Planet Utah

Words with Friends: two questions...UPDATED

Like a lot of you, I'm hooked on Words with Friends. (If you want to play me, my username is DBDIM.) I'm still learning the ropes, so I'm looking for input on a couple of different scenarios.

First scenario: an opponent starts playing words like PENUCHIS, PONGID, AND NEIFS. (Someone has played all three of those on me in a game I've got going right now.) So, here's my question: Do you challenge an opponent who plays words like this, that is, do you use WWF's text feature to say, in effect, "Hey, are these words coming out of your head, or are they coming out of a word generator on the Web?" 

I should note that avid Scrabble players actually know, and use, words like penunchis, pongid, and neifs. So it's always possible that what I've got on my hands is a Scrabble whiz. HOWEVER, I'm currently leading Ms. Penuchis by nine points, and I am not a Scrabble whiz. The craziest word I've played in this game is DOTERS (people who dote). So it seems likely to me that I'm working with an average player who's juicing (i.e., using performance-enhancing word sources). 

Second scenario: you're looking at the board, and the only words you can play are words that may or may not exist. Let's say, for example, that your opponent has played the word NARY. You have a "T," an "R," and an "I," among other letters, so you say, "I know BINARY is a word; maybe TRINARY is a word, too." You lay down TRINARY, and WWF tells you that it's not a word. So then you say, "Okay, how about RINARY?" Again, no sale.

If you do this often enough in enough different scenarios, eventually you'll come up with a word that really exists...one that you didn't know about before...one for which you will earn points.

So, here's my question: Is this plug 'n play approach ethical? 

The comment box is now open...

UPDATE: After failing to find "penuchis" in any online dictionary, I asked Ms. Penuchis what the word meant. She did not respond, and then--adding injury to insult--she proceeded to play ANABAS. I then trampled her with a ZEBRA. Now I lead by 32.

UPDATE 2: Next, she played SWITH, and I played ERECT. I lead by 42 with six letters left. 

UPDATE 3: She just played QIS, and I played TEEL. I lead by 45 with two tiles left. I am also a colossal dork for recording all of this.

UPDATE 4: She played LOO, and I played HIKER. I lead by 50 with one tile--and a stern lecture--left.

UPDATE 5: She played DEN, and I played EM. I won by a score of 367 to 309. No lecture...just the peaceful sleep of the righteous.

Question for Romney and Huntsman

I believe that some of the fundamental tenets of Mormonism are testable...and in fact have been tested...and in the testing have been shown to be false. Specifically, the Book of Mormon's entire story about pre-Columbian America--a story on which the faith rests, in substantial measure--has been shown by secular scientists and historians to run counter to the best available evidence, which evidence is pretty damn good.

In my mind, then, to accept the version of history that appears in the Book of Mormon is, in intellectual terms, roughly equivalent to rejecting the theory of evolution.

Soooooo, just as it would be fair game to ask a presidential candidate to defend his or her rejection of evolutionary theory, I think it's fair game to ask Mitt Romney and John Huntsman to defend their acceptance of Mormon history.

I'll see if I can get a press credential...

Footnote: By the way, one or both of them might very well say, "Actually, I don't think the Book of Mormon gets pre-Columbian American history entirely right. As you know, all religions contain elements of myth, and fable, and pure invention. In my mind, though, the value of religion doesn't depend on a completely accurate presentation of historical facts. Instead, the value of religion depends on the connection it helps you make to God, to your family, and to the broader community. By that standard, Mormonism has been immensely valuable to me."

Who just got goosebumps?

Anklenote: Here's another possible answer, which probably applies to most people when it comes to the more controversial claims of their respective faiths: "I've never really thought about it that much. I was always taught that it was true, but I've never researched it or anything, if that's what you mean."

That one, though, isn't going to give anyone goosebumps.

Classic Krugman

I've always had two problems with Paul Krugman.

First, he is, by his own definition, a hack. That is, his issue positions are utterly predictable and virtually immutable--hallmarks of the ideological sell-out.

Krugman never says anything that surprises you; you never read him and think, "Gosh, I wouldn't have thought in a million years he'd defend that guy, or support this position, or criticize this person...and yet he just did."

Nope, that never happens. That's what hackery looks like.

Second, he's intellectually dishonest. Like Robert Reich, if he needs to disregard the facts or apply double-standards to make his case, he will. 

Here's the latest example, from his column on Paul Ryan's Medicare plan:

"...the claim that the plan would keep Medicare as we know it intact for Americans currently 55 or older is highly dubious. True, that’s what the plan promises, but if you think about the political dynamics that would emerge once Americans born a year or two too late realize how much better a deal slightly older Americans are getting, you realize that this is a promise unlikely to be fulfilled."

That may or may not be a valid point. But if it's a valid point, it also applies to Obamacare. Krugman might very have written, "When you think about the dynamics that will ensue when the Obama administration starts making deep cuts to Medicare provider payments, and when unelected bureaucrats start deciding that the program will no longer pay for certain procedures that patients and providers both value, you realize that most of the purported Medicare savings under the president's reform are unlikely to materialize." (By the way, a couple of guys over at the WSJ make that very case right here.)

But Krugman doesn't say that. He doesn't say, "Neither party's health care reform proposal is serious." Instead, he gives President Obama abundant credit for the projected cost savings in his proposal: "Mr. Obama...has done more to rein in long-run deficits than any previous president. And if his opponents were serious about those deficits, they’d be backing his actions and calling for more; instead, they’ve been screaming about death panels." 

In short, Krugman himself is not an honest, serious participant in the civic discourse (which is not to say that he isn't taken seriously). He is, as I said, a hack.

Footnote: Remember Jared Lee Loughner? A judge just found him too batshit crazy to stand trial for his Tucson shooting spree. All the available evidence indicates that it was this same batshit craziness that prompted him to engage in the shooting spree in the first place. If Krugman had any intellectual honor, if he were capable of learning and evolving, if he believed in intellectual honesty, he would now apologize for blaming the shooting on Sarah Palin, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh.

Well, he hasn't apologized...or even acknowledged that perhaps he spoke too hastily...so what does that tell you?

Robert Reich, you lie!

Robert Reich is a guy who doesn't let the truth get in the way of a good story. The first edition of his memoirs infamously "described dramatic episodes and dialogue that did not match the record of C-Span tapes and transcripts of Washington meetings," according to the NYT. Funny thing is, Reich's version of events "did not match" in ways that always made him look heroic and smart, and his opponents look petty and stupid.

Keep that in mind when you read Reich's description of Paul Ryan's response to critics of his Medicare plan:

Ryan calls it "demagoguery," accusing (Congressional candidate Kathy) Hochul and her fellow Democrats of trying to "scare seniors into thinking that their current benefits are being affected."

Well, Ryan's got a point here, seeing as how his Medicare reform plan doesn't take effect for a decade...and so has no effect on the "current benefits" of seniors...and in fact will NEVER affect the benefits of anyone who is 55 or older.

How does Reich respond to this? By writing this:

Seniors have every right to be scared. (Ryan's) plan would eviscerate Medicare by privatizing it with vouchers that would fall further and further behind the rising cost of health insurance. 

Actually, seniors have no right to be scared; Paul Ryan's plan DOES NOT AFFECT THEIR MEDICARE BENEFITS, unless by "seniors" you mean "people who will be 65 in 2021." But by that logic, a three-year-old is a teenager.

Of course, Reich knows this. But the truth doesn't serve his purposes, so he simply pretends that it is something that it is not.

The border security analogy on taxes--it's brilliant!

Republicans are going to have to make their way through the primary season making the flatly implausible assertion that the budget can be balanced without raising taxes. There's a way to do it, though, without sounding completely detached from reality: Say that a tax increase cannot, should not, and will not be an appropriate subject for discussion until: (a) major entitlement reform has taken place; and (b) every possible dime in savings has been wrung out of domestic discretionary spending. So, you're not saying "never"; you're saying, "Not until some more important stuff takes place."

This is very similar to discussions of immigration reform, amnesty, etc. Smart politicians say, "We may need to talk about amnesty, liberalized immigration policies, and so on. But the time to have that conversation is AFTER the border has been secured."

"Hate"

When I was in California a few weeks ago, my sister-in-law told me that Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood because they "hate" women. My aunt recently said that she doesn't like Chris Christie because he "hates" teachers. And during the collective bargaining protests in Wisconsin, a school nurse told a reporter that she wanted to know why Governor Walker "hated" her and her fellow public employees.

So, what does "hate" really mean? Here's the definition: "to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest."

By that definition, I don't think any mainstream American politician actually hates any group of Americans.* I mean, hate is an extreme, intense emotion. It's the sort of thing that's reserved for child molesters and animal-torturers, not for the New Jersey Education Association. 

So, why all the hate talk? I have a few theories.

One, maybe people are just imitating stuff that they hear other people say. A while ago, for example, a few people started talking about "kabuki theater" in American politics. Now everyone uses that phrase. Back in the 1980s, somebody coined the phrase "deficits as far as the eye can see." After that, it became nearly impossible to talk about deficits without using those words. So, maybe "hate" is the same way...a few opinion leaders started using it, and other people are just imitating it, thinking that it's the standard way of describing a politician's posture toward a disfavored group.

Two, the people who use the word "hate" are overly certain of the purity and correctness of their position. The logic here goes something like this: "The teachers in New Jersey are obviously doing God's work. They're overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. There's no rational basis for opposing them on anything. The only basis for opposition would, therefore, have to be an emotional one--something like pure hatred, for example. So, Chris Christie must hate teachers."

Finally, invoking hate is a cheap, easy way of villifying an opponent. If I don't like Chris Christie, I might be able to get you to dislike him, too, simply by noting his ostensible hatred for teachers. Here's how your thinking might go: "What kind of a jackass is Chris Christie? I mean, I don't agree with everything the teacher unions do, but for a guy to actually hate teachers...well, he must really be a bad person and a bad governor." 

*I do believe, however, that there are large numbers of Americans--just average Janes and Joes--who actually hate certain mainstream politicians and organized political groups. And I think that's a BIG problem in our politics.

How Tim Pawlenty could pull it off

Seven or eight years ago, while grocery shopping, I met an awesome girl named Cynthia. When I met Cynthia, she had a boyfriend, but as I got to know her a little better over the course of a few months, it seemed like she had some doubts about him. Even so, I never tried to undermine the boyfriend, or prey on Cynthia's doubts, or anything like that. Instead, Cynthia and I just carried on a standard email friendship--no in-person meetings, no phone calls, just friendly emails every two or three days.

Well, one day I got an email from Cynthia saying that she and the boyfriend were no longer together. She wanted to know, too, if I would like to get together for drinks.

Why am I telling you this story? Mainly because it makes me seem attractive and socially successful. But also because Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are the boyfriend, Cynthia is the Republican primary voter, and Tim Pawlenty is me.

Huh? 

Early in the Republican primary season, I think you'll see a big bloc of support coalescing around Mitt Romney, and another big bloc of support coalescing around a Christian conservative (could be Huckabee, if he runs, or maybe Rick Santorum, or possibly Sarah Palin, too, though I don't think she's running). This will shock a majority of the Republican primary electorate, who will start thinking, "Really? Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee? Those are the choices? If we just keep going the way we're going, we're going to end up with one of those two guys? Ugh..." (Both candidates have obvious, serious flaws, but both have a core of support, too, so they should start out the primary season strong.)

At that point, I think nervous Republicans will start looking for an acceptable alternative...and I think Tim Pawlenty could very well be that alternative.

Pawlenty, like me, will have been hanging around, being all "Minnesota nice," being all gubernatorially competent, being all Sam's Clubby, just waiting for his chance.

And I think he'll probably get it.

Footnote: Whatever happened to Cynthia? After a few dates with me, she started seeing John Thune--or rather, started seeing another guy that I didn't even know was in the running...

Unsolicited advice for Mitt Romney

Mitt's not my guy--right now, I'd say I'm supporting Tim Pawlenty, unless Mitch Daniels gets in...in that case, I might switch to Mitch (I've established legal ownership of that phrase, so you have to pay me a quarter ever time you use it)--but I think he's getting kind of a raw deal on the healthcare issue. So, I'm going to give him some free advice.

First, he's got to stand by what he did, that is, he can't say that if he knew then what he knows now, he never would have supported healthcare reform in Massachusetts. Why? He's already got a reputation as a flip-flopper, as someone who changes his positions as circumstances dictate. So, he's gotta own the policy.

Second, he needs to make a pretty simple federalism argument: "When we passed the healthcare law in Massachusetts, it's because we believed it would work in one state--Massachusetts.  Massachusetts is a relatively small, relatively wealthy state with a very small population of uninsured individuals and an excellent healthcare infrastructure. The program we created was designed to work in those circumstances. I would no sooner have imposed that model on every state than I would have insisted that all 50 states adopt Massachusetts' tax code, or its university system, or its welfare programs. But that's exactly what the Obama administration did, which is why I opposed the healthcare reform bill."

Here's another approach. It's more defensive, but a little fresher, too: "Imagine you're the governor of a small state, and you pass an education reform bill that you think is good for your state. A couple of years later, a presidential administration comes along and says, 'Gosh, we really like that education reform bill. We think EVERY state should have to adopt it.' Well, of course the states are going to scream bloody murder, as they should; it's not up to the federal government to dictate how each state manages education policy. But ask yourself, who should they be screaming at? The president who's trying to force everybody to adopt a one-size-fits-all education policy, or the guy who passed that policy in his state because he thought it was good for his state...a guy who never once suggested that what was right for his state was right for every other state, too?"

Lingering "macaca" mystery

Now that George Allen is running for his old Senate seat, you're going to be hearing the word "macaca" all over again. 

This is one of those political scandals that REALLY puzzles me. I mean, you pretty much have to believe one of two highly implausible stories.

The first story is that Sen. Allen made up a gibberish nickname for an opposition researcher who had been following him around, videotaping everything he said, waiting for him to screw up. (Courtly southern gentleman that he is, the good senator ultimately obliged.) And the gibberish nickname he came up with was "macaca."

Okay, so, maybe I'm the weird one here, but I have never, ever in my life made up a gibberish nickname for anyone, nor have I ever heard of anyone making up a gibberish nickname for someone. That's because the whole point of a nickname is that it has some meaning. You don't just say to a friend (or an enemy) "I think I'll call you 'sildafez' from now on...no reason in particular. I just scrambled together some letters and came up with that. Hope you like it, because that's your new handle."

Ridiculous, right?

The alternative, though, is that Allen specifically chose "macaca" because the oppo researcher was an Indian American (i.e., a kid with ancestors in India), and, in the words of Wikipedia, "'macaca' is a pejorative epithet used by francophone colonialists in Central Africa's Belgian Congo for the native population."

Obvious place to begin on this one: The researcher was Indian American, not Belgian Congolese American; Allen is not a francophone colonialist; and it's no longer the 1900s.

Beyond that, the point of using a racial epithet is that people KNOW it's an epithet. It causes pain because its pejorative connation is understood. Recognizing that, what good does dropping a "macaca" bomb do you? 

The supposed smoking gun here, of course, is that Allen's mother is of French Tunisian descent (Tunisia/Congo; potato/potahto). So, naturally, she must have learned the word "macaca" as a child, must have used it freely around George when he was a boy, and must have modeled the acceptability of using the term to describe anyone with dark skin. And of course, George picked up the word and just never stopped using it...because nobody ever taught him that it was bad or wrong, and because he never learned any other words you could use to put down someone different from you.

This is pretty plausible to me. After all, I refer to people I don't like as "Jackeens." Just to lay out the whole chain of causation here, my mom's ancestors were from rural Ireland, and people in rural Ireland used to refer to Dubliners as "Jackeens" ("city slickers," very roughly).  And yeah, I use the word to this day, even though across the entirety of the English-speaking world, only a handful of professors at Trinity College know what it means, even though I'm the ONLY guy who still uses the word, and even though my usage of it is at odds with its historical meaning. It all makes perfect sense, right?

As I said, two competing--and utterly implausible--explanations. The mystery remains.

Enhanced patdown!

Yesterday at LAX, I went through the full body imager, then had my hands swabbed, then got the enhanced patdown, then had swabs applied to all my carry-on baggage (inside and out), my driver's license, my boarding pass, my belt, and my shoes. And you know what they found? Nothing. 

I would have been okay with this if: (a) it were a random procedure applied to, say, every fifth person; or (b) at the end of it, the TSA people had said, "Okay, we figured out the problem. Did you eat a cinammon bun for breakfast? Sometimes the machines pick up the cinammon residue because it mimics a substance that's used in making biological weapons."

No such satisfaction.

First, I definitely was not subjected to this treatment at random. I was subject to the treatment because: (a) the full body scan showed something in my pockets--even though there was nothing in my pockets, a fact verified by the TSA agents who, naturally, checked my pockets; and (b) the swab-reading machine said I had suspicious residue on my hands, even though I hadn't held anything more suspicious that morning than a Diet Coke.

Second, once the process was done, the TSA guy who frisked me and my luggage just shrugged and said, "Those machines are super-sensitive. Sorry for the delay, and thanks for your patience." No other explanation.

So, I know what you're wondering: How was the enhanced patdown? No big deal. Yeah, the guy ran the backs of his hands over my ass, and he ran both of his hands up both of my legs. He also ran both of his hands over the front of my pants...more in what I would call the "pocket area" than the groin area, but there was incidental contact with the groinal region. And yeah, he ran his fingers around the inside of my waistband. 

As I said, no big deal. I didn't feel sexually assaulted, nor did I feel embarrassed, even though all of this was done in full view of anyone who cared to watch (I declined the offer to have it done in a private room). In truth, my recent colonics were far more degrading.

Mostly I felt angry that I was made even later for a flight for which I was already late...and all for no reason in particular. 

Footnote: The last time I made alarms go off--literally--both the walkthrough magnometer and the lady with the wand said that I was packing metal. I said I was not. You know what though? I was--in the form of metal collar tabs. Totally forget about them...so in that case, the machines were absolutely right.

Yesterday, though, the machines were being malevolent, and were using human beings to further their ends...yes, EXACTLY like The Matrix.