Activity Log

Representative tries to put the fear of God in atheist.

That’s terrible.

I do wish the article at the Tribune had more details, though.

(HT to The Agitator.)

Department of Homeland Security will Waive Laws to Build Border Fence.

How terrible.

Sir Edmund Hillary passes away, and all I can think of is 1996 New Hampshire Primary, when I met presidential candidate and nutjob Michael Milko.

Milko claimed to be Sir Edmund’s godson, Bill Clinton’s worst nightmare (due to the Hillary connection, naturally), and, I read now, Chairman Mao’s son in law. For some reason, I find all of these claims dubious.

Later that day I found myself in slightly more reputable company, when several of my friends and I somehow ended up signing in members of the press who would cover Bob Dole’s speech when the day was over. Dole ended up losing that day to Pat Buchanan. For my part, I hoped Lamar Alexander would win.

Three days after Americans saw the Bush administration’s counterterrorism chief say the Iraq war has likely not made the United States safer from terrorism, the official announced his resignation, citing health reasons.

As some people say some of the time, sick, mate, sick!

[This was written in the heat of the moment and has been removed pending a rewrite.]

A letter to the Boston Globe, in response to the latest case of hysteria:

Re: MIT student arrested at Logan in bomb scare:

In the current climate of overreaction, Star Simpson may gave been unwise to go to the airport with exposed electronics, but she didn’t do anything morally wrong. Most of us avoid such legal entanglements by going with our electronics discreetly out of sight: we call them laptops and iPods.

The best that can be said for the brainwaves who pass laws and who are tasked with enforcing them is that at least Simpson wasn’t tased.

Michael Wolf
Mexico City
+52 55 xxxx yyyy

Soon, if the Teamsters don’t get their way, some Mexican trucks may be allowed to drive throughout the United States.

On the face of it, it’s easy to write off the Teamsters as being Teamsters — a powerful, self-interested, violent, and corrupt force with nothing constructive to add to society in general.

On the other hand, lots of trucks in Mexico are undermaintained. Many shoot huge clouds of black exhaust (suggesting little to no engine maintenance), have bald tires, etc. And, if the training of drivers of everyday cars is anything to go by — it isn’t mandatory — then there also are probably plenty of untrained truck drivers too. And not all of them would understand English road signs.

So, people not wanting to allow these drivers and vehicles into the US (for reasons other than fear of competition) aren’t being entirely unreasonable.

The best solution seems to be to ignore the Teamsters and the racists and figure out what the real problems or potential problems would be: the problems I outlined above, basically. Then fix those problems: only allow trucks that are properly maintained and driven by properly trained drivers into the country. Which may be the case already: “Participating Mexican carriers must comply with all legal requirements governing operations of domestically owned carriers, and in some cases stricter requirements,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler.”

Assuming anyone with “Attorney General” in his title can be trusted these days, I’d say that’s a good enough. Let the trucks in.

Argentine president calls US border fence plan ‘insult’ to Latin America.

Of course it is. But Latin Americans shouldn’t feel singled out — racists within the US would be just as happy to insult any other country where most people are brown. But since it doesn’t border any other country like that it can’t. At least not by building a fence.

The Neocon Reader by Irwin Stelzer (ed) et al. Grove Press.

I was writing a review when, meaning to open a new tab in my browser, I hit C-r instead of C-t. Everything lost.

Fuck this shit. It’s sufficient to say that Irwin Stelzer is an intellectual lightweight, and whoever the pseudointellectual who wrote the piece about pr0n was is even worse, and few of the people whose writings are included are much better.

Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t read the book.

Good.

A lot of people, whose motives I suspect but cannot prove are less than pure, say that they aren’t opposed to immigration per se, but have a problem with the many immigrants who have already entered the US in ways that contravene the law.

I always knew that there was something fallacious about that line of reasoning — it sounds appealing and reasonable on the surface but something about it has long struck me as not being quite right.

This post, at Café Hayek, clears the confusion:

A critical distinction in Anglo-American law is that between actions that are malum in se and actions that are malum prohibitum. Some actions are malum in se — wrong in themselves. Examples are murder, rape, theft, and fraud.

…

Other actions are malum prohibitum — “wrong” merely because the government proclaims these actions to be wrong.

…

To attach the label “criminal” both to persons who commit actions that are malum in se and to persons whose only wrongdoing is the commission of actions that are merely malum prohibitum is to use language confusingly.

Yup, that explains it swimmingly, but do read the whole post.

(It’s also amusing to see that the commenter on Café Hayek whose comment sparked the post is also the author of one of my favorite blogs, The Doosra.)

Critics cast Clinton’s Alabama speech, on the 42nd anniversary of the historic civil rights march over the city’s Pettus Bridge, as an example of her being phony and pandering.

Clinton? Phony? Who’d ever think that?

I’ve lived, for years at a stretch, in countries where dollar coins (or coins worth roughly the same amount, such as 10 peso coins) are used and in one country where they are not generally used.

My opinion, based on actual experience with both systems, is that dollar coins are far more convenient.

Whenever discussion of which system is better comes up, people who have rarely if ever left the United States complain about how bad dollar coins are or will be.

Sometimes I’ll then say that dollar coins are better, and I’ll explain why. The reason most important to me is that small purchases are much faster. (Another reason, less important but valid nonetheless, is that vending machines almost never fail to accept perfectly good coins.)

People invariably respond “I pay for everything with a card now anyway”.

Fair enough.

But it’s changing the subject entirely.

(more…)

I sent the following to the Boston Globe:

If you think that genuine bombs in real life actually use blinking lights and are placed in conspicuous locations, I think that you are barely fit to turn on your DVD player to watch the daft movies where that does happen. You are certainly not fit to work in government or law enforcement. Nor, for that matter, are you fit to be writing for a newspaper.

Somehow, I doubt they’ll publish it. But I hope they do.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html

and

http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/272-36.htm.

I’m embarassed anyway.

Or don’t.

…and that is why I am in shock. No, wait, I didn’t, so I’m not in shock. That “[two] election workers were convicted … of rigging a recount of the 2004 presidential election to avoid a more thorough review in Ohio’s most populous county” does not shock me either.

Doh.

But going to New York to see some cricket sounds awesome. I’ll totally go if it happens.

Introducción a la literatura norteamericana by Jorge Luis Borges. Emecé.

A review of Northamerican literature, up to 1970 or so. Borges mentions several authors that I haven’t read and probably should.

I wonder if this book was ever translated into English.

The book has lots of errors; many English words and placenames are misspelt. I like to think the errors are due to the editor or publisher, not Borges, who learned English in his childhood and presumably wouldn’t have made such mistakes. I made a list of all the errors I noticed, and plan to send Emecé mail. Pedantic mail.

The chapter on Native American literature seems a bit forced. Political correctness in Borges - who’d have guessed? But then again, I usually take a dim view towards poetry. And it’s not all political correctness; Borges calls the Indians los pieles rojas (redskins).

Not the greatest of Borges’ works by any stretch, but it was quite cheap at the Gandhi in Querétaro. And more Borges of course looks good on the bookshelf.

I am watching videos of Dawkins at a reading and Q&A session at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. In the Q&A section, against mostly hostile questioners, he is like a ninja with a lightsaber beating the crap out of 3 year olds. Except it is funny, not cruel.

(If you’ve read God Delusion you might want to skip the first video, in which Dawkins reads some passages from Delusion, and just watch the second, which contains the Q&A.)

On an inexpensive flight to the US, I could go, buy one Wii and one game for the Wii, and come back. I would end up paying less than what I’d pay to buy them here in Mexico.

A few weeks ago I posted about a study on the effects of gun control in Australia.

Today, I came across a different conclusion.

MEAT PIES are coming to America. It has been years since I’ve eaten a MEAT PIE. I would like to eat one right now, in fact.

A bunch of racists are against immigration and amnesty for illegal immigrants. They’re also against the invasion of Iraq.

I disagree with them, strongly, about immigration. They’re right about Bush and Iraq, though, and it’s nice - if very strange - to find myself in such strong agreement with neanderthals like these about anything.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/10/23/1161455665717.html

I don’t have a strong opinion on gun control. I don’t know enough, and it seems like everyone who writes about it has an agenda. And, of course, it’s hard to do a proper experiment since there’s no way I can think of to set up an alternate control group.

But it is interesting.

[Mayor of London] Ken Livingstone declares tax war on 4×4s.

Oh, the things that can be accomplished when people don’t equate freedom with being stuffed in metal and plastic boxes, nearly unmoving among other metal and plastic boxes.

It’s lamentable that people prefer reality TV and corndogs to Shakespeare and steamed vegetables, but unjust?

http://www.post-gazette.com/images4/2006108rr_santorum_concedePJ_580.jpg

I’m a bit reluctant to write about this, but I should. So I’ll be vague.

I know some Mexican people who live in the US, legally. They’re getting married next year. The mother of one of them lives in Mexico, and probably always will. She has no visa, and is planning to sneak into the US rather than go through the long, uncertain, and humiliating process to get a visa.

Why? Because she wants to go to the wedding, and she believes her chances of being able to get there are greater when attempting to do so illegally.

The New York Times is running an article about how the government can unconsitutionally sieze your laptop when you enter the US. It’s nice and chilling. It’s also a bit clueless:

One remedy some companies are considering is telling travelers coming back into the country with sensitive information to encrypt it and e-mail it to themselves, which at least protects access to the data…

Sounds like good advice, but that’s not all.

…if not its privacy.

Huh?

(It also raises the question why the government can’t just pop your disk, do the needful with dd, and return it to you. But that’s assuming technical competence by a government. So just forget I mentioned it.)

…because it has been banned in the US.

Holy crap.

The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite contains folate, which in the US can be added only to breads and cereals.

Which makes me think that there are no concerns about safety whatsoever. It’s special interest protection, which honest people call corruption.

Although I’ve got to wonder: the vegemite brand is owned by Kraft. Surely they’re plenty used to getting the US government to change its rules to favour Kraft. On the other hand, it’s unlikely that Kraft cares very much about the half dozen vegemite eaters in the United States.

All a moot point anyway, of course. Promite is far, far better than vegemite.

Update: It looks like this might be an urban legend, although as is often the case, snopes’ treatment isn’t entirely clear. Certainly the US has earned itself a bad reputation for how it treats people in airports, which doesn’t detract from its credibility.

Absentee voting for people who are residing more or less permanently outside the United States is far more complicated than it needs to be.

Ideally, citizens could just register with their local embassy a short time in advance, and show up at the embassy (or local consulate) on election day and vote, with the rest of the process being completely transparent. Alas, it is not currently so.

It’s not clear which congressional district I fall under, either. I spent my last continuous two months in the US - between vacating my apartment in Brighton and moving to Mexico - at my parents’ house in Sharon. Although there was never any doubt that that was a temporary situation, it probably counts as my last address. (If the move to Mexico had fallen through, I would have found a new place in Boston or Cambridge or somewhere else with public transportation and restaurants and bookstores.) So, which district do I belong to? Probably District 8, as that includes cities adjacent to Boston that are close to where I lived. No, wait, I mean District 4. But who knows? Massachusetts is, after all, the birthplace of gerrymandering. I last registered to vote in 2002; I do not remember what ward and precinct I registered with. And since Democrats will almost certainly take any interesting office I’d be voting for this year, why should I bother jumping through all these hoops?

Which reminds me: I have two and a half years on my Massachusetts driver’s license. My Mexican license never expires, in theory, but it really isn’t (or shouldn’t be, at least) worth much. There was no test; all that was involved was showing up with (flimsy) proof of where I lived and about 400 pesos. When my Massachusetts license expires, I’ll want a new one, but will I be eligible?

Jesus would be ashamed of you, if he were anything other than an insane and/or drugged up flake - albeit a charismatic one - who maybe (!) lived some two thousand years ago.

I just renewed my membership, after having let it lapse for some time.

Alma’s visa was delivered on Saturday. Now that the process is done, I feel like I can talk about it some more.

She applied for a visa interview appointment in March. It was scheduled for mid-September. The wait times at the embassy in Mexico City are really that long.

When the appointment came closer, I asked an immigration expert I know for help. Her advice was invaluable. We also got two letters of support: one from my dad and one from my brother’s rep in Congress. The letter from the representative was sent directly to the embassy. I do not know whether it was received or whether it had an impact.

I went with Alma to the appointment at the embassy. It was at 7:30. We arrived just after 7:00, and there were literally hundreds of people waiting outside. Adjacent to the embassy is a side street which was cordoned off. Entrance to the interview area was via that street. People were allowed in in groups, based on their scheduled interview times. We waited a while under a tarp that’s set up. There were signs saying that photographs of the embassy are prohibited.

Smaller - but still large - groups were called to another waiting area. There there were periodic announcements about how certain items may not be brought inside, that if your application has two or more errors adiós, and so on. Some staff were available to answer last-minute questions about forms and to do crowd control. They were not friendly. When you got one’s attention, you could ask a question. After answering curtly they’d wander off, so you had to say “Wait please, I have another question.”

Eventually Alma’s group was allowed into the actual interview area. I was not allowed in as I didn’t have an appointment, and especially because - I was told - I’m a US citizen. I could see inside for a moment; there were portraits of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Tony Garza. The decor was typical of US government facilities: ugly and dated looking. I left, ate breakfast, and waited for Alma.

Finally she was done, told me she got it, and we went to have breakfast. She had her forms and supporting documentation with her, but wasn’t asked to show most of it. She never had a chance to present the letter that my dad wrote. There was little privacy during the interviews. She overheard interviews that took place before hers, including a denial.

Well, she didn’t get it that day; it had been approved, but it would take several weeks for the actual visa to be delivered. That finally happened on Saturday.

Tips for Mexicans who want visas to visit the United States.

These apply specifically for Mexicans who want to get a B2 tourist visa. Maybe they’re relevant for other classes of visa, or for people from other countries seek visas, but I do not know.

When you apply for a visa to visit the US, there are several things that your assessor will want to see. Two are no-brainers: they want to know that you’re not a terrorist and they want to know that you’re not a criminal. What’s less obvious, but just as important, is that they want to know that you have ties to Mexico and that, at the end of each stay, you will promptly return to Mexico. Intention is impossible to prove for any reasonable definition of “prove”, of course, so instead they look at indicators. If you’re an adult, you had better be employed or retired. And if employed, the longer at the same place the better. You’ll want a letter from your employer, stating your position, how much you make, etc. They’ll want to see evidence of a bank account, which hopefully has a significant amount of money in it. If you own property, you should prove that. Etc.

They might ask you domain-specific questions about your work. For instance, Alma, who works as a webmaster, was asked what programming languages she uses. I imagine that they have canned questions of a similar nature for other professions: a mechanic may be asked what kind of cars he specializes in fixing; maybe doctors are asked in what field of medicine they practice, etc. I do not believe that your specific answers matter. Rather, what matters is your ability to answer them confidently. A “doctor” who says “uhh, I, like, you know, help sick kids and stuff” won’t look nearly as legit as one who says right off the bat that he is a paediatrician.

During your interview, answer honestly. Don’t equivocate. [Una nota para hispanoparlantes leyendo éste: “to equivocate” no significa lo mismo que “equivocar”, sino “dar evasivas”. No lo hagas.] When filling out your application, there will likely be some ambiguous questions. Either answer to the best of your ability, or leave them blank in the hope that while you’re waiting outside the embassy, the staff can help you. The staff isn’t friendly or very helpful, but if you can get and hold their attention, they should give you decent advice. If you can’t get them to help you, fill in the blanks you left to the best of your ability. Some questions you won’t be able to answer accurately at all. If you’ve been to the US before, but that was ten years ago, it’s natural to forget the exact dates of your last trip. So put down the year and an approximate month. Tell the assessor that you can’t remember exactly when. There is no point in lying to the assessors about this; they know when you last visited the US - and probably much more besides - already. Don’t lie about other things either. If they catch you, adiós.

This isn’t legal advice, of course. I’m just trying to distill what I know in the hope that the process makes a little bit more sense and that fewer Mexicans are denied entry for no good reason. It might be relevant for people from other countries, but I don’t know for sure. My guess is that it isn’t wrong, but it may focus on things that aren’t relevant to other people. And yeah, I know; I should translate this to Spanish.

Politics.

There is one word to describe all this nonsense: “shameful”. For a variety of reasons that I don’t want to get into right now, I don’t often refer to the US as “my country”. But I felt ashamed that morning outside the embassy, and I feel ashamed - and angry - writing about it now. Given the reprehensible treatment of people who are trying to follow procedures correctly and honestly, it should be no surprise whatsoever that so many Mexicans attempt to enter the US illegally. Many applicants are old people, whose children now live in the US; they want to visit their kids. They’re not wealthy or well-educated, and they didn’t get a member of Congress to support their application, nor did they have access to an immigration specialist. Many of them, undoubtedly, made unimportant errors on their applications and subsequently had their petitions for visas denied, at a non-refundable cost of some $100 USD, which is a lot of money for such people.

Being allowed to go where you want to go is a human right. Aside from the rare person who would present a genuine and predictable danger to people already in the US (this is limited to violent criminals and people with serious communicable diseases, as far as I can see), there is no conceivable reason whatsoever to deny entry to the US to anybody. Some people might have misguided economic ideas, but for the most part it’s racism. Or maybe nationalism or some other word; the point is that discrimination based on country of birth is no less abhorrent than discrimination based on genetics.

Some people will enter the US and attempt to stay there. That’s good for the US! Some people will enter the US, see the sights, go shopping, and return home. That’s also good.

In addition to being dehumanizing, the process is needlessly complex. If it were true, I would just say that governments worldwide make things more complicated than they need be. But it isn’t true. I’ve looked for official documentation about immigration to Canada and the UK. It was easy to find and easy to understand. It was even friendly. I also remember that Australia’s procedures were quite simple, although things may have changed since 1999. A Mexican does not even need a visa to enter Canada; they’re necessary to go to the UK, but they are quick and easy to get.

The actual decision-making process is not, as far as I know, documented anywhere. It seems to be to some extent arbitrary; if your assessor doesn’t like you, tough luck. It have been told that there is an appeals process, although my understanding is that it is not at all transparent and that decisions are rarely overturned.

I don’t think many Americans realize just how badly the US treats foreigners who are trying to do the right thing. I’m sure most would be extremely indignant upon receiving such treatment from other countries.

God I hope so.

Well, you should.

I read Jennifer Government over the weekend. No time for a detailed review, but the book seemed very Australian to me.
It was cool to see placenames I know. Even if they were places like Chapel St. and Chaddy.

It was also cool to see somebody I know (well, somebody I met a few times but who probably does not remember me) mentioned in the acknowledgements section.

The book is written in American spelling, but not really American English: terms like “different to” and “car park” abound. And can you imagine a Texan taking a “working holiday”?

Anti-American resentment comes in at least as many flavours as there are countries. I don’t think Barry resents America, but I do think his writing shows some of the things about America that Australians in particular - as opposed to Brits or Mexicans or Pakistanis - resent. The Australian image of an evil and crazy businessman is different from the image others have.

But there’s more than just the specific examples and ones like it that seemed so Australian to me. I could name more examples, but I’m hard pressed to define more generally just what it was that made me think so. Oh well.

On a semi-related note, I think that some day, national flags will show logos of sponsors. If this ever happens, I think Australia will be the first country to do it. (And I think it’ll be McDonald’s’ logo we’ll see wedged in between the Union Jack and the Southern Cross.)