Well, the anti-OSAA ball keeps rolling in Oregon. My HS district, the Portland Public Schools, by far the largest district in the state, and also home to the most populous sports league, the PIL, has come out publicly in opposition to the 6A redistricting plans.

PPS opposition

Now, if all works out, I should have an opinion piece running on the issue in the Portland Tribune tomorrow (cross my fingers...)

I was randomly playing albums on my iPod at work today, and I happened to play two female groups in a row, which for me is a rarity, seeing how much male singers and groups dominate my 8,000 song collection. I got to thinking, since the women i spin are so rare, who are my favorites.

Tegan & Sara (best album: So Jealous)
Sugababes (best album: Three)
Kelly Clarkson (best album: Breakaway)
Anna Nalick (debut album: Wreck of the Day)
Maria Mena (debut album: White Turns Blue)

All I know about these women is that they can rock when they have to. Take Kelly Clarkson, for example. She comes out of the American Idol factory that has thus far made crap singers popular, given them audience-tested songs to hit it big initially (exhibit A: the pedestrian Carrie Underwood), and then the world turns away next season to a new crowd, leaving the old winners with their thumb stuck out at some rural bus stop, trying to get home from their last, cancelled show. The dustbin is filled with them. Ruben, the Martin Short lookalike Clay Aiken, Fantasia, etc. Kelly was supposed to disappear too. She was good, but not great, on her first album. Did you see her Ms. Independent video? She looked like she didn't even know what to do with her hands the whole time. And after everyone learned the song was originally for Christina, well, they started imagining what could have been. So there goes Kelly, into the dustbin. Then she hits the radio with her second single from Breakaway, Since U Been Gone. And damn Gina, if it didn't rock harder than Creed (i keed, i keed!). The whole album is a joy, and a realization of her potential.

On that note, Anna Nalick's debut is amazing. I'm seeing her with Howie Day on Aug 10.

Tegan & Sara are sisters who are lesbians (they avoid each other). They have somewhat nasally voices, but are great songwriters who have been around for years.

The Sugababes are a girl group that straddles pop, techno, and R&B. They avoid the girl group dynamic by focusing less on being girls who sing, and more on the music, which is catchy as hell.

And Maria Mena is a waifish looking girl who has the oddest voice ever to hit the Top 40. But she too, amidst some traditional pop songs, lets wail on a few tracks.

did he really say this?

Bush in his press conference said we cannot set deadlines to leave Iraq because we don't want to make the terrorists think they can wait out the troops (and Rumsfeld has said the insurgency could last another decade)

then a minute later, he says the reason he won't send more troops to Iraq is because we don't want the Iraqis to think we are planning on staying ... and because his commanders say they don't need more troops.

So we can't pull out because the insurgents are still strong. But we can't send more troops because we don't want Iraqis to stay... wow, we're fucked.

Of course, he won't mention that he refused to send more troops after the initial strike so we wouldn't screw up the rebuilding process. And of course he didn't mention that one reason we can't send more troops is because we don't have many left...

I was under the impression that revenge was a goal that was supposed to be pursued subtly in Washington, in order to avoid looking like a petulant child. But baseball, of all things, seems to be interfering with the normal affairs of politicians.

Among the numerous groups bidding for the Washington Nationals is one that includes billionaire financier and political bankroller George Soros, who heavily supported Dems in 2004 to the tune of $20 mil. Understandable that Republicans don't like him. But for them to publicly say that it would be better if he didn't win the bid, because if he did, they might refuse to ever help the team again?

"They enjoy all sorts of exemptions' from anti-trust laws. Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), vice chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that covers the District of Columbia budget, said if Soros buys the team and seeks public funding for a new stadium or anything else, the GOP attitude would be, "Let him pay for it.""

Why, this is amazing! Liberals may hate American soldiers and love terrorists, but i'll be goddamned if the Republicans aren't even worse. They hate baseball! Sickening.

This week's Time magazine reports on the Christian evangelism that is being encouraged at the Air Force Academy by the increasingly bold and intolerant establishment. This revelation, drawn out through reports in past weeks, after a long period of unproven allegations, only serves to increase the depth of my feeling that ROTC must be reintroduced to liberal campuses that have banned the program for the post-Vietnam era. It is an indisputable fact that the makeup of the military's officer corps, in terms of political beliefs, have shifted from largely liberal, with a huge portion nonreporting, to largely conservative, with a huge portion still nonreporting. While some of the shift can be attributed to the shift of the military to all-volunteer, that does not cover the whole shift.

In Evan Wright's book, Generation Kill, in which he tracks the Marines First Recon unit as it storms into Iraq, we meet Lt. Fisk, a Dartmouth grad with liberal political tendencies. As I noted on this blog previously, he directly addresses, from his experience joining the military after attending a college that had banned ROTC, issues I have raised:

"Despite his cavalier humor, Fick finished at the top of his class in Officer Candidates School and near the top of the Marine Corps' tough Basic Reconnaissance Course. He is also something of a closet idealist. His motivation for joining the Marines is a belief about which he is quietly passionate. "At Dartmouth, there was a sense that an ROTC program, which the school did not have, would militarize the campus," he explains. "They have it backward. ROTC programs at Ivy League campuses would liberalize the military. That can only be good for this country."

When we see the conservative religious values being introduced at the Academy, in large part I would assume because there is little intellectual opposition present anymore, I would argue it makes it even more imperative that we agitate at Columbia for the presence of ROTC on liberal university campuses.

Check out the latest Zogby polling report for a fascinating picture of the changing political landscape. In a Bush-Kerry rematch, people are now saying they would choose in a manner that would lead to a 45-45 tie. Bush's poll numbers are his lowest ever, and he is now actively disliked by nearly 60% of those surveyed. Even in many Red States, his popularity is below the 50% mark.

But those numbers were ones we saw coming. Other, more interesting results include:
-Only 2% of those polled think the Senate is doing an excellent job. Nearly 70% disapprove of the Senate's actions currently.
-In a head to head match up, John McCain would beat up on Hilary Clinton by nearly 17%, and would beat up on John Kerry by 20%. Clinton v. Kerry would end in a solid Clinton victory. Interestingly, McCain won nearly every voter category against Clinton, tying only in the under-30 demographic. This means that Democrats are willing to vote for him, as are moderate Republicans. The big question leading up to 2008 is, what is the religious right going to do? We all saw how Bush destroyed him in South Carolina in 2000 by playing dirty and pandering to the conservative base; can a Bill Frist or a Rick Santorum do that again, or will McCain become a Rockefeller Republican standard-bearer for at least one term?

Also, due to random brainstorms, a glimpse at topics I will expound on in the near future:
1) The problems with the music/movie monopolies, including how the Big Corps that dominate both areas stifle creative independence, force ticket prices when demand is decreasing for supply when the supply is available only at 10 bucks a pop, etc.

2) Nostalgia for Billy Graham and Barry Goldwater. Remember the old days, when small "c" conservatives like Goldwater ranted about the negative effects religion would have on politics if religious leaders gained power in the Republican Party? Or how Graham, despite missteps like his in-private Jew-bashing with Nixon, always chose to befriend politicians of both party, and chose not to speak out on political issues that touched on established church beliefs? He was a class act, a man who wanted people to live by the Gospel's basic tenets, not listen to his personal views on how one could twist religious texts to apply to contemporary political situations. He was like John Paul II if ol' JPII had quieted down on the evils of homosexuality and stayed more centered on basic faith and human goodness.

3) How to create a proper parody movie. Do: take broad swipes at the area you are parodying, but try to make the movie solid in its own right. Don't: re-use every scene from the movie you are directly parodying (Not Another Teen Movie, cough cough). Do: mix physical sight gags with broader, more subtle running jokes (see: Airplane, Anchorman, some of Spaceballs). Don't: try to make as many parody movies as there were movies in the series you are parodying; you are bound to fail (see Scary Movies I, II, III, and conceivably a IV). So on and so forth. Stay tuned.

As everyone who knows me understands, I'm in love with Jon Stewart. If he weren't Jewish, I would go to Massachusetts to marry him. Showing once again why he is the freshest thing on TV since Mr. Clean debuted on commercials, he pontificates about hyperbolic rhetoric in the U.S. Senate "reality show," and then goes on to discuss the devious "War on Christianity." It is Stewart at his satirical best.

Talk Talk Talk

I've often argued, based on the fact that youth and young adult crime rates have been dropping for years, that violent video games do not lead to violence. A new study out shows that young men who play several hours a day show brain activity similar to that of someone engaged in actual violence. This does not, as the article points out, answer the larger question: do violent people tend to gravitate toward such games, or do games make people more violent? I, in response to the "sky is falling" group that sees violent video games leading to our ruin, still believe that young adults have in general an ability to differentiate between real and virtual violence, and to separate their actions on the screen from their actions in real life. Thoughts?

------------
In other news, the US House, for the third time in a decade, has passed an amendment that would allow Congress to place a ban on flag burning. The last 2 times, the Senate was unable to achieve the two-thirds consensus necessary to send the amendment to the state legislatures. This time, with at least 65 senators seeming to support it (67 are necessary), there is a strong potential for the amendment to pass. Rep. Duke Cunningham, who is already in hot water for potentially illegal real estate dealings in California, thinks people who oppose the amendment are out of touch with the American people. But Rep. Jerrold Nadler of NY has a good reply: "If the flag needs protection at all, it needs protection from members of Congress who value the symbol more than the freedoms that the flag represents." Sept. 11 did change how we lived in small ways represented in big government actions. Yet our lives remain essentially unchanged, and the role of our flag as a symbol of the nation, not of a single ideology, should remain unchanged as well. I hope this bill gets shot down.

When I first read a collection of Thomas Friedman's columns, gathering his post-9/11 musings, I realized what had been nagging me about his writing for years--he is a generalist. More so than most mainstream columnists, he talks about the big picture, and somewhat repetitively too. My love for columnists Frank Rich and David Brooks stem from the fact that they love to ferret out new books, new trends, interesting people, and other narrow topics to make their larger points. Friedman, on the other hand, seems to appeal to a basic news format of using quotes from prominent people and reports to increase the appeal of his broad strokes. Yet, despite this tendency, I still often enjoy what he has to say, because it is clearly stated. Case in point, today's "Run Dick, Run" column in the Times.

"Instead, Mr. Bush seems to be governing as though he were on a permanent campaign - much like Bill Clinton did. But Bill Clinton was on a permanent presidential campaign. Mr. Bush seems to be governing as if he were on a permanent primary campaign against John McCain in South Carolina.

So far, the second Bush term, to the extent that it has any discernible agenda, seems to be to cater to the far-right wing of his party - period. It's been urgent midnight meetings about Terri Schiavo and barely a daylight session about energy."

He understands that one of the largest problems the Republicans face is not that they as a party are failing, but that their leader is leading their more moderate majority off into the wilderness without a compass. Regardless of what you think about President Bush's policies, it is becoming indisputably clear that people no longer believe he is on the right path in anything except for a narrowly defined "keeping America safe from terrorists," which polls show is no longer considered by most respondents to include the mess in Iraq.

I loved the BBC mini-series version of Pride and Prejudice, and I can't imagine the new movie version being released will trump it, or even come close in quality. But goddamn, how can anyone say no to this face, even if she is too pretty to be Elizabeth Bennet?

.

The French and the Americans hate each other. What's new?

Also, and more on this later, the House Committee dealing with public broadcasting has voted to hack away at funding. Actions like these show the lie that is the Republicans claim that they are only trying to moderate the liberal bent of NPR and PBS--they honestly oppose solid news reporting and intriguing new commentaries if they don't support their cause. Additionally, the word on the street is that PBS is going to have its very own ombudsman to make sure it is fair and balanced. Somehow I don't see this working out very well. Suddenly, every Sesame Street puppet is a straight, moderately religious, clean-cut individual, predominately white (or yellow, whatever color is normal there). Surprise!

A new Gallup poll shows that, much like OJ, Michael Jackson's popularity is highly polarized between white and black Americans, with whites opposing his not guilty verdict 2 to 1, and blacks supporting it 2 to 1.

I find this surprising, in its parallels to the OJ trial, since while OJ was clearly black, Michael's racial affiliation has become murkier over the years. Where he was clearly once black, he's now stuck somewhere at the halfway point, not white or black, but clearly "whack."

Regardless of his race, he's creepier than Steven Tyler's lips. As Conan O'Brien said, when Charles Manson heard that Michael Jackson, if found guilty, might end up in the same prison as him, he complained, "That guy's nuts!"

The Bend Bulletin does a long review of the effects of the OSAA's 6A reclassification plan, which provides good details, but does little to express the widespread opposition to the plan.

Do you ever suddenly remember something you once saw, and laugh out loud at the memory? That just happened to me a minute ago; I was browsing Facebook, and came across some genius' profile of "Peter Parker," which included the line, "I'm Spider-Man." Which of course made me think of the Celebrity Jeopardy sketch on SNL where Matthew Perry played Michael Keaton, and kept stage-whispering "I'm Batman!" while looking mysterious. Shut up. I thought it was funny.

--John Kerry had lower grades at Yale than President Bush, including four D's freshman year. Who saw that coming? Imagine the campaign the Dems could have ran, possibly successful: "our man is more stupider than your man" or "representing the common man's grade: John Kerry" or "ask not what John Kerry can do for you, ask what you can do to help raise John Kerry's test scores" or "Yale: where failure leads to greatness" or "Yale: Where the great become mediocre and the mediocre become president"

--Sorry, got carried away. In other news, Kathleen Edwards, an oft-annoying conservative columnist, has a decent piece today about Howard Dean, who I've supported in the past. She argues that the problem with him is not that his comments (like the one about Republicans being a white christian party, which she points out is in fact pretty true), but his delivery. He makes harsh comments without softening them with a joke, he doesn't know how to mix hot and cold, etc. Having seen him speak many times, I can understand what she is getting at. Regardless, the article makes for an interesting read: Dean's missing funny bone

--Also, it looks like my lobbying efforts with the Portland media to raise hell about the OSAA's attempt to change Oregon high school sports is paying off. Ken Goe wrote a sports column about it last week, independent of my lobbying, but now Steve Duin, a Metro columnist who I talked with last week, has issued an order for people to raise hell about the decision. Read about it here

From the Daily Show:

Jon Stewart: Could the media today break a story like Watergate?
Steven Colbert: No Jon, it lacks credibility.
Jon: The media?
Steven: No. The truth.


and


Jon Stewart: "But Sen. Spector continued to fight, because he is a moderate Republican. A moderate Republican is a regular Republican who is sick or knows someone who is."

Woohoo! I now have a job as an intern at the PR firm of Fleishman-Hillard's Portland office. F-H is the second-largest firm in the world; while their PTown office is small, it has a sweet layout, including a full-size pool table in the kitchen. And oddly, I am the only male working there more than part-time. Ladies, please!

With that and my Chinese class at PSU, I'll be in downtown Portland for at least 9-10 hours a day for the summer.

What?! No fortune cookies?! 17 Chinese Restaurants Raided in Mich.


On a more serious note, a new study contributes to the idea that the problem with cell phones is the distraction from
talking, not the act of holding something in your hands. Depending on how loud activists get, I wouldn't be surprised to see a serious effort in the future to ban cell phone use while driving. Of course, biking should be outlawed as well, as I saw a woman flip over her handlebars a few days ago because she was too busy talking to notice the car pulling out ahead of her.

This is my future:

"I like to con people. And I like to insult people. If you combine con & insult, you get consult!"

What imbecile greenlighted this project? Paul Anka doing swing versions of Bon Jovi's "It's My LIfe," Foreigner's "Eye of the Tiger," and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Sounds like shit. I mean, it is one thing to do covers of songs in which you transpose the songs into another genre; it is a whole 'nother tamale when you succeed in making them soporifically dismal. Rock Swings, the album is called. Paul Anka should hang for this.

This is frustrating me to no end. The Oregon Student Activities Association, which governs high school sports in Oregon, is preparing to expand from 4 classes of teams to six, which, among other things, will tear apart the largest divisions in the state, including the 100 year old Portland Interscholastic League, all because of reasons that would be better addressed through selective changes.

Read here for background on the issue: What's at stake

Read here for what schools will end up in what class: Changes

Read here for Oregonian columnist Ken Goe's attack on the proposal:
Prep reclassification


And here is an article I wrote about the issue:

OSAA’s realignment will shatter traditions and rivalries

Progress is good; inertia is bad. That is the message the Oregon Student Activities Association is trying to get across as it pushes forward with its plan to expand Oregon high school sports from four classes to six. The ostensible goal of this plan is to save money on transportation costs for rural and suburban schools, and to level the playing field by achieving closer school size parity within districts. Although the goal is admirable, the methods and effects of the proposed realignment will irrevocably harm high school sports in Oregon.

In April, over 80 percent of the Oregon Athletic Directors Association voted for less grandiose revisions than the OSAA had in mind; in fact, 17 of the 32 votes for the 6A plan came from the Class IA schools that would be least affected. Everyone else overwhelmingly supported a 5A plan with two divisions within 5A for larger schools. Above all, the athletic directors sought to avoid tearing apart the long-standing sports leagues, including the Portland Interscholastic League.

The OSAA would choose to rip leagues like the PIL apart without a second thought, due to a belief that in order to save money and increase competition for some schools, every school must be radically altered. Grant and Wilson would join Metro League teams, normally only the rarest of non-league rivals, in 6A. Every other PIL school except for Roosevelt and Jefferson would go to 5A; the Roughriders and the Demos, condemned to 4A, have already announced that they plan to play in 5A.

Another large problem with the plan is the shrinking districts it creates. In order to save money on transportation by creating smaller and more localized districts, an issue that some athletic directors dispute is even going to save money for many schools, the OSAA has created numerous 5-school districts, where 60 percent of each district will qualify for the playoffs—in attempting to improve competition, the OSAA is cheapening it.

This isn’t the equivalent of the Seattle Mariners joining the National League; this is the equivalent of moving to a Japanese division—that is how much the traditional rivalries and divisions mean to high schools where everything else, most significantly the students, are a constantly changing facet.

It is always important to think of fairness and nickels and dimes when discussing high school sports, but it is even more crucial to consider essential traditions that stimulate fan bases, motivate rivalries, and bring 21 year old graduates like myself back to cheer on something recognizable years later. At a time when school districts are unable to guarantee support for programs from year to year, traditions and rivalries gain so much more significance. The money problem is essentially one of large-scale funding questions; minor changes to transportation costs alone will have little effect in the long run.

If change is needed for schools in certain districts or classes, let the improvement be done in a selective manner that helps without hurting. For the OSAA to claim that they have found the best option in the face of stiff opposition is for them to willingly blind themselves to the nature and realities of high school athletics.

The OSAA has the right to act as it plans to, in contravention of the wishes of most school athletic directors, but the right to act does not mean that action should be taken as one sees fit. The Grant Generals, my alma mater, should not be forced to leave behind all its old rivalries and traditions. High school is not the time to prioritize professionalism over fun, teamwork, and good old grudge matches. The OSAA needs to let a little democracy in, listen to the schools, and change its mind on realignment before its decision-making meeting in September.

A little bit of a disconnect in terms of reporting, wouldn't you say?

From the NYTimes: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in an unusually blunt public critique of China, said Saturday that Beijing's military spending threatened the delicate security balance in Asia and called for an emphasis instead on political freedom and open markets.

From the NYTimes: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, arriving here today for a conference on Asian security, drew a sharp distinction between two of the region's major powers, predicting that ties with India would strengthen while urging China to let political freedom grow there along with its economy.

"It would be a shame for the people of China if their government did not provide the opportunities that freer economic and political systems permit," he said, describing a tension "between the nature of their political system and the nature of their economic system."

versus

From China's People's Daily: China poses no threats to other countries including the United States, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on Saturday in Singapore.

"China is an increasingly important country which is growing economically and has relations with many nations across the globe. That is a good thing, it is not a bad thing, not a threatening thing," He said at the fourth IISS Asia Security Conference here.

Doesn't this make you want to read more?

What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)

The excerpt, from a column by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt, is the first of the new Freakonomics columns that will run in the NYTimes magazine. Dubner and Levitt are the authors of the bestselling Freakonomics which uses economic analysis to explore a whole range of questions, from: how do parents choose baby names, to, does abortion lead to less crime?

This week's column explores a Yale collaboration between a economist and a psychologist to teach capuchin monkeys about money. The results, thus far, are that they develop and learn to value money like humans. Evolution, anyone?

My friend Reid says my blog is boring and needs: reidiculous25 (12:44:17 PM): your blog is boring. you should spice it up with some humorous anecdotes or scandalous photos.

So here is a good anecdote. My AIM conversation with a drunk Reid. Bon appetit!

reidiculous25 (9:45:28 AM): i hate youf uckehead fuckface dooshnozzle
Biggerz (9:45:36 AM): hahaha
reidiculous25 (9:45:41 AM): fucks you
Biggerz (9:45:48 AM): whatever you say
reidiculous25 (9:46:00 AM): go fucks ome euronesans
reidiculous25 (9:46:06 AM): why arent you drunk
Biggerz (9:46:12 AM): its 10 am
Biggerz (9:46:15 AM): thats why
reidiculous25 (9:46:22 AM): exuyses exueses
reidiculous25 (9:46:26 AM): pussy
reidiculous25 (9:46:36 AM): seirously
reidiculous25 (9:46:46 AM): go play lebnaonon
reidiculous25 (9:46:48 AM): like a man

I'm degrading my blog for my readers.

Oh and here is what Reid looks like:

It is the rare piece of writing that is powerful and meaningful enough to make me feel anything more than enjoyment at the strings of words expertly crafted. But I just read a short story that had such a simple elegance and meaning to it that I was literally breathless. "Monday," by Mark Helprin, is the tale of a successful construction company owner who yanks his men off every job he has to work on a woman's house, to finish it six times faster than would be expected. He loves her, but not in the traditional sense of love. He tells his foreman, Gustavo, that he wants to charge her nothing for a half million job.

"Why?" Gustavo asked. And, when Fitch was noth forthcoming, Gustavo commanded, "You've got to tell me why."
"If you could see her ...," said Fitch.
"I saw her when we did the kitchen. She's pretty. She's beautiful. But she's not that beautiful."
"Yes, she is," said Fitch. "She bears up, but I've never seen a more wounded, deeply aggrieved woman. It's not because she's physically beautiful. What the hell do I care? It's because she needs something like this, from me, from us, from everyone. Not that it would or could be a substitute, but as a gesture."
"A substitute for what?" Gustavo asked.
"Her husband."
"Her husband left her?"
"Her husband was in the south tower when it came down," Fitch said. "For Christ's sake, they'll never even find the bodies. Vaporized, made into paste. What can she think? What can she feel?"

In response to that, Fitch's entire crew chooses to work nonstop for free in order to complete the job, all because of a highly developed sense of honor. "They knew that they had made something beautiful, and, because of this, they were content."

As Fitch explained to the woman, Lilly, when she couldn't understand why he would take a job that was seemingly entirely in her favor: "Look, I don't know what happened to the country, but everybody tries to screw everybody else. More so than in my father's day, more so than when I was a child, more so than when I was a young man, more so than ten years ago ... more so than last year. Everybody lies, cheats, manipulates, and steals. It's as if the world is a game, and all you're supposed to do is try for maximum advantage. Even if you don't want to do it that way, when you find yourself attacked from all sides in such fashion, you begin to do it anyway. Because if you don't, you lose. And no one these days can tolerate losing."
"Can you?" Lilly asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Tell me."
He hesitated, listening to the clink of glasses and the oceanlike roar of conversation magnified and remagnified under the vaulted ceilings of the dining rooms off to the side. "I can tolerate losing," he said, "if that's the price I pay, if it's what's required, for honor."
"Honor," she repeated.
"Honor. I often go into things--I almost always go into things--with no calculation but honor, which I find far more attractive and alluring, and satisfying in every way, than winning. I find it deeply, incomparably satisfying."

(Later, she asks him to explain why he values honor.)

"I'm fifty-three," he answered with analytical detachment. "My father died at fifty-nine. What good is money? If I have six years left or thirty, it makes no difference. My life will be buoyant, and my death will be tranquil, only if I can rest upon a store of honor."
"There are other things."
"Name them," he challenged.
She met his challenge. "Love."
"Harder than honor, I'm afraid, to keep and sustain."
This startled her into silence.


I don't know if I agree with all the sentiments expressed about human nature and values in this short story, but the sheer import of it, the focus on generosity, kindness, and humanity, makes for some of the most powerfully affecting pages I have read in years. It is a pure message, in response to the realities of the world, and sometimes, everyone needs a little bit of such idealism.

Whenever semi-authoritarian governments conduct polls, they never release the logistics of the poll (who was interviewed, margin of error, etc.). Polls like these mean nothing without grounding. Besides, I'm very curious to know if Hong Kong residents really care little about the loss of political freedoms they've seen in the last 8 years.

According to a survey conducted by Committee on the Promotion of Civic Education, Hong Kong, most Hong Kong citizens feel proud of the remarkable achievements China has made. Among the total interviewees, 73 percent expressed their proudness of being Chinese.

And any good pollster would probably laugh at this type of question, since it doesn't provide context for what HK residents think of as "Chinese" nor what their views are on the Chinese government itself. This amounts more to a rubber stamp that the CCP is glad to have than anything else.

UPDATE: Case in point, today's NYTimes article about tens of thousands of people turning out in Hong Kong to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre. Obviously, there is some disconnect between pride of being Chinese and and pride in the Chinese government. Link

Angry Chinese Blogger discusses the fruits of three years of labor, a unified history textbook co-written over a host of conferences by South Korean, Japanese, and Chinese scholars, and points out how the existence of such a moderate, honest account has been papered over in China while riots have been occuring in reaction to the narrowly-distributed Japanese textbook which itself refused to acknowledge WWII Japanese atrocities.

Though it arrived with less of a fan-fair that some feel that it deserved, particularly in China, the month of May marked the officially sanctioned release date of a new high school text book that some see as being a revolution in the teaching of Asian history, not least of all because it marks the first successful attempt to produce an account of Chinese, Korean and Japanese relations, through some of their most troubled times, to have been complied by scholars and educators from all three nations.

---------
And this is almost too good to be true. The good conservatives at Human Events (thanks to Lean Left for the link) have polled top conservatives about the 10 most dangerous books of the last 200 years. Surprise of surprises, the most dangerous book is the Communist Manifesto. But what the hell is progressive thinker John Dewey doing in the top five? And the Kinsey Report? Oh, we're all having fun here...

Conservatives think nukes are fine, but watch out for dangerous books!

I've long argued in support of ROTC on Columbia's campus, both to improve campus attitude toward the military, but also to help increase the flow of liberal-minded students back into the armed forces. I'm reading Evan Wright's Generation Kill, about the modern generation of troops going into Iraq, and ran across a quote that sums up my entire argument, out of the mouth of an Ivy Leaguer who didn't have ROTC on campus but still joined the military:

"Despite his cavalier humor, Fick finished at the top of his class in Officer Candidates School and near the top of the Marine Corps' tough Basic Reconnaissance Course. He is also something of a closet idealist. His motivation for joining the Marines is a belief about which he is quietly passionate. "At Dartmouth, there was a sense that an ROTC program, which the school did not have, would militarize the campus," he explains. "They have it backward. ROTC programs at Ivy League campuses would liberalize the military. That can only be good for this country."

Just a random thought. During lunch, I caught some of Star Trek: DS9 on cable, and it made me realize how much the health of the franchise depends on a strong captain figure in each show. In the shows that were highly successful and critically acclaimed (Star Trek, Next Generation, and DS9, if only in retrospect for the former), the captain was a dominant and impressive figure. Shatner as Kirk, Stewart as Picard, Brooks as Sisko. In Voyager, which always seemed to pale next to DS9, Mulgrew as Janeway was good, but she suffered from a weaker cast and show, and didn't carry the show to the same degree. And Enterprise, the latest venture, and by far the least successful? I'm sorry, but Scott Bakula has never impressed me, I hated Quantum Leap, and he is the poster child for an unimpressive captain.

Actually, now that I think about it, I quite miss DS9. And if NGeneration didn't look so early 90s (90210 in Space!), I would miss it more.

If you are as scientifically uninclined as I am, you too might be a little concerned by the recent spate of coverage being given to intelligent design theory, which straddles a halfpoint between evolutionary theory and creationism, arguing in essence that cells are so complex that they had to be developed by some sort of intelligent creator, even if evolution did occur once those cells were created. If you are curious about why evolutionists do not give credence to these theories, and why we don't need to let Kansas be a guide for the whole nation in its search for parity between evolution and I.D., read H. Allen Orr's piece in the New Yorker, where he dissects the arguments of the two leading I.D.ers and explains the falsehoods associated with I.D.

Biologists aren’t alarmed by intelligent design’s arrival in Dover and elsewhere because they have all sworn allegiance to atheistic materialism; they’re alarmed because intelligent design is junk science. Meanwhile, more than eighty per cent of Americans say that God either created human beings in their present form or guided their development. As a succession of intelligent-design proponents appeared before the Kansas State Board of Education earlier this month, it was possible to wonder whether the movement’s scientific coherence was beside the point. Intelligent design has come this far by faith.