the Senate version, by the way, and while I'm all for cutting taxes—I'll explain why in a moment—this particular package doesn't look like the best way to do it.

Among the bill's highlights:

Taxpayers can exclude 50% of their dividend income in 2003. From 2004 through 2006, all dividend income is tax-exempt. The tax is reinstated in 2007.
A speed-up in the scheduled reductions in income tax rates. Under the 2001 tax cut law, those reductions would not take full effect until 2006.
An increase from $600 to $1,000 for the tax credit families can take for each child.
Tax relief for couples who are hit by the so-called marriage penalty.
Expanded incentives for small businesses to invest in new equipment.

So much for the velvet glove. Now for the iron fist: During the Senate negotiating to pare down the cuts to $350 billion, "the effort to expand the bill's dividend tax relief was the focus of heavy lobbying by GOP leaders and the White House." And somebody has to pay for that. Turns out to be us. Senator Don Nickles (R-Okla.) proposed trimming the tax relief provided for married couples and small businesses by $43 billion.

[Democrats] accused Republicans of penalizing married couples to pay for bigger tax breaks for wealthy shareholders.

"This is absurd," said Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). "This is irresponsible."

The other Gom Jabbar handbox trap is a rather ugly repeal of the $80,000 foreign-income exclusion credit currently affecting Americans who reside overseas. I used to take advantage of that one myself. As the Senate version now stands, even if you live abroad and pay income taxes to a foreign government, all of your income will now be considered fully taxable U.S. income. Ouch. Senator John B. Breaux (D-La.) tried to add an amendment to drop this provision.

Breaux said that would undercut an important incentive for workers to accept jobs overseas.

Many Republicans shared Breaux's opposition to the tax increase but voted against his amendment because he proposed paying for it by scaling back the dividend tax cut.

These three items: marriage-penalty relief, small-business assistance, and foreign-income exclusion should not have been sacrificed like this to allow dividend tax elimination. The House version, which simply would have scaled back dividend tax relief to the first $500-worth of income seems the better idea.

But why cut taxes at all? There are several good reasons. For one thing, we've observed a generally burgeoning role in Federal influence across the board over the past few decades, with a concomitant reduction of state authority. Far from being a bureaucratic blip, this reorganization has the very significant effect of reducing individual political authority: State government is more reactive to local government—where you and I have more control. While excruciatingly painful to a number of constituencies, eventually the states will be forced to re-adopt a number of functions they've relinquished to the Federal level.

Another matter is simply bureaucratic logic. When a program, a department, an institution, or a layer of bureaucracy is established anywhere, it tends to grow of its own accord. Every dollar allocated to such a body will be spent. As far as government goes, it is a general truism that there is no such thing as a surplus. "But we had a Federal surplus under Clinton," you might argue. Yet there was no surplus—only the potential for one. Every extra dollar envisioned in the latter half of the '90s as accruing in the future would surely have been earmarked and promptly spent. The only way to reduce the size and cost of government is to choke off the money stream that feeds it.

Yet another matter is "the economy," which we'll define here as the stock market indices, the unemployment rate (or number of jobs available), the value of the dollar, the GDP, inflation, and rates of personal savings. You might also add heavy equipment and durable goods orders and building starts. It may be that reducing Americans' tax burden will result in an upswing in these indicators to our benefit. Since I'm not an economist and do not have access to budget data like that commanded by the Senate Finance Committee, I don't know if this hypothesis is correct or not, but I don't mind giving the idea a shot.

So in a nutshell, reducing taxes tests the worthiness of the various social and infrastructural programs currently in place, empowers individuals and arms them with more choices, and potentially bolsters the economy. The alternative is endlessly upward-spiraling rates of taxation and a strangled society, as we see in Great Britain. One thing's for certain: If this is a mistake, our lawmakers know how to soak us good and hard with brutal tax rates and outright fiscal appropriation. If they need to do it, they will.

Later today: Death and Blogs.

Rush to Judgement

Thu, 15 May 2003 22:10:47 GMT

I always do. That first microsecond of awareness is The Golden Moment, when your subconscious picks up the subtle cues, when your peripheral vision notices all the players. Your initial inclinations are usually spot-on. But then we decide to overlook, for example, the poor condition of the restaurant because we don't want to make a statement by leaving or whatnot, and the second thoughts come bursting in, breathless with an armload of justifications and rationalizations and we give in to doubt.

Now some of you, I'm sure, are already shaking your heads, thinking, "Oh, no, snap judgements are often wrong," and I understand that. But I'm not talking about giving extra weight to biases, prejudices, or anything like that. Because The Golden Moment kicks in a microsecond before any of those pesky things enter the picture. It's more like Taoism, a sense of "going with the way the universe wants to go," and to do that requires all of your senses, tuned and being directly in the flow of things.

A lot of what we call ESP or being especially sensitive falls into this idea, that the logical, reflective mind is 90% monkey chatter at the very least, and you wouldn't want Bonzo at the steering wheel, now would you.

We Beg to Differ

Spotted this op-ed at the Washington Post this morning: Don't Blame Diversity, by Terry Neal. This is more on the Jayson Blair incident, which we're following with all the rabid expectation of a Southern sheriff tailing a VW bus sporting a psychedelic paint job. There's some real dirt in this story, and it looks like Questions Will Be Asked.

Can't figure out what the Feds are doing, sniffing around this case. But it looks like they're trying to find an entry point. Might be interstate fraud, or maybe a civil rights violation, but if they want in, they'll have to duke it out with the Times people, who are circling the First Amendment wagons around the pressroom.

Terry Neal says that this story isn't about diversity (i.e., affirmative action hiring at the Times), that it's wrong to raise concerns about Blair's position as a minority hire because what he did has been done before. Neal's all wet, we say, because Blair wasn't hired on the basis of his talent, and that managing editor Gerald Boyd protected him from criticism.

Why did Blair keep getting promotions and prime assignments? Here's my theory: Freed from the normal constraints of truth and veracity, "journalists" such as Blair, Shalit, Barnicle, Smith and Glass outshine their counterparts. They're promoted ahead of the pack because their stories, sneakily cloaked as journalism, read better than everyone else's.

We don't buy this line of reasoning, because writers at the Times aren't promoted for the quality or style of their prose. All Times reporters adhere to a standard and produce copy that, apart from op-ed pieces, is generally indistinguishable. What matters is the story, the timeliness of the reporting, and getting the scoop. No, the issue is whether the Times (or any other paper) needs to worry about anything except hiring the best writing talent available.

Def Comedy Jihad

The end of the Cold War kinda put a damper on Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff's career. Remember him? Well, politics makes for interesting humor, so keep an eye out for Shazia Mirza, the Islamic comic.

She wears the hijab, and carries herself as an average devout Muslim, except of course that she's a 27-year-old Londoner with a master's degree in biochemistry. So you can tell she's bright. Here's a sample from her routine:

—About the male gaze: "I was walking past this building site in Mecca when a group of Muslim builders shouted, 'Show us your...face.'"

—About arranged marriages: "My friend Julie says, 'How can you sleep with someone you don't know?'—but she does it all the time."

—On the search in Iraq for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction: "Look up his wife's purdah (dress), because nobody looks up there."

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Mirza captured laughs this way: "My name is Shazia Mirza...At least that's what it says on my pilot's license."

So how does this go over? She's "one of England's best-known comedians," and will be making her U.S. debut at the "Funny Girlz" comedy event in S.F. this Saturday. On the other hand, a trio of angry Muslims attacked her onstage a couple years ago after she said in a performance that when a guy groped her in Mecca, "I felt a hand on my bottom. I ignored it. I thought, 'I'm in Mecca. It must be the hand of God.'" The Raven says, you go girl. But Mirza, you ever hear what happened to this Rushdie guy?

Tailgate Followup

Remember that road rage incident in Atlanta we mentioned a few days ago? There's been a development.

Turns out the driver of the 1996 Ford F-250 pickup truck was 32-year-old Paul Samuel Gardner, who you can see here is a real sweetie. According to the highway patrol, he "engaged" the white Blazer driven by 21-year-old Kera Koon last Saturday, and the two vehicles started playing freeway tag.

"[According to Gardner] he speeds ahead of the Blazer, gets in front, slams his brakes a couple of times, causing the driver of the white Blazer to lose control," McCastle said. "The vehicle flipped several times."

Then he and his pal sped off into the night. Another Good Deed accomplished. Guess they figured that Koon must have survived. When Gardner and his accomplice, Michael Moody Jr., discovered that they'd killed Koon, they turned themselves in—as they well should have. A Fayette judge denied bond Monday for Gardner, who's been charged with felony murder. Moody, 21, is out on $15,000 bail.

Take the Red Pill

If you're a Matrix fan, I guess that means something or other. Anyway, I thought the first film had an interesting premise: perceived reality is a software program.

Weirdly enough, the Christian Science Monitor has an article exploring the religious symbolism of the Matrix films that's actually a rather good read.

"There's two ways to look at this from a Christian perspective," says Glenn Yeffeth, editor of the book "Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix." "One is that it's retelling the story of Christ," he says. "The other way to look at it is a very violent film filled with garden-variety blasphemy that exploits people's resonance with the Christian narrative to fool people into a story that is fundamentally atheistic."

That's almost as tough to follow as the films' storyline.

The Best Intentions

Wed, 14 May 2003 18:17:22 GMT

No, I told myself, I will never allow this forum for the exploration of all that is wonderful and compelling about the human condition to become a simple "news of the weird" kind of curio shoppe. I'd rather talk of lofty things and contemplate our infinite potential as a species.

And then we have days like this one.

Animals run amok, psychotic bagel-wielding nurses, you look at this stuff, and you wonder how we ever made it this far. Used to be, you could leave the house, grab a bit of string and head over to the agora for a discussion of geometry. Now you get to battle traffic and join a bunch of beer-soaked losers at the local Pizza Hut. Hardly a "win" in my book.

Our media reflects back to us an image of childish and violent people with short spans of attention. We've become an ugly, noisy rabble armed with legal pitchforks and we hunger to see some innocent passer-by yanked off the street. Through the miracle of downward social comparison we take solace in the knowledge that it wasn't us who got stripped naked, painted red, and sent off howling in pain and terror.

Whither the beautiful? How many ears are tuned to the music of the spheres? In an asphalt world we lie gasping on our backs, exhausted, hoping against hope for a mild electric buzz of pleasure to numb our deadened senses and suggest—if even for a moment—that a manufactured orgasm proves the banal triteness of our existence.

The solution to this, if there is one, may lie in understanding a bit more about our story. Perhaps we aren't self-contained novels, but rather more akin to chapters of an on-going narrative; we're a privileged wave of awareness that began when the first proto-savage used a stick to poke a grub out of its hole, and here at the crest of that irrepressible wave of creativity we can glimpse the inklings of a farther shore. Grab your surfboard and let's boogie.

Pure Terror

That's what the denizens of a normally tranquil part of England experienced the other day after withstanding a 48-hour rampage by Boris the Badger.

You might think a little guy like the one shown here at left couldn't do that much damage, but you'd be dead wrong. At just under 3 feet in length, a full-grown badger can move with preternatural speed, and while most are shy nocturnal creatures, this one had formerly been domesticated and had absolutely no fear of people—striking two teenagers and a couple walking their dog in a park.

For retired BBC producer Michael Fitzgerald, 67, it began when he went out to his garage to investigate the source of some odd-sounding noises. Peering through the door, he spotted the crazed badger, which instantly charged him, "sinking its fangs into his arms and legs before scuttling off into the night."

His wife, Pam, speaking as Mr Fitzgerald was due to undergo plastic surgery for his inch-deep wounds at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, said that the badger had struck without warning. "It was like something out of a horror movie, he was bleeding so badly," she said.

After his eventual capture by a member of the humane society, Boris "was later put down on medical advice."

When Shoe Clerks Go Bad

We saw an example of human behavior at its worst a couple weeks ago when the Nordstrom chain of department stores held an in-store contest. According to the rules, the Nordstrom shoe department with the best day's sales of Munro shoes would win $500 for each employee, plus $5 for each pair sold. You can imagine what happened after the clerks did the math:

Employees sold shoes to themselves and rang up sales for co-workers, family members, friends and customers knowing the shoes would be returned in a few days.

The downtown Seattle branch won by racking up 339 sales, but following a subsequent internal investigation, eight employees lost their jobs. "I can't say that those were 100 percent pure sales," said one fired employee. "Basically...we manipulated the contest." Which is a nice way of saying they cheated. And listen to him whine: "We're not the only ones who've ever done this, and it's not like this is our fresh and brand-new idea."

Oy Vey

This headline looked like a winning click: Nurse charged in bagel killing. Happned in Clevleland, where unlicensed nurse Wanda Kanner murdered her multiple sclerosis patient, Darlene Amberik, by feeding her a piece of a bagel and then letting her choke to death. An angel of mercy? Nope. She wanted to "carry on an affair with the patient's husband," John Amberik.

Authorities said Wanda Kanner killed Darlene Amberik in 2001 to clear the way for the relationship. Police also say John Amberik bought an engagement ring for Kanner four months before his wife died.

Tres sordid, non? And they would have got away with it, too, but Kanner recently filed a police report stating that an "engagement ring and two wedding bands" had been stolen from her, and the receipt she showed them bore the name of John Amberik. Oops. In cop parlance, they call this "a motive."

Playing Hardball

That's what they're doing in the Atlanta suburb of Avondale Estates. Seems that some local property owners were denied permission to make certain home rennovations because doing so would alter their neighborhood's "historic character." They decided to get even.

"Quite so," they realized. "We can't change the shape of our porch stoop. But the regulations do not say we can't paint our house lime green and cover it with purple polka dots." Which they did. Several homes are now sporting the strange purple dots, and the protest is gaining steam as owners realize that flouting the authorities feels good.

Sunday night, the spots appeared on the front of a large addition that Don Baer and Gail Burbridge are making to their ranch home. The couple says, with large smiles, that they don't know how the dots got there.

Why comment on this story? Because it's the kind of activism that I always applaud. Whenever people are forced to obey petty regulations, it's a heartwarming thing to seem them stand up and assert their rights to expression.

Shoot to Kill

A tough sentiment, but what else can you say about this case: Burglar to revive case against farmer. It's the usual. Man catches burglar looting his home. Man shoots and wounds burglar. Burglar sues for damages. In this case, the miscreant is Brendon Fearon, 33, who was shot in the leg while breaking into Tony Martin farmhouse in Emneth Hungate, Norfolk. Fearon says that he's owed something on the order of $20,000.

He claims that his injuries, including the leg wound, have affected his ability to enjoy sex and martial arts and that he has suffered post-traumatic stress.

So a criminal is stuffing your belongings into a pillowcase, you wing him, and he expects a huge cash settlement because you've interfered with his kung-fu lessons? Fearon, by the way, "has more than 30 criminal convictions."

Test of Evil

That would be the PSAT. Turns out that the people who run the thing, Educational Testing Service, have been embarrased by Kevin Keegan, a high school journalism teacher who spotted a flaw in one of their questions. See what you think: Is the following sentence grammatically correct or incorrect?

"Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured."

Initially, the "correct" answer was that the item is correct as it stands. Keegan, a sharpie and the Raven's kind o' guy, noticed a subtle flaw: The pronoun "her" refers to the adjectival "Toni Morrison's." Can't do that. You'd have to say "Toni Morrison's genius enables Toni Morrison to..." or something like that.

So they tossed out the question and bumped everybody up a couple points. First time a challenge to the PSAT has been sustained in 20 years. For my part, I'd like to see fewer examples of multicultural hoo-hah in our standardized tests.

Only a Motion Away

Tue, 13 May 2003 18:06:06 GMT

And I would not give you false hope, not on this strange and mournful day. Most of our selections this morning deal with kids in one form or another, and before we get started, allow me to say that the Raven has never been very fond of the young. They're midget idiots, far as I'm concerned, and when a waitress at a restaurant asks me if I've got a seating preference, I usually say, "Yeah, no children!"

Nothing ruins a romantic dinner over candlelight faster or more thoroughly than the screeching and howling of someone's lil' toddler. But I guess people think I'll enjoy listening to that diaper-swaddled pair of bellows raising a ruckus louder than the roar of a Pratt and Whitney jet engine. They guess wrong, because I'm the guy who whips his head around and snaps, "Silence your animal!

Seems to me that we ought to be able to find a compromise here. How about it, parents? When I go out to eat, I'll leave my air raid warning klaxon at home, and you return the favor by finding a babysitter for your bawling little brat. It isn't just the noise, either, because I gotta tell ya, the visuals don't work for me. Just one look at your little guttersnipe with its goalie face-mask pacifier, bulging eyes, and waving tendrils is enough to put me off my appetite. And if that doesn't do it, the concomitant baby-urine-and-saliva smell will.

The gubbering, the barking, the snivelling—I didn't sign on for that package, you did. So keep your repugnant, snot-nosed anklebiter out of sight and out of earshot and we'll get along just fine.

Poor Taste

That's my take on God's Little Ones, the Website where you can order an anatomically correct recreation of a stillborn micropreemie that can be worn as a lapel pin.

From 3 weeks to the third trimester, they'll take an ultrasound photo and sculpt a cherished keepsake that you can wear, wall mount, or even place into a coffee mug or hollowed-out apple, as shown here. From their literature:

These dolls are requested as memorial dolls or dolls that celebrate the miracle birth of real living children. The parents have supplied all medical records that validate the accuracy of these models as life size portrait sculptures. The parents have given permission to the artist to create editions of these dolls to be sold to parents who do not have photos of their babies and are looking for comfort dolls.

I don't know about you, but if I were a bereaved parent, having one of these weird things around would give me the heebie-jeebies. Gotta love their Website, though, which warns the viewer that, "You may want to grab a box of tissues before you scroll down the pages." In fact, I was weeping during my visit, but probably not in the way they envisioned. [Thanks, mefi]

Give Him a Medal

Not jailtime. I'm talking about Daniel Cunningham, the former Northwest Airlines flight attendant who pled guilty yesterday to "assaulting a 19-month-old baby" on a flight from Amsterdam. Seems that the enfant terrible was doing what babies do best: screaming. So Cunningham used his noggin and slipped a Xanax into the little tyke's drink.

The Oakland County girl's mother, Beate Turner, took the juice off the flight after noticing that it was bitter and foamy and had blue and white specks floating in it. The girl drank some of the juice, but suffered no serious injury.

According to the Detroit Free Press, when the ear-splitting crying had gone on long enough, Cunningham told the girl's mother, Beate Turner, that "This is starting to be a problem." Then he spiked the kid's apple juice. I know that if I'd been on that hell-flight, I'd have had my arms wrapped around Cunningham's ankles, sobbing with relief.

They Go Bad

Most kids do. In my experience, if you're a so-called "proud parent," you're looking at something like a 50-to-1 shot that the little tyro is gonna turn out right. Most likely, the pride of your loins will wind up sporting a spikey "do," a brace of tatoos, and more piercings than an ocarina. Then the little bastard will turn to a life of petty crime.

They have the same problem in England, so authorities over there have set up a proactive Website designed to straighten 'em out—if there's still time. The site is called Rizer, and you can tell it's targeted at young offenders because as you enter, you get to select your own "homie" who will lead you through the content.

Jed's Nikes, the graffiti-type graphics and straight talk of the Rizer site is part of its aim to distance itself from any "discernible connection with government or other traditional forms of authority".

Whatever happened to the belt? Anyway, a test group of young urchins gave the designers positive feedback, saying that the animations and "simple words" were helpful, since, as one of 'em put it, "The sort of people who commit crimes don't tend to read, so I think this is a good approach to talk to them."

Might even keep 'em from twocking your ride.

What You Don't See

Mon, 12 May 2003 15:53:38 GMT

Just might kill you. That's how it looks this morning. The stories are all about hidden dangers and concealed threats—the monsters from the ID, if you like. For instance, in Atlanta, we've got another road rage incident, and police are frantically searching for the driver of a blue Ford pickup who "engaged" the driver of a white Chevy Blazer. The Blazer driver lost his life as a result of the ensuing "high-speed chase."

Could've been you. Jump in the car, head to the store for a six-pack, and the next thing you know your vehicle is airborne at 90 mph. Paranoia may destroy you, but it's looking like a fundamental strategy in the quest for ongoing survival.

Leggo My Stego

Steganographic cypher, that is. You might remember steganography as an occasional form of encrypting messages popular in the early 90s. Works like this: You take any given jpeg image, use a stego-application to merge unused pixels in the photo with a text file, and bingo—you can e-mail the coded photo to a pal. Very hard to detect.

Turns out investigators in Italy have uncovered a large cache of coded images from computers seized from an Italian mosque, including pictures of the twin towers as well as your standard porno, that contain messages al Qaeda cell members like Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed (aka: Abu Saleh) were using to communicate with each other.

Although the investigators were able to determine how the images were manipulated, they have not yet been able to decode the messages that might have been conveyed by those manipulations.

A related article on steganography, which means "covered writing," explains the origin of the term:

"It actually goes back to Roman times when they used to shave the head of messengers, and tattoo secret messages on their scalp."

The Scent of a Woman

In this case, it was overpowering: Wife arrested in aroma assault. In Stuart, Florida, 36-year-old Lynda Taylor was fuming over the terms of her divorce settlement with ex-hubby David Taylor. Seems that David had netted $150,000 in a recent workers compensation suit stemming from his on-the-job exposure to chemicals, an injury that left him with severe allergies to almost any kind of scented materials. When he refused to give her half of that cash, she went on the warpath:

"Lynda came in the kitchen wearing perfume and applied some to (her daughter). Then went around the house spraying Lysol and even sprayed some in my face," David Taylor wrote in his complaint.

Then she hosed down the house with bug killer and lit up a bunch of scented candles. Lynda's been charged with aggravated battery. Eau de humanity!

Free at Last

Streetwalkers in Iraq are celebrating their new-found freedom to ply mankind's oldest profession. The London Times has a focus article on Marwa, a Baghdad prostitute, who rejoices in the spirit of liberty. She says things are so much better now that Saddam's out of the picture:

"He made life very difficult. First there were the terrible crackdowns. Then the police would harass us or, worse, steal our money," she said as she watched out for customers. "Now we can do as we like."

To the untrained eye, spotting one of these women is a real trick: "It is not like the West, where they wear miniskirts and boots," says Marwa. "Here they often cover themselves in a black shawl like a religious woman, but have dyed blond hair and wear jeans under their robes."

Lest we sound flippant, her case is a common one: injured in war, a widow, there's practically nothing else she can do to survive.

A Day in the Life

But probably not your life. This is the Unseen America project, organized by photographers and journalists who distributed a couple thousand cameras to janitors, nannies, clerks, and day laborers, asking them to record images of their own lives.

The idea comes from Esther Cohen, a labor organizer in New York City, who noticed that the people who make America work rarely turn up in the pages of Vanity Fair.

"Initially, I would go to each class with a large stack of newspapers and magazines and say to the workers in the class, 'Find yourselves in these publications,'" she says. "In no class were they ever able to do that."

You can view the Dept. of Labor gallery exhibit at the Bread and Roses Website. The Raven noticed that, unlike the photos you usually see of America's underclass, in these pictures the subjects are often smiling. Something here for anyone who likes underground photography.

Can I See Some ID?

That's what store clerks in the Golden State will have to ask children if this law goes through: Lawsuit seeks to ban sale of Oreos to children in California. Attorney Stephen Joseph, who's made a career out of abusing the criminal justice system, is targeting the Nabisco corporation due to the high trans-fat content in Oreo cookies. We need this law, he says, because we're all stupid an' stuff:

"Tobacco is well known as an unsafe product. Trans fat is not the same thing at all. Very few people know about it," he said.

The implications here are rather worrisome. It isn't so much that children ought to eat well, but that people like Joseph would prefer the government to enforce the idea. I have no Oreos and I must scream.

An Environment of Operations

Sat, 10 May 2003 22:02:43 GMT

In an essay penned recently under the nominative heading of an "Environment of Surfaces," writer Art Jacobson at Ojo Caliente posits an operational view of human existence that seems to describe, or state, a mode of being separated from the common or generally accepted notion of being as an expression of intentionality.

By "operational," I mean that an "environment," as Jacobson forwards the idea, is a theater in which one performs certain actions; admittedly, all actions are locative with respect to environment—even such ephemera as becoming angry, or recollecting—but it is more typical to structure statements of fact around actions than it is to formulate statements of fact around the places in which they occur. Objections to this assertion are envisionable, certainly, but would take the form of pointing out that in specific cases the rule of typicality is violated, which indirectly reinforces the stated assertion.

In directing our attention toward environment, Jacobson's argument appears to derive its force from a metaphorical interplay between subject and idea, i.e., an environment is a surface whether substantive or not, and all actions and intentions are conducted on physical surfaces or carried out in some relation to physical surfaces, such that a comparison between location and the depth (or lack of depth) of intentionality is altogether natural and one that most persons might be expected to consider at some point or another.

Before exploring the idea of a surfacial environment of operations further, however, an examination of the idea of surfaces is in order. When we use such expressions as "a surface-level argument," or "how things look on the surface," we seem to be treading on the same ground as covered by such terms as "face-value," and "superficial," which indicate that reality may be sometimes masked in some way, like an actor might don a mask or disguise, and that to take overt appearances for reality is to do more than make a simple mistake: it is to express such gullibility as to make one morally culpable for the consequences of the deception. Indeed, someone who takes all things at their implied value based on surface appearances is likely to be guilty of self-deception. This idea is encapsulated in the admonition to "not judge a book by its cover," and also by the observation that "beauty is more than skin deep." These aphorisms suggest a conventional understanding that we have a responsibility to question appearances and perform critical evaluations on any representation of fact; this injuction holding for both apprehensive phenomena (looking, touching, etc.) and declarative statements including speeches, works of art, measurements, evaluations and so on. One idea expressed by the word "criticize," especially as with "art critic," "film critic," and so on is that things contain deeper meanings that can (and should) be explored deeply in order for us to fully understand them.

If, then, we are to regard exterior appearance (i.e., surfaces) as propositions only until proved otherwise, then the declaration that we live in an environment of surfaces is tantamount to nihilism inasmuch as it negates the potential of living in a world of perceived symbolism. In the area of the philosophy of language, the view that words can represent reality in an inherent sense and contain empirical meaning is termed essentialism, and this school of thought has been, if not discredited by modern philosophers, at least subjected by them to a serious and long-running assault.

All of this seems to be a laborious way of getting around to the idea that we do not live in a world purely of surface value, but rather a world of implications, and here I would like to suggest that in effect we are living in an environment of operations. By "operation," I mean that we act in various ways, either independently or in response to other actions taking place around us. For example, a person who is feeling anxiety may eat in a given instance not because he or she is hungry but because eating is comforting. The surface appearance is that this person is eating, but the underlying truth is that the action of eating is synonymous with any calming or restorative act and should be so interpreted. What we are viewing is an operation and a full comprehension of the act requires a grasp of the operation being conducted.

Another example worth considering is satire. In the sarcastic mode, as with Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal, the surfacial implication of the work is intended to direct our attention to the fact that its apparent meaning is in fact the opposite of what is being stated—children should be cared for and not eaten. And in considering language, which is a purely symbolic form of representation, we can conclude that the arbitrary symbols we use to communicate with one another are capable of holding any meaning warranted by the circumstances of their use, which is another way of saying that language is imbued with meaning by the operation it is intended to accomplish.

R&R with R&R

Wed, 07 May 2003 16:39:10 GMT

Your host and the ever-lovely and talented Ravenatrix are headed south for a few days of adventure along the Gulf coast.

We'll be exploring historic Apalachicola and the port St. Joe area. If we're feeling exceptionally invincible, we'll probably try a raw bar of some sort, demolishing plates of fresh oysters and shrimp washed down with bottles of ice-cold Abita. The place we're staying, a sort of B&B, offers horseback riding along the surf, as you can see in this photo from their brochure.

We'll rejoin you on Saturday, and expect the Raven to be cranky after a three-day forced absence from keyboarding. We'll be catching up on our reading. Have a great week.