The Fry Side

From Flowing Data:

FloatingSheep, a fun geography blog, looks at the beer belly of America. One maps shows total number of bars, but the interesting map is the one above. Red dots represent locations where there are more bars than grocery stores, based on results from the Google Maps API. The Midwest takes their drinking seriously.

(Found via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.)

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

[From 1984 by George Orwell]

There is an easily understandable truth to the phrase, History is written by the victor. The victorious are the ones left after the battle to tell the tale, so it is their story. Even ‘his story’ seems like the etymology of the word, though it is not.

Logically, however, it seems as though it should not be the case. Fact is fact. What happened, happened. Right? The American Revolution went from this, to this, to this.

But we humans are limited, isolated souls. We cannot truly know anything beyond our own experience. So when we look upon the past, we see it through our own eyes and nothing more. Try as we might to keep the past even-handed, it remains clouded by what we believe actually happened.

And that belief as to what happens tempers our current state of mind. We justify our current decisions based on that foggy history, to either follow the path or run counter to it. The hardest to cope with of all is when evidence points to a different conclusion than what is believed to be true.

This is where a new battlefield has opened up, and it follows the words of George Orwell exactly.

In Texas, there is a board of education that controls the content of a huge amount of school textbooks. A single board, in one state, dictates the content they want in most schools.

How this is possible is through textbook manufacturing. Texas publishes a single list of approved textbooks for all of its schools. Texas is a huge state. So, if a publishing company wants guaranteed millions in sales, they cater to Texas. And since they’ve catered to Texas, those books become the books for much of the whole country.

As one would expect, Texas, as a whole, has stronger religious leanings than average. And this board has a solid voting bloc of religious conservatives. This fact would normally be balanced out by California’s liberal-secular leanings, but since that state won’t be purchasing textbooks for another half a decade (good planning, that’s what that is), Texas is now wielding far more influence over the market than it previously did.

Up now for their curriculum decisions is social studies. History. Our very past is going to be altered by the present. Alterations to make sure that there are well-mentioned gaps in Darwin’s and Galileo’s advances in our very world. Show Reagan as a hero, followed by the grandeur of Newt Gingrich. And be sure people see that our very founders were espousing Christianity and rule under Biblical law.

It is the last point that is most confounding to my knowledge. I have read our founders, not just read about them. Most of them were Christians, yes, but that was merely the default. The far more reaching fact about them was that they divorced their personal faiths (which were from numerous sects) and knew that their inspirations came from Enlightenment philosophy of reliance on themselves to get through existence.

These people honestly believe they are setting history right. That is what is so tough to fight. And it is a subtle fight over words. What is most impressive is that they are thinking in terms of generations. If they rewrite history now to deceptively emphasize the religions of our Founders over their actual beliefs, then it will be thirty years before the ramifications are fully felt.

As Mr Coates mentioned when I first read about this on his blog (also followed up by Mr Sullivan), it is hard not to leave this subject on a sour, depressing note. The effects of such an intellectual coup are difficult to see as too harmful in a world becoming coated with ubiquitous information. It also requires a vast amount of effort to maintain a campaign such as this over decades.

Still, it is always worth fighting against such willful acts of ignorance and deception.

Last week had some fun news out of CPAC, a Conservative conference in Washington DC. Only there could you find fun interactions like these. It really goes to show that the only Republican I can get behind anymore is Ron Paul.

My recollections are not perfect, of course, but Nate Gunderson should be able to help me fill in the details. The exchange is roughly as follows.

“So, you’re the infamous Ryan Sorba,” I said.

“Yep!”

“You’ve made quite a name for yourself.”

“Haha, yeah. Where are you from?”

“I go to college around here, American University.”

“What are you studying?”

“I was double-majoring in Political Science with a political theory focus and International Relations with an Islamic Studies focus, but I think I’m going to drop the latter. I can’t take the relativistic preaching, the whitewashing of the burqa, Sayyid Qutb, the entire religion.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. So what did you think of my little tirade, then?”

“Oh, I thought it was quite evil, actually. I’m gay.”

“You mean you think you’re gay.”

“No, I’m gay. Do you think it’s a choice?”

“I think it’s the result of a complex process of social and environmental factors, but that it’s reversible.”

“So, like, why is it that over one hundred animals have been observed engaging in homosexual sex in nature?”

“Well, only 0.2% of animals are known to do that — ”

” — I mean, mammals, obviously, not ants, birds — ”

” — you know, animals masturbate, your dog humps your leg. Does your dog talk with a lisp?”

“Do I talk with a lisp?!” I yelled.

“A little bit.” (I later asked a couple of gay friends if I have a small lisp; both of them said I have no lisp whatsoever. Aron, who is straight, has said my voice is sometimes theatrical, but that I don’t have a lisp.)

“Rudy Giuliani has a lisp — is he gay?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Want to know why so many people around the world hate America? Here’s why:

‘Nuff said, as they say.

I’ve been reading a lot more. I knocked out Prisoner of Azkaban in just about a week. This week I read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Now I’m back onto Machiavelli after taking a break from it to read a couple of novels (and to catch up with my niece who is reading the Harry Potter series for the first time).

The speed reading is definitely coming along, I think. My retention is higher. I’m getting closer to my goal of reading about a book a week, plus I’m able to consume more delicious content online. Hopefully that’ll make up for the fact I can’t listen to podcasts any longer since my kids keep getting louder.

So here are a few lines from The Art of War that struck me. From Chapter 2, Waging War:

3. If the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

Chapter 3, Attack by Strategem:

18. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Chapter 13, The Use of Spies:

4. What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.

5. Now, this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.

5.1 If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.*

6. Knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions can only be obtained from other men.

27. Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying and thereby they achieve great results. Spies are the most important element of warfare, because on them depends an army’s ability to move.

That all spoke quite a bit about what has happened in the world in the past decade, and even so about the Cold War as well. Who would have thought that actual, evidential knowledge would be useful in conducting war?

*Not actual quote from Sun Tzu.

My take on the State of the Union speech last night was that it sounded more like a lecture to Congress, rather than a speech for the people. I am all for that, because more than ever, it seems that the Senate and House have far more problems getting work done than Obama. And Obama is a constitutional scholar; he respects that Congress is the primary body politic of the US and that it needs the most power compared to the President and to the Supreme Court.

I am naturally a libertarian (except when it comes to children), and would lean Republican, but have yet to vote for one. I can’t see myself supporting a party overrun by Jesus with an M-16. I’ve never been able to fully support Democrats because I think they want government to do too much for us, plus I don’t much care for Unions or hippies.

So to me, the speech went well. I like to hear the ideas of rolling back the government a bit in order to, you know, pay for things we promise. And I really liked that Obama vocally disagreed with the Supreme Court (Roberts as CJ = we’ll be paying for Bush for a long, long time), and that he admonished both parties in Congress for failing to do work.

Democrats, you have a majority, do something with it. Republicans, just saying ‘no’ to everything isn’t leadership. Seriously, this is why I can’t support any of you right now. (Note: I do support Democrat Tarryl Clark for Congress in my district for so many good reasons I named above.)

It’s been interesting reading the immediate responses to the speech out in the blogosphere. The truly liberal are ragingly pissed about Obama’s concessions to cut spending and still wanting to work with Republicans. The political commentators seem wary that the speech did anything. And, well, I don’t have many conservative writers in my RSS feed because they sound as though they’re foaming at the mouth more than anything else.

Frankly, I thought Obama passing the responsibility on to Congress to get things done, particularly telling Republicans that if they have a better idea, he’d like to hear it. I think that’s a great way to call them out on their empty critiques.

I spent the speech just sitting there watching and reading a couple of other live-blogging events. There were only a couple of points that made me react. Here’s from my Twitter feed:

Did he really just end the Iraq war, or has that date always been set?

YES! Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell! [I actually clapped and shouted 'Yes!' when I heard that.]

These are big deal things to me, and he had better follow through. Now, I know Obama said that combat troops would be out of Iraq, so that means we’d still have support personnel on the ground. Frankly, I see a permanent base there, similar to the leftovers of World War Two.

As for DADT, I’m excited, but the history I’ve read from other blogs is to be wary. Many things have been promised in the past to the gay community and so many went unfulfilled. But I can see DADT ending with Iraq engagement and taking care of two big shifts in the military at once.

To wrap up, I want to note the Republican response to the State of the Union. Interesting to note, Governor McDonnell gave the response before an actual assembly rather than in front of a camera in a room. It’s just different than what has been done before.

However, Governor McDonnell said nothing. The entire time, he sounded like an empty shell. I kept waiting and waiting for a single idea that could be presented as an alternative to any of Obama’s plans. I heard mention of off-shore drilling, but that was all, and Obama even hit on that himself.

So it was a non-speech. Even my wife kept repeating to me, he’s not saying anything. But according to pundits, the bar was so low, all he had to do was not cut an audible fart in front of the camera. Good job, McDonnell. At least your speech was only ten minutes so you didn’t have to worry about saying anything relevant.

Ta-Nehisi Coates Talking Shop With Ezra Klein (Coates is the interviewer). The whole post is worth the few minutes to read. It definitely reminds me of some of my issues with the Democratic Party.

Can you paint the stakes in detail? What will be the cost of not passing this bill?

I’m going to put the choice very simply– If you pass the bill things get quite a bit better. If you don’t pass the bill things just continue to get worse. We all spend our time saying that this is not a perfect bill. That this is not our first choice. That If I were king I’d create a single-payer utopia. That’s because we’re intellectually honest. But that’s been a mistake. It’s obscured the fact that this bill is a tremendous improvement in the situation.

The basics of it remain the same. The people who really get helped are the people who end up without a large employer giving them insurance. For those people, this bill is a hedge against extremely bad luck. It’s a hedge against the worse part of the system–You lose your job because you have breast cancer and now no one will insure you. You have out of pocket medical bills that go up to 90 thousand. On an average day, none of that happens to us. But there comes a day that is not the average day, and that’s when everything goes wrong. This bill says we won’t allow it to go too wrong.

Beneath that there is the basic subsidy scheme. In 2019 you’re spending 200 billion a year in subsidies on poor people. When was the last time you’ve heard about government helping low income folks like that? It just doesn’t happen anymore.

Joe Biden: Why America Needs Trains

Support for Amtrak must be strong–not because it is a cherished American institution, which it is–but because it is a powerful and indispensable way to carry us all into a leaner, cleaner, greener 21st century.

Consider that if you shut down Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, it is estimated that to compensate for the loss, you’d have to add seven new lanes of highway to Interstate 95. When you consider that it costs an average of $30 million for one linear mile of one lane of highway, you see what a sound investment rail travel is. And that’s before you factor in the environmental benefits of keeping millions and millions of cars off the road.

In 1830, the first steam-engine locomotive, the Tom Thumb, graced America’s railways. Its first run was a rickety 13-mile trek from Baltimore to Ellicott Mills, Md., but it became much more than that. It marked the beginning of a new journey, heading straight into a better, more imaginative American future.

There is a point of rhetoric I would like to poke a hole in right now: “We must support our troops who are out defending our liberty.”

The first part of the phrase aside*, for now, sending our troops abroad does not ‘defend our liberty’. If we said such a thing to our Founders, they would have scoffed (Franklin would have laughed). It would be essentially nonsense. It still is.

Liberty’s opponent is Tyranny. Our ruling organizations are what dictate how free or oppressed we are. To defend our Liberty is to take up protest or, at worst, arms against our own government.

The French fought for Liberty against their kings. The Indians fought for Liberty against foreign British rule. Blacks fought for Liberty against our institutionalized Jim Crow. Even right now, Iranians are fighting for their Liberty to elect their leaders.

The governments of Iraq and Afghanistan have never been remotely capable of threatening our freedoms. Not even Al-Qaeda terrorists came close to ruling us, or even off-setting our power.

The only place that can erode Liberty in the United States is Congress. That body politic holds the key to fighting Tyranny. It is the bastion of our great Republic, the one that gives us voice in how we govern ourselves.

Congress is a body designed to be slow and deliberative, to put much time and thought before levying taxes or entering us into wars. And in that time, the people are to go about their business, knowingly free from government intrusion.

Our Liberties have been lost at the hands of our own fear-fed representatives. We can be listened to, imprisoned without trial, and even tortured. All this because our Great Legislature deigned to give unchecked powers to the Executive.

Liberty is not defended by sending troops abroad, because Liberty can only be defended at home. It requires constant vigilance and participation. At most what we are doing is sending our troops to protect our interests or hunting criminals. We defend our Liberty against the forces of our Tyrannical government, though it is with damn good feeling that our volunteer military would side with the people.

*Back to the former point: Supporting our troops is a double-edged sword. Technically, supporting our military means paying for their engagements. Not supporting them would be to cut off funds and would bring them back home. And really, we have yet to pay a dime for our two invasions, so we haven’t even supported them at all yet. Technically. This is a semantic argument all around after all.

Still the only voice of reason on television. And he’s from the network that spawned South Park.