Now that is fast!

My 17 year old son is really into art. He recently found some videos of people doing spray paint art. I think this is completely amazing. Check it out.


39 Second Painting - For more funny movies, click here

Now he wants me to buy him the supplies so he can try it out for himself. Who knows, I might try my hand at it as well.

Full Circle and Beyond

Well, I've finally come full circle in my exposure to Dr. Who and gone a few episodes beyond. I had heard about Dr. Who, of course, and was vaguely familiar with the character from the first incarnation of show, but had never watched it, neither the original series or the new series. Then one day I watched this clip on a scifi blog:

I thought that David Tennant was pretty funny in the clip and decided that I would give the show a try. A colleague told me that the SciFi channel was going to be running a marathon of the first season of the new incarnation of Who and that I should start there so I gave it a try.

I actually quite liked Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor and thought that there was a good dynamic between him and Billy Piper as Rose. My favorite Eccleston episode is the two parter, "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".

When Tennant took over at the beginning of season 2 it was a little difficult getting accustomed to the new Doctor. If nothing else, Tennant is just a little harder to understand at times than Eccleston was. But also, I never really liked the dynamic between the 10th Doctor and Rose. It just didn't seem to play as well it had with Eccleston. And in fact, I like Martha better than Rose in general, I think. But I will say, that my favorite Tennant episode so far is "The Girl in the Fireplace", but that was because I thought he played exceptionally well with his then-girlfriend, Sophia Miles.

I hated that they had Martha leave at the end of season 3, but I'm glad that they wrote in her leaving in the way that they did. It preserved the strength that I felt they had given the character to that point, and it makes it possible for her to have guest appearances in the future without the creepiness that went along with Rose's reappearance at the end of "Partners in Crime".

So anyway, I've made it full circle. I started with "Timecrash" and have finally made it back around to "Timecrash" in sequence after the last episode of season 3. I've watched a little into season 4 (I've seen through "The Planet of the Ood") and I'm not sure yet how I'm going to feel about Donna. She's a little annoying, but I'm reserving judgment at this point.

On lying

Recently I've been thinking a lot about lying and why people seem so inclined to do it. Now, of course, I've lied, everybody has, but I just seem to be surrounded lately by instances where people want to lie and or hide the truth from people close to them. In some cases I've understood the motive, and in other cases, not so much. Plus, I have been lied to so incredibly much in my life that I have learned to greatly despise the practice and have a very low tolerance for being knowingly lied to by the people I voluntarily associate with.

So this morning I decided to do a Google search on why people lie. I found an article that I thought was interesting and somewhat helpful called "Why We Lie" from LiveScience.com. Apparently one of the main reasons that people lie is because of self-esteem issues. That sounds pretty reasonable to me. I did find this statement in the article particularly interesting:

Men lie no more than women, but they tend to lie to make themselves look better, while women are more likely to lie to make the other person feel better.

And there was also this statement, which to some degree I already knew:

humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others, researchers say. People are so engaged in managing how others perceive them that they are often unable to separate truth from fiction in their own minds

Very interesting. But then again, as a social scientist, I've always been very interested in what people do and why they do it. I've always been a people watcher, that is what drew me to the social sciences in the first place. I'm not really good at interacting with people, but I love to watch and study them.

So anyway, my minimal amount of research has led me to the conclusion that I will probably never obtain the truth that I so desperately wish to know. The person in question is probably incapable of being honest enough with himself to give me an honest answer to my questions if I ever got the chance to ask them. I guess I am just left to form my own conclusion and go on with my life, but I hate having unanswered questions floating around in my mind. Anyone who truly knows me knows the truth in that statement.

Dealing with what we own

One of today's quotes on my iGoogle homepage really struck home with me this morning. It is particularly appropriate considering how I have been spending most of my summer vacation so far. The quote is from John Ruskin and it says:

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

For the past month and a half I've been trying to cull through all the accumulated junk in our shed and in the children's rooms to try to make room for my eldest son to return home after a year of dorm life. It is amazing to me how much stuff a family of 5 can accumulate and hold onto over time. As I look through the piles and piles of old toys (many never really played with beyond the opening at Christmas and some never even opened!) I begin to realize the opportunity cost associated with so much stuff. And I being to look at possession in something of a different light. Do you say to yourself "I might as well keep it," or "It's a good price, I might as well buy it" or should you say, "What am I ever going to do with this?" or "Where am I going to put this?" I find myself realizing that we do become wearied and weighed down by our possessions. Sometimes I think it is true that less is more.

A letter (or email) of endorsement for Cheryl Sabel

Kris Kallies, Cheryl Sabel's campaign manager, emailed me recently with a copy of an endorsement email sent out by Randall Williams of New South Books, Inc. I thought I would share it with everyone.

If you live in Congressional District 2, I urge you to vote June 3 for Cheryl Sabel for the Democratic nomination for Congress. As she says in her television ad*, she is pro-choice, pro-worker and anti-war. Those six words alone distinguish her among Tuesday's field (and, sadly, from everyone who has held that Congressional seat in the last century).



But there are even more reasons to vote for Cheryl. She is one of the most decent, most principled, most intelligent people I've ever known. She comes from a working-class Alabama family and has educated herself and learned leadership skills and put them into practice. She has an open, collaborative style that is precisely what is needed in a congresswoman. She speaks plainly but eloquently, and she grasps the significant issues—not the sham patriotism and moralism that passes for political standards among so many of Alabama's elected officials—that confront us.



From the war in Iraq to foreign trade, education, immigration, transportation, economics, energy, taxation, to any other issue I can think of, Cheryl's views are consistently progressive, commonsense, and, if I dare say so, American and small-d democratic to the core. Further, you can count on her to vote according to those principles.



With respect,

Randall Williams

Cheryl has also been endorsed by Alabama New South Coalition, Bullock County Voters League, Democracy for America, Montgomery Chapter, and National Organization for Women PAC

And remember, June 3rd is just around the corner! Vote for Cheryl Sabel in the Democratic Primary!!!

I feel so smart

Click Here To Take The Test!

Quote of the day & I love it

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
-- Bertrand Russell

I haven't been able to find any yet either. And I'm more convinced than ever that even those who consider themselves the most rational are in fact just as irrational as the rest of us.

Quote of the day

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” - Dr. Seuss

And yes, that is directly related to my previous post. I try to remind myself of that fact often these days. It seems to help quite a bit. :)

Thank Heaven!!!

Well, it is finally over, the worst semester in history. I had some bad semesters when I was a student, but this semester, as a professor, was even worse. But at least I found out some very important things about myself and others.

First, I've determined that I never want to teach two Tuesday-Thursday classes back to back ever again. And in fact, I'd rather not teach them at all if possible. I never liked being a student in a Tuesday-Thursday class and I equally despise being the professor of one. I don't have the attention span to listen to someone lecture for 75 minutes and I don't have the stamina to do it myself. Also, I found it very difficult to learn the names of my students in the T-Th classes because I only saw them twice a week. And I hate not knowing my students' names.

Also, I found out that medication for depression and anxiety is not a cure all. And that sometimes following the advice of medical professionals is not the best course of action if it doesn't feel right to you. And as a corollary to that discovery I will add this. Don't let your "friends" convince you to start taking drugs. I know you always hear that in regard to illegal drugs, but it applies also to prescription drugs. They may be helpful in some circumstances, but don't let anyone convince you that they are really the answer, because most likely, they aren't. Plus, there is a good chance that the same friends that convinced you to take them in the first place won't be willing to be there for you when you still have problems in spite of the fact (or possibly because of the fact) that you are taking said medication.

This leads me to the other unpleasant discovery of the semester. That is that two people that I thought were my friends, were indeed, not my friends at all. It is my opinion that friends don't give friends the absolute boot and subsequent cold shoulder without any chance to clear up misunderstandings or even state your case in the matter. If they just make assumptions about your motives and feeling without even addressing the issue with you until they were ready to call it completely quites, that is not a friend. Plus, I have to say that to lie to a person about your feeling when you know that person has social anxiety is just cruel. Cruel. Period. Exclamation point! There is no other explanation for it. I guess the good thing is that I know now and I feel much better knowing where I stand. And in fact it makes me feel a little better about my judgment knowing that the discomfort I was detecting was real and not just a figment of my imagination as I was wrongly being led to believe.

The semester was not all bad, however. I did find that I can make at least a small difference in lives of my students. Teaching can be very demanding, but it can be fulfilling as well. I'm getting much more comfortable in the classroom and much more comfortable with the idea that it is my classroom and that I should focus on what I feel is most important regardless of how the textbook is designed.

So, anyway, I'll say again, thank heaven that it is finally over. I'm looking forward to a much more relaxing and enjoyable summer.

No easy answers

As the semester comes to an end, my students are handing in papers where they had to analyze a presidential candidate (history and political platform) and determine, based on the real powers of the office, whether this candidate is making empty promises or suggesting real solutions to the nations problems.

As the students presented their papers to the class yesterday, it was obvious that at least some of them had come to realize just how complicated politics really is. Some of them were coming to the conclusion that party labels and party stereotypes aren't as cut and dried as they had always assumed (or been led to believe) that they were. Others were realizing that the president will need major cooperation from Congress to achieve many of their goals and campaign promises. And some were even coming to the conclusion that their are no easy answers to the problems that face our country. I actually felt good about being a teacher yesterday.

This morning I read an article in WaPo (Running on Sweet Nothings) that is lamenting the emptiness of campaign promises and asks why the candidates continue to lie to us and act like there are easy answers to all of our many problems. I think the answer is fairly simple. The average American believes that there are easy answers to be had and so they expect to be told that those easy answers exist and what the answers are. When someone tries to explain to them that it is a complex process, like Kerry tried to do to some extent last election cycle, they get ridiculed by their opponents for supposedly saying stupid things, like Bush did to Kerry when he tried to explain why he would vote for a bill and then against a bill in the Senate.

In short, Americans tend to be drawn to the KISS approach to most things: Keep It Simple Stupid. Keeping it simple is the best, and possibly only, way to get votes. My hope is that which ever candidate makes it to office this go-around he or she will actually realize that simple answers don't really exist, unlike the one we have in office now. I think the problem with Bush is that he actually believed (and possibly still believes) that those simple answers are out there.

I must be a rare person

I came across a quote today, from Dick Cavett of all people, that really struck a chord with me.

It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.

If Dick is right in his assessment, then I guess I am a truly rare person. And I say that because I almost always want to hear what people assume I don't want to hear. Partially it has something to do with my masochistic tendencies, but mostly it is just because I hate not knowing the truth.

Cheryl Sabel for Congress - AL District 2

On Monday I attended the candidate forum here at Troy University. Before attending, I didn't even know who was actually seeking to replace our retiring Congressman. It was a long and painful process to listen to a group of politicians all answering the same questions and most all of them giving the exact same answer.

But one candidate really stood out to me. Her name is Cheryl Sabel and she is running for the Democratic nomination for the 2nd Congressional District here in Alabama. If you are interested in voting for a true progressive Democrat on June 3rd, your only choice is Cheryl Sabel. Check out Cheryl Sabel's website at Cheryl Sabel for Congress

I was amazed at how much Bobby Bright did not sound like a Democrat at all. In my opinion, he is at best an Independent in Democrats' clothing. He basically said that if elected he did not intend to caucus with the Democrats. I believe his exact words were "Nancy Pelosi will not tell me what to do." I can understand that congressional representatives sometimes have to vote against their party to do what is in the best interest of the their district and all that, but a comment like that sounds like it should be coming from a Republican not a Democrat.

Life Lessons - The Golden Rule

Everyone is familiar with the Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or in more modern terms, treat people the way that you want to be treated. My recent realization is that one shouldn't take the Golden Rule too literally. From some recent experiences I have determined that people don't want to be treated the same way that you may want to be treated. In fact, most people have a certain perception of how they want to be treated and it has nothing what so ever to do with how you might personally want to be treated. And it may, in fact, not even have any direct correlation to how they say they want to be treated.

And in addition to that, I've recently determined that people often don't like to be treated the way that they treat other people, and I'm not even referring to the way they treat people when they are being rude or unkind. It has often been my observation that people with certain personality types can't stand other people that have their exact same personality type. But I've recently decided that there are people who act very friendly and inviting, but then don't appreciate it (and in fact resent it) when you act the same way in return.

So my take on all of this is that the Golden Rule should probably just be interpreted to mean that you shouldn't do things to other people that you wouldn't want done to you, or put more simply, don't be mean. But you must always remember that most people don't really live by the Golden Rule.

I wonder

Goethe once said "As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live." I have to wonder if that will ever happen to me.

Some Higher-Ed News

From Inside Higher Ed we get some info on the size of the full-time professional employee population in Higher Ed and what jobs they are mostly performing.

Every other year, data released by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics provide a snapshot of the growth of part-time positions in the professoriate. This year — an off-year for that data — the federal statistics provide evidence for another shift, in which the majority of full-time professional employees in higher education are in administrative rather than faculty jobs.

Very interesting, or at least I think so.

A comment on capitalism

I really enjoyed this op-ed column over at the Washington Post. It begins like this:

Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.

The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard.

I definitely think it is worth the time to read the whole article.

It reminds me of something I was thinking about recently. I was thinking just the other day about the economic stimulus checks that are scheduled to be sent out this summer and mentally comparing it to FDR's programs. At least with many, if not most, of those programs the people who benefited from them had to work to gain the benefit. Programs like the CCC and others involved public works programs that employed people who couldn't find work elsewhere. The current plan just gives people money to go out and spend. How is that so much more conservative than the programs FDR initiated that conservatives seem to hate so much and have worked so hard to get rid of? Just wondering.

WOW!!

And no, it's not a post about World of Warcraft. Check out these awesome pencil carvings. All I can say is: WOW!

Who said what to whom?

My sister told me this evening that she had heard some new info on the story about the Canadian leak that an Obama aide had supposedly told Canadian diplomats not to take his stance on NAFTA seriously. She had heard that it was actually a Clinton aide that had made the statement originally. I decided to see what I could find about it on the internet and I came across this article from Canada.com: Canada's NAFTA leak is regrettable: U.S. envoy. From what I can tell, this would seem to back up that position, if I'm reading it correctly.

Canadian media reports said on Thursday that the furor was triggered by private remarks that Ian Brodie, Harper's chief of staff, made to the CTV Television network last week about Clinton's criticism of NAFTA.

They said Brodie revealed someone from the Clinton campaign was "telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt." CTV investigated the remarks and then ran a story focusing on Obama, saying his adviser had privately told Canadian diplomats that a promise to reopen NAFTA was solely aimed at winning votes in the Ohio primary.

I'm not sure if that is saying that both campaigns have supposedly said the same thing or that it was actually an act by the Clinton campaign that got attributed to the Obama campaign. If it is true that the real story is the reverse of what voters were told, I would think that any momentum Hillary gained from Tuesday's primaries would instantly evaporate.

How clean is too clean?

I found this article in today's WaPo very interesting: Immune Systems Increasingly On Attack. The article seems to indicate that we may be keeping our immediate environments too clean for our own good, or particularly our kids' own good. It would seem that sterilizing everything isn't such a good idea after all. Of course nothing is known for certain at this point, but the article is interesting nonetheless.

Blood and Soil

After a couple of days of discussing the McCain issue via blog comments, emails and telephone, I've decided that it is time to finally blog about it myself. So here goes. I have always felt that being a natural born citizen simply meant that you were a citizen at birth, whether by blood or by soil. And I still feel that that is what it should mean. That being said, I'd like to weigh in with my take on all the arguments that are being made about the McCain issue at the moment.

First, I don't think that anyone is arguing that McCain is not legally a citizen, as it is obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is and has been from the time of his birth. If that is all it takes to be a natural born citizen then he is one, end of argument. However, the argument does not end there. Some assert that in order to be considered a natural born citizen you must be a citizen by soil.

Therefore a new question arises. Is McCain a citizen by both blood and soil or simply a citizen by blood? In a recent article from the AP, McCain states his position on the issue:

McCain himself insists the issue was put to rest when fellow Arizonan, Barry Goldwater, ran for president in 1964.

"Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona when it was a territory, Arizona was a territory, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court," McCain told reporters Thursday on his campaign plane. "And there's no doubt about that. And it was researched again in 2000."

The Panama Canal Zone was a U.S. territory when McCain was born on Aug. 29, 1936.

Again, this new information would seem to put the issue to rest, but again, it does not. Yet another question arises, was the Panama Canal Zone truly a US territory? I personally am not convinced that it was. Let us check the law on the issue.

On the issue of citizenship, US Code Title 8, Chapter 12, Subsection III, Part I, §1401 states:

The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;

This makes no distinction about the parentage of the individual, and in fact, even the children of illegal aliens born within the boundaries of the United States are indeed legal US Citizens. And given the US Supreme Court's ruling an Goldwater (which I would reference if I could find, but try as I might, I can't find it), it would seem to include territories of the US as well.

So, if the Panama Canal Zone was a US territory in 1936 as McCain and the above quoted article indicate, why does §1403 of the same US Code state the following?

(a) Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.

Why does there need to be special instructions on the canal zone and why does at least one of the parents of a child born in the canal zone have to be a US citizen for that child to acquire citizenship at birth if it is indeed US soil? This would seem to me to indicate that individuals born here do not acquire citizenship by right of soil.

And then there is the text of the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty itself which states:

ARTICLE III

The Republic of Panama grants to the United States all the rights, power and authority within the zone mentioned and described in Article II of this agreement and within the limits of all auxiliary lands and waters mentioned and described in said Article II which the United States would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign of the territory within which said lands and waters are located to the entire exclusion of the exercise by the Republic of Panama of any such sovereign rights, power or authority. [emphasis mine]

So that leads to the question of what exactly counts as a US territory? This treaty does not give the US actual sovereignty over the canal zone, but the same rights it would have if it had sovereignty.

In addition to that, the land was leased with annual lease payments due to Panama from the United States.

As the price or compensation for the rights, powers and privileges granted in this convention by the Republic of Panama to the United States, the Government of the United States agrees to pay to the Republic of Panama the sum of ten million dollars ($10,000,000) in gold coin of the United States on the exchange of the ratification of this convention and also an annual payment during the life of this convention of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($250,000) in like gold coin, beginning nine years after the date aforesaid.

Is this not the same type of arrangement the US has about Guantanamo? And does the administration not argue that Guantanamo is NOT US territory? It seems to me that you can't have it both ways. Either leased areas are territory or they are not. How can the Canal Zone be and Guantanamo not be?

For those who would point to the fact that he was born on a military base as proof that he was in fact born on US soil, we must take a brief look at the Foreign Affairs Manual which states in 7 FAM 1116.1-4:

c. Despite widespread popular belief, U.S. military installations abroad and U.S.
diplomatic or consular facilities are not part of the United States within the meaning of the
14th Amendment. A child born on the premises of such a facility is not subject to the
jurisdiction of the United States and does not acquire U.S. citizenship by reason of birth.

Now of course this is irrelevant to McCain's citizenship, as it undoubtedly is referring to the children of non-US citizens born in such locations, but it does address whether such citizenship is acquired by right of soil, which it obviously is not.

So in conclusion I will reiterate. I think that McCain should be eligible for the office of president because I believe that either right of blood or right of soil should suffice for meeting the "natural born" requirement spelled out in Article II of the Constitution. However, if it is determined that right of soil is necessary, then I don't believe he is eligible under the current law as is stands.

I think that if the case were brought before the Supreme Court they would probably find in McCain's favor, but I think that a very reasonable argument could be brought against such a ruling. I think that if, on the off chance, they did find that he did not qualify, there would be an immediate uproar for a Constitutional Amendment to either define "natural born" as including right of blood in addition to right of soil or to remove the "natural born" requirement altogether. I would be fine with removing it altogether, personally. But if it were removed, I think that the time requirement should be extended beyond a mere 14 years.

Anyway, that's my opinion and my argument given the information I currently have at my disposal. If someone has some other pertinent info that I'm missing I'd be happy to consider it. And I would really appreciate a link to the Supreme Court case involving Goldwater if anyone has it. Until then, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.