Wrestling With Religion: What GOP Strategist Steve Schmidt Doesn't Understand

(and why this matters around the world)
Also, a post that must be read entirely to be understood.

Caricature from "Le Rire" regarding a 1905 French law on the separation of Church and State)

John McCain's campaign manager Steve Schmidt made some news of his own the other day with his speech at the Log Cabin Republicans' national convention. The Huffington Post summed it up very well; "Steve Schmidt, McCain Campaign Manager: Religion Could Kill The GOP". Unfortunately the Huffington Post has also, in summing up Schmidt's point, made a better one than Schmidt himself did. To quote;

"If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party," Schmidt declared. "And in a free country, a political party cannot be viable in the long term if it is seen as a sectarian party."

Whatever you think about the policies and beliefs of the Republican Party, this statement is incorrect.

First, in a technical sense, "Christian Democratic" political parties are extraordinarily common throughout the globe, and are frequently dominant in European Union nations. The international organization of Christian democratic parties, the Centrist Democrat International (CDI), is the second largest international political organization in the world (second only to the Socialist International). A majority of of the nations that the average North American would acknowledge as being democratic have extremely strong Christian Democratic parties. There is plenty of reason NOT to want any party with religion embedded directly of course, but nobody should pretend it is impossible.

In the second place, Schmidt's statement about the proper role of religion in politics is logically unsound. This is a pretty strong statement on my part, and such criticism would be unfair if the statement was taken casually, but policy at his level has to treated precisely.

What Schmidt is saying, is that an issue, or proposal that arrives, or is taken into the public sphere, is not to be filtered by religious convictions. Obviously in this context there is no question of Republican positions being formally certified by some specific religious hierarchy. What he is talking about is the religious sensibilities of Republican Party members.

To Schmidt these religious feelings should be ENTIRELY private; they should not influence or veto a proposal. Who however, imagines that a person who is egalitarian, who feels that people should not starve, who feels that everyone should have medical care, or who is a feminist, is NOT going to allow their feelings about what is right, appropriate and ethical, to influence their positions on political issues?

Anyone who claims that their convictions, of whatever type, are not going to influence their position on political issues, either simply doesn't know how to FIND their convictions "with both hands", does not in fact, hold the convictions that they claim to, is LYING, or, worst of all, is "just following orders". Each and every political party is going to have to take the deeply held sensibilities of their members into account.

But why should a liberal, or someone who has never even visited the US think that this point is so important? To be sure, everyone has convictions, a nice and politically pius sentiment, but isn't this fundamentally still a defense of theocratic politics?

In fact, Steve Schmidt's comments indirectly reveal exactly why religion threatens the future of the Republican party, and also why theocratic religious politics are such a problem around the globe. Schmidt asserts that the sequence;

public issue - policy proposal - voter evaluation according to personal convictions & beliefs

is corrupted if the religious convictions of the voter affect his or her REACTION to a policy proposal. This idea is wrongheaded to be sure, but the reaction to these notions is often equally undesirable. The theocrat simply reverses the sequence to;

personal convictions and beliefs - policy proposal - public issue evaluated by political calculation.

Instead of the government AVOIDING policy that offends the convictions of the populace, one gets religious convictions regurgitated ONTO the public, by the government. This theocratic regime tramples upon anyone with divergent beliefs, and the impure vessel of government stains, rots, and fouls what is pure in religion. If the public and if political parties of any nation fall into a false choice between a 'morals-free-zone, and theocratic rule, then that nation or party is in for a very hard time.

Real friends, and real empathy. On mandatory niceness and bullying policies.

I was curious to see how the New York Times article Gossip Girls and Boys Get Lessons in Empathy would be received. I should not have expected much I suppose, since the comments are in fact, moderated, and most responses are favorable of this scheme to the point of being promotional.

One writer argues that the students are likely to become resentful of authority, but this is the only direct attack on the whole scheme. Frankly I doubt that additional resentment is much of a serious concern in that some sort of expectation of "good behavior", however defined, is a universal element of society, and distinctive resentment is most likely when the social expectations are illogical. Empathy and kindness toward others are certainly not illogical. Research projects involving interviews with the elderly and a survey of wheelchair ramps might be resented as extra work, but it is difficult to see how they are more onerous than the other annoying projects that students are tasked with.

There are other very serious problems with the 'forced empathy' schemes however. Take the personalized party sweatshirts for example. At Scarsdale Middle School, the main school featured in the article, it is apparently common for students to give out commemorative sweatshirts at big and significant parties like bar or bat mitzvahs. Popular students are naturally more likely to receive plenty of such invitations, and so, with the goal of combating feelings of exclusion, the Parent Teacher Association, is trying to prevent students from wearing their personalized sweatshirts on the Monday after the big party weekend.

There are a couple of problems with this idea. The obvious one is that not going to the party is plenty of reason to feel excluded, and most students around the United States are able to exclude, or be excluded without the aid of embroidered cue sheets.

A more significant and subtle problem is that this proposal, and many other egalitarian and inclusive social engineering schemes can disrupt the formation of alternate social groups. I cannot comment on the rest of the globe, but in the US at least, most schools have the "popular kids" to be sure, but there are many other social cliques that purport to disdain the social butterflies and the jocks.

Since cliques who hate the popular kids are very often more numerous than the popular kids themselves, it is clear that the complete authenticity of their scorn is often in question. Without a doubt, many members of the less popular cliques would abandon their introverted, nerdy, or acne-spotted comrades for the athletic, the gossipy and the beautiful, but the fact remains that literally millions of students find durable and lasting friendships that are far better tuned to their own personalities and interests than would be the case if they were invited into the most social circles. Artificially linking the so-called unpopular with the popular might well do more to elevate the status of the popular, and lower the status of anyone who is not consumed by socializing, than it would eliminate socially inflicted pain. As students work their way through the high-school system they are forming their own interests, personalities, and identities, and it is crucial that these identities and interests are tailored to the individuals that bear them. Turning a 'band geek', 'chess nerd', or music fanatic into a sycophantic hanger-on, cackling and groveling at the behest of the popular is no improvement.

The superficiality of the PTA focus on sweatshirts also raises notable questions in my mind as to whether formal "empathy" programs and their ilk are going to be better at improving the social lot of less popular students, or whether they will rather, allow socially dominant bullies and snobs to anchor their elevated status with adults. At this point in social history, it is often the case that the 'popular' kids are at best, semi-popular with the society as a whole. Obvious obnoxiousness triggers memories of bullying and contempt endured decades before by adults. Such memories are not so powerful that a teenager may be assured of adult understanding however, and formalized kindness programs seem very likely to provide the socially skilled and popular with all the necessary tools to camouflage their scorn and contempt toward less popular students. Whatever the results, you are likely to see them if you live in an English speaking nation. Anti-bullying schemes have been spreading throughout the English language diaspora nearly as fast as anti-terrorism laws.

Quasi-Socratic Dialogues on the Web - Re:The appeal of violence and morbidity (in Death Metal music)

The appeal of violence and morbidity

What is it about death metal (and, I suppose, related things like black metal and the horror genre) that is so appealing? The gory, morbid album art, the nonsensically ghoulish lyrics (see, for example, Suffocation's "Infecting the Crypts," which throws around a lot of morbid imagery while not making any actual sense, lyric-wise), the sinister and impersonal atmosphere of the music... what's so appealing about it?

Sure, if you wanted to, you could make a case for death metal as nihilistic art, or the music of industrial Man facing his own mortality, or blah blah blah. Death metal can be taken seriously when it's done well, but there's no denying that the violence, gore, and other assorted unpleasantness associated with the music serves as a "hook." However seriously this or that band presents the material, whatever artistic aspirations they may have, there's no escaping the impression that these musicians - and fans - dig this stuff on a less intellectual level. It may be art, and it may have something important to say, but the morbidity and violence are appealing on their own.

Why? What do you think?

To say that the appeal of Death Metal is its morbid associations is very much like saying that "THE" reason that a person likes particular music is always because of its lyrics.

If there is any better candidate for a musical genre where the lyrics are NOT the only, or main draw, I should like to know what it is, and if the specific meaning of the lyrics is not necessarily important, why should we assume that gory themes are crucial?

Virtually all of the Metal sub-genres have a distinct sound, and the fact that there are so many Metal sub-genres is testament to the importance of specific audio styles for Metal fans.

Confronting, or embracing mortality, or the simple thrill of morbid topics may well be what draws SOME Death Metal fans to the genre, but for many people, what distinguishes Death Metal from other types is a particularly uncompromising approach to music. Thematically, or musically, Death Metal WILL go there. "There" may titillate and thrill some, and as we all know, will drive away others, but the unbounded quality of the music is crucial in its appeal to most fans.

As to the question of the "intellectual level" that Death Metal is operating on, this is a matter that is hopelessly entangled in "high art" vs. "low art" pretensions. Death Metal is obviously not especially popular in "fine arts" circles, but "nonsensically ghoulish lyrics" could also be described as evocative, atmospheric, and non-literal lyrics, and as such could well be described as being more abstract and intellectual than a love story narrative song. The dark themes of Death Metal are well enough represented in the so called fine arts. Take a look at this description from the Wikipedia article on Francis Bacon, one of the the most important English artists in the 20'th century.

Bacon's artwork is known for its bold, austere, homoerotic and often violent or nightmarish imagery, which typically shows room-bound masculine figures isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds.

Barring "homoerotic" this description would not stand out in
Death Metal. Moreover, neither would much of the art. Take a look at this Bacon, and keep in mind that this is universally accepted as fine art.

British And French Nuclear Sub Collision Could Have Released Radiation

An accident of this sort is an accident all right, but contrary to official claims, is not a simple coincidence. Submarine accidents of this sort (of which there is a long Cold War history) occur when one, or both of the submarines are stalking one another. In playing cat and mouse, one of the submarines may accidentally overtake and collide with another.



Such stalking can be a way of gathering information about the other sub, preparation for war, or simple machismo.



All submarines have a unique acoustic signature, and submarines specialize in detecting such, so it is unlikely that at least one of the subs did not know that the other was an ally. Because of this, the only reason that cat and mouse stalking would be justified, would be as practice for war; a military exercise of sorts.



Naval collisions between nuclear vessels are not an acceptable outcome in an exercise, whether that exercise is officially planned (doubtful) or is informal, and one or both of the submarine captains should be, and are likely to be punished. Both navies are trying to cover up the nature of the accident however, because there is real irresponsibility involved.
About Nuclear Weapons
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Death by a thousand cuts: micropayments and journalism

Wikimedia Commons

Pressed by the economic crisis, weakened newspapers are beginning to crumple, with The Tribune Co. and Minneapolis Star Tribune bankrupt, and the New York Times in hock to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Naturally, this is alarming to those in the media, and commentators are weighing in with schemes to solve the problem.

What is interesting, and probably alarming for those people who like newspapers and journalists, is just how many crucial points these rescuers miss, and not just crucial shortcomings of newspapers (and there are plenty) but crucial points about the proposed solutions themselves. Time Magazine's cover story is as good a place to start as any. In Walter Isaacson's piece How to Save Your Newspaper, he suggests that the solution is micropayments.

The key to attracting online revenue, I think, is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment. We need something like digital coins or an E-ZPass digital wallet — a one-click system with a really simple interface that will permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge.

The dubious viability of micropayment schemes is not exactly unknown to internet users. Has Isaacson somehow failed to get the message? Apparently not.

Admittedly, the Internet is littered with failed micropayment companies. If you remember Flooz, Beenz, CyberCash, Bitpass, Peppercoin and DigiCash, it's probably because you lost money investing in them. Many tracts and blog entries have been written about how the concept can't work because of bad tech or mental transaction costs.

From the sound of things, he has in fact been burned already by this notion. Surely then Isaacson has a new angle on the subject; a new and reformed micropayment system? Unfortunately not. Isaacson has been burned, but refuses to acknowledge that the stove is hot.

But things have changed. "With newspapers entering bankruptcy even as their audience grows, the threat is not just to the companies that own them, but also to the news itself," wrote the savvy New York Times columnist David Carr last month in a column endorsing the idea of paid content. This creates a necessity that ought to be the mother of invention. In addition, our two most creative digital innovators have shown that a pay-per-drink model can work when it's made easy enough: Steve Jobs got music consumers (of all people) comfortable with the concept of paying 99 cents for a tune instead of Napsterizing an entire industry, and Jeff Bezos with his Kindle showed that consumers would buy electronic versions of books, magazines and newspapers if purchases could be done simply.

It would seem very reasonable to define "bankrupt" as meaning that people do NOT need or want your services enough to pay for them in their current form. "But things have changed" is precisely the sentiment that has brought a form of prosperity to Las Vegas, and the reverse of prosperity to millions of individuals throughout history. To be sure, necessity IS the mother of invention, but invention means CHANGING a mechanism to obtain a result. Needing or wanting are not, as several billion desperately poor people around the globe can tell you, the same as invention.

Not only is this solution illogical, but Isaacson has committed a minor journalistic atrocity by slapping us, yet again, with overly mentioned fads like the iPod and Kindle. Most of the 'Dot Bombs" were popular with somebody, but just HOW popular matters a great deal. It is far from clear that the Kindle for example, can be viewed as a substitute for anything, rather than being an additional income and distribution opportunity, being supplemental just as web advertising is for newspaper publishers, and a convenient means of distribution, just like impulse-buy bookracks at gas stations, druggists, and grocery stores.

Isaacson should note that Steve Jobs and the iPod (which are more significant in music than the Kindles is in publishing) have NOT in fact, stanched the bleeding in the record industry. The public has little enough to worry about in this, because the record industry does not in fact contribute especially much to the content and normally musicians get only a small portion of the income from album sales, but a newspaper publisher is not 95% a groupie hanger-on like a record label.

The real problem with Isaacson's suggestions however, is not in his overenthusiasm for the iPod or Kindle, but is rather in his failure to recognize the lessons that their example presents. The best example is in the most important of the two; iTunes and the iPod. Apple did NOT by any means "permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge." To the contrary, the iPod was successful PRECISELY because they did not permit price variation, but sold all songs at a flat fee (Apple apparently intends to tamper with their model, but the business was built on flat fee).

Looking at iTunes, we also have a big hint as to why past micropayment schemes have not worked well. SOME people are willing to cough up 99 cents for a song, although this is certainly not the only source of music ultimately supplied to iPods. Any song purchased can be listened to again and again, and more importantly, if you pick your songs with foreknowledge, you will WANT to listen to the song repeatedly. This is NOT true of most newspaper articles. Most of the things that micropayments could be used for have been overpriced. To be fair to Isaacson, he is not completely unaware of the problem.

Under a micropayment system, a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough.

This is not exactly a bad analysis, but it isn't enough to work with either. A person buying a newspaper has traditionally expected to be making what is essentially a micropayment that will provide them with a broad selection of current news and entertainment. Nobody was willing to pay for individual articles in the past, and there is no reason to expect that this has changed. A dime for a days access to the paper would not be unreasonable, at least if the buyer can easily download individual articles in handy, can-be-passed-around-freely form, but access would need to be at minimum, access to the entire paper. Everyone who has read newspapers or magazines is used to a headline or title story not being as interesting as expected, and the fact that magazines and newspapers are sold to readers, while tracts are sold only TO proselytizers rather than BY newsstands shows that article by article sales are not a viable business model.

Icelandic Minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, Would Be World's First Gay PM

It is probably true that Johanna Sigurdardottir's homosexuality would be more noted and more controversial in the US than it is now in Iceland, but it would be incorrect to suppose that this is the only characteristic that would feature in news coverage of any similar figure in the US.



While former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey attracted nationwide attention almost entirely based on his sexual behavior, his scandal plagued administration was notable for little else. His sexual orientation played a crucial role in a sexual harassment AND corruption scandal,



Sigurdardottir by contrast has distinguished herself as unique in 'standing up for the little guy' and with so long and distinguished a record, of course Icelanders will focus on these characteristics that actually affect them.



We are not confined to idle speculation regarding American tolerance, because the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee is Barney Frank, an openly gay congressman. Frank has been reelected several times and holds a coveted chairmanship despite being caught hiring a male prostitute and misusing the power of his office to benefit them. Frank has recently attracted nationwide news coverage because of his role in overseeing the banking system, and the attention has been focused on his job, not his sexual orientation. Sigurdardottir's ascent to Prime Minister is still historic, but a close look would suggest that this ascent has more to do with her hard work and humanitarian efforts than disproportionate tolerance in Icelanders.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Completely mad reasons to support Apple and Mac

So the new online only PC magazine decides to celebrate 25 years of the Mac. This makes a fair amount of sense because the Mac did after all, introduce the GUI to general personal computing, and also because PC Magazine needs all the corporate support that they can get (why do the cynical reasons always come to mind whenever Apple comes up). To make an Apple product look good in PC Magazine, the writers and editorial board write articles describing their wonderful experiences with the Mac. The crazy thing is, the Mac is praised as ACTUALLY WORKING with iTunes!

But here's a great argument for Macs: If you have an iPod or iPhone, you need one. iTunes won't make your Mac run slow or conflict with your database software.

In a seperate article, he details further.

Then in 2002 , my wife got me my first iPod. It "worked" with my homebuilt PCs with FireWire cards, but there was something…lacking. I had to reformat the iPod way too often, and iTunes was a resource hog on the PC. I had to get a Mac so that I could have some stability in my music player. I was back to an Aluminum PowerBook G4, first a 12-inch then a 15-inch. The Intel transition of Macs happened in 2005, and now I carry both operating systems everywhere I go: a MacBook Pro that runs both Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard.

And this is written by no less than the Lead Analyst for the Desktops team at PC Magazine Labs! Even a technical expert, and indeed a technical expert cultivated by tech companies, has to put the term 'worked' in quotation marks when describing iTunes.

Should I mention at this point, that I HATE, HATE, HATE, Quicktime media player and its hellspawn iTunes?

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Quicktime, and what appears to be about a quarter of an operating system that comes with it, is the most invasive program that I have EVER run across, with the PARTIAL exception of pure malware.

People have been wondering lately why Steve Jobs is so emaciated looking. His problem is simple. The poor man simply installed iTunes/Quicktime on a PC while touching the back of the computer, or otherwise making a connection. The body of Steve Jobs is not Apple proprietary, and who would imagine that being made according to God's standards was good enough?

Now all this might be taken to imply that I disparage Apple and the Mac. To the contrary, I think that any system that can inspire loyalty against the prevailing Wintel quasi-monopoly AND inspire loyalty DESPITE functioning so poorly with Wintel products of any sort (I assume that Quicktime and iTunes will work properly on a Mac) , must have something going for it! I must admit to a certain amount of puzzlement as to what exactly this IS, but there must be something.

Any time that I have used a Mac, I have been annoyed by the unique path required to make any adjustment. This is actually praised in the PC Mag Widows vs. Mac point-counterpoint article. To quote "Windows has too many ways to do things". This strikes me as very odd, since virtually everyone has misplaced something at home, and then been forced to spend a disproportionate amount of time hunting for it. I fail to see how replicating the "lost it and I need it NOW" experience is desirable. Perhaps a Mac person out there can tell me what the special ingredient is. Oh, and yeah, I know about Vista.
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Vista SUCKS!

Anyway, having complained about Quicktime/Itunes, I should list a couple of programs that might help if they don't work for you. First item is a substitute for Quicktime; the QuickTime Alternative. This program is supposed to be a replacement for Apple's compu-cancer, and it is updated on a regular basis. In the past at least, it did not necessarily work as well as a person would like, but it doesn't have to. It isn't as invasive as the real thing.

The second program that I would recommend, if you want to remove Quicktime from your system would be Revo Uninstaller. QuickTime likes to leave chunks of itself on your system when you remove it, and if you run Revo on a more thorough setting, it helps to strip the invasive, interferes-with-other-programs monster from your system. Running the thorough clean takes time, but it is worth it!

Unfortunately, by the time you detect that you really have a problem, there is a good chance that you will already have tried to uninstall Quicktime, and have discovered that the removal was ineffective. For this problem, you might try CCleaner. This useful utillity will remove garbage of all sorts, not just that left by QuickTime/iTunes, and though I have yet to come across a program that completely undoes the damage of 'Apple's revenge', this will often solve the problem.

Finally, there is an old program that might or might not work; QuickTime Killer. This 2005 era program was designed to stop QuickTime from placing itself in the system tray as an autorun program. As of this writing, you can still download the program, but I have never used it, and for obvious reasons, I do not wish to infect my system to test whether or not it will work with the latest versions of QuickTime. If you are trying to tame QuickTime, but can't remove it, you might try the program.

Since so many people have had problems with Apple's media-invader, I would be very happy to hear any other suggestions, or means of removal. You can of course, put your experiences in the comments, but I also would be happy to publish a guest post if someone wants to write one.