If I understand her correctly, Pam Spaulding wants us to call up Wal Mart and complain about a game they are planning on selling "Left Behind: Eternal Forces," a video game based on the Left Behind franchise. Why she's upset about it, I'm not exactly sure. You can play as Christians in the end times, crusading to kill or convert the heretics. But you can also play on the side of the anti-christ, so I figure that's a push. Also, this game will be on sale everywhere, given that it does not have an "M for Mature" rating.
This is not the kind of thing for which I go to Pandagon or other lefty blogs. In fact, this is the sort of thing for which I regularly ridicule right-wing blogs.
I mean, what's next for Pandagon? Lauding the V-chip? Toughening up those parental warnings based on ideology instead of gore and sex? Fan-fucking-tastic.
Those who really want to have a sense of the game should check this out. WARNING: Boring material past link.
12/12/06
A great gift idea
Syphillis plush toy:
From ThinkGeek.
(via)
Let it be known that I still want a 'Syphillis is for Lovers' Tee.
From ThinkGeek.
(via)
Let it be known that I still want a 'Syphillis is for Lovers' Tee.
12/11/06
At least somebody knows what's what
Is a new turn of phrase properly called a neologism, or is that term exclusively reserved for new words? I just don't know.
Anyway, I've been wondering about the provenance of the phrase, "Can I help who's next?"
For all I know this unholy mishmash of "Can I help you?" and "Who's next?" has been around for years, but I first noticed it in Chicago last summer. Now it seems like I hear it every time I stand in line. I've learned that those who deploy the phrase are often uninterested in discussions of usage.
Luckily, there's Language Log. Apparently this is an example of the fused relative construction, which is all but extinct in English. Who knew?
Anyway, I've been wondering about the provenance of the phrase, "Can I help who's next?"
For all I know this unholy mishmash of "Can I help you?" and "Who's next?" has been around for years, but I first noticed it in Chicago last summer. Now it seems like I hear it every time I stand in line. I've learned that those who deploy the phrase are often uninterested in discussions of usage.
Luckily, there's Language Log. Apparently this is an example of the fused relative construction, which is all but extinct in English. Who knew?
12/10/06
More Hall of Fame blogging
The two glaring Baseball Hall of Fame voting related factual errors in Mr. 3000 are, of course, that the Hall of Fame voting results are announced at mid-season and that Bernie Mac's Stan Ross is admitted to the Hall of Fame a single year after his second retirement. I wonder, though, whether the premise of the film -- that having merely 2997 hits could stand in the way of Hall admittance -- isn't also in error.
A quick look at the list of career leaders for hits reveals that among those who are eligible for the Hall but excluded, Andre Dawson has the most hits at 2774. Vada Pinson, at 2757, has the highest hit total among those who are excluded and no longer on the ballot. Harold Baines, for what it's worth, just hit the ballot this year with 2866 career hits.
Speaking of exclusion from the Hall of Fame, Steve Garvey is down to two years of ballot eligibility. He was named on only a quarter of ballots last year, and has never been named on more than 43%, so it's looking like he won't make it into the Hall of Fame. It's a shame.
Admittedly, his numbers are short of what one expects from a Hall of Famer: 2588 hits; 272 home runs, 1308 RBI, 1143 runs, and 440 doubles. On the other hand, the fact that he made ten All-Star rosters (including eight in a row from 1974-81) shows that he was one of the dominant players of his generation. That ought to count for a lot.
A quick look at the list of career leaders for hits reveals that among those who are eligible for the Hall but excluded, Andre Dawson has the most hits at 2774. Vada Pinson, at 2757, has the highest hit total among those who are excluded and no longer on the ballot. Harold Baines, for what it's worth, just hit the ballot this year with 2866 career hits.
Speaking of exclusion from the Hall of Fame, Steve Garvey is down to two years of ballot eligibility. He was named on only a quarter of ballots last year, and has never been named on more than 43%, so it's looking like he won't make it into the Hall of Fame. It's a shame.
Admittedly, his numbers are short of what one expects from a Hall of Famer: 2588 hits; 272 home runs, 1308 RBI, 1143 runs, and 440 doubles. On the other hand, the fact that he made ten All-Star rosters (including eight in a row from 1974-81) shows that he was one of the dominant players of his generation. That ought to count for a lot.
The officer is off patroling all the nation
My reaction to this story pretty much tracks Balko's:
Maybe thinking about this case will clarify something about the points I've been arguing here, here, and in comments here.
Part of my discomfort with what I have called the police-defense rationale is that it authorizes force whenever police find themselves facing what appears to be a 'confrontational, volatile, dangerous' person, with no regard for how the situation came to be. To think in terms of the police-defense rationale is to trap oneself into thinking that there is a stark choice to be made between allowing police officers free reign to protect themselves and significantly curtailing their right to act in their own defense. But that just isn't how things are. To the contrary, in many cases where the police-defense rationale is deployed the need for defense arose because the police made a choice to escalate a confrontation.
It is perfectly obvious that there are situations like the one in Chicago, situations where the police are called in to bring a violent situation under control, and where nothing short of deadly force will accomplish that. Moreover, it's clear that we have an interest in having a police force which can bring such situations under control.
It is also obviously true, however, that police frequently escalate confrontations with citizens. I think this habit of escalation is problematic for a lot of reasons, but for right now just focus on the fact that police escalation sometimes results in police using deadly force when it wouldn't otherwise have been necessary. Isn't it just as clear that we have an interest in avoiding situations like that?
Here we had a man who presented an immediate threat to the people inside that building. The SWAT team acted quickly, decisively, and killed the guy with minimal risk to bystanders. It's exactly the kind of thing SWAT teams were intended to, and it's what they excel at.
I'm not anti-SWAT. But confrontational, volatile, dangerous tactics ought to be reserved for confrontational, volatile, dangerous people. Nonviolent offenders don't meet that standard. Rampaging, hostage-taking, murdering gunmen do. |Balko|
Maybe thinking about this case will clarify something about the points I've been arguing here, here, and in comments here.
Part of my discomfort with what I have called the police-defense rationale is that it authorizes force whenever police find themselves facing what appears to be a 'confrontational, volatile, dangerous' person, with no regard for how the situation came to be. To think in terms of the police-defense rationale is to trap oneself into thinking that there is a stark choice to be made between allowing police officers free reign to protect themselves and significantly curtailing their right to act in their own defense. But that just isn't how things are. To the contrary, in many cases where the police-defense rationale is deployed the need for defense arose because the police made a choice to escalate a confrontation.
It is perfectly obvious that there are situations like the one in Chicago, situations where the police are called in to bring a violent situation under control, and where nothing short of deadly force will accomplish that. Moreover, it's clear that we have an interest in having a police force which can bring such situations under control.
It is also obviously true, however, that police frequently escalate confrontations with citizens. I think this habit of escalation is problematic for a lot of reasons, but for right now just focus on the fact that police escalation sometimes results in police using deadly force when it wouldn't otherwise have been necessary. Isn't it just as clear that we have an interest in avoiding situations like that?
12/6/06
Why, sir, I do so admire your fair and balanced tone!
Ok, so I was going to write a post about this quote:
And what I was going to do was ask, what fallacy is at work here? I think it might be an Appeal to Hatred, but I'm not sure. Could be that the problem is using question begging language.
Anyway, while nosing around the internets I discovered that someone had invented a neolatinism for the fallacy of playing the Hitler card. It's argumentum ad nazium.
I think that's just hilarious.
There is no way to know for sure whether this report is true, but I don't think it would be surprising if Democrats, anticipating their new Congressional majorities next month, are already talking to our country's enemies with a view toward crafting their own foreign policy. |John Hindraker|
And what I was going to do was ask, what fallacy is at work here? I think it might be an Appeal to Hatred, but I'm not sure. Could be that the problem is using question begging language.
Anyway, while nosing around the internets I discovered that someone had invented a neolatinism for the fallacy of playing the Hitler card. It's argumentum ad nazium.
I think that's just hilarious.
12/5/06
Good news from Mars?
I bring you reporting from the great nation of Canada, which is like America but with some French thrown in. I'm traveling for work, and the last time I travelled for work I was stuck in a hotel room as we began the war in Iraq with a little shock and awe.
So sitting here in a hotel room is bringing back some of that vibe, and I'm kind of depressed and I have a sense of foreboding about the news. On the other hand, tomorrow Nasa is announcing a significant find on Mars. Unless the found a malevolent alien race bent on human conquest, this might be good news.
So sitting here in a hotel room is bringing back some of that vibe, and I'm kind of depressed and I have a sense of foreboding about the news. On the other hand, tomorrow Nasa is announcing a significant find on Mars. Unless the found a malevolent alien race bent on human conquest, this might be good news.
Tang!
Little was known about the causes and chemistry of farting until the space race of the 1960s and 70s when Nasa became so concerned about the possibility of spacemen being asphyxiated by their own methane in their sealed space suits that they carried out detailed research into the problem. |link|
(via)
12/4/06
What's going on in Lebanon?
I really don't know. This is one of those situations where being a blog consumer may lead to some serious misunderstanding of what's happening. But what I'm reading is Juan Cole and Abu Kais, Michael Totten's current guest blogger.
Music monday
Everybody knows about Pandora, right? If not, you should really check it out. It's a "radio station" that finds music that is similar to music you already like. As they continue to add features that enhance your ability to direct the flow of any given "station," and, critically, they add lots more music to Pandora's database, it's becoming my go-to music player at work.
On a similar principle, I suppose, is The Filter. I haven't tried this yet because it's not available for Mac, but it promises to dynamically build playlists of similar music out of your own iTunes library. There's some buzz about this little app, but, oddly, no wikipedia entry... for some people, that means it might as well not even exist!
It's unclear to me how The Filter works. One thing I like about Pandora, by contrast, is that they are very up front about and proud of the underlying idea of the software, which is the Music Genome Project. Rather than somehow mathematically analyzing music for similarities (which will someday be possible), they use our existing, semantic descriptions of music to relate various songs.
Lastly, operating on no principle I can discern, is Musicovery, which definitely has the most interesting-looking interface. It occurs to me--as I see the same few bands come up again and again on Musicovery--that even if these applications are built on some sort of sound principle, the actual results could easily and invisibly manipulated to promote certain record labels. Payola is illegal, but payola-with-a-lowercase-p could be pretty rampant on the net.
UPDATE: I fixed the links. Also, from the comments, Lisa B points us to another interesting internet music thingamajig, Last.fm.
12/3/06
Nip it in the bud
We desperately need a substantive post around here. Not sure that I'm up to it, but here's a remainder from our recent police violence thread.
A very widely held view seems to be that police shootings, or at any rate, the shoot first tactics employed by police, are justified by the fact that the individuals targeted by police violence appeared to pose a threat, or fit the profile of a threat poser, or something like that. Call this the police-defense rationale.
When encountering the police-defense rationale it is tempting, for me at least, to get into a discussion focused on whether the apparent threat was as serious as supposed by police. Arguing this point, however, already concedes a contentious claim. Namely, that these sorts of police tactics are properly justified on the same sorts of grounds that you or I might use to justify acting in self-defense against what philosophers charmingly call an Unjust Aggressor.
One reason to doubt the claim that the police-defense rationale parallels the principle of self-defense is that there is a significant disanalogy between paradigm cases of self-defense and the sorts of situations that advocates of the police-defense rationale would judge permissible.
In a paradigm case of self-defense, you are set upon by an Unjust Aggressor and face the choice of either defending yourself with deadly force or suffering grievous harm. Among the morally relevant facts here are that it is the Unjust Aggressor who chose to bring about a situation such that one of you will die or suffer grievous harm, and the severity of the consequences you will certainly face if you refrain from using deadly force.
Now, compare this to a situation in which police have invaded a home in the middle of the night and employ deadly force when faced with an apparently armed occupant. Unlike the paradigm self-defense case, this situation is one such that deadly force is used by the party responsible for circumstances being as they are. Also unlike the paradigm case, this situation is one in which deadly force is used by a party which cannot be sure that the alternative is death or grievous harm.[1] Lastly, it is worth noting that the police created this situation in order to avoid the possibility of a consequence much less serious than death, namely the possibility that evidence might be destroyed if less aggressive tactics were to be employed.
The point is that the police-defense rationale allows the use of deadly force in a much wider range of cases than would the traditional principle of self-defense. As such, one need not accept the police-defense rationale merely because one accepts the principle of self-defense. Further, insofar as one accepts the limitations commonly placed on the principle of self-defense, there would appear to be good reason to think that the police-defense rationale goes too far.
Leaving all this aside, there seems to me to be another reason to distrust the police-defense rationale. Consider that police already have, prior to any threat to themselves or bystanders, the right to employ force in the line of duty. Given that police have this right, it seems ad hoc to maintain that there is a subset of cases in which the right of the police to use force rests on a separate rationale. Which is not to say that I'm personally in possession of anything like a general justification for police employment of force. I suspect, however, that any plausible account of legitimate police violence is going to insist that show a lot more restraint than they currently do.
----------
1 The claim here is just that given (a) the obscurity of the possible threat; (b) the fact that untrained persons tend to be bad shots; and, (c) the fact that the police are wearing body armor, the police can't claim anything like the certainty found in paradigm cases of self-defense.
A very widely held view seems to be that police shootings, or at any rate, the shoot first tactics employed by police, are justified by the fact that the individuals targeted by police violence appeared to pose a threat, or fit the profile of a threat poser, or something like that. Call this the police-defense rationale.
When encountering the police-defense rationale it is tempting, for me at least, to get into a discussion focused on whether the apparent threat was as serious as supposed by police. Arguing this point, however, already concedes a contentious claim. Namely, that these sorts of police tactics are properly justified on the same sorts of grounds that you or I might use to justify acting in self-defense against what philosophers charmingly call an Unjust Aggressor.
One reason to doubt the claim that the police-defense rationale parallels the principle of self-defense is that there is a significant disanalogy between paradigm cases of self-defense and the sorts of situations that advocates of the police-defense rationale would judge permissible.
In a paradigm case of self-defense, you are set upon by an Unjust Aggressor and face the choice of either defending yourself with deadly force or suffering grievous harm. Among the morally relevant facts here are that it is the Unjust Aggressor who chose to bring about a situation such that one of you will die or suffer grievous harm, and the severity of the consequences you will certainly face if you refrain from using deadly force.
Now, compare this to a situation in which police have invaded a home in the middle of the night and employ deadly force when faced with an apparently armed occupant. Unlike the paradigm self-defense case, this situation is one such that deadly force is used by the party responsible for circumstances being as they are. Also unlike the paradigm case, this situation is one in which deadly force is used by a party which cannot be sure that the alternative is death or grievous harm.[1] Lastly, it is worth noting that the police created this situation in order to avoid the possibility of a consequence much less serious than death, namely the possibility that evidence might be destroyed if less aggressive tactics were to be employed.
The point is that the police-defense rationale allows the use of deadly force in a much wider range of cases than would the traditional principle of self-defense. As such, one need not accept the police-defense rationale merely because one accepts the principle of self-defense. Further, insofar as one accepts the limitations commonly placed on the principle of self-defense, there would appear to be good reason to think that the police-defense rationale goes too far.
Leaving all this aside, there seems to me to be another reason to distrust the police-defense rationale. Consider that police already have, prior to any threat to themselves or bystanders, the right to employ force in the line of duty. Given that police have this right, it seems ad hoc to maintain that there is a subset of cases in which the right of the police to use force rests on a separate rationale. Which is not to say that I'm personally in possession of anything like a general justification for police employment of force. I suspect, however, that any plausible account of legitimate police violence is going to insist that show a lot more restraint than they currently do.
----------
1 The claim here is just that given (a) the obscurity of the possible threat; (b) the fact that untrained persons tend to be bad shots; and, (c) the fact that the police are wearing body armor, the police can't claim anything like the certainty found in paradigm cases of self-defense.
Ooooo! Check out those gnarly graphics!
On the off chance that you don't care about video game industry marketing strategy circa 1981, let me just tell you that Phil Hartman shows up around the one minute mark of this six minute YouTube odyssey.
(via)
(via)
12/2/06
12/1/06
Famous birthdays
I thought these descriptions were funny.
1870: George Cormack
cereal inventor (Wheaties)
1867: John Robert Gregg
Ireland inventor (shorthand)
|June 17|
Bombs
Speaking of movies, both of the new releases that I've seen in the theater this year have been box office bombs. A Scanner Darkly made just $5.5 million, and The Science of Sleep is sitting at something like $5 million..
What's up with that? The Science of Sleep was both awesome and got good reviews. A Scanner Darkly was less awesome, but it looked really pretty and had a lot of geek cred. You'd think the illegal drug user audience alone would put each of those films past the $10 million mark. I mean, Phish had a career.
Speaking of boffo box office, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was the only movie to top $300 million this year, and earned as much as the #2 and #3 films combined. What is up with that?
(I did look all of this up on Boxofficemojo, but I can't get their site to load this morning, so you'll just have to trust me)
What's up with that? The Science of Sleep was both awesome and got good reviews. A Scanner Darkly was less awesome, but it looked really pretty and had a lot of geek cred. You'd think the illegal drug user audience alone would put each of those films past the $10 million mark. I mean, Phish had a career.
Speaking of boffo box office, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was the only movie to top $300 million this year, and earned as much as the #2 and #3 films combined. What is up with that?
(I did look all of this up on Boxofficemojo, but I can't get their site to load this morning, so you'll just have to trust me)
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