Muttroxia

The Supreme Court recently heard and ruled on Rumsfeld vs Forum. This is the case that tested the impact of the Solomon amendment. This amendment said that all universities had to give the military equal access to recruiting as any other recruitment, in order to recieve federal funding. That is, at any job fair or such, they would be allowed whatever others were.

Many Law Schools were against this. Their reasoning was that they are bastions of free speech and anti-discrimination. The military’s policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” violates soliders rights of free speech and expression. These schools had passed policies saying that any recruiter that didn’t meet their standards in regards to rights granted would not be allowed on campus, or some similar “downgrading”. This applied to any organization, including the military.

The two sides have been battling in court for a long time until it finally made it all the way to the top last week. Whereupon the law schools were spanked, and spanked hard, in an 8-0 decision that left no doubt. Our new Chief Justice had the best line, when during oral arguments he told the law schools, “What you’re saying is, ‘This is a message we believe in strongly, but we don’t believe in it, to the tune of $100 million.’ “.

Bravo. The Law Schools stance has always been incredibly hypocritical. If they felt that strongly about the don’t ask don’t tell policy, they could simply stop taking federal monies.

In addtion, it was simply wrong. The military is different than other organizations. It’s mission is not to maximize profit, it’s mission is to kill others so that we are kept safe. The military organization is not at all like any other, in many ways. Despite all the military metaphors littering modern corporate vocabulary, they are worlds apart, and thank goodness for that.

The New Republic had a very nice article about this (subscription only). For some strange reason, it’s littered with advice to Hilary on the topic, but it’s take is generally on.  The military has increasingly become associated with the heartland, and with the GOP.  In Vietnam, many of the soliders were from fine universites, and military service was still considered a noble calling.  The irony of the chickenhawks (Bush, Cheney, etc.) in power questioning the service of the Democrats who served (Gore, Kerry, etc.) is absurd, but it points out how the pendulum has swung.  By excluding the military from the elite and Ivy League schools, the military has been pushed to recruit where it can.  This has led to the solidifying of the military as a reliable GOP block.

Way to go, Supreme Court.  I hope the next few decisions are this easy.

(Blogroll is the geek term for those links on the right.)

Deleted:
Jabley – Hurry up and graduate so you can update your blog. I’m sorry, but your last post was on Harriet Miers.
The Daily Howler – This is one of my favorite sites. Years and years of carefully documented media biases, errors, and general stupidity. However, the author has more or less thrown in the towel. The focus of the site has shifte to education, with occasional forays back to media idiocies.

Added:
Digby – One of the best left blogs around. It’s gotten a bit acerbic lately (6 years of a self-annointed king can do that to ya), but I am still constantly amazed at the sheer amount of content that underlies it. Not just a bunch of stupid links like Atrios (one of the worst blogs around), but well supported ideas, bringing together diverse historical documents for support.
Glenn Greenwald – My new favorite. Again, very factual, very analytic. If you think there’s the least bit of “right” in the Bushies/NSA scandal, read on.
The Poor Man – Just cracks me up.

Updated: Jabley’s back. And Beltway Observations got renamed for the fourth time.

I must bring up a contentious issue. Some years ago, it came to my attention that many people don’t understand where the top of a pizza slice is. Allow me to set the record straight, clearly and without any ambiguity. The first photo is right-side-up. The top of a slice of pizza is the point. The bottom is the crust. End of story.

RIGHT!
WRONG!

Based on past polling, it is clear that my view is in the minority. Nevertheless, having consumed a truly awesome amount of pizza in my lifetime, I feel my opinion suffices. Yes, I am America’s leading authority on your basic cheese pizza. (The only voice that could sway me is that of my oldest brother, my only rival in total lifetime slices consumed.)

Take your standard everyday analog clock. You wouldn’t think that a device that’s been around this long would have bugs in it, would you? I never really thought about it until I started teaching my son how to tell time.

Telling time is easy. You look at the hour hand. See what number it points to. That’s what o’clock it is. If it points to 7, it’s 7:00 o’clock. If it’s between two numbers, it’s between o’clocks. Halfway between 4 and 5? It’s half-past 4 o’clock. Almost at 11, but not quite? It’s almost 11 o’clock, but not quite. The hour hand tells you the time to within 10 or 15 minutes. Almost all the information on the clock is in the hour hand.

So which hand is more prominent? Not the hour hand, the minute hand. The minute hand is always the long one, which means it draws the eye more, and is easier to read. This is an interface bug. The most important information should be the most prominent.

I guess it’s just one of those things you don’t think about once you internalize it, like the way we Americans use a fork and knife. (Ever think about how often you have to change hands? Watch your own hands the next time you eat, you’ll be amazed how much time you spend moving forks and knives from hand A to hand B.)

Stop yammering about Cheney’s hunting accident. It’s not important. It has no larger ramifications. Last week, Peter Daou wrote an excellent post about Scandal Fatigue, widely cited, and yet this week every blog is taking time out to try and make points on the Cheney incident. Every time you talk about this, you’re not talking about illegal wiretapping, torture, lying AGs, record deficits, corrupt majority leaders, etc.

I ate at Romano’s Macaroni Grill for the first time last week. I was particularly intruiged by their “Create your own pasta” dish. (I accidentally called it “Make your own pasta” when I ordered, our waitress instantly corrected me. Lordy.) To create your own pasta, you are a given a menu. You pick any of six noodles, eight sauces, up to three vegetables out ten, five meats, and a couple of salads (numbers are from memory). That’s a good amount of variety. And in fact the meal was delightful and I will return. So why am I blogging? Because of the catchphrase on the menu. “The possibilities are endless”. No, they’re not. The possibilities are not endless, they are finite, countable, and easily calculated.
6 noodles X
8 sauces X
120 vegetable combinations X
5 meats X
3 salads (none, A, or B) =
86,400 combinations*. Very finite.

But Romano’s is not the only offender. Let’s talk about Waffle House. They claim prominently on their menu how many ways there are to prepare a burger. On their website, they claim at least 70,778,880 different ways.

This was deconstructed nicely in this article. Here’s how you do math for something like this. How many possible toppings are there? Eight. Each one can either be there or not — two ways for each topping. So you take two, and multiply it by itself eight times. This equals 256. How do you get from 256 to 70 million? You can’t. You can get weasely to get closer. For instance, you could either have a bun top, bun bottom, or not. That’s another factor of 4. You could get the burger rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, well done. That’s a factor of 5. That gets you to 5,120. We are almost halfway to supporting their claim (because 5,120 squared is almost 70 million.) But we’ve used everything we got.

Here’s one way to explain the discrepancy. Consider the clientele and employee base at Waffle House. Do they strike you as particulary sophisticated when it comes to mathematics? I’d guess over half the people who eat there need a tip calculator to figure out what 15% of $10.00 is. The workers are no better. It’s the bottom of the barrel, no getting around it. The management doesn’t look like they’re taking Number Theory courses at night either. So based on this limited sample, we conclude that everyone associated with Waffle House is a drooling idiot of some kind. I conclude that their advertising claim is false, but is merely due to stupidity rather than malice.

*Interestingly, this number is the exact number of seconds in a day. I often need to use this at work to convert dates to datetimes and back. From now on, all my code will call it the “Romano” factor.

Ever since I started Muttroxia, I’ve been wanting to do a post about the things I like about the Bush administration. I suppose it was part of an effort to seem non-partisan, or objective or something like that. Problem was, every time I sat down to write, I couldn’t come up with much. It was going to be a top 10, but I ended up with only four. And since one of them (#4) was a unanimous decision by 300 million Americans, it’s not really all that amazing. And they all have asterisks. Oh well, when you’re grading Worst President Ever, there’s not a lot to work with.

The things I like fall under two broad themes.

Economics: These folks believe in the power of the free market. To a large degree, so do I. They often put it places it doesn’t belong (Social Security, Health Savings Accounts), but sometimes it goes somewhere I like.

1) No Child Left Behind – Without accountability, it is foolish to hope for change. Hoping for A while rewarding for B does not work. Bush deserves credit for bring market forces to bear in the educational system, and installing a system where performance is rewarded. There are major major problems with the implementation and details (not enough money, testing standards that don’t take gifted or special needs students into account, no real option for students or schools that just failed) — but the idea has merit, and to some degree, this is the pain that is needed to get to a better place in the future.

2) Market-based trading of pollution emissions – Again, there is plenty of room to argue about how exactly this program was implemented. Nevertheless, bringing market forces into the area of environmental pollution is a great idea. As far as I know, it has been proven over and over to produce the best results the quickest, and do it in a way consonant with both democracy and capitalism.

Black and White foreign policy: These folks believe in good and evil. They believe that some societies are just bad, and deserve to be treated like dirt. They should not be negotiated with, they should not be given the same status as mature democracies, etc. Many times, this leads to huge foreign policy mistakes (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, etc.), but if I happen to agree with the judgement, it’s refreshing not to have the President pretending that these societies are every bit as good as everyone else, just different. That’s simply not true, and we all know it.

3) Calling out the Palestinians – There’s never been a shadow of a doubt that the Arab world is the bad guy in the Arab/Israeli conflict. No one with an ounce of perspective can claim otherwise. The line from Yasir Arafat, who invented modern terrorism, to Osama Bin Laden is self-evident. To his credit, Bush did not treat Arafat like a hero or diplomat or peace monger. His stance was very clear, that until Palestine cleaned up it’s act, there’s nothing to talk about. Despite the recent triumph of Hamas at the polls, there have been any number of positive developments since he took this stance.

4) Taking out the Taliban – Yes, he let Osama get away. Yes, he invented a war in Iraq, and let Al Queda flourish. But at least for a couple months, he did what any sane person would have done. Al Queda, through the Taliban, ran Afghanistan. We took ’em out. They were evil, and we dumped them. Too bad we didn’t follow through, but at least the start was right.

All TVs now come with a mute button. I am asking for a “blind” button. This would keep the sound going, but turn off the image. It would be good for shows with gross medical stuff. NipTuck, medical surgery shows, etc. Seriously, who wants to watch that stuff, it’s repulsive. I know have all kinds of disgusting organy things inside me, but I don’t need to think about it. It would be good when good songs are played on a show, but the imagery is just annoying. Any of the CSI/Who openings, bands that should wear bags on their head, etc.

Most people already have a hundred stations that do nothing but broadcast music. Why not complete the comparison and turn off the video? This is especially easy in the digital TV/TiVo world, it ought to be one simple button.

Yes, this is a great idea! No doubt about it – that Muttrox sure is smart! But even one so insightful and brilliant as I cannot come up with the right name for this function.

The sound one is called “mute” to indicate no noise being broadcast, not deaf, which would refer to you the listener. (Wouldn’t it be funny if they had called it “dumb” instead?) What is the equivalent with light? Is there a word for someone that can’t show themselves? Well, no, that’s physically impossible, more or less. Blind? Invisible? Ideas welcomed.

Many have framed this issue as a tradeoff between civil liberties and national security. It is not. There are many venues to have that debate. One of them happens to be Congress. In fact, this debate happened about 30 years ago, when the FISA courts were created as a response to Nixon. The FISA court was created specifically so that the president could take appropriate actions to protect national security. In it’s history, it has approved over 99.9% of requests, so it’s not exactly a bastion of treehugging liberal civil liberties crybabies. It even approves tapping retroactively (within 72 hours), in case the need is truly urgent.

Further, if the president truly felt that FISA was tying his hands too much, he had an obvious option. It’s called Congress. At any time, he could have asked Congress to rewrite the rules. Data mining provisions could have been added, adjustments to modern technologies and the particular enemy we face could have been made. Although the president has loyal majorities in both houses of Congress, he chose not to do that. He chose to simply ignore Congress and do what he wanted.

This is what the Democrats/Liberals/Left/Libetarians are up in arms about. In point of fact, there has been remarkably little criticism for the idea that some domestic monitoring may be needed. The primary criticism is that the president knowingly, willfully, broke the law. When confronted, he has been unrepentant. Bush’s position is that he has the authority to ignore Congress’s explicit wishes. His position is that if Congress passes any law which he disagrees with, that law is unconstitutional. You don’t need to be much of a constitutional scholar to understand why this is a bad thing. It’s equivalent to saying that he does not recognize that Congress has any authority. In fact, this has been demonstrated. In his signing statement for McCain’s recent torture law, Bush claimed he has the right to ignore the law whenever he wants. He and his cabinet have been asked if the Patriot Act were not renewed, would he recognize that authority, and they have said they would simply work around it as needed.

This is not a president. This is a king. America got rid of them over 200 years ago, and we went to create the best society in the history of the world. It’s a shame to see the monarchy making such a comeback.

As a postscript, one of the primary authors of the legal theory underlying Bush’s actions happens to be Sam Alito.

***late addendum:
Andrew Sullivan, whose essay on torture I referenced earlier, wrote an excellent article about the issue at stake here. I gotta admit, I’m starting to like the cut of his jib.

Most of you who read this blog get our annual holiday card. We get them from Snapfish. They send you the cards and the envelopes. After writing and printing out the letter, we folded them all up. Unsuspecting of any trouble, we did a standard tri-fold of the letters. I am for too proud that I can always nail this perfectly on the first try to fit into a standard envelope. Anyhow, so we’ve folded all the letters, and we go to put them in the envelopes, and…

The envelopes aren’t quite wide enough to accomodate a standard piece of paper. For some odd reason, instead of making them 9 1/2″ wide (which, you’ll notice, gives you enough room for a 8 1/2″ wide piece of paper, with a little left over), they made them around 8 1/4″ (which, you’ll notice is ever so slightly less than 8 1/2″). Why would they not make them just a bit larger, so that they could accomodate a letter along with the card? Admittedly, holiday letters are a bit dopey, but I know we are not the only people that do them. It’s hard to believe the people at Snapfish ever had to eat their own dogfood, or they would have noticed and fixed this in 10 minutes. At any rate, we had to go back and fold each letter into 6ths instead of 3rds, which looked very amateurish, if I do say so myself.

The truly irritating part? The exact same thing happened last year, and I had totally forgotten about it. Feh! Double Feh!

The other day I got a menu from a new Chinese delivery place. It said in big letters, “WE DELIVERY!” But that’s not what I’m up in arms about. It’s too easy, and I make too many typos to get preachy about it.
Yes, it’s the exciting conclusion to my Asian-themed trilogy o’ rants!

Here’s my latest beef (and I don’t mean with broccoli): fortune cookies — They’re not fortunes!!!! A fortune cookie should have a prediction about what could happen in the future. I’m not asking for specific, testable prediction, a simple “You will find great happiness next year” will do. Or “If you have no love for others, you will find yourself alone.” Some sense of consequences.

Instead what you get is inane blather. “Love is it’s own reward”. It’s even that way online, try a few sample fortunes at the Fortune Cookie Generator, or an Astrological Fortune Cookie.

Resist everything but temptation.
Well begun is half done.
Faith is the answer to success
” .” — Harpo Marx

Here are two from my favorite Chinese place growing up:

Today, by civil, but don’t go out of your way to be over friendly.

Draw upa budget and figure out how to cut down on your debt.

Folks, these aren’t fortunes. Half of them don’t even make sense. That last one is a quote. You might as well start adding in Jon Stewart’s latest one-liner, or directions to the bus stop. It makes as much sense as these, and would be more in line with the lottery numbers often added. Yep, the lottery numbers, there’s another alarming twist. C’mon, who is so desparate for tips on the lottery they think that a mass-produced fortune cookie has the answer, just for them. Anyone who plays the numbers on a fortune cookie should instantly be taken out back and castrated.

***LATE UPDATES***
I am informed by an old source that once the California lottery was in fact won by the number from fortune cookies. There were 300 winners. Lottery officials suspected fraud until the truth came out. (The truth being that they were all idiots, having to split the pot 300 ways).

Someone actually sent my wife a fortune cookie in the mail that said “You are the life of any party”. That’s not a fortune! (Although it probably does apply to her a lot more than me.)

Here’s another annoyance. Chinese food places always give you two pieces of silverware. A fork and a spoon. Why a fork and a spoon? Where’s my knife? Every meal I have to make a special point to ask for a knife. In every other way, Chinese food places rock. Do you know why? Service. You can waltz in with torn jeans, 3-days of stubble, reeking like the sewer, and they’ll still treat you like an honored guest. Except for the silverware.

I think they want you to use chopsticks. It’s only in a nod to Western culture they even include a fork and spoon. But if they’re going that far, where’s the knife? Don’t Aisans ever need to cut anything? Have you seen the size of those broccoli pieces? Chopsticks don’t cut anything. Chopsticks stink. I don’t care how cool it is to be able to use them, they’re stupid. Once your society passes the phase where you have to rely on bamboo for your flatware, it’s time to upgrade to actual utensils.

Give me a knife!