An article from the New York Times today about Utah Republicans who still — still! — back Bush all the way. Read it — it’s head shakin’ good.

“When I watch him, I see a man with his heart in the right place,” said Delia Randall, a 22-year-old mother from Provo, the hub of a county that gave Senator John Kerry just 11 percent of the presidential vote in 2004. “I like George Bush because he is God fearing, and that’s how a lot of people in this area feel.”

…

“He’s strong, and he doesn’t waver,” said Jaren Olsen, 18, a freshman at Brigham Young, the nation’s largest religiously affiliated private university, who is from Albany. “I like that he is for the family, that marriage should only be between a man and woman. And the war, we need to finish what we started.”

Another student at Brigham Young, Danielle Pulsipher, a junior, offered blanket approval of the president. Asked to name which of his actions as president she liked most, she was hard-pressed to answer.

“I’m not sure of anything he’s done, but I like that he’s religious — that’s really important,” Ms. Pulsipher said.

I used to live among these people, and the ’92 election season was pure hell. I felt like I was in some kind of asylum. Boy, was everyone cranky at BYU the day after Clinton won.

At the heart of the Mormon experience is the gaining of a ‘testimony’: a spiritual conviction that the principles of the Church are true. And how do you gain a testimony? By feelings and experiences. In other words, for a Latter-day Saint, if you pray about something and you feel ‘good about it’, that means it’s true. That’s supposed to serve as verification! It’s garbage in, garbage out. You’re just bound to arrive at stupid conclusions if you buy stupid premises.

And that’s why Bush is so popular among Utah Mormons. He hits all the right buttons. They feel ‘good’ about him. Facts don’t matter; feelings do. Come to think of it, this is probably the process by which Bush decided to invade Iraq. No wonder they love him. They truly think alike.

Today is 6.6.06, the Day of the Beast. Unless of course, you go for the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which puts the number of the Beast as 616. In which case the Day of Evil was last January or last week, depending on the date encoding conventions in your area.

The remake of “The Omen” opens today. Housemate went to an advanced screening last night, and said it was okay, but the kid looks a lot like Youngest Boy. With the filthy glares that kid can give, I’m not surprised.

I hate scary movies, but for some reason, it doesn’t frighten me when a movie features one scary character who’s doing evil things. What really scares me is when a bunch of people who think they’re good act evilly. It’s a major theme in To Kill a Mockingbird, which I’m reading aloud with Oldest Boy. You have a whole community of decent people, but because racism is so entrenched, it turns out all wrong. And yet they see nothing wrong with the outcome. You have lots of tiny bad decisions by lots of ordinary people enforcing their values ignorantly, and it multiplies into monstrosity.

Let’s look at a case:

The customer is always right? Not at Geno’s Steaks in South Philadelphia.

Belly up to its counter and order a cheesesteak in a language other than English, and you’ll walk away hungry. Fromage-avec? Fugheddaboudit.

It seems that Joseph Vento, Geno’s owner, feels strongly that everyone in this country ought to speak English – even if they’re tourists from faraway climes looking for that fabled Philly cheesesteak fix.

Vento insists his customers order in English. No pointing at the menu items. Speak English, a sign at Vento’s popular, curbside counter reads.

Okay, so the guy has an value that it’s important to speak English in the USA. Fine. It probably is. But what an ignorant ass to enforce this value in such an ignorant way.

I’m a language-learning guy. I speak Spanish and French (pretty well), and Russian (some, but I’ve forgotten a lot). I’ve also taken some first-year Japanese, and I can still recognise a few words and phrases. But when I go to Japan, I have real trouble with ordinary tasks. And I’m so grateful when someone is helpful to me, the dumb gaijin who can’t speak Japanese. What if no one helped me? First, they’d be assholes. And second, I’d starve. Which they’d probably be happy about if they were the kind of assholes that are running Geno’s Steaks. Or the kind that are currently whipping up popular ire about America’s language policy.

This is the kind of evil I find really scary. The kind of evil where a whole community turns the cold shoulder to someone because they don’t speak the right language. Or have the right colour skin. Or the right religion or family connections or … well, you can fill in the blanks. If there were just one evil person, you could find them and stop them, but when it’s everyone making those tiny decisions, they don’t feel like they’re doing anything evil at all.

I recently heard (again) that line that Edmund Burke probably never said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

To that I would like to add: People aren’t always very good at knowing whether they are good or evil. And evil often triumphs when good but ignorant people take it into their heads to do something.

Oldest Boy once asked me if Bush had done anything well during his presidency. Ordinarily, I can find one or two good points about anything, even if it’s not something I like. The incompetence of Bush poses a special challenge in this way.

I told him that there was one thing Bush was very good at: winning elections. He had a way of finding just the kind of issues that would split the electorate, to his advantage.

But the skills needed to govern are not the same as the skills needed to win elections, and I don’t think Team Bush has even yet figured that out. Which is why the President has decided to stake his recovery on an issue that worked for him in 2004, but which has gone cold since: gay marriage.

In our free society, people have the right to choose how they live their lives. And in a free society, decisions about such a fundamental social institution as marriage should be made by the people — not by the courts.

Talk about poor governance: he’s stacked the Supreme Court with conservative judges, but still feels the need to complain about judicial activism. (He didn’t see the need to complain about judicial activism when the SCOTUS made him President, though.) And so he’s going populist in the hopes that voters will support a Constitutional amendment that will discriminate against a segment of Americans.

Will it work? Public opinion-wise, it looks less likely than ever. The latest Gallup Poll shows a 39/58 split, for vs. against. Back in 2004, it was 32/62, so the public is slowly shifting views on marriage to match the recent acceptance of homosexuality. Once again, Bush plays to the extremists rather than the mushy middle, but this time, the base may be too alienated to return. But the middle will be even more alienated by this ploy, and Bush will continue his slow slide to 25.

Ms N_
Graduate Research School

Dear Ms N_

I noticed your call for participation in the 9th National Student Leadership Forum on Faith and Values, to be held in Canberra this September. I’d like to apply as a student representative. I may not be the ideal applicant because I don’t have any faith, but I do have values like you wouldn’t believe. I’d like to tell you about some of them, and you can decide if they stack up favourably.

One of my values is that government should be kept free of religious interference. For that reason, the idea of a leadership forum that leans toward religious faith is deeply unsettling, especially when political leaders are speaking at it.

However, another of my values is to balance my skepticism with open-mindedness. So I try to stay open to the idea that the whole forum might not be a disingenuous attempt to increase religious influence in government using coded religious language with perhaps the goal of taking power from non-religious citizens, funneling federal money to religious groups, and stripping Australia’s citizens of rights they currently enjoy. If I see any evidence at the forum to contradict this view, I’ll be sure and mention it in my report.

But my most important value involves faith. Faith is superfluous, even harmful, to the pursuit of knowledge, and a university has no business promulgating it. Faith feeds on the natural human tendency to see what we expect to see. It is a form of bias that causes the believer to stick with poorly-supported theories. The only reason anyone would need to exercise faith in an idea is if that idea lacks adequate evidence to support it. University students (among which I include myself) need to learn not to hold ideas because of faith, but because of empirical evidence and sound reasoning.

It is these values that I wish to discuss at the forum. Thank you for considering my application. I await your reply.

Is it Friday again? Time to Refresh…

I Could Be Dreaming by Belle & Sebastian Album: Tigermilk
I first saw this album in 2000 and thought, ‘Hmm, Smiths.’ I didn’t buy it, though. Then I saw people on the Duffylovers list talking about it, and I downloaded “She’s Losing It”. Loved it. Bought the first three albums on eBay. I don’t know how I feel about B&S now. I think I may approve of them more than I like them. But the song’s good, and the cover’s slightly charged. Do Scottish people really talk like the girl on the outro? How do vowels vary so much in such a small geographical area?

Sugar High (Slow Version) by Duffy Album: Needle Mythology (Single)
Duffy is Stephen Duffy of Lilac Time fame. Or, sadly, non-fame. Stephen is brilliant, but his work has been ignored by all but the most musically knowedgable. And people like me who’ve been lucky enough to notice. This comes from his foray into Britpop in 1996. Best lyric: “It’s all there/In the air/And in every young girl’s hair.” This ‘Slow Version’ is thirteen seconds longer than the album version. Discuss.

Fathers’ Pyramid by Powderfinger Album: Parables for Wooden Ears
Powderfinger’s huge in Australia. This one’s an early one from 1994 that I haven’t listened to very much. It’s what you listen to when you feel like listening to something sort of Pearl Jam-ish, which for me never ever ever happens. Ever.

Petrol by Severed Heads Album: Bulkhead
More Severed Heads. This song hasn’t stood up well for me. It’s metallic and industrial, but it sounds so lightweight, so 1982. Better try something a bit more aggressive, like Bad Mood Guy or Come Visit the Big Bigot.

Universal Daddy by Alphaville Album: Afternoons in Utopia
I used to love this album. It was sort of science fantasy, and the lyrics contained cross-references and conundrums. And the songs! Put on your headphones and come for a walk to the Crystal Castle out across the snowy fields of Aris! Fantastic. Still not too dated. Best lyric: “Throwing stones against your window/Don’t pretend you’re not at home.” That captured what it was to be forever young in 1986.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University: Bush twice as bad as Nixon.

Strong Democratic sentiment pushes President George W. Bush to the top of the list when American voters pick the worst U.S. President in the last 61 years. Bush is named by 34 percent of voters, followed by Richard Nixon at 17 percent and Bill Clinton at 16 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. Leading the list for best President since 1945 is Ronald Reagan with 28 percent, and Clinton with 25 percent.

Okay, so now will people believe us when we say it might be a good idea to pick the smart guy over the dumb guy? I don’t ever want to have to go through the 2000 Election ever again.

Reagan got the nod for best President, partly because he talked about God all the time, and partly because people felt happier then and terrorism didn’t exist. Just behind Reagan was Clinton, but not among everyone:

Clinton tops the “worst” list among white Protestants – 24 percent, and white evangelical Christians – 29 percent.

I just don’t understand how some people think. Largely prosperous economy, crime rates down — hey, abortion rates were down — but for the stone-throwers in the Brigade for Decency, sexual morality is morality, and a lapse is enough to tank your legacy. Great stuff, eh?

Never mind. It seems to take forty years or so to get some historical perspective on matters of “Worst Presidency”, but if this is part of the trajectory, then maybe people are starting to see things straight.

An article that shows why your research productivity dropped off: you got married.

“The productivity of male scientists tends to drop right after marriage,” says Kanazawa in an e-mail interview from his current office at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom. “Scientists tend to ‘desist’ from scientific research upon marriage, just like criminals desist from crime upon marriage.”

I like how the writer juxtaposes research with crime.

Kanazawa’s perhaps controversial perspective is that of an evolutionary psychologist. “Men conduct scientific research (or do anything else) in order to attract women and get married (albeit unconsciously),” he says.

Yeah, that’s why I do what I do. For the chicks. Wait a minute — that’s not why I do science! Oh… wait… it’s unconscious. Guess I’ll never know now.

I just hope that now that I’ve got reproduction out of the way, I’ll be stimulated to do more research, while avoiding becoming so attractive to women that I get married again, thus ending my creative streak. Such a tightrope, isn’t it.

I was reading an article in the Bulletin about some nice young educated people who make well-reasoned porn movies.

The most surprising thing I found was a sentence (boy, am I jaded):

She’s nervous. “There are certain limitations to what I’ll do,” she says. “I’m OK with nudity but not sure how I’d feel about the X-rated stuff.” She is yet to tell Brownfield this.

Is yet to tell? I thought it would be ‘has yet to tell’. I’d never run across the ‘X is yet to do Y’ construction, but when I sprang it on three native Australian speakers (without telling them what I was looking for), they thought it was fine. Could it be a cross-cultural usage thingee?

Off I went to VIEW, a searchable implementation of the Brown corpus. Very handy.

The search “is yet to [verb]” gives 72 instances, and one third of them are something like “the [best/worst] is yet to come.” I do have to admit, “the best has yet to come” does sound a trifle odd.

On the other hand, “has yet to [verb]” gives 515 matches. Looks like American usage favours “has yet” over “is yet”.

Readers Australian and American, what say you? Does either ‘has’ or ‘is’ sound ‘funny’? We could be on the cusp of linguistic discovery, which is very exciting, even more so than the porn article.

And the word is ‘munted‘.

I dropped the cake, and now it’s looking a bit munted.

Etymology obscure.