I wrote a letter to the Red&Black that was published Friday about the new tuition fees, the transgressions of the Board of Regents, and the SGA's failure to appropriately deal with it. The original letter follows here:

"Mr. Connor McCarthy, it is time to tender your resignation.

Yes, you. You and all your associates on the Student Government Association. We did not elect you so you could beef up your résumé for law school applications. We did not elect you so you could toady to the administration.

We elected you - hired you, really - to act as our intermediary and advocate in the running of this school. You've failed to do your job, and I'm afraid we'll have to let you go. I was upset to hear of the fee increase, especially since the Board of Regents did not follow established procedures or solicit student opinion before doing this.

As I read the article, though, I felt assured I would read the outrage of those representatives I voted to speak for me.

Well, Mr. McCarthy? Where is the outrage? Where is the dramatic stand against the University? Where is the demand that the University treat its students with the common respect we deserve?

Oh, I know it's all been said before: SGA can only do so much. Maybe that's true. Maybe the SGA is only good for the small bureaucratic victories we've seen from it in the past. In that case, perhaps it is time for the SGA to dissolve until a more effective body can take its place. If the SGA will not fight to represent students, then it has no right to claim its position.

Demand accountability. Demand change. Show some outrage. Or do the honorable thing and go."

It seems I struck a nerve: I left for the weekend and returned to find my e-mail inbox full, a number of messages from people I do not know on my cell phone, and Facebook absolutely crowded out.

[A pointer to student groups: it is really creepy to call someone you don't know because they write a letter in the paper; there are less stalkerish ways to contact me. UGAMiracle did it; now SGA has gone and done the same. Really, guys?]

A lot of SGA senators wrote to me telling me I was wrong and why I was wrong. A good deal more non-SGA-affiliated people wrote to compliment me and tell me they agreed in every particular. If you're reading this, SGA folk: this is the view that most people on campus have of you. Consider it, and consider why that might be.

I stand by every word I wrote. I invite anyone who disputes my opinion to come and speak to me. Find me on Facebook or comment on this blog; you and I will get coffee and address all your concerns face-to-face. That's the appropriate way to deal with an opposing opinion.

Let us be clear once more: the fee, while significant, is not the issue I want the SGA to be concerned with. The issue is the blatant disregard for student opinion or procedure in enacting this fee.

First argument I was sent:

Connor McCarthy was outraged. He worked hard with the senators and demanded that they get outraged.

Unfortunately, the general student body has not heard any of that outrage. The SGA has failed to relate to and communicate with those it represents. Most students are as concerned with the SGA as they are with the inner workings of the College Republicans or the Demosthenian Society; one comment on the SGA I heard was: "The plus of the SGA is that we get to see a lot of dumb t-shirts and weird little party names when they run for reelection in the Spring; the minus is that they take up space in the newspaper. That's about all they do." If the SGA are truly student leaders, then they must connect with the student body and lead.

Second argument:

It's the Board of Regents. There's really nothing that we can do about it. Letter-writing campaigns? Petitions? Why should they care?

The Board of Regents is appointed by the governor, Sonny Perdue. The Board of Regents' policies affect 283,000 students, 11,000 faculty, and almost 29,000 staff. Most of these people are registered voters. Most of the students have parents who are paying for their educations and are also registered voters. You're right: let's not write to the Board. Let's write to Sonny.

You say you can't get the organization and mobilizing power to do this? Then you're not leaders. You're not effective. Resign. If you are student leaders, then use that position to lead. Perhaps this has never been done before, but that only means that you have a muscle you have not flexed. If the SGAs of the universities of Georgia work together to actually have pressure put on the Board of Regents, that will be a show of power that will last you for years. Write to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Write to other universities. Organize. Mobilize.

Third argument:

The SGA actually gets a lot done, and we really do care.

For every accomplishment of the SGA I have seen, I see many lapses. Their successes do not outweight their failures or plain ignorances of what needs doing. If they do not have power to deal with the Board, then they have no business speaking on anything that it does. If they are weak, then we do not need them. An ineffective SGA is bad for the student body because it allows us to believe we have an advocate when we do not, placating us when we ought to rise.

As one man said:

"The illusion of good government is a greater evil than bad government or no government at all."

Endnote: I've heard that the SGA has a few tentative little goals to do things like get a student on the Board--probably as a non-voting member. Don't chicken out on us. You have exactly as much power as you choose to have. Push the envelope now and your successors will have that power too. If the Board of Regents has pressure put on it from above, then that is a lesson they will remain with for years to come. Remember, in your position if you're not making a few enemies, then you're not doing your job right.

Have an opinion? Here:

• These links are information about the new fee.

Here's the SGA's take
And here's the article from before it was voted on . . .
And this is what the Board did wrong.

• These are the addresses, phone, and fax numbers of the members of the Board of Regents. Enjoy.

University System of Georgia Board of Regents

• This is SGA President Connor McCarthy's e-mail address. Demand change and demand action, but do so politely and do not do so anonymously. Treat him as you would like to be treated.

Connor McCarthy

• Of course, here's the SGA's general e-mail address as well. The same caveat applies.

Student Government Association

• Want to send a letter to Sonny Perdue? Here's his office. Make your points reasonably and intelligently. An angry pointless letter accomplishes little or nothing.

Contact Form: Governor Sonny Perdue's office

• No, I guess you'd like to write to the paper. That's good too. Here's the Red&Black--

Red and Black Opinions

• And if you're up for some big hitting, here's the Atlanta-Journal Constitution:

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

What does activism mean, really?

You know, people like to say something, usually in reference to politics: If it ain't broke, don't fix it (IIABDFI).

"Fix" and "broke". Nice choice of words. Seems to imply something mechanical.

So let's apply this precept to engineering!

Do we maintain the same technology year after year, only fixing problems when they crop up? Or do we seek to improve them a bit?

If we do, then

Would it be better to continually improve the oil lamp, or replace it with something entirely different--say, a lightbulb?

Do we just keep souping up our horse and wagon, or shall we overturn the whole damn system and drive cars?

IIABDFI is, we can see, an entirely silly aphorism based on--what, ignorance and lack of basic sense? Often the best thing is not to fix what ain't broke, but improve upon it.

And the greatest advances in human history are based on sweeping away what came before entirely, and making something new.

It is taking an active stance towards world affairs and society. We don't seek to repair what's broken (return to the past, which nostalgia proves was better). We may make small improvements.

And sometimes we'll pull out the tablecloth from under the dishes and change the whole thing. And that's gonna be a good thing, in the long run, and people have to learn to cope.

Activism. Not trying to preserve order or return to an older state of being, but advance in a new and better one.

I'm homeschooling my kids. I'm homeschooling the hell out of them.

This is based on the conclusion that school, especially grades k-12, are indoctrination factories. Ninety percent of what is taught is simply to fit children into cultural norms and so forth, not to actually educate.

I'm not going into my rant about turning children into adults who think within the system and believe the only way to get ahead is as a nine-to-five weekday worker climbing the corporate ladder.

I will, however, list the following points:

1. Children in most of the U.S. are taught Christianity in schools.
Evidence: the very idea of teaching Intelligent Design as science, abstinence-only sex ed, et cetera

2. Amero-centric history classes.
How much can you tell me about the history of the rest of the world? Did you--like me--have to spend a WHOLE FUCKING YEAR on Georgia state history? D'you know, I've heard a lot of history professors say that the first few semesters of college history is basically unteaching everything from k-12, from facts to methods.

3. Literature classes
Hey kids! We're gonna have you read this book, which contains a very persuasive ideological message! Because this ideological message is the one that is approved of by the school board, we've basically found a way to worm our ways into your mind and tell you exactly what and how to think.

Hence my love of banned books . . .

4. Government Propaganda
I'm not having my kids in this DARE shit (anti-drug education program). They skew facts to support the government's position on the matter. Then--and this is priceless--to pass the course you sign a pledge that says you won't use illegal substances. Ever.

Heheh. As a fifth grader, I signed a pledge concerning the rest of my life after hearing one side of the debate, delivered by a figure of authority. Lovely.

5. Gender roles/human sexuality
Schools emphasize traditional gender roles and ideas of sexual orientation. In two words: FUCK THAT.
In three: FUCK THAT SHIT.
In six: FUCK THAT SHIT WITH A RAKE.

6. Blandness
Knowledge is blanded out and made inoffensive. Objections and disagreements with authority figures are discouraged. Nothing inflammatory may be said. Schools wish to avoid controversey, so they don't allow discussion of anything controversial. Lame-age.



*********


Who's with me? Let's homeschool our little brats.

Laurel, Ugly, and I, following an eventful coffee session at O-house, moseyed on out to the grocery store to pick up a few items. We all learned many important lessons: Ugly especially learned that Laurel and I might not be the best combination of people to have at the grocery store.

For one, there was all the breasts.
Me: Look! Look! Look look look!
Ugly: What is it?
Me: (points to a pack of turkey cold cuts) It says "breast"!

Then in the produce section . . .
Laurel: Let's get about a pound of apples.
Ugly: k.
Laurel: Mm, that's a bit more than a pound . . .
Me: Those're some big ol' apples.
Laurel: Mmhm. Big round apples.
Me: A bit wrinkly, really.
Laurel: Heavy, too.
Me: How 'bout them apples.
Ugly: And I thought this place was rated G . . .
Me: How 'bout them apples.

As we passed through the store, Laurel and I had the following conversation:
Me: I kinda wanna go on a rampage through here.
Laurel: Yeah! Just attack the place!
Me: I could get siege weapons, and, and, and . ..
Laurel: Look at all the eggs. Imagine what we could do with those.
Me: If we brought in a potato cannon . . .
Laurel: Just egg the whole damn store!

And finally, buying Saltines!
Ugly: Ok, do we get low fat, low salt, or wheat? Or Breast Cancer awareness . . . or original . . .
Me: Let's get the breast crackers!
Ugly: Are you su--
Laurel: They're probably round.
Ugly: Fine, breast crackers.
Laurel: With little nipples in the middle.

Also, we found a trashy romance novel with nipples on the cover, and naturally we had to purchase it.

Disclaimer: I don't remember conversations well enough to transcribe them properly, so don't take my word that this is exactly what was said. I have the niggling feeling that Laurel managed to produce far more sexual innuendo than what I attributed her above.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++

You know what's fun? If I tell people about my weekends without going into a long explanation--just the bare facts of the weekend--it's fun to watch their faces!

Me: So then we all slept together, and in the morning I couldn't find my clothes.
Everyone else: . . .
Me: Wild thang, I make my heart sang!

+_+

So Nietzsche talks about something called the "will to power", which he considers a high human virtue and natural instinct. It is a natural and inherent desire to dominate and gain power. He regards this rather highly, as the distinction between what he calls the Slave and Master classes in society.

I think it's crap. I think it sounds like weakness, not strength.

If you are a Master in the Nietzschean sense, then your identity is entirely dependent on your forcing others into subjugation. Nietzsche detests the division of good and evil, because he says good is just everything that's not evil: the positive is defined simply as the abscence of the negative, not by itself. The Master class, in Nietzsche, is defined by others. They are dependent on others, while the Slave class's identity is entirely independent.

I see three other wills as greater than Nietzsche's will to power--two of which are some of the driving forces behind my life, and the third which I doubt I will ever achieve.

The first is the will to greatness. This is the will to become great in one's field: to become a great writer, a great poet, a great scientist or a great lover. It is the will to rise and excel, to reach the very heights. Note that I do not say it is the will to be the greatest or to rise the highest, because that means nothing. If I surround myself with fools, I may be the smartest but that does not mean I am smart. The will to greatness exists independently: we seek simply to be great in our own eyes, regardless of the standards of greatness we may regard ourselves by. We seek to rise as high as we possibly can, no matter what.

I know there is quite a ways for me still to rise, and so I am fighting, always, for improvement in every aspect of myself. I will be smarter, more talented, more honest--I will always struggle to rise.

The second is the will to bigness--best word I could find for it, gents. This is the desire to become larger than life, to almost become a symbol of that which you do. It is simply to become a presence, in and of yourself, of considerable weight on the world. This is often unconscious: people come to symbolize something without putting an effort to that purpose, but to some other end. Think of Frank Sinatra as a symbol of an entire era or Martin Luther King, Jr. as a symbol of the entire civil rights movement. It's about being as large as possible (no, not physically).

Another thing I, melodramatic though it may be, usually seek.

The third is the will to gravity. This is . . . this is not even a conscious thing. It's just part of some people. I think we've all met them: people who we meet briefly and we become swept up in their wake. We become caught in their orbit, through belief in them or fascination or love. It is distinct from Nietzsche's will to power because the man with gravity does not seek to dominate or gain subjects; they simply accumulate to him by forces unknown. It is also an independent will--because though it affects others, it does not require them. Gravity exists without anything to gravitate.

I don't think I'll ever gain any great gravity. But I have met a few people in my life with true gravity, and they do fascinate me deeply.

I know there are other sorts of forces in life people will address: love, compassion, charity, et cetera. I am sure they have their place in my life, as any other. But in this I focus only on the self-contained wills, those that define the individual independent of anything else, those that characterize the giants in our world. Can you think of someone you truly admire who doesn't have one of these: a will to always better themself, a will to become something great, or an unconscious charisma that draws people to them like satellites?

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Tomorrow at Demosthenian I will attempt to present either "Be it resolved: people should sleep around more (and reproduce) to eliminate racism" or "Be it resolved: religion as a socio-political institution is the greatest evil the world faces today". Or maybe "Be it resolved: prostitution should be legalized". Any opinions on which I oughtta do?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Something interesting about being gay I thought about. I think part of what adds to the enjoyment of being with a guy to me is the mild sense of danger. If I kiss a guy in public, it feels just a bit dangerous--and that's kinda exciting. Being in a very libertine group of friends eliminates a lot of the fear and mystery that have traditionally been a part of romance, and I like to get that back.

Sometimes I think a bit more melodramatically on the subject. I think the likeliest model for any sort of coup on America's government or sudden change in the political shape of the nation would be more like The Handmaid's Tale than 1984. We are moving towards a nation of mysticism and values propagated not on reason but shaky religious grounds. True religious fundamentalism is making a comeback, and it rather scares me. If I've seen anything from history, it is that only a small committed minority is needed for the sort of drastic reactionary change I fear. And I worry.

And I hate to say this, but first clue I get that something like that is going down in the U.S.--really happening--I'm leaving the country. I'll leave everything behind, if need be. Change comes in small steps. Each infringes a bit more, but people say, "Well, it's only a little bit. And that's all. Nothing to get alarmed about." And it progresses, and progresses, and . . . the world changes. The nation changes. Pogroms happen.

I think about McCarthyism and--melodrama again, I know--I wonder if an American theocracy would get the rolls from LGBT political institutions and organizations for evidence in trials.

I think about how fierce hatred has become of LGBT people in some circles, and I don't understand why it is so much greater than hatred of everything else that the conservative percieve a societal ills. I don't get it.

And I realize that the sexual nature of the percieved transgressions means that any societal reaction against LGBT people will be graphic and painful.

And when I get in one of these turns of mind, that really scares me.

*******************************

Big Brother is watching you, and you're boring the hell out of him.

##################

If I get my NaNoWriMo novel published and make any proper money out of it, screw it, I'm dropping out of college. It's a small chance I will get it published, but if so . . .

-------------------------

I wish to disdain reality.

------------------------

My Christian faith is something I wrestle with lately. It is hard to hold onto, but something I fear losing. Some will say I fear losing a crutch. But the imagery is powerful to me, and I've always been of a fantastic turn of mind.

And besides, I think I'd enjoy holding onto some of the wonders that come with it--the multitudinous angels of Hebrew folklore, the lovely virtues, the rich symbols--enough that even if a large part of me doesn't believe in it, I'd still follow it.

I love kosher laws, by the way. Something appeals out of ritual and devotion that has no real purpose but itself. It is devotion for devotion's sake, and I can appreciate this.

Then sometimes I wonder if it's just a fear of Hell I've never been able to shake, and if I'm lying to myself. If so, what I am doing is cowardice.

But I've yet to be rid of it.

Last night I watched The Prestige (excellent movie, by the way), and it got me thinking about the nature of stage magic and misdirection.

To my mind, there are three vantage points to a magic trick. There is the Yokel, who is being shilled or tricked--he has little knowledge of stage magic, and while he will try to figure out how it's done, he's usually baffled. There is the Observer, who knows quite a bit about stage magic, and may begin to guess at the workings of a trick. And then there is the Magician, who performs the trick.

In a ball and cup game, there are three cups. Under one of these, a ball is placed. The cups are then moved around very quickly and the Yokel is to guess, at the end, which cup the ball is under. The Yokel is always going to be wrong. This is not because he has failed to watch the cups properly--it is because he thinks the game is in watching the cups. He has accepted the rules presented him by the Magician: that the ball is in fact under one of the cups, and that its position depends on how the cups are moved. The fact is, the ball wasn't there in the first place: the Magician palmed it before the cups even started moving, then dropped it under whichever cup he wanted to at the end.

In The Prestige (mild spoilers), Borden performs a trick called The Transported Man. In this trick, a man walks into a box and shuts the door; almost instantaneously, the door of another box on the other side of the stage opens and out walks another man. Of course, the Yokel and the Observer have two very different ways of examining this trick. The Yokel will try to figure out how on Earth someone could move that distance so quickly without getting out of breath or rumpled. The Observer knows that the man who comes out of the box is not necessarily the same one who went in; he looks for signs that a double is being used. Again, the Yokel assumed that it was the same man, and this cripples the thought process.

In this way, Angier's version of The Transported Man is not a feat of prestdigitation in any sense. He is actually travelling that distance very quickly by scientific means; the man who was on the stage is the same as the one who emerged two seconds later on the balcony. There is no misdirection involved at all.

Let us address another trick. I know, I know, this is getting a bit dull. If you'd like, skip this paragraph and go to next, where I talk about what any of this actually means. But for now, I'd like to discuss the bullet catch. In this, the Magician loads a gun, then has a member of the audience fire it at him--and the Magician catches the bullet. In The Prestige, Borden's version involves a ramrod that, rather than tamping the bullet down, actually removes it. Once more, the Yokel's assumption is that there is a bullet in the gun when it is fired, and he thinks the trick is in how it is caught. The bullet, of course, wasn't even there. There is another version of this that uses a revolver in which the bullet is switched out for a bullet carved from soap and fired out a revolver. The soap bullet is destroyed in the blast, and the performer shows off a bullet palmed earlier.

So. How does any of this actually apply?

We have a major issue as human beings; we are, for the most part, Yokels. We assume society's rules, as presented to us, are true, and therefore try to work within them. And don't get me wrong--people have been known to do well working within those rules. But those who achieve greatness do not.

Let us examine the case of Bill Gates. We like to assume that to sell something, you need to have it first. We're Yokels. Bill Gates is a Magician. When he went to sell his first operating system to IBM, they didn't make much of it, and when he asked for rather high royalties on every computer sold with his OS, they agreed, saying that the money was in hardware, not software. As Yokels, we think that was the genius: spotting the market for software before anyone else. Not at all.

When Bill Gates sold the OS, it didn't actually exist. After selling it, Gates and his associates found a man in Seattle (?--maybe Portland) who had invented a system very similar to what he had sold IBM. They found their man in Seattle and bought the OS cheap. You see? The rules were that he was selling what he had. He was not: he invented a product while speaking, then after selling it obtained it. The ball wasn't under the cup at all.

I think the movie V for Vendetta is hilarious. In this film, they go on a massive manhunt for an anarchist terrorist known only as V. He wears a Guy Fawkes mask and a long black cloak. They also search for a girl named Evie Hamilton: she has been seen in V's presence, and so they assume she has something to do with him--an associate or accomplice, perhaps. When V turns up in a final showdown with the head of the Secret Police, he is shot multiple times. And--this is hilarious--they think this means they've killed the terrorist.

He is defined and identified by the fact he wears a mask, something few people do. Do you see the joke? His identity lies in the fact he cannot be identified. Yet they don't think in that light. Evie Hamilton could be the terrorist just as well as anyone else, 'cause guess what: two people could wear the same mask. V might actually be hundreds or thousands of people, each wearing the outfit only once, to commit some crime, and then never donning the mask again. This would be a further stroke of brilliance: the police in the film are putting together V's identity by where he has appeared and whom he has killed, trying to pick out a single person under the mask. If there are many, each crime would have a different MO and a different motive, all totally unconnected--it's like playing connect-the-dots with your freckles. There is no underlying pattern to be discerned.

Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed when the filmmakers didn't play with this notion at all, but I'll save that rant for another day.

Martin Luther King, Jr and Mahatma Gandhi knew it too. There were established avenues for political change, and established ways of doing things. They ignored these. They created their own avenues, most brilliantly passive resistance--which we've been copying ever since.

Ok, here's something very relevant:
Most of those who read this blog, I know, are college students. There is a plan we have been told for our lives. We go to high school and get a good education, and then we go to college and get a diploma. With this diploma, we go out and get a job. By hard work, effort, and talent, we make our way up the corporate ladder to success.

Or maybe we drop out of college, put all our eggs in one basket, and do something so wildly outside the rules we fool all the Yokels and make something truly great.

What are the standard rules and patterns that you see in life? Now try seeing past them. This is very difficult--at least for me--because these rules are defined by the very fact we don't notice them.

It's just a thought.

I made a pretty!

Sacco and Vanzetti were two prominent anarchists during the 1920s. They considered governments the worst enemies of people in existence. They were put to trial for murder--a trial that has become the most contested in American history. They were found guilty and executed.

If people are going to be going on and on about the Jena Six, I felt I oughtta add a cause I care about--my anarchist pals, dead though they may be.

"This man, although he may not have actually committed the crime attributed to him, is nevertheless culpable, because he is the enemy of our existing institutions."
Judge Webster Thayer's remarks to the jury before the trial of Bartolomeo Vanzetti

"We are not here to say whether these men are guilty or innocent. We are here to say that the high standards of justice, which we in Massachusetts take such pride in, failed Sacco and Vanzetti."
Governor Michael Dukakis's remarks following a proclamation removing any stigma or defamation from their names

This case is important to me because it is a perfect failure of our justice system. It does not matter whether or not Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty or innocent; all that matters is whether evidence supported the notion that they were guilty. There needn't even be evidence for innocence.

If a guilty man walks free because of a lack of evidence, that is just a success of the justice system as when an innocent man does--or when a guilty man is sent to jail when guilt is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. So I don't care if they were guilty or innocent. There may not have been enough evidence at the time to absolutely clear them, but that doesn't matter. All that matters is that there was not enough to prove them guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. That is the failure.

I could say this carries over. We prefer to assume guilt rather than innocence. We don't like the idea of attacking every assertion of evidence that proves guilt--we'd rather attack the evidence of innocence. Tell me, when a celebrity is being convicted, do we try to cast doubt on every proof of innocence and accept every proof of guilt without thinking?

I'monna go watch "Twelve Angry Men".

Disclaimer: I do not own Kirby. I don't own his image. He definitely belongs to Nintendo. I like to believe he'd support Sacco and Vanzetti as well, but I can't say for sure--I don't speak for him.

Let me preface this post by saying that I'm against sexual predation, et cetera, et cetera.

So, those who read the news know of the sting in which a UGA student, believing he was soliciting sex from a fifteen year old girl, was arrested--the person he was chatting with online was actually a police officer.

Here's what I find interesting about it. In cases of statutory rape, they say it doesn't matter whether you know that they're underage or not. If your partner uses a false ID that shows them to be over 18, it's still considered statutory rape if they're underage. What this would tend to show is that the actual action matters less than the intent behind it.

So . . . if these fellows intended to seduce underage girls but were actually seducing adults, can you convict them? Is consistency too much to ask in criminal justice?

Mmm, poll, question: shall I send this in as a letter to the Red & Black?

Ooh, and deliciousness: one of the men arrested in the sting is the Pike County superintendent of schools.