sheer potentiality

From the Washington Times:

Federal immigration agents, assisted by local police and sheriff’s deputies, raided one of the nation’s largest suppliers of fresh and frozen poultry products yesterday and arrested more than 160 illegal aliens.

At the risk of being identified as “just another libertarian blogger”, I’m going to write a post complaining about the government. Again.

While the government is applauding itself for arresting over a hundred people for the crime of making whatever small living they could for themselves and their families without going through its obstacle course of regulations, I think I’m going to ruin their party by pointing out how they just wasted their time and ruined a bunch of people’s lives for no good reason.

First, the big reason people (demagogues) complain about illegal immigration is crime. Illegal immigrants are criminal gangsters who deal drugs and rape children and run over people while drunk on their tequila—to hear O’Reilly say it. Well, something makes me doubt that people who work 9 to 5 at the chicken factory are really part of the hispanic mafia. Maybe because they work for less-than-minimum wage at a chicken factory instead of rolling in cash from their marijuana deals?

Second, suppose they actually crack down on Koch and they don’t hire any more undocumented immigrants. Guess what happens? Some other, as-yet-unknown chicken factory opens up, and either Koch loses business, or they outsource to the illegal chicken factory. They ride this for a few years until the police raid them. Wash, rinse, repeat. (As a matter of fact, this is what police usually do with escort services—letting them build up some assets they can seize through asset forfeiture before deigning to bust them.) The only people getting penalized are the people who leave their native country for a shitty job at a chicken plant. Good job crushing what little hope these people have.

I can’t help but note this story, which is either horribly written, or is accurately portraying the most horribly-written political agenda ever put forward. Here’s some choice quotes:

Nationwide, two-thirds of U.S. adults are obese or overweight, according to the fourth annual report from the Trust for America’s Health, titled “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America.” The report’s co-author says the government needs to treat this trend as an epidemic that threatens the health of Americans and put in place a national plan to combat obesity.

“The key recommendation in the report is we need a national strategy,” said report co-author Jeffrey Levi.

He noted that the federal government has created a comprehensive plan to be implemented in the event of an outbreak of pandemic flu.

Emphasis mine.

Something tells me that pandemic flu is not quite like obesity. For one thing, obesity is not directly contagious. For another thing, obesity is not spread by airborne pathogens. Furthermore, pandemic flu can kill millions of people within months. Yes, obesity can be fatal too, but there’s a difference between “you should eat better or you’re more susceptible to diabetes and heart disease” and “if you step outside this month you have a good chance of dying of influenza weeks later”. And this is even without considering the fundamental issue—obesity is a condition that’s up to the individual to address, pandemic flu is a public safety hazard just like a wildfire or sniper. One of these things is fundamentally something that should be addressed by the government, and the other is an issue of personal health.

Now let’s play “spot the statistical inconsistency:”

Nationwide, two-thirds of U.S. adults are obese or overweight, according to the fourth annual report from the Trust for America’s Health, titled “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America.”

….

In 32 states, 60 percent of the population is either overweight or obese. West Virginia ranks highest in the combined statistic, with nearly two-thirds of its adults obese or overweight.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that’s mathematically possible.

There’s two fundamental points this report fundamentally misses, alongside its strident stupidity in such things as analogy-crafting and statistics. One is a fundamental philosophical point: other people’s bodies are not the personal business of the “Trust for America’s Health” or the report’s co-author Jeffrey Levi. Are Americans too obese, on average? Yeah, probably. Who cares?

The second point is that the recommendations do nothing to address why Americans suddenly are getting fatter. America did not have more farmer’s markets, higher food stamp benefits, or vegetable snack programs in schools before we got fat, why on earth is the lack of them suddenly a causative factor? I don’t have all the answers, but I have one: the federal government, in its infinite desire to mollify both multinational agribusiness and American farmers, have decided that America shall put a tariff on imported sugar. Not only does this help all eight farmers growing sugar in the United States (what next, protectionism for Alaska’s orange growers?), but this also is a major boon to the corn industry, who can now sell something called “high fructose corn syrup” as a sugar substitute. Ever notice how Coke tastes so much better in Canada or another foreign country? That’s because US Coke uses corn syrup, while Coke in all other countries is made with sugar. From what I’ve gathered, high fructose corn syrup, along with fattening the wallets of the corn syrup producers, also affects the insulin differently from sugar, fattening our bodies as well.

I’m not saying it’s a great thing to drink all that much Coke, mind you. Just that Americans drank just as much Coke before high fructose corn syrup and didn’t get as fat as they are now. What Jeffrey Levi and “Trust for America’s Health” misses is that it’s not the lack of new federal interferences that’s to blame—it’s the federal interferences that have already happened.

Thanks to Canadian TV, I was able to watch both of these often-conflicting shows in the same night without mucking about with BitTorrent.

24…I’m not sure what to say. I mean, clearly all the major crises were averted and Jack Bauer continued to defy capture and adversity. It’s not a terribly unpredictable show in that respect. Oh, and James Cromwell died.

Heroes was just great. I mean, it was a little less-than-awesome to have 40 minutes of characters having heart to heart dialogues about their heroism and only about 90 seconds of climactic battle with Sylar. But most of the heart-to-heart dialogues were good, and climactic battles are expensive to do the special effects for.

Also, it was nice to see Hiro thrown into the past to meet his hero. Almost better than seeing Nathan sacrifice himself to save the city from Peter.

(You might notice the lack of spoiler warnings. That’s just how I roll.)

Someone holed up in a church tower and shot at police officers at a nearby courthouse. Google is all the fuck over it, but the first word I got was from frequent commenter Laurel, who prepared to return fire last night, and is probably mighty disappointed she didn’t get to.

Well, who do you think it was? A disgruntled college student trying to emulate Cho? A crazed white supremacist making a political statement? A mentally disturbed Iraq veteran who had one flashback too many? A distraught minister who decided to turn to violence after the death of Jerry Falwell? A charismatic cocaine dealer on the run from the law, making his last stand? The Pullman, Washington panty thief who stole $2000 worth of women’s underwear? All these people, and more, have a high probability of being in Moscow, Idaho, so I’m not entirely surprised this happened. Leave your theories in the comments?

Otherwise known as “legislating from the bench”:

I got into it on Slashdot again, someone claiming that the Constitution is “threatened by the Justices behaving like philosopher-kings finding new “laws” in the Constitution that the oafs in Congress should’ve passed (practice often derided as “legislating from the bench”)”. I have decided to post my reply (in an edited form) here.

People who complain about “judicial activism” or “legislating from the bench” remind me of whiny sports fans who blame the refs every time they lose a game. If a court ruling goes their way, no complaint. If a court ruling goes against them, it’s “judicial activism”.

First off, let’s be perfectly clear on one thing–most law in the United States is case law, i.e. law that is made by the precedent of judicial rulings. This allows the law to grow organically from case analysis rather than simply being handed down from Congress every so often. This is a vital feature of the system of common law we inherited from Great Britain, so if you have a problem with it, take it up with them. It’s also an inescapable consequence of stare decisis, the doctrine that future courts will rule according to the precedents set by past courts. But for stare decisis, court rulings would be unpredictable and arbitrary.

Having a strong judicial branch with the power to strike down what Congress and the President do also protects us from the tyranny of the majority. The civil rights rulings of the 1960’s are a perfect example of this–the “will of the people”, the laws Congress did pass, all this stuff you people claim is trampled by judicial activism, were in this case part of a horrifically evil system that oppressed people for no reason other than their racial origin. It was the Supreme Court, upholding the principles of the Constitution, which stopped this. For all your complaining about how the will of the people is subverted, you fail to recognize—quite often, when the “will of the people” is to restrict human rights, it needs to be subverted.

I’m not saying the Court never makes bad rulings–they clearly do, particularly in cases like Kelo. But majority rule makes bad decisions far more often, and it’s vital that there be some way to put majority rule in check in situations where it is clearly acting unjustly. And that will necessarily involve overturning what Congress and the President do from time to time.

Is it just me? Seriously?

I mean, who was the person who said, “Let’s do a ‘Law & Order’ spinoff where all the cases are bizarre sex offenses!”? It’s kind of perverse. Of course, perverse things aren’t all that unusual. What is unusual is that the normal conservative, not-that-edgy audiences that watch “Law & Order” want to watch a show about violent and often disturbing made-up sex offenses every single week.

What’s this about? Does sex sell? Maybe someone realized that a good percentage of the population are victims of sex offenses, and want some way of working through that. And maybe lots of people watch SVU just so they can try and work out things that happened to them in the past. (Does that make NBC good, for providing this to those people, or evil, for exploiting those people to get ratings?)

Even more strangely, how many “Law & Order” fans (who weren’t raped or anything) watch SVU without it ever occurring to them how perverse the show’s premise is, kind of like kids who grow up eating Spam without ever realizing how weird and gross it is?

Number of Americans killed on April 16: 33
Number of Iraqis killed on April 18: 172
Number of Facebook profile pictures changed to memorialize dead Americans: 4*
Number of Facebook profile pictures changed to memorialize dead Iraqis: 0*
Number of WSU campus memorials for dead Americans: 1
Number of WSU campus memorials for dead Iraqis: 0
172/33: 5.2121…

What does this say about us as a people?

*Out of 64 Facebook friends

It’s getting close to Easter, which means my favorite seasonal treat, Cadbury creme eggs, are now available. But many people don’t like Cadbury eggs because they’re disgusting. Perhaps they don’t like the idea of a chocolate-and-creme treat which looks like an egg (with some of the creme dyed yolk yellow for that purpose), or perhaps chocolate and creme should never be mixed together, but I for one find them delicious and would find it a true sacrifice to give them up for Lent.

If I was still an observant Catholic.

I have expressed my views on the subject of pants privately several times, but I think it’s time to come public about it. Simply put, I’m against them.

No, I’m not some crazy person who doesn’t want to wear pants. Hear me out. I just think that social norms are pretty backwards when it comes to the subject of below-the-waist garments. There are two general options: bifurcated (pants) and unbifurcated (skirts and other things that aren’t pants). And, for some reason, women were the gender that got assigned skirts, while men got assigned pants.

When you think about the mechanical issues here, this makes no sense. Women have neatly packaged internal genitals which means the free-flowing openness of the skirt gives them no advantage. It also means that women can comfortably wear tight pants, which they, of course, end up doing a lot. Pants are actually no problem for women, which is why women have all but given up skirts.

Men, on the other hand, have external genitals that hang down from the crotch. This is highly problematic! There are two solutions to this problem, neither of which is appealing. One solution is to physically constrict the genitals so they’re close to the body. This is uncomfortable and is bad for fertility, because it constricts the vessels and warms the testicles.

Another solution is to wear looser pants, or to wear the pants lower on the hips, but this results in looking like a slob who doesn’t know how to wear pants properly.

Most men use a combination of both solutions, and we get by, but obviously the best solution would be to wear a kilt or some other form of unbifurcated garment. In several cultures this is socially acceptable for men but in ours it is not, even though they’re inherently more comfortable for men than pants are—whereas skirts are socially acceptable for women, despite the fact that they serve almost no purpose on a female body! This shit is bananas.