The Random Yak

Three locations for public dissent were established at the Beijing Olympics, at the demand of the West and the Olympic organizing committees, but they all went unused.  Remarkable.  People protested against China en masse during the Olympic torch relay, but not at the Olympic Games themselves.  There was no public dissent in China during the Olympics.  Everything was too perfect.  True, foreigners who applied to use the free speech areas were sent out of the country, and Chinese citizens who tried to use them for peaceful protest were sentenced to work camps.  But, hey, they can dissent there until they die.  Dissent is permitted, just in the proper places, where it can be promptly, harshly and properly punished. 

Barack Obama does not know when human life begins, he says, but he is emphatic that there is a basic human right to kill it, even if it is born alive after an intended abortion.  The “Obama Nation” people should contract their spelling to ”Obamination.”

Nancy Pelosi, as the result of her self-proclaimed extensive study, has declared that the Roman Catholic Church is undecided as to when human life begins.  All of the Popes back to Peter have said “at the moment of conception,” but what did they know?  Surveys say that women politicians are perceived as more compassionate than males.  That is, compassionate toward everyone except some helpless infant living inside one of them.

Not Olympics, to boot, as in extra for free (lagniappe, as they say in New Orleans, and about nowhere else).  No, Olympics to boot, as in events to kick out of the next Olympic games.  Suggestions? 

Gone already are men’s baseball and women’s softball.  Why?  Not a wide enough variety of nations play these games.  Europe does not have baseball/softball, nor Africa, and only Japan and Korea play them in Asia.  Besides, baseball does not draw the best American players, whose season continues though the games.  In my judgment, Major League Baseball should have scheduled its All-Star break during the Olympic games each fourth year and sent its best players to the Olympics as ambassadors for the sport.  They might  become international superstars, like the NBA basketball players.  But too late now.

By the way, the rule of baseball should be changed so that a player who is walked intentionally for a second time during a game should get a two-base walk.

As for women’s softball, a lot of games are mercied, since the scores are too lopsided, and the US has won every gold medal since the sport was introduced into the Olympic games, reason enough for some to kick it out — but bad timing, since today/yesterday Japan beat the US for the 2008 softball gold medal. 

Ok, 13 events to boot from the summer Olympics. 

1.  Walking.  Puhleeze.  Have you ever seen anything so unnatural and so uncomfortable? 

2.  BMX. 

3.  Tennis.  We already have international tournaments that duplicate the tennis matches, and it’s difficult  to believe that now, this week, the players are playing for their countries and not for themselves.

4.  Cricket.  Well, if the British are planning to add cricket for the 2012 London games, let the Yak be the first to complain.  (Cricket was in the 1900 Olympics.) (So was surf lifesaving, for that matter.  But we get enough, too much, of the beach babes now in beach volleyball, which actually is a competitive event.)  Once when I was in London I picked up the sports section of the London Times and read a story on the recent cricket matches.  I literally could not understand anything it said.  It’s absolutely un-American.  Adding rugby?  I could go for that.  (Rugby was in the games of 1900, 1908, 1920, 1924.)  Australian football?  Close, but no.

5.  Artistic gymnastics.  Ribbons? ‘nough said.

6.  Rhythmic gymnastics.  This is dancercize, musical exercise routines transported from your local fitness center.

7.  Synchronized springboard diving.  Was this invented just to pad the Chinese medal count?

8.  Synchronized platform diving.  Was this invented just to pad the Chinese medal count?

9.  Boxing.  The scoring changes since the 1970’s have made boxing unwatchable.  Back in the old days I actually paid to attend Olympic boxing live.  Now I’m glad its on that other tv channel.

10.  Dressage.  (RYak will kill me for this.)  The skills in dressage are wonderful, but they belong in the animal Olympics.  This event should go the way of the once-popular chariot racing.  Why not include polo, or horse diving?  Rodeo sports?  Besides, women compete equally against men in dressage, which proves it is not a competitive human sport. 

11.  Team handball.  This is water polo for people who can’t swim, that is, with the hard part taken out.

12.  Women’s weightlifting.  I mean, the guts on the men are hard enough to stomach.

13.  Field hockey.  Maybe if you could play it standing straight up . . .

How about demonstration sports to add?  Like, say, ballooning, mountain climbing, boules (French bowling), Nascar racing or hotdog eating?

Had enough of the Olympics?  Before you leave, be sure to watch the best Olympics movie ever made, Chariots of Fire (1981), four Oscars, including Best Picture.

When a yak breeds with a cow (random sexual selection being an ill-conceived Darwinian idea evidently practiced by some adventuresome, or blind, or poppy-eating yaks) the resulting offspring is a dzo.  Dzo (female dzomo) are larger and stronger than either yaks or cattle, but like most cross-species hybrids, they are sterile.  Since such cross-species hybrids cannot reproduce, they do not create new life forms or advance evolution, showing that Darwinian evolutionary sexual selectionists do not know much about anything.  Females, called dzomo, are fertile, but they can only mate with nonhybrid yaks (or bulls), thereby successively diluting the shared genetic materials until the herd returns to standard yak (or cattle), which actually is what natural selection proves, not selection of new species from old, but selection of old, standard forms of a species in preference to any new variations that occasionally crop up.  Despite evolutionary theory, when species try to intermix to move evolution along, the result is not survival of the species but eventual re-standardization of the species and termination of the hybrid line.  Dzo that’s that.

On the November ballot in California is an initiative, the Marriage Amendment, to restore marriage to its historical meaning of one man and one woman and to reverse the elitist “Do what we say or else!” dictatorial order of the California Supreme Court last May in the Marriage Cases, which held that four Supreme Court justices have power to overrule history, legal precedent, the will of the people and natural moral law and can declare that marriage is for any two people who want to live together. 

We used to joke about the courts turning into the Morality Police, but its no joke now.  You remember how the Left once pontificated against the conservatives on subjects like pornography by declaring “You can’t legislate morality”?  Well, as always, they were hypocrites, using language to achieve desired results, not to speak truth.  When the opportunity came for the leftist California Supreme Court to legislate morality to suit the personal tastes of the justices concerning same-sex marriage, they did not hesitate and no one on the Left charged them with improperly imposing their morality on others.

Which brings us to the commercial now running on television in California during the Olympics opposing the Marriage Amendment, (titled) “Let California Ring.”  It shows a heterosexual couple at a wedding being impeded by all sorts of obstacles and nasty looking people and it asks something like “How would you feel if you could not marry the person you love?”  Marriage to these people is not a social institution of immense cultural significance.  It is a prize for lovers.  Unlike opposite sex relationships that produce children and need marriage laws to protect them, same sex relationship are solely for self-fulfillment and can be satisfied by civil unions, which the law already provides. 

Don’t be fooled by the touchy-feely ad that calls you a meany if you will not vote to let these nice same sex people marry.  Notice they do not even show a same sex couple?  If they did, people might see the real issue.

Move over “in a New York minute,” there’s a new shortest minute contender, proclaimed at the Olympics last Tuesday.  An announcer covering men’s beach volleyball, noting the problems a defender at the net was having trying to block a particular opponent’s spike, said profoundly that “It takes a minute to adjust to his unusual style.”  A minute?!  Try a nanosecond.  A minute to these cat-quick athletes is an eternity, match over.  In fact, these players’ hand-eye coordination reactions obviously move faster than a professional announcer’s brain-mouth reaction time.  Or maybe this announcer is the imprecise type of speaker (thus in the wrong profession) who asks you to wait a moment by saying “Just a sec” and then takes all afternoon to get back to you.  Announcers like that are one reason I record the Olympics and watch later with my commercial-skip and fast forward capabilities at the ready, and why I often watch with no sound, to avoid the clutter of nonsensical chattering.  My ear-finger-mute reaction time has hair-trigger sensitivity.

There were no scientists before 1833.  That’s when William Whewell, a British geologist, invented the term “scientist.”  Before that we only had people who investigated things and published their findings.  The term “scientist” became popular after Charles Darwin, and today scientists have limited “science” to the investigation of physical explanations for the natural world, mechanistic materialism, even when the best evidence indicates the existence of nonphysical (spiritual, “super”-natural) causes.  To science today, the answer is materialistic, even if its wrong — because that what “science” means. 

We’ve all seen those old westerns in which the villains commit a crime and then race for the border of the county, the state or the United States to escape the jurisdiction of the police.  Well, if you haven’t, you were deprived as a child. 

Anyway, what should the law do when a California Highway Patrol officer spots and follows a stolen van which is then driven by the thief onto federal lands, outside the jurisidiction of the state of California, specifically the Camp Pendleton Marine base?  Can the California police officer arrest the suspect there?  Can the suspect be charged with evading arrest, if he drives the van off the base but still on federal lands, to evade arrest by the state police officer? 

Judge for Yourself. (more…)

With all of the swimming records and praise going to Michael Phelps and others at the Olympics, and the controversy about the new Speedo swimsuits, perhaps we should recall Janet Evans and what made her so spectacularly fast so long ago, with no artificial aids. 

On August 20, 1989, in Tokyo, Japan, Janet Evans set the world long course record in the 800 meters at 8:16:22, and that record is still floating at the top of the water charts.

A zenana is not a harem after all.  Who knew?  From the Persion word zena, meaning “woman,” zenana simply means the part of a house (in Asian cultures) which only women are permitted to enter.

So, is that like, uh, the kitchen?  the nursery?  the laundry?  Yaks, not living in houses, find some concepts difficult to grasp, particularly virile male yaks (well, actually, that’s redundant).  So, when a male human wants something from a female human he goes outside this mysterious zenana and bleats, or what?

Let us now praise famous men and women (even those the Random Yak often decries). 

The Random Yak heartily commends the California Superintendent of Pubic Instruction, the California Department of Education, the Caifornia Attorney General, the Los Angeles Unified School District, and the California Court of Appeal — sincerely. 

On August 8, 2008, the California Court of Appeal declared that the California Constitution and laws permit home schooling.  Specifically, California law permits home schools to register as private schools, and parents may teach their children at home without the requirement of a California teaching credential.  166,000 students in California, and more to come, will benefit from this eminently correct legal ruling.  The Random Yak would like to take credit for the decision of the Court of Appeal, since its reasoning and holding track an amicus brief filed in that action written by the Maniyak, but the reality is that the praise goes largely to the good sense and decency shown by the the California Superintendent of Public Instruction, the California Department of Education, the California Attorney General and the Los Angeles Unified School District.  In its opinion, the Court of Appeal, having determined that home schools are permitted under the present law, indicated that its conclusion drew strong support and confirmation from the fact that these governmental entities agreed.  The Court wrote:

“In this case, we sought amicus briefing from the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Department of Education. In their letter brief, they expressed their opinion that, ‘it is legally permissible for [parents] to qualify as a private school and teach their children in their own home.’ Both the Governor and Attorney General agree with this interpretation, as does the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). While the interpretation of the private school exemption is ultimately an issue for the courts, we find it significant that education and enforcement officials at both the state and local levels agree that home schools may constitute private schools.”  Slip op., page 12.

Blessings on all your houses.  We would name you all collectively “Yak of the Week,” but for reasons we ourselves have never fully comprehended, this designation is for ridicule rather than honor (confusing, since yaks are highly respected creatures, which is why we live on mountains, in the rarefied air, closer to God).  In the alternative, please accept our humble thanks.

In re Jonathan L. (August 8, 2008).

Winning the war in Irag would almost certainly spell defeat for John McCain and the Republicans in the November 2008 election.  History says so.  Winston Churchill and the Tory party, having magnificently led Great Britain through World War 2, faced a parliamentary election in July 1945, barely two months after the European war ended and while the war in Asia continued.  The British electorate expressed its heartfelt thanks to its world-renowned leader and his party by turning them out of office. 

Democracies hate war, even successful, ethically justifiable wars.  The best strategy that Barak Obama and the Democrats could pursue in the coming election is not to declare the Iraq war lost but to declare it won.  The American people would elect Obama President in a landslide, as an act of contrition and moral cleansing. 

The leading authority on correctness of citations in legal writing is the Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, published by the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review.  The Bluebook tells what must and must not be written in formal, official legalese.  One might consider it as a corollary to the authoritative word on social behavior once represented by Emily Post’s Etiquette.

So, what a surprise to find this astonishing sentence on the Bluebook website extolling the current edition of this venerable rulebook:  “Occasionally errors or clarifications must be made to Bluebook content.” 

That’s what it says.  “Occasionally errors . . . must be made to Bluebook content.”  Oh, well, if the Bluebook deems that making errors occasionally is necessary, so be it.  But what is troubling is that nowhere in the Bluebook is the reader told when to make these errors, or which errors to make.  Is it enough merely to mispell a word (such as “misspell”), or is making it needful obviously backwardness syntactically to composition?

Emily Post spoke of necessary errors also (if my memory serves), such as the hostess “accidentally” tipping over a water glass when a guest has caused a spill, to divert embarrassment from the guest in the situation. 

Are legal writing errors in the Bluebook needed for a similar purpose, that is, to make a verbal gaffe to distract attention from irrational or unconstitutional legal arguments being proffered?  Perhaps a later edition of the Bluebook will provide a fuller explanation.

Meanwhile, this we can say:  When making errors, take care to err correctly, by the book.

Footnote: The Bluebook “necessary error” language can be found at http://www.legalbluebook.com/Public/Help.aspx section 6.2 (last visited August 8, 2008).

The sages tell us that every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up knowing that it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be killed.

The sages say also that every morning in Africa a lion wakes up knowing that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death.

So, the sages warn, whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun rises in the morning, you’d better start running.

As for myself, today I was slower than the slowest gazelle — that is to say, I got a bit behind.

August 6 marks the anniversary of the explosion of the first atomic bomb in human warfare, over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, sixty-three years ago today. On August 9 the second, and so far the last, atomic bomb detonated in warfare fell on Nagasaki.

Approximately 100,000 people were killed and another 100,000 injured by these two bombs, at least half of the victims were civilians.

Was the use of these nuclear weapons justified, legally or morally? This question raises three levels of response: (1) First, the use of nuclear weapons in the context of the Second World War, between Japan and the United States; (2) second, the use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances; and (3) third, the morality of war itself.

Clearly the use of atomic weapons ended the war early and prevented the loss of perhaps a million of more lives of Allied soldiers. But is that enough to justify their use? Are atomic weapons so inherently colossal that the civilian collateral damage will always be too great? Does use of nuclear weapons necessarily mean acceptance of the “total war” concept of attacking not only the enemy’s military but its population as well?

Or, would smaller, tactical nuclear weapons be permitted but not the huge A-bombs used in WW2?

Does the environmental and radiation/genetic damage specially associated with nuclear weapons make them inherently unjustified?

Or, are people entitled to use all means necessary to protect their safety and freedom? As Patrick Henry declared for Americans at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, “Give me liberty, or give me death.”