Elitism and Mediocrity

One thing I've said in past posts is: you don't play games you can't win, and I stand by that. It's odd, then that I have been breaking it for the past few months, looking for a job in IT. I love computers and technology. It's an interest of mine and has been for some years now. I even enjoyed my last IT job. Thoroughly. However, corporate America is a game I have no mind nor stomach for. At heart, I am an academic and a practical man. There's no room for people like me in an environment in which you are told to follow and fit in.

Of course, some would say that such an attitude is impractical, and it is that notion that lies at the heart of the title of this post, because in these interviews with these small men and women who sit and contemplate the bottom line and view me and presumably all their candidates in this way, I can only think one thing: I am better than that person.

You can't enter an interview with that mindset, for so many reasons, but I do, because I can't help it. Every time I'm asked what my strengths and weaknesses are or where I see myself in five years, I think to myself: "but you wouldn't make it."

What I mean by this is that if we were in a life or death situation, I am better equipped to deal with it than they are. I'm not saying I'm well equipped, or that I'd make it either, but there's a question there, and a possibility. I have taught myself to drive fast, run fast, shoot well. I can prepare my own food and drink. I exercise and eat well. I take care of my body and my mind. Maybe none of that matters in their world, but it does in mine, and mine is the only one that matters, because in my world you live or die by your own merits. So when I try to work under the assumption that a corporate interviewer may be controlling my livelihood in the future, my mind discards that notion as absurd and laughable.

I don't want to put myself out as something I'm not here. I'm no soldier. In an emergency, I'm not sure I'd survive. But I am sure that your average white collar worker wouldn't because they don't have the mind for it. I once wrote an article on why I love the shooting sports. Besides being straight up fun, shooting is pure. You hit the target or you don't. What enters into it isn't how nice a guy you are or if you can make people laugh, whether you can make a sale or how fast you can close a call. What enters into it is your rifle, your technique, and your skill. You put a round on target or you don't. And in a situation where you're called to shoot more than paper, that skill can mean your life. Hit or miss. Live or die. It's a fundamental equation and it's binary and final. That's the way my mind works. That's the practicality I'm talking about.

Does that sound insane? Perhaps, but you have to ask yourself why it's becoming increasingly popular to make your own stuff, and why guns and survival gear sales are surging, why primitivism is back in vogue. This isn't the 1950s where every American house yearns to have a refrigerator, an electric stove, and a smiling, obedient, and thoroughly boring bleach-blond stay-at-home mom in the kitchen. Our manufactured goods are a product of mass production and slavery, and people want an escape from that reality to a truer reality. Making something yourself or learning survival skills are actions which speak to the same root, and that root is the desire to create something relevant to you. If I buy a beer off the shelf, it wasn't made by me for me. I had no control, and no matter how good that beer tastes (and there are some great craft beers out there) it will never taste as good as the one you made yourself, even if the one you made yourself isn't particularly good. In a world where people feel lost, and as if their lives lie in the hands of the state, the corporations, or some other entity, making your own goods or learning to live in the woods is a mark of personal rebellion and rejection of a system which is, by its nature, synthetic.

Still think I'm crazy? What I'm saying isn't new. It was a major tenet in another industrial society: 19th century America. If you think this movement is new, read more Thoreau.

Which brings me back to my original point: applying to IT jobs is, for me, playing a game I can't win. There is no room in a job based on reaction for a fundamentally creative person. I don't react. I create the scenario in the first place. In academia, you live or die on the novelty of your ideas. Certainly your work is based on those who came before you, in more ways than one, but the way in which you interpret history must be new in some way, must be creative, in order to be compelling.

But more importantly, I think, it must be meaningful. It has been my goal for some years to help solve existing racial problems (and if you think that doesn't apply anymore, there's a plane ticket to Missouri I'd like to buy you) by upholding the memory of over four million enslaved men and women. It has been the goal of many of my friends and brothers (both literal and metaphorical) to attempt projects just as meaningful as mine. This is the world in which I live, and when I compare it to solving CEO Johnson's wireless problem again, I laugh, because I see no reality in a world in which CEO Johnson or his wireless problem exist. They are small and feeble and I have more important things to do.

There is no denying what big business has done for this country, for better or for worse. But I can't make it matter to me. That's my bottom line. My strengths are many, my "weakness:" my inability to accept the importance of that which does not matter. Where do I see myself in five years? Not stagnating. Not sitting in an office chair wishing I'd done it differently. Not working for a paycheck, but for a future installment on the future of humanity. I see myself existing.

In Defense of a Riot

The anniversary of a riot is in three weeks. 241 years ago in Boston, a bunch of citizens got pissed off about taxes on tea, so they got together, rubbed burnt cork on their faces, dressed up like Native Americans, and rioted. They went down to the local harbor, smashed up property belonging to a major company, threw it in the water, and left.

The Boston Tea Party is a major event in American history, so much so that an entire political movement has grown up around it. It was by no means the first riot in American history. Previous riots had actually been a lot more destructive. British colonial citizens were guilty of assaulting tax collectors, burning private property, and threatening with bodily harm agents of their government. The most infamous act by American rioters was probably that of tarring and feathering a victim and riding them out of town on a rail. Many citizens suspected of supporting the Crown's taxes were also forced to drink boiling tea (which, as you might imagine, is not particularly pleasant).

White people rioting over tea and taxes. It's an integral part of our national folklore. While some professional historians have attempted to make the civil unrest in early America more nuanced (as they well should), the public image of these riots remains essentially the story of a group of white citizens taking drastic steps to gain liberty from a tyrannical government.

 I'd like to take a brief moment here to make some disclaimers. I am fully aware that the Revolution was not a strictly white endeavor. I am aware that the actions of the colonists and whether or not they were egged on by cultural and social elites has been endlessly debated. I am aware that making comparisons of Ferguson to the Revolution is essentially bad historical practice.

However, while neither strictly true nor untrue, the popular image most American citizens have of the period matters. While I would like most Americans to have the understanding of the American Revolution that professional historians do, they don't. Largely, Americans view the pre-Revolutionary events in Boston as a bunch of white dudes fighting for liberty through unconventional and extralegal means. Again, it is this image that is important, rather than its veracity.

I say the image is important because it is primarily people who invoke this exact image, no matter how flawed, of the Boston Tea Party who are the biggest critics of the Ferguson Riots.

I don't condone looting or destruction of private property. However, I find it deeply ironic that a wing of a major American political party named after one of the most important riots in American history is standing staunchly on the side of law and order in the case of Ferguson, Missouri. The biggest argument I see from the Tea Party, its sympathizers, and even ordinary Republicans is that rioting isn't justified in this case, and that it won't be effective. Instead, say these men and women, the citizens of Ferguson should have used the proper channels.

Putting aside the irony I've attempted to detail above, I think it's important to consider that the entire reason the men and women of Ferguson, Missouri are rioting in the first place is a complete failure of the proper channels those condemning the riots are espousing. The "proper channels" in this case shot an 18 year old boy and then refused to be particularly forthcoming with certain pieces of evidence. There is some evidence that the boy in question was going for the officer's gun or had entered the car, but we can't say for sure, because the police department is being squirrely about what they release. Furthermore, the police story and the eyewitness stories don't match up, and while that's to be expected, questions of why so many shots were fired and in what context these events occurred have not been properly examined. For this exact reason, the actions of the officer who killed Michael Brown will not be further looked into. He may be an innocent man who acted in self-defense. But he also may be a racist murderer, and due to the actions of the courts in Missouri, we simply will never know. And that's a problem.

I'm a big fan of the concept of innocent until proven guilty. However, I'm also a fan of an investigation being based on all the available facts. When a police department is allowed to withhold evidence and then use lack of evidence as a reason to dodge an indictment, it brings up the question of the legitimacy of the "proper channels."

In other words, don't stack the deck against a large group of people and then expect them to play your game.

Of course, as I said before, I'm completely against the destruction and looting of private property, but I think it's important to question this assumed link between the protesters, the rioters, and the looters. What exactly is it that causes those on the right to assume that these are essentially the same people? I've heard the claim, multiple times, that the Ferguson protesters are destroying their own community or that rioting simply isn't the best way to effect change. In this claim is the unstated assumption that the looters in question are looting because they're protesting what happened to Michael Brown, and not simply because they're taking advantage of a situation caused by Michael Brown's shooting and the subsequent legitimate protests and arguably legitimate riots. In this unspoken assumption that equates looters and protesters, I hear an uncomfortable echo of the claim that all people of a certain group act the same way and, as someone who has studied race for six years, I have to ask why that is, and whether, had this been a white neighborhood, the media would be failing to make that distinction.

Regardless of racial motives, the equation of looters with legitimate protesters is problematic because it takes away from the legitimacy of those protests. Holding up a sign, or even torching a police car, have totally different connotations than robbing a Toys R Us. There's no need to assume that those taking advantage of the protests in Ferguson have the same motives and to project the motives of looters on the protesters, and to lump them all in the same group distracts us from the very real grievances those protesters who did not destroy property, or who targeted police and police vehicles, might have.

There's no doubt that the situation in Missouri is a mess, but the bottom line is that those who advocate approaching the indictment decision in a way that does not involve protest do so because they largely live in a community where no protest is necessary. They aren't targeted by the police, don't have a deep-seated distrust of law enforcement and the courts that stems from centuries of systemic abuse, and don't have to deal with the massive social and economic issues caused by that systemic abuse. Middle class whites (or blacks for that matter) can safely advocate not rioting because they will never be placed in a situation that calls for it. No one is going to put 12 bullets into their young men for stealing a pack of cigarettes. None of them fear they're going to be next.

Perhaps rioting isn't the solution. Perhaps the solution is to create the same atmosphere in the lower-class black communities of the South that middle-class whites enjoy. Perhaps the solution would have been for the Ferguson police department to cooperate with an outside investigation and be open with the forensic evidence. Perhaps the solution would have been to try and figure out what really happened to Michael Brown. Perhaps the solution is to not have police outfitted with equipment taken from the arsenal in Battlefield Hardline. Perhaps the solution is to address the concerns of a major community before they feel like rioting is the only option left open to them.

If you want people to use the proper channels, you have to make those channels actually work. Until then, people are going to carve their own channels, and those channels aren't pretty. Ultimately, and this is the key point, you don't have to condone the riots in Ferguson to have expected them. And you don't have to be a social scientist to figure out what that expectation says about the United States, race, and the increasing militarization of America's police forces. Until we address these issues, instead of choosing to ignore them, as the Ferguson Grand Jury did, don't expect Missouri to be the last place such rioting occurs.

The Problem with Voting

On Election Day, a lot of people like to talk about how voting makes us free. I'd like to take a minute to point out why voting makes you, if anything, less free than the man or woman who does not vote.

We believe voting is, at its essence, part of a democratic (or republican) process, and that's true. But we only associate these processes with freedom because we have been conditioned to do so. The basis of any government, however, is still coercion, and the advantages of republican or democratic government do not negate that essential fact. When you vote, you are telling someone else what to do, pure and simple. You are not merely stating that your views are correct, which is generally harmless; you are causing others to live according to your mores. This is not deemed coercive in our society, however, because we assume that, through some intangible "contract," we have agreed to live according to these rules.

An entire essay could be written on the flaws inherent in such a system. Many, including myself, signed no such social contract, and yet we are told we must live according to its tenets nonetheless. However, I would instead like to focus on the fundamental difference between those who do follow this contract, and express it via voting, and those who do not.

When you vote, you are implicitly signing away your rights, regardless of who you vote for. Why? Because you aren't guaranteed to win. The same people who complain about Apple or Microsoft's Terms of Service, bemoaning that they invade your privacy or are restrictive, do not read your government's own Terms of Service. The Terms of Service of democracy state clearly that, should you participate, you must adhere to the decision of the mass and the mob. You risk everything by voting. If you win, you get your way (or so you think; again, an entire essay could be written on that subject). But should you lose, you lose everything.

I say you lose everything because you willingly chose to participate. You agreed that a system in which men and women, by virtue of their numbers, could do things in a manner with which you disagreed. By voting, you legitimated and participated in that system. To put it another way, if you vote, you have no right to complain about the outcome.

Oh yes, I can use that bromide as well as you, though I believe I have more justification. If you voted Republican and want to complain about Obama taking your guns, your money, and your privacy, remember that you agreed to a system under which the winner would be able to do such things. If you're a Democrat and you want to complain about Republican opposition to progress, be it social or scientific, remember that you legitimated and participated in a system that allowed such people to come to power. If you belong to neither party, and bemoan the ills of both, but still vote, remember that you knew the problems inherent in the two-party system, but chose to aid in its perpetuation. Don't tell me that you have the right to complain but that I do not. I don't play games I can't win, and I certainly don't play games in which, regardless of the outcome, millions of people's lives, liberty, and property are directly affected. I don't believe that I have that right.

If you vote, that's fine, but it's hard for me to understand why I shouldn't have a right to complain about the system you put in place and I didn't, and it's hard for me to understand why it makes you free if you willingly partake in a system you know and even admit could result in a lack of freedom for you if you lose, but I'm somehow neglecting my freedom if I refuse to participate in such a system. The reality of it is that you are free to the degree you choose to be. By casting your ballot, you voted away your right to freedom. All government is based on force. Some are just more honest about it than others.

The Artificial Sweetening of Reality

Americans have a reputation for laziness. I don't think it's a deserved one. Americans are, after all, responsible for a number of achievements throughout human history, ranging from great to terrible. However, one particular aspect of popular culture today does little to dispel that stereotype: slacktivism.

I could write an entire post about slacktivism, especially the economics of it. If you think the editors of Buzzfeed, Upworthy, or Elite Daily give two shits about you or believe anything they write, you may want to consider that every time you visit these websites, they make more money. Seriously. Look it up. It's a great little system. They get money and you get to feel self-righteous and share an opinion you know no one will disagree with on your Facebook wall so you can show all your friends how forward thinking you are - all without leaving your couch. Isn't the Internet great?

The without leaving your couch aspect is important, because it ties in with one particular piece of clickbait I keep seeing, over and over again. I've seen it for months and I saw it yet again today and it itself isn't really better or worse than any other trite little piece you'd see written up on these very very for-profit "activism" sites. What bugs me, then, isn't the piece itself. It's the discussions that follow it.

The article is here.

So what's the problem with this? Well, actually, I tend to agree with almost all of it. I'm not going to judge someone for the overwhelming majority of these things. In fact, I agree completely with the point the artist is trying to make: most people should try to have self-esteem, regardless of what society thinks of them. So what's the problem?

The problem is "Whitney." Whitney is probably going to die at age 60, if not sooner.

I'm all for tolerance. I think anyone that knows me knows that. But there's a point at which we, as a society, have to draw a line and say, some things are not ok. Being overweight is a health issue. There's simply no way around that. If you are overweight, you are at a higher risk for related health issues, many of which are life-threatening, than someone who is not. Period. End of story.

At this point, I want to make clear what I am not saying. I am not saying that being overweight is always a choice (though it can be). I am not saying that being a healthy weight isn't harder for some people than it is for others. I am not saying that overweight people are, as a rule, lazy, stupid, or anything else. What I am saying is simply this: it is not good to be severely overweight and if you are, you should not just be ok with it.

I'm also going to put out a disclaimer right here and now: I've never struggled with my weight and I'm extremely lucky that my health problems are super minor and pretty much just extend to bad eyes and some nighttime teeth grinding.

That being said, if you have a health problem, a problem of any kind, you take steps to deal with it. I wear contacts and a mouth guard. I'm lucky because that's all I have to do. However, some people aren't. Some people have major issues with their body, and they take medication or do therapy for it. Some people have mental issues, and they take medication or do therapy for it. The issues aren't their fault, but they handle them to the best of their ability. If being overweight is just another health issue and isn't the fault of the overweight person (and like I said, I fully admit that that can be exactly the case) why should we treat it differently?

My problem is that we're telling overweight people that it's totally ok to not deal with a problem that may literally kill them.

Think about that. We sure as hell don't tell people who have cancer to be ok with their tumors. We don't tell people with depression that they should just deal with it instead of seeking help. Why are we telling overweight people to do nothing about their health issue? That's kind of messed up, when you stop and think about it.

Of course, one might say that all this article is saying is that overweight people shouldn't hate themselves. Ok, well I agree with that. But that's not quite it, is it? There's an implication here and that implication is that trying to lose weight doesn't matter, that being overweight doesn't really make a difference to your personal well-being, and that society should act like being overweight is pretty much the same as not being overweight. There's a belligerent tone against those who would say otherwise; the word 'discriminating,' in the sense of discrimination on the level of racism, sexism, or homophobia is implied.

No one's saying that overweight men and women should hate themselves, but let's draw a line here: being overweight isn't the same as being a certain race, gender, or sexual orientation. To claim it is is beyond offensive. Being black (or white, Hispanic, Asian, etc.), a woman (or man), or gay (or bi or straight) isn't a health problem. It is not bad for you to be those things in any way, shape, or form. If we equate, say, being over 500 pounds with being black, for example, we're comparing health to race, and as someone who has spent the last six years studying race and has a Master's degree in the history of slavery and race, let me tell you that that is some backwards movement on society's part in a big big way.

Let me reiterate so that there's no confusion here: if you're claiming that weight and race/gender/sexual orientation are the same, you're either equating race/gender/sexual orientation with a health problem, in which case you are a bigot, or you're saying being overweight isn't a health problem, in which case you're denying scientific evidence to the same degree as, say, those who deny evolution or global warming.

And let's not forget that belligerent tone, either. Yeah, I'm in pretty good shape. Am I supposed to pretend that I'm not? Fun fact: I run a lot, and those who know me well know that because I talk about it a lot, because, you know what? I'm kind of proud of it.

Again, I'm not saying that my weight has everything to do with running (though it helps). In fact, I have some weirdly good genetics that mean I've just never struggled with weight. I admit that. But in some of the threads this article has spawned I have seen the claim, and I'm not kidding, that overweight people are just as healthy as I am, and that is, if I may use the term (and I can, because it's my blog) bullshit.

Let me tell you something right now: I am not in phenomenal shape, but I am damn well in better shape than a lot of people and part of that is because I exercise and I eat ok. Again, I'm not saying that I'm a health nut or a workout freak, because I'm not. I eat bacon on occasion and I don't run as often as I should. That being said, I do eat a fairly balanced and healthy diet for the most part and I do work out regularly. And it pays off. Yes, I enjoy running, so maybe it's not always a huge chore for me, but if you don't exercise particularly regularly and you want to tell me that you're as healthy as I am, let's go for a five mile run right now.

Again, I'm not saying, at all, that overweight people don't exercise. Some do, and some don't - just like non-overweight people. What I am saying is that I work towards my health, it's not easy, and, yes, actually, I do think I have a right to claim that my being in shape is something to be proud of. So feel free to tell me that overweight people shouldn't hate themselves, because I totally agree. But don't tell me that it doesn't matter if I exercise or not, because it does, and don't tell me that making an effort towards a healthy lifestyle is the same as not making that effort, because it isn't.

We, as a society, have to draw the line somewhere. Yes, we have to be more tolerant, as a nation and a people. Yes, we have to start teaching people that it's ok to have self-esteem and to be proud of their accomplishments. But there is something very very wrong with a society that deems health to be unimportant or tells unhealthy people that they should make no effort to better their condition. A society that wants its citizens to be content with their health problems is sinister. Instead, as a society, perhaps we should be telling people that health problems are, well, a problem and helping those with illnesses, including obesity, to overcome them.

As a country, we suck at treating illness, but we try. We try to help people with cancer, or depression. We don't tell those who suffer from those illnesses to just live with it. We try and solve those issues through science on a mass level and through support of those we know with those issues on a personal level. If obesity is truly a disease-based problem, why are we treating it like a race or gender issue? Shouldn't we be trying to solve it as a health issue?

And what about obesity that isn't purely the result of genetics? It's not exactly a secret that kids don't get enough exercise. It's not exactly a rare gem of knowledge that eating fast or frozen food every day is bad for you. When we tell people that being overweight is the same as being in shape, or that exercise and diet don't matter anyway, what exactly are we doing to combat lifestyle based obesity? Again, I'm not saying that some people don't have a legitimate problem losing weight, but there are other people who are overweight simply because of their habits. You don't need to say that smoking is ok in order to make it clear that you don't hate people with lung cancer, and you can certainly differentiate between people who gave themselves lung cancer by smoking a pack a day vs. those who got lung cancer despite not doing so.

So, yes, America, let's be more tolerant as a people. Let's respect people who have illnesses of any kind. But let's also be tolerant of people who are in shape. I would even go so far as to say, if I might be so bold, that we should admire those who are in shape because they made the decision to be. In fact, let's also, perhaps even more, admire those who aren't in shape but who have made the same decision to eat healthy and exercise in an effort to keep their genetic health issues under control. Let's not tell people who are actively trying to handle their illness to stop doing so. Let's not tell them that their efforts are pointless and that they shouldn't even try. Instead of saying it's ok to be overweight, let's instead tell "Whitney" that the 10 years she spent trying to lose weight were, in fact, honorable and never to give up. That, I think, is a little more human and a little more humane then simply encouraging those with legitimate health problems to give up, stop trying, and live a shorter and ultimately less pleasant life.

Why I Shoot

Yeah, ok, this post is a bit random, but I'm bored, it's late, and I'm unemployed, so you're getting it anyway. Deal with it.

There are certain things that I love in life. Driving is first and foremost. Driving is a technical pursuit that will always have a special place in my heart, and a lot of the things espoused in this post apply to it as well. However, shooting is also a technical pursuit, for much the same reasons as driving. Here's why.

Shooting is pure. What do I mean by this? It's simple. Shooting doesn't care how good a person you are. It doesn't care how nice you are. It doesn't care how much you gave to charity last year. It cares about how much your physical and mental abilities can come into play to do something precise.

Call me cold. Call me evil. That's fine. It's not that I don't care about human things like starving children and sad puppies. I do. But for whatever reason, I have been, throughout my life, blessed - or cursed, take your pick - with  a love of competency. Nothing moves me like it. I'm a bastard, but it's who I am.

Shooting (driving, building computers, take your pick) has always fascinated me. We live in a complicated world. Drone strikes, the NSA spying on our communications, etc. It's hard to know exactly how much control we have over our lives. Not so in shooting.

See, in shooting, only one thing matters: how well can you control the material matter in your hands to put holes in paper where you want them. It's precision. It's control. It's life.

Bear with me.

Given the way things run in this country, how much control do you have over your life? Really. You vote, but the choices you're offered don't offer much in the way of you deciding anything. Once the men and women you've voted for are in office, it's they who make decisions, not you. Fact.

But when I drive, when I game, when I shoot, I'm in control. What do I mean? When I put that three pounds, 8 ounces on the trigger of my Ruger American, I control where that .223 inch diameter  bit of lead goes. Me. Myself. I. I do. Hits are mine. Misses are mine. Mine alone.

It's not Obama. It's not Congress. They have no bearing. Any amount of respect, or lack therof, cannot determine where that bullet goes. Just me. Just me and my rifle.

That's what shooting is to me: control. Same with my SRT. Same with my copy of BF4. It's me. Not them. I have a modicum of control over my life in an uncertain world.

That's what this short post is about. Shooting to me. Baseball to you, Mearns? Fine. Computers to you, my dear friend, Harry? Yes. Battlefield 3 for you, Mike? Ok. Old school knitting to you, mother? Go for it. I know who reads this.

This blog, in a sense, is not about shooting. It is about living. Do what makes you, you. Do not submit. Do not yield. Do what you love, and they cannot control you, those in power. That's what shooting is to me. That's what driving is. That's what we are. That's how we maintain control,

Live. I do it through shooting, You do it through some other means. So be it. That's life. It will never be taken away.

Why I Don't Like Harry Potter

There's been a recent Facebook fad about picking 10 books that influenced your life. Almost invariably among my friends, the Harry Potter series features heavily in, if not tops, this list. I can't argue with the popularity of this series, but it baffles me that out of all the literature ever written, a children's book should be so ubiquitous.

I've written something like this before, but it was on an older blog which I later deleted. While I've changed certain things for this piece, the theme is pretty much the same: I don't get Harry Potter. I've read them, and I don't get them.

My problem doesn't stem from the fact that these books are bad, per se; it stems from the fact that they're so popular. As a book for kids, or a book purely for entertainment, it's not the worst thing people could be reading, especially when you factor in all the Clive Cussler or Susan Donovan crap floating around. Compared to what most adults read, it's actually not bottom barrel by a long shot. However, and this has to be said, it's not exactly the best literature on the planet either.

This is a shame, because if there's one strength to the series, it's Rowling's ability to world-build. Sure, nothing in her world is particularly original, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. In fact, the characters in and world of the Harry Potter series have a lot of potential for a decent writer, which is what makes is so frustrating that Rowling can't, or won't, tap that potential.

Let me give you some examples. I'm going to assume everyone reading this has either read them, or doesn't care about spoilers, so let's talk about the death of Fred in the last book. Death is a powerful literary tool. My understanding of Fred's death, just from reading the book, is that he was killed to demonstrate that things were getting pretty bad and that Voldemort and his followers were really really bad dudes. It was meant to introduce tragedy and drama into the book because a main character died. It's not a bad try.

There are a lot of problems with this approach, from where I'm sitting. First of all, it's the seventh book. If the feeling wasn't there that things were awful already, something wasn't done right in the last six books. In my opinion, that's actually exactly the case. Yes, Sirius is dead. Yes, Dumbledore is dead. But somehow, they fail to accomplish this sense of terror or hopelessness in the same way Fred's death fails to do so.

Death is just one of those concepts Rowling can't quite get the hang of, and this is where her issue with wasted potential comes in. In the case of the death of Sirius, where he literally falls into a realm of death, there's the opportunity for a powerful metaphor, or many powerful metaphors. She could have implied something about the transience of life, the permanence or lack thereof of death or many many other themes. As it stands, though, Sirius trips and dies and Harry is sad about it, and that's pretty much where that ends. If there's an attempt at any deeper meaning there, it's left unclear.

The same goes for Dumbledore's death. Snape kills him, and is clearly conflicted about it. Here is another huge opportunity to talk about murder, utilitarianism, and the human psyche, but it's largely not taken advantage of. Snape does what he has to do and feels bad about it, and that's pretty much it. At the time, we don't even know Snape had good reason, an aspect which she could have easily run with later to say something about the kind of psychological consequences such an action creates. This is an example of Rowling channeling M. Night Shyamalan more than Orson Scott Card.

Here's what I would have done if I had written the battle of Hogwarts: kill Ron.

Killing Ron would have had an impact that killing other characters just doesn't. Sirius' death doesn't really work because we only know him such a short time; Dumbledore's doesn't really work because we know that it needed to happen and that, in fact, he controlled the circumstances of it. If you really want to portray senseless violence, evil for evil's sake, the kind of evil that caused things like the Holocaust, you need to kill someone important and have their death be largely the result of wanton cruelty. Better yet, have Malfoy do it point blank and thoroughly enjoy it.

Think of how that scenario would play out. Think of how the death of the most loyal and largely good character at the hands of a malicious killer who enjoys killing would have played out in comparison to that of a dead clown hit by a stray magical bullet. How would that have touched you? Sure, you wouldn't be as happy, but I daresay that if you're a Harry Potter fan, that might have spoken to you on a deeper level. Even I know that, and I don't write best sellers. At most, all Fred's death does is say something about the death of comedy, which is ok, I guess, but a bit crude and clumsy.

The thing is, most of Rowling's attempts at drama or the themes it can elicit are a bit clumsy. She either lacks the ability or will to turn her world into something with the ability to say something any deeper than 'love triumphs over evil,' which, again, is a bit of a shame, because it's not like the world she's created would prohibit that in any way.

As another example of this phenomenon, let's examine Rowling's characters, who are largely one dimensional. Harry is the hero. Ron is the loyal friend. Hermione is the smart one. This actually doesn't have to be a bad thing. In fact, we can look at other literature that has one dimensional characters that actually works pretty well.

As an experiment, let's compare the characters in Harry Potter to the characters in Atlas Shrugged. I'm not asking you to like the latter, and I'm certainly not asking you to agree with it. It absolutely has its flaws; it's heavy-handed, overwritten, and, like Harry Potter, the characters are so one dimensional that they might as well be anthropomorphic straight lines. However, there is a difference. The characters in Atlas Shrugged are one dimensional in the same way that characters in Greek drama are one dimensional: they are literal embodiments of human traits and characteristics. In fact, they are embodiments of one trait or characteristic in particular. For instance, Henry Rearden, as a character, is Pride, imprisoned by his wife Lillian, or Guilt. Only when Pride (Rearden) is free of Guilt (Lillian) does he reach his full potential. Simple? Obvious? Certainly. Atlas Shrugged takes most of its cues from ancient Greece, where that kind of story was common and effective. Atlas Shrugged, as a book, makes its simplistic characters work for it to form a coherent philosophy. For better or for worse, and for all its numerous flaws, it is effective literature. It works.

The characters in Harry Potter, however, are tropes. They are cliches. I'm not saying there isn't some crude meaning there. Harry embodies love; his parents saved him by sacrificing themselves and, in fact, he dies to save his friends. (Of course, he comes back to life, which has its own set of problems, which I won't get into here; if I got into every literary issue I have with Harry Potter, I would be here for a long long time.) It's actually a good theme, and a simple one. Voldemort is evil. He is the embodiment of evil. He kills and tortures for little to no reason. Again, fair enough, and a decent theme.

Here's the problem though: through tools like internal or external dialogue, Rand's characters put forth a philosophy. We understand what they represent because we've felt it. When Rearden feels successful because he's accomplished something, but is made to feel guilty about it, or simply fails to be recognized for it, that's something we can relate to. When Taggart's life work is destroyed, it's something we can understand, because we've all had something important to us taken from us, and risen from the ashes anyway. This allows these one dimensional characters to work. However, it's hard to relate to Harry because very few of us have lived under shitty parents and then found out we were super famous and had a shitton of money in a bank somewhere, and, oh, also are the prime target of the world's foremost mass murderer. Yes, we can relate to him as a good guy who sometimes is conflicted. Yes, we can relate to him as a child learning to grow. Those things are only so useful however, and, to be honest about it, if you want a story about growing up and feeling uncertain despite being fundamentally good, I have a book for you that will do the same thing in fewer pages and in a more novel fashion written by a certain Mr. Sallinger.

Harry is the main character, so it's a bit troubling that relating to him is something you have to take an effort to do, rather than having the book make you relate to him by virtue of its writing. The problem is that Rowling's primary strength is her characters. It's actually what she does best, despite herself, and yet, somehow, she doesn't do it that well. This same issue with flat characters and her failure to use them correctly plagues the entire series. We have what could be a fantastic villain, Voldemort, who has no internal dialogue, very little backstory, no real indicator of what makes him tick. We don't even get the sense that he's just evil for the sake of being evil, like a magical Hitler, because his end goals aren't really ever stated. He's just bad and we're supposed to understand that because he does bad things. The potential for either depth or representation of real world evil is there, but it's not properly used.

That last sentence is the fundamental issue I have with most of Rowling's work: it could do so many things and does, in fact, do a lot of them, but without doing any of them particularly well. It puts forth some ideas, but not particularly strongly. It has potentially decent characters, but doesn't do a lot with them. It's not as efficient as it could be. Any way you examine Harry Potter, from a literary aspect at least, it's just kind of mediocre writing. Going back to our earlier comparison, Ayn Rand has her own books that aren't particularly great, which is exactly why I'm using her so heavily as an example. Like Rowling, she's a best selling author with fundamentally flawed works. For instance, We the Living comes to mind. However, even that book, while heavy-handed, at least kind of works. It's an example of a fledgling writer with raw skill writing a bad book, but making it work to make a point about a real world circumstance, as opposed to a bad writer trying to work with good themes and ultimately coming up with less than she could have. What I'm trying to highlight here is how two different best selling authors make or don't make fundamentally problematic books work based on their comparative skill at writing.

I'll say what I've always said, at this point: none of this is bad on its own. Harry Potter is a kid's book. It is a book for children. As such, it's far better than a lot of things kids could be reading and I commend it for that. I really do. But saying that your life was influenced by it is a bit like saying that your life was influenced by Walt Disney: you're essentially saying that your life was influenced by something trite, designed to be easily digested by preteens, and just a tad racist. What are you saying about yourself? What are you saying about the wealth of literature you could have chosen? When you think about it, really think about it, is it a good thing that Harry Potter influenced you so much? If that's true, are you as well read as you should be? If you are, isn't that kind of a slap in the face to literature that actively tries to say something about the world and the nature of man, and does it in a technically sound manner?

I'm not saying you can't be influenced by Harry Potter, but I question whether it should be that influential as a work of literature when there are so many fantastic and meaningful books to choose from. I've mentioned a few here, and guess what? They're by no means the best. Not by a long shot. There are literally millions of books in the world that say so many things in so many languages. I am not urging you to stop reading Harry Potter. I am urging you to take advantage of those millions of books and perhaps pick up one that isn't a kid's book with, and there is no way around this, clumsy, mediocre writing. Harry Potter isn't bad, but unless your age is lower than a school zone speed limit, you can simply do better. There's an entire world out there. Take advantage of it.

Why I Love Beer

Today I'm going to talk about something political, heavy, and divisive.

Just kidding. I'm going to talk about beer.

I love beer. If you don't, that's fine, but I challenge you to find a beverage as versatile and unique. Want a cheap beer you can get wasted on with your bros? American industrial lager has you covered. Want a beer you can enjoy in front of the fire on a winter's night? Try a heavy stout or porter. Want a light beer you can drink all afternoon and not feel disgusted with yourself at the end of the day? Probably going to want to go with a saison. Beer can have high or low alcohol content, be light or dark, chock full of various flavors or devoted to only one or two distinct flavors. Beer can be anything you want it to be.

For all its diversity, however, beer is a simple drink. Unlike say, wine, aged for years and saved for a special occasion, even the best beer (in most cases) is made in the span of a month and goes bad in about a year. Beer isn't a conversation piece, or something you open on a very special occasion. There aren't beers from 1906, and if there were, you wouldn't want to consume them. Beer is something you drink. Beer isn't about show; beer is about taste. You brew it, you bottle it, you drink it, you brew more beer. It encourages you to enjoy it. You don't feel guilty about opening a really nice beer.

This simplicity is what makes it easy to experiment with beer. Want to do something crazy with your next brew? Want to make a grapefruit and hot chili porter? Go for it. If it goes wrong, make a new batch. Beer is the perfect beverage for free spirits. And there's a certain advantage to a beverage that only takes about fifty dollars and a month or two to make: if you did mess up, or even if you just aren't satisfied with your results, you can repeat the process, tweak your recipe, and get it right where you want it at very little cost and with very little comparative effort. Beer is the perfect beverage for control freaks

However, as simple as beer is, it easily matches wine or whiskey for sheer complexity of flavor. Even the worst beers have a certain unique taste or tastes to them. Let me give you an example. The beer I'm having right now is a George Killian's Irish Red. It is not a good beer, but it's not terrible either. It kind of fills that middle role for people who want a decent beer with a somewhat different taste, but don't want to pay a lot for it. I happen to have some around from helping a friend move into his new apartment.

What you may not know is that Killian's is a Coor's product. It wears the label of "Irish Red," but, like Goose Island, it's owned by a major producer of cheap American industrial lager and designed to compete with the craft beer market at a lower price point. However, I wouldn't necessarily need to look at the box or the price tag to figure that out. Irish Red Ale, according to the BJCP, should have "moderate caramel malt flavor and sweetness, occasionally with a buttered toast or toffee-like quality..." Killian's does not entirely lack these tastes, of course, but lurking under the maltiness is the telltale hint of that metallic tang so often present in American industrial such as Budweiser or, appropriately enough, Coors.

This doesn't make Killian's a bad beer, but it does make it different than a traditional craft Red. For all I know, this is intentional, designed to appeal to those coming from Coor's more mainstream offerings. I honestly don't know. What I do know is that that taste alone makes Killian's not quite a pure Irish Red, and not quite your standard industrial. It's a midrange beer, a beer designed to fill a gap. It has a purpose, and it fills it well. That one flavor, not even a particularly desirable one to many, tells an entire story about this beer, its origins, the recent history of the commercial beer market, and the niche it's trying to fill. That's the dynamism of beer.

One may not think that a taste like that in a beer is a good basis for comparison to wine in terms of complexity. However, I'd argue that it is, because if you can get that much information out of a bottle of red-colored, malty Coor's Light, think of what you can get from a high-end craft beer or a homebrew. One distinct flavor, multiple flavors, subtle tones, anything you'd get from wine, you can absolutely get in beer, and you do. Go to any homebrewer's meeting and you'll get not only some of the best beers you've ever had, but a unique story to go with each beer.

If that's not enough of a demonstration, consider that Budweiser and one of my favorite commercially available beers, Old Engine Oil, are both beer. I'm sure you're familiar with the appearance, and maybe the taste, of Budweiser. Old Engine Oil looks like this:

As you might imagine, the taste of these two beers is wildly different. Yet, they are both beer.

This brings me to another facet of beer. Beer is a peasant's beverage. It is the people's beverage. Hell, it's everyone's beverage. When you see a construction worker on the street, you generally don't assume he's going home and cracking open a bottle of wine. However, he's not cracking a bottle of the stuff pictured above either. This is yet another example of beer's range. Everyone can drink beer, from the richest to the poorest.

That being said, even generally high end beers aren't especially expensive. Sure, there's the occasional double digit bottle, but for the most part, you don't pay more than six bucks for a beer outside of a bar. Beer may be complex, but it's not expensive.

Perhaps that's what I'm struggling to really say about beer and why I love it. It's hard to describe exactly why beer is so great precisely because beer is... beer. It's complex, but it doesn't invite you to make a big deal out of it. It appeals to the hipster who wants to impress his friends by drinking some unnecessarily hopped up IPA as easily as it appeals to the factory worker who goes home and has a can of Miller Lite at the end of a day. Beer is all things to all people. It's accessible in a way that wine or whiskey can never be.

To be fair, I know nothing about wine or whiskey, and I'm sure I've made some egregious errors in defining their characters. That being said, at the end of the day, I can't think of a drink as diverse as beer, or a drink with more range. I can't think of a beverage as simple, cheap, and accessible, yet as simultaneously complex as beer. I can't think of a drink you can pound back all night with your best friends or simply have one of at home for a nice relaxing evening. That's why, beer snob though I am, I will drink any beer put in front of me. Yes, some beers are better than others. Yes, a good beer is preferable to a soullessly created, industrial beer. But at the end of the day, beer is beer. It's a drink that has mountains of class while remaining essentially modest, and that commands my respect.

I'm going to go grab another Killian's.

Robot Jesus

I don't like thinking about death. I don't think anyone does.

As an agnostic, I'm often faced with people fundamentally misunderstanding my religion. They think I'm not sure about what I believe or that I'm an atheist with no conviction. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I believe, in a nutshell, is that God exists in everyone as a certain force that drives people. For example, one of the many ways I "worship" is driving. I'm good at it and I own a car designed for people who are good at it. Those people didn't have to design my car the way they did. There's no reason to. They did it because it was something on this Earth about which they cared, and that (no pun intended) drove them. The SRT4 project, like many projects, was more than engineering; it was a project personally close to those who worked on it.

How is this religious? Those behind the development of machines like this did it for people like them and people like me, and when I drive that car, testing my limits and its limits, I feel a bit of what the engineers who designed the machine felt. I feel connected to the Earth (in the form of the environment in which I am driving), connected to myself (in the confidence of my skill to manipulate the machine to take that corner and not end up in the ditch), and connected to those who built the machine to take full advantage of both these things, make driving an experience, and provide the link between life and living.

Some people feel nothing from driving. I can guarantee, however, that they feel what I feel about driving in some other way. If it sounds crazy and shallow, understand that there are precedents for these exact types of experiences in Buddhism and that some of our best native writers wrote about it.

Why do I bring all this hippee shit up? Well the timing is important, given what day it is. While the above might lead you to believe I mean 4/20, I actually mean Easter. I don't follow the Christian religion; however, I don't hate it either. It's actually a great religion, not least for its ability to be all things to all people. The Bible, for it faults, can be adapted and used in almost any context. As anyone who has read it (and I have) will find, the Bible provides a variety of complex and valuable metaphors that can guide one through life effectively. (Hell, even Jesus loved metaphors. Otherwise why would he have told so many parables?)

Although there are those, many of those, who believe that Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead and literally resurrected others from the dead, given the state of medical science 2000 years ago, I have to assume this is yet another Biblical metaphor, and a good one, that teaches us something about conquering death through spirituality.

But what do I know? I'm just an atheist without balls.

However, while Jesus was able to conquer death metaphorically and create one of the largest belief systems on this planet, he did actually die, and, in all probability, stayed dead. The first man or women to literally, truly conquer death will likely do so via a computer.

If you thought my beliefs were weird before, you may want to stop reading.

Offensive to religion or not, the probable truth is that our mind, our being, and our soul is wrapped up in encoded chemical data stored in a combination storage device and central processor. The problem is that the CPU and drive are powered by a relatively weak and inefficient power supply and mainboard that are pretty easy to disrupt and wear out in a pretty short amount of time. Like it or not, machines are more durable than we are. In order to conquer death, we need to figure out a way around this.

Creepy? I don't know. I do know that science fiction literature and film from The City and the Stars to Caprica have covered the topic about a billion times, so I'm not saying anything new here. The first true Lazarus will be a robot.

There are many ways this process can go, actually. Cryonics, robotics, virtual reality, and cloning are only the most popular. However, who's going to embrace it? Death is, allegedly, part of the human condition and figures heavily in most world religions. Those who worship a man who they believe literally died and came back are, ironically, going to be the most vocal in opposing this stuff.

Despite this, some religions actually have heavy emphasis on conquering death. In fact, when you think about it, reincarnation makes sense in a very literal way. When we die, our molecules are broken up and the elements of which we consist are redistributed. In all probability, we were a fly at some point, or part of one. And yet, again, the religious camp will, in all likelihood, hinder the progress of transhumanism, because it is, they say, "unnatural."

Transhumanism might indeed be unnatural, but, as an agnostic, I look at it in a very simple way: we don't know what happens when we die. Despite rhetoric about heaven and hell, I have no real evidence that either of those exists outside of a metaphorical framework, and I'm pretty happy where I am. In fact, who's not to say that heaven isn't happiness and hell, sadness? Who's not to say that heaven and hell are just spiritual metaphors? All I know for sure is that I'm going to die someday and that, while I don't really fear it, I'm also perfectly ok with living right here. So put me in the robot body.

I should hasten to add that you may think you don't have to think about this stuff, but the future is always here faster than you think. We can already simulate a rat's brain with a computer to a small extent. We can now bring dead people back after several hours by injecting their circulatory system with frozen saline. All this is pretty unnatural, but it may help people with brain injuries to recover or give people who have died another chance at life. If your God is against that, than screw that guy. He should have been a robot.

Transhumanism is big and its scary, but it's part of what I believe and it's coming sooner than you think. Although I'm in the minority, I hope against hope it will come in my lifetime. As someone who lives on Earth and loves life with the fanaticism of a religious zealot, I want to be there.

I was recently asked a question by a good friend. I was asked if I could get a ride to space for free, would I? I was apparetly in the minority who answered that I absolutely would, no questions asked. I would also likely be shitting myself the whole time. It would be worth it. I feel the same way about transhumanism. Am I afraid of it? Yes. Terrified. If the proponents of this movement are correct, Singularity will be the single (no pun intended) most frightening thing ever to happen to man. It may also be the be most dramatic. For bad or good, it's not something I want to miss.

The best, or perhaps worst, part? It's even possible that, with the pace of technology being what it is, I won't. You may not either. While I love humanity, I don't object to being something more. Machines aren't perfect, but neither are we. Machines don't hate each other, and they don't hurt each other. Machines don't get sick. They don't die. Maybe, as transcendent humans, we won't either. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. Take your side.

A Well Regulated Militia: Necessary to the Security of a Free State

Recently, the state of Connecticut passed some rather harsh gun laws, which do not, as one might expect, target criminals, but rather law-abiding citizens. This law, while not directly affecting criminals, has nonetheless created many of them. Before reading further, I highly suggest you read this article.

I can't say I would take the time either, so here's a summary: Connecticut officials estimate that 85% of gun owners in the state of Connecticut simply ignored the new laws that require registration of certain semi-automatic rifles.

One representative, Senator Tony Guglielmo, is shocked: "I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast majority would register..." he said. Frankly, I'm shocked too. I'm shocked that 85% of people targeted by this law decided to do the right thing. Another quote by Guglielmo is revealing: "If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don't follow them, then you have a real problem."

Connecticut officials certainly do have a problem, and it's a problem they should bear in mind next time they attempt to pass an unpopular and un-Constitutional law at the expense of innocent civilians. The problem, for Guglielmo and others like him, is that people don't like to be told what to do, a fact Guglielmo discovered when he discussed the matter with a Connecticut gun owner: "I said, 'You're talking about civil disobedience, and he said 'Yes.'"

Guglielmo's surprise is valid. Civil disobedience is all too rare in our day and age. There was a day in this country, some years ago, when a group of officials sent their red-coated enforcers to confiscate the arms of the citizenry. On that day, those enforcers failed. Call me cynical, but I would never have expected that the same result could occur in 2014.

That day is important to remember, because it, like so much in history, gives us insight into our own era. Take the reaction of the state of Connecticut. Some, such as "undersecretary in the state Office of Policy and Management" Mike Lawlor, are talking tough: "Like anything else, people who violate the law face consequences. … that's their decision. The consequences are pretty clear. …There's nothing unique about this..." But the state's words don't match its actions. Connecticut recently extended its deadline for registration of these semi-automatic rifles, in the vain hope that some will register for it if given a little more time. Others in the government claim that the issue isn't defiance; people simply don't know about the new, and highly controversial, law.

Such implausible hopes and claims are face-saving measures which recall those made by the British government previous to the Revolution, and should be met with the same jeering derision proletarian colonists gave that government. The fact of the matter is simply that the state is afraid.

Those who refuse to give up their weapons aren't ignorant. They know all too well that the state cannot possibly create hundreds of thousands of criminals, particularly when those criminals are armed. It is unwise to make an innocent man a criminal. It is dangerous to make an armed man a criminal. It is devastating to make a community criminals. It is suicide to make a community of armed men criminals. A community of men and women who have been made outlaws, who have no further regard for the state and for whom the state has no regard, and who are armed, is an unpredictable and volatile community indeed. The state knows this.

They know, as well as those men and women in Connecticut who refuse to obey unjust law, that citizens who are treated as criminals do unpredictable things. They stand in fields against better-armed and better-trained foes and die for what they believe. They walk through snow without shoes, cross icy rivers, for the rights that they have lost and cannot regain but by force. This is not a scenario desirable to the state.

Possible violence aside, the state also knows it cannot jail or fine hundreds of thousands of men and women whose only "crime" is what type of property they choose to own. There are not cells enough, courts enough, for this. When so many stand and silently utter, "we are Americans; our right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" then there is little the state can do, short of outright tyranny, something a state government, or a national government, cannot and will not maintain on such a scale.

This, I submit, should be a lesson for all Americans, no matter what their stance on gun control. When we refuse to comply, refuse to play along with the machinations of a corrupt state, we can make a difference. Perhaps had more Americans done so earlier, thousands, American and otherwise, would not be dead in the Middle East, we would not have our government flying deadly drones over our cities and towns, and an innocent man, a heroic man, would not be ironically exiled to a state whose freedoms are fewer than ours, and the rights for which that man still fights would be intact.

This is a lesson. It is a lesson for the state of Connecticut and a lesson for men like Mike Lawlor. It is, however, a greater lesson for us. As we do not, and cannot forget events like Lexington and Concord, we cannot forget the lesson hundreds of thousands of citizens in Connecticut are teaching us: oppression can be resisted, and peaceably. All it requires is that we simply do not give such oppression our consent.

Prosser? I Barely Know Her!

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the whitest holiday ever.

I'm sure a lot of people, both white and black, would disagree with that statement, but I stand by it. To prove it, I could point to the fact that most people don't know anything about King, or the Civil Rights Movement. After all, unless King's oft-quoted dream speech involved the dream that Americans would get a sweet three-day weekend and watch a lot of football while consuming a six-pack of Bud Light, I think most people "celebrating" the holiday are largely missing the point. However, more at the heart of the matter is what that point is and what it means for Americans white, black, and other.

This weekend, I was assigned a book about border conflict in the United States during the antebellum period. The book was entitled Border War. However, I am halfway through the book, and it has yet to mention John Brown once. The book is actually about slavery and slave resistance in the border states. Nevertheless, I don't think the title is misleading. Slavery was, after all, a form of violence, and was met, in many cases, with violence. For hundreds of years there was a civil rights movement in this country which involved white people attempting to coerce black people into subservience by force, and white and black people resisting that concept by, in many cases, murdering members of that first group of white people, as, frankly, they deserved. This is the civil rights movement, and interpretation of it, that you don't get in your high school history books. It was brutal and bloody by necessity and it took place because one racial group decided to tell another one what they could and couldn't do.

This is not, however, the picture you get from Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I'll give the holiday some credit for being created via a multiracial effort, and perhaps it's unfair of me to be cynical about it, but it seems to me that a state holiday focusing on peaceful white and black efforts to overturn Jim Crow via the efforts of one man misses the point almost as much as Natty-guzzling frat bros cheering on the Dallas Pantherhawks (or whatever fictitious teams the kids are into these days). The multiracial resistance to oppression carried out by private and public interests should be celebrated. However, as a nation, it is supremely important to remember how changes in the law regarding race in this country came about. Violence is not ideal, but it is, at times, necessary, and for centuries in this nation, it was necessary for one group of people to violently resist another in the name of liberty and equality.

Lest anyone should call me bloodthirsty or divisive, let me point out that America's national holiday, July 4, celebrates a violent division. We do not, however, see that violent divide as negative. It would have been phenomenal had King George simply peacefully allowed this nation to separate from Britain, so that no one died. But he didn't, they did, and we celebrate it much in the same way we celebrate MLK Day (albeit with more explosives). It would also have been great if people had decided not to enslave and oppress black people in this country, and if no one had had to be killed to reverse that, but, once again, they didn't, and they did. Remembering that isn't divisive. Instead, it should remind us of what happens when one group of people oppresses another, the consequences of that, and perhaps goad us towards cooperation and a day when racial differences are irrelevant.

MLK Day, however, at least in the popular mind, is about one man leading a movement to peacefully resist the state. It does not discuss the violence of the period during which MLK lived, nor the resistance to centuries of oppression before that. It is a perfect state holiday: it allows us to believe that peaceful measures alone can persuade the state and the general public to change its ways, when history demonstrates otherwise. It focuses on Martin Luther King Jr., a black man that Americans can be comfortable with, instead of say, Gabriel. It also views American struggle through the lens of simple black/white racial issues and presents Americans with a concise and happy resolution which never actually existed. Racial issues, as well as issues of class, gender, and sexual orientation, continue to plague this country. MLK Day should be a reminder of that, and a spur to real unity, not a celebration of a false one. While this is exactly what it is for some, it is not what high schools and the state focus on. Perhaps instead of closing schools, we should keep them open and dedicate the day to understanding the real history of race in this country, the ways in which it still affects us, and working on possible solutions.

There is nothing wrong with setting aside some time to think about race in this nation. There is something wrong with approaching it in a way that helps alleviate America's discomfort with race and perpetuates avoidance of actually delving into the issue. MLK Day, or at least the way we celebrate it, does little to solve anything. Instead, it distracts us from real progress towards healing the greatest issue this nation has ever had and understanding what caused it in the first place.

Though, on the bright side, we do get a three-day weekend. Go, Pantherhawks.