The only worse death that I can think of... ...JC
Oh c'mon. First you skin a cow...
I was afraid at first we were going to be discussing the pop merits of the linked song.
Heebie will get here eventually, Minivet.
Let me guess: Friday beat out Tuesday in the test marketing focus groups.
I never knew somebody that heavily autotuned could sound that bad.
It sounds better as your ringtone, Tweety. Give it a try.
Oh man if that was my ringtone every time my phone rang I would just want to leave work and sit in the front seat or, alternately, the back seat.
I was quite confused when an adult black male suddenly showed up.
Black men love Fridays too, Blume.
One of the youtube comments:
Because 12 year olds have house parties every friday.
I was thinking "this is pretty bad, but is it really worse than a randomly chosen autotuned pop song?" And then I got to the "yesterday was Thursday" bit and cracked up. But it took "Sunday comes afterwards" to have me laughing so hard I was in tears.
In the "explicit" version, it is revealed that she's got "Lust 4 Life" tattooed on her mons.
I love this song! And Fridays! And you guys!
Don't worry, it's temporary. She got it last Friday.
Maybe she should go perform in the Sahara for Berber children who live an impoverished life, never having seen an Autotune.
What's amusing to me is that many of the pop song antecedents of this track/video are so obvious, and yet obviously misunderstood by the creators. The underlying sentiment is virtually identical to "Manic Monday", the rhythm seems to owe a lot to "Lemon" and/or "Stand", and the mise en scene references "Tik Tok". And yet somehow it fails to be a syncretic masterpiece. Go figure.
Anyhow, she's no Spoek Mathambo.
20: I didn't watch the video. Just, people saying they had a seizure kind of freaks me out. For a split second I thought she meant that she'd had a seizure. I'm not offended.
Carry on.
Sorry, parsimon, false alarm, but it gets really flashy for a long time in a way that spurs a really weird (non-seizure) reaction in my brain, and I would worry that more neurologically sensitive types would be affected more severely.
15 Now I have, "Lust For Life" stuck in my head.
Manic Monday
Here's an interesting interview with the Bangles talking about what it was like working with Prince on Manic Monday.
After watching that I decided that it does sound like a Prince song, which wasn't something that I had thought about previously.
23: Oh. I thought (after my initial deep concern on your behalf) that you were using "seizure" figuratively. Well, okay, it's good to know that there's troublesome flashing in the video. I know the kind of thing you mean; a discomfort and a wish to turn away.
Anyhow, she's no Spoek Mathambo.
Who wants to... ah, never mind. Too obvious.
24: I'm not going to watch that interview, because I would like to preserve my vision of those recording sessions: Prince chasing Susanna Hoffs around the studio at high speed while the Benny Hill music plays.
Oh man, the article explaining the producers behind the music videos reminded me so much of my former scammy employers. Unlike the writers of that article, I seriously would not assume that the parents shelling out the cash for their kids to "become the next pop sensation" are actually wealthy.
21.--That's also an amazing video.
Ringtone, Bob. Make it your ringtone.
||
Dark Star was terrific. 2/27/69 LD version. Art should be apprehended but not comprehended.
TCM running at least four consecutive Joans:restored Bergman, Seberg, restored Falconetti, Bresson...Bresson doesn't play Joan. Fleming, Preminger, Dreyer, Bresson.
That's real classy, but maybe a little crazy, unless being recorded is the plan.
|>
Because if those disney sitcoms, a huge number of tweens and younger want to be singing stars.
34: I thought Justin Bieber was to blame.
14: I started to lose it at "which seat should I take," but the days of the week did me in completely.
It's a shame: if Ark were willing to settle for the Stupid People Tricks / Die Antwoord brand of notoriety, they could make a real niche out of producing horrific parodies of auto-tuned pop music. But their other videos are just awful, not entertainingly awful. (Except for their Anonymous Guest Rapper. He's definitely entertainingly awful.)
Ok, so I was laughing really hard until I thought about the odds that this chick is gonna self harm sometime in the next few days.
I don't care how young you are. I don't care what your level of intellectual functioning. "Fun fun fun fun" is never an acceptable song lyric. You have to stop at three, and that's only acceptable if it's 1964 and you're the Beach Boys.
Jesus, who is the target demo for this? People who liked Amy Grant until she got all edgy?
Um, and now I just watched Die Antwoord's Evil Boy. NIGHTMARES. SO MANY NIGHTMARES.
(My favorite part is the glottal stop at 0:55 to let us know she's been around and seen a thing or two, but not in a threatening way.)
Jesus, who is the target demo for this? People who liked Amy Grant until she got all edgy?
People who were born five years after Amy Grant got edgy.
Except for their Anonymous Guest Rapper.
I think that's Clarence Jey, one of the company's founders.
I really hope she doesn't kill herself. I also really hope I don't see her on Intervention in five years. They would cut to the video, too.
37: Yeah, I suppose Ark wouldn't really have prepared their "talent" for the likely number of people on YouTube and the general Internets who're going to mock them relentlessly. On the plus side, if her parents could afford Ark they should also be able to afford a decent rehab clinic; they could think of it as just getting the full arc of their paid-for celebrity experience.
42: Livin' the dream, Clarence is. Definitely livin' the dream.
No, Clarence Jey is the other guy in this photo. AGR is Patrice Wilson.
they could think of it as just getting the full arc of their paid-for celebrity experience.
Around the office, they call it the ARK.
So back in the seventies, people paid to have their lyrics sung by professionals. Now, people pay to be the singer in a song they otherwise have no connection to.
47: ironically, one of the tracks from that compilation is one of my ringtones.
Ok in the linked article there is a second video. It's a good deal less funny than Fri-ee-dayee. I don't recommend it. It will kind of make you want to move back to Kansas. But anyway is that little girl drinking 4 Loko? Because it looks like she is.
49: I thought it looked like an Arizona iced tea.
48: Please tell me it's either "Run Spook Run" or "Blind Man's Penis."
Contra 29, this looks to me like a quinceañeras
or Bat Mitzvah present. Thanks for the Mathambo.
PS
OPINIONATED Geldof thanks Tony Wilson for never mashing up the Happy Mondays with Blue Monday.
39: I'm sorry I recommended it! I love it so much!
It's a young man's uplifting expression of hope in the midst of social isolation upon refusing to subject his body to ritual mutilation, and other things we're not allowed to talk about on this blog anymore.
honestly i didn't hear any musical references at all. its not music, its stuff for people who know their friends have outgrown Kidz Bop 14 and want to fit in with the new regime, but who haven't themselves actually gotten that puberty/hormone/music-demon-comes-and-possesses-you thing happen to them yet.
This is a brilliant, if ethically challenged business model. It combines all the best elements ("best" in a morally neutral economic sense) of vanity publishing and modeling school.
The only drawback is that it's fairly easily replicable, so it's likely to attract competition. This is bad in two respects: the obvious one that you have to share the market and face downward pressure on prices, and the non-obvious one that the more players are in the game, the more the awareness of scamminess will filter down to the target market.
From a strategic perspective, I would advise the owners to invest a bit of their cash into creating some competitive differentiation. Specifically, they need to take their least-worst customer, and pay a few well-placed bribes to make that person's video a top 40 hit for a week or two. (There is conveniently already an industry devoted to placing such bribes.). Thereafter they can hold themselves out as the only legitimate hit makers in the industry, while all those other scammers are just after your money.
As an aside, I'd wager a large sum that the owners see the popularity of "Friday" on youtube as an unalloyed good. Their target demographic looks at 100,000 hits and says "That girl isn't even that talented, and they made her a star on youtube. 100,000 hits! Why, little Olivia/Ashlee/Crystal-Sue is better than her. She's likely to go platinum!"
wouldn't it be easier to bribe someone who is actually talented and connected to good writers and well promoted etc to give you a production 'credit' on their video?
aaaagghh, the powers that be added a back-and-forth cattle pen area at the end of the dread ngee ann city taxi queue, causing my judgment of its length vis-a-vis the japanese restaurant to be fatally wrong. fuckers!!! to unite some sub-threads, I'd like to tell you all that while my sister was at rehab in belize, the head of the rehab threw his local girlfriend a quincanerina.
Wasn't there supposed to be some implied metaphor in the seat-choosing aspect of the song? My advanced poetics analysis skillz lead me to suspect that she's not just talking about the seat in a car; she's talking about life. Right? Am I going to be a "front-seat girl" or a "back-seat girl"? In the video she always seems to choose the back seat. Watch out Rebecca! The NHTSA recommends the back seat for children 12 and under and for having sexual intercourse! Your decision either reflects your desire to remain a child eternally or to grow up way too fast!!
(Does anyone else find it strange that, in several states, the learner's permit age is just two years older than the age at which a child can begin sitting in the front seat?)
63. Are you telling me that 14-year-olds are allowed a learner's permit? Half of them couldn't reach the brake! Next time I'm in the US I shall wear plate armour at all times.
Where I'm from, yes! It's state-by-state, like many things.
61: is there something special about Belizian rehab, or was she there already?
65 is very scary.
I imagine Belizian rehab as being like standard rehab but with the added incentive that if you fall off the wagon you get shelled by the Guatemalan army.
Maybe with group trips to go scuba diving with whale sharks!
Whale sharks are so cool.
65 is very scary
If it makes you feel any better, there is a well-funded business lobby pushing hard in the other direction. The car insurer's lobby has succeeded in persuading legislatures in several states to curtail the freedom of teenagers to drive. The latest fashion is "graduated driver licensing". Below a certain age (usually 18), there are limits on driving, eg you can't drive after midnight or you can't have more than one passenger under 18 in the car with you without an adult present.
Yeah, in NZ the learner's age is 15, which yeah. The excuse is of course that farm boys need to drive various vehicles on the farm. This is hilariously daft.
wouldn't it be easier to bribe someone who is
actually talented and connected to good writers and
well promoted etc to give you a production 'credit' on
their video?
I thought of that, but I was concerned about the difficulty of getting an established artist (who would at this point be represented by a capable label and agent) to give production credit to an obvious fly-by-night outfit. But I'm no expert, so maybe you're right.
Also almost certainly cheaper: hire a washed up youstabee producer to be your front man. Then you can carefully elide the question of when and where he made so-and-so a star.
Colorado is now 17. It's sort of considered an American birthright to be able to get one at 16. They do have different regs for licensed drivers under 18 though.
I didn't learn until I was 22, and I needed extra cushions to see properly.
Below a certain age (usually 18), there are limits on driving, eg you can't drive after midnight
In case your car turns into a pumpkin?
Either you are able to drive, in which case this is a ridiculous infringement of your liberties, or you're not, in which case they have no right giving you a permit in the first place. They can't have it both ways (except they apparently do). What time of day can you start again?
73: agree that this is insane. After midnight is probably the safest time to drive, because there's so little traffic. When you don't want inexperienced drivers on the road is during rush hour.
Either you are able to drive [...] or you're not
Well, they do call it a learner's permit. What was far more insane is that when I was a little kid, they let high school kids drive the *school buses*. What could go wrong?
What was far more insane is that when I was a little kid, they let high school kids drive the *school buses*. What could go wrong?
further evidence for my theory that Janet Evanovich writes documentaries...
75: Well, they do call it a learner's permit.
The restrictions generally extend beyond the learner's permit (when there almost always needs to be an "adult" in the car and which are not always reciprocal state to state). In Pennsylvania after the learner's permit you get a junior driver's license which does not allow driving between 11 and 5 (with some exceptions) generally until 18 (it can turn over earlier). This Wikipedia article attempts to capture all of the gory details state-by-state. My advice to my kids was "don't fucking get caught".
My father had a driver's license at age 14 so they could drive uphill to their distant high school uphill both ways in a blizzard (mud actually seems to have been the larger impediment).
There are also restrictions on allowed passengers for teen drivers as in this law in Ohio.
Drivers under 17 may only have one non-family member under the age of 21 in the car; no restrictions on family members or those over 21.
It's all about the suburbs. If teens aren't allowed to drive, then either their parents cart them around all over the place or they have to befriend older teens who can drive. And older teens are trouble.
In Pennsylvania after the learner's permit you get a junior driver's license which does not allow driving between 11 and 5
In other words, you aren't allowed to drive except at rush hour. WTF, Pennsylvania.
UK law: at 17, you can get a provisional licence just by asking; this allows you to drive anywhere except on motorways, at any time, but only if there's a qualified driver in the car who has been qualified for at least three years.
Once you've passed your driving test, you can drive anywhere, any time, whatever your age.
74: After midnight is probably the safest time to drive, because there's so little traffic.
One might think, but in the US, the midnight to 3 AM time has a far higher fatality per mile driven rate than other times. Alcohol playing a huge role of course (it would be interesting to see what the rate is for those who themselves are not impaired).
80: In practice t is not as crazy as you think. More really a bit of nanny-stateism and extension of the anti teen drinking programs. Not necessarily that effective.
Drivers under 17 may only have one non-family member under the age of 21 in the car;
I see the rationale here, but also, if kids can't carpool, that means more kid drivers on the road, no?
70: In New Jersey you have to be 17 to drive, unless your family has a farm, in which case it's 15. A friend of mine planted a few acres of uneconomical Christmas trees on his property in order to make his 15-year-old daughter the coolest kid in her grade (he was recently divorced and feeling kinda guilty).
More really a bit of nanny-stateism and extension of the anti teen drinking programs.
The assumption here seems to be that no Pennsylvania teenager would dream of drinking alcohol before 5 pm. Hmm.
but only if there's a qualified driver in the car who has been qualified for at least three years. And who would not be illegal due to drink, drugs or extreme tiredness if they took the controls. And if you're insured, or the owner of the car has fully comp.
Also, "OK, I wrote off six parked vehicles and flattened a little old lady and three fluffy kittens, but I only got my license this morning" is not a defence in law.
73, 74, 80: I'm pretty sure the idea isn't that teenage drivers are insufficiently skilled to drive in traffic (they probably are, starting out, but that's not age dependent). The idea is that as teenagers, they're likely to behave irresponsibly and dangerously with a car -- driving too fast, inattentively, drunk, deliberately doing dangerous things. So not letting them drive late at night or with other teens in the car in theory discourages intentionally (or semi-intentionally) dangerous behavior.
The no driving is 11PM to 5 AM. Yes, it is flawed, but not entirely crazy.
I am loving the baroque aspect of this, with simple questions like "Do you have a driving licence" being gradually overgrown with worries about whether you're a farmer, what time it is, how many of your relations you have in the back seat, what age they are, do you have an adult with them (presumably to act either as a chaperone or a buffer zone)...
89: If you add what applies if the teenager happens to be driving in another state it gets almost unknowable.
87, 88: a saner and less intrusive policy might just be to make it illegal to drive dangerously or while drunk.
91. I'm pretty sure every state has DUI laws, though how meaningful they are probably varies. After all, a country which thinks it's OK to hurl half a ton of steel around the streets when you're 15, but not OK to fuck without a license until you're 18 is unlikely to be rigidly pro-booze.
but not OK to fuck without a license until you're 18
Not the law in most US states. Some are 18, but most are 16.
91: Shockingly, those laws are in place. Yet more shockingly, people still do both!
91: Couldn't you say the same thing about drunk-driving laws? There's nothing dangerous about driving drunk in itself, it's only dangerous if you don't maintain proper control of the car. The idea behind the law is that the odds of someone with a high BAC losing control of the car are high enough that it's worth banning the condition, rather than waiting until something bad happens. Same with teenagers driving at night with friends in the car -- not necessarily dangerous, but the odds of something dangerous happening is high.
(I don't actually know if those laws are well supported by facts -- they make sense if kids driving at night really do have a wildly disproportionate number of accidents, not if they don't. But I don't have a problem in principle with it.)
Pi day, Pi day, looking forward to squaring the circle...
Looking forward to 2015 (Three point one, four one five, nine two six five three five eight nine...)
Seriously, who's not at work today and can borrow a video camera and shoot this? I think there is a free trial version of Autotune.
87 get it right. MN added new teen driving restrictions in 2008 after a series of crashes involving younger and less experienced drivers. I don't know whether there was a statistically significant change in the number of teen car crashes or if it's just a folk devil, but the sense was that if we introduce a few restrictions to remind teens that their driving privileges are limited and can be taken away, they'll somehow be less likely to do something stupid. It's a cultural and symbolic move as much as a regulatory one.
While unsuccessfully googling for details, I find that my less interesting senator has just co-sponsored national legislation along these lines.
53: I mean, I've watched it, roughly, 12 times now. It's really hard not to like them.
Shockingly, those laws are in place. Yet more shockingly, people still do both!
Indeed, this is central to my point. So the idea is that teenagers who have a) failed to respect the laws regarding drinking age, b) failed to respect the laws regarding drunk driving and c) failed to respect the laws regarding driving safely, will nonetheless d) respect the laws regarding the permissible hours of driving?
the head of the rehab threw his local girlfriend a quincanerina
AWKWARD. "Happy consent day!"
101: Do you remember being a teenager? I remember the range of responsibility of my behavior being HUGE, and where I happened to fall on my little personal responsibility scale depended largely on context. Because I was an idiot.
It has taken me a while to come to this realization, but teenagers are essentially little children with adult bodies, drivers licenses, and cell phones.
Well, teenagers aren't one thing -- different people have different levels of responsibility at different ages, and a thirteen-year-old isn't a nineteen-year-old.
So the idea is that teenagers who have a) failed to respect the laws regarding drinking age, b) failed to respect the laws regarding drunk driving and c) failed to respect the laws regarding driving safely, will nonetheless d) respect the laws regarding the permissible hours of driving?
All of these are pretty rigidly enforced. Just as adults can expect to lose their license on a first drunk driving arrest, teenagers can expect to lose their license (until age 18) upon being caught driving after hours or whatever.
Keep in mind that letting 16 year olds drive is already pretty rare in global context, and that U.S. teenagers are more likely than in other countries to actually have a car. So the risks they pose to the public are proportionately greater. And there is apparently good science behind both the late night driving ban and the "too many teens in the car" ban. (In the latter case, it's because teen drivers are notoriously distractable and prone to risk-taking behaviors when there are other teens in the car and no adult supervision.)
Unusual degree of pushback here. Usually us Americans agree wholeheartedly when the Europeans say our laws are infantile and irrational.
Weird. It's almost as if the specifics mattered.
Usually us Americans agree wholeheartedly when the Europeans say our laws are infantile and irrational.
I'm on the record as preferring a lower drinking age and a higher minimum driving age as in Europe. I wouldn't have agreed with that when I was 16-17, when I found it convenient to legally drive and illegally drink. Sometimes on the same night. Which is sort of the whole argument for the European solution.
Most developmental research says that full brain development doesn't occur until 25, but it would be kind of silly to make people wait until 25 to start driving.
111: what do you mean by full brain development?
Well, also. Is driving around aimlessly at high speeds while occasionally attempting to do something cool with your car (where "cool" almost universally means "something designed to make your friends go 'OH SHIT!'") considered recreation in any part of Europe? There are apparently large swathes of America where there is not much else to do that doesn't involve having one's privacy invaded periodically by adults. I mean, I've been told. Although I wonder if this is still true, what with the fancy internet and everything.
111: Um. I'm shocked they gave me a license NOW. I mean, I'm shocked they give most people licenses. You can be a borderline retarded alcoholic with terrible vision and a rage problem and you still have to hit, like, a school bus or something before they even think about taking away your license to drive a two ton death machine.
Is driving around aimlessly at high speeds while occasionally attempting to do something cool with your car...considered recreation in any part of Europe?
Of course it is, but I do see a lot of less of it here than when I was growing up in the states. A lot of maturing happens between ages 16 and 18.
114: that school bus came out of nowhere, okay? Don't make me fight you.
Though even 18 still seems to me like an appallingly young age to be entrusted with a giant metal box that can propel itself at high speeds.
Well, I assumed the school bus started it. Think they can do whatever they want. They stop just for spite.
107: All of these are pretty rigidly enforced. Just as adults can expect to lose their license on a first drunk driving arrest, teenagers can expect to lose their license (until age 18) upon being caught driving after hours or whatever.
...which isn't really the point. The threat here is people being hit by drunk or careless teenage drivers, yes? For a law prohibiting after-hours driving by teenagers to have any impact on this problem, we have to assume that there are teenagers who
a) get drunk (illegally in most states) and
b) go driving while drunk (also illegal) and/or
c) drive dangerously (also illegal)
but who would not
d) drive at times of the day when the law says they shouldn't.
I don't believe that this is a very large set.
It's a stupid law.
Furthermore, any teenager who is arrested under this law will either
i) be drunk or otherwise unsafe, in which case he can be charged with drunk or unsafe driving, or
ii) be sober and safe, in which case he isn't endangering anyone and shouldn't be arrested.
119: the contention is that teens driving late at night are higher risk independent of drunkenness or sobriety. I haven't seen the studies, but I trust that the Insurance Institute wouldn't waste good money buying legislators to pass this stuff if there wasn't some actuarial profit in it.
119: If the point is to reduce driving by adolescents (which is just by the numbers, very dangerous), then sure, why not draw a bright, possibly stupid, line and remove from traffic any who would cross that line?
The opportunity cost is miniscule, since there's very little "enforcement" activity on roads that is worth its spit anyways. The net effect is to remove a small number of kids from the road. Moreover, the ones you remove are those who are willing to break rules with the knowledge that if they are caught they will be unable to drive for 1-3 more years--a not very risk averse pool.
The root problem of this is really the car-centric culture in America. You've got to let teenagers drive because you can't participate in the adult world in America if you can't drive. One suspects this is also the reason you can get multiple DUIs, cause half a dozen collisions, and still keep your license, a scenario that would be ludicrous in most other developed countries.
I say establish mass-transit wherever feasible, and then raise the driving age to 25, and the level of required driving competence to German levels.
112: It's an imprecise phrase, but I think that a lot of neuroscience types would say that people haven't really matured as adults until they're 25.
123: I'm just not sure what you mean. In terms of brain size? Synaptic pruning? Skill development? Moral reasoning? It is true that many tests of cognitive ability peak at around 25, from what I understand, but some peak earlier and some peak later, and of course the brain changes continually over a lifetime.
I think Tweety is going to argue that people don't mature until they're in their late thirties.
but who would not
d) drive at times of the day when the law says they shouldn't.
This is also something that is more easily enforced by parents. Out drinking beer in a field, and then driving home way more tipsy than you should? Parents don't necessarily find out, unless you get caught by police, or unless they stay up and seriously grill you when you get home. Whereas it's much easier to monitor whether you're home with the car by 11.
I trust that the Insurance Institute wouldn't waste good money buying legislators to pass this stuff if there wasn't some actuarial profit in it.
Well, it might have been bought by some swivel-eyed anti-alcohol lobbying group, in which case the rather elegant market-based corruption argument would not apply.
121: you don't have any problem at all with a law whose only justification is "this law is, in itself, pointless, but it will give us an opportunity to punish people who are uppity enough to think they can go around ignoring pointless laws"?
I'd like to see this argument extended to justify some other laws. Perhaps a Compulsory Hat Law, allowing the police easily to identify and punish those malcontents who think they can flout the will of the state by going round bare-headed. After all, with an attitude like that they'd probably commit some other crimes sooner or later anyway.
122.last: I don't agree about the age, but I fully endorse the competence requirement.
Cars are heavy machinery and should be treated as such. Given my druthers there'd be mandatory testing to maintain one's license, including low speed maneuvering, parking, defensive driving, adjustments for weather and road conditions, the whole shebang.
Though even 18 still seems to me like an appallingly young age to be entrusted with a giant metal box that can propel itself at high speeds.
For your own peace of mind it's probably best you stay away from, say, the Armor School at Fort Benning. You wouldn't believe what they're entrusting 18-year-olds with. And they let them drive at night! After 11 pm!
128.2: I don't think any of that is all that relevant to be a safe driver. I think it's mostly about being cautious and continuously aware.
And they let them drive at night! After 11 pm!
Well, yes, but presumably they get night-vision.
whose only justification is "this law is, in itself, pointless, but it will give us an opportunity to punish people who are uppity enough to think they can go around ignoring pointless laws"?
As said above, the justification for the law is that it prohibits behavior (driving by under 18s with other teens in the car or at night) that has been demonstrated (I'm taking this on the representations I've read -- could be false, but that's the justification) to be strongly correlated with accidents. You may think either that the facts this justification relies on are false, or that the correlation isn't strong enough to warrant the law, but your description of the pointlessness of it all is off base.
128.2: And how to share the road with cyclists.
126: true, but that's not an argument for making a law preventing it. It's an argument for parents telling their kids to be home by 11 and then checking they're not drunk when they get back.
121: you don't have any problem at all with a law whose only justification is "this law is, in itself, pointless, but it will give us an opportunity to punish people who are uppity enough to think they can go around ignoring pointless laws"?
I'd like to see this argument extended to justify some other laws. Perhaps a Compulsory Hat Law, allowing the police easily to identify and punish those malcontents who think they can flout the will of the state by going round bare-headed. After all, with an attitude like that they'd probably commit some other crimes sooner or later anyway.
I'd come down squarely in the camp of 'privilege not right' and say that the actions which justify revocation of that privilege needn't be all that hideous.
132: not the argument Annelid made, to which I was responding.
It's an argument for parents telling their kids...
That'd be nice. Meanwhile, if you actually want to change things in the real world...
My mom says she's going to teach me how to drive! She's the BEST!
135: well, we could punish people who refused to wear hats by taking away their driving licences.
ajay, you don't think that increasing the share of risk-averse drivers has something to do with increasing safety?
140: good point. Let's ban men from driving.
141: how about just teenaged men?
Or perhaps just teenagers who demonstrate their willingness to break laws?
142: no, all of them. Men of all ages are statistically more likely to cause car accidents.
Or, since there's no point in stopping anywhere short of the coul-de-fucking-sac of absurdio, why not ban driving entirely?
And the whole "let's weed out people who are prepared to ignore pointless laws" argument is what I was getting at with my Hat Law example.
I have no problem with banning men under 25 from driving, none at all. I've been told repeatedly that trauma wards are 95% drunk or high men under 25, and the other 5% are people they've hit with their cars.
Actually, why aren't insurance premiums prohibitively expensive for that demographic? I know nothing of this.
Would you disagree that those ignorers are less risk-averse than the sheeple--with regard to following the sort of coordination laws with which roads are lousy?
you still have to hit, like, a school bus or something before they even think about taking away your license to drive a two ton death machine.
A few days before Christmas, an old lady, with a history of driving into supermarkets and the like, jumped the curb in front of Marshall Fields in Chicago and drove down the sidewalk mowing over holiday shoppers. I forget how many people she killed, but one of them was the m-i-l of our departmental assistant. The old lady was given back her license 6 months after the incident, because there was no law by which she could be permanently denied it. (Adding insult to [mortal] injury, when it came out that she wouldn't be permanently losing her license, she swore to the press she wouldn't be seeking it back anyway. And yet the very first day she was eligible, there she was in line at the DMV.)
Wow. It is almost like the Europeans here didn't spend their high school years blasting KROQ and driving Malibu Canyon way too fast just for fun.
Even without drunk driving the no-passengers after midnight or the one-grown-up in the car rule sound very practical to me. That way the driver doesn't have someone from the back seat and the guy in the passenger seat wrestling over the radio while he's driving too fast anyway and feeling like he's got this driving thing down because look how well he's taking the curves. For any driver, distraction is a threat while driving, and a car full of kids will inevitably be more distracting than a solo driving moping his way home.
I have no problem believing in the set of kids who would observe a late-night driving curfew (or modified rules about passengers) but are menaces if given full driving privileges (through exuberance and an immature understanding of risk, not a willingness to break laws).
but that's not an argument for making a law preventing it
Sure it is. As much as any law is made to stand in for the judgment of individuals.
I've been told repeatedly that trauma wards are 95% drunk or high men under 25, and the other 5% are people they've hit with their cars.
Someone's been repeatedly handing you hyperbolic nonsense, but I assume you knew that already. The relevant question is what percentage of men under 25 end up in trauma wards?
The relevant question to consider before you advocate banning men under 25 from driving, that is.
In priniciple, I'm tempted to make the Youth Rights argument here (which may have been where chris y was headed; I can't tell what larger angle ajay is working anymore) and say that, per Togolosh, it's wrecklessness and driving skills that should be regulated here, rather than age.
But ... I know from experience that while teen driving is fun and many are perfectly safe (and part of the higher accident rate seems to fit in with the higher accident rate for new drivers in general), there is a very real and very dangerous component to careless teen driving (including distractable driving in packs) that it's not a bad idea to respond to. You can announce that your just going to more vigorously enforce existing laws, but it doesn't have the same effect
And FWIW the new MN regs also added a six month period of restricted driving priviledges for all new drivers, regardless of age.
why aren't insurance premiums prohibitively expensive for that demographic?
Because the vast majority of that demographic makes it to 25 without incident.
Even without drunk driving the no-passengers after midnight or the one-grown-up in the car rule sound very practical to me.
They are very practical, and in practice, I've chiefly seen the law used by parents to justify refusing to let the kid(s) go out driving after 11 p.m. It's certainly the case that any number of parents wouldn't see the need to enforce such a rule, so there's a sense in which the 11 p.m. curfew is a law directed to parents as much as to kids.
Though I assume a kid caught driving after 11 is the one nabbed for the crime, and the parents aren't implicated.
Also, on preview, what 152 said.
it's wrecklessness and driving skills that should be regulated here
Wrecklessness is a virtue when it comes to driving.
159: True. Which is why it should be made legally compulsory.
157: right. The premiums are higher, but they're not prohibitively (as in unaffordably) high.
155: that is indeed where I was trying to head. I think you shouldn't partially ban adults from driving if they are entirely qualified to do so, based solely on their membership of a demographic group. Teenagers are not the only distractable drivers out there, as any parent who's driven with kids in the back seat will tell you.
My other point is that justifying laws solely as a way of weeding out people who tend to ignore arbitrary and pointless laws is bad for civil liberties.
I'm very sympathetic to ajay's position, but remember that the driving curfew applies to those with learner's permits, which by nature are restricted licenses.
But wait. Actually Knecht's 69 describes something slightly different from a 6-month-long learner's permit: The latest fashion is "graduated driver licensing". Below a certain age (usually 18), there are limits on driving, eg you can't drive after midnight or you can't have more than one passenger under 18 in the car with you without an adult present.
This is to say that if you get your learner's permit at 16 and your driver's license a short while later, you still ... for 2 years? ... can't drive after midnight, or 11 p.m.? That does seem a bit much. I'd have found it intolerable myself.
151 is totally right. We would blast the soundtrack to Psycho, cut the headlights, and charge as fast as we dared down the Verdugo Mountains IN TOTAL DARKNESS. Sometimes someone in the passenger seat would grab for the steering wheel to yank it around. It is somewhat unbelievable to me that I was ever quite that stupid, but there it is.
Query: How many more times does O'Keefe need to be exposed before people question what he says before firing anyone?
119
...which isn't really the point. The threat here is people being hit by drunk or careless teenage drivers, yes? For a law prohibiting after-hours driving by teenagers to have any impact on this problem, we have to assume that there are teenagers who
a) get drunk (illegally in most states) and b) go driving while drunk (also illegal) and/or c) drive dangerously (also illegal) but who would not d) drive at times of the day when the law says they shouldn't.
I don't believe that this is a very large set.
It's a stupid law.
I agree with you that our policies on drinking, driving and teens are stupid and I'll bet most other Americans here would as well, but your interpretation of this is so tendentious that it borders on stupid as well.
For one thing, your list of assumptions is wrong. The intent of the hour restrictions is not that kids will notice the time and responsibly decide to call a parent or a cab rather than drive home from wherever they are even after they've been drinking or while around friends they want to show off to. The hope is that they will decide not to stay out that late to begin with or plan alternate transportation options beforehand.
Teenagers are not the only distractable drivers out there, as any parent who's driven with kids in the back seat will tell you.
Yes, but hopefully that parent has several years of driving experience to improve her odds of recovering from distraction. And isn't out doing very fun, very dumb driving because she is too young to get into bars and what else is there to do?
Here is a discussion on Graduated Driver Licensing in various countries.
162: I'd have found it intolerable myself.
In the context of that time, maybe. If you were a teen now, probably not.
I'd have found it intolerable myself.
It may be hard to imagine, but others have survived even greater hardship.
164: I was just pleased to hear that someone at NPR had a realistic appraisal of the Tea Party. Quite the journalistic coup, O'Keefe.
In college a friend of mine used to like to yell "Dead at the wheel! Dead at the wheel!" while driving and feign unconsciousness, requiring the passenger to steer and issue instructions about braking, etc.
Good times.
The intent of the hour restrictions is not that kids will notice the time and responsibly decide to call a parent or a cab rather than drive home from wherever they are even after they've been drinking or while around friends they want to show off to. The hope is that they will decide not to stay out that late to begin with or plan alternate transportation options beforehand.
So, that assumes that they would happily plan an evening of illegal drinking and drunk midnight driving, but they wouldn't be prepared to plan an evening of illegal drinking and drunk midnight driving if it was against the law to be out that late? That's kind of what I was getting at with the a) to d) list.
In the context of that time, maybe. If you were a teen now, probably not.
This is actually quite a sad sentence because of its undertone of "remember, teenagers today don't have the freedoms that we did when we were young".
170 -- Huh. I wonder if we have the same friend. Probably not.
At age 18, I and some other kids did a approximately 300 mile road rally -- 9 teenagers in 4 cars going at 100+mph on an ordinary weekday on crowded interstate highways weaving through traffic, into the shoulder, making last minute cut-offs to pass people, coming unbelievably close to death multiple times, etc. At the end none of us could quite believe that we'd done that; I still sometimes have dreams about it.
If that's not a jailable offense I'm not sure what should be, but no one even got a speeding ticket.
169: But even for that, In the longer tape, it's evident Schiller is not giving his own views but instead quoting two influential Republicans -- one an ambassador, another a senior Republican donor. Schiller notably does not take issue with their conclusions -- but they are not his own. Just dreadful coverage in the media. The prior ACORN stuff stands as one of the most stunning recent illustrations of class and racial bias in the US mainstream media, politics and society.
164: You'd think it would have only taken once, but that would violate the First Law of Democratic Politics. The bigger question is, even granting for the sake of argument that everything *had* gone as O'Keefe edited the tape, why anybody would apologize for stating the completely fucking obvious. The Tea Party *is* a bunch of racist religious fanatics.
122
The root problem of this is really the car-centric culture in America. You've got to let teenagers drive because you can't participate in the adult world in America if you can't drive...
I say establish mass-transit wherever feasible, and then raise the driving age to 25, and the level of required driving competence to German levels.
I agree with the sentiment, but that "wherever feasible" part completely cancels out the rest. Geographically speaking, something like 95 percent of America has population density too low to make public transportation suitable for day-to-day use (PTSFDTDU) feasible. Even looking what most people actually live close to (because acres don't vote and all that), it would still probably be unfeasible to have PTSFDTDU for probably 40 percent of the population, or maybe even the majority, I don't know. And you know, in America, acres DO vote - it's called the Senate (thanks, Founding Fathers!) so good luck getting federal funding for PTSFDTDU.
And the thing is, this is one area where America's stupid, penny-wise and pound-foolish, half laissez-faire and half nanny-state policies make sense. Or maybe "make sense" isn't right, but it's one area where the status quo isn't a result of either Jim Crow (Well, except for the Senate approval of federal funding thing again) or the military-industrial complex. America also just has a much lower population density than most of the industrialized world. According to this, America's population density is 32 people per km^2; compare that to this. Only three countries in the EU have a lower population density than the U.S. France's density is about three times ours, the overall EU's density is about four times ours, Germany's density is about seven times ours, and the UK's is even more than that.
There's a big cultural myth about "real America" being either farms or suburbs, and it's certainly pernicious. But the crazy thing is, it's not a total myth, there actually is a huge chunk of Americans who live in places where you need a car to do anything outside the home.
Geographically speaking
Why would that be relevant?
Even looking what most people actually live close to (because acres don't vote and all that), it would still probably be unfeasible to have PTSFDTDU for probably 40 percent of the population, or maybe even the majority, I don't know.
Why?
167.last: Sure. I know. I simply recall a number of times when I was called upon to, say, pick someone up from the bus station -- in one case picking up my mother (who had night blindness and wasn't good driving at night) from the train station after she'd visited her parents, and her preferring me to drive home, though I'd had my license for only a year.
I'm sure we could have worked around it.
I mean, of course there are places where public transportation would be difficult and expensive, but the point is that public transit spurs development. Saying "well, we built all these car-centric suburbs, ergo we can only ever have car-centric suburbs" seems like a self-evidently circular argument.
I'm deeply suspicious of the brain development research, or at least of the conclusions that are usually drawn from it, but there is something powerfully dangerous about the combination of youthful bravado and sense of immortality. There have been PSAs here encouraging young people to be the uncoool one who says "Hey guys, how about we not kill ourselves tonight," and there's much longer tradition of drivers ed splatter films (and the beginning to The Lookout), but very little of this seems to convince a chunk of young drivers that it won't be a great time to see how far they can push it.
they wouldn't be prepared to plan an evening of illegal drinking and drunk midnight driving
They're kids. They don't plan a fucking thing. The question is whether at 10:45 they sit around and say "Dude. Through Malibu one more time?" "Dude. Curfew." "Dude, lame." "Dude. I know." "Whatever, dude." "Dude, I can't get busted." "Dude."
Having agreed, some (large) subset of them will head for home. Some (small) subset of them will live because of that choice.
I think a lot of teen driving behavior is entirely spontaneous and malleable. They aren't, like, dedicated to going out and drinking after midnight. They're just cruising and sometimes finding trouble and fun. They'll mostly abide by something that weighs on the side of going home, and since they're at fairly high risk, that'll make a difference.
Maybe in England you don't do aimless recreational driving, so you believe teen driving behavior is all more purposeful and less subject to dissuasion than I remember it.
180: The best minds of our generation!
183: We thought we were pretty clever, but we were far from being the best minds in 02138, generation notwithstanding.
Just so you know, I have high school age siblings. I am not relying on memory to re-create this dialogue, although I talk(ed) just like that. I am close to the source.
184: yeah, those car talk dudes are pretty damn sharp.
I believe that there's research that suggests that teens are not more generically risk-seeking than adults -- in fact, they are more rational and realistic about risk generally than many -- but that they are much more susceptible to peer pressure that encourages doing wildly irrational things in groups to demonstrate bravado.
That's certainly held true for me; no one would have done the road rally I described above alone or even in a group of 2-3; it was a kind of madness of the small crowd.
186: Aren't they in a different part of town?
182: I think it's more that in England there is far more of a stigma (and more of a penalty) attached to drunk-driving than there seems to be in the colonies. Also, teenagers are much less likely to have cars, and recreational driving's a lot more expensive and (thanks to traffic) generally less enjoyable.
Rural areas are different: I have some fairly hair raising stories about driving behaviour in rural North England (or "Scotlandshire" as we call it).
it might have been bought by some swivel-eyed anti-alcohol lobbying group, in which case the rather elegant market-based corruption argument would not apply.
Except that it *is* the insurance industry that lobbies for these laws. They boast about it in full page ads in upscale opinion magazines. My argument is not only elegant, but correct.
187: I had a friend in high school that was crazy enough to have done something like that on his own. Have I told you all already about the time he contested his $250 speeding ticket?
||
I had a dream in which bob mcmanus was an octopus who told me that if mexico used a subterranean geological spear-like weapon against japan, he'd hold me accountable. I was in a stall in a bathroom and he put one tentacle under the door and I was supposed to (and did) pull the rest of him through. For some reason the toilet faced ninety degrees away from the door to the stall.
|>
For some reason the toilet faced ninety degrees away from the door to the stall.
Wow, that part's really weird.
188: nope, they're in the square.
192: I bet there's a manga and anime series about that.
195: There used to be a "Dewey, Cheathem & Howe" sign you could see from the street. Probably still is.
I don't interpret dreams involving myself, especially if they don't have dogs.
I also, as a child's rights advocate, am not pleased by this thread. But that, and Free the Children!, is about all I care to say.
187: they are much more susceptible to peer pressure that encourages doing wildly irrational things in groups to demonstrate bravado
The males are more susceptible, it seems.
Sucks for those who are normal (responsible) drivers, of course. It's almost like there's profiling going on.
In any case, being an under-18 driver in the US these days is clearly a more tightly controlled state of being than it once was. I wonder whether there are figures to show whether new graduated licensing laws have ushered in reduced accident rates. (I haven't read the link in 167 yet.)
172
So, that assumes that they would happily plan an evening of illegal drinking and drunk midnight driving, but they wouldn't be prepared to plan an evening of illegal drinking and drunk midnight driving if it was against the law to be out that late?
Exactly. Now you're getting it. That sounds reasonable to me. See, I'm kind of assuming that kids can plan by themselves or in the company of their parents, just not when they are trying to impress each other or honestly lose track of time. Parents can enforce curfews, and kids can plan around them, much more easily than kids can be confident of driving cautiously, or have two drinks but not three, or whatever.
Personally, I can think of only two times during high school when I went to parties with the expectation of any drinking by me. One ended during daylight, and my parents were out of town for the other. (Yes, I was a loser in high school.) And that was before there was a legal curfew.
177/179:
Why would that be relevant?
A little because of suburban development, like you say. Sure, we don't want to be locked into suburban development habits forever, but we can't ignore the cost to switch gears. More than that, I was thinking of how it distance affects the cost of public transportation suitable for day-to-day-use (PTSFDTDU). More miles to cover means more gas burned and all that. Sure, it saves money in the long run compared to individual cars, but individual cars don't show up on the budgets of government agencies. Most of all, though, I was thinking about state governments and the Senate. I doubt the Senate would vote for federal funding for PTSFDTDU between Rochester and Buffalo unless Montana, Idaho and Arizona each got enough money to start a new such project from scratch. And then, New York wouldn't support the project unless...
Again, yes, of course I think it would be great if more of America had rational drinking laws, a consistent driving age which probably could be a higher than it is in most places, and/or PTSFDTDU. But for once, there are reasons for the status quo in addition to simple corruption.
as a child's rights advocate
Driving: not a right.
At the very least, cat owners should probably have restricted licences. Since becoming one, I've developed a tremendous overconfidence in my driving abilities, and entirely lost my fear of cat urine. N=1.
Sure, it saves money in the long run compared to individual cars, but individual cars don't show up on the budgets of government agencies.
I mean, they aren't, like, itemized, but plenty of the budget of local governments goes towards paying for automobile infrastructure.
149: To their credit, the auto insurance lobby has been pressing for mandatory licence re-examination for old fogies as well. Unfortunately, the geezer lobby is rather more influential in state legislatures than the teenage goof-off lobby.
198: bob, have you read Janusz Korczak? Might be of interest to you -- he wanted to be the "Karl Marx of children."
mandatory licence re-examination for old fogies
To the credit of the auto insurance lobby, definitely. I don't know how many families of old fogies have had to forcibly remove the keys or the car itself from the possession of the family fogey.
The freedom to drive -- in the US, where public transportation is paltry and distances can be significant -- is one that we USians can be fairly passionate about, for good reason. Freedom of movement and all that. Absent a robust social support network -- something that is indeed increasingly absent -- people get upset at being prospectively homebound.
An adversarial and restrictive approach to the matter is less productive than a cooperative approach aimed at fostering mobility. If I may be so obvious as to say so.
They aren't, like, dedicated to going out and drinking after midnight
Really? Because I was, and so were most of my friends.
Maybe in England you don't do aimless recreational driving, so you believe teen driving behavior is all more purposeful and less subject to dissuasion than I remember it.
I'm probably not the best person to ask, as I don't have a licence and nor did most people I know have a car until well into their 20s, but I get the sense it's a lot less common. You get a lot of boy racerism, but not so much aimless driving (again, rural areas are probably different). Driving is expensive in the UK and if you want to go somewhere to do stupid teenage things you can usually walk or get a bus.
again, rural areas are probably different
For the purposes of this discussion, the US outside of the cores and perhaps inner-ring suburbs of large cities should be considered "rural" in this sense.
The area I grew up in was definitely rural, though on the outskirts of suburbia. Two miles of walking or driving would get you to a 7-11, which sold beer. I think the shocking bit is that for most of the developments that were built nearby, they were no closer to anything non-residential, and often involved more major highways in the trip. 20 miles or 30 minutes of driving would probably get you to the far fringes of a metropolitan area bus network.
(Of course, I was a totally boring teenager in this sense and only drove to and from school, or to the bus stop, once I had my license and beat-up car, because it permitted me to stay late for the after-school clubs).
Interesting. Just going by the FARS data these people pulled together, the rate of teen drivers being involved in fatal accidents (relative to the total population) has been relatively rapidly converging to the whole-population rate. Since around 2000-2002.
Maybe in England you don't do aimless recreational driving, so you believe teen driving behavior is all more purposeful and less subject to dissuasion than I remember it.
Yeah, petrol is just a bit over $8 per (UK) gallon at the moment and the price discrepancy has been at least that as long as I can remember, which is longer than you've been alive. Driving is an expensive hobby in Britain; if teenagers drive, it's to get somewhere by the shortest possible route, even if it's only a field they can make out in.
... because it permitted me to stay late for the after-school clubs.
All of them? Which ones? Don't leave us scrambling for material to ridicule you for the enthusiasms of youth hanging.
I agree with the sentiment, but that "wherever feasible" part completely cancels out the rest. Geographically speaking, something like 95 percent of America has population density too low to make public transportation suitable for day-to-day use (PTSFDTDU) feasible. Even looking what most people actually live close to (because acres don't vote and all that), it would still probably be unfeasible to have PTSFDTDU for probably 40 percent of the population, or maybe even the majority, I don't know.
I don't see how density is destiny. (Except anagrammatically.)
If we're talking only about feasibility - assuming an all-benevolent People's Assembly with its all-wise Secretariat - I'll bet you could combine soft policy tools like commuter rail, transit-oriented development, gas taxes, carshares, bike-friendliness, etc. such that the majority of suburbanites don't use cars to commute.
212: Theater, of course. How else are you going to be at late rehearsals and such?
I'll bet it was Academic Decathlon. And Lincoln Douglas.
Teenagers are probably better drivers these days due to quicker reaction times developed through playing the video games.
I'm not even sure that the suburban parts of the UK are substantially more dense in strict terms than the bulk of suburbs in the USA (excluding the really far out, quasi-rural suburb, perhaps); they are just oriented in a different way w/r/t transport. In the Western US, at least, most cities and suburbs are actually fairly dense, they just aren't designed well for non-automobiles.
210: Those are some interesting figures. I was trying to figure out a joke about how, in 2009, 16% of major veehicle crashes by teenagers occured on Frieeeday, but it wasn't coming together.
It seems worth noting, contra some of the drunken teen scenarios floating through, that, for those involved in fatal accidents, (after seniors) teens had the lowest rate of BAC above the legal limit. This fits into the fact that alcohol is hard for teens to get in the US; harder than drugs are in many cases.
213/214:
If we're talking only about feasibility - assuming an all-benevolent People's Assembly with its all-wise Secretariat - I'll bet you could combine soft policy tools ... such that the majority of suburbanites don't use cars to commute... If you had 30 years, that is.
Sure, I agree, and I don't see how this differs from anything I've been saying. It's less likely than peaceful abolition of the Senate.
Also, I say "sure" a lot.
219: Teens being much more likely than adults to drive stupidly while sober also fits into it. I wonder if there are any stats that would differentiate accidents caused by lack of skill (the sort of thing that would probably happen in heavy traffic, or in parking lots at low speed), from accidents caused by intentionally driving dangerously (crazy fast on curvy roads, driver and passengers fooling around).
Sure, I agree, and I don't see how this differs from anything I've been saying. It's less likely than peaceful abolition of the Senate.
OK, comity. I just got the impression from your comment you were talking about some kind of objective engineering feasibility rather than political feasibility.
Best curfew story ever, from an elderly acquaintance:
In the 1950's women's colleges in Virginia typically had a midnight curfew, while mens's colleges had a 1 a.m. curfew. There was a cluster of women's colleges in Lynchburg, and a cluster of men's colleges in Lexington. The sororities would host parties. The few frat brothers who had cars would drive the rest of the guys, so all the cars were overloaded. The guys would of course stay at the sororities until they were locked out at midnight. Then they had exactly one hour to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains to reach home base, or they would be locked and possibly given some kind of academic discipline. Google now claims the route takes one hour four minutes, but the cars and the roads were somewhat worse back then, and it was after midnight. The sororities slipped some alcohol into the punch, and the gas stations in Lynchburg and along the way all sold moonshine. Cars did not have seatbelts.
The net result was the death of at least a carload or two of the scions of the state's ruling class in every graduating class, which could probably have been avodied if the people who set the rules at the various schools ever gave the situation any thought.
This is a good overview of why it's dumb to confuse "denisty" per se with "automobile-oriented transportation structure."
Do you remember being a teenager an adult? I remember the range of responsibility of my behavior being HUGE, and where I happened to fall on my little personal responsibility scale depended largely on context. Because I was an idiot
Not that I don't think teens can be little assholes. I just remain broadly unconvinced they are, as a group, bigger assholes than adults.
223: Great (bummer) story. As for giving the situation any thought, rules are rules, man. They are the rules.
Vaguely related: Republicans push for English as the official US language. The Senate bill has no co-sponsors, while the House bill has 60. Are we sure we want to eradicate the Senate, and let the zoo that is the House set the pattern?
222
OK, comity. I just got the impression from your comment you were talking about some kind of objective engineering feasibility rather than political feasibility.
Well, it's not cold fusion or time travel or anything, but I'm pretty confident that PTSFDTDU is objectively harder in most of the US than in most of the EU. And, unfortunately, it's harder in a way that is particularly bad in our political system. But no, of course I don't think it's impossible in a theoretical sense. All it would take is a massive amount of money, time and political will (but not, technically, an infinite amount). It would also take either a new political system or several times more of each of those.
Adults are carefully asinine (Lloyd Blankfein or Lisa Rinna) while teenagers are spontaneously asinine.
Factoids: The LA urban area is probably roughly as dense as that of Copenhagen, and more dense than Oslo. The overall LA urban area is significantly denser than that of NY, but public transportation usage rates in NY are much, much higher.
227
Are we sure we want to eradicate the Senate, and let the zoo that is the House set the pattern?
Hypothetically speaking, if the Senate had magically vanished in 2008, the stimulus bill might have been bigger. If it had been, the economy would probably be better now, and therefore Republicans wouldn't have got elected in 2010. The Senate isn't the root of all evil, but it does do more harm than good, and more harm than is immediately obvious.
225: Well, yes, in many ways I am still an idiot, but I contend I am still much less of an idiot than I was, if only through acquired experience that allows me to envision better alternatives at critical junctures. Idiocy: hopefully forever approaching zero.
Idiocy: hopefully forever approaching zero.
There's some serious Brownian motion in there for me.
Hypothetically speaking, if the Senate had magically vanished in 2008, the stimulus bill might have been bigger.
Not to mention the public option.
All it would take is a massive amount of money, time and political will (but not, technically, an infinite amount). It would also take either a new political system or several times more of each of those.
Money, really? It would take a more massive amount of money than, say, what we currently spend on roads?
Evan Bayh has signed on as a Fox News contributor. I expect that this is his audition run for the GOP VP slot in 2012.
233: I know. I feel like I just challenged my Id. "I'll show you laws of physics!"
(Um. That would be my Id, talking shit.)
Also, if we got rid of the Senate, the House would be faced with the prospect that some of the crazy shit they pass would actually go into law, which might inspire them to tone down the crazy shit.
I saw this story when it came out, but missed that the gaffer was a 91-year-old freshman state legislator.
But, when everybody can be 21, who cares? Apparently you need serious kit to crack these. Ordinary checks are no good.
234: If there had been no Senate in 1998, would Clinton have been removed from office?
241: I feel reassured that my info is safe with them, knowing that they are located in a safe country.
230: Factoids: The LA urban area is probably roughly as dense as that of Copenhagen, and more dense than Oslo. The overall LA urban area is significantly denser than that of NY.
Anyone struggling with the couter-intuitive factoid would do well to study this map (pdf) of the officially defined Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana urbanized area. Discernment of why use of this factoid frequently needs to be caveated left to the studier.
If there had been no Senate in 1998, would Clinton have been removed from office?
Unlikely, as a two-thirds vote is required for removal, and impeachment only narrowly passed in the House (228-206 for perjury and 221-212 for obstruction of justice).
If there had been no Senate in 1820, no Missouri Compromise!
An adversarial and restrictive approach to the matter is less productive than a cooperative approach aimed at fostering mobility. If I may be so obvious as to say so.
I just wanted to give this some attention, because, in my mind, it's the heart of the matter. Alas, it seems that public opinion holds precisely the reverse. Locking people in cages is ordered liberty; upzoning is socialist tyranny. Sigh.
Speaking of Senate-logic, it just hit me, probably belatedly - were Alaska and Hawaii admitted as states at almost the same time to preserve the balance of power, like Missouri and Maine, and all those other pairs? Would Puerto Rico and all the other territories be states today if we hadn't run out of Republican wastelands to pair them with?
Money, really? It would take a more massive amount of money than, say, what we currently spend on roads?
For large parts of the country where I live probably.
With population density like this you are going to have huge areas where doing public transit is pretty much going to be worse than just having everyone have a car. Granted in the grand scheme of things it isn't a lot of people, but you can see why the driving is pretty important.
248 -- IIRC, the answer is yes, but the parties got it exactly wrong. Alaska was supposed to be Democratic (government workers! war veterans!) and Hawaii Republican (not sure of the logic here -- maybe it was assumed that the Dole interests would control everything forever).
250: Funny. I see both states made their now-traditional choices for President in 1960, but both by narrow margins.
244: That's one confusing map you've linked there.
252: careful... Megan might be watching...
I am watching! But in agreement with LB. It took me a while to find the neighborhood where I grew up on that map. I don't generally think of the San Fernando Valley as a subset of the Simi Valley watershed.
252: You're just not appreciating the simplicity of: "Urban areas in the United States are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as contiguous census block groups with a population density of at least 1,000 inhabitants per square mile (386.1 /km2) with any census block groups around this core having a density of at least 500 inhabitants per square mile (193.1 /km2)."
Red hatched areas are in the urbanized area counted as LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana. PLaces like San berdoo/Riverside/Simi Valley and Mission Viejo are not in, nor per the definition the intervening mountains and other deserted areas. It makes a very different pattern than in the east where >500 per sq mi. goes on and on and on... Not necessarily inimical to Halford's point, but of note.
I got my threads crossed up.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_11068.html#1291340
Cruising and 'profiling' and enjoying company, stereos, and air conditioning have been a longstanding part of US youth culture.
Hawaii Republican (not sure of the logic here -- maybe it was assumed that the Dole interests would control everything forever).
Probably this. What I vaguely recall from reading my James Michener is that bunch of rich plantation owners had run the islands for decades and they were, naturally, Republicans. But during the '50s, the old order got overthrown in a series of general strikes.
I don't generally think of the San Fernando Valley as a subset of the Simi Valley watershed.
Neither do I! In my case the explanation is probably somewhat different, though.
254: Tell it to the Marines Census Bureau and the EPA! The official maps are here at the census bureau but I actually thought the EPA one was clearer to read...
Also, the parties are made of very different coalitions now.
Further to 259, I don't know why the EPA was using the census block urbanized area thingy for storm water areas but for my purposes that is a red herring, I just wanted the map.
260: Yeah, apparently the Southern Democrats were concerned that Hawaii might elect a non-white Senator.
If there had been no Senate in 1998, would Clinton have been removed from office?
To be replaced, presumably, by Gore, who would have been a better president, and (as an incumbent) would almost certainly have won handily in 2000... doesn't sound too bad. Bit of a shame for Clinton, obviously, but I'm sure he would have managed.
Or worse, a non-white Hawaiian President.
259: I found this outline map less cluttered and more self-explanatory; OTOH, it nearly crashed Chrome twice.
265: I found it harder to see that the outlying areas were actually different urbanized areas on that one. The point is a minor quibble anyway.
So after it was brought up here I did occasional searches to see if any prominent people were blaming Japan's sinfulness for Sendai; all I found was liberals predicting that response, until today.
But this is true for the Eastern cities as well. I.e. there is a Bridgeport, CT urbanized area that is distinct from NY-Newark. It is a bit mysterious as to where the census decides that you've got a dense suburb separate enough to create its own urban area.
In any event, the point is that public transportation/non-automobile usage is very, very far from simply being dependent on the overall population density of your urban area.
269 was supposed to start off by quoting Stormcrow's the outlying areas were actually different urbanized areas
164: Why hasn't anyone punched him in the mouth on sight, started a vicious anonymous hate website dedicated to him, organised a barbershop quartet of SEIU members to follow him around singing "Get a Job", denounced him as a hypocrite, liar, political whore and torture fan and challenged him to sue...there's a lack of testicular fortitude here?
Anyway, the cars. I grew up on the boundary between the Bradford metro area and the hills. But even so, the teenage car thing was much watered down. Even though logistics was a big problem in general, given that the cab fare back from town ran £30 at any time you'd want one. The car freaks were either rich, or else dad was in the trade in some way, or there was the one guy who was an apprentice mechanic and bought a Vauxhall Nova with rust holes, installed the 136bhp engine from an Astra SRi, expensive rally shocks and brake discs, and here's the classy bit - he didn't change its appearance at all, just left the coachwork looking like shit. Everyone else just cracked on one way or another. It wasn't really a big issue, because most of the times you wanted private transport were the ones you wouldn't have wanted to be driving.
A friend of my sister got her licence and immediately wrecked several cars in a row, but no-one I knew ever got hurt on the roads. Not even the mechanic - he had the good sense to flog the insane hot rod mentioned to one of the rich, and I left town and I don't know what became of it or him.
Someone else took up serious amateur rallying, it helped that his dad owned a garage, like practically all racers'. And the many times world motorcycle trials champ, Dougie Lampkin, lived about three miles away. So the impulse was there, it just wasn't overridingly important.
One thing that sticks in my mind was that on a few occasions when a group of us were in a car together, everyone would be laughing at doing something so ridiculously Hollywood-esque. I mean, it was the drag version of car culture.
239: Also, if we got rid of the Senate, the House would be faced with the prospect that some of the crazy shit they pass would actually go into law, which might inspire them to tone down the crazy shit.
That's quite a gamble on which to hang your hat, or whatever the phrase might be.
Is it a version of the "But they would never do that!!" argument?
272 cont'd: And if so, is the idea that the House/Senate configuration as currently constituted makes the House into a joke body which is free to be populated by Representatives who need not take themselves or their responsibilities seriously?
It certainly does look like that at times. On the other hand, my own perception has a lot to do with whether the House is controlled by Democrats or Republicans. Nancy Pelosi's House didn't seem totally nuts.
Generally, I agree with Halford's point that it's not just density but how you orient your urbanized development. But are any of the densest parts of the LA (and vicinity urbanized area) as dense as the the densest parts of NYC (and vicinity urbanized area)? Also, I'm pretty sure that LA actually has higher transit usage than its reputation suggests.
A huge part of the problem with 1960s transit construction <cough>BART</cough> is that it was built pretty explicitly as a freeway alternative for commuting than as a way to get around in everyday life. So you ended up with large parking lots around what could have been - and with infill development in some places is now becoming - small urbanish-suburban transit-oriented centers.
Some of the sadder things a transit advocate can read are the reports of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Commission in the late 1950s where they considered, but obviously ultimately rejected, building a line down to San Jose in conjunction with residential and commercial development. This was back before the South Bay boom, when right-of-ways were a little bit easier and less expensive to come by.
It's true that unicamerality would moderate any "extremism" (or in my view, electoral responsiveness and flexibility) of the House; I don't see how it would completely, or even mostly, negate it. Institutional configurations do matter.
But are any of the densest parts of the LA (and vicinity urbanized area) as dense as the the densest parts of NYC (and vicinity urbanized area)?
No, although there are some areas (MacArthur park) that come fairly close.
As I see it, the House pushes boundaries, and the Senate moderates. At least ideally. We all know that in practice Senate moderation doesn't work out as we might like, but the answer would be adjustment of Senate rules, and, god knows, campaign finance reform and lobbying restrictions.
277: I think the coffee-and-saucer logic is an overapplication of the concept of checks and balances - we already have that going on between the three branches of government, to which are added the forces of interest groups, bureaucracy, the press, and so forth: do we really need to go further and encourage the legislature to moderate itself?
At any rate, the principle of bicamerality still doesn't justify the horrible vote-power-disparity the Senate's structure creates, though I suspect you agree with that.
||Shady Polish-Uruguayan businessman Jan Kobylański complains that Poland isn't governed by 'real Poles' with only thirty percent of the cabinet and parliament made up of 'Catho-Poles' as opposed to secret Jews. The dude is the main financial sponsor of the very influential hard right media empire of Father Rydzyk, and a cause celebre among the more right wing members of the Polish opposition. He made the statement on Rydzyk's 'Radio Maryja'. Extra bonus, as a young man in occupied Warsaw he and his dad would blackmail hiding Jews for all they had and then turn them into the Nazis for the reward. He runs a big Latin American Polish association but has been very unhappy ever since a dozen years ago the then Polish foreign minister, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, banned all diplomatic contact with him or his people. The current foreign minister barred all contact by parliamentarians traveling on government funded trips. Kobylański already hated Bartoszewski as a self-hating Pole since Bartoszewski had run the largest Jewish rescue organization during the war.>|
278.1: I think the coffee-and-saucer logic is an overapplication of the concept of checks and balances
Yes and no. It's not at all clear to me that we would have had the health care reform bill at all were it not for the House. Hence my remark that the House pushes boundaries, for which read the status quo.
do we really need to go further and encourage the legislature to moderate itself?
Apparently we do. In an ideal world we would not, but the current constitution of the House is as a bunch of crazy idiots, and neither the other branches of government nor the press, etc. seem to do much to leaven it. I wish it weren't so.
At any rate, the principle of bicamerality still doesn't justify the horrible vote-power-disparity the Senate's structure creates
I'm clearly tired. Explain? Perhaps you mean the fact that in low-population states, a smaller number of people gets a vote (in the Senate) equal to that of those in higher-population states. Yes, that's an issue. Sorry, I really must eat in a minute.
Yes and no. It's not at all clear to me that we would have had the health care reform bill at all were it not for the House. Hence my remark that the House pushes boundaries, for which read the status quo.
And I see that as a good thing. Ambitious as it was by the standards of the politically keyed-in, the House health reform bill was still quite modest by historical, outside-observer standards. What's the evidence that the current House membership would tear apart the fabric of the country without the Senate? 60 out of 435 members signed on to something especially crazy? At the moment, there's still the presidential veto, and in times of unified Republican power, or even in the Jeffords session, the Senate did very little moderation toward the public good (viz. Iraq).
I'm clearly tired. Explain? Perhaps you mean the fact that in low-population states, a smaller number of people gets a vote (in the Senate) equal to that of those in higher-population states. Yes, that's an issue. Sorry, I really must eat in a minute.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
What's the evidence that the current House membership would tear apart the fabric of the country without the Senate? 60 out of 435 members signed on to something especially crazy? At the moment, there's still the presidential veto
At the moment there's still the presidential veto.
Calling for evidence gets you nowhere.
Frankly, the American electorate is so vastly uninformed that it votes into the House people who are are not qualified to serve (yes, I said that).
Largely for financial reasons, but also for social ones (my friends and gf had cars and were willing to cart me around), I was unable to receive a license when I was 16 (I'm 23 now). Is anyone familiar with the process for getting a first-time license as an adult? I assume I'll have to contact the IL DoT. If it's not prohibitively expensive I think I'll start the program this spring or summer.
283: I don't know that there's a program per se. You might need to get a permit first, but then you take a road test, then they give you a license.
At the moment there's still the presidential veto.
That's why I immediately followed up by citing a long period where we didn't have it.
A large part of the reason Republican House members clown so much is, I think, because they're so far from the real power structure. Without the Senate, that would change quickly - they would still clown, but it would mean less.
I really think we're resilient enough as a country to stand a more partisan, activist legislature. The UK is miles past what we'll ever be in that regard, and while they certainly don't enjoy it day-to-day, it seems to work out a lot better on the whole.
285: I would love to think you're right, babe, I really would. But I can't manage to look at half of them without thinking that they're utterly corrupt/ignorant/disconnected from reality untrustworthy. You seem to have more faith in the representation the American public can produce than I do.
I honestly don't know. I understand what you're saying.
Was anyone able to get past the part where she gets in the back seat of the convertible?
||
OT Bleg: Does anyone here have experience and/or advice regarding obtaining a visa for entry to the US, non-immigrant status? The websites are a confusing morass.
|>
Oh yeah, that would be helpful detail. UK, and uh - would like to work while here but it's not for work.
How long does this person want to stay, and how important is it for him/her to work? If for more than a few months, and if work is important, maybe s/he should try to get a J-1. If s/he has an affiliation with a college or university, the school may have an exchange program that can help with this.
My understanding was that the situation you're describing (come to the US not as a student and work, but not with a specific job lined up at a large place with political clout) is something that we don't allow people to do legally. As of half-a-dozen years ago, it's not all that difficult to do illegally (you have to do some flying back and forth funny business, and hope that you don't get a customs person who figures out what's going on). But not having a visa cuts down on job options (i.e. all the people I know who did the above were nannies).
291: Thanks for responding to my uninformed questions, jms!
As for length of visit, he'd take what he could get - six months seemed to be the longest term of time?; no current affiliation with an university but perhaps that could be changed; and work would be good but possibly non-essential. (Sorry this is so ... vague. Basically, we're on a fact finding mission rather than having things figured out, and we are just having a hard time finding out any information whatsoever, possibly due to poor search techniques.)
Also, do you know if you applying for a non-immigrant visa creates a problem if you were to apply for immigrant status at some later date?
292: Yeah, that's kind of what I thought...frustrating but not surprising.
Also, it seems possible that all the annoying hurdles we've put in for visitors from Europe might have changed how illegally immigrating from Europe works. (That is, it seems plausible that some new database catches you if you do the fly-back-and-forth thing.)
annoying hurdles we've put in for visitors from Europe might have changed how illegally immigrating from Europe works.
Is the quick marriage still a possibility? (If it ever was.)
If it's just six months, it's easiest just to get a visitor's visa. He probably wouldn't be able to work though. (I'm guessing he's not an Olympic athlete, a journalist or a scientist with unique knowledge or anything like, so unless he's affiliated with a school with an exchange scholarship program (which could get him a J-1) or can get an H1B visa by hooking up with an American company willing to sponsor him for a short period of time and claim that they are unable to employ an American national with his skills and abilities, he probably won't be able to work.)
I don't think (though am not totally sure) that applying for a non-immigrant visa will make it difficult for him to obtain immigrant status later, as long as he is out by his expiration date and doesn't otherwise violate visa rules (like, by working on a non-work visa) or the law.
Also, do you know if you applying for a non-immigrant visa creates a problem if you were to apply for immigrant status at some later date?
If you return home and wait for visa1 to expire before applying on an immigrant track, no problem.
If you apply to 'adjust status' where here still on visa1, likely yes.
Of course, what he should do is come over on a visitor's visa and convince you to marry him, and then apply for a green card right away.
There is such a thing as a "fiancee visa," but I don't know much more about it than that it is temporary, doesn't convey many rights to work or travel, and seems to require an expensive lawyer.
I gather that the "marriage green card" is no picnic, given the experience of a friend who's been happily married to a USian for several years now. Of course, I suspect it *might* have something to do with said friend's country of origin.
297-298: Thanks so much. This gives me a much better sense of the rules - and a good starting point for looking up more information.
299-301: Not quite at that stage of things, and I'm not sure even were we that it would involve staying in the US.
Paren, can you combine a marriage visa with an elaborate and strict prenuptial agreement? Probably, right? You could get married in Virginia and have Will draft the prenup. That would limit the downside (to you, the American). I don't know the rules but I suppose that the foreign boyfriend would have to leave following the divorce, but would be no worse off (in terms of immigration status) than he was to begin with. I say go for it, unless your conventional bourgeois morality is holding you back. Also, RomCom material.
RomCom maybe, sitcom not so much.
It the very least, liveblogging material.
I'll take refuge in my numbers and graphs on urban densities--this article has a couple of charts that capture some of what I was failing to get across with the LA map on the different density profiles and what is a generally different pattern in eastern and western cities. Figure 1 (third page) really captures the essence of the east/west difference showing the much narrower range of densities in western urban areas (in general)--they lack both the very dense central cities, but also have a much less prominent tail of low-density suburbs grading into exurbs grading into semi-rural areas. From Figure 2(a) you can pick out the more prominent differences between Los Angeles and New York in particular.
304: I used to watch that show. I have such a clear memory of it, that I can't believe it was cancelled after only 13 episodes. I guess I didn't have much else to do in the fall of 1987.
282
Frankly, the American electorate is so vastly uninformed that it votes into the House people who are are not qualified to serve (yes, I said that).
But then, if House representation actually mattered, Americans probably would make themselves better informed about it.
I'm actually half-serious about that. One idiosyncrasy of our system is multiple veto points, and another is nonintuitive delegation of authority, which means it's very easy to ignore, disguise, or get confused about who is responsible for what. Call me overly optimistic, but I think that if elections had consequences - clear, direct ones, not this lost-in-committee, filibuster-proof majority bull - people would pay at least a little more attention to them. Sure, magically make the Senate vanish into thin air right now and there would be chaos, but if you allow a few decades for the dust to clear, or if we're talking about a historical counterfactual in which it had never existed in the first place (but the Founding Fathers had found some other, less bad way to get the slaveholding states to stick around), this country would probably be a much better place.
So my solution, after feeding the Senate to the pigs, is a House that serves for 3 years, with 1/3 being re-elected every year. Also, some form of non-single-representative-geographical-district-first-past-the-post-based representation. And a pony.
Call me overly optimistic, but I think that if elections had consequences - clear, direct ones, not this lost-in-committee, filibuster-proof majority bull - people would pay at least a little more attention to them.
The parliamentary system has many problems, but at least when one party wins you can be fairly sure they're going to be in charge and do the stuff they want to do. (Coalitions aside. I refuse to refer to the current government as a coalition: I am going to use the Anglo-Saxon equivalent word and call them The Clot.)
Forty acres and a pony?
(The joke to fit this punchline has not turned up yet.)
The only demand of the Chartist movement that was not eventually granted was annual elections to Parliament. The sober, rational argument against this is that it would be counter-productive to have elected representatives campaigning every year. And certainly, with as broken as the US electoral system is, that is a scary thought. But there's no reason to suppose that a change that drastic wouldn't be accompanied by other changes. There could, for instance, be a law limiting campaigning to a single month, or 60 days per year. Some basic campaign finance overhauls would take care of many of the problems, and given that digital media in particular (along with high-speed transportation) have made it much easier to "reach" people, there doesn't seem to be much traction for the objection that it would take legislators away from the halls of government for too long.
Here would be my ideal if I believed in bourgeois democracy:
Legislative branch:
Unicameral
Re-elected annually
Ranked-choice voting
No private campaign spending
Mandatory broadcast time for debates/speeches
Election day a national holiday (on a Wednesday in the fall)
Election judging mandatory for voters
1-hour civics class mandated every five years in order to renew driver's license, state ID or passport
Executive branch:
Same as above except with 5 year terms
Absolute limits on patronage jobs, e.g. No more than 500 appointees, including ambassadors
Judiciary:
All appointees would have to have completed a 4 year apprenticeship with civil and criminal court experience, and pass a comprehensive test, like the bar but harder and more thorough
Maximum 25 year terms
All judges would have to spend a month in jail with no special privileges before they could serve
The only demand of the Chartist movement that was not eventually granted was annual elections to Parliament.
The Monster Raving Loony Party, by contrast, started off campaigning for all-day pub opening, the abolition of the 11-plus, the lowering of the voting age to 18 and the introduction of commercial radio. Success all round. (Still no progress on their plan to put Parliament on wheels and have it move slowly from town to town though.)
Natilo, most of that looks good: not keen on one-year terms though, because you could easily have marginal constituencies where it alternates almost every year, and not a lot would get done.
Definitely not keen on political patronage as a way of appointing ambassadors (or any other senior civil servants), which looks to me like a hangover from the 18th century.
Not very keen on a separately-elected executive branch. Or on state-issued ID cards - I have a thing against being asked for my papers.
And the maximum terms for judges seem unnecessary; why not just have a fixed retirement age? That's effectively what you've got anyway; your other conditions mean that no one is going to be a judge much before the age of 30, and then they'll retire in their early 50s at the earliest. Why not just make them retire at 65?
311: Forty acres and a pony?
What are the Shetlands after global warming*? (Except not really, due to the freaking topography.)
*Or the next Storegga Slides (inappropriate tsunami humor).
Still no progress on their plan to put Parliament on wheels and have it move slowly from town to town though.
Not fully achieved but some progress - under the last lot they put the Cabinet on wheels and moved it rapidly from town to town (much to the chagrin of the local people who suddenly found themselves having to host a Cabinet meeting).
1-hour civics class mandated every five years in order to renew driver's license, state ID or passport
I've mentioned it before, but my wishlist political system has mandatory voting with an option for "None Of The Above". If the NOTA option takes a plurality, it goes to a re-do but no one from that first ballot can run on the second. (Thinking for a second: this set-up could probably work only in a two-party system. Hm.)
Again, the solution is random lot for both representative legislation assemblies as well as oversight & political quasi-grand juries. Election is simply not a good way to select people, and it's not a good way to get accountability, either.
Any system that relies of election will founder on the simple fact that--especially in relatively well-off polities--the vast majority of people would rather not think about this stuff very much. And there's no way to make them. You can lead a horse to an election booth, but you can't make him vote intelligently.
317, 318: The nation that controls magnesium controls the universe!!!.
I agree with x. trapnel, but would suggest that beginning sentences with "Again, " is not a good way to get people to agree with you in general.
Good point. What I meant was "I'm too lazy to search for my own previous comments on the subject, but one should look there for something more like an actual argument."
319: Warning: Theory may be correct.
I finished my sandwich! Wonder Bread makes me strong like Wonder Woman! My bracelets block bullets! PING!!!!! PING!!!!! PING!!!!! PING!!!!!
I guess I was free associating a little too much with the Chartist reference -- was thinking about them in the context of being in Madison again on Saturday for the big rally, and how the Chartists were able to wield some political power because they had peaceful mega-rallies, with the implicit assumption by all parties that it was a good idea to keep the marchers peaceful. And because a big part of what they were aiming for was various electoral reforms. Sorry if that was not connecting-the-dots enough for everyone.
Obviously, I'm not crazy about having an executive branch at all, or a judiciary, and the ideal legislature, short of abolishing it completely, would be one that was immediately recallable. And my point about the requirements around getting state issued ID was that if you didn't mind not voting, you could still go without. I'm actually pretty sympathetic to the sovereign american types, at least in so far as their antipathy to gov't ID and what not is concerned. (Not sympathetic about the racism and xenophobia and stuff, of course.) They are, in a sense, the damaged younger siblings of anarchism.
is 'not have an executive' something other than 'end all non-defense discretionary spending' + close the pentagon?
325: the point here is that Natilo is an anarchist and therefore doesn't think that having a government is a very good idea.
Which is fair enough, but not a position I really agree with.
And my point about the requirements around getting state issued ID was that if you didn't mind not voting, you could still go without.
It's perfectly possible to vote without a state-issued ID. I've done it lots of times.
No more masturbating to Nate Dogg. That means you, nosflow.
It's perfectly possible to vote without a state-issued ID. I've done it lots of times.
Indeed. The UK approach to voting being:
'Who are you?'
'I'm Bob Foo'
'Vote over there'
328: that's been my experience every time I've voted in this country, so.
Surprising that there's been a Bob Foo on the rolls everywhere.
The Foo family are everywhere. Running their chain of cheap pubs, the Foo Bars.
And now I must commit pun-related seppuku.
||
No more masturbregulatin' to Nate Dogg.
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333: I always thought the song exaggerated the extent of Warren G's regulating. It sounded like Nate did all the work.
Has anyone notified there's no more masturbating to Christmas songs Hugh Martin?
335: If there was no masturbating to begin with it doesn't count.
If there was no masturbating
Stop giving me nightmares, Captain Dystopia.
No, don't make apo's nightmares stop. I masturbate to them.
Speaking of the topic via James Wolcott, Driftglass for the Broder remembrance win. Key grafs:
David Broder -- this "Dean of the Washington press corps" -- totally missed out on covering the greatest story of his time; the utter collapse of the American news media and the mutation of the GOP from a political party into a dangerously fascistic cesspit of oligarchs, lunatics and rubes.
It was a story which his background and years of hard work had almost uniquely prepared him to cover, and one that was literally staring him in the face for much of the last 20 years.
And he completely fucking blew it.I'd add that you can't really cover something that you are a key part of.
337: If there was no masturbating there'd be no more masturbating to masturbating.
340: I feel an infinite regression coming on. Should I masturbate?
Apo's trapped in Borges's adult video store.
Borges's adult video store.
Contains every possible member eight inches long.
333: I always thought the song exaggerated the extent of Warren G's regulating. It sounded like Nate did all the work.
Warren G was more of the procedural liberal who provided an institutional framework.
Guys, Rebecca Black's Fri-eeeee-day is in the top 100 on itunes. Or was, according to the wwtdd guy. So...that's...good? I mean, less suicide-y?
345: When I saw that news I wondered how the Ark Music Factory people have handled copyright/publishing for the songs they're producing. I'd bet there's a good chance Ms. Black won't be seeing much of that iTunes skrilla.
Didn't take long for a cover version to surface.
maybe this thread is closed but i thought i would link to the "bob dylan" "cover" (???)
349: Worth extending it for. My son wandered by as I was playing that and pronounced it "one of the best things ever created on the Internet."
one of the best things ever created on the Internet
Thundersnow has taken to singing the lyric as "Fried eggs! Fried eggs!" I'm not sure if this is from a thing on the internet or what, but it amuses me.
The Comments on the 'Bob Dylan' one are great, too. "Thank you so much for posting this beautiful piece. My father had a framed copy of it over top of our fireplace and whenever I asked him if we could play it, he said the only time he wanted to hear that song again was on his deathbed and at his funeral. After many attempts to get him to let me play this mysterious tune, he would only shake his head and smile. Well, he got to hear it twice more in the summer of '97. Whenever I hear this song I remember him. I miss you so much and RIP dad."
