Hazing Troubles!

My college was located in the middle of a city, so while we had fraternities there never seemed to be reason to join one--most of their parties (free beer! Comely lasses of virtue true!) were open to the public and there were plenty of other options for inebriated joy in town. Apparently though, at some colleges located in the middle of nowhere, fraternities are so key to your social life that pledges are willing to swim in filth, get into vomit contests, and otherwise wipe away any shred of dignity that can never be regained. Because once you've swam in filth and willingly been vomited on by your dudebros, you can never be respected again.

Picture it--here you are, decades after graduating cum laude from Dartmouth, spending years in the U.S. Foreign Service, teaching at Georgetown School of Foreign Affairs, negotiated a test ban treaty, then nominated as Secretary of State. Your first meeting with the President of Russia, and he asks "hey I hear you were a brother at Sigma Kappa Omega." You nod yes, and then he follows up with "so at one point in your adult life you willingly allowed another pledge to vomit on you before you swam in a kiddie pool full of his filth?"

Now, I'm no teetotaler--this blog's title even laments the world's shortage of agave-based liquor--and think it's just fine for comrades to drink together as they bond. But why on earth would you ever want anyone to join your group if they had to debase themselves so thoroughly? Why would complete lack of self-respect be a plus? Loyalty, dedication, hard work, social qualities and connections are all good measurments for who you'd want in your frat--and there are good ways to test these things. In fact, the "kiddie pool of fecal matter" should, if anything, be a way to weed out weirdos and morons--anyone willing to do that in order to join should be told they failed the test.

But schools really shouldn't ban this type of hazing. It's Darwinian, really--anyone willingly subjecting themselves to such things is surely deserving of what they get.

Tea Time

This past week at work has been a trying one, because both tea machines on our floor were out for repairs and I'll be damned if I'm going to go down one floor to use their tea machine. Why a tea machine, you ask, reasonably? Well, my co-workers like things to be high tech, so rather than a hot water spigot and bags we instead have these fancy machines in which you put a cartridge, press some buttons, and a few minutes later you have a hot tea, flavored coffee, or cappucino that doesn't exactly taste like cappucino. This has been my tea delivery system for the past few years.

Why tea, you ask? Well I sort of fancy myself a proper gentleman and tea is the beverage of choice for those of us who like to enjoy our libations. Coffee I understand, as something for when you've been awake for forty hours and need to haul a load of hooch across the 'Sippi line ahead of them Duke Boys. My wife drinks coffee every day, not because she's a trucker but because she'll otherwise get stabby and I've grown fond of my skin in its current, unstabbed state. But I've preferred tea as a morning work ritual.

Now, we worker bees have become a bit spoiled when we fret over (temporarily) losing a perk, when at the end of the day an employer really only has to provide clean drinking water. So this is really more a reflection on how set in my ways I've become.

It won't be long before I'm yelling at those damn kids who won't get off my lawn.

*Yes I could bring in my own tea bags and boil some water in the microwave, but I never remember in the morning to bring any in.

Wednesday Reflections

1) Referring to someone as a "white hispanic" is assinine. What's next, the "gentile jew"? Keep finding those new lows, New York Times!

2) You know what I haven't heard enough about lately? This "Hunger Games" thing. If only the media would provide some coverage!

3) Maybe it's just me, but I think my neighborhood could really use a theater that only plays "mumblecore" films. It would draw exactly the clientele I need to open up my "pretentious hats" store.

4) They have really not done enough to cater to Americans' twin desires of chocolate and beer. Why so few choco-beers, brewing industry? Why?

5) If I'm a Supreme Court justice, then I've likely graduated near the top of my class at one of the country's top law schools, clerked for another Supreme Court justice, and spent many years of intense scholarship, legal practice, and likely a judgeship. I've also likely been through a ringer of a Senate hearing and confirmation, and reached the top of my profession. My decisions on Constitutional issues will be based on solid precedent and well reasoned analyses of the law. You know what won't sway my decisionmaking? A bunch of yahoos camped outside the courthouse with idiotic protest signs.

6) Remember when everyone was shocked a couple years ago when KFC invented a sandwich using two pieces of fried chicken as bread? We were so innocent then. Now Taco Bell has a taco using Dorito for the shell.

7) March Madness is that special time of the year when students at top basketball schools get to go wild rooting for a team of mercenary atheletes who happen to use their school's facilities but wouldn't be caught dead socializing with the regular students. It's good practice for the pros, when riff-raff around the city will hoot and holler for a team of even better paid athletes who will never associate with them and easily switch teams for better pay.

Thoughts on Florida Shooting

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, there has been much gnashing of teeth and rightly so--an unarmed teen gets killed by an overzealous neighborhood watch volunteer, and the local police (this was Sanford, Florida) make no arrests. The dribblings of information coming out of the incident make it more troublesome--the shooter was told by 911 operators to not follow the "suspicious" boy, and evidently he did anyway, and the racial element (Hispanic shooter, black victim) has made this a national story. A few thoughts on this:

1) The shooter--George Zimmerman--was apparently covered by Florida's "stand your ground" law that allows the self-defense defense to cover shooters who choose not to retreat when reasonably threatened. It's not clear whether Zimmerman felt "reasonably threatened", though this should be a matter for a criminal investigation--but this is the problem with such blanket rules. In theory, even a shooter acting unreasonably--stalking someone or picking a fight--can be let off once the threat is elevated, even if it is a threat they caused themselves. A better standard is one that considers all circumstances in determining if the shooter acted reasonably.

2) There's a lot of crowing that this is too focused on race, because we don't hear the media covering black kids who are being murdered by other blacks more frequently. Well, of course race is an issue here--it likely played a part in Zimmerman's decision to go after Martin, and there are accounts that he was making racial slurs over the phone immediately before confronting the black teen. I agree that it is a tragedy that black-on-black violence is treated by the media as something to be expected and not worthy of as much coverage--similar to how a missing rich white girl is going to get all sorts of copy while missing black kids will get ignored by the press. But this case is certainly newsworthy.

3) Can someone please pay Al Sharpton to go do some missionary work out in the middle of nowhere for a while? There has never been a case where anyone said "good thing Reverand Al was here to instill some calm and togetherness. His input has really improved things."

4) Recently leaked reports about Trayvon Martin's "gangsta" tweets and possible marijuana-related punishments at school are basically irrelevant--what does any of that have to do with whether Zimmerman was justified in shooting him?

5) There's been a lot of flak about Geraldo Rivera's suggestion that Martin should not have been wearing a hoodie since hoodies arouse suspicions. I agree with the backlash on this--it smacks of blaming the victim, sort of like saying a woman may have been raped because of her short skirt--but it is at least a discussion worth having. If dressing a certain way in certain neighborhoods is more likely to get you attacked by a bigot or a nut, then why risk your life trying to prove a point? Better to remain alive and find more effective ways to speak out against bigoted assumptions. Though it raises the question of whether even a nicely dressed Martin would have been confronted by Zimmerman.

6) Everyone's quick to jump to assumptions on this one, ranging from the "Zimmerman's totally a guilty racist nutjob" to "Martin was a troublemaker who attacked Zimmerman who acted in self defense" and you know what? Until all the evidence is collected you just don't know. The only thing we should be calling for right now is a full criminal investigation. This is why we have courts. Calling for one man's head or a dead kid's reputation to be trashed is not helpful.

Tebowed!

The sports world is ablaze with much rending of garments over the issue of super-Christian and so-so quarterback Tim Tebow being traded to the New York Jets. The arguments against the trade that I've seen from Jet fans include the following:

1) Tebow sucks.

2) He's a holier than thou Christian who showboats his religion in an unseemly manner.

3) He dresses poorly.

4) He sucks.

As a longtime Ravens fan, I don't have a dog in this particular fight, and while I consider religion to be something most properly kept personal and free from public drama, I don't really have a problem with those that go public with theirs. (Professional sports has enough showboating and trash talking and nightclub shootings to worry about--a guy praying publicly is hardly the worst thing to happen in the NFL)

But for Jets fans, I offer this perspective--your team has been awful for a very long time. Sure, every few years it gets a winning season and gets smacked in the playoffs, but at this point it has been 43 years since the Jets appeared in a Super Bowl. There aren't a lot of teams that can match such a drought. Moreover, the Jets haven't had a famous player since Joe Namath (or possibly Joe Klecko). (I'm defining "famous" as "someone a casual football fan can name").

Tim Tebow, for better or worse, would at least get the Jets talked about. His onfield proselytizing and his church revivals held at Washington Square Park--in the heart of the West Village!--would bring fresh publicity for a team that has been the second best NFL team in the NYC area for a very long time.

So you hate the guy? Great! When it comes to the NFL, better to be hated than unknown.

Names for my Neighborhood

Giving a neighborhood just the right name can have a significant effect as to how it is perceived. For instance, "Penn Quarter" has a much hipper feel to it than "Phony Chinatown" and "Dupont Circle" just sounds a lot trendier than "Georgetown Adjacent". With the new ballpark district continuing to grow and gentrify, residents are debating between "Ballpark District" and "Capitol Riverfront" but one thing is certain--no way that neighborhood will ever go back to being called "South Stabbington Stab-Stab". It was hell on real estate agents.

I think of this when I consider that my own current neighborhood--wedged in between the SW Waterfront and the Mall--doesn't really have a name. I'd rather be able to explain to people where I live by simply mentioning the neighborhood name, much like someone saying "Columbia Heights" can let you infer that they are a hipster, or someone saying "Clarendon" can let you know they're a dudebro. Here are some proposed names for my neighborhood:

1) Space Alley (due to our proximity to NASA HQ)

2) Troll Canyon (due to having to walk under 395 to get to our neighborhood from the Mall)

3) Fallout (we're in the immediate blast zone if the Capitol were to be hit)

4) SW Valley (we're down the hill from Capitol Hill)

5) Concrete District (many federal buildings around here)

To Unbless a Road

In the so-called "war on religion" going on in this country, I've often found that the stakes involved--whether a public school can lead a prayer during morning announcements; whether our coins should mention "God" on them--are petty compared to the actual religous oppression going on elsewhere in the world. Still, the "battles" going on here in America are not without their interesting moments.

In the latest round between believers and atheists, neither side has run out of their sense of smug jerkishness. Some Christian group goes and "blesses" a highway in Florida, so an atheist group one-ups them by "unblessing" the highway.

Does this serve to prove anything? I'd think if you're a genuine atheist, you'd see the "blessing" by the Christians as a pointless exercise, sprinkling plain old water around and calling it holy. If that's the case--if the "blessing" is pure hokum--then doesn't it make more sense to ignore it the same way you'd ignore a baby muttering gibberish? By "unblessing" the highway, you're going beyond nonreligion and entering the dark world of anti-religion. You're accepting that there is something to the believers' beliefs, in that they must be countered. If you're a true atheist, any validation of these beliefs is sort of descending into madness, isn't it?

Better, I would think, to argue that the original blessing meant nothing and leave it at that. Or, maybe to ignore the whole thing, because if someone wants to believe that their sprinkling of water is doing some good, where's the harm in that? It's a far cry from forcing nonbelievers to accept something. On a scale of imposing one's beliefs, this seems fairly mild.

I guess though this is better than raging mobs burning one another's homes. Thank God our disputes are this petty.