In a recent New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell examines the recent trend of local governments out lawing pit bull-like dogs (see here, for instance). Gladwell makes a case that the fundamental problem isn’t with specific dog breeds, but with the type of people who want to own bad-ass dogs; pit bulls are just the current popular breed for such people.
The problem for governments, Gladwell points out, is that it’s easier to make laws based on generalizations about dog breeds than it is based on generalizations about people. In regard to a recent pit bull attack, Gladwell concludes:

It was a textbook dog-biting case: unneutered, ill-trained, charged-up dogs, with a history of aggression and an irresponsible owner, somehow get loose, and set upon a small child. The dogs had already passed through the animal bureaucracy of Ottawa, and the city could easily have prevented the second attack with the right kind of generalization—a generalization based not on breed but on the known and meaningful connection between dangerous dogs and negligent owners. But that would have required someone to track down Shridev Café, and check to see whether he had bought muzzles, and someone to send the dogs to be neutered after the first attack, and an animal-control law that insured that those whose dogs attack small children forfeit their right to have a dog. It would have required, that is, a more exacting set of generalizations to be more exactingly applied. It’s always easier just to ban the breed.

My hero Jimmy Carter took some swipes at President Bush at the funeral of Coretta Scott King:

In an apparent swipe at the domestic eavesdropping programme authorised by Mr Bush as part of the war against terror, Mr Carter recalled how Mrs King and her husband had been the targets of secret government wiretapping.
“It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated, and they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance,” he said.
Mr Carter also referred to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as evidence that the struggle for civil rights was not complete. “We only have to recall the colour of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi who are most devastated by Katrina to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans,” he said.

There was some discussion over on MetaFilter about whether this was the appropriate forum for such criticisms, and I have to agree with those MeFites who think that these comments were not only appropriate but a tribute to what Mr. and Mrs. King stand for. For instance:

MLK and Coretta were all about telling the truth to power. MLK paid the ultimate price for doing so. I think Coretta would have been absolutely thrilled that Carter stood up and spoke strongly for civil rights at her funeral. Her entire life was devoted to criticizing the establishment and pushing it to do better. For this woman, in this time and place, what better possible way could there be to say goodbye?

I filled out a form on a web site this morning, and I noticed the date below:

It’s an awfully long time past the year 2000 for something like that to still be showing up.

Physicians tell the lessons they’ve learned from working in the ER. For instance:

Stay away from people named “Some Guy” or “This One Dude”, because they for whatever reason, just punch someone in the face or hit them with a crowbar and run off. If I see them on the street, I cross the street to get away from them.

Never, ever leave flashlights, shampoo bottles, beer bottles or any long, circular object on the floor because someday you will fall on it and it will somehow, work its way up your rectum.

If you have taken 7 home pregnancy tests that are all positive, and you come into the emergency department…chances are that test too will come back positive.

(via BoingBoing)

I did my graudate education in literary/cultural theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which means I was thoroughly immersed in deconstruction and post-structuralism: truth is relative, our thinking and reality are limited by language, human relations are all about power, etc. I was hit with Derrida in my first semester of grad school and the theories of Michel Foucault figured prominently in my dissertation.
Some would find it odd, then, that I became a Christian in the midst of this education, what with faith’s appeal to universal truth and the institutional nature of Christianity. I find deconstruction and post-structural theories interesting, useful and basically sound, but in retrospect, I think my embrace of faith represented an ultimate rejection of those theories. If you completely embrace those theories, the end result is hopelessness: we are each stuck in our own little reality–which itself might be an illusion–unable to genuinely communicate with others.
I guess I refused to go that far. I wanted and want to believe that there is some meaning to life. I’m not even sure that it’s God, but in a community of faith, I found a group of people who also want to believe that it’s possible to connect with others in a meaningful way (whatever that means).
Oh, I feel great ambivalence about the institutional nature of the church. And it’s damn hard to cut through all the crap that constitutes our daily lives to get to know others intimately, but at least the members of a faith community profess to believe it’s possible to do so. It’s that belief–that faith–that counts. And occasionally, I actually glimpse that connection.

I care a whit about football and have never watched any professional football game, but I noticed something this week: I guess you have to pay for rights to use the term ‘Super Bowl’ in your advertising. I noticed a sign outside a Luby’s yesterday, reminding people to order food for ‘the big game on Feb. 5’, and last night I saw a similar McDonald’s TV commercial also talking about the unnamed ‘big game.’