A preposition is a horrible thing to end a sentence with

If I use my old computer to prop open my door (which is about all the good it is), then doesn't that make it a doorstop?

Well, so consider this sentence: "Engineering is a bad field to go into." It ends in a preposition. Which is bad, I am told. I'm not supposed to do that. It's grammatically incorrect. A preposition is supposed to start a phrase which modifies some other part of speech.

Except for this: if I were to examine that sentence without regard to what is or isn't supposed to happen, I would come to the conclusion that "into" is used as an adverb there. It seems to be modifying the verb "go."

Well, it occurs to me that the argument against this, to wit, "'into' is not an adverb, so you can't use it as an adverb," is fairly silly. If I use "into" as an adverb, then as a matter of practicality, it is an adverb. If it's also used as a preposition elsewhere, then that seems irrelevant to its use here as an adverb.

I'd say, then, that to claim "The language is now used this way, and so to use it some other way is incorrect, and you shouldn't do that" represents a certain inflexibility of thinking. And a denial of practical reality. The underlying assumption there is that language is some monolithic thing which cannot and should not ever change, whereas the fact of the matter is that language does change, continuously. Words do not keep their same meanings and uses forever, but over time acquire new ones. (I am looking squarely at you, you people who argue that "marriage is by definition between a man and a woman, so gays aren't qualified, so they can't get married.")

Yeah, I may be reconsidering that whole grammar-Nazi thing.

I don't wanna eat the beets

Well. My holiday happened, and it was pretty cool. Got to hang out with my mom for a few days, which was nice. Cooking dinner was soothing and fairly low-key, and it all came together. So, that's nifty.

My mom's cat was pretty seriously sick starting last week, and had to be persuaded to eat anything, so mom brought the cat along for the visit.

Every few hours my mom would get some food and try to feed the cat, who wasn't very enthusiastic about it. Mom had to be fairly persuasive. So she'd be sitting there spoon-feeding the cat and making encouraging noises: "Here, have some of this, it's yummy...mmm, wasn't that good? Here, have some more...oh, what a good cat, you've had two whole bites! Isn't that good food, yum yum yum!"

The way mom was talking to the cat left me pretty disconcerted, and I finally realized that I was probably getting a little glimpse into my own distant past, one in which mom was trying to feed me out of a jar and I was unenthusiastic about eating the pureed beets.

So, yeah. Holiday both wonderful and informative in a disturbing way. Huzzah!

Hey nonny nonny.

I would like to wish everyone out there a very happy Winter Solstice, and I hope that all of you are celebrating this most joyous day in a manner appropriate to the traditions of your culture. So light up a bonfire and dance around it until the cops come, take a moment to cheerfully taunt the stuffily religious, and definitely practice your fertility rites.

Enjoy the holiday before Hallmark gets ahold of it.

What I've noticed this year is that I'm fairly disconnected from the changing of the seasons. When I was a student/teacher, I was very driven by my college's schedule, which was of course very seasonal. This is late Spring so it's finals season, this is Winter so take a break for a month, that sort of thing.

Now, though, my work is very non-seasonal in the sense that the schedule of what I'm doing doesn't depend on the season. So I find myself a little disconcerted by that.

Maybe the bonfire will help.

...all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile...

I am told that many people become sad and depressed around "the holidays," and that even more find it unhealthily stressful.

I will admit here that I'm one of those people for whom this time of year is a mixed bag, so to speak.

On the plus side, I get to hang out with my mom and sometimes some other relatives for a few days, and they're pretty cool. The ones I see, anyway.

I also have an excuse to go all-out with the cooking and whatnot, which I don't usually do, and I mostly find that fun and kind of soothing.

Not to mention that I tend to have a very good time on New Year's Eve (hi, Shannon!), which is for me usually a very casual and fun thing, hanging out with friends and whatnot.

On the minus side, I'm pretty bothered by the obligation aspect. I have to do these traditional things; I don't really have the option of taking a pass, should I feel like doing that. It's an expectation, and if I fail to meet it, there's something horribly, drastically wrong with me.

Which is likely true, but I can't have people thinking that, now, can I.

And I pretty much loathe the holiday music, too, which runs the gamut between insipid and overtly religious. Neither of which I'm really okay with.

I will admit, though, that the line "We won't go until we get some" always makes me giggle. Figgy pudding, eh? So, that's what the kids are calling it these days.

Speaking of overt religiosity, some people find the season to be an excuse to wear their particular faith like a badge, which I find troublesome on several levels.

And don't even get me started on that whole Bill O'Reilly "War on Christmas" nonsense.

So, yeah. Hope everybody out there enjoys whatever it is they're doing, but if some of your off-beat friends/relatives don't seem to be having a good time during these few weeks, do me a favor and cut 'em some extra sympathy.

Good for the goose

Just to warn you, I'm dipping back into the political for this post.

I posted a reply a few days ago on Pete's blog, and I would like to expand on that reply here.

Pete's post was about Jose Padilla, US citizen accused of planning to use a radiological weapon. Padilla's case has become a farce from a legal standpoint, largely because of the executive branch's misbehavior. As Pete points out, if there's any justice to be had for Padilla, one way or another, we are very likely at this point never to know what it is.

The fact that Padilla was a US citizen, who should be constitutionally entitled to protections against the sorts of things the government has done to him, ought to give every US citizen nightmares. What prevents anyone else from being next up for the same treatment?

However, that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the US's treatment of foreign nationals.

I am going to argue in this space that foreign nationals should be subject to the same constitutional rules as are (nominally) US citizens.

I had over the years many conversations with arch-conservative Mark, but a few stick out in my mind. One, right after the 9/11 attacks, was about how we should deal with the terrorists responsible. I argued that they should be tried in an international court for crimes against humanity. Mark was aghast. "What if they're found innocent," he said. This just amazed me. Clearly, if the prosecution can't muster enough evidence to make a convincing case that these are guilty people, then they should walk. Mark was presupposing guilt, clearly, which is not a good idea. Why not? Because if you assume a person is guilty, then you overlook the possibility that they're innocent and you've made a mistake. Maybe you made a mistake identifying them. Maybe they didn't do the things you think they did.

On another instance we were talking about the Guantanamo detainees. I forget the exact context of that discussion...I was probably arguing for humane treatment...and Mark said, "They're terrorists!" The presumption there is that they're all guilty (which is almost certainly untrue), and that since they are guilty they don't deserve any humane treatment.

Though Mark certainly has an extremist political view, I've heard the same sorts of arguments come out of a lot of people, and not just conservatives.

US citizens don't...nominally...have these problems. US citizens are constitutionally entitled to speedy and fair trial, where they are presented with all the evidence against them and have a chance to rebut, and the judgement of their guilt or innocence comes from a jury of their peers. Punishment might come after they've been found guilty, but must not be "cruel and unusual."

A person might argue that the consitution doesn't apply to foreign nationals, and therefore we're not constitutionally bound to treat foreign nationals according to those rules. Which is strictly true. The question I ask is, how should we treat foreign nationals? Is it just a free-for-all, where the US government can do whatever they want, and if somebody doesn't like it, then screw 'em, it's what we're doing? Is that alright?

Why do we have those rules in place in the US constitution, to be applied to US citizens? Because the state, who is prosecuting, is scary, powerful, and potentially malicious, and clearly thinks from the start that the accused is guilty. The state therefore can't be counted on to have the best interest of the accused in mind. Further, the state may have made a mistake as to whether the accused is in fact guilty. If we don't bother to have a trial, then the state's position...presupposing guilt...is the only position, and when inevitably some of the accused are in fact innocent, a vast injustice is done. If the accused doesn't have the chance to challenge every bit of evidence brought against them by the state, then the state has the upper hand in the trial, and the trial is pointless. If the accused doesn't get their trial in a speedy fashion, then in the meantime you may have wrongly imprisoned an innocent person.

This, gentlefolk, is the case right now with regard to foreign nationals. They have been imprisoned indefinitely, without trial, while subject to "interrogation" that certainly doesn't amount to humane treatment. Some of them may be terrorists. Maybe those who are do, in some sense, deserve what they're getting. But so far as we know anything, we know that many of them are not terrorists, and certainly do not deserve the treatment shown them by the US government. "Vast injustice" hardly even begins to describe it.

How do we tell which are innocent and which guilty? The best way we know to do that is to give them a trial according to rules laid out by the US constitution.

To summarize: my position here is that there are good reasons those constitutional rules were created for US citizens; and that the reasons are equally (if not more so) valid when it comes to foreign nationals. We therefore ought to be conducting trials of terror suspects in accordance with the US constitution, regardless of whether the constitution strictly applies. To the extent that we do otherwise, we are permitting and even condoning miscarriages of justice.

We as a nation know how we ought to be behaving here. The fact that we're doing otherwise is inexusable.

And I'm really feeling very old today

Well. This has been an interesting year for me.

This year I got to try out the career path I'd chosen for myself, which was teaching, on a serious level. Notwithstanding the previous experience teaching the summer class, which I think doesn't really count. I found teaching to be in some ways very rewarding...the "lightbulb look" comes to mind, that look of illumination when a student finally got it. It made me so pleased. I'll always be proud of myself for the teaching, even though I don't know to this day how good a job I did.

I also came to realize that teaching wasn't the right career path for me at all. Moments of transitory reward aside, I just don't have the patience to long put up with a large number of undergraduates being...well, undergraduates. ("Professor, I'm leaving for my Spring break in Florida early, so I think you should let me out of Friday's quiz." Ack.) I guess that is a good thing to know about myself before I committed to a career doing that, rather than after.

I was also in a managerial position for pretty much the first time. I had to ride herd on nine or so TA's for the class, and I can't say I did so well with it. I tended to be a hands-off manager, just giving them something to do and expecting them to go do it. And it didn't really work that way. I suppose on the plus side I'd know better if I ever landed in another managerial role.

I got my first real nine-to-five job as a professional anything. I like my job pretty well, early mornings aside, and my research is interesting and varied. The company actually depends on me to produce things, and if I fail in my task it might go badly not just for me, but for pretty much everybody. This is a strange feeling for me, almost as though I'm a responsible adult-type person.

For those of you noting that this is coming pretty late given that I'm now 36...oh, be quiet, you.

I had a very interesting (ultimately, I mean "interesting" here in the sense of the Chinese curse) relationship that was almost exclusively on-line. I find the fact that I can have those sorts of feelings about somebody I knew only from words on a screen to be both enlightening and, given the outcome, a little disturbing.

I can also be vicious and vengeful, when given a really thorough and painful screwing-over. Whether or not my response was deserved by the receiving party is probably irrelevant. In an ideal world I wouldn't have done it, so I still don't feel that's a side of myself that I should indulge much.

And, I re-started the art thing. I'm now sketching again after a good twenty years of...not. I actually went and bought some drawing supplies from the expensive art store down the street, because I started thinking that what I had sucks, and I needed better. So, yeah, I'm in it now. And I don't think it's going badly for me, either. The sketch I did of Rhea is probably the best work I've ever done. I was very very pleased when Rhea liked it, so...I also might be a little more attached to external validation than I thought, which is probably not a positive thing.

Anyway. I survived another year, had new experiences both wonderous and awful, and learned lots about myself. So, you know. Yay me.