Wednesday, November 17, 2004
PETA Calls for Greater Sensitivity to Fish
In response I provide the following image:
I call it "Forty-two pounds of Kiss My Ass!"
Sport fishermen have done more to protect fish than PETA ever will because we love to fish and will pay to support our joy. The dilettantes from the dimension of lame cannot sustain their protective efforts because their joy is the denial of other's choices, an essentially parasitic function. Fish are better protected by those who derive their livelihood from them than those who salve their consciences by being scolds.
The fish I'm holding in the picture got that big by eating other fish, not tofu. I caught it after a struggle involving the cooperation of five vertebrates sapiens for over an hour. I was sensitive to the fish in question, otherwise it would have spit the hook out!
Hat Tip: Jeff Goldstein
Friday, November 12, 2004
Anti-Protean Nationalists
A tremendous intellectual failure on the part of American liberalism is the assumption of European tolerance. This assumption is predicated on a belief among American liberal intellectuals that all things European are superior. While it is argued that having more than a hundred different kinds of cheeses is conclusive evidence that France is a tolerant nation, it ignores a central truth that the French do not import another hundred kinds of cheese. While the Europeans are not entirely intolerant, they are not actually deeply tolerant. It would be more accurate to say that in the latter portion of the Twentieth century, Europe adopted the Dutch model of being benignly intolerant.
What confronts the European Union today in general and the Netherlands specifically after the death of Theo Van Gogh is the central hypocrisy that they are not actually promoting tolerance, they have instead banded together to enshrine benign intolerance. A huge portion of this is driven by the French realization that their cultural identity was disappearing under the onslaught of a massively more compelling culture distilled from the American melting pot. It must be tremendously galling for them to admit that American culture was approaching supremacy as an unintended byproduct of superior marketing research on Madison Avenue. The only way for them to combat the golden arches was to promote cultural isolation as a central facet of governmental operations.
Regrettably, the same governmental structure that keeps the 158th cheese of France competitive in the market also keeps sharply flavored Islamist intolerance active. There will be no assimilation as long as the melting pot is illegal in Europe. The price of cheese in Europe may be Islamist encroachment. There are solutions to this seemingly intractable problem, but they may require more courage and toleration than EU law allows.
Congratulations to Captain Van Steenwyk
Although I question the causality of his economic analysis in this post, I celebrate the root news. Now if he would ever get out of the hurricane magnet and visit his family, Michael and I could buy him a beer.
Boundaries of Tolerance in the Netherlands
Michael Totten is concerned that 40% of the Netherlands are not sufficiently welcoming of Islamic peoples, according to a recent poll. He says:
I understand their frustration. But they should hope Muslims learn to feel more at home in the Netherlands, not less. Dutch society is perhaps the most liberal on Earth. It’s not surprising that immigrants from a vastly more conservative culture feel alienated there.
The peoples of the Netherlands, a nation that's been welcoming for centuries, have done what they can to allow diverse groups to include themselves in their society. History shows them that not everybody belongs, though. Almost 400 years ago one intolerant group, who we call the Pilgrims, tried this culture, decided they didn't like it, and went on to build their own culture. Those folks did not get tolerant for a long time. As recently as fifty years ago, "Banned in Boston" was in common use, for instance. The Pilgrims decided to build something new to that was to their liking, and there was room and time for them to do so.
The Islamists are not interested in creating something new and their own; they are interested in destroying everything that is not old and theirs. I do not blame the many diverse people of the Netherlands for accepting the reality that not everybody belongs and that not everybody can change to accept others. Their history shows them that this happens. Regrettably, there is not time and space to allow the Islamists the chance to make something for themselves and to succeed or fail on their own merits. We do not have the luxury of ignoring the intolerant in a world where the technology to make WMD is readily available. There is no fence good enough to make genocidal intolerants good neighbors.
This is not on the Netherlanders to fix. Nobody from Amsterdam flew a jet into Mecca; somebody from Saudi Arabia flew jets into the most important buildings in New Amsterdam. The method the Netherlands are taking is the one they have been taking since creation. They are opposing totalitarian rule and inviting anyone who favors intolerance to leave. This is a method that works for them. I think it is time for us to respect their culture.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Sincere Concern for Democracy and its Antithesis
The lawyers the Democratic Party paid to observe the ballot counting all went away after the results were released at eight last night, but it took the volunteer Republican observers some time to figure this out because they were so busy observing the process and so used to the opposition being thin on the ground. The central thing to keep in mind about this is that the most optimistic Republican in the building only dreamed of getting 33% of the Multnomah County vote in his wildest flight of fancy. There never was a serious race to win in the Portland Metro area; there was only a contest to put in a respectable showing. The observers from the Republican Party were there to make sure that an honest election functioned. The lawyers from the Democratic Party were there to impose the form of an open election was observed. Once the initial results were released, it appears the process became irrelevant to them.
The Republicans in Multnomah County total about 89,000 of the 429,000 registered voters, slightly less than 21% of the electorate. President Bush got 27% of the county's votes in the initial results last night, not enough help to carry the state, but a respectable performance in this bluest of blue regions this side of Berkeley. The funny part about all this is that four years ago Nader pulled more than 5% of the county vote and Bush got about 21% here. The Republican candidate got a smaller percentage when Nader was in the race in Multnomah County. That has just got to suck a whole lot for some people.
Kerry just conceded and one can only hope that this loss will show the fundamental vacuity of injunctive interference in the electoral process. Playing pettiness games with the Democratic lawyers was a tedious and pointless activity that I hope will not be repeated in four years. The willingness of Democratic money sources to continue to shovel funds down rat holes in pursuit of non-existent rewards remains to be seen. The willingness of vastly outnumbered Republican supporters to show up and put in long hours to help keep things honest appears undiminished. Last night the Republicans had no problem producing as many polite, orderly, and intelligent observers as they needed to observe every aspect of the process. These were mostly just folks who wanted to keep things honest in a profoundly partisan county. The failure of the Democrats to keep anybody in the building after the initial results were released was the best indicator of their sincerity.
A brief note of congratulations to John Kauffman Director of Elections for Multnomah County and his superlative staff who have worked long hours in conditions made horrible by the interference of litigators without an abiding interest in the honest exercise of democracy. These people did their best to maintain their dignity and integrity under terrible stress. Last night, long after the litigious opportunists had departed the building and the last (drunk) procrastinator had staggered through the door to vote, he and his exhausted staff were still working hard to keep democracy functioning.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Observing the Election from a Tester's Perspective
Yesterday I learned that I trust my vote to clear eyed ladies who cast their first vote for Wendell Wilkie more than I do young lawyers in short skirts who cast their first vote for Bill Clinton. I also learned how to scare young lawyers in short skirts from the room with an even tone and a reasonable statement. I spent election eve at the Multnomah County Elections office observing the process and doing my part to maintain healthy stress on the system, and keep an eye on the lawyers trying to screw it up. While there I got to see the entire process, and the hash Democratic lawyers have made out of the system of observing it.
For those of you who don't know me, I'm a systems tester currently between contracts who grew up in a fiercely partisan Democratic family. I did eight years in the Navy and left during the Clinton administration after a couple of pretty hard tours on tin cans. As a civilian, I leveraged my self-taught PC skills into a series of testing jobs at Intel and Microsoft. I've found enough bugs and written enough test plans to be able to spot deficiencies (bugs) in a process almost instantly.
After the election I will discuss the biggest single potential bug I saw, but the biggest existing bug in the election process I saw yesterday was the presence of lawyers as observers. Any test will affect the process being tested to a greater of lesser extent, but some testing methods are so invasive as to invalidate the results. Before the 2000 debacle, retired persons from across the political spectrum acted like tribal elders in preserving the traditions of the vote; in Oregon that system worked for generations. One thing good testers learn is that working systems rarely need to be messed around with.
Regrettably, this year Oregon became a swing state, and the tremendous amount of money flooding into the election economy resulted in the presence of lawyers from the Democratic Party showing up to observe the vote count. Oregon votes by mail and the ballots have been collecting for weeks and observers have been present watching the process to ensure that everything stayed above board. The observers from the Republican Party are predominantly mature ladies with clear eyes and a firm commitment to democracy. One lady I met yesterday was born before women got the vote and cast her first vote in the 1940 election. The observers from the Democratic Party are mostly young lawyers who have spent some time in DC. Because the Republicans showed up early with plenty number of people, the opposition lawyers made their presence felt by establishing boundaries where observers could and could not be and in what numbers and what representations.
The notion that democracy exists at the sufferance of injunctive relief is a new one that doesn't sit well with the sharp eyed ladies who have been watching the process for generations. One of the problems created by the lawyers is that many of the places where ballots are handled cannot possibly be observed from the newly defined observation locations, and the observers can only see one small set of the available ballot handling boards. In Oregon the mailed in ballots are contained within a secrecy envelope inside an envelope signed by the voter. At tables called "Boards" four people, predominantly retired ladies, from different political affiliations open the secrecy envelopes, review the ballots for quality of marking, and order the ballots for machine counting. If necessary, the ballots are enhanced, in accordance with state law supporting voter intent, by these people. As observers, our job was to count the ballots we can see being enhanced in order to note any particular trends and to help keep things honest. At the elections office, there are more than thirty Boards, and the observers can now only keep their eyes on at most eight of them from their newly imposed observation locations. In the interest of "fairness" we have lost transparency.
After watching the Boards for a while I went upstairs and relieved the fellow watching the front. Out front the people who had problems with their signature or their ballot were obtaining a ballot and voting. At one in the afternoon of the eve of the election, people were lined up halfway down the block with no shelter from the rain. Observing this process, I realized that the people engaged in voter fraud were most likely to be caught right at this stage. As a systems tester, I figured that the bugs in the registration system should be caught right at this point, and that the bad people bent on distorting the system should be rolled up by the police. Instead of a law enforcement problem, this was being handled as a bureaucratic function, however.
When the Democratic Party types surrounding me were gushing about the willingness of people to stand in line in the rain to vote, I let slip that I would feel better about the process if sometime in the next 20 hours somebody was hauled out of the building in handcuffs. It appears the notion that voter fraud should be punished acts upon Democratic lawyers like garlic does to vampires. If you are ever surrounded by Democratic lawyers, say in a clear voice your belief that voter fraud should be treated as a crime.
The great realization from yesterday's experience was that for the political operatives, reality was established only at elections. Those of us who test systems and methods more frequently, who are confronted with a more harsh reality than a malleable electorate, make political types distinctly uncomfortable. The central threat of non-activist bloggers discussing political matters from a variety of perspectives is that we are not accountable to that electorate and so we can make uncomfortable statements without fear of refutation. We can risk offending voters by arresting them for fraud because we have nothing to lose; in fact, we have a lot to gain from this behavior.
I hope that we have a clear decision tonight because the legalistic imposition of fairness has diminished transparency in Oregon, and probably elsewhere. They have muddied the water in an attempt to control the vote and the best result free people can hope for is that this effort was futile. I hope this election establishes a reality that lawyers cannot control the will of the people. A decisive win by Bush will re-establish the notion that power flows from the people to the government, without the consent of the trial lawyer's bar.
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