"Bong Hits 4 Jesus"

Even CNN couldn't have made this stuff up!

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"Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr argued for the principal that a school "must be able to fashion its educational mission" without undue hindsight from the courts.

That brought swift skepticism from some justices.

"There was no classroom here," said Kennedy.

"This was education outside a classroom," replied Starr of the torch relay observation.

"What did it disrupt on the sidewalk?" asked Souter of Frederick's banner.

"The educational mission of the school," was Starr's answer.

"The school can make any rule that it wants on any subject restrictive of speech, and if anyone violates it, it's disruptive?" asked Souter.

Justice Samuel Alito, alone among his conservative bench mates, appeared sharply critical of the school's position

"I find that a very, very disturbing argument," he said, "because schools have and they can define their educational mission so broadly that they can suppress all sorts of political speech and speech expressing fundamental values of the students, under the banner of getting rid of speech that's inconsistent with educational missions."

Several on the bench tried to test the limits of what kinds of speech the schools could control. Many were clearly grasping at a proper balance.

Justice John Roberts wondered whether a button that said "Legalize Marijuana" would be political speech.

Souter asked about whether a "substantial disruption" would exist if a student flashed a small sign in class saying "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

What about a button that advocated rape, asked Kennedy.

Or a button that read "Extortion is profitable" said Justice Antonin Scalia.

"Suppose that this particular person had whispered to his next door neighbor, 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus, heh heh heh,' " speculated Justice Stephen Breyer.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested Frederick's banner was ambiguous enough not to support claims he was promoting illegal drug use. "One can look at these words and say it's just nonsense," she said. "It isn't clear that this is 'Smoke Pot.' "

Souter called it "just a kid's provocative statement."

"a-desire-to-belong" amnesia - it's a new type and dangerous!

Today was 19 degrees. i don't know that for sure, but when i ran out to my car and started gasping because the air was so freaking cold, the bundled-up old men standing in the lobby who told me the temperature started to seem credible.

I learned many things today. Unfortunately I only remember two of them. One - one of our speakers during training was born in Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. Two - according to some random book that was poorly sourced in a power point slide, people in our generation (our moniker for some reason is the millenial generation) communicate "politely." This is in contrast to our boss' generation (the baby boomers) who are blunt. Man, I thought it was just a george thai thing to tell someone they're stupid because you think they're stupid.

So I had a frightful moment today. Driving home from work, my lights spotlighted a circular metallic "P" thinger-majigger. I found myself straining to discern the words on the edge, thinking, "Hey! Princeton! Yo, we're buddies! Maybe I'm not so alone here," until I recoiled in horror.

I need to sleep more. a LOT more.

Democracy

This whole business about the Christian Abdul in Afghanistan has got me thinking a lot about the nature of the type of democracy that the US is trying to support. Although I think that killing someone for their beliefs is cruel and inhuman, it did make me wonder if this was just one more example of hypocrisy. We ostensibly fight wars to give people the right to make decisions over their own lives. But when they make decisions we don't like, it's not okay - or example with the Hamas election victory, we're not pleased when these decisions lead to outcomes that go against our interests.

This case is different. And yet, it still raises questions. If say the court wasn't to kill Abdul but simply to jail him, would we seriously have the moral authority to complain about such a decision. In this case, the argument goes that there is an inviolable human right that's being violated. But if we can be abstract for a moment, consider this: From the governance perspective, laws maintain order in a society. In a democracy in particular, laws reflect the norms and mores that a society agrees upon (in an ideal situation). Now, if in their society, there was consensus that by becoming christian, he posed a threat to a way of life that the majority of people have chosen, don't they have a right to expel him?

I'm not trying to argue that this situation is either right or wrong, but the principle of choice is being violated here. We have examples of that at home. I've been watching Big Love and it's as enticing as it is gross. But what I'm saying is that these people and their way of life is illegal in the US. Aside from those 80 year olds that marry 12 year olds on compounds, there are people that make that choice. It's not the same as killing them for being polygamists, but it is the same sort of human rights infringement. Our response to claims that it's also a human right's violation is that these polygamists undermine the norm of the family which in turn undermines society. As a democratic society, we have a right to defend certain beliefs not on any irrefutable, air-tight scientific logical basis but on the basis of consensus that something is just not right. Will we give other people that right as well?

What's the point of being earnest?

Granted, being earnest and honesty isn't useful in many situations. In most professional experiences, it must be carefully applied.

But the value of honesty and being earnest in college is important depending on what you consider college to be. Many people view college as a pre-cursor to reality. But recognizing that it's merely a "pre-cursor" and not the actual thing makes a big difference. Didn't you ever wonder why the stakes seemed so high in mere college? Didn't it ever strike you as strange that an 18-year old kid, otherwise completely immature, unwise, inexperienced demanded respect merely because he could read homer in greek? To a real person in the real world, that's just snobby and childish because there's more to a man than the things he can pick up in books, just as there's more to people than the shiny cars and bling they flash around.

I tend to think of college as a training ground as well as a precursor to the real thing. Being guarded all the time is sort of frigtening in such an environment because to truly challenge yourself intellectually, you have to let your guard down, be stupid sometimes, be brilliant others. Because you don't learn by saying the judicious or diplomatic thing ALL the time. And that's what college is for - a place for you to learn things so that you can be a better human being. Memorizing and getting an easy or even a difficult A isn't enough. We learn in adversity but only if there's an environment accepting enough that we don't feel like we're always surrounded by sharks. I rarely felt challenged by my classmates who, as you say, were too scared to say something negative because you might have to walk past them everyday on the street. If you aren't challenged by the people around you, you don't grow. What I felt a lot of the time - not always - was an intense sense of wanting to get ahead without enjoyment of the process. And I think a lot of people at our school geniunely enjoy the process. It's just that the process is hard and our school environment is so unforgiving to weakness. As a result, everything was so gentile. Even our bi-partisan debates were so gentile. That's not the real world. That's the isolated world of elites who have too many roles to play.

College is supposed to be difficult but not in a way that makes you wary of people, distrustful, and sometimes uncaring. I would never wish college to be that for my children.

Talking to a Hong Kong person who has taken 1/2 years of English...

is a lot like sawing off your ear very slowly with a dull cheese grater.

of course, speaking to me in cantonese is like yelling at a deaf and mute person.

John Tsang needs to learn some civility.

John Tsang, the commerce secretary in Hong Kong and the WTO ministerial leader for the Hong Kong conference, finally granted public consultations on the WTO meetings. This only after a whole bunch of protestors held up signs during a meeting and made him look bad to his European friends. To shut them up, he promised to hold a mini-conference after the meeting, but then he booked it through a side-door.

After that embarrassment, he complained of the NGOs lack of "civility". "Civil society is supposed to be civil," he complained snottily over and over in a piece that aired on the news for about a week. Soon thereafter, he finally granted the NGOs two public consultations. But at the first one, when directly asked by an HKPA leader what the Hong Kong position on the WTO was, he said (and I quote now)

"Mr. Apo, with your knowledge and with a bit of research, you can figure it out yourself." He then went on to chastise Apo for "saying things without solid knowledged" and said that rather than slogans, that the meeting had been held ot discuss "concrete things."

Now, while Mr. Apo might have been a bit slogannish, I find it hard to blame to guy, especially when the government won't outright say, we SUPPORT FREE TRADE. In some ways it's OBVIOUS, but if it's so OBVIOUS, why are they so scared to come out and say it?

Moreover, Mr. Tsang's comments were on this side of JERKY and wavering on that side of, "ACCOUNTABILITY? WHAT? ME?" I don't know what government officials are paid for, even in Hong Kong, if they aren't suppose to tell its citizens what they are saying on their behalf. You can't just ignore citizens, even if they aren't direct constituents because they ask you questions you don't like. And so long as you're trying to maintain the pretense of being a democracy, you can't blow a question off by condescending like that. In a real democracy, citizens rely upon the government to make connections and research and make decisions for the people. It's their responsibility to understand matters which they have been expressly appointed to understand on the behalf of the people. Civil my butt - look it up Mr. Tsang.

Okay-la!

[12:06:07 AM] Danica says: no. not buffalo that day.
[12:06:20 AM] Danica says: giraffes were not on the menu that day either.
[12:06:27 AM] periwinky says: dang, you missed out homie
[12:06:32 AM] Danica says: i KNOW.
[12:07:07 AM] Danica says: tommy gazelles were pretty good too. they're really cute in real life, um, i mean, alive.