Long things you should read

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Our affection for Fred Clark’s Slacktivist is well documented. Clark is a journalist, but also an evangelical Christian frankly dismayed by what’s become of his church. He’s made much sport of the Left Behind books in a series of posts described as “reading them so you don’t have to;” they are at once hilarious and depressing.

He’s in the midst of a new series of posts now worth a review if you find yourself confused by the vision of a church based on Christ’s compassion being so obsessed with contempt for homosexuals. Check out “The Gay-Hatin’ Gospel:”

  • Part 1: The Safe Target
  • Part 2: Inner Demons
  • Part 3: The Innocent Backlash
  • Part 4: The Exegetical Panic Defense, which includes this:
Part of the answer, I think, has little to do with homosexuals or homosexuality per se. It has to do, rather, with epistemology — with the need for certainty and the panicked hostility that surfaces when that certainty is threatened. “We see through a glass, darkly,” St. Paul said, warning against the temptation to chase the will-o’-the-wisp of certainty. But American evangelicalism is largely based on the idea that certainty is not only possible, but necessary. Mandatory, even. This certainty can be achieved thanks to the one-legged stool of the Evangelical Unilateral. That’s a made-up term, but it describes something real. It’s a play on the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” — an approach to theological thinking that relies on the four foundations of scripture, tradition/community, reason and experience. The evangelical approach to theological thinking is exactly like this Wesleyan method, except it doesn’t include tradition or community. Or reason. Or experience.
  • Part 5: It’s the politics, stupid
  • Part 6: In which critics who believe there really IS some sort of moral struggle happening are answered, and he illustrates how a longing for legislative enforcement of religious mores paints a picture of weak moral fiber

I’m sure he’s more to say on the subject, but read these. It’s illuminating.

Grrr

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We have another torture AG, it appears, and it totally didn’t have to happen: the vote to confirm was 53 to 40, which means a cloture vote was a real possibility. Add to this that the campaigning Dems didn’t show to vote. We reckon there’s some angle to allowing another yesman to get confirmed to show everyone how bankrupt the GOP is, but it really IS time to play hardball. The GOP have fucked up everything in sight, and have no reason to stop now. The Democrats really need to tighten up and play hard to show America they’re just as pissed off as everyone else.

Rolling over on “waterboarding may not be torture” Mukasey ain’t gonna do it.

Major League Baseball Hates You

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Remember how we keep reminding you about DRM being a bad idea, and that you should only ever buy content you can treat as you please?

Yeah, here’s another example why. Basically, MLB has been selling some digital downloads on their site for a while that include DRM. The DRM pings some central server to validate that it’s ok to run. MLB has shifted to a new DRM system, though, and has abandoned all the old content. None of the old downloads work anymore, and their answer to customers is basically “suck it up and buy them again.” Really.

As it turns out, they’ve got boneheads in England, too

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So, there’s a lotto-type game over there, and one of the scratch-off games involved getting temperature values lower than some target value. Bonehead buys card (thus illustrating a basic and common level of innumeracy) that has target value of -8, scratches off two numbers, and then is convinced he’s being had because he doesn’t know -6 is higher than -8:

On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn’t.

I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher – not lower – than -8 but I’m not having it.

Wow.

Keith is our Conscience, Again

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His most recent special comment concerns fired U.S. Acting Assistant AG Daniel Levin, who lost his job for speaking out against torture generally and waterboarding specifically — after he had the technique used on himself to better evaluate it. Olbermann begins:

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the meaning of the story of former U.S. Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin.

It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed:

The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.

Go read the whole thing.

Mukasey Hates Boobies

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Check Balko for more; Mukasey has basically promised Orrin Hatch that he’ll pursue “mainstream obscenity” in his hypothetical DOJ, which is code for “I’ll crack down on porn.”

Balko:

It’s important to note, here, that “mainstream obscenity” is a contradiction in terms. Obscenity, at least by the Supreme Court’s definition in Miller v. California, isn’t “mainstream.” What Hatch wants are pornography prosecutions.

Still, it’s helpful to know the spirit of Ed Meese is still alive and well in the Republican Party. Never mind that, as I’ve explained before, just about every measurable social indicator that people like Hatch believe could be affected by the availability of pornography is moving the other way, and has been since the early-to-mid 1990s, also the very period over which the Internet has made porn abundant, free, and easily accessible. Over the last 15 years, rapes are down to historic lows, abortions are way down, teen sex is down, teen pregnancy is down to historic lows, divorces are down, and crimes against children are down.

This dude just gets better and better.

Oh lovely

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The Feds would like very much to convince the courts that you have no right to privacy in email. This would mean that any email communication could be eavesdropped upon without any sort of warrant or court oversight.

We’re pretty sure this is a bad idea.

Awwwwww

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Sources say A&M is in talks to buy out Coach Fran. Buh-bye.

Amusingly, the story mentions the Aggies seeking a conversation with Auburn coash Tommy Tuberville. We’re not sure trading Auburn for College Station would make sense for Tuberville, nor are we sure his stock is high enough to warrant the kind of cash it would probably take to entice him to make the move.

(Hat tip to Attorney.)

SabanWatch, Week 10: No, really, we’re happy — or, We Are All Midshipmen Now

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We’ll lead with the big story: NickyLou met his old pals from the Bayou on Saturday in a serious SEC brawl of the first order. We’re sad our Tide couldn’t hold on, but we feel pretty good about their performance against one of the top programs in the country. They made LSU earn the win, and looked good doing it. The silver lining for us is that the victorious Tigers — and therefore the SEC — are still in the national title hunt; they’re back at No. 2 in the BCS, behind Ohio State, so we’re reasonably content. However, the results hurt the PPM; let’s do the math.

When we last checked in, after the rout of Tennessee, we had some 86 victory points; this one-touchdown loss takes us back to 79, so the new Nick Saban Points Per Million Value is 2.46875, or not at all far from our high of 2.6875 after he sent Fulmer crying all the way back to Rockytop. We remain pleased.

Of course, a couple other events on Saturday contribute to our overall rosy outlook.

First, the unranked Seminoles of Florida State showed Boston College how to play football, and handed the perfect-up-to-now Eagles their first loss — and in so doing knocked those pansy yankees out of title contention. Way to go, Bowden!

Second, of course, is even better. As we have hoped all year, Saturday marked the first time since 1963 that the U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen have beaten the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame; it took 3 OTs to do it. The 43 game streak was the longest ever in NCAA top division football, and its ending is yet another feather in the hat of this year’s Irish, who are now on a school-record 5 game losing streak. For his part, Weis is sanguine; ESPN quotes him as thinking the streak had no meaning for him or the team. We trust the Irish faithful will disabuse him of this notion in short order.

ND’s season isn’t over, either: they still face Air Force, Duke, and USC-toppling Stanford, and we figure they won’t win more than one of those. Sadly for us, it’s pretty clear we won’t have the pleasure of watching ND lose yet another bowl game (last bowl victory: 1994 Cotton Bowl, against A&M) this time around, but the Navy game was a pretty fine consolation prize. The Academy agrees, by the way, as they cancelled classes today in celebration.

(By the way, we’re also pretty happy that Coach Fran got pounded on Saturday, too, as A&M fell to Oklahoma 42 to 14. The Tide faithful were sorry to see him go, but the truth will out, and the Aggies are welcome to him.)

We’re running late with the SabanWatch, but in the meantime, here’s some bitching

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Dear NFL: Fuck You. The NFL’s rules on broadcasting games — such as this afternoon’s much ballyhooed contest between the remaining undefeated teams in the league — mean that any market with an un-sold-out local-team game can’t see any other games on TV at the same time, supposedly to encourage in-person attendance. Yes, this means even in Houston, with the Texans on the road.

There are a number of problems with this. On any given Sunday, there are games expected to be interesting — like Colts v. Pats — and games unlikely to be worth two squirts of piss, both in terms of competition and in terms of the later season, like, say, Texans v. Raiders. The NFL doesn’t care what we want to watch, though; they want to control the feeds and force us, if we want to watch football at 3:00 today, to watch the crappy game instead of the one everyone will be talking about tomorrow.

Again: Fuck you, NFL.

It’s really yet another example of old business models trying to force their way through a new world. It’s not gonna happen. The more ways of communication we have, the more ways people like the NFL have to figure out how to block to preserve these chickenshit restrictions. Here’s a clue: give people what they want to buy, and stop doing things like this to piss them off.

This kind of crap is another in the long list of reasons we never, ever go to live games. It’s a shitty experience compared to watching at home, and encourages these absurd rules. Fuck that.

The Chron, believe it or not, has a good piece on it.

Wurstfest Results

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So, here we are, all done. Results pleased pretty much everybody, but are inexact because it wasn’t a “chip” race, so if you weren’t at the starting line to begin with your official time is off by as much as a minute or two:

  • Eric: 43/44 and change (under his goal of 9s!);
  • Lindsey: 1:02 or so;
  • Chief Heathen: 1:03 or 1:04 or so, only a bit behind Lindsey;
  • Mrs Heathen: 1:20, with lots more running than walking

We will now commence drinking beer and eating meat.

The Prohibitionists are Coming

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Reason runs down the threat to liberty that has grown out of Candy Lightner’s MADD. Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1980, but now finds their obsession with any alcohol consumption to border on mania. She’s right.

As it happens, pushing the legal limit lower and lower isn’t driven by data at all; it’s more about Carrie Nation redux. Click through for more. Lowering the limit from .1 to .08 did NOTHING statistically meaningful to traffic fatalities, though we’re sure it certainly DID add significant cash to country and city coffers.

Well, that was fun: SabanWatch Week 9

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Perhaps it’s a bit disingenuous to call it SabanWatch this week, since the Tide didn’t play (nor did LSU), so the value is unchanged (2.6875), but there’s still much to discuss.

Two upsets really please us: Mississippi State over previously-golden 14th-ranked Kentucky, and of course the “shocking” loss by USC to Oregon. Both really warm our hearts, but for different reasons.

MSU is perennially a stepchild in Mississippi and SEC football (Ole Miss gets all the love, to say nothing of USM), but Sly Croom has been quietly building a program in Starkville, apparently. The Bulldogs improve to 5-4, 2-3 in the SEC — but those two wins were over Auburn and Kentucky, and are probably enough to keep his job. Especially if he beats those rich bastards from Oxford (who, it should be noted, are having only slightly more success than Notre Dame this year).

With USC, we just love to see them lose. This win for the Ducks actually puts them in the title hunt

Some comeuppance happened this time around, too, though the one we hoped for (Cal over ASU) didn’t happen. ASU is still perfect, but perfect’s easy with a schedule like theirs up to this point. Coming up, though, they’ve got Oregon, UCLA, and USC, and we wouldn’t bet on ’em bagging all of those.

In the Disapointment column, we mark down Urban Meyer’s boys. Ranked 7 spots over Georgia, they still couldn’t close the deal. The Dawgs bottled up Tim Tebow and dominated the game from start to finish, finally whipping the Gators 42 to 30. It’s not a good week to be Coach Meyer, we’re betting, if you can’t bag a long-running rivalry the year after your take the brass ring. Ouch.

This week’s “Why Can’t They Both Lose” award goes to the Fulmer v Spurrier contest that ended in OT with the unranked Vols squeaking by Spurrier’s Cocks. Whups!

Oh, and South Florida Who? Much was said about how unfair their drop in the polls after their single loss was, especially compared to the treatment powerhouse programs like LSU get — except LSU has kept winning, and now the Bulls are down two in a row. The rest of their slate is unremarkable, and they deserve kudos for bagging Auburn and West Virginia, but title team? We don’t think so.

The rankings are of course out by now: BCS has it Buckeyes, BC, LSU, and so does the AP. We still don’t believe in BC despite their record, but time will tell.

(Yes, we know: No Irish snark this week. They had a bye, but next weekend should be fun: it’s Navy’s big chance.)

And We Won’t Miss It One Bit

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Longtime Heathen know that we’re crazy about Macs here at Heathen Central, but it wasn’t always so. Up until about 1998 or 1999, we were Wintel people, but trying to live on a Windows laptop on the road was absolutely miserable. Sleep never worked right. It crashed constantly. Finally, realizing we did Office docs for a living, and that MS Office is the same on Macs and PCs, we took the plunge on a 500Mhz G3 Powerbook, and haven’t looked back.

Back then, Macs still ran the great-great-great-grandson of the original Mac OS — all greys and lines with that Chicago font everywhere — and they weren’t all that much stabler than PCs for most things; however, the mobile platform was one place where they had the advantage, and it was huge. Done? Just close it. Need it back? Just open. And, unlike Win98, OS 9 didn’t eat itself every few months. We were happier, but not genuinely happy.

Or, rather, we weren’t until Apple made the jump to OS X. In one of the bravest moves in the history of consumer computing platforms, they more or less scrapped the long-in-the-tooth operating system and started over with a kernel based on the FreeBSD open source platform. For the first time, Macs were, essentially, running Unix. And for the first time, a Unix-like OS was a completely reasonable choice for you, your brother, your mother, or even your grandmother, so well had Apple hidden the complexities. Unlike in OS 9, though, those complexities were available for the savvy user, and consequently that’s when we became true Mac partisans. This new OS was capable of running old-style Mac programs using an emulation layer called Classic, but Apple made it pretty clear this was a temporary state, and that all new work should be done for OS X.

If Apple hadn’t made this move, we’d have long since gone to full-time Linux — and, we suspect, Apple wouldn’t be the roaring success they are today (they’ve now got a market cap larger than IBM).

Because of our unconventional Mac history, then, we’re not really invested in the old style Mac paradigm; we don’t miss any Classic programs, and haven’t even bothered to enable it on our last several machines. It’s a dead issue for us.

Well, now it’s really a dead issue for everyone, or at least everyone who runs Leopard. New Macs haven’t been able to run Classic at all for a while (PowerPCs can; Intel machines can’t), but the Leopard upgrade is the final nail. Leopard has the Classic hooks removed. Mac Luddites, it’s time to join the future.

Runnin’ with the Devil, or at least Lindsey

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Today: the combo-route that is Rice + Hermann Park; Linds reports that we covered 5.92 in just over an hour, which is a new personal best in terms of both distance and speed. Mrs Horne ran the whole way; I did intervals of 4:30 running and 1:30 fast-walking. Mr Horne was way ahead, and Mrs Heathen did her 3 mile loop in a personal best 43 minutes.

We’re feeling pretty good about the Wurstfest run next Saturday now. I’ll be in Seattle most of the week, and I’ll be lucky to get in an easy run on Tuesday (3 miles or so, max), but that should set the stage for a good experience in the hill country next week.

Dept. of Recurring Actors

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We pay more attention to cast than most people, we guess, since we’re constantly hitting Wikipedia and IMDB on the living-room laptops when we find ourselves wonder “Hey! Who is that guy?”

Tonight we hit something funny. Geeking out, watching Bionic Woman, we long-ago noticed that Jaime’s handler/minder/repair tech appeared on Friday Night Lights as Herc, Jason Street’s rehab wheelchair rugby buddy. What we didn’t know, though, is that a much earlier role for him was a minor appearance on Buffy, as the nasty brother to Tara Maclay in the “Family” episode back in 2000; we had to check the YouTube clip a couple times before we were convinced. He rather disappears into a role.

Guy’s name is Kevin Rankin, and his debut was, oddly enough, in another film we love: The Apostle, and he guested on Six Feet Under several times as well.

Innumeracy is an ugly, ugly thing

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Check this out: Some nutbird creationist asserts:

scientists have computed that to provide a single protein molecule by chance combination would take 10^262 years. Take thins pieces of paper and write “1” and then zeros after them – you would fill up the entire known universe with paper before you could write that number.

We’ll pause for a moment for the sheer gravity of this stupidity to sink in. Now proceed to one of the finest Internet smackdowns ever.

Nutbirds on the Right, Again

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We find ourselves here, looking at someone the Family Security Matters organization thinks is dangerous. The pic is funny, but the list — FSM’s top 10 most dangerous organizations in America — is hilarious. Their site is slow, so here’s the rundown:

  1. Media Matters, because reprinting what the Right says is somehow wrong;
  2. Universities and colleges, apparently because booklearnin’ is dangerous;
  3. MoveOn.org, a clear communist cabal;
  4. The League of the South; actually, this one makes sense — LoS is pretty freakin’ scary;
  5. Center for American Progress, whom they decry as “smearing and misleading;”
  6. Shockingly, Dobson’s Family Research Council, a group Heathen also oppose;
  7. The ACLU, natch, on account of their dangerous promotion of liberty;
  8. CodePINK, a grassroots peace-and-justice outfit;
  9. The Muslim Student Association, ’cause all them ragheads is DANGEROUS;
  10. ThinkProgress, smeared here along with MediaMatters, MoveOn, CodePink, the ACLU, etc., for consistently pointing out just how naked the right is.

Enjoy.

Finally.

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Genarlow Wilson, previously serving a 10-year sentence for having consensual oral sex with another teenager, has been ordered released by the Georgia Supreme Court. He’s served 2 years already.

The “crime” occurred when Wilson was 17; his partner was 15. The law under which he was charged was one against child molestation; some prosecutor’s ass needs to be in a sling for even bringing that bullshit to trial. (His partner didn’t cry rape, and has maintained the sex was consensual the whole time.)

Dem Russians Dem Russians

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Check out this clip from the Christianist anti-commie schlockfest that is If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? The film, a product of the feverishly paranoid mind of New Albany, Mississippi preacher Estus Pirkle (what a name! Call Pynchon!), paints a bizarre picture of the dangers facing America from Godless Communism. If you thought the work of Ed Wood was bad, well, this stuff makes Plan 9 look like the Godfather.

It Keeps You Running (New Category)

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Some of the Heathen have been a-running since August, and not because anyone’s chasing us. The stated goal is the completion of the Wurstfest Five Miler a week from Saturday (where, it is said, they hand you sausage and beer upon completion; that’s our kind of race), but the real point is banishing the mid-30s expansion that’s happened to all of our waistlines (shut up, Lindsey). I’ve run before, and even once did a 5K in under 30, but it’s been a long time, and at the start of this I was easily in the worst shape of my life.

Even so, in the last week or so, I’ve noticed a drastic drop in the “suck” of running, and some actual improvements in time and performance, so I’m ready to start talking about it in public to reinforce the social conditioning aspects of this process.

Last Friday we did the loop off White Oak, which is about 2.1 miles; since it’s short, we did it twice. I was pleased to discover my current alternating pace (run 4, walk 2) kept me more or less up with Lindsey, at least until I hit some sort of wall around 2 miles in. The final damage was something over 4 miles in something under an hour, even with my wall-hitting halfway through. The previous acknowledged time was the Memorial Loop at about a 12-minute pace, even with walking 1/3 of the time, so it was within tolerances especially factoring in the weird “hills” they have at White Oak.

We did some walking between then and yesterday to rest from the mileage increase, but when running time came last night, Mrs Heathen was feeling ill. I went alone in the neighborhood over a circuitous route through the Montrose (basically, a big loop of Taft to Peden to Park down to West Alabama, over to and around the Menil, down to Richmond, up Yoakum, over on Harold, and back home, but with some switchbacks I inserted to make the time come out roughly correct) that took about an hour; GoogleMaps reports it was 5.2 miles or so, which is a distinct improvement. Another shocker: I wasn’t miserable or nearly dead at the end, and found I was getting bored during the 2-minute walking breaks. Clearly, it’s time to adjust to 4:30 x 1:30 or so, which will have the pleasant effect of increasing my speed. The goal is to run for about an hour, but it’d be nice to get to the point where running for an hour goes farther than 5 miles.

Which brings me to the next point: route selection. Up to now, we’ve been doing 3-mile routes over at Memorial Park and my old up-and-back route on the Heights Boulevard. As we push distance, twice around the White Oak/Sawyer trail seems like a better idea, but is difficult for me mentally since I’m most likely to want to bail at a place on the track where it’s easy to do so (i.e., as I return to the start to being lap 2). Twice around Memorial is a good goal, but it’s dead boring to repeat, and would suffer the same temptation aspect as the White Oak trail. Fortunately, Fleet Feet has some maps that are useful.

The first is a rundown of an absurd 9.76 mile route that includes both Memorial Park and the Allen Parkway trail, but it includes the information that the AP route alone is 4.76 miles, crossing at Shepherd and Sabine. That’s a nice long loop with essentially no chance of cheating, which is nice.

The other is one I knew of before, but had forgotten. Rice’s outer track is 2.9 miles, but is close to another 2 mile loop over at Hermann Park (Marvin Taylor Loop, 1.98miles). They’re connected by a .73 mile jaunt from the main gate of Rice over to the Rose Garden, yielding about a 5.5 mile loop. The nice part about this route is that you could go with folks who prefer the shorter 3-mile course and still meet up at the same endpoint.

Of course, there are also planned runs, which are much better than running alone. The Wurstfest run is already on the calendar, but we feel like most any 5K/5 mile/10K runs are in our grasp. I’ve done the MFA run a few times, but they no longer do it for some reason. What other inner-loop runs exist in the sub-half-marathon range? Is there a decent calendar somewhere? The one at SignMeUpSports, well, sucks; surely there’s a better option.

Even factoring in the sucky available calendars, though, I did find these:

  • Rice 5K on 11/1, at 6pm on a Thursday. I’m out of town, but the rest of the crowd could consider it.
  • Chevron Jingle Bell, with 5 mile and 5K options, Sunday 12/9, 2pm. I suspect there’s no reason not to do that one.

More Assholery In Our Name

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The sad tale of Abdallah Higazy bears repeating. Here are the facts.

On 9/11, Higazy, an Egyptian citizen, was staying in a New York City hotel that (predictably) emptied out after the event. The hotel later found, in the closet of Higazy’s room, a radio meant for communication with flight crews and airline pilots.

The hotel alerted the Feds, who detained Higazy for questioning. Higazy denied any part in the events of the day, but was eventually coerced into confessing something to the contrary because the interrogators threatened to tell the Egyptian authorities he and his family were terrorists, and we all know that Cairo is not exactly a paragon of human rights. Faced with an impossible choice, Higazy confessed to something he didn’t do.

Comes now the good news (quoting from here):

So Higazy “confesses” and he’s processed by the criminal justice system. His future is quite bleak. Meanwhile, an airline pilot later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back. (Emph added) This is like something out of the movies. The radio belonged to the pilot, not Higazy, and Higazy was free to go, the victim of horrible timing. Higazi was innocent! He next sued the hotel and the FBI agent for coercing his confession. The bottom line in the Court of Appeals: Higazy has a case and may recover damages for this injustice.

We might think that threatening familial torture would be the end of it, but we’d be wrong. The original ruling in the case, which detailed the fact that the FBI had illegally coerced his confession, appeared briefly online. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t online anymore — but a few hours later, it resurfaced, with the objectionable parts redacted on the grounds that they were classified.

Classified, my ass. Thank God some folks grabbed the original version of the opinion so people can know what’s really happening here; that toothpaste is out of the tube now, no matter how embarrassing it is to the Feds. Here’s the part the Court tried to suppress:

Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.”

Higazy later said, “I knew that I couldn’t prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger.” He explained that “[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family’s in danger. If I say this device is mine, I’m screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

(There’s more; follow the link above.)

So, to recap:

  1. FBI collars wrong guy;
  2. In absence of any but circumstantial evidence, FBI uses illegal coercion and threats of torture for the suspect’s family to extract a false confession;
  3. FBI gets slapped down over the whole thing in court;
  4. FBI and DoJ later try to redact the whole affair rather than man up and admit just how fucked up they are.

That’s ok. We’re sure things are much better now.

Not.