Dumb Criminal

'Spanky' the child sex-predator posing in his almost-foolproof masquerade.

"This man's profession as Spanky the clown brought him into contact with hundreds of families," said agent Albert Fitchett Jr. in Wilmington, North Carolina. "Behind the clown nose, however, this man appears to have been supporting an industry that trades in the exploitation of children."

This has to qualify as one of those stupidest criminal stories. If you're going to be a child sex predator, can you at least be a little more subtle than to call yourself 'Spanky the clown?'

The New Conservatives

With all the name-calling and ideological labeling that's going on in politics right now, which will only increase as November draws near, no one seems to have a good idea of exactly what they're saying when they label someone a 'conservative' or a 'liberal.' It's not that we don't have associations; there are plenty of those i.e. liberal = anti-Vietnam, multicultural; conservative = religious, anti-abortion, family values. When asked the question, "What is a conservative," the answer almost anyone would give, including these researchers, would include: unprogressive, intolerant, closed-minded, narrow, resistant to new ways of thinking, deference to authority, dogmatic. However, in my experience, these descriptors apply much more to liberals I have met than to conservatives.

Probably the most intolerant and authority-following people I know are liberal. How can you be intolerant and liberal? Easily. Preach and require everyone around you to follow a doctrine of uncompromising and thoughtless tolerance. Subscribe to fanciful ideas that the races have no inherent differences, that no cultures breed more violence than others, or that people deserve special exceptions simply because they are a minority race, and incriminate those who don't. This is the reason you read about 'intolerant liberals' or 'oppressive PC' in college guides much more than 'bigoted conservatives.'

The brainchildren of liberalism, such as political correctness and egalitarianism, have become unquestionable codes of conduct and thought, imposed dogmas that pre-determine what is right and what is wrong. Especially at our colleges, where much of our adult thinking is shaped, these doctrines reign as the supreme law. Some people conform the rules more than others, but on the whole, the more you follow it, the better a person you are thought to be. Why do we live under such a, for lack of a better word, doctrinaire code? The reason is because 100 years ago people lived under a different kind of code, which said that black people were a lower class and that women weren't fit to be educated. These were obviously incorrect ideas, but unfortunately, as we all know, social change takes a long time to happen on its own. So socially conscious people invented opposite policies (i.e. black people deserve a certain number of spots in institutions REGARDLESS of merit; women are completely equal to and exactly the same as men, in fact they're more powerful than men) to change the majority's opinion by force, and accelerate social change. Well, the good news is that it worked; we live in a better and fairer world than we did 100 years ago. But guess what, it's still a dogma, just as much as the dogma that used to say "believe in Christ and obey His law for if you don't you will go to hell." And, as usual, the people that are the most dogmatic and least flexible are propounding these dogmas the most piously and inflexibly, dismissing and denouncing anything that doesn't adhere to the simplistic notions fed to them as mechanisms of liberal values.

Don't get me wrong: liberals and conservatives should continue to fight it out until they're blue in the face, and people should continue to debate and discuss issues until changes are made. But I don't ever want to hear the cavalier categorization that liberals are more open-minded, tolerant, thoughtful or intelligent again.

THIRD PARTY WRITE-IN CANDIDATE ADAM KRAUS for PRESIDENT

Democracy may be the best political system, but it breeds some weird things. Like picketing for instance. Does picketing actually work? I'm not talking about in little dinky town elections, I mean in high stakes elections. The way I see it, it only has potential to work on two kinds of people. 1) People who weren't going to vote 2) People who are going to vote but don't know who the candidates are.

I suppose the first category could exist. There are plenty of apathetic people who don't care about issues or know about elections, but who will be reminded or inspired or whatever by seeing a sign for a candidate, and, having been exposed to a particular candidate's name first, are more liable to vote that way. Call this the honorary tobacco company strategy, because it's likenable to the way these companies "get 'em while they're young."

The second category is more absurd. It's kind of funny, though, to imagine someone at the polls, looking over their choices saying "Well I've HEARD OF this guy," or voting by process of elimination. Hey, it could happen though.

Explaining that it works through an advertising-like effect doesn't seem convincing to me. I can understand how constant advertising can affect consumer purchases, since these tend to be more impulsive and possibly more unconscious decisions than choosing the president of your country. Seeing positive messages associated with a product on a regular basis can make a person more likely to buy the product in the long run, if you figure that sometimes the buyer will be in a rush, or will be undecided between two brands. But what the manufacturers care about is not individual purchases, but rather the continuous buying habits of consumers over the long term, which may be easier to manipulate. When it comes down to elections, aren't the people who are going to vote going to be informed enough to make these subliminal tricks negligible?

Hey, Kris, I know you don't agree with me because I've already shared this opinion with you. So write a post about it. Come on Kris, you're being out-blogged.

Update: reader Dan believes voters who do not know the names of the major candidates is probably the norm in most states.

Public Enemy (Defender) #1

I thought the defense attorneys who jumped at the chance to defend the D.C. snipers were questionable. But this guy has taken the sleazy stigma of being a criminal defense attorney to a new level. He's a truly world-class criminal defense attorney sleazeball.

The French lawyer known for defending Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and
guerrilla Carlos the Jackal said on Saturday that Saddam Hussein’s nephew had chosen him to represent the deposed Iraqi president.

Klaus Barbie and "Carlos the Jackal" (who is "Carlos the Jackal" anyway?)... apparently he also he also has a self-destructive streak. Oh yeah, he lost,

Verges has taken on tough cases before. Barbie, known as the “butcher of
Lyon,” was jailed for life in 1987 for crimes against humanity in Nazi-occupied France. Carlos the Jackal, whose real name is Illich Ramirez Sanchez, is serving a life sentence in France for a string of deadly attacks in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s.

In all fairness, the job has to be done by someone, right. He's kind of like the middle school janitor who cleans the bathrooms, who you may look at with disgust, but who actually does everyone a great service by performing a necessary job no one else wants to do.

Unflattering Promotion

Seems like a lot of people are calling Kerry this nowadays. It makes sense that most of the people who pass this judgment are Democratic voters, so what is up with Kerry that inspires them to call him a douche? He has a respectable history of accomplishments and he's certainly competent. So what if he's a Democrat and he comes from a lot of money, so does every other politician. Why wasn't Howard Dean a douche? (He was). Ok, but here are some more substantial reasons why I think he is regarded as a douche.

1) He wavers, which many interpret as hypocrisy, or worse yet, indecisiveness. Welcome to the worst criticism of liberalism embodied.

2) He says things to try to please people. No different from any other politician, but with his tendency to hedge his positions on points, it's more pronounced.

3) He's not very likeable. He's aloof. People think that politicians who claim to fight on the side of the common man should interact with the common man.

4) He's an elite. I know I already got to the money thing, but there's something off-putting about an almost billionaire heiress's husband who lives a lavish lifestyle with 6 houses and yet claims he wants to reinstate taxes for the rich.

Of course all of this should be disregarded by Kris, who will undoubtedly vote for the socialist party's candidate.

Get Out the Duct tape and Plastic Sheeting!

I don't have anything great to say. But that's what I like about blogs. Blogging seems to me to reward productivity much more than deliberative quality; I can make a bad post today and tomorrow it will be totally forgotten if I have a decent post up.

These people think America is currently in the process of rotting from within. According to their historical / futurological analysis, large-scale social life goes through repeating cycles of 4 roughly generation-long phases. What we're headed for next, of course, is a giant catastrophe.

First came the postwar High, then the Awakening of the '60s and '70s, and now the Unraveling. This audacious and provocative book tells us what to expect just beyond the start of the next century. Are you ready for the Fourth Turning?

While the thesis is interesting and merits further attention, I have to wonder, haven't there been people in every generation who have predicted an impending catastrophe for that generation? Someone should do a generational study of catastrophic generational studies to find out if there's any kind of regularity there. That would be a generational study worth reading.

Kris' first post

It seems that Adam has been busy for the past few days. Or perhaps the opposite is true. Either way, here's my first post.

The world of blogs is rather new to me. I've read a few over the years since they began catching on, but I never kept up with too many of them because they were either so right wing that I would get too frustrated to continue, or they were just a guy posting links to various articles saying things like "I found this amusing, check it out," or "This is fucked up. Seriously. I have no words." Not terribly engaging.

So when Adam and I began discussing the possibilities of running our own blog, I was interested but not very excited. I tried having a Livejournal once; that pretty much crashed and burned. Every time I've kept a journal it hasn't lasted me more than a week and I have no idea what to write about. So I have no expectations from this experience.

I think Adam pretty much summed up why we're doing this blog. We are not seeking to revolutionize blogging, nor are we trying to say that our posts will be free of all irony or narcissism; in fact, it seems to me that the act of blogging or posting anything about yourself on the internet is inherently narcissistic. But let's see where this goes. Feel free to comment away.

A vote for Bush is a vote for yourself?

A while ago, my dad made the statement that anyone who is educated and votes for Bush must be doing it for selfish reasons. At first I considered the statement too categorical and closed-minded, and therefore untrue. But coming up with an example that refuted the generalization was difficult. It's true that a handful of people in my more extended family who vote for Bush are either rich, or kind of selfish, or both. So assuming that the average vote for Bush is cast for selfish reasons, is there anything wrong with that? Or is that how we can expect people to vote, and more generally to express themselves politically? Is democracy merely a system for balancing selfish power and interests, or are there higher reasons for identifying with a political candidate or creed, such as philanthropy or ideology?

I tend to think that my dad is wrong. I don't think political affiliation is purely a function of interest for a couple of reasons: 1) The term "ideology" would lose its meaning then, since there is no place for ideals when every choice is a cut-and-dry instance of self-interest - although ideology could just be a way to rationalize self-interest, an analysis I don't subscribe to myself. 2) Most people cannot accurately assess how their interests will be served because a) they have imperfect or incomplete information about the precise consequences of most policies b) in the case of supporting a political party, they do not know for sure what policies will actually be implemented. 3) Lots of people (from the South, military) who vote Republican do not ostensibly benefit from the party's(economic) policies. This brings another question: is it somehow better to support a party which has hypothetically pernicious policies on the grounds of ideology, rather than because of interest?

One point I would like to make here is that as the inequalities among voters grow, so do their interests diverge, and this makes the role that interest plays in political activity more salient. Basically the domestic political forum becomes more like a fighting ring, rather than a place of collaboration. I don't know if it's bad or good, but it definitely detracts from a harmonious political system.

We'll surely be talking much more about inequality here at KrisKraus, because the so-far silent Kris is actually an avowed and vocal socialist.

Let's talk (about the gay marriage debate)

I don't think I know what my position is on the gay marriage issue yet. But I did notice an interesting point in the debate. There is a common argument you hear by opponents of gay marriage that is premised on the conviction that homosexuality is immoral. You hear this argument so frequently that you naturally assume it's at least valid, and it's only when you stop and think about it that you realize it doesn't seem to hold water.

Any non-religious idea of morality that we accept today in America is at the fundamental level based on the utilitarian necessity of not causing harm to someone or something - with the caveat that one may justifiably do harm where there is conscious consent involved (I would welcome objections if anyone's got them). Applying this standard of morality to many examples of so-called sexual perversions, you would conclude that most are in fact immoral. For example, the universally detested act of bestiality would be wrong not because it is aberrant and unnatural, but rather because it consists of the mistreatment of a powerless subject - much in the same way that picking up a cat and swinging it around by its tail would be abusive and wrong. Likewise, man-boy or man-girl (man-child)? relationships are immoral because the power disparity and plain immaturity of one of the participants prevents the establishment of acceptable consent. Homosexuality is of course between two presumably consenting adults, and not even the staunchest opponent of homosexuality makes the claim that it causes harm to either one of them - if it did, wouldn't it be more logical for them, as gay haters, to advocate it? To say homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural or improper doesn't work I think, because we as a culture don't seem to define morality on those grounds. The only other justification for calling it immoral must lay in religious teachings. I should hope that we as a country are beyond the stage of basing any government affairs, especially legislation, on religious beliefs.

A First Post

This will be the first post, so I figure it will be a good place to explain my vision of what this blog will be. This blog is meant to be different from other blogs. Instead of displaying only what I think, or what Kris thinks, this blog will be an unplanned online conversation between both of us. Blogs are supposed to be windows into the spontaneous world of someone else's thoughts or something, and this blog really will be: what follows will be an unplanned and ongoing debate between two people with different viewpoints. We're not sure what the format will be yet, whether each topic will be strictly composed of two sub-posts, or if we'll use an Onion-style point-counterpoint format, or maybe we'll just ignore each other. Hopefully not though. Feel free to take sides in your comments, or contribute additional facts or arguments we may have left out. We don't fight or argue a lot in real life, even about the kind of topics we'll handle over here, we're just kind of exhibitionistic. Hopefully the end result will be less narcissistic and more meaningful than other blogs. We will promise never to do anything like post our academic papers on the blog, or anything else that upsets the blog-gods.

We're going to try to each post about any chosen topic, although on occasion we'll post about separate topics. Kris, if you feel I have misinterpreted the project, let me know.

Why Jazz

Pre-jazz, I studied classical music with a local teacher, with a mixed level of interest. In 9th grade I learned the jazz lexicon and repertoire. In my view, the advantages of jazz over other forms of music include:

Versatility: People of all ages enjoy it; old people find it nostalgic, young people still tend to think it's hip, at least as compared to same-era popular music. In another sense, it's versatile in terms of appropriateness. It would not be improper or obtrusive to play as background music, accompanying dinners, cocktail hours, or social events, while it functions equally well as "feature" music in similar settings. Jazz can be played at concerts, or performed solo. In New Orleans it's even played at funerals!

Scope and transferability: The skill developed by reading jazz lead sheets is applicable to virtually every style of music except classical. (Of course, I am leaving out non-western forms of music, but I have no knowledge of these or their written form). And in the 17th century, classical music was recorded on lead sheets too as figured bass. For reasons I haven't figured out, I have a natural advantage reading lead sheets in symbolic notation over musical scores written note-for-note. Nevertheless, I can say to anyone who is in a position similar to mine that the ability to read scores can be developed, through practice and mental techniques.

Snob appeal: No, only kidding. But, jazz is the ideal balance of listening accessibility and musical sophistication. The problem faced by any serious musician faces is that the popular music of today is not challenging enough to hold even the slightest bit of musical interest. At the other end of the spectrum, classical music is the pinnacle of musical development and exactingness, however its context is much more limited. There are opportunities to study and share classical music in certain contexts, but they tend to be academic, more formal, and attended by a select group of afficionados. Certainly, the snob value of classical music and the classical music world is unmatched. But it is still possible to find jazz that is of comparable musical interest and depth. A partial list of composers I would recommend along these lines includes George Gershwin (considered pseudo-classical), Art Tatum (performances, not material), Bud Powell, Dave Brubeck, and Louis Armstrong. Of course, my appraisal is biased toward piano music.

Potential for creativity: All music is creative of course; however I'm refering to creative potential for the performing musician. Like ancient folklore, jazz has historically been transmitted through generations by way of ear, which allows for each person to contribute something. For this reason, when jazz is written down, it is presented in barest possible terms. Lead sheets require active musical input just to play (at least for polyphonic instruments). Improvisation is the creative aspect of jazz that gets the most credit, although in my opinion it is not the most important.

Main page \ Current activities \ My music

My Music

As a sophomore in high school, I began playing solo jazz piano in restaurants, country clubs, golf-club dinner rooms, and private functions, which is harder to do than you would think for those like myself who do not belong to a musician's union. If for some inconceivable reason you are impressed and/or desperate enough to wish to hire me directly over the internet based on this brief exposition of my skills and/or chutzpah, feel free to email me. All inquiries should be made with at least 2 months of advance notice.
See below for music performed by me:

Jazz

1998: The earliest dated recording I know of: / Bouncing with Bud / Misty / Dolphin Dance /
1999: / Bag's Groove /(duet)
2000: Natick Arts Center; all musicians from high school: / One Finger Snap / Boplicity / Nica's Dream / / I Mean You / Nostalgia in Times Square / Confirmation / Con Alma / "Jam" / Maiden Voyage /(solo)
2001: Herbie Hancock Tribute at the Center for Arts in Natick during a break from college: / Canteloupe Island / Three Wishes / Eye of the Hurricane /
2002: Pretty experimental, kind of free-style song solo: / Dolphin Dance /

Funk

2000: I staged a small funk concert in my high school theatre, pejoratively refered to by a musical friend as my "recital." From the CD: / Hang up your Hang Ups /
2001: These took place at a high school benefit concert for Amnesty International. Pardon the sound mixing issues on some tracks: / Actual Proof / Cissy Strut / Driftin' /
2001: An original funk song performed as an opener for the group Jiggle the Handle. The main section is written in groups of 6 measures: / Original /
2001: An impromptu, unrehearsed recording. The song we're playing is another original: / Original / 2

What attracted me to jazz.
Main page

Prank Idea Collection

Here is a collection of benign high-school pranks (none of which I have ever actually done, of course) that were coincidentally an interest of mine during my last two months of high school. The following are all original, except for one, but maybe I will start accumulating others' ideas as well. Note that this page is the one area of my otherwise stingy site where the contents are most emphatically not my legal or intellectual property. In fact, I generously give whoever appropriates the information contained on this page immediate and unequivocal legal ownership of the intellectual property contained herein.

All of these pranks require access to the school for a solid chunk of time during which the school is unoccupied.

"Styrofoam Net": Buy some plastic mesh sheeting from a home supply store, the kind you can use to cheaply animal-proof a garden. Make sure it is see-through. Then, find a large quantity of styrofoam packing peanuts, like 10 cubic feet worth, which shouldn't be hard to obtain from a warehouse or other place that does shipping. Then, on the ceiling of a well-traveled hallway, non-destructively attach a surface of the mesh large enough to contain half of the peanuts, making sure to load them all in before you fully attach the surface. Now, do the same thing again right under the first surface, except this time permanently attach the lower surface to the top surface IN THE CENTER REGION OF THE SURFACE. If you wish to include a message of some sort, prepare it on a large sheet of paper, easily visible from the floor, and place the paper face-down inside the second surface. Finally, load the remaining packing peanuts into the second surface, above the optional message, and seal that surface as well. The idea here is that the school officials are faced with a choice: leave your message on display to anyone who walks down the hallway, or disassemble the aparatus and deal with cleaning up all the packing peanuts from the floor.

Kool Aid Cups: (This idea came from a friend) Obtain a large quantity of dixie cups, the smaller the cups the better. In a well-travelled hallway, line them up in rows with a density that makes walking through them impossible. The more rows the better, 10 feet worth seems ideal. Yes, the lining up process will be tedious, but not impossible. Afterwards you fill each cup with an inconvenient (but not permamently staining!) liquid. Obviously this will requires a container that will hold a large volume of the liquid and a hose to precision-fill the individual cups (no spilling). Congratulations, you have just accomplished the prank equivalent of violating the conservation of energy law from the perspective of human labor by putting more potential energy into a system than the work you expended on it.

The "get something really big into the school that they can't get out" Prank: The diversity of pranks following from this single concept is endless as long as you follow the simple principle assembly. Obviously, the quicker the assembly time and more extensive the object the better. If you are skilled with carpentry, you might build something out of wood, for the purposes of benign obstruction or just visibility. A particularly clever idea, I think, is to use water from a water supply to inflate a giant inflatable pool in the middle of some particularly inopportune location. Then, fill the pool with water as well.

(Note: All of these pranks cause incovenience. However, none of them are ultimately capable of causing any damage. If your goal is to cause damage, you don't need to try to be clever about it. Don't bother looking to these tips for help.)

Main page \ Current activities

School Duties

Sorry, it goes against my code of ethics to post schoolwork on this blog. Posting schoolwork anywhere on the internet should be given a penalty.

If you are still unsatisfied, here's a collection of original and benign school prank ideas, properly used only once in a student's career as an expression of appreciation upon graduation.

Main page \ Current activities