Stan Taylor

It’s easy to make jokes about Vice-president Dick Cheney’s accidentally shooting a fellow hunter last weekend. But as much as I’m tempted, I’m reluctant to join the merry-making.
I grew up in the Texas Hill Country, surrounded by ranches. Pretty much all ranchers there supplement their income by leasing their property out to deer hunters. I knew not to go on or near ranch property during deer season, and I know that the ranchers themselves are worried about the risk of being shot while working on their ranches. They mitigate these risks by trying to lease to the same people year after year and by stipulating that only the agreed upon people can hunt on the lease, minimizing the possibility of their hunters bringing less informed friends out for the weekend. Many ranchers also make it a point to wear fluorescent colors when they’re out taking care of their livestock during deer season.
Depsite all of these precautions, when I was in middle school or so, my best friend Reginald’s uncle was shot and killed by the hunters on his ranch while he was out tending his cattle.

In a recent New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell examines the recent trend of local governments out lawing pit bull-like dogs (see here, for instance). Gladwell makes a case that the fundamental problem isn’t with specific dog breeds, but with the type of people who want to own bad-ass dogs; pit bulls are just the current popular breed for such people.
The problem for governments, Gladwell points out, is that it’s easier to make laws based on generalizations about dog breeds than it is based on generalizations about people. In regard to a recent pit bull attack, Gladwell concludes:

It was a textbook dog-biting case: unneutered, ill-trained, charged-up dogs, with a history of aggression and an irresponsible owner, somehow get loose, and set upon a small child. The dogs had already passed through the animal bureaucracy of Ottawa, and the city could easily have prevented the second attack with the right kind of generalization—a generalization based not on breed but on the known and meaningful connection between dangerous dogs and negligent owners. But that would have required someone to track down Shridev Café, and check to see whether he had bought muzzles, and someone to send the dogs to be neutered after the first attack, and an animal-control law that insured that those whose dogs attack small children forfeit their right to have a dog. It would have required, that is, a more exacting set of generalizations to be more exactingly applied. It’s always easier just to ban the breed.

My hero Jimmy Carter took some swipes at President Bush at the funeral of Coretta Scott King:

In an apparent swipe at the domestic eavesdropping programme authorised by Mr Bush as part of the war against terror, Mr Carter recalled how Mrs King and her husband had been the targets of secret government wiretapping.
“It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated, and they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance,” he said.
Mr Carter also referred to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as evidence that the struggle for civil rights was not complete. “We only have to recall the colour of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi who are most devastated by Katrina to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans,” he said.

There was some discussion over on MetaFilter about whether this was the appropriate forum for such criticisms, and I have to agree with those MeFites who think that these comments were not only appropriate but a tribute to what Mr. and Mrs. King stand for. For instance:

MLK and Coretta were all about telling the truth to power. MLK paid the ultimate price for doing so. I think Coretta would have been absolutely thrilled that Carter stood up and spoke strongly for civil rights at her funeral. Her entire life was devoted to criticizing the establishment and pushing it to do better. For this woman, in this time and place, what better possible way could there be to say goodbye?

I filled out a form on a web site this morning, and I noticed the date below:

It’s an awfully long time past the year 2000 for something like that to still be showing up.

Physicians tell the lessons they’ve learned from working in the ER. For instance:

Stay away from people named “Some Guy” or “This One Dude”, because they for whatever reason, just punch someone in the face or hit them with a crowbar and run off. If I see them on the street, I cross the street to get away from them.

Never, ever leave flashlights, shampoo bottles, beer bottles or any long, circular object on the floor because someday you will fall on it and it will somehow, work its way up your rectum.

If you have taken 7 home pregnancy tests that are all positive, and you come into the emergency department…chances are that test too will come back positive.

(via BoingBoing)

I did my graudate education in literary/cultural theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which means I was thoroughly immersed in deconstruction and post-structuralism: truth is relative, our thinking and reality are limited by language, human relations are all about power, etc. I was hit with Derrida in my first semester of grad school and the theories of Michel Foucault figured prominently in my dissertation.
Some would find it odd, then, that I became a Christian in the midst of this education, what with faith’s appeal to universal truth and the institutional nature of Christianity. I find deconstruction and post-structural theories interesting, useful and basically sound, but in retrospect, I think my embrace of faith represented an ultimate rejection of those theories. If you completely embrace those theories, the end result is hopelessness: we are each stuck in our own little reality–which itself might be an illusion–unable to genuinely communicate with others.
I guess I refused to go that far. I wanted and want to believe that there is some meaning to life. I’m not even sure that it’s God, but in a community of faith, I found a group of people who also want to believe that it’s possible to connect with others in a meaningful way (whatever that means).
Oh, I feel great ambivalence about the institutional nature of the church. And it’s damn hard to cut through all the crap that constitutes our daily lives to get to know others intimately, but at least the members of a faith community profess to believe it’s possible to do so. It’s that belief–that faith–that counts. And occasionally, I actually glimpse that connection.

I care a whit about football and have never watched any professional football game, but I noticed something this week: I guess you have to pay for rights to use the term ‘Super Bowl’ in your advertising. I noticed a sign outside a Luby’s yesterday, reminding people to order food for ‘the big game on Feb. 5’, and last night I saw a similar McDonald’s TV commercial also talking about the unnamed ‘big game.’

Here’s a great analogy from Fred Clark, a.k.a. Slacktivist:

I might be less skeptical of the Bush administration’s claim to be planning to cut the federal deficit in half over the next five (now four) years if they produced even the hint of something resembling a plan or an explanation of how they intend to do this.
It doesn’t help their credibility on this point that they’re also playing “Mom, I’m pregnant” every year with their deficit projections.
My friend Michelle got a tattoo, a modest, but conspicuous little dolphin on her ankle. This was bound to freak out her mom. So before showing her mom the ink, she told her she was pregnant. After letting her really freak out over that for a bit, she said, “Relax, mom, I’m not pregnant. I just got a tattoo and I didn’t want you to blow this out of proportion.”
No offense to Michelle, but this is a pretty dishonest trick. In her defense, she only did it once. The Bush administration has done this same thing year after year.
They project record-shattering deficits of half a trillion dollars or so, so that later, when the merely record-breaking figure of around $400 billion comes out they can claim that they’ve actually reduced the deficit from their previous, Mom-I’m-pregnant projection.

In his article, Early Retirement: Where to Live?, Philip Greenspun offers the following advice:

If you can rent anything decent, try to avoid buying property. Think about the most interesting people you know. Chances are, most of them are renters. People who rent talk about the books that they’ve read, the trips that they’ve taken, the skills that they are learning, the friends whose company they are enjoying. Property owners complain about the local politicians, the high rate of property tax, the difficulty of finding competent tradespeople, the high value of their own (very likely crummy) house or condo, and what kinds of furniture and kitchen appliances they are contemplating buying. Property owners are boring. The most boring parts of a property owner’s personality is that which relates to his or her ownership of real estate.

His article doesn’t apply to me, but his insight about home owners hits close to home nonetheless. For us middle-aged suburban homeowners with school-aged kids, the concerns include: property values, the quality of the schools, how new development (especially new rental property!) will lower the quality of the schools and our property values, traffic, planned maintenance and upgrades to our homes, etc. Boy, he’s right. That is boring stuff.
(via Rafe Colburn)

Common Dreams’ list of the top ten underreported news stories of 2005 is interesting, though I have issues with Common Dreams’ referring to the stories as ‘censored’.