(re)defining violent felonies

A while back, while blogging about the juvenile justice resolution, I tried to find a solid definition of the phrase "violent felonies," looking to the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984.

A recent Supreme Court ruling hinges on an ambiguity I hadn't explored: section 924, (B) (ii):

(ii) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another[emphasis added]

In a 6-3 decision, SCOTUS found that fleeing from police in a vehicle constitutes a violent felony under this definition.

Mr. Sykes’s flight was dangerous, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. “Sykes wove through traffic, drove on the wrong side of the road and through yards containing bystanders, passed through a fence and struck the rear of a house,” Justice Kennedy wrote.

But, Justice Kennedy went on, the issue was not whether Mr. Sykes’s actual conduct had been violent. Rather, it was whether the crime he had been convicted of was as a general matter a crime of violence.

As a matter of both common experience and statistics, Justice Kennedy wrote, the answer was yes. Fleeing from the police in a car, he wrote, “is a provocative and dangerous act that dares, and in a typical case requires, the officer to give chase.”

Scalia penned the strongest dissent:

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing only for himself, issued a vigorous dissent. He said the provision of the federal law under review (“involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another”) was a hopelessly vague Congressional “drafting failure” and that “today’s tutti-frutti opinion” produces “a fourth ad hoc judgment that will sow further confusion.”

The phrase "otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another" may be broad, but the context--as part of a "crime" or "act of juvenile delinquency"--limits the scope, which is probably why six justices lined up in favor of the broad reading.

As an aside, what is a "potential risk?" Isn't any risk inherently "potential?" Lawyer friends, help me out here.



[via Glenn Reynolds]

liberal pinko commie

My lone contribution to the corpus of Google Ngram-based scholarship is to note the approximate date when "commie" permanently surpassed "pinko" as the anti-liberal insult of choice: roughly June 1967.

the eleventy-sixth amendment

I've been staying out of the political fray this season, since I'm far too busy with far more pressing things. (Today in Debate: a half-hour skirmish on the meaning of history.) Why am I posting this, then? I don't know. I guess it's because I loathe confident ignorance.

I tried to watch Christine O'Donnell's dust-up with Chris Coons over the interpretation of the First Amendment, and whether it lays the groundwork for the separation of church and state. I was hoping to see if O'Donnell's reported ignorance ("The First Amendment?") was, in fact, an uncharitable fallacy of accent in interpretation. (Point. Counterpoint.)

I couldn't get that far. It took only 1 minute and 8 seconds to determine that O'Donnell's grasp of the Constitution is tenuous, if not fatuous. When Coons argues that schools shouldn't be allowed to teach religious doctrine, O'Donnell fires back,

"Public schools do not have the right to teach what they feel? [Turns to the audience.] Well there you go. Do you want a senator who would impose his beliefs? Talk about imposing your beliefs on the local school!

At this point, O'Donnell is at least courting an actual controversy. Local school boards have long wrestled with the First Amendment, and there are plenty of folks who want to keep the feds out of their schoolhouse. (Ironically, a lot of them are the same folks who voted for the president most responsible for the raging federalization of education, George W. Bush.)

But then, after reiterating her support of teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom, O'Donnell tries to hammer the point home:

You have just stated that you will impose your will on local school boards, and that is a blatant violation of the Constitution."

Which Constitution? The one that hides out in the National Archives makes no mention of education, leaving the matter entirely to the states. Nothing in the Constitution would prohibit the establishment of a national education system, which seems to be the trend these days.

So I never made it to the moments when O'Donnell reportedly was baffled by the placement of the establishment clause in the First Amendment. I was too astonished at her novel interpolation of the Eleventy-Sixth.

how to road-test a thesaurus

How do you tell one thesaurus from another? They're all so doggone / darn / gosh-darn / danged similar.

Here's one way, which I invented this morning while teaching.

During a conversation about reading strategies, one of my students suggested the thesaurus as a place to look up unfamiliar words. "That's a good emergency option if you don't have a dictionary," I said. "But thesauruses just can't list as many entry words as a dictionary can. For instance, my guess is that you'll find 'pulchitrudinous' as a synonym for 'beautiful,' but not the other way around."

She seemed a little dubious, so I said to grab a random thesaurus off my pile of random thesauruses, and test my theory.

Of course, the first one she opened had "pulchitrudinous" as its own entry.

I laughed and admitted that I hadn't chosen the best example, but that my reasoning was generally still sound. After class ended, I checked the rest of the thesauruses--big ones, small ones, medium-sized ones, college editions or average Joe versions, even Roget's II. Turns out about half of them had "pulchitrudinous" or "pulchitrude" as its own entry. (I was doubly disappointed that The Superior Person's Book of Words didn't include the term. Perhaps it's not as uncommon as I had hoped.)

So that's when I turned lemonade into an Arnold Palmer, and devised this handy way of picking a good thesaurus. Open it up to P, and if it has "pulchitrudinous" or "pulchitrude" as an entry (usually "Pulchitrudinous: See beautiful"), you're probably / likely / possibly / potentially holding a good one.



Sidebar
Of course, Firefox's automatic spell-checker, which dutifully underlines every perceived orthographical slight, doesn't recognize "pulchitrudinous" or "pulchitrude" as legitimate.

correct me no corrections

Every time I tell a stranger my primary occupation, they say a version of the following: "Oh, I guess I'll have to watch what I say!"

"I'm not on the clock," I usually reply. The mock-fear of being corrected by the Grammar Police both saddens and amuses me.

Where does that mock-fear come from? People like this:

Rosenthal, who is in her early 60s, asked for a toasted multigrain bagel -- and became enraged when the barista at the franchise, on Columbus Avenue at 86th Street, followed up by inquiring, "Do you want butter or cheese?"

"I just wanted a multigrain bagel," Rosenthal told The Post. "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want.

"Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English."

No, you are not. You are what you called the barista: an asshole.

Why? Because there's nothing grammatically incorrect about the barista's question. It's a logical problem--a false dichotomy--but only if it's pronounced a certain way. The accent matters. See below:

"Do you want butter or cheese?"
Without any emphasis, the possibility of neither is perfectly sound. Just answer "no thanks."

"Do you want butter, or cheese?"
Now we have the false dichotomy.

And once again, there is a perfectly reasonable and polite way to answer: "Neither, thanks."

One more thing: when you go to Burger King, you certainly do have to decline the things you don't want: the meal deal, the meal deal King-sized (or whatever they call it at Burger King), and whatever else the order-takers have been ordered to upsell that week.

So, in conclusion: step down from your grammatical high horse, Ms. Rosenthal.  The world needs less false dudgeon.



[via Slate's Twitter feed]

half-formed thoughts on cyberbullying

A work in progress. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Sticks and stones
May break my bones
But words will never hurt me.


I'm made of rubber,
You're made of glue.
Everything you say
Bounces off me
And sticks to you.

--children's sayings

Recently a reader sent this email:

I'm a long-time reader of your blog. I was hoping that you would blog about cyberbullying laws sometime since they have been a matter of controversy for a while now. Thanks!

I was somewhat stumped. As a teacher who uses the Internet all throughout the curriculum, and for someone who has established a persistent online presence for seven years, I'm ashamed to admit that my perspective on cyberbullying is, at best, half-formed and ad hoc.

Which it shouldn't be, as cyberbullying challenges traditional notions of education, juvenile law, and parenting.

My thoughts were expanded when another reader, Kevin, sent along one an otherwise unrelated email titled "German Civil Rights Fail." (Any insertions or edits are his.)

"Article Five: Freedom of Expression.

(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing, and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of repor...ting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. **There shall be no censorship.** [Sweet! Censorship = un-Constitutional in Germany.]

(2) **These rights shall find their limits** [Wait a minute! You just promised us CONSTITUTIONALLY that censorship will not happen! What happened?] in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to **personal honor** [What does this even mean?! It's a violation of civil rights to insult somebody?!]."

GERMAN CIVIL RIGHTS?

FAIL

At first I didn't notice the connection, but there it is: the language of the German constitution provides a perfect framework for understanding the current controversy over cyberbullying. After all, it is a form of speech that threatens the mental and emotional wellbeing of young persons, and is an affront to their personal honor.

But should it be a crime? And, if so, what about free speech?

In one sense, the German constitution is superior to its U.S. counterpart; at least it explicitly notes the limitations on free speech, while in the U.S., we have to rely solely on decades of muddled juriprudence to determine where the boundaries of infringement lie. (Eugene Volokh, discussing a related issue, notes that even the word "infringement" isn't simple.  See also his critique of a new cyberbullying statute.  Legislators definitely run the risk of too broadly defining what constitutes cyberbullying.)

Here in the U.S., as the children's sayings imply, we certainly value personal honor and the sensibilities of the young. We don't want a nation of wimps.  A societally coordinated and aggressive approach to bullying, though, is a fairly recent invention. We leave personal honor to the person, creating a razor-thin line between encouraging mental toughness and blaming the victim--because sometimes words will hurt, and arguing otherwise is a form of denial. (If you disagree, imagine what a bully thinks when told that "words will never hurt.")

Throw this kind of thinking into a culture saturated with technology, which creates new dimensions for bullies.  What happens?

• There are new means of public or private aggression.  Blogs. Forums.  YouTube videos. Text messages.
• There seem to be no natural "times out," given the ubiquity of technology.
• The audience is potentially global, multiplying any humiliations--especially when older folks get in on the act. (Children aren't the only ones who cyberbully, as the Jessi Slaughter incident makes obvious. And if you look up Slaughter's experience, be warned: it's disturbing on multiple levels.)
• Anonymity and the removal from a personal context increase aggression.
• Thanks to Google, cyberbullying's evidence can last a lifetime.  How do you heal when the sting never stops?

Humans live out narratives, selves couched in stories and words.  As we migrate further into the digital hemisphere, words take on more and more importance. Maybe the Germans are on to something.

For further reading: Emily Bazelon's excellent series on the subject over at Slate.

"chicken one day, feathers the next"

The concretion, found in Oregon, offers a potential glimpse into a world millions of years in the past, but the story offers an equally fascinating glimpse into the colorful world of paleontology.

"It's kind of like your first blind date," said state paleontologist Bill Orr. "The closer they get, the worse they look...."

We're waiting for Mother Nature to knock it off the wall," Hanshumaker said.

There's an expression in paleontology, Orr said, that describes the frustration involved in finding something that might be spectacular but really isn't that big of a deal.

"Chicken one day, feathers the next," he said. "This is definitely a feather day."

Here's hoping for a really cool chicken ancestor trapped in the middle of an ancient rock.

you, y'all, all y'all

Apropos of being in Alabama for one more day...

It starts with a discussion of the vagaries of standard English usage. It evolves into a thoroughgoing and sometimes contentious analysis of the greatest of all pronouns: "y'all."

if you're reading this, you're a socialist

At least, as Kevin Kelly defines the term.

Instead of gathering on collective farms, we gather in collective worlds. Instead of state factories, we have desktop factories connected to virtual co-ops. Instead of sharing drill bits, picks, and shovels, we share apps, scripts, and APIs. Instead of faceless politburos, we have faceless meritocracies, where the only thing that matters is getting things done. Instead of national production, we have peer production. Instead of government rations and subsidies, we have a bounty of free goods.

I recognize that the word socialism is bound to make many readers twitch. It carries tremendous cultural baggage, as do the related terms communal, communitarian, and collective. I use socialism because technically it is the best word to indicate a range of technologies that rely for their power on social interactions. Broadly, collective action is what Web sites and Net-connected apps generate when they harness input from the global audience. Of course, there's rhetorical danger in lumping so many types of organization under such an inflammatory heading. But there are no unsoiled terms available, so we might as well redeem this one.

The movement is organic rather than organized, and cooperative rather than collectivist. You're already a part of it.

But it needs a better name. "Socialism" is too fraught with connotation. "Collaborism" is a little unwieldy. "Synergism" is too corporate--and "corporate" is already taken.

There has to be a better, fresher noun.

Update: Jesse Walker for the counterpoint.

Update II: Jason Kuznicki on the closest approximation to utopia.

e-neo-ough

You are allowed only one neo- per noun.




[via Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing]

American shibboleth

Syrup.

Seer-up or surr-up?

symplectic camels and quantum uncertainty

I'll let the science writer explain a potential challenge to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle:

Maurice de Gosson at the University of Vienna in Austria thinks that the inability to pin a particle down is due to something called symplectic geometry, not quantum weirdness.

De Gosson realised that a theorem in symplectic geometry had parallels with the uncertainty principle. The concept is known as the symplectic camel after the biblical suggestion that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.

De Gosson imagined that a ball represents a cloud of possible positions for a quantum particle. He found that such a ball cannot be squeezed down to the size of one particle to fit through a hole in a plane, because its geometry resists this in some way. The inability to squeeze the ball is analogous to singling out one particle and measuring its position and momentum exactly. De Gosson reckons this geometrical resistance creates the uncertainty in measurement, not quantum fuzziness (Foundations of Physics, vol 39 p 194).

I just wanted to point out the word: symplectic. In my imagination, it is a super-adjective combining the meanings of sympathy and apoplexy.

geniuses procrastinate

I'm pretty sure Leonardo would've been a blogger if he'd had the chance.



[via Arts and Letters Daily]

good + good = bad

Here's a game: take two words that represent good things individually, and combine them into a common phrase that is bad--or, at best, disappointing. I'll start.

1. steak + sandwich

2. TV + timeout

3. poetry + reading

4. rice + pudding

5. [this is where you come in]

search, search again

If at first you don't succeed...

(With StatCounter, search terms display in reverse chronological order.)

because grammar matters

Put that modifier in the proper place. Or else:

After the flub heard around the world, President Barack Obama has taken the oath of office. Again. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama on Wednesday night at the White House - a rare do-over. The surprise moment came in response to Tuesday's much-noticed stumble, when Roberts got the words of the oath a little off, which prompted Obama to do so, too....

It happened when Obama interrupted Roberts midway through the opening line, in which the president repeats his name and solemnly swears.

Next in the oath is the phrase " ... that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States." But Roberts rearranged the order of the words, not saying "faithfully" until after "president of the United States."

[via Glenn Reynolds]

Obama gets you right in your vagus nerve

Emily Yoffe reports that neuroscience is catching on to something students of oratory have known for, oh, millennia: rhetoric sends people.

Elevation has always existed but has just moved out of the realm of philosophy and religion and been recognized as a distinct emotional state and a subject for psychological study. Psychology has long focused on what goes wrong, but in the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in "positive psychology"—what makes us feel good and why. University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, "Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental 'reset button,' wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration."...

We come to elevation, Haidt writes, through observing others—their strength of character, virtue, or "moral beauty." Elevation evokes in us "a desire to become a better person, or to lead a better life." The 58 million McCain voters might say that the virtue and moral beauty displayed by Obama at his rallies was an airy promise of future virtue and moral beauty. And that the soaring feeling his voters had of having made the world a better place consisted of the act of placing their index fingers on a touch screen next to the words Barack Obama. They might be on to something. Haidt's research shows that elevation is good at provoking a desire to make a difference but not so good at motivating real action. But he says the elevation effect is powerful nonetheless. "It does appear to change people cognitively; it opens hearts and minds to new possibilities. This will be crucial for Obama."

And how does it work, neurologically speaking?

Keltner believes certain people are "vagal superstars"—in the lab he has measured people who have high vagus nerve activity. "They respond to stress with calmness and resilience, they build networks, break up conflicts, they're more cooperative, they handle bereavement better." He says being around these people makes other people feel good. "I would guarantee Barack Obama is off the charts. Just bring him to my lab."

"Vagal superstars": brilliant, or completely batty. Or both.

speaking off-the-cuff: the really "competitive, scary thing"

I'm not blogging this from a political perspective--I'm exhausted by this year's election marathon, and am saving my energy for more important things, like finishing up my $700 billion bailout plan that promises to put America's banks, lending houses, and realtors on steadier footing, and I'm not going to say too much about it, except that it involves Donald Trump, Bill O'Reilly, and a cross-country death race--so I'm approaching this purely from a speech coach's standpoint.

This is the worst impromptu speech I've ever heard. Sure, it's more coherent than "U.S. Americans," but the potential importance of the source determines the ranking.



[Thanks to Jason Kuznicki]

Added: Christopher Beam's advice is quite good.

a cure for the common rhino

Today, illustrating how seemingly disparate words can be joined at the root, I employed "carat" and "rhinoceros." Each derives from the Greek keras, for "horn." "Rhino," I explained, means "nose." "For example, a rhinovirus is the common cold, right?"

Right, said students.

I'm not much for magical thinking, but I may have cursed myself.

more election rhetoric

Slate's Juliet Lapidos points out that antimetabole, right now, is hot:

John McCain, in his Thursday convention address, deployed the technique in this admirably honest line: "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us." The audience roared. McCain's antimetabole echoed one used by his running mate, Sarah Palin, the night before: "In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change." The inversion of change and career, forming a crisscross structure, gives the line a powerful one-two-punch feel. During his speech last week, Bill Clinton recycled an antimetabole he'd first used in the 1990s: "People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power." The turn of phrase pleased the delegates—they clapped and hooted—but a far less famous speaker can lay claim to the most successful rhetorical switcheroo of the Democratic Convention. Barney Smith, a regular guy from Indiana who lost his job to outsourcing in 2004, took the stage at Invesco field and produced this zinger: "We need a president who puts the Barney Smiths before the Smith Barneys."

It's nice to see rhetoric getting the attention it deserves during this election year. It probably stems from the fact that, for once, we have some halfway decent public speakers in the mix--Bush vs. Kerry was, rhetorically, a parched desert.

Added:Peter Wall makes his own observation.