President Obama’s declaration of a national emergency regarding swine (H1N1) flu reminds me of the Saturday Night Live fake ad for robot insurance. Obama’s declaration was described by the AP as having “the goal … to remove bureaucratic roadblocks and make it easier for sick people to seek treatment and medical providers to provide it immediately.” This raises the question, why were there bureaucratic roadblocks in the first place?
Similarly, in the SNL fake ad for robot insurance, Sam Waterston is the spokesman for Old Glory Insurance Company. Their policy offers to protect anyone over the age of 50, regardless of previous health condition, against robot attacks. One elderly woman in the ad wonders: “I don’t know why the scientists make them.”
I guess we have bureaucratic roadblocks to medical care for the same reason scientists make robots that attack old people and eat their medicine for fuel — so that someone can protect us against these problems.
The good news, according to Mickey Kaus, is that the spread of the swine flu might not be as bad as media outlets are reporting.
It’s a bad call. No doubt about it. Of course, I mean introducing instant replay into baseball as well as the call in the Angels-Yankees game.
Yes, the ump should have called both Yankee players out rather than just one because neither had a foot on the bag when tagged. But to introduce instant replay to fix this or other errors in baseball officiating would make things worse than the problem it is meant to correct.
Officials are human and will make mistakes. In the absence of corruption or bias (and there is no reason to assume that the men in blue are generally corrupt or biased), errors will be distributed randomly. In the long run, they should even themselves out and no team should have a particular advantage.
It’s true that a particular call made at a particular moment will seem to alter the outcome of a game, series, or championship. But the truth is that every call in every game has some minute effect on the outcome of that game and potentially a series or championship. If any call went a different way, players and coaches could make different decisions about pitches to throw, ways to swing, players to substitute, etc… Life is a string of choices; changing any one — no matter how small — might change all subsequent ones — including big ones. In general, the best we can hope for is that errors in officiating are rare and unbiased.
Introducing instant replay might correct some errors, but it certainly wouldn’t be practical to try to use it to review all potential errors in officiating. And since any call — even the one not at what seems like the pivotal moment — can alter the outcome of the game, the outcome can still be altered by errors unless all calls are reviewed. And even if they are reviewed, there can be errors in the review. In short, there is no way to remove errors from officiating.
Even if we tried to reduce error by reviewing certain calls, we couldn’t always know which calls really would influence the outcome of the game. What’s more, instant replay reviews significantly slow down a sporting event and interfere with the play and enjoyment of that sport.
People need some perspective. It’s a game. It’s meant as entertainment. We should no sooner have instant replay reviews of baseball calls than judges’ votes in So You Think You Can Dance. Let’s just assume that officials are acting in good faith and errors are a matter of chance, just as chance can influence whether the ball hits a seam and bounces in a strange direction.
But I suspect that discomfort with chance in life is part of the demand for instant replay. To many people randomness feels like injustice — especially when that randomness goes against their interests. There are no accidents in this view of the world, someone is responsible for everything that happens, and all wrongs must be righted. An unwillingness to accept the reality of chance can lead to a headlong pursuit of justice that causes much more injustice.
Eighty-one percent of all teachers approved the deal, which leaves “teacher vacation, nine paid holidays and six teacher planning days … untouched.” Teacher benefits, including pension and health benefits also remain unchanged. In addition, “[t]he new agreement also guarantees no layoffs for two years and postpones the implementation of random drug testing for teachers.”
So, teachers work 9.4% fewer days for 8% less pay, full benefits and two more years of guaranteed employment. It’s not a bad deal… as long as you are a teacher. Kids will be shortchanged, parents have to scramble for daycare, and the state gives away more than it gets in savings.
The only risk for the teacher union in doing this is that we might discover that student achievement is unaffected by 17 fewer days of school. If that’s the case why not cut 34 days of school for 16% less pay? Or maybe get rid of it altogether.
There is a common theme in who has been selected to be nominated for the Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year Award. For the most part, the nominees have, like Al Copeland, done something to improve the human condition by improving our material pleasure. Steven Henson gave us delicious ranch dressing. Debrilla M. Ratchford saved our aching backs by developing the roller bag. Ralph Teetor gave us the smooth ride of cruise control. Only Fasi Zaka distinguishes himself from the other nominees in that he was nominated primarily for his contribution to liberty by ridiculing tyrants.
Our next nominee, Mary Quant, has improved the human condition both by adding to our material pleasure and by promoting liberty. Quant is credited with the invention of the miniskirt. She also popularized hotpants and patterned leggings.
The contribution of these inventions to material pleasure requires no explanation. But unlike Henson, Ratchford, and Teetor who primarily sought to improve material pleasure, Quant was also seeking to expand liberty. Women’s clothing has often been designed to confine women — to limit their liberty by limiting their ability to function in the world.
Quant wanted to do more than decorate women, she also wanted to liberate women to be able to participate fully in the world. As the Wikipedia entry puts it, Quant saw the miniskirt as “practical and liberating, allowing women the ability to run for a bus.”
And if you don’t think women’s clothing can be an assault on liberty, how about the requirement in many Islamic societies that women wear burkas? Imagine running for the bus in this.
After triumphing over Nazism and Communism in the 20th century, liberty faces a new threat in this century — radical Islam. This threat is being counteracted (we hope) by diplomacy with potential allies, force against enemies, and high-minded speeches to remind all that the cause of liberty is right and the cause of tyranny is wrong.
In addition to all that, there is another essential element in the arsenal of liberty — ridicule. Tyrants of all stripes, in addition to being monstrously cruel and evil, are also almost always laughably, pathetically, and outrageously ridiculous.
Charlie Chaplin realized this when he mocked Hitler in The Great Dictator. In Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick portrayed the communist leader as a weepy drunk and the war-mongering general as a paranoid suffering from ED. South Park has portrayed Osama Bin Laden as the slapstick LooneyTunes villain, Wile E. Coyote. The Daily Show and Colbert Report make their living off of puncturing the pomposity of politicians. Humor may not be the best weapon against tyrants, crooks, fools, and all other kinds of politicians, but it is a very important one.
But Chaplin, Kubrick, Parker, Stone, Stewart, and Colbert have mocked tyrants from the safety of the free world. Fasi Zaka does it from the front lines. Zaka is a Pakistani radio DJ — a shock-jock — and host of a TV news parody show, News, Views, and Confused. Given long stretches of military rule, government censorship, and death threats from extremists, Zaka can’t and doesn’t address oppression in Pakistan head-on. Instead, he flirts with the issues, poking fun at the Taliban and corrupt and incompetent Pakistani leaders with social satire more than political criticism.
For example, Zaka mocks the Taliban for smelling bad rather than for beheading opponents and suicide bombings. As an LA Times profile described his approach:
So when a guest host, a character named Mr. Enlightened Moderations, poked fun at fundos , slang for Islamic fundamentalists, it was not for any extreme religious views but for poor dress sense, aversion to after-shave and limited use of deodorant. “You sound like a fundo,” he’d say accusingly to callers. “You doesn’t even wears a deo, smelly boy.”
By mocking tyrants and their followers Zaka makes them seem uncool. Making them uncool may limit their power more than a speech on their logical errors. Remember that young men were drawn to Nazism in part because they wore shiny boots and neat brown shorts. It was a struggle whether people would perceive fascism as the trend of the future or a group of buffoons singing Springtime for Hitler. Buffoons who smell bad don’t attract girls, so young men are much less interested in movements that are uncool.
Not everyone agrees with Zaka’s humorous approach:
Some critics say Zaka is squandering a golden opportunity to be constructive and foster moderation in a confused younger generation. “It bothers me when people do silly entertainment shows when we really need people to make a difference,” says Mani, another radio host.
Radio hosts don’t have to be boring and didactic to get their message across, counters Zaka, pointing to frequent discussions on extremism, women’s equality and the violence sweeping Pakistan. “They presume preaching is the way for change,” he says. “It isn’t.”
Zaka can be serious. He is, after all, a Rhodes Scholar who was educated at Oxford. And he regularly writes op-eds with more standard political criticism. But it is his humor and ridicule that are really advancing the cause of liberty.
I make no claim that Fasi Zaka is as funny as Charlie Chaplin, Steven Colbert, and the others. The parts not in English seem even less funny, but you can check out a clip of his TV show here:
And like Chaplin, not all of Fasi Zaka’s political views are necessarily desirable. Again, Zaka is worthwhile because he mocks bad guys, not because he’s a sound political analyst.
While Zaka may not be the funniest of these satirists for freedom, he is clearly one of the most courageous. Making crap of the Taliban and military dictators is a real contribution to improving the human condition and makes Fasi Zaka worthy of a nomination for the Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year Award.
We here at JPGB are proud to announce nominees for the Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year Award. The award is meant to honor a person who has made a significant contribution to improving the human condition.
“Al Copeland may not have done the most to benefit humanity, but he certainly did more than many people who receive such awards. Chicago gave Bill Ayers their Citizen of the Year award in 1997. And the Nobel Peace Prize has too often gone to a motley crew including unrepentant terrorist, Yassir Arafat, and fictional autobiography writer, Rigoberta Menchu. Local humanitarian awards tend to go to hack politicians or community activists. From all these award recipients you might think that a humanitarian was someone who stopped throwing bombs… or who you hoped would picket, tax, regulate, or imprison someone else.
Al Copeland never threatened to bomb, picket, tax, regulate, or imprison anyone. By that standard alone he would be much more of a humanitarian. But Al Copeland did even more — he gave us spicy chicken.”
With that introduction, I would like to present the following nominee for the Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year Award — Steve Henson, the inventor of ranch dressing.
Brian Kisida has submitted this nomination with the following support:
Like the man who the Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year Award is named after, this year’s first nominee has also benefited humanity by stimulating our taste-buds.
The first nominee for 2009 is: The creator of ranch dressing, Steve Henson!
Steve and Gayle Henson opened the horseback-riding tourist attraction Hidden Valley Ranch in Santa Barbara, California in 1954. One of the things guests at the ranch enjoyed was a special salad dressing Steve developed, and soon visitors were being sent home with to-go bottles of the tasty goodness we have all come to love. After starting a side business for the sole purpose of manufacturing his invention, Steve sold the recipe to Clorox for $8 million in 1972. At this time Hidden Valley Ranch was nothing more than a packet of seasoning that consumers had to mix with mayonnaise and buttermilk.
Today, ranch dressing is not only the most popular salad dressing, its pervasiveness as an all around condiment is nearly unmatched. It’s splendid as a dip for fresh vegetables, fried vegetables, French-fries, and chicken-wings. And it’s not uncommon for ranch to add some zing to baked potatoes, hamburgers, and even pizza. In fact, I dare you to think of something that isn’t better with ranch.
Thank you Steve Henson, for the gift you have given to all of humanity.
I know, I know. I’ve been writing a lot recently about special ed vouchers. But if you’ve missed it or are just looking for a convenient one-stop place to get the latest info, arguments, and evidence on special ed vouchers, check out the piece Stuart Buck and I wrote for the current issue of Education Next. It’s filled with links, so it should be a useful resource for anyone interested in special ed vouchers.
Controversies surrounding the celebration of Columbus Day raise a number of interesting questions. Unfortunately, many of the new answers offered are at least as simplistic and historically false as the established answers they are meant to replace.
It is true that Europeans confiscated land on which other people lived, sometimes intentionally killed those people through war or disease, and more often unintentionally killed those people with disease (this was, afterall, before the development of the germ theory of disease or any practical means to control its spread).
While there is no doubt that Europeans confiscated land in the Americas from other people, we almost always fail to ask how those people came to possess that land. We regularly refer to the people from whom Europeans confiscated lands as Indigenous Peoples or First Nations, but those terms are clearly inaccurate.
Indigenous means “having originated in and being produced, growing, living, or occurring naturally in a particular region or environment” and first is defined as “preceding all others in time, order, or importance.” Neither term correctly describes the connection between the people whom the Europeans displaced and the land from which they were displaced. Those peoples neither “originated” from nor preceded “all others in time” on that land. Instead, those peoples confiscated that land from other groups of people who preceded them, often through war and disease. And those displaced people confiscated the land from people before them, and so on.
It would be more accurate to describe the people from whom the Europeans confiscated land as the “T-1” Peoples because they were the people in possession of the land in the prior time period. And those T-1 Peoples confiscated the land from T-2 Peoples, who in turn took it from T-3 Peoples, etc….
This all raises some very messy and complicated questions about how a People can have a legitimate claim to a land. You can’t just declare that history starts whenever it suits you. Being a T-1 People does not make them the “first” or “indigenous.” There was a history before that with its own prior claims of ownership.
Just to illustrate this messiness — much of the land around the Dakotas was in the possession of a group of Sioux known as the Lakota when large number of European descendants arrived in the area. The struggle between these European-Americans and Lakota culminated in the massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee and their confinement to reservations. This chain of events was filled with suffering and cruelty inflicted on the Lakota and has been cited by activists to justify claims of expanded control over land in that area by the Lakota descendants.
But how did the Lakota come into possession of that land before large numbers of Europeans arrived? The Lakota can be traced to the Great Lakes area (and almost certainly came from somewhere else before that). They were pushed west by the Ojibwe as the Ojibwe were pressured by the westward expansion of the fur trade. The Mandan and Hidatsa blocked the Lakota from crossing the Missouri river, but eventually their resistance was weakened by disease and the Lakota were able to conquer the grassland in the Dakotas. In doing so they also pushed west the Shoshone, who were struggling for that same valuable grassland.
So, who has the rightful claim to that land? Is it the Lakota, because they were in possession of it before large-scale arrival of Europeans? What if descendants of the Shoshone, Mandan, or Hidatsa showed up, could they legitimately claim the land as their own? What about the descendants of the various peoples who preceded all of these groups?
Only simple-minded college students and slogan-shouting activists could say that Europeans stole that land from the indigenous people, massacred its people, and ought to give it back. The problem is that all land has been stolen countless times, with round after round of massacres, and an endless string of confusing claims to rightful ownership. Being the T-1 People is hardly a sufficient justification for the legitimate possession of land.
If college students want to think seriously about these issues, they should discuss multiple, practical criteria for legitimate ownership of land, which might make them appreciate some of the messy compromises that explain status quo arrangements.
Regardless of what one thinks about President Obama’s strategy for producing greater world peace, I think all can agree that it is a strategy that has yet to produce meaningful results. It seems quite strange that the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to someone who hopes to produce peace without having achieved much of anything in the way of actual peace.
There’s been no change in the situation with regard to Israel and the Palestinians. There’s been no (positive) change with respect to Iran’s nuclear ambitions (and there have been some considerable negative developments). The situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have deteriorated significantly over the last year. Other than a bunch of speeches, what good has actually been accomplished?
I just have to repeat that Al Copeland, the founder of Popeye’s Chicken, is more worthy of this kind of prize. At least he actually did something to improve the human condition — like give us spicy chicken.
Posted by Jay P. Greene 
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