As you all know, everything is swell in America. Our coffers overflow with doubloons from our white-hot economy. Everyone has the sort of job where even your secretary's assistant has an Aeron chair. Homeless people Google for best Thunderbird prices on 3G 64 Gig iPads. The government has solved all of our domestic problems and now casts about to find new ones to solve.

Or that's what I assume. I mean, if that's not the case, then I'm not sure why the government is spending time and resources to investigate and prosecute John Stagliano.

To be indelicate, Stagliano is a pornographer. To be specific, he makes movies with names like "Milk Nymphos" and "Storm Squirters 2: Target Practice." I don't think you need to Google to guess what those are about. It's definitely not my cup of tea (though I suspect some of you gentle readers might be into it.) I don't need to view it to know it's not for me.

But your federal government believes that such material — filmed using consenting adults, not involving children or animals, shipped through the mail to consenting adults — poses a threat to society that should be addressed through the criminal law. That's why the FBI ordered some of Stagliano's movies through the mail, arranging for them to be shipped from Baltimore to Washington D.C., and then indicted him in D.C., charging him with violation of federal obscenity law. I have uploaded the indictment; you can read it here. The government's trial brief — which lays out the elements of obscenity and the law that the trial judge will very likely follow (since federal judges have a disturbing habit of following the government's arguments about elements, evidence, and procedure rather slavishly) is here.

As Nick Gillespie at Reason notes, the trial judge has disallowed expert evidence about the literary, social, political, or scientific value of the work, meaning that it will be up to the jury to apply the familiar Miller test:

1) Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

2) Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the material depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive manner; and

3) Whether a reasonable person, viewing the material as a whole, would find that the material lacks serious literary, artistic,
political or scientific value.

As the government notes rather triumphantly in its trial brief, it matters not under Miller that the material was produced by consenting adults and is sent only to consenting adults for use in their homes.

Nick Gillespie notes that the statutory maximum sentence, if Stagliano is convicted, is 32 years. That's misleading; if he's convicted, the sentence is likely to be near or below the United States Sentencing Guideline range, which by my calculations is probably a few years. But we're still talking about an obscenity.

No, not the movies. I'm uninterested in whether they are "obscene" under the Miller test, which is part of the Puritan cultural heritage of a country that once banned Henry Miller and James Joyce — boring old plain-text books that didn't even have a DVD special features menu — for obscenity (and not, as you might have thought, because they were completely unreadable). No, I'm talking about political obscenity.

It is patently offensive, appealing to sick prurient interest in the sex life of strangers, and totally lacking in any redeeming value to pursue and prosecute people for distributing consensually-produced expression from one free person to another. A government that thinks it needs to be putting people in jail to protect you from your desire to watch dirty movies featuring consenting adults is a government that thinks it knows what is best for you to read, to watch, to say, to think. It is a government committed not only to addressing tangible things, but intangibles like your moral fiber. That government — and the power it confers upon its minions, like Assistant United States Attorneys Brent Ward (chief of the appalling Obscenity Task Force) and Pamela S. Satterfield — are vastly more dangerous than dirty movies could ever possibly be. The mere fact that the government thinks that now — during economic and social chaos, with strained resources — is a good time to spend your tax dollars pursuing pornographers is an excellent indicia of the danger. Government likes power, and wants more. The power to decide what you should and shouldn't watch is a mighty one.

Make no mistake — I'm not making a point about moral relativism. A breast milk fetish grosses me out. I have no problem judging it as creepy. But I'm not afraid of people with a breast milk fetish. I am terrified of the sort of sick freaks who believe it should be their job to pursue and punish those who produce fetish videos and distribute them to consenting adults. I am repulsed by the mindset that it is job of the state to protect the moral fiber of its subjects by jailing those who produce things we shouldn't (in the view of the government's minions) read or view. I want to throw up when I see that some people inhabiting a job I was very proud to hold are crusading to limit what grown-up free people can watch.

There are perverts at large in this case. But they aren't John Stagliano and his customers. They are Brent Ward and Pamela S. Satterfield and the entire Obscenity Task Force. They have a sick and prurient interest in the sex lives of strangers. Their behavior is patently offensive. Their work has no redeeming social value. What is worse, they want to make 12 unsuspecting residents of Washington D.C. into perverts as well, by putting them on a jury and asking them to judge the sexual interests of strangers.

I don't have a lot of faith in the residents of Washington D.C. And juries across the nation seem too willing to let the government make them into perverts. But I hold out hope that this jury will display some modesty and decency and Nanny-state chastity, and nullify.

Edited to add: here is another great Reason post on the case, with this excellent quote from a dissent by Justice Brennan:

I would place the responsibility and the right to weed worthless and offensive communications from the public airways where it belongs and where, until today, it resided: in a public free to choose those communications worthy of its attention from a marketplace unsullied by the censor's hand.

I love the internet.

Unlike many of you, I remember days when home internet access was limited to a few superbrains and no one else.  (A middle school friend's dad had it.  He designed the electrical systems on the ALVIN submersible, as well as a lot of stuff he refused to talk about even to his son.)

And only the internet could have made possible what I read this morning: supremely erudite Cato Institute scholar Walter Olson, commenting on Lindsay Lohan's Twitter feed.  Though the two seem to be ideological twins, Olson is critical of Lohan's research methodology on federal sentencing policy.

In the 1970s you had to read underground magazines, circulated only in certain Chicago book and record stores, to enjoy this sort of thing.  Today it's available to everyone.

Are you an atheist, or an agnostic? Have you ever expressed an atheistic or agnostic view — or for that matter openly questioned some tenet of mainstream Christian faith?

If so, you are an abuser. You are offensive. You are cruelly assaulting decent Christians. You might as well have taken a dump on the Bible.

Just ask Chrissy Satterfield, who writes — possibly as a term of probation, possibly as karmic retribution for molesting children in a past life — at the WorldNetDaily.

Chrissy Satterfield is delighted. She's aglow. Why? Has she seen the naked be clothed? Has she seen the hungry be fed? No. She's thrilled because some pro-atheism signs were vandalized. See, those signs carried hateful, aggressive, anti-Christian propaganda:

Now, you might not see the anti-Christian hate. But you haven't been trained to look. See, this sign blatantly omitted the phrase "Under God" from its excerpts of the Pledge of Allegiance, thus defying God and insulting his devoted servants, President Eisenhower and the 1954 Congress, which recognized that invoking God would further distinguish us from those evil communists. Thus, referring to the pre-1954 language is a slap in the face. It's like burning a cross — in a bad way.

So naturally Chrissy Satterfield is happy that people are defacing these anti-God assaults. She begins "Never would I encourage vandalism," but apparently means "never" in some way that only super-special Christian insiders can interpret. Because she then goes on to encourage and celebrate vandalism. Because open expressions of atheism are an assault on Christianity and Christians, and deserve retribution. Hence:

Atheists have been vandalizing my beliefs for years, so it's about time the shoe was on the other foot.

. . . .

We will only take so much before we stand up against our oppressors.

. . . .

This billboard campaign was a calculated insult to Christians, and the atheists thought it was appropriate. That shows you how spiteful this organization is.

. . . .

Well, let's see them ignore this.

. . . .

At last a silver lining. Someone actually made a difference without broadcasting his name to the world. The vandal stood up for what he believed in and said, "To heck with what anyone thinks." I find it quite refreshing considering all of the negativity our country has accumulated lately. It's nice to reflect on something positive, especially during theFourth of July weekend and the days that follow. The timing was impeccable.

Chrissy Satterfield has also mastered rhetoric and logic. Thus she recognizes that because most people would think it despicable and cowardly anonymously to vandalize free expressions of belief with which you disagree, it must actually be heroic to do so, because you're defying social convention that you're a cowardly loser:

I would like to extend my deepest thanks to the man or woman responsible for this vandalism. I appreciate the action you took. Thank you for reminding me that I'm not alone. It took a lot of guts to do what you did – and the fact that you haven't stepped forward to take credit makes you a hero. It shows everyone that you are more devoted to the message than you are to the spotlight. I encourage you to keep your cover. Don't give the secular world a reason to call your name; instead, let them call for our God.

That's some fancy dancing.

My first instinct is to despise Chrissy Satterfield and the mindless thuggish theocracy she represents. But on reflection, my second instinct is to pity her. I derive an enormous amount of comfort and strength from faith. But what sort of feeble, flabby faith does she cling to? When she goes to church, or prays, what sort of impotent, cowardly, mewling God does she imagine? I can't conceive she believes firmly in a strong God, a powerful God, a loving God. If she did, she wouldn't be so pathologically threatened by people expressing views that differ from hers. If her faith were not meager, she wouldn't be celebrating vandalism of alternate viewpoints. People of genuine faith don't fly into a rage when someone expresses a different belief in their presence. People who fly into an inarticulate rage over differing viewpoints do so out of profound fear and insecurity.

Chrissy Satterfield and her ilk are the people who will say that you are "shoving your lifestyle down their throats" if you simply attempt to exist in their midst without conforming to their every stricture. They're the people who register any dissent, however mild, as an immediate threat. They're people who think that Christians are under siege in a country where they vastly outnumber everyone else, in a country where the populace would elect any previously despised group before they'd elect an open atheist. They are the people who think that being criticized is the same as being censored. They are broken people. But that doesn't make them any less dangerous to the rest of us. Having read Chrissy Satterfield's column, do you doubt for a moment that she could come up with a way to rationalize and excuse violence against people who believe differently than she does?

I'm not an atheist or an agnostic myself. But I am very fond of many of them. I believe that my relationship with God depends upon my treating them with genuine respect. Are a few obnoxious in their evangelical atheism? Sure. A few. But they no more define all atheists or agnostics than Fred Phelps defines Christians. And if the weapons in our armory of rhetoric are insufficient to respond to them, and we have to resort to vandalism in response to the merest, most imagined slight, there's something deeply wrong with us.

Via Radley Balko.

In the previous post in this series, I considered how the pose and three-dimensionality of a figural sculpture support its interpretation.  I noted that representational sculptures reside at the intersection of what is actual and what is virtual.  Because it is there and we can regard it in many ways, a statue shows us part of a projected fictional world and implies or suggests even more, unrealized in the sculpture, about that world.  The artist leaves its underdetermined fictional details to the viewer's imagination.

I described how different vantages on Michelangelo's David yield somewhat different understandings of the figure, and I explained how Bernini later carried vantage-based variations to an energetic extreme in his own David.  From these observations and others, I drew a conclusion: although we typically think of movies in relation to photography and painting, film (like its cousin, theater) is more akin to sculpture.

Asserting a close kinship among sculpture, theater, and film raises issues of technology, so I would like to recommend a way of thinking about technology and to illustrate how it can inform the interpretation of art.

In 1346, King Edward III Plantagenet crossed the English Channel to assert his claims on France.  After startling victories in Caen and Crécy, he laid siege to Calais.  Caen had fallen in a day; Calais, at the urging of King Philip VI Valois, held out for nearly a year.

Resisting a siege is a nasty business, and under the persuasive weight of disease, starvation, and want, the people of Calais finally decided to negotiate.  Edward offered terms: he would show mercy and not sack the city in exchange for the lives of half a dozen of its most important citizens– an offer generous to the many but harsh to the few.  After months of deprivation, they could scarcely reject the terms. But who would rise to give his life?

A leader did step up, and then another and another until six had offered themselves: Eustache de Saint-Pierre, Jean d'Aire, Jacques de Wiessant, Pierre de Wiessant, Jean de Fiennes, and Andrieu d'Andres.  Several were among the city's wealthiest and most influential figures, and all understood in some measure that the privileges of reputation presuppose honor and civic duty. They would pay the price for the survival of Calais.

Dressed in simple robes, draped in nooses, and bearing the keys to the keep and gates– all in accord with Edward's instructions– they marched forth from their city in the hope that by sacrificing their lives, they would save their people.  (The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.  Remember.) Did they hesitate, think twice, reconsider? Did they waver in resolve or press stolidly onward? Were they enraged at the enemy, at humankind, at God? Did faith and faithful action steel them against encroaching fear and doubt?

As a matter of historical record, the six heroes were eventually spared in a display of magnanimity.  However, at the moment when they rose to the occasion and walked off toward the enemy's camp to face their doom, the six had no reason to suppose their lives were anything but forfeit.  And it is that moment of bittersweet hope and despair that Auguste Rodin chose to depict in his masterful bronze of 1889, The Burghers of Calais.

Rodin, The Burghers of Calais

This work rather obviously participates in the same multi-perspectival dynamic that gave life to the statues mentioned above. Here, however, two differences appear, one physical and one thematic.  The physical difference is that this is a sculptural group rather than a single figure; the somatic complexity is much richer.  The viewer walking around this sculpture, moving toward it, or drawing away from it, will have the opportunity to notice many more changes in surface, shadow, and shape than even Bernini's David affords.

The idea of having multiple figures in a sculptural group is no novelty, though Rodin deploys the idea with sophistication.  What is perhaps more novel, or at least more typical of Rodin's culture and era than of earlier times, is the statue's exploration of psychology and emotion.  The thematic difference between Rodin's group and earlier sculptures is that the complexities of pose and spatial extension serve not so much to project an unsculpted fictional world around the figures, but rather to project a plurality of virtual mental worlds within or among the figures.

The statue does not imply or suggest what it might be like to depart besieged Calais and to march toward the encamped English.  Instead, it whispers, declares, and bellows what it might be like to ponder one's impending death and the seeming pointlessness of so many great, petty, proud, or pious achievements as one now prepares to march toward the moment of capitulation, humiliation, and negation.  Bernini invoked our imagination by showing us body and intentionality; Rodin invokes our imagination and empathy by showing us conflicted or decided minds, stable or wavering intentions, the threshold where prior dreams are dashed and a desperate hope in behalf of others takes their place.

Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, Jacques de Wiessant

Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, Jean d'Aire

Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, Andrieu d'Andres

The work invites empathy, analysis, and introspection by presenting unexpected or evocative details and juxtapositions to the exploratory viewer. From one vantage, it appears as if the six, as a cluster, are ambling toward their fate. From another, the group breaks into two as a leader in the front turns to encourage his companions in the back.

Rodin, The Burghers of Calais

Still another vantage reveals that half of the group is headed in the wrong direction, one clutching his head in despair or disbelief, and two moving as one in rhymed poses as they retreat to his aid or exhortation.

Rodin, The Burghers of Calais

The more a viewer explores and ponders the information this sculpture offers, the more the physical gives way to the mental. Historical imagination gives way to the presentation of concepts, assertions about human character, portrayals of vulnerability or resilience, considerations of individuality and community, and a host of other themes that speak to what it is to be fragile humans in a fragmented, fractious world.

Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, Pierre de Wiessant

To put it in a more useful way, The Burghers of Calais is a technology that amplifies our powers of inspection, introspection, empathy, and intention by providing a rich occasion for their exercise.

What, after all, is a technology? What is the etymological "logic of art"? As a matter of cultural and linguistic habit, we use the term "technology" to refer to certain classes of gadgets, machinery, or manipulation. Turn to the "tech" section of any newsfeed, and it will be replete with discussions of 4G cell phones or particle accelerators or biomodification. But this way of using the term "technology" elides the point worth emphasizing.

I prefer to emphasize that technology always stands in a certain relation to the people who use it: technology is anything that amplifies what the human body can already do. A club amplifies the ability to punch. A gun amplifies the ability to throw. A telephone amplifies the ability to shout. A motor vehicle amplifies the ability to run. Clothing amplifies the protective and insulating qualities of skin. Architecture, oddly enough, is large, static, communal clothing. Telecast media amplify vision or audition. The hard drive and RAM of a computer amplify the ability to remember and to calculate. And so on.

Any technology may be understood this way, and therefore anything that acts as a force multiplier on what humans in general can already do may be construed as a technology. What's more (and setting aside the mind/body problem), technologies may amplify not only the physical but also the mental. Formal logic is a conceptual technology that amplifies the ability to think systematically, to argue cogently, and to relate premises to inferences in a way that yields foreseeable material results from abstract plans. Language, one might say, is a distributive technology that amplifies the ability to define and organize human experience by engaging and uniting many people in ordered pursuit of those tasks.

So then, what of art? The fictional projection of possible worlds in text, paint, stone, metal, or light is a material technology that amplifies our ability to entertain and evaluate conditional counterfactuals. This, of course, is just a jargon-laden way of saying that representational books, movies, and art propose imaginary scenarios– in some respects like the actual world and in some respects different– and thereby provide a means for us to safely explore alternate paths of choice and action without the burden of non-fictional consequences. Vicarious experience, fantasy, imagination, escape– these are the crux, but they're complex notions best left for another post.

The key point is that we use technologies such as chiseling and bronze casting to make artworks, but an artwork is itself a technology by means of which we do something else. (Of course, it is a staple of aesthetics and art theory that a work becomes "art" at precisely the point where we abandon any notion of its utility. For reasons best deferred, I find that understanding of art inadequate, a historical curiosity of that stream of modernism that has its source in the Enlightenment.) But if the key question is how we are using art, then it is always already the case that the maker and the consumer of art are both embroiled in the creation and valuation of its meanings: active in some ways and passive in others, now resolute and now conflicted, egoistic but altruistic, insular or communal, in a grand negotiation of the terms of surrender and victory.

And if the consumer is always already as much a factor as the producer, then it just won't do to maintain that art is something that artists do for (or to) willing but passive recipients. It's not a question of whether the audience actively contributes to the art it finds enriching, but of how much, how well, and how.

As I write this, I hear many sirens. Sounds like the LAPD is rolling out patrol cars to the vicinity of the CCB, where a jury just found former Oakland Police Officer Johannes Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter, but not guilty of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, for shooting unarmed, prone, handcuffed Oscar Grant in the back. Mehserle claims that he mistakenly grabbed his Glock rather than a taser.

As I write this, it is still possible there will be riots. There's a lot of anger about the case, and about the verdict. A quick Google or Twitter search will show it to you right now. But I wonder: how many people who are angry know the difference between second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter?

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Only cavemen and troglodytes believe that the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution has any meaning.

For those of you who weren't home-schooled, the Tenth Amendment is a legal fiction.  Most historians call it an inkblot which James Madison tried unsuccessfully to wipe away from that precious parchment.  Some superstitious types see this when they read it:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

These are the same sorts of people who see images of Jesus on taco shells, or drug-induced visions of UFOs in the wilderness.

So of course, the Honorable Joseph L. Tauro, of the Federal District Court of Massachusetts, couldn't have meant it when he wrote today:

This court has determined that it is clearly within the authority of the Commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages among its residents, and to afford those individuals in same-sex marriages any benefits, rights, and privileges to which they are entitled by virtue of their marital status … The federal government, by enacting and enforcing [the Defense of Marriage Act], plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state.

Because that sounds an awful lot like saying that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a power, reserved to it alone, to regulate marriage among its citizens.  Which plainly cannot be true.

For what it's worth, I agree with Judge Tauro's holding, but I can't imagine how he could be correct in saying that a state, or individual people for that matter, has some power upon which the federal government cannot encroach without concluding that the Tenth Amendment actually exists, and means something.

Help me out here people.  I can't make head nor tail of what this Judge has written: commonwealth massachusetts v health and human services DOMA decision and gill v OPM DOMA decision

At least we can all agree about the statues.

Figuratively speaking, I'd kill to have a monument like that in my yard, blotting out the sun, towering over the neighbors, reminding them of my oppressive majesty.  It seems that I'm not alone, and some would do it literally:  Dozens of ruthless African dictators can't be wrong.

North Korea may be poor, but it has no shortage of cheap labourers and architects. In fact, Kim Jong Il has been lending them out to build monuments, palaces—even football stadiums—for leaders across Africa. In return, he’s getting foreign cash: the construction projects may have earned the country US$160 million since 2000 alone, the South Korean news service Daily NK reported.

The countries where North Korea has found the most success are also places whose leaders can relate to a self-declared Supreme Leader like Kim Jong Il: Equatorial Guinea, Angola and Congo, all repeat customers, whose presidents came to power when Jimmy Carter was in office.

Now I'm no fancy critic, but I know what I like.  And what I like is gigantic statues depicting heroism, triumph, and moderate nudity.  To a man who has his own collection of North Korean art, every day must be like living as the hero of an Ayn Rand novel.

Why are we here? I can't say. I certainly don't know why I am here. I don't know why you are here. It's a big philosophical mystery.

However, I think we can all get behind the concept that some people are here just to entertain us — some by design, some by character.

John Fitzgerald Page is such a man.

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What's the worst business idea, coming from a solid company, that you can think of?  Recently, the decision by Fannie Mae to promote mortgage lending to unemployed bankrupts comes to mind.  So does the decision by BP to use a blowout preventer known to be faulty in dozens of respects.  But then, this just-announced decision by Blizzard Entertainment to force players using its forums to disclose their real names comes pretty close.

Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature, a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it.

Um, no.  A thousand times no.

I have played and enjoyed World of Warcraft for years.  While I do not play it now, I am looking forward to the expansion coming later this year.  Or I was.

I'm content with my real name sitting in a credit card database, disconnected from the game itself, trusting fool that I am, the same way I'm content with certain other companies having my name.  E-commerce is risky, but life is risk, and it's convenient.  I am not, however, content with linking my name to my in-game account, where other players might access it, even though I won't access Blizzard's forums ever again.

Because I've been to the Blizzard forums.  I've read them.  I've written there.  And while I've been all over this wide internet, I'm confident in saying that you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the official World of Warcraft / Battle.net forums.

What could go wrong?  Someone will die, that's what.

Someone is going to get stalked through this tool because some whackadoodle fell in love with an avatar. Maybe the victim did a little roleplay and the stalker took it too seriously. Maybe the victim hurt the stalker’s widdle feewings during a message board discussion.  Who knows. Marriages break up (and reform) every day thanks to MMO drama leaking out into the real world. Blizzard should know this better than anyone. Good lord, you can’t go a week without an international advice column posting some complaint about a spouse or a kid that is too involved in WoW. That’s not Blizzard’s fault.

But “Here’s the real name of the person who sexxored you and then changed her mind/called you an idiot in front of all your friends/won’t talk to you because you’re creepy” will lead to something disastrous.

Of course the Blizzard forums will feature a prominent warning to users that by posting they are revealing their real names, just as Blizzard informs its customers of all important legal details about the game.  Prominently. And Blizzard will disclaim all legal liability arising from misuse of this information by third parties.

I'm not concerned about Blizzard's liability.  That's between the company and some very high-powered plaintiffs' attorneys who know that Blizzard's real business is printing money.  Blizzard will argue that it isn't responsible for all of the creepy psychopaths out there, and it isn't, legally or morally.  But the company is responsible not to jeopardize its customers in a fashion that, to a reasonable person, creates a foreseeable risk of harm with no compelling business reason to do so.

Someone is going to get killed as a result of this decision.  And it will be someone who didn't have to die.  Stalkers may be creepy.  They may be relentless.  Fortunately, in general they're not very smart.  But they won't need to be very smart to locate Jane Doe when her real name is posted right on the Blizzard forums, right above her in-game identity as Sexxina the Blood Elf huntress.

Though it will surely be weeks or months before someone is actually killed by a nemesis who takes the game into the real world, we can expect the usual internet mayhem of mockery, scorn, and digging up and publishing of private details to begin immediately.  World of Warcraft is a big game, played by children, people with all manner of psychological states, and people with, for instance, autism.  I personally know two people with autism who play the game.

Perfect prey.

Some gaming bloggers, more naive than most, are delirious with joy at this announcement.  "No more trolling on the Warcraft forums!"  And I suppose that's Blizzard's rationale too.  They can fire their forum moderation staff, secure in the knowledge that their forums are now clean, wholesome, and decent.

Of course if Blizzard is mistaken, its savings on staff will be passed on not to the shareholders, not to the customers, but to the lawyers.

So, a 5.9 quake out to the east of us, south of Palm Springs.

The swaying motion on the 40th floor of a tall building during an earthquake is disconcerting. If there's a quake — even a big quake — while I'm at home, it doesn't bother me much. I'm in a one-story ranch house. What's going to happen if it turns out to be the Big One? I guess I could get killed in the subsequent Mad Max scenario. But I'll live through the day.

Downtown, though, way the hell off the ground, it's a different story. If it's the Big One, we'll see just how good the engineering of this 70s-era building is. If it falls over, we won't be walking away from it. So it's kind of a long moment, waiting to see if the swaying and rocking is going to stop.

Edit: Revised to 5.4 from initial 5.9 report.

In my roughly 30 years as a gaming geek, I looked forward to (read: lusted after) no game more than the 1985 masterpiece Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. And it was worth the wait. Though the graphics (at which true gaming geeks sneer) remained primitive, the gameplay and verisimilitude represented a great stride forward.

There will be no more Ultimas. The last two were bitter disappointments, and their creator is now focused heavenward. Many gaming geeks like me look to indie shareware to enjoy such classic gameplay. It's never the same — not so much because of defects of the indie games, but because I'll never be a teen with no real worries or responsibilities again, whiling away careless hours on an Apple IIe.

Fortunately Ultima IV was released into the public domain a few years ago. And now you don't even need to track it down and make it work on your current operating system. Courtesy of Tales of the Rampant Coyote (an excellent indie crpg resource), I see that some enterprising and talented person achieved the awesome: he made the complete Ultima IV (complete with a few tweaks and improvements) into a browser-based flash game.

Marine recruit sues Corps for making him exercise in the summer.

Zachary Ryan Snow filed suit against the U.S. Marine Corps and recruiters Sgt. Compton and Sgt. Esquibel on June 28 in the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division.

Snow entered the USMC's Delayed Entry/Enlistment Program on Oct. 10, 2008. The program has a nonpay status and Snow was not entitled to any benefits or privileges.

Under the supervision of the Marine Corps, Snow participated in vigorous physical activity and instruction on July 9, 2009, in Denton.

"The temperature in Denton reached or exceeded 100 degrees Farenheit that day," the suit states.

Due to the high temperature, Snow claims he suffered a massive heat stroke and liver damage and had to be hospitalized.

Two thoughts:  Snow's attorneys, Evan Lane Shaw and Colby Vokey of Dallas, claim the Corps was negligent for failing to follow its "Operational Risk Management and Heat Injury Prevention Program," for failing to ascertain that Snow was a "disgusting fatbody," and for failing to follow "orders to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps."

Well I made up that last part.  Anything for a Gunnery Sergeant Hartman quote, you know.  In fact:

Where was I?  Oh.  The lawsuit!

First, Snow is going to have a high hurdle to leap in order to get over the Feres doctrine, a draconian rule that prevents even inactive reservists from suing VA doctors for malpractice.  The rule is good public policy in general, as we can't have soldiers suing generals for negligent command decisions and the like, but it's tripped many a soldier suing the government for negligence that seems utterly unrelated to service.

But perhaps as importantly, Texas law, which will govern the substantive rather than procedural aspects of the case, includes the defense of contributory negligence.  It utterly bars a claim in which the plaintiff is more than 50% responsible for his injuries.  Now if I exercise to the point of heat stroke in the hot sun I'm 100% responsible, even if others told me it would be a good idea, or that I had to do it.  But I'm not a Marine.

In pressing this suit, Snow will have to follow in the footsteps of that other great non-Marine, William Calley, that he was "just following orders" as he exercised himself into a froth.  Given that, in order to escape the Feres doctrine, Snow's suit essentially alleges that he was not a Marine (not being paid, not on active duty, on delayed enlistment status), that may be a tall order to fill.

Edit: Thanks to commenter Brewdogmike for a correction as to Lieutenant Calley's status, which incidentally improves the post.

Gary Coleman was crazy. Arianna Huffington is crazy. Jerry Brown is crazy. Grey Davis was crazy, in a very boring sort of way. Arnold? You'd better believe HE'S crazy.

But we could handle all of those people being crazy. A number of them were clearly crazy before they ran for governor of California.

But inoffensive watermelon-smashing prop comic Gallagher? Did running for governor of our great state drive him crazy? Say it isn't so!

But it is so. And he's not funny-crazy, like a Robin Williams character, or Ron Paul.

He's gone scary-ass bigot crazy.

At last, after two hours of his tedious, hacky, right-wing manifesto, Gallagher gets to the part his (willing) hostages have been waiting for. It's time to smash some shit. There are the watermelons, there is some cottage cheese ("It's got the curds that blow up, just like on the news!"), there is sauerkraut and syrup and honey. Then Gallagher gets a tin pie plate. He opens a giant can of fruit cocktail and pours it in. He opens a can of some Asian vegetable—water chestnuts, maybe—and pours that in, too. "This is the China people and queers!!!" he screams and takes his sledgehammer to the thing with a fury that is no fun at all. Wet chunks of China people and queers fly everywhere. The hateful, bitter old man laughs.

What. The. Fuck?

The North Carolina Court of Appeals wrestles with the question, "What is a metallic knuckle?" in In re: J.C., handed down today.

For those who find such things to be of interest, North Carolina General Statute § 14-269.2 prohibits possession of certain weapons, including "metallic knuckles," on school premises.   J.C., a juvenile defendant, appealed from his conviction for possessing:

a three-eighths-inch thick solid metallic bar that formed a C-shaped “link” which was about three inches in length and one-and-a-half inches in width, and closed by tightening a one-half-inch thick bolt. The object, commonly referred to as a quick link, was said to be made of solid steel and to weigh at least one pound, and was distinguished in the testimony from a similarly shaped object, known as a carabiner, which is generally made of aluminum or some other lightweight alloy and is designed to hold a freely running rope or, in modern use, as a key chain. The weighted steel link was one through which the juvenile was capable of sliding several of his fingers so that three to four inches of the three-eighths inch thick solid steel bar could be held securely across his knuckles and used as a weapon as he gripped the other half of the steel link with his fist.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, J.C., who by the way sounds like one dangerous kid who clearly meant to assault another but was prevented from doing so by a good, alert teacher, was convicted and designated a juvenile delinquent for possessing something that looks this:

Rather than something that looks like this:

Is a quick link a set of metallic knuckles?  I'd say not at all.  Fortunately, we can turn to the definition of "metallic knuckles" provided by the North Carolina General Assembly, as the Court of Appeals did.

Except that the legislature never defined "metallic knuckles".

That didn't stop the Court of Appeals from upholding J.C.'s conviction and delinquency adjudication.  In the words of the Court:

because the focus of the statute at issue is the increased necessity for safety in our schools, we think it consistent with the plain language, the spirit, and the objectives of the statute that the item seized from the juvenile as described above is sufficiently equivalent to what the General Assembly intended to be recognized as “metallic knuckles” under N.C.G.S. § 14-269.2(d). [Emphasis added, citations omitted]

In other words, because the legislature surely, in spirit if not in text, meant to criminalize possession of a quick link, which is after all a round piece metal through which a knuckle could be inserted, we'll call a quick link a metallic knuckle.  For the children.

Query whether schoolyard possession of a horse shoe, or a very large ring, say a Sauron The Great-sized ring, would also be a criminal offense under this law?  If a quick link is a metallic knuckle, surely a horse shoe is as well.

What disturbs about this case is that the Court, in following the rule of statutory construction that the intent of the legislature controls interpretation, ignores an older and more fundamental rule, that where criminal statutes are ambiguous (as in, "what is a metallic knuckle anyway?") they should be strictly construed in favor of the defendant.  While the reasons for that ancient rule should be obvious, suffice it to say that at English common law, and today, we make the value judgment that the state should only be allowed to convict defendants of laws that are clear, defined, and knowable by the citizen.  That the law should put citizens on notice of what is right and what is wrong.

Unless the defendant is a child.  In that case, the new rule of "for the children!" trumps all of the common law.

Update: Many thanks to my good friend David for his kind advice on the gender of French nouns.

Via Radley Balko and GamePolitics, I see that the TSA has announced that it will block its employees' web access to, among other things, sites offering "controversial opinion."

What could this mean? Well, the past is prologue, my friends, so I submit to you that the TSA's history shows that it believes the following opinions are unacceptably controversial:

1. If you carry cash, you are not necessarily a terrorist.
2. A depiction of a thing is not the same as the thing itself.
3. Americans ought to question government officials.
4. TSA officers cannot read your mind.
5. The Decepticons are not a clear and present danger to U.S. airline security.

There. That should keep them from browsing Popehat in between groping people.