Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule

Mr Rodriguez contemplating the
implications of the Supreme Court's
1972 Flood v. Kuhn ruling which
upheld Major League Baseball's
exemption from anti-trust litigation,
despite what many observers
considered an 'overly strict'
reliance on stare decisis
...and Chien-Ming Wang's rash.

While carrying out my usual research on the broader public importance of obscure facits of baseball I happened across this unusual legal article that explains, in excessively footnoted detail, the legal and societal precidents for the adoption of the Infield Fly Rule. For those sociopathic Americans who don't tivo spring training games, or humans who are from that wild and lawless land that isn't America, the Infield Fly Rule states that when there are less than two outs and runners on first and second, the batter is automatically out if he hits a pop-fly that could be easily caught by an infielder -- whether or not the infielder actually catches it. This prevents the defense from intentionally dropping the fly ball to make a double-play. The runners in this situation have no choice but to stand near their respective bags, assuming the ball will be caught, and then in the event that it isn't, would be too far from advancing to 3rd and 2nd to avoid an easy double play. It's baseball's equivalent of the en passant.

The article, (which was published anonymously and later revealed to have been written by then law-student William S. Stevens), describes the invention and evolution of the rule in the 1890's in a scholarly/mock-scholarly tone that apes similar, less light-hearted works with overt formality. A footnote on the word "origin" reads:

6: For a discussion of origins, see generally Scopes v. State, 154 Tenn. 105, 289 S.W. 363 (1927). Genisis 1:1-2:9. But see even more generally Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968); R. ARDREY, AFRICAN GENESIS (1961); C. DARWIN, THE DECENT OF MAN (1871); C. DARWIN, THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (1859).

Stevens mainly describes how the rule developed out of a widespread desire to preserve the 'gentlemanly' nature of the sport, and was later modified with the same goal in mind -- for instance by reducing the role that umpires originally had in enforcing it, whereby they would make a ruling on who was out and where they runners ought to be after the play had taken place. Since this could cause arguments (and a purpose of the rule is to let the game play out with everyone playing to their best abilities) it was changed so that the umpire calls it and gestures during the play, to put everyone on equal footing. Also interesting is his retelling of how the calls for such a rule arose out of a game in 1893 where an infielder intentionally allowed a fly to drop with a runner on first, but only in order to catch the runner because he was faster than the batter. He got only a single out, not two, merely substituting a fast runner on first for a fat, slow one, and this isn't even a situation that the rule applies to! And once this tactic had been realized, similar plays seemed to have the umpire calling out the runner regardless of the fact that there was no rule against intentional drops.


Evidently, there are a number of parallels between the standards that established the IFR and those that formed English Common Law. I'm not an expert on historical legal questions, but the comparisons he makes are fairly broad, so I doubt that they are too controversial. The idea that the academic world was begging for a comparison of these two things is a little more far-fetched, but it's still a great topic, due to the amount of analysis you can do on such an obscure rule.


Still, I can't help but wonder about one thing -- he rightly points out that the nature of baseball has its roots in 19th century English sporting culture, that it's intended goal was more about exercise and camaraderie than competition. The attitudes of this society and era, to "[keep] the rules simple and [allow] moral force to govern the game" is apparent in many aspects of modern baseball. For simplicity there are things like the fact that there are no rules about where fielders can stand (or that there are even any codified differences between them), or knocking over fielders covering a base (as long as you're not unnecessarily violent about it) what constitutes a pitch (the eephus counts), a strike, a fair ball, etc. There are even more examples of moral impulses codified in the rules*: balks, catcher's interference, crowd interference, uproar about sign-stealing, slapping at balls during a tantrum. It's not a rule, but people even get upset about running over the mound when you're not supposed to. Not to mention steroids. Hmmm...a lot of these things are A-Rod related...


Anyway, the thing that I think I disagree with him about is the notion that these attitudes are primarily English. I don't doubt that they were originally, but if that is true, why does baseball, which has been developing in the US for at least 150 years, retain a strong sense that right and wrong are important to the sport while soccer, which was also arose out of this gentlemanly English attitude of fair play (and is most popular there) is more rife with unpunished deception and fake injuries than pretty much all other sports?

"Aside, The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule," anonymous, 123 Univ. Penn. Law Review 1474 (1975).

*The primary counter-example to the moral prohibition against trickery in baseball that springs to mind is the hidden-ball trick, but it's overruled by the opposing desire for simplicity.

Simply the Best

Best of Wikipedia is my new favorite site. As someone who too frequently has to resist the urge to spend hours link-hopping around obscure wikipedia articles, BoW is a dangerous place. They simply put up a couple of unusual and fascinating articles a day. For those of you with more self-control a sample of some of their recent entries includes:

Gruen Transfer: In shopping mall design, the Gruen transfer refers to the moment when a consumer enters a shopping mall, and, surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout, loses track their original intentions. Spatial awareness of their surroundings play a key role, as does the surrounding sound and music. The effect of the transfer is marked by a slower walking pace and glazed eyes.

Paraprosdokian A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. An example by Groucho Marx is, “She got her good looks from her father, he’s a plastic surgeon.”

Semantic Satiation Semantic satiation (also semantic saturation) is a cognitive neuroscience phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who can only process the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.

So there you go.

[Comic via XKCD, obviously.]

*Etc

The Freakonomics Blog points out some graveyard humor, describing the origin of this clever headstone juxtaposition.

They belong to chemists buried in the Yale's cemetery. The one on the left of a John Kirkwood, while the right is Lars Onsager, both of whom were brilliant statistical and fluid mechanics. At first glace this looks like the absolute apex of academic one-upsmanship, but as usual, there is a buzzkilling explanation that involves these two guys not hating each other. Kirkwood died pretty young and his widow basically decided to make his headstone a curriculum vitae for some reason. Most people who knew him thought it was a bit odd, but Onsager's wife wanted to do the same for him when he died, but her family talked her out of it. His son Erling wanted to put an asterisk on there, but she vetoed it as being mean-spirited.

But the idea of the asterisk stayed in Erling’s mind, and years later, when the children were adding their mother’s death date to the monument, they also added the asterisk and the “etc.” footnote. “When my mother died, my brothers and sister and I, we all agreed it was the right thing to do,” said Erling.

Erling wanted to set the record straight on his family’s motive for including the notation:

The idea was very tongue-in-cheek. It wasn’t done maliciously. It was triggered by the neighboring headstone, but it was not aimed at it.

And all the people involved seem to agree that both of these gentlemen would have found it hilarious. So revenge downgraded to gentle comedy. It kind of reminds me of Jefferson's headstone, that mentions only that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence, and Virginia Statute of religious freedom and that he founded the University of Virginia -- without bothering to point out that he was the President. Which, if you think about it, seems to say to all the other presidents "Oh, you were the president too? That's sort of cool I guess. I didn't think it was worth making a big deal out of..."

Twin Mirror

Improv Everywhere, is the group that brought you such stunts as a bunch of people freezing in place at Grand Central Station, creating a time loop in a Starbucks, and my personal favorite: getting 80 folks to dress up in Best Buy employee outfits and swarm a Best Buy. Their most recent mission was getting identically dressed identical twins to fill a subway car, symmetrically. I knew twins were good for something.

Human Mirror - Improv Everywhere

Note to self: All sets of identical twins seem to own matching pairs of clothes. How sneaky...

Saturnalian Christmas

As we gather around the roaring yule-log, sipping our rum laced with egg-nog, we too often fail reflect on the true origins of our yearly holiday. And I certainly do not mean the Christy ones-- I'm talking about the kind of origin that involves drunk rioters and talking farm animals. In times like these, I turn to my 1898 edition of Curiosities of Popular Customs, and of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances, and Miscellaneous Antiquities by William S. Walsh for the proper perspective. I bought my copy from the Tabor Academy library for $1, the reference librarian having concluded that it was too racist and outdated for a modern high school. It is an invaluable source of naïvely Anglo-centric information about holidays no one celebrates anymore, or celebrates widely now but which were new then, or stories about where pieces of saint's bodies ended up. Or of the horrible blood-rites common in heathen lands.

As my X-Mas gift to you, people who read this, I will simply excerpt a large piece of the fascinating entry on Christmas. (It may be read starting on page 226). No where else can you see the history of Christmas explained using words like 'pagan,' 'Gov^r' and 'Popish'? Or outlandishly racist sentiment from the 1890's. Or phrases such as "...citizens saluted his charred and mangled corpse, when it was last borne to the grave." Enjoy!

______________________

Christmas. The reputed anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, December 25, and as such one of the greatest festivals of the Protestant, Catholic, and Greek Churches. It is essentially a day of thanksgiving and rejoicing,—a day of good cheer. Though Christians celebrate it as a Christian festival, though to them it is the anniversary of the most solemn event in all history, the meeting of heaven and earth in the birth of the God-Man, the festivities that mark the epoch are part of the universal history of the race. In pagan Rome and Greece, in the days of the Teutonic barbarians, in the remote times of ancient Egyptian civilization, in the infancy of the race East and West and North and South, the period of the winter solstice was ever a period of rejoicing and festivity. Even the Puritanism of the Anglo-Saxon has not been equal to the task of defending Yule-tide from a triumphant inroad of pagan rites and customs, so that the evangelical churchman who is shocked to see flowers decorating the sanctuaries at Easter would be sorry to miss the scarlet berries that hang there at Christmas, so that even austerest lovers of the plain-song tolerate and even weleome " quips and cranks and wreathed smiles" in their Christmas carols, so that joviality and merrymaking are the order of the day at Christmas banquets,—a joviality sanctified and made glorious by good will to all men. Yet the holly and the mistletoe are a survival of ancient Druidical worship, the Christmas carol is a new birth, purified and exalted, of the hymns of the Saturnalia, the Christmas banquet itself is a reminiscence of the feasts given in honor of ancient gods and goddesses, when, as Cato said of the analogous feasts in imperial Rome, commemorating the birth of Cybele, the prospect that drew one thither was "not so much the pleasure of eating and of drinking as that of finding one's self among his friends and of conversing with them." Nay, the very idea of the Child-God, which gives its meaning to the Feast of the Nativity, was prefigured and foretold not only in the vaticinations of sibyl, seer, and prophet, but in the infant gods of the Greek, the Egyptian, the Hindoo, and the Buddhist, which in different ways showed the rude efforts of the earlier races to grasp the idea of a perfect human child who is also God.

Great as the feast is, however, nobody knows anything definite about its origin, nobody knows who first celebrated it, or when or where or how. And nobody even knows if December 25 be indeed the right anniversary of Christ's nativity.

This anomaly arises from the habit of the early Christians to look upon the celebration of birthdays as heathenish. The birthday of the Lord himself was not excepted. But after the triumph of Christianity the old prejudice died out; and then the date of the Saviour's birth became a matter of ecclesiastical investigation. St. John Chrysostom, writing in 386, relates that St. Cyril at the request of Julius (Bishop or Pope of Rome from 337 to 352) made a strica inquiry as to the exact date. Cyril reported that the Western Churches had always held it to be December 25. It is true that other communities of Christians preferred other dates. In many Eastern Churches the 6th of January had been fixed on as the anniversary not only of the birth of Christ, but of his manifestation to the Gentiles. (See EPIPHANY.) April 20, May 20, March 29, and September 29 were respectively accepted by small minorities. In short, as St. Clement says, the matter was very uncertain.

Nevertheless it appears that Pope Julius was so far satisfied with the report of Cyril that somewhere about the middle of the fourth century he established the festival at Rome on December 25. Before the end of the century that date had been accepted by all the nations of Christendom. This acceptance was facilitated by the fact that it is the date of the winter solstice,—the turning-point of the year, when winter, having reached its apogee, must begin to decline again towards spring,—when for unnumbered ages before the Christian era pagan Europe through all its tribes and nations had been accustomed to celebrate its chief festival.

Now, it was always the aim of the early Church to reconcile heathen converts to the new faith by the adoption of all the more harmless features of their festivities and ceremoniala. With Christmas the Church had a hard task. Though it aimed only to retain the pagan forms, it found it could not restrain the pagan spirit, in spite of clerical protests and papal anathemas, in spite of the condemnation of the wise and the sane, Christmas in the early days frequently reproduced all the worst orgies, the debaucheries and indecencies, of the Bacchanalia and the Saturnalia. The clergy themselves were whirled into the vortex. A special celebration called the Feast of Fools was instituted,—as learned doctors explained,—with a view that " the folly which is natural to and born with us might exhale at least once a year." The intention was excellent. But in practice the liberty so accorded speedily degenerated into license. The Council of Auxerre was moved to inquire into the matter. A Flemish divine rose and declared that the festival was an excellent thing and quite as acceptable to God as that of the Immaculate Conception. There was great applause among his like-minded brethren. Then Gerson, the most noted theologian of the day, made a counter-sensation by retorting that "if all the devils in hell had put their heads together to devise a feast that should utterly scandalize Christianity, they could not have improved upon this one."

If even among the clergy heathen traditions so strenuously survived, what better could be expected from the laity? The wild revels, indeed, of the Christmas period in olden times almost stagger belief. Obscenity, drunkenness, blasphemy,—nothing came amiss. License was carried to the fullest extent of licentiousness.

Memorable as an illustration of the manners of the French court was a catastrophe that occurred in Paris in 1393. Riot and disorder had run wild all through the Christmas festivities. But the court was not yet satisfied. Then Sir Hugonin de Guisay, most reckless among all the reckless spirits of the period, suggested that as an excuse for prolonging the merriment a marriage should be arranged between two of the court attendants. This was eagerly agreed upon. Sir Hugonin assumed the leadership, a post for which he was well fitted. He was loved and admired by the disorderly as much as he was hated and feared by the orderly. Among other pleasant traits, he was fond of exercising his wit upon tradesmen and mechanics, whom he would accost in the street, prick with his spurs, and compel to creep on all fours and bark like curs before he released them. Such were the traits which endeared him to the courtiers of His Most Gracious Majesty and Christian King of France. The marriage passed off in a blaze of glory with an accompaniment of attendant Gargantuan pleasantry. At the height of the ceremonies Sir Hugonin quietly withdrew with the king and four other wild ones, scions of the noblest houses in France. With a pot of tar and a quantity of tow the six conspirators were speedily changed into very fair imitations of the dancing bears then very common in mountebanks' booths. A mask completed the transformation. Five were then bound together with a silken rope. The sixth, the king himself, led them into the hall. Their appearance created a general stir. "Who are they?" was the cry. Nobody knew. At this moment entered the wildest of all the wild Dukes of Orleans. "Who are they?" he echoed between hiccoughs. "Well, we'll soon find out." Seizing a brand from one of the torch-bearers ranged along the wall, he staggered forward. Some gentlemen essayed to stay him. But he was obstinate and quarrelsome. Main force could not be thought of against a prince of the blood. He was given his way. He thrust his torch under the chin of the nearest of the maskers. The tow caught fire. In a moment the whole group was in flames. The young Duchess of Berri seized the king and enveloped him in her ample robe. Thus he was saved. Another masker, the Lord of Nantouillet, noted for strength and agility, rent the silken rope with a wrench of his strong teeth, pitched himself like a flaming comet through the first window, and dived into a cistern in the court, whence he emerged black and smoking, but almost unhurt. As for the other four, they whirled hither and thither through the horrified mob, struggling with one another, fighting with the flames, cursing, shrieking with pain. Women fainted by scores. Men who had never faltered in a hundred fights sickened at the hideous spectacle. All Paris was roused by the uproar, and gathered, an excited mob, about the palace. At last the flames burnt out. The four maskers lay, a black and writhing heap, on the floor. One was a mere cinder. A second survived till daybreak. A third died at noon the next day. The fourth—no other than Sir Hugonin himself—survived for three days, while all Paris rejoiced over his agonies. "Bark, dog, bark!" was the cry with which the citizens sainted his charred and mangled corpse, when it was at last borne to the grave.

But why dwell on only one side of the picture? In the coarser days of our ancestors riot and revelry did indeed go hand in hand, but the revelry was ot a lusty, vigorous, and hearty sort unknown to these quieter times which have eliminated the riot. As we read of the great feats performed by these heroes of the trencher and the tankard, by these adepts in all out-door sports, the Gargantuan good nature of the season impresses us more than the cruelty, gluttony, and drunkenness which were apt to sully it. A race of jolly giants must needs give and take harder blows than their pygmy descendants.

Merrie old England was the soil in which Merrie Christmas took its firmest root. Even in Anglo-Saxon days we hear of Alfred holding high revelry in December, 878, so that he allowed the Danes to surprise him, cut his army to pieces, and send him a fugitive. The court revelries increased in splendor after the Conquest. Christmas, it must be remembered, was not then a single day of sport. It had its preliminary novena which began December 16, and it ended on January 6, or Twelfth-Night. All this period was devoted to holiday-making.

It was a democratic festival. All classes mixed in its merrymakings. Hospitality was universal. An English country gentleman of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries held open house. With daybreak on Christmas morning the tenants und neighbors thronged into the hall. The ale was broached. Blackjacks and Cheshire cheese, with toast and sugar and nutmeg, wont plentifully round. The Hackin, or great sausage, must be boiled at daybreak, and if it failed to be ready two young men took the cook by the arm and ran her around the market-place till she was ashamed of her laziness.

The women also had their privileges. In some places in Oxfordshire it was the right of every maid-servant to ask the man for ivy to dress the house withal, and if the man refused or forgot, the maid stole a pair of his breeches and nailed them to the gate in the yard or highway. In other places a refusal to comply with such a request debarred the man from the privilege of the mistletoe.

The gentlemen went to early service in the church and returned to breakfast on brawn and mustard and malmsey. Mustard is your great provoker of a noble thirst. Brawn was a dish of great antiquity, made from the flesh of large boars which lived in a half-wild state and when put to fatten were strapped and belted tight around the body, so as to make the flesh dense and brawny.

With the rise of Puritanism the very existence of Christmas was threatened. Even the harmless good cheer of that season was looked upon as pagan, or, what was worse, Popish. "Into what a stupendous height of more than pagan impiety," cried Prynne in his "Histrio-Mastix," "have we not now degenerated!" Prynnc's rhetoric, it will be seen, is not without an unconscious charm of humor. He complained that the England of his day could not celebrate Christmas or any other festival " without drinking, roaring, healthing, dicing, carding, dancing, masques and stage-plays . . . which Turkes and Infidels would abhor to practise."

Puritanism brought over with it in the Mayflower the anti-Christmas feeling to New England. So early as 1621 Governor Bradford was called upon to administer a rebuke to "certain lusty yon ge men" who had just come over in the little ship Fortune. "On ye day called Christmas day," says William Bradford. "ye Gov^r caled them out to, worke (as was used), but ye most of this new company excused themselves and said it went against their consciences to worke on ye day. So ye Gov^r tould them that if they made it mater of con science, he would spare them till they were better informed. So he led away ye rest, and left them ; but when they came home at noone from their worke, he found them in ye streete at play, openly : some pitehing ye barr, and some at stoole-ball and such like sports. So he went to them and tooke away their implements, and tould them that it was against his conscience that they should play and others worke. If they made ye keeping of it matter of devotion, let them kepe their houses, but ther should be no gameing or revelling in ye streets. Since which time nothing hath been atempted that way. at least openly."

In England the feeling culminated in 1643, when the Round-head Parliament abolished the observance of saints' days and "the three grand festivals" of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, "any law, statute, custom, constitution, or canon to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding." The king protested. But he was answered. In London, nevertheless, there was an alarming disposition to observe Christmas. The mob attacked those who by opening their shops flouted the holiday. In several counties the disorder was threatening. But Parliament adopted strong measures, and during the twelve years in which the great festivals were discountenanced there was no further tumult, and the observance of Christmas as a general holiday ceased.

The General Court of Massachusetts followed the example of the English Parliament in 1659 when it enacted that "anybody who is found observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting, or any other way, any such day as Christmas day, shall pay for
every such offence five shillings."

The restoration of English royalty brought about the restoration of the English Christmas. It was not till 1681, however, that Massachusetts repealed the ordinance of 1659. But the repeal was bitter to old Puritanism, which kept up an ever attenuating protest even down to the early part of the present century. (See THANKSGIVING. Also see BOAR'S HEAD; CAROLS; MISTLETOE ; MISRULE, LORD OF ; WAITS ; YULE-LOG, etc., forspecial Christmas festivities.)

There are many superstitions connected with the coming of Christmas itself. To the cock have from time immemorial been attributed unwonted energy and sagacity at that season. Even now in England it is common to hear one say, when the cock crows in the stillness of the November and December nights." The cock is crowing for Christmas." He is supposed to do this for the purpose of scaring off the evil spirits from the holy season. The bees are said to sing, the cattle to kneel, in honor of the manger, and the sheep to go in procession in commemoration of the visit of the angel to the shepherds.

Howison in his "Sketches of Upper Canada" relates that on one moonlit Christmas Eve he saw an Indian creeping cautiously through the woods. In response to an inquiry, he said, '-Me watch to sec deer kneel. Christmas night all deer kneel and look up to Great Spirit."

In the German Alps it is believed that the cattle have the gift of language on Christmas Eve. But it is a sin to attempt to play the eavesdropper upon them. An Alpine story is told of a farmer's servant who did not believe that the cattle could speak, and, to make sure, he hid in his master's stable on Christmas Eve and listened. When the clock struck twelve he was surprised at what he heard. " We shall have hard work to do this day week," said one horse. " Yes; the farmer's servant is heavy," answered the other horse. '' And the way to the churchyard is long and steep," said the first. The servant was buried that day week.

...
The salmon was a great Christmas favorite, and Sandys mentions a Monmouthshire tradition to the effect that on every Christmas Day, in the morning only, a large salmon appeared in the adjoining river, showed himself openly, and permitted himself to be taken and handled; but it would have been the greatest impiety to capture him.
...
In some places, as in Suabia, it is customary for maidens, inquisitive as to their prospective lovers, to draw a stick of wood out of a heap to see whether he will be long or short, crooked or straight. At other times they will pour melted lead into cold water, and from the figures formed will prognosticate the trade or profession of the future husband....In Poland, and elsewhere, it is believed that on Christmas night the heavens are opened and the scene of Jacob's ladder is re-enacted, but it is permitted only to the saints to see it. Throughout Northern Germany the tables are spread and lights left burning during the entire night, that the Virgin Mary and the angel who passes when everybody sleeps may find something to eat. In certain parts of Austria they put candles in the windows, that the Christ-Child may not stumble in passing through the village. There is also a wide-spread opinion that a pack of wolves, which were no other than wicked men transformed into wolves, committed great havoc upon Christmas night. Taking advantage of this superstition, it was not unusual for rogues disguised in wolf-skins to attack honest people, rifle their houses, sack their cellars, and drink or steal all their beer. As a specific charm, no doubt, against these wolfish depredations, it was customary in Austria, up to a recent date, after high mass on Christmas night, to sing in a particular tone, to the sound of the large bell, the chapter of the generation of Jesus Christ.
...
Scandinavia is especially the land of the Yule-log, of Christmas stories and legends of Thor and Odin. Then is the time for skating, sledging, dancing, and a general frolic. It is customary for every member of the family to take a bath on the afternoon preceding Christmas, and oftentimes it is the only thorough bath that is received during the year.
...
From the frozen North, of the midnight sun, to the evergreen South, of perpetual summer, is a long journey, but in all the distance there is found no land where the Christmas festival is not celebrated.

A Christmas celebration in Peru has peculiar features. In the cities, and more especially in Lima, there are bewildering scenes of activity on Christmas Eve. The streets and squares are crowded with a gayly dressed people. Droves of asses are to be seen in every direction, laden with fruits, boughs from the mountains, liquors, and other merchandise. Ice-stalls, provided with chairs and benches, are crowded by the perspiring pleasure-seekers, who find ice necessary on sultry Christmas.

As night approaches, the streets are packed with a noisy people, and joko and jest and merry pranks become the rule. These are participated in mostly by strangely attired persons in masks. Music of guitars, clattering castanets, and pebbles rattling in gourds fill the air with mingled discordant sounds. No door is closed. There are music and dancing and the distribution of gifts in every house. All are weleome to enter. Strangers are sure of a hearty weleome, and to be a foreigner is to have a double claim on hospitality and to receive a double weleome. All ceremony and restraint are absent.
...
The ante-bellum period in the Southern States was signalized by a special celebration at Christmas-tide, handed down from those English folk, gentle and simple, who first peopled Virginia and the Carolinas, and whose descendants have spread over the face of the country south of Mason and Dixon's line.

"There's no such thing as real Christmas now," sigh elder folk, white and black, whose memories run back to the gay, good days of slavery. Then, in truth, it was a two weeks' saturnalia. No master who respected himself, or hoped to keep the respect of his neighbors, dreamed of asking his black people to do more in the month of December than kill hogs and get up a big Christmas wood-pile...Often, too, the old negroes went visiting on their own account. No time like Christmas for a trip back to old Marster's or to see the sister or brother who had been given to some other branch of the family and so lived maybe twenty miles away. Duly mounted, tricked out in Sunday beat, with all sorts of queer bundles dangling here and there, and a carpet-bag fat to bursting swung at the horn of the saddle, Black Daddy and Black Mammy rode a-Christmasing, and at the journey's end were as weleome to whites as to blacks...

The pious among the slaves sang and prayed the night through. But their piety did not take the form of a prohibition sentiment. With a psalm yet hot in the mouth they were as ready as their fellows to troop up to the great house at daylight and drink their share of Christmas eggnog. Small blame to them, either, since the eggnog of those days was a mighty seductive thing to any who had a nice taste in drinks.

_________________

(By the way, it probably goes without saying, but I just wanted to point out that this last bit about slave times is extremely dubious, and I for one certainly do not agree with or trust the antiquated author here at all.)

YourFace

As a sick joke, some aimless individuals have created social networking sites with the names "myface" and "facespace" instead of contributing to society in any meaningful way. Some day soon, technology will allow us to live purely ironic lives.

Ignobel Prizes

You know how every once in a while, just to mix things up, the Nobel Committee awards the rare Ironic Peace Prize? As if to say to the recipient: 'please, try to be more peaceful.' Kissinger and Arafat would be your classic examples of this. There are also the ones which are ironic only in retrospect, like American VP Charles Dawes who won it for his work on German reparations following WWI. Of course, we all now know that their severity contributed to the economic hardship and sense of national outrage that allowed extremism to flourish there. Or the one that went to the unfortunately named "Permanent International Peace Bureau"...in 1913. And then you have all of the awards that just look silly now, like pretty much everything awarded to the League of Nations. For most of these you can at least say that they admired these people or organizations for trying, but I'm not sure why they couldn't tell that the Kellogg-Briand Pact was doomed to failure. This was an international treaty that supposedly "outlawed war as an instrument of national policy." Since it was ratified by the Senate it's law in the U.S., and in basically every other major country, but it's done about as much good as those tags on mattresses that you're not allowed to rip off.

Unfortunate though the Peace Prize's record sometimes looks however, at least you can applaud the sentiment (especially since they've now given it to our delphian former veep for his voice work in Futurama). I have found something much funnier than the Nobel Peace Prize though--the Lenin Peace Prize. An award created as a rival, communist, Nobel to honor people that the USSR considered worthy. And this one had the irony built right in, it was originally titled the "Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples." Because when you think Strengthening Peace Among Peoples, you think Stalin! The honorees are a rich melange of actual luminaries who simply happened to be lefties (like Pablo Picasso, Nelson Mandela or Linus Pauling), party leaders from around the world who the Soviet Union was trying to elevate the status of, and commie hacks who no one has ever heard of.

Thanks Wikipedia! [cue 'the more you know' graphic here]

It Could Happen

Thanks news media! I was just wondering why public understanding of science is so poor, and then I saw this article in MSNBC's science section.

Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen

As software becomes more advanced and the relationship between humans and robots becomes more personal, marriage could result. "One hundred years ago, interracial marriage and same-sex marriages were illegal in the United States. Interracial marriage has been legal now for 50 years, and same-sex marriage is legal in some parts of the states," Levy said. "There has been this trend in marriage where each partner gets to make their own choice of who they want to be with."

"The question is not if this will happen, but when," Levy said. "I am convinced the answer is much earlier than you think."

"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience.

Levy predicts Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize human-robot marriage. "Massachusetts is more liberal than most other jurisdictions in the United States and has been at the forefront of same-sex marriage," Levy said. "There's also a lot of high-tech research there at places like MIT."

Same-sex marriage = human-robot marriage. Finally, someone brave enough to make that comparison!

The main benefit of human-robot marriage could be to make people who otherwise could not get married happier, "people who find it hard to form relationships, because they are extremely shy, or have psychological problems, or are just plain ugly or have unpleasant personalities," Levy said. "Of course, such people who completely give up the idea of forming relationships with other people are going to be few and far between, but they will be out there."

Hey! Half of my family are from Massachusetts and we aren't that hard to get along with!

The possibility of sex with robots could prove a mixed bag for humanity. For instance, robot sex could provide an outlet for criminal sexual urges. "If you have pedophiles and you let them use a robotic child, will that reduce the incidence of them abusing real children, or will it increase it?" Arkin asked. "I don't think anyone has the answers for that yet — that's where future research needs to be done."

Keeping a robot for sex could reduce human prostitution and the problems that come with it. However, "in a marriage or other relationship, one partner could be jealous or consider it infidelity if the other used a robot," Levy said. "But who knows, maybe some other relationships could welcome a robot. Instead of a woman saying, 'Darling, not tonight, I have a headache,' you could get 'Darling, I have a headache, why not use your robot?' "

Child-sex robots. Oh my god. I am not the kind of person who shouts exclamations of disbelief at no one in particular while reading, but for this I made an exception (if only so my roomba could hear). When discussing potential topics was this guy's thesis adviser just like: "Think of the creepiest possible thing you can imagine. Now double it." (I know that is how I ended up working on cosmological neutrinos as an undergrad.)

Furthermore, "Darling, I have a headache, why not use your robot?" Solid gold. Can we please make this a cliché? Nothing would better exemplify the loss of America's collective can-do spirit...

In summary,
Wacky PhD thesis from some European university with low standards? Check.
Ridiculously ill-advised comparisons to actual civil rights struggles like inter-racial and gay marriage? Check.
Repetition of common (but partially misguided) stereotype that all New Englanders want to marry/copulate with robots/quahogs/houseplants. Double check.

Stationary Banana On Texas

The Geostationary Banana Over Texas project seems to be moving forward. If you are not familiar with this website, it purports to explain an artist installation in a rather unusual location: hovering over the largest continental state. Apparently they want to build a huge banana-shaped floating banana and float it over the republic of Texas. They state that

The Geostationary Banana Over Texas is an art intervention that involves placing a gigantic banana over the Texas sky. This object will float between the high atmosphere and Earth's low-orbit, being visible only from the state of Texas and its surroundings. From the ground the banana will be clearly recognizable and visible day and night; it will stay up for approximately one month.

Of course, nothing about this makes much sense, the banana would not be visible from that height, and it certainly wouldn't be visible from everywhere in the state. It also wouldn't remain frozen in the sky, winds would blow it out of the state in a few days at most, and there is no way that they could float it as high as they say they would. I do enjoy the bit about using gyroscopes at each end of the fruit to maintain a particular orientation, though given everything else they've said about the GBOT I don't think the gyroscopes they would want to use are anywhere near light enough. Not to mention the fruit flies! Either they're loopy artists who can't figure out how to figure out whether of the stuff they are proposing is possible, or they just assume that the people reading their website can. Other than the obvious, who this website is intended to fool, mainly? People who don't know better? Artists? Probably Texans actually, but why a banana? Is this a subtle way of suggesting that they aren't getting enough fruit in their diet?

They recently stepped up their campaign with a slick-looking video interview of some Mexican artist. I have to admit, seeing it in that format sure makes me wish it were real. And if nothing else, the artists reasons on the main website's "Concept" page would be enough to convince you that these are your standard loopy modern artists.

It is banal.
It is Visual.
It is a fiction. It is live 3D. It is surreal.
It is dream-like.
In the land of dreamers and the ones with faith.
A banana appearing in the Texas sky might seem like a 'message.'
As a signal.

It is in Texas because it has oil,
and a lot of Walmarts, Exxons,
and Haliburtons. (and The Ranch)

It is a buffoon act, trying to
impress...
Texan dominant Aerospace,
and all the Gun Clubs.

Amazingly, the wikipedia article doesn't even cast suspicion of hoaxiness, nor is there yet a Snopes page dealing with the banana's claims.

Where the dumb people live

Seven percent of the U.S. population reported their ancestry as American.

The number who reported American and no other ancestry increased from 12.4 million in 1990 to 20.2 million in 2000, the largest numerical growth of any group during the 1990s⁵. This figure represents an increase of 63 percent, as the proportion rose from 5.0 percent to 7.2 percent of the population.

⁵American was considered a valid ancestry response when it was the only ancestry provided by a respondent.

This is a convenient map of stupidity, provided by the U.S. Census. The "Americans" live in the off-white counties, which trace a predictable outline. Predictable if you are a contemptuous New England elitist. Apparently knowing what the word "ancestry" means is enough to make you an elitist.

Boing

So apparently that flash game from a few months ago was just the game version of this commercial. You know when Letterman drops stuff off the roof? This is the same concept on steroids. Replace 'Letterman' with '~50 cameras' and replace 'watermelons' with '250,000 superballs.' And instead of dropping it off the roof they drop them off San Fransisco. I believe that it is a few years old, and it was on TV for a while, but this link leads to a gratuitous extended online version. This other movie of a paint apocalypse isn't so bad either.

Antipodes Attract

From Strange Maps, a blog documenting the cartographical oddities of the world, comes this chart of Earth's prime tunneling locations. The dark blue indicates antipodes, the places that you could go straight through the planet and come out the other side. As usual, real life disappoints by placing most of the places that I live opposite some useless ocean. Most of the dry land located in opposition is in one of those second-rate hemispheres, like the "Southern" or the "Eastern." Lame. Imagine the disappointment of someone trying to dig their way out of Siberia and ending up in Antarctica.

They are also smart in pointing out this Earth sandwich project: a group committed to the idea of placing slices of bread at precisely opposite points of the planet at exactly the same moment. [It was achieved between folks in Spain and New Zealand.]

Other Strange Map highlights include the most generic map ever, the last surviving territory of East Germany, and the secret Soviet plan to remove the entirety of North America, to name a few.

L'Enfant Terrible

The Washington Post recently conducted a very funny social experiment. They got one of the world's finest violinists, Joshua Bell, to pose as a street musician and play in D.C.'s L'Enfant subway station as mid-level federal bureaucrats made their way to work. Several days earlier he had sold out a Boston concert hall where seats went for over $100, and the goal of the experiment was to see, I suppose, whether these Washingtonians would form some kind of classical music appreciating flash mob. Or at least stop and listen at higher rates than usual.

He chose some of the hardest and most beautiful pieces of music, played his heart out (as you can hear at the article site), and, predictably, attracted little attention. Yawn. It is supposed to be a revelation that when it comes to cultural knowledge most people are phoning it in these days?

It was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch. Try speeding it up, and it becomes one of those herky-jerky World War I-era silent newsreels. The people scurry by in comical little hops and starts, cups of coffee in their hands, cellphones at their ears, ID tags slapping at their bellies, a grim danse macabre to indifference, inertia and the dingy, gray rush of modernity.

. . .
"It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . ."

The word doesn't come easily.

"...ignoring me."

Bell is laughing. It's at himself.

"At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change." This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.

The saddest part is probably the bit about every single passing child wanting to listen and being dragged off by their parents. The whole article is fascinating and the video of it is indeed difficult to watch, especially since it lets you hear how beautiful his playing was, even in that weird acoustic environment.

Not surprisingly, (and I think I'm prettymuch alone here), I don't agree with most of the obvious interpretations of this event. No one ever gets tired of pointing out how degenerate our modern lives are -- regardless of when "modern" is taking place. When I first read this story, it reminded me a bit of something I wrote about last summer, where a blind taste-test showed that sommeliers couldn't tell regular wine from super-fancy wine without seeing the label. It was a nice little trial because it exposed some of the phoniness of pretentious wine people and confirmed what we all know to be true: that lines like "I detect a slight hint of peachy zest" are completely worthless. But is this the same thing? That people who flout their extensive knowledge of classical music, and would spend hundreds for a night in a gilded concert hall wouldn't recognize Joshua Bell, or even drop a buck in his violin case in a different setting? I'm not so sure.

There is a bit later on in the article where an art critic says that he isn't surprised about Bell's performance attracting so little attention because art requires "the right context." Nobody realized he was a great musician because he was playing in a subway and therefore, no one could have known what was going on. Like most things that come out of the mouths of artistic types, this is partially true, but for the wrong reason. If people had stopped to watch him because there was a sign saying "Joshua Bell, performer for the Crowned Heads of Europe" the passerby wouldn't be listening because they suddenly realized that he was a virtuoso, it would be because of his notoriety. The art guy compares it to taking a painting from the National Gallery and putting it for sale in a coffee house, where people like him wouldn't be able to tell the painting was any good. That certainly makes me think of the wine snobs. If your job is to understand the greatness behind certain works of art and then convey it to others, but you need to be told which paintings are worth looking at, what are you good for? If you actually purport to have this special ability for art appreciation, but basically just regurgitate the same established critical reviews that have been around forever...well, it's no wonder so much modern art sucks, the reviewers are just an echo chamber.

Anyways, I don't think it says anything so important about the plebians on their way to work other than that they didn't have the time to stand around listening to Bach in a subway station. If it was scores of music producers passing him on the way through the turnstiles, sure, it would show that they are hypocrites. But you can't tell that no one thought he was any good, even if they had wanted to stay and listen, everyone was rushing to work. This is not the right way to conduct this experiment. Try it in the afternoon and then tell me no one stops to listen. Sure, the vast majority would still pass by without breaking stride (I'll admit that I might even be in this group myself), but give me a more leisurely crowd and I'm sure that classical music appreciators would have lingered. If it shows anything, it is that most people are too worried about keeping schedules. Yes, most people are ignorant about classical music. Yes, it is sad that only one person recognized him while Paris Hilton treads the Earth on winged feet. Yes, everyone is too involved in their own affairs to "appreciate beautiful things occurring spontaneously in daily life." None of these things are news, and despite popular opinion, the intellectual world is not crumbling at a greater rate than usual.

[credit]

I am thinking Potato

A thoughtless and unprofound post.

-One of the smartest plays in baseball, The Decoy Potato:

Carlton Fisk’s game-winning home run in game six of the 1975 World Series. Reggie Jackson’s three straight homers in the Fall Classic. Joe Carter’s ninth-inning, championship-clinching smash to end the ’93 campaign. All great moments in baseball history.
...Bresnahan says he casually mentioned to his teammates the possibility of throwing "something other than a baseball" into the outfield to entice a runner on third to come home and be tagged out. "Everybody laughed and said "Why don’t you do it?" Bresnahan recalls. "It started out as a dare, became a challenge, and I eventually did it."
...
The perfect opportunity presented itself in the fifth inning of game one. With a Reading runner on third, Bresnahan called timeout, told the home plate umpire something was wrong with this catchers mitt, and ambled over to the dugout to retrieve another mitt. Only this mitt contained the infamous potato.

"When I picked up the potato glove that was the cue for everybody on the Bills that it was going to happen," Bresnahan says. "I called for a slider away, so the batter wouldn’t hit the ball. During the pitch, I had to move the potato from my glove to my bare hand. After catching the ball, I rifled the potato over the head of the third baseman in to the left field."

The runner on third jogged home thinking he was going to score an easy run. But Bresnahan had a surprise as the rest of his teammates put their snickering faces in their gloves. "I tagged the guy out, "Bresnahan laughs.

"It (the potato) looked like a ball," confirms Williamsport Sun-Gazette Sports Editor Jim Carpenter, who was sitting along the third base line that night with his son Keith. "It had a good likeness to a baseball. Thinks just happened so fast. I was not thinking potato."

Neither was Scott Potter, the home plate umpire.

-Mexico once had an Emperor. WTF?
It is true. Two actually, during non-consecutive terms. But unlike Grover Cleveland, neither attempt went well. The first sort of rose up the ranks of the military and was eventually selected to be Emperor, like Napoleon I. He lasted a year. But the second guy was an Austrian who was just randomly appointed to the "Mexican Throne" (if they had one) by the conservadores and managed to be so lousy that he was executed within several years. Still, there is a crown collecting dust somewhere in Mexico right now. Waiting perhaps...

-Slate's Explainer, as it often does, led me to an article on cannibalism. If you scroll down about halfway to you will find a shockingly lucid account of what people taste like. The site name is "Food Resource" so you know it is worth checking out. William Seabrook's tale (about 60% of the way down the page) is especially worth reading. Anthropologists are rarely good for anything, so I for one found the story both refreshing and morbid. You cannot deny that you have always wanted to know. I won't give it away beyond mentioning that much like spiders, each one of us consumes, on average, roughly twelve human beings in a year.

371 Years of Treason

On September 22nd, 1776, on his way to the gallows, Nathan Hale proclaimed his only regret to be that he "had but one life to lose for my country." Since then, it has been all downhill for Connecticut in terms of loyalty.

A spy for the Revolutionary forces, Hale was caught behind enemy lines and executed for his role prior to the Battle of Long Island. He was America's first espionage agent, but is celebrated almost entirely for his famous last words -- which differ in their few vague accounts and which most scholars believe to be a repetition of a phrase he did not come up with himself. In any case, for being this sort of fearless, patriotic Christ-figure, Nathan Hale is honored far and wide with postage stamps, statues, and an obscene number of elementary schools.

[Incidentally, the primary witness to this speech was a British Colonel John Montresor. Despite the distinctiveness of this name and the modest notoriety he achieved for his role in the war he seems to bear no relation to the Montresor of Poe's Cask of Amontillado. Not that this would make any literary sense either.]

Since Hale uttered his celebrated line, Connecticut history has been nothing but a parade of backstabbers and turncoats. In fact, I will demonstrate that treachery is the state's most basic identity. Let us consider some notable historical figures in the intervening time. Not more than four years later, Benedict Arnold was thwarted in his plot to surrender West Point to the British. That would be the Connecticut-born, Benedict Arnold, synonymous with betrayal.

That one is too obvious, how about something more obscure? The Hale execution story was popularized primarily by one man, William Hull, then a lower-level army officer who heard of Hale's bravery while meeting with a British officer the following day. By the War of 1812 he had worked his way up to the level of general, commanding the northwestern army. Facing what he thought (erroneously) to be vastly superior British forces approaching Fort Detroit, he promptly surrendered THE ENTIRE NORTHWESTERN ARMY. Despite popularizing Hale's all edged speech Hull did not seem willing to regret that he didn't even bother to try losing his life to defend the whole Midwest. Few subordinates believed this action to be even remotely necessary, and a court marshall agreed. Hull was ordered to be shot, and only spared at the last minute by President Madison.

In modern politics, we have Joe Lieberman, Bush's shadow. Go-to guy for really misguided Iraq War ideas and repetition of corrosive "people who criticize the war hate the soldiers" type rhetoric. Who lost the Democratic primary and then stabbed the party that supported his entire career in the back by running as the Independent/Connecticut for Lieberman nominee. Who periodically threatens to break his promise and side with his real soul-mates in the Senate, overturning the intention of the people who voted for him with the expectation that he wouldn't do that. Not to mention the fact that almost none of the positions he espouses are held by the actual people of his constituency in a state that dumped all but one of its Republican representitives last November. Classic Connecticut.

[Speaking of which, someone with an excellent sense of humor actually joined Joe's nominal "Connecticut for Lieberman" party. He called the Secretary of State, found out that no one, not even the Senator, had bothered to become a member of the party named after himself. As the only member of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, Dr. John Orman held a convention at his house, nominated himself for chairman, seconded his own nomination and voted for himself. He then adopted a number of party rules, including "If you run under Connecticut for Lieberman, you must actually join our party."and "If any CFL candidate loses our party's nomination in a primary, that candidate must bolt our party, form a new party and work to defeat our party endorsed candidate."]

Speaking of people who love the President, need I remind you that no one is working harder to further the terrorists' goal of fomenting terror in America and the rest of the world than Connecticut-born George W. Bush himself? Freaking out the country with vague threats, doing the enemy's job by building up the danger they pose and keeping them constantly in the limelight, while at the same time wasting vast resources and efforts fighting people who are not them. Not to mention the obvious stuff like allowing bin Laden to avoid capture and creating a generation of impoverished displaced Muslims who hate America. Whether or not he's actually trying to, it is hard to deny that he's helping the enemy at this point.

Now to more important matter, baseball. Connecticut has always been the least authentic part of New England, or so it seems to the rest of us. In the "real" New England states like Rhode Island and Massachusetts, I think that the source of our unease with Connecticut is their non-allegiance to the Red Sox, and to a lesser extent, the Patriots. We just don't know how to deal with people who call themselves NEer's but don't support the very thing that unifies our region. This intrepid blogger could write a book on Red Sox-Yankees dynamics in CT, and frequently laments the grating fact that the New England Sports Network, which carries the Sox, does not serve Fairfield Country. Is it too much to expect a channel that calls itself the New England Sports Network to operate in, you know, New England?! In any case, it is merely symptomatic of a larger problem, the overflow of fair-weather baseball fans into what is rightly our dominion. Here is how it is supposed to work-

Officially designated Red Sox Area: New England.
Officially designated Yankees area: NY, NJ, remote regions of the country with losing teams and poor baseball knowledge, much of Japan.

Oh, and I forgot, BOS: Dominican Republic, NYY: Nicaragua. But Connecticutters are not content to stick to the pre-arrangement. Instead, many of the weak-willed betrayers of western Conn. took it upon themselves to divide up the state as they wish. The NY Times published a fascinating summary of the boarder dispute last summer.

Which all brings us back to Hale, who was, at the very least, a patriot who has inspired millions to serve our nation with his brave demeanor. But is it surprising, after all this, that Connecticut's official state hero is a spy? Who probably didn't come up with or actually utter the very words for which he was immortalized? And what of Conn.'s familiar appellation: The Nutmeg State? Astute knowers of trivia will recognize that this handle refers to the shrewd practice of peddling fake wooden nutmeg to southerners and similarly dimwitted fellow residents. So ingrained is Connecticut's deceitful nature that the state's nickname itself celebrates their own duplicity! Quad erat demonstratum.

So next time you are enjoying the manatee exhibit at Mystic Aquarium, watch your back.

The job market just got a little smaller

I believe myself to be in possession of perhaps the worst resume in existence. Not the actual job experience part, the writing part. In that the writing is equivalent to disjointed, insane, rambling. I think about 70% of the sentences are fragments and all of them are trying to convey some sort of grandiose, megamaniacal thought that has no place in a CV. This guy is a friend twice-removed and is well-known for being an extremely verbose and strongly-opinioned pseudo-intellectual with a high school education and a passion for philosophy. He went to South America and had a spiritual experience while on mushrooms. He also has some kind of Farakhan-esque racist philosophy and is planning a trip through the downtrodden, unscenic regions of Eastern Africa, the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent with the money he has saved through his stereo sales career. I think we can expect to see him, bearded and dirty, handing out a poorly-xeroxed socialist newsletter in downtown New Bedford in about ten years. Without further explanation, here is its precursor.

Chris W------
---------
Dartmouth Ma 02745

Fore Note
Before the list of material accomplishments, I suppose the psychic and character compositional may suffice more truly, though verifiable by observation alone. Rather the experience of a man is composed of such, and from such springs his ability, but a blueprint are the achievements of his work, the substance composed of, is his character.

Aspiration
To enhance the literary prowess of an adored industry and make industrious audiophiles. To transcend technical detail in favor of emotionally immediate information.
To enwrap in eloquence, simulating the poetic expression of sounds soul, to hear speakers songs, and tube amp whispers and transmit such linguistically.
To raise a new generation of audiophiles, addicted spirits to luxurious listening, like the luscious sweets of wine.
Replication of listening, reenacted in words, behind the mind the same play unfolds, magazines get sold.
Self supporting markets stimulate addiction, constant bombardment with stimulus, emotionally drawn, elongates the souls longing for soothing, let music be the opiate.
Let equipment be the means.
Let a new light shine, where an old sun smoldered, and re-ignite romances long past, born of broken dreams, molded and loaded into fancy once more, finances shall pour.

Experience
Veteran of sales, experienced in the dynamics of emotional manipulation, so as to induce a musical fever, expressed through equipment.
Contagious in the flu of enthusiasm, few escape such honesty.
Well studied in logistics, an avid student of reason and philosophy, economics and sociology, transmitted in logical planning and intuitive foresight. A compass for a customer.
Economically inclined, and thoroughly well thought, advantages rarely slip by in a well constructed equation of logistics.
Ambitious toward perfection, perfectionist undoubtedly, suppressed only when absolutely necessary, when reason permits.
Traveler of three continents, boarding on four and five in the future unfolding.
The culture of which well drunk, an understanding of peoples perspective well lavished, as valuable in a global marketplace, and in a pot of melting butter.
Prolific in output, philosophical in approach, only writers block may ebb flow, such drought has passed of late and well watered springs spool endless work, and blocks but induct nourishment, production trudges on. Reliability is my specialty.
Sense of loyalty imbedded in deep bone, provided well treatment nourishes.
Well understood of the emotional bridge of connectivity, linking man and man, and of what modifications or inspirational incentives are required to make its trench passable.

Education
Largely self taught by the teachers of eternity, paradigm acquisition from philosophers long past, and educators for whom the term education, was wrought.
Poets and generals, but thinkers and philosophers, antiquated and cerebral, eloquent in word and chiasmic in depth.
And lastly the meager completion of High School, and a few courses of College engineering. Quite abstracted from the spirit of audiophilia, and the concoction of auditory nirvana.

References furnished graciously upon request

Cold Facts:
Job Experience
Four years sales for -------, home theater system construction and installation
Three years sales and consultation for ----------, high end stereo importing and distributing
Two consecutive summers bathed in sun, with eyes water locked and governing imposition as a beach lifeguard
One year pool vigilant as a YMCA lifeguard

There isn't much to say about this. The character in question actually seems to be a nice enough guy (I believe he has referred to me as the "tall mathematical fellow," who wouldn't like that?), and I don't mean him any disrespect...but that doesn't mean his resume isn't hilarious.

The banned underground American Democratic Party

For no good reason I've been reading about North Korea a lot recently. The people are so isolated from the outside world, and the state has such complete control over what goes in and out that the whole nation seems preserved in a weird shrink-wrapped Asian/Stalinist 1950's. It is also interesting to me the propaganda they feed to the people there. Without any opportunity to compare it to anything from the outside world it makes you wonder whether most of them realize their leaders are full of shit. I'm not sure that they all do. At least in one of the accounts I read about the mid-eighties (before the famine) by an inpartial westerner, the people seemed to be living bleak but not completely unhappy lives, and most seemed basically loyal to the government. When you don't have any frame of reference and you are constantly being told that the rest of the world is even poorer... (of course these were only really about the main city, I think the rural parts of the country were much worse.) In any case, I am sure that thoughtful North Koreans can put the pieces together; the U.S. can't be both a dominating superpower that strong-arms every other country in the world to oppress their people and an impoverished cesspool teetering on the brink of collapse and/or revolution. That the same news story often presents these two versions side-by-side must eventually strain credulity.

In any case, I was lead eventually to this "news" site. I doubt that North Koreans actually buy the stuff they're saying, but I have an obligation to present some samples. This article by far takes the cake. Could this be the most succinct description of American politics? A few months old, but still hilarious. "Nuclear Tests Cover Up For Rapists?":

Just a few days ago, prominent American Republican (Fascist) Party representative Mark Foley was revealed to have raped and sodomized dozens of young male pages who was completing their work experience in the US congress. Foley, who was not democratically elected to the congress, was also the president of an anti-child abuse organization. It turns out that the organization was a front for many paedophiles and rapists among the undemocratically elected American congress members.

These proven accusations, launched by the banned underground American Democratic Party, were overshadowed now by the country's recent testing of nuclear weapons. Of course, the American propaganda news sources told the people through hours and hours of daily propaganda that the missiles were being tested because of a potential attack from the government of Korea, while not a single news source mentioned the crimes of Mr. Foley and the rest of the congress. In reality, the country is preparing for an aggressive attack against peaceful Korea, and to continue its dirty deeds with young children.

It has long been known by the international community that the USA serves as a prime location for child sex trafficking and prostution. In 2005, a group of Korean special operatives infiltrated and rescued a child prostitution ring of young girls and boys from Uzbekistan in America. It turned out that the prostitution ring was the work of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov and American dictator George W. Bush. Karimov, known for boiling in hot water those who dissent against him, made a deal with Dictator Bush, giving him cheap oil and young children in exchange for blood money. Now it seems, with the revelations of Fascist Party member Foley, the American government has begun raping its own children. It is yet another sad story of victims of the American imperialists. By contrast, in Korea our government members are democratically elected, and uncorrupt. Rapists and paedophiles would be immediately ejected from the party, and put in jail for the crimes, rather than being defended like they are in America.

Where did they get that photo? Moving on, this "poll":

Earlier last week, a poll was conducted in Pyongyang to show public opinion so far going into the December presidential elections. The results came out as follows:

Kim Jong Il - Korean Workers' Party - 70.33%
Kim Yong Dae - Social Democratic Party of Korea - 22.69%
Lee Jung-Mi - Green Party of Korea - 5.07%
Ryu Mi Yong - Chondoist Chongu Party - 1.83%

Many are shocked at the results, with nearly 23% of the population of the city in favour of the Social Democratic Party, which announced its pro-Imperialists platform next week.

Yeah, I'm sure it'll be close. The best part? I looked up the names of those other people and at least two of them are South Korean Olympic athletes.

sheild your eyes

this is an excellent article written back in the mid-nineties about my college's sub-par sheild, and all the typical dartmouthesque bungling and incompetance that went into producting it. found via dartmo, an excellent site on the college's architechure which also explains the monstrosity in front of fairchild. basically, the upshot of the article is that our school seal, which most of us already consider somewhat inadequate aesthetically, is in fact, really, truly awful and goes on to innumerate the reasons why. the main ones are that a sheild should never be a line drawing, and that the image itself is of, like, you know, naked indians walking towards a symbolic cross (i mean, come on!)--which continues to promote the falsehood that dartmouth was at any time a missionary institution (or primarily for native americans for that matter). the notion that we should hang on to it simply for the reason that it is somehow traditional is debunked by the observation that it was only created in 1944. a bit of basic sheild design stuff:

1. the placement of colored objects on a contrastingly colored field is fundamental to good heraldic design, since it allows a coat of arms to be easily recognized. the dartmouth coat of arms however, exists only as a line drawing...

2. also, a well-designed coat of arms uses a limited number of objects to make a symbolic statement. these objects should never be crowded into a vista, or act as filler, or disappear off the edge of the shield, as they do in the dartmouth coat of arms.

the reason for our chaotic arrangement seems to be the orginal bizzaro seal that you see on only the most official of documents, which did actually date from an early point in the college's history. as the author explains, plenty of places have one of these, but no one tries to adapt it for the heraldic sheild since it looks terrible! (a seperate article, (also via dartmo) points out how weirdly dressed the people in there are and how it is impossible to figure out what they are supposed to represent). the common sheild itself is simply too complicated to form much of an impression in the memory. my own veiw on logos is that they should be reproducible by 6-year-olds without becoming unrecognizible.

worst of all is that the man commissioned to design our coat of arms did so only 'under protest,' saying how unsuitible the drawing was for any sort of carving, metal-casting, or mass-reproduction and how we needed to adopt a heraldic-style design for common use. for replacement, the author goes over a few suggestions that have been made over time. the best of which is his own:

i tinted it green. i think we can all agree that it is far superior. it has a deer in it for god sake! case closed.

the people's albatross

of all the crackerjack things the soviets did over the years, this has got to be one of the most crackerjack ones. in an apparent attempt to impress everyone with the architectural splendor of communism, plans were drawn up in the 1930's to construct a gigantic "palace of the soviets" in the heart of moscow larger than the empire state building. capped off with a likeness of none other than lenin himself (chubby edition of course), 100 meters high. each of his legs would have been the same size as the statue of liberty and the entire structure would have been the tallest structure in the world. i hope that they were planning on having that plane fly circles around the thing all day long, with moving spotlights pointing up at it from the base.

of course, like everything else the communists did, this worked out exactly according to plan. after blowing up some famous church to lay the foundation, the builders discovered that the land was too marshy to construct a stupendously large monument. as they were about to fix it, world war two started and they gave up, turning the left-over cement basin into a glorious "swimming pool of the soviets" instead:



it just goes to show you: if you ever want to erect a scary-looking palace of ridiculous proportion, make sure that you're truly committed to building it, or you'll end up with a big ditch full of wet commies. and nobody wants that.