Obsidian Wings

Papers, Please

by Gary Farber

Children.

Who we hates, we do, because their parents are illegal immigrants. 

And in Alabama, this is now happening: 

FOLEY, Alabama -- Many of the 223 Hispanic students at Foley Elementary came to school Thursday crying and afraid, said Principal Bill Lawrence. 

Nineteen of them withdrew, and another 39 were absent, Lawrence said, the day after a federal judge upheld much of Alabama’s strict new immigration law, which authorizes law enforcement to detain people suspected of not being U.S. citizens and requires schools to ask new enrollees for a copy of their birth certificate. 

Even more of the students -- who are U.S. citizens by birth, but their parents may not be -- were expected to leave the state over the weekend, Lawrence said. 

"It’s been a challenging day, an emotional day. My children have been in tears today. They’re afraid," he said. "We have been in crisis-management mode, trying to help our children get over this." 

Foley Elementary has the area’s largest percentage of Hispanic students, about 20 percent of its student body. 

Under the new immigration law, schools must check the citizenship status of any student who enrolls after Sept. 1. 

The students must present a birth certificate. Those who cannot do so have 30 days to submit documentation or an affidavit signed by a parent or guardian saying that they are here legally. 

Why?  Federal Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackwell.  

Off With Their Heads!

by Gary Farber

I say we just kill all accused murderers from now on.

Think of the money saved, the deficit, and, of course, the children.

Now that we've established that the courts and Constitution don't matter, let's just jail all the accused criminals, too. Why lose sleep? They're murderers and criminals! The state says so. 

All Presidents need the power to assassinate people simply because they say so. What could go wrong? 

This matters not.

Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings.

Ratified 12/15/1791.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Universe returning to its tracks friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

I'm neither a fan nor an anti-fan of the Boston Red Sox, but their collapse reminded me of something Hilzoy wrote in 2004. She starts off with an excerpt from Poor Man. I'll just clip the whole thing here

"... 6-0 in the top of the third. Wow. They really must want me to get my hopes up. Lots of luck, fellas. Prediction: Yankees win 24-23 in the bottom of the 40th, on a 2-out inside-the-park grand slam by pinch hitter Don Zimmer. ...

... 8-1 in the 7th, Sox threatening. I accept on an abstract, intellectual level that it is physically possible for the Red Sox to win this game. Prediction: Yankees win 43-43* in the 104th inning when Zombie Babe Ruth leaps from his grave beneath the pitcher's mound and eats Manny Ramirez's brain seconds before he can score the winning run.

... Same score, Derek Lowe, pitching a one-hitter, is pulled for relief pitcher Pedro "New York is my Daddy" Martinez, pitching on 3 minutes' rest. Prediction: Yankees win 324-8 in 9 innings. Pedro's arm falls off. At the exact moment that the game ends, Fenway Park is hit by a comet."

 

I can't believe that they actually won. I assume it's just a ruse to get us to not just watch, but actually care about, the World Series, which they will lose in the seventh game, in a way that makes 1986 look like a normal loss. They will be ahead 843-0 in the 9th, with two outs, when Pedro Martinez, who has pitched a no-hitter so far, walks three people in succession. He is replaced, and replaced again, but the walks keep coming, until the entire Red Sox pitching staff has done its best and our opponents, they who shall not be named, have scored 294 runs without a single hit. At this point the Red Sox stop walking people and start committing horrible errors: dropped pitches, lazy pop flies that miraculously drop through the gloves of outfielders, and so on and so forth. Still, we will think, it's 843-502; surely they won't be able to get another 341 runs before we manage one out. But they will. And then, having tied the game... I leave the rest to your imaginations.

As someone observed, the whole Poor Man post is a gem, but it seems to have gone to that great 404 in the sky, so I only have a memory of it, but when I read something like this

No team has blown a bigger lead in September — a nine-game margin through Sept. 3 — and missed the playoffs. Boston went 6-18 after that and did not win consecutive games at any point in the month.

Or, as this CSMonitor piece says

Yup. That feeling is back. I forgot about this feeling. The past 10 years have been one Duck Boat parade after another. All four major pro sports teams have won a title. Seven in all. Absurd. I have talked smack until I was blue in the face.

This morning I need to remember who I was before the Boston Red Sox broke "the curse" and won the World Series in 2004.

I never believed before that.

I get the feeling that things are returning to normal in the universe. 

Reading list

by Doctor Science

What I'm reading now and hope to post about soon:

Hamlet's Father by Orson Scott Card. Available as a standalone or as first published, in a collection your library might have.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution By Francis Fukuyama. I may have to do a Read and Rant Along With Me! post (or series), because it's (a) an important, widely-read book, (b) in one of my favorite fields, rollerskate-history, (c) that has a pretty good take on a bunch of things, (d) but also some parts that make me go WTF?!? and want to argue with him. At length.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. The best kind of history book: it makes my own life and times more understandable. Also, with all these 60s-wayback-machine shows (Mad Men and its ilk), someone could make a GREAT TV show about the Migration. Probably on HBO, because of "language".

Other books I've recently finished:

Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway by Frank Schaeffer. I really love seeing someone grow and change their mind.

The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. Parts are *fascinating* and informative, others are seriously weak (e.g. no consideration of "passing", nothing on Hispanics as a "race").

The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual—and the Modern Home Began by Joan DeJean. Another history book that tells where our default assumptions come from, in this case about what kinds of things we need in a home.

Education Friday open thread

Two related articles from the NYTimes. This tells the story of two charter schools, one for underprivileged students, the other one of those high powered ones, and their attempt to teach students 'character' with the title "What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?", while this tells the adventures of Clifford Levy (or more importantly, his children) when he took up the post of NYTimes foreign correspondent in Moscow for 3 years, entitled "My Family’s Experiment in Extreme Schooling". Maybe you see where this is headed.

Unfortunately, I often fret that having my children being a Japanese-English bilinguals is not, to put this delicately, the optimal combination. but two languages are better than one, or, as the Omniglot site says, Одного языка недостаточно.

I'd be interested to hear the commentariat's thoughts on the matter.

September 11, Iraq, and the nature of courage

by Doctor Science

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Suffering leads to the Dark Side.
-- Yoda

As I've said, my emotional reaction to September 11 was full of fear and grief. Now, it has often seemed to me -- and to many others -- that in the years after that day much of the American people went crazy with fear. In particular, this was how I felt about the push for the Iraq War.

But I opposed the war, from the start. Does that mean I was less frightened by 9/11 than the war's supporters? Or that I was as frightened as they were, but braver?

The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Richard Caton Woodville.

Your sports Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

The Guardian observes, in a piece about Cheryl Cole concert in Afghanistan, has this:

The X Factor is becoming almost like America's NFL, whose relationship with the military has become so weirdly symbiotic that flypasts before each game come as standard, the league's flagship show has been broadcast from a military base, and forces recruiters set up shop outside stadiums.

Don't know if that is true, but still, they seem to have a much better fix on America's heartbeat than MLB. I think that one reason I left the US was to get away from sports, not because I didn't like it, but because I liked it too much. But now, I can have NFL and MLB games streamed to my computer, so stepping away from it was probably a good thing.

I'd also note that I saw some highlights of the US Open semifinals and finals, and at the end of 5 sets, they looked like they were playing ping pong, the ball was going so fast. As a kid, you imagine yourself doing something like the pros, no matter how impossible it would be. But when I watched those 20+ shot rallies, corner to corner with full ground strokes, that whole idea suddenly seemed to vanish. 

Lots of non US sports as well. Champions League matches, Women's world cup qualifiers, track and field in Daegu (I loved the way Bolt didn't blame anyone but himself on the false start. Real class). cricket, England's rugby team involved in dwarf throwing.

Even when it's not about sports, it's about sports. The NBA lockout may have have the league scattered to the four corners of the globe. Since there are only 450 players on the NBA roster at any given time, this piece predicts that over 10% are going to be playing overseas.

And there was the Russian hockey team, Locomotiv, that died in a plane crash, which gave another interesting look into the internationalization of sports and sports tragedy. (1/4th of the passengers were foreign citizens)

So here's a thread to talk about any of that stuff or anything else that takes your fancy.

 

The New World's Post-Apocalyptic Landscape

by Doctor Science

I'm gathering up a bunch of threads that came up in the Methos on September 11 post and answering them here.

The question, "Were New World populations significantly reduced by Old World diseases introduced after 1492?" is currently considered settled by historians, and the answer is "Yes". If this startles you, it *is* a paradigm shift from what you probably grew up learning -- but it's a really solid shift with a huge weight of evidence behind it. The best popular account is 1491, by Charles Mann; I'm on the library waiting list for 1493 and will be sure to review it here when I've read it.

The Triumph of Death, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Methos and me on September 11th

by Doctor Science

The Tower, by Pamela Colman Smith, from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Unsourced description from Wikipedia:

Chaos ----- Sudden change ----- Impact ----- Hard times

Crisis ----- Revelation ----- Disruption ----- Realizing the truth

Disillusion ----- Crash ----- Burst ----- Uncomfortable experience

Downfall ----- Ruin ----- Ego blow ----- Explosive transformation

One of the most important parts of September 11, 2001 for me was a conversation with someone who doesn't exist.

Das Glühkatzchen

by liberal japonicus

Hartmut can correct that German, I hope, but this Guardian story about genetically manipulated cats that glow in the dark had me singing 'Shine little glowpuss, glimmer, glimmer', which led me to the wikipedia entry for that song, which is originally from the German operetta Lysistrata by Paul Lincke.