Obama’s Q&A with House Republicans
We haven’t had a lot of posts about politics here over the past year, in part because that was always a bit more of A’s territory and he hasn’t been writing much, and in part because I feel more relaxed about things with Obama in the White House. I don’t feel like I have to hang on every shred of news out of Washington anymore because I agree with the basic principles on which Obama operates, and I feel like I can trust him to make well-considered decisions based on his own ability to reason, as well as on the information and expert advice he has available to him (a much vaster quantity than what I know). It’s obvious, when I listen to Obama speak, that he knows what his positions are and exactly why he has taken them. It sounds like such a little thing to ask from a president, but after eight years of Bush, it feels like a breath of fresh air.
A perfect example of what I’m talking about is Obama’s meeting with House Republicans at their retreat in Baltimore last week. If you’re the sort of person who reads this blog regularly, you’ve probably at least heard about this if not seen it. I finally sat down and watched the video all the way through, and I’m still in awe — of Obama especially, but really of everyone. It was an awesome thing to do. Everyone was very civil — the Republicans had time to explain their questions fully and did so in a way that was earnest and not belligerent, Obama answered with real details and arguments rather than talking points and catchphrases. This is a great example what a real political dialogue can look like. Could we please have more? Lots more?
If you haven’t watched it yet, I’ll make it easy for you. Here’s the meatiest part, the Q&A session (via C-SPAN).
Don’t talk about politics or religion
It’s a rule of thumb for polite conversation that most of us had drilled into us as children, here in the US. Don’t talk about politics, and don’t talk about religion. You’ll only start an argument.
Maybe that’s true. After all, merely by saying “I am a member of such-and-such political party,” you are implying that you think its platform and philosophy are superior to the platforms and philosophies of all other political parties. If you didn’t think that was the case, you’d be a member of a different party. And by saying, “I am such-and-such religion,” you are saying that there is a certain set of statements about reality that you believe to be true. That means that other people, who don’t think that set of statements is true, are wrong in their beliefs. You don’t even have to say it outright. You just have to let it be known. Maybe someone spotted a bumper sticker on your car, a pendant on your necklace, a logo on your t-shirt. You can say that you think we should “coexist,” that we should be tolerant and all get along. Those are worthy ideals. But you have to face the fact that if you every commit to any opinion, you’re effectively telling everyone who doesn’t share it that they’re wrong, which doesn’t come across as very “tolerant.”
But that’s okay! I actually think we should be talking about politics and religion more freely. The discord is still happening, when the very existence of Democrats is an implicit affront to Republicans and vice versa, and when religious (or irreligious) groups rally support from within by directing anger at the mere presence of other groups. I think that by stifling conversation, we’re only silencing the argument, not really stopping it. No one gains anything from that.
I really wish I could remember the details of this story, because it made a real impression on me, but sadly I can only offer vagueness. At any rate: I read a news story once about an election happening in another country, quite possibly a country relatively new to the whole “election” thing. The focus of the story was on how the citizens were all eagerly arguing with each other about which candidates to support, all over the place. It was not a taboo topic in the least. And that’s an exciting thing to see, because it means that people are engaged in their democracy, they care about the outcome of the election. Most importantly (to me), they don’t see the election as rooting for their own team, but as a search for the best possible candidates. They’d prefer to get the right people into office, even if it means changing their minds.
Well, I’m sorry that anecdote came across as completely made up; I promise you it’s not. (If anyone remembers reading something like that – or experienced something like that! – and could help me figure out details, leave a comment. I’d bet there are plenty of countries this could apply to, but I only read a news story about one of them.) My point is that when we disagree and argue about it, it may feel a little uncomfortable and unpleasant at the time, but there are major benefits in the long run. After all, what’s more important: that your political party control a majority of seats in the legislature, or that the legislature is as full as possible of thoughtful people who have the best interests of the country in mind? Sure, you’d hope those things are the same, but you have to recognize the possibility that they’re not always. And what if there is one particular deity (or set of deities) who really wants you to live your life in a very specific way or else. Wouldn’t it be good to figure out which deity/deities it was, as soon as possible? (Alternatively, what if there are no deities like that? Wouldn’t you want to figure that out before spending your entire life obsessed with made-up rules and nonexistent judgment?)
“Sure, Z,” I can hear you saying. “I guess it would be great if we could all have these calm, reasoned debates. But how? I’m sure of my beliefs, and you’re sure of yours – we’ll never work it out!” It does seem daunting. What I do is, I try to keep a bit of agnosticism in my attitude. Perhaps it doesn’t come across that way… maybe it’d be better to call it best guess-ism. I feel strongly about my beliefs, having reflected on them and examined them before actively calling them my own, but I try to remember that they only reflect my current best guess. At any time, I could come into new information that might lead me to change my mind – to make a new, better guess. I welcome arguments because they’re the primary way I might get that new information.
I’d like to live in a society where more people had an attitude like that. But I’m open to debate about even that belief!
Dobbs leaves CNN
I want to take a moment to stop and celebrate the departure of Lou Dobbs from CNN. This is a really good sign for news. What’s more important is that apparently he left because the people in charge at CNN decided they didn’t want a crazy opinion show on their network. Fox, and to a lesser extent MSNBC, have clearly decided that opinion is a good way to get ratings, and they’re probably correct. However, it’s very good for the country that there is another network out there that’s clearly in between the two. (Also, as annoying as it is, it’s probably good that MSNBC went to the left, because it makes genuinely unbiased news look neutral, rather than looking liberal by comparison to Fox.)
I can understand the “it’s like the editorial page of a newpaper” argument, but it’s really not. A newspaper has a very careful separation between the news staff and the editorial staff, preventing overlap between the two, and clearly labels its opinion. That type of system just doesn’t exist on cable news networks—at least with their current organization.
Now, I would be happy to see any strongly opinionated show leave CNN, but it’s also worth pointing out that Dobbs is a xenophobic nutcase, and his departure from any sort of national spotlight would be cause for celebration for that reason alone.
Rooting for the team
Are you registered with a particular political party because you agree with their platform? Or do you agree with their platform because you’re a member of that party?
Do you follow a particular religion because you agree with its teachings and its characterization of the world? Or do you agree with its teachings because you’re a follower of that religion?
Is your goal to find ideas that you agree with, or to make your team the winning team?
This is part reflection on Friday’s post and the comments that followed it, and part inspired by some other things I’ve been noticing lately. Students wearing T-shirts that look like university sports fan gear but turn out to be promoting their religious student group. Pundits on TV talking about how to reform the Republican party’s image, or how to make the GOP more appealing to young people or to non-white people. The Catholic church trying to entice some Anglicans back into Catholicism. And of course, Democratic senators more willing to gut their health care plan in exchange for an extra vote or two than they are to advocate for and explain their original plan.
There’s nothing particularly logical about people’s allegiances to sports teams, and that’s okay. Maybe you root for a team because they represent your city, or a city you used to live in, or a city you wish you lived in. This is completely arbitrary, though at least it makes some intuitive sense. But plenty of people don’t root for their “home team,” opting instead to support the one with better stats and more success. Others like cheering for the underdog and deliberately pick a team with a history of failures. There are plenty of even more arbitrary reasons for picking your favorite team. I used to love the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies solely because I liked their logos the best. (I was about 9, and I liked teal and purple. What can I say?)
Arbitrariness is okay in choosing a sports team to root for, though, because they don’t matter. Sorry, Yankees and Phillies fans, but it’s pure entertainment, with no actual ramifications. That’s why I think it’s so pernicious when people treat their other associations in life as though they were sports teams.
Political parties are alliances of people whose core values and ideas are similar enough that they feel they can cooperate to create the best policies for the country. There’s nothing magical about them. There’s no pledge you’re forced to take when you register as a member of one party that you have to support their platform forever and ever, even if you change your mind. The way it’s supposed to work is, you make up your mind about your political philosophy and then you try find a party you’re willing to ally yourself with. And perhaps you don’t find one. That’s okay too.
As for religion, I don’t know. Obviously my perspective is that we should all be searching for truth, and we shouldn’t be afraid to abandon a belief system if we find it to be false. Also obviously, though, most religions teach that there is something “magical about them,” and that you have to believe things that seem like falsehoods or you are committing a grave sin. Still, if your religious beliefs mandate that you accept that pi is exactly 3 or that ancient people sailed from the Middle East to the Americas (twice!) or that… no, I don’t know how to sum this up in a single phrase…. Anyway, my point is that hopefully there’s some line at which most people would say, “This religion cannot be true, and I will leave it to go look for a true one now.” (…And perhaps you don’t find one. That’s okay too.) Plenty of people do go on personal religious quests, and convert to new religions sometimes multiple times. I’m sure I’m not alone in my assessment that this is an important question to answer for oneself.
The real goal—in both these cases—is to pin down the truth about the way the world works and the way it ought to work. It’s not about cheering as loudly as possible for whatever interpretation of things you happened to hear first; that won’t lead us to a better society in any sense. If your team has good ideas, those ideas should be all the promotion you need. If people aren’t interested in your ideas, don’t look only to marketing some kind of “team spirit.” Sure, that’s useful to get people’s attention at first, but what you really need are better ways of explaining your ideas. Or perhaps it’s the ideas themselves that need a makeover.
Bipartisanship is overrated
Calm down, calm down. I appreciate the concept behind bipartisan efforts. I just think that maybe we get too preoccupied with the idea from time to time.
All the news coverage I come into contact with (radio, TV, internet, occasionally paper) about health care reform feels overblown. All the flurry over Olympia Snowe’s personal opinion on the bill even when a 13-10 committee vote would have been sufficient… and the uproar about Joe Lieberman promising to vote with Republicans…. Everyone’s asking, will there be enough votes in the Senate to pass the health care bill? But I’m asking, why are we panicking about this so much?
It takes a majority to pass regular legislation in the Senate. That means that our country has decided, if 51/100 senators think something should become a law, it ought to be a law. Presumably it’s ideal that 100/100 senators like a law, but we realize that is virtually impossible to achieve. The more votes the better, in general, but the bar is set at simple majority. Now, there’s this other little feature called the filibuster. Senators can block a bill’s passage by speaking for as long as they choose. However, if at least 60 senators support the bill, they can vote to invoke cloture and prevent a filibuster. This has apparently resulted in 60 votes being thought of as the new bar. You don’t have “enough votes” unless you have enough to prevent a filibuster, and you assume that your opponents will filibuster if they have the opportunity. Hence all this talk of bipartisanship, and all the coddling and cooing over any Republican senator that sways leftward in a gentle breeze momentarily.
This is nuts. There are 60 senators in the Democratic caucus. Yes, one of them is Lieberman, but even 59 is still substantially above the simple majority requirement. There are plenty of Congresses in which 59 Senate votes for something would have indicated an astounding bipartisan effort. But it really doesn’t matter what party everyone is from. If that was the real requirement, the Senate could just be made up of one Democrat and one Republican (or if you like, a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, and a Green?), and as soon as the two (or four) of them agreed on something, it’d become law. No, what actually matters is that each senator represents their constituents, and having “enough votes” to pass a law is a proxy for having enough popular support for that law to make it valid democratically. The fact is, having close to 60 senators in one ideological camp is a strong, meaningful statement that that ideology has majority support in the nation. We shouldn’t presume to need any more than that.
I’d like to see Harry Reid go ahead with his 59 votes, or whatever it is now. Maybe it’ll actually be 60, depending on Olympia Snowe’s present whimsy. But even if another Democrat or two doesn’t want to vote for it, and Reid can’t convince a handful of Republicans to break party lines… so what? Make them actually filibuster. Show the country that these 57, 58, 59 senators really want to provide a better standard of living for their constituents, really do want to do something about all the people who end up having to resort to the big plastic jug health care plan, but that these clowns would rather read from the telephone book for hours and hours and hours. Please, Senator Reid, make them read recipes and recite poetry for days.
Maybe the Democrats will flinch first, and the Republicans will win via the filibuster. But they’ll have made themselves look terrifically foolish in the process, discrediting their side for the next time around. (Just imagine the PAC ads… “Here’s a picture of a little baby denied health insurance for a stupid reason… and here’s Senator So-and-So who thought that the Senate had more important things to worry about.”) But maybe the Republicans will flinch first. It’s not exactly strawberries and cream, this whole filibustering experience. And maybe, just maybe, they’re all talk. Maybe they realize how unpleasant the task actually is, and would rather not actually go through with it. Do they feel as strongly against health care as Strom Thurmond felt against racial integration? We ought to find out.
There’s a time to be conciliatory, to “reach across the aisle” and try to build consensus. But when something as important as health care reform is dragged out so long, and no compromise seems to be good enough, it’s time to go for it with whatever you’ve got. Whatever we’ve got now ought to be enough.
Bad news from Israel
I heard this story on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, and can’t get it out of my mind. Sheera Frenkel reports:
FRENKEL: Every night, David, who asked not to be called by his real name, patrols this and other neighboring Jewish settlements. His mission is to find Arab-Jewish couples and break up their dates.
DAVID: (Through translator) My heart hurts every time I see a Jewish girl with an Arab. It’s extremely upsetting. I asked myself: How did we get to this situation? How did we descend to this level? It is a serious step backwards, in our eyes.
FRENKEL: David is the leader of a group of vigilantes that goes by several names, including Fire For Judaism and Love of Youth. They say they number between 30 and 40 men and patrol the streets each night. Officially, they’re on the lookout for any mixed couples, but T.S.(ph) a member of the group who often serves as David’s driver, says the problem lies solely with Arab men dating Jewish girls.
This is terrifying and unbelievable. Perhaps you, like me, have been lulled into complacency thinking that the days of Jim Crow laws and the like are behind us as a species, but this is happening today, in a modern democracy. Now, there will always be some crazy isolationist fringe groups out there, and many people certainly do disapprove of their own children dating outside of their own culture or religion. It’s not hard to imagine that a couple people would feel so motivated as to walk around outside and yell some threatening things. Some people are jerks. But while this isn’t Jim Crow, it’s happening on a large scale. In Pisgat Ze’ev alone, there are apparently around three dozen men on patrol every night, and this is happening in many other cities as well. According to NPR, at least one of those cities possesses a government-run dating patrol, not vigilantes. This is serious.
On another level, this terrifies me because the Jews I know are American Jews, and I think that the result (in the US at least) of years of oppression and minority status is that Jews are particularly aware of the importance of protecting minority rights and personal freedoms. Somehow, it seems that if anyone would understand the danger of society embracing an ideology like that of these dating patrols, it ought to be the citizens of the Jewish state.
I haven’t been able to find any evidence that any high government officials in Israel have come out opposing these patrolling mobs, or of police crackdowns against them. I hope they get their act together on this soon.
Afghanistan v. Iraq
There seem to be more and more people questioning whether we should be sending additional troops to Afghanistan (or, for that matter, questioning if we should still be there at all). I’m not sure where I stand on this, though I definitely think it’s good that we’re having the discussion, rather than just accepting the assumption that the US should stay there. That said, it appears to me that there are two main reasons we would stay. The first is a selfish national security motive. If we left, the argument goes, the Taliban or Al Qaeda or something similar would take over and send more terrorist attacks to the US and Europe. It seems really clear to me that on that front we can get 90% of the benefit of being there very easily by just maintaining a base from which we can shut down training camps, sending drones over the area, and so forth. A really large presence wouldn’t be necessary. We wouldn’t be able to get rid of the longer-term threat by giving everyone there a great modern education, but that is unlikely anyway.
The other argument for staying is a moral one. We invaded and took over the country, and now we have an obligation not to leave until doing so doesn’t mean horrible things for the lives of people there. This has been a primary reason given for us staying in Iraq, and I actually think it’s a much better argument there than it is for Afghanistan. Iraq was, I think most people would now agree, a war of choice. It might have seemed like it would have national security benefits, but it definitely didn’t seem like we were forced into it. The only thing that made it seem urgent was the supposed WMDs, and the US clearly has to take responsibility for that error. The only act of war, as far as I know, was the shooting at planes patrolling the no-fly zones, and no one seemed to think that that on its own deserved anything more than the occasional retaliatory missile strike. Afghanistan, though, was clearly a case of self-defense. The government there (through its close relationship with Al Qaeda) used its territory to train people to attack the United States. That’s an act of war, and the government was a continuing threat. There was little alternative than to displace the government.
Consider the analogous situation for an individual. You’re attacked by a mugger, but happen to have a knife on you and would them in self-defense. Are you liable for the medical bills? Of course not. Now, it’s easy to point out that a country isn’t a unitary actor, and that many of the people in Afghanistan who would be hurt by the US leaving (say, children and women) had no role in allowing the Taliban to control the country. I still think, though, that the analogy works perfectly well. Say instead of wounding your attacker, you had to kill him, and that the attacker had a child. Would you be obligated to take care of the child? Clearly the child did nothing wrong and is in a horrible situation. To some extent, any random passerby (or better yet, society overall through the government) would have an obligation to help, but I don’t think your obligation is any greater because you’re the one that killed its father.
I think the same applies to Afghanistan. If the reason we’re staying is more humanitarian than self-interested, we have to acknowledge that the Afghanis in question have no greater claim to US resources than to the resources of any other country, and that Afghanis in horrible poverty or lacking liberty are no more deserving of help than any other poor or oppressed person anywhere else on the planet.
Health care and crazy people
I am far from the only one who is kind of baffled by the recent spurt of crazy nutjobs showing up at town hall meetings and likening the Democratic health care plan to some sort of secret Nazi plot. Lots of people have tried to explain it, and I think a lot of the explanations have a bit of truth to them. There is a segment of society (largely white, rural, religious, etc.—typical Republican base) that is losing the power that they recently had, and they’ve bought into a mythology where they’ve always had that power and deserve to retain it. (It’s the “real America” stuff, along with older things like praise for “the heartland.”) To some extent, any remotely liberal policy Obama chose to start out his administration pushing for would have led to claims that he was “stealing our country” and things of that sort.
I think, though, that health care reform—particularly the way it’s being done now—is an issue particularly favorable to conspiracy theorists and nutjobs. That’s because it’s incredibly complicated. In some ways, if Obama was actually proposing nationalized or single-payer healthcare, it’d be better in this respect. Those are huge changes to the system, but at least they’re straightforward and easy to understand. Instead, what we’re getting is a messy patchwork system of fixes for the status quo. People are confused. Telling a crowd of people that you’re going to set up a “health care exchange” doesn’t really clear up the confusion. Saying that instead of a public option you’ll have a “health care cooperative” doesn’t help either. These phrases are stand-ins for complicated, messy policy proposals. Even if someone was willing to take the time to explain it, they’d be incapable, because there are several different plans floating around and no final proposal. Each plan differs on huge issues of policy. The same piece of policy might be good in one plan and bad in another, depending on what other policy decisions are made elsewhere in the bill.
I understand the general outlines of the proposals, but I definitely don’t understand all the details. Even I am not willing to put in the time necessary to understand things well enough to make a truly intelligent judgment on the matter. I support the reforms for two simple reasons. First, I know very well that the current system is awful. Second, I trust those proposing the reforms much more than I trust the opponents. Those reasons aren’t going to be enough to win over enough of the population to push borderline senators into voting yes. Democrats need to agree on some plan that at least 55 of them in the Senate are ready to vote for. Then, they need to consolidate all the proposals, come up with more clear ways to explain what they’re proposing, and really go out campaigning for it. If the public doesn’t know what’s going on, some are going to tune out, some are going to revert to partisan predispositions, and some are going to go batshit insane. That is not a good way to make policy.
A note about Arlen Specter
I’ve had this draft sitting around for a few weeks now (end of the semester was hectic, what can I say) so bear with me while I beat a horse that’s been long-dead in the political blogosphere. It may be old news, but it’s a good example of game theory in a political context and, I think, still interesting to think about.
The basic issue is this: Specter doesn’t want to run as a Republican, because he doesn’t think he could win as a Republican but does think he could win as a Democrat. Most of what I’ve heard is either criticism of this sort of selfish motivation, or resigned praise that he’s at least being honest about having a selfish motivation. But isn’t this* exactly the right way for a politician to behave?
We expect companies to pursue profit, not because profit has a moral quality on its own, but because it acts as a measure of real worth. If people like what you’re selling, they’ll buy it, and you’ll make money. A company that relentlessly pursues profit will (most of the time) be trying relentlessly to make as many people happy as possible.
Similarly, we expect politicians to try to get themselves elected and reelected. “He’s already campaigning for reelection” is often said with derision, but there’s really nothing wrong with it. Trying to get elected means trying to make your constituents like you and want you in office. True, there are some limits on this with respect to corruption and voter superficiality, but in general, we respect elections as a mechanism of choosing who deserves to hold political office. If you’re a politician and you don’t think that doing what you’re doing will get you reelected by the people you represent, we expect you to change what you’re doing.
However, if you really think that what you’re already doing is the best way to be a politician, it’s reasonable to have a bit of integrity and resist changing it. Maybe you should try to make the case to the public that your ideas and actions are worth valuing, worth electing. But let’s suppose for a moment, just hypothetically, that that isn’t working. That perhaps you really believe in strict measures for national security and in the right of women to choose abortion, and the majority of voters who elected you don’t understand how those ideas could go together.
What would we expect a company to do, if in the same situation? What if they can’t convince anyone to buy the high-quality aprons they sell, except for those couple people they heard of one time who tied them up into some really nifty handbags for themselves? Should they close up the apron shop and look for other careers? Or should they make the most of the fact that with a slight repackaging of the product they already make, they could reach a brand new and much larger market for their goods?
Arlen Specter knows he’s providing valuable services to his nation and his constituents, but he can’t convince enough PA Republican voters of that. He paid attention to polling and noticed that PA Democrats really like the job he’s doing, and also noticed that that had something to do with the fact that his ideology and actions would be at home in the Democratic party. So Specter had three choices. He could keep doing the governing he thinks is best, and get voted out of office by Republicans who don’t appreciate him and Democrats who’d rather vote for someone with a D by his name. He could compromise his ideals and vote the way that the Republicans want him to vote, just to keep his job and the R by his name. Or, he could agree to write a D by his name and get the chance to continue his work using the ideology he believes in.
Sure, I suppose it’s selfish, but we’ve constructed the system in such a way as to make personal interests and public interests motivate each other, so acting selfishly is not immoral. Specter isn’t somehow rigging the system in order to trick the American public into voting for him. He’s trying to make himself into the sort of politician the American public actually wants to elect. What more could we ask for?
* I realize some other political games were played after the initial announcement of Specter’s party switch. I’m not talking about those, mostly because when I wrote this, they hadn’t happened yet. At any rate, I want to talk about the initial incident and people’s reactions as a case study.
Carnival of the Elitist Bastards XI
Welcome to the eleventh edition of the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards. CEB is a monthly blog carnival that celebrates the intelligent and the exceptional, and decries willful ignorance and uniformity. Some may call us elitist bastards, but we prefer the term “awesome.” I thought the submissions this time fell into three general categories: politics/policy issues, science and other fact-related pursuits, and everyday life stuff. Let’s dig in:
Elitist law, politics, and policy
Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds explains the Employee Free Choice Act. Not content to listen to generalizations from the Wall Street Journal and others reporting on the proposed legislation, she read it herself in order to break down what it really says and does.
Mike at The Big Stick discusses why a revolving door for teachers isn’t so bad. He argues that alternative certification procedures would allow more qualified and excited individuals to become teachers, and that’s better than the status quo for students even if these new teachers leave after a few years for other jobs.
Cujo359 at Slobber and Spittle writes about what history can teach us, specifically regarding the Obama administration’s public statements compared to the outcomes of Obama’s policies as president. King John didn’t write the Magna Carta on a whim alone one day; the British aristocracy held him accountable and pushed for the type of government they wanted.
Just the elitist facts, ma’am
John Pieret at Thoughts in a Haystack deconstructs statements from the Discovery Institute’s Michael Egnor, who argued that intelligent design ought to be taught as science since most Americans are creationists. John points out that this reveals not only that the real agenda behind ID is creationism, but also that ID proponents seem to think science is merely a popularity contest.
Dana Hunter at En Tequila Es Verdad recommends two books by Richard Dawkins on understanding evolution. The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable deal with the somewhat non-intuitive idea that complex beings could have “randomly” evolved. Understanding what the word “random” really means is one of the most interesting parts.
Blake Stacey at Science after Sunclipse mourns the death of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section. They’re going to push a few science-related articles into the business and lifestyle sections if they fit, both space-wise and content-wise it seems.
Two people sent in links about Jon Stewart’s takedown of financial reporter Jim Cramer on The Daily Show. After a week-long feud between the two (Stewart mocked CNBC in a brief segment and Cramer took it upon himself to defend his show “Mad Money” and the station as a whole), Cramer came to Stewart for an interview. It’s pretty painful. Dana Hunter walks you through the gory details. Cujo359 turns it into a case study about how being ignorant of the facts and encouraging ignorance in others spells disaster for anyone, whether you’re a TV personality or not.
Living the elitist life
George at Decrepit Old Fool suggests that we do one impossible thing every year — not literally impossible, but seemingly impossible, something we can’t do yet and maybe never imagined we’d try. He’s learning to ride a unicycle. What will you do?
Blake Stacey also alerts us of the coining of the word TeXgefühl. If you’ve ever written in the typesetting system LaTeX or its variants, you’ll appreciate the notion that it takes a particular instinctive sense to get it right. My TeXgefühl has been gathering a bit of dust lately, but I think the existence of a word is motivating me to get it back in gear.
Here at It’s the Thought that Counts, I wrote about the Spread the Word to End the Word campaign (against the word “retarded”) and why it’s misguided. Respect for others is important, but I think we shouldn’t confuse respect with blind political correctness.
That wraps up CEB XI. Thanks for stopping by! It’s been an honor and a pleasure to host. See you next month!