Teachable Moments in American History

On NPR this morning the anchor happily reported that Minnesota Police have started their own YouTube channel to show how well they do their job.  In response to a video that showed peaceful protesters "getting roughed up" before being charged with "impeding the flow of traffic," Minnesota's finest posted a video that shows them first yelling at the peaceful protesters over a bullhorn.  The story was presented as great news.  They made it sound like accurate information shows that the police in question are not bad people, and according to our cultural norms this may almost be true, but according to the ideals of our constitution and our legal system it's a long way off.

Aside from the obvious and irrefutable argument about the rights to peaceably assemble, speak freely and petition the government that are guaranteed to all Americans in the Constitution, which make any law against impeding the flow of traffic inherently illegal and un-American, we have another constitutional doctrine against cruel and unusual punishment.

This doctrine is often summed up by a belief that "the punishment has to fit the crime."  I would like to argue as a substitute teacher that if someone stands in someone else's way, there is no reason for anyone in that situation to yell over a bullhorn, let alone "rough them up."  These are two of the biggest misconceptions I face when I teach in kindergarten and first grade classes, so I know they exist, and I also know how to clear them up.  I could counter it with an enlightened Gandhi quote like, "your right to move your arm ends where my nose begins," but this is really too dignified a refutation for such a patently silly and immature justification for bullying.

A school bully is not justified in "roughing up" any of his classmates for being in his way or for saying how they feel.  My young students learn that instead of solving problems with violence they need to talk things through and, if that fails, go find a teacher to help calmly talk things through to a mutually agreeable solution that respects the rights of both parties.  When they do go get a teacher, the teacher's job is just that:  to talk things through.  That's also the Minnesota policemen's job if they are brought in to a trafficky, frustrated situation by a democratic government which disagrees with its people.

If a teacher came in to a disordered, frustrated, trafficky classroom and started "roughing up" defenseless children, that teacher would go to jail.  More than that, they'd be completely ridiculous, as a different YouTube phenomenon has pointed out.  They'd be ridiculous because we know teachers, as authority figures, are supposed to serve as behavioral models to show children how not to act as bullies.  They'd be ridiculous because once they start acting like bullies, teachers lose their moral authority.  A teacher who hits students is not only a physical danger to those she teaches, but a moral danger to those her students may encounter later in life, who have been taught that grown ups respond to bullying by simply becoming bigger bullies.

This Minnesota nonsense pits the Constitution of the United States of America against the Bully Doctrine of Move Because I Said So Very Loudly.  It is ridiculous that our public radio system, with a moral obligation to defend and explain the former, should glibly endorse the latter.  It's bad enough that many parts of America are policed by grown-up, heavily-armed people who believe more powerfully in Because I Said So than in the god-given right of all people to peaceably assemble.  It's bad enough that this can be presented as "News."  However, when bully policing is presented as good news, on the grounds that at least the bully said so very loudly before "roughing up" his fellow citizens, we have before our nation a teachable moment.

Check Your Fart Rate!

After my work is done I'm going to start a nonprofit that helps people understand their carbon footprint in terms of a more comprehensible greenhouse emission.  I mean, when everyone you know is releasing tons of carbon emissions through their driving, shopping and eating choices, it must be hard to see that as the mistake that it is.  But if you could hear the sounds of those emissions, you'd understand what's really going on.  So, without farther adoo, let's calculate our carbon fartprints!

.	First, calculate your carbon footprint in tons/year at:	Let's convert that into tiny 35mL farts.	That's still such a big number that it's kind of abstract.	Still having a hard time understanding your greenhouse emisisons rate? No problem! Let's convert it to Seconds Per Fart.
.	http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/index.htm	We'll just multiply by the 48138639 mililiters in a ton, and then divide by 35.	Let's divide it by the 525 948.766 minutes in a year.	We'll just divide the sixty seconds in a minute by your FPM rate, to get your SPF.
.
.	Let's say your score is:	Now your farts/year equivalency is*:	Here's your external farts/minute rate.	Note that even though we're calling this rate, SPF, greenhouse gases are not a sunscreen. They're actually the exact opposite!
.	1	1375389.68571429	2.61506400361872	22.9439891019769
.	2	2750779.37142857	5.23012800723744	11.4719945509884
.	3	4126169.05714286	7.84519201085616	7.64799636732563
.	4	5501558.74285714	10.4602560144749	5.73599727549422
.	5	6876948.42857143	13.0753200180936	4.58879782039538	The average person on earth should say "excuse me" once every four and a half seconds.
.	6	8252338.11428571	15.6903840217123	3.82399818366282
.	7	9627727.8	18.305448025331	3.27771272885384
.	8	11003117.4857143	20.9205120289498	2.86799863774711
.	9	12378507.1714286	23.5355760325685	2.54933212244188
.	10	13753896.8571429	26.1506400361872	2.29439891019769
.	11	15129286.5428571	28.7657040398059	2.08581719108881
.	12	16504676.2285714	31.3807680434246	1.91199909183141
.	13	17880065.9142857	33.9958320470434	1.76492223861361
.	14	19255455.6	36.6108960506621	1.63885636442692
.	15	20630845.2857143	39.2259600542808	1.52959927346513
.	16	22006234.9714286	41.8410240578995	1.43399931887356
.	17	23381624.6571429	44.4560880615183	1.34964641776335
.	18	24757014.3428571	47.071152065137	1.27466606122094
.	19	26132404.0285714	49.6862160687557	1.20757837378826
.	20	27507793.7142857	52.3012800723744	1.14719945509884
.	21	28883183.4	54.9163440759931	1.09257090961795
.	22	30258573.0857143	57.5314080796119	1.0429085955444
.	23	31633962.7714286	60.1464720832306	0.997564743564213
.	24	33009352.4571429	62.7615360868493	0.955999545915704
.	25	34384742.1428571	65.376600090468	0.917759564079076
.	26	35760131.8285714	67.9916640940868	0.882461119306804
.	27	37135521.5142857	70.6067280977055	0.849777374147292	The average American should say "excuse me" five times in every four seconds.
.	28	38510911.2	73.2217921013242	0.81942818221346
.	29	39886300.8857143	75.8368561049429	0.791172037999203
.	30	41261690.5714286	78.4519201085616	0.764799636732563
.	31	42637080.2571429	81.0669841121804	0.740128680708932
.	32	44012469.9428571	83.6820481157991	0.716999659436778
.	33	45387859.6285714	86.2971121194178	0.695272397029603
.	34	46763249.3142857	88.9121761230365	0.674823208881673
.	35	48138639	91.5272401266552	0.655542545770768
.	36	49514028.6857143	94.142304130274	0.637333030610469	If you're up here, you must be very wealthy, and unlike most Americans, you have the ability to change where many people score. Not just yourself.
.	37	50889418.3714286	96.7573681338927	0.620107813566943	Let your employees work from home a few days. Improve the vegetarian options in their cafeteria. Subsidize public transportation. Reduce mandatory travel. Etc.
.		*note that this doesn't count your actual farts. But you're welcome to add those in. The average is 500mL/day, or 182,500 ml/year.

Actually, the most interesting comparison might be hidden in that asterisk.  If an ordinary person passes 182,500mL of greenhouse gas per year, then each ton of emissions represents the FartStrength of seven men.  If you emit around 7 tons of greenhouse gas per year, you can congratulate yourself that your emissions are way  lower than those of most Americans.  You can also congratulate yourself that you fart with the strength of fifty men (or two over-crowded classrooms).  If your emissions total 14 tons per year, you fart with the strength of a hundred men (you don't go to the assembly.  You are the assembly).  At that point, you might want to stop congratulating yourself and take a look at how to change your behavior.

That's all.

Happy Belated Earth Day!

Hardcore Fail

After my work is done I'm going to start an awards show that gives awards to other awards shows for the things they do well. It'll be great to recognize the way that positive reinforcement and publicity can help spur creativity, innovation and growth in almost any field.

One awards show I'll have a hard time recognizing might be the Washington Area Music Awards. What could I recognize about their 2012 ballot? Maybe I could give them an award for Most Bourgeois? Most Noise-Free? Most Generic?

How else do you honor an awards show dedicated to music in Washington D.C. that doesn't mention punk? In last fifty years, DC has been on the national music map for two things: hardcore punk rock, which developed its straight edge movement in DC and gogo, which was invented entirely in DC.

Yes, it's great that the ballot has two categories devoted to a capella music, and that these categories gave Sweet Honey in the Rock their due. Yes, it's marvellous that there are still three categories devoted to big band jazz, in case Duke Ellington should rise from the grave, but for some reason I can't help wondering if nominee "Natty Beaux" isn't even from D.C. at all...

It's good that there are four different awards given to bluegrass musicians in the area because, as much as no one here listens to or plays bluegrass music, people really don't listen to or play bluegrass anywhere else. This is cultural preservation at work. And that's great, even if the culture comes from Appalachia.

But while we're at it, let's preserve the culture for which DC is internationally known and respected. Let's recognize that there's more to the local rock scene is not actually divided into "modern rock," "pop rock," and "roots rock." The last time I saw any of those LA-generic terms in a local concert review was... well... never.

The reason we need a local awards show isn't to show how everything in DC is just like everything in LA, only not half as plentiful, popular, organized or publicized. The reason for a local awards show should be to show what's unique about a location.

Thankfully, although I had to scroll down almost the entire ballot to find it, there is a GOGO section, with awards for the best talker, group and instrumentalist in the genre. The fact that the ballot goes to the trouble of saying "talker" instead of "vocalist" is an example of exactly how an awards show should go about understanding the mess it seeks to categorize.

I'm happy to see some old friends and acquaintances nominated for awards--and am certainly excited to vote for Lucky Dub, Justin Trawick, Flo Anito, Niki Barr, Bio Ritmo, Edie Sedgwick, and Gabin Assouramou--but I'm also perplexed because, while these are all terrific musicians who contribute to the multicultural patchwork of the D.C. scene, none of them really sums up what D.C. music means to people in and outside of D.C.

For that you need to recognize not just Go Go, but also Hardcore. Bad Brains put this town on the map. Fugazi put this town on the map. There's still a scene today, all over town, and that's recognized with Dischord Records' nomination as Washington Area Record Company of the year.

But who am I telling? You know all of this stuff, Wammies. It's all in your history of the DC Music scene. In fact, in the late nineties, you even gave out awards in a lumped together category called "hardcore/punk/underground." Yes, that's fifteen years after the rest of the world started to associate DC with, as you correctly put it, harDCore, but still, better late then never.

But since then, Wammies, what's happened to you? Your rock awards are so vague and arbitrary that they don't seem to mean anything. They certainly don't rock.

Once you put together a few hardcore categories (Best Band; Best Singer, Intelligible; Best Singer, Unintelligible), it might be time to add a few nods to the avant garde scene and then, if you're feeling really brave, you might even update some of the other rock categories. Interview some rock bands. Talk to some club owners. I would bet that there are more "post-punk" bands and "indie" bands in DC right now than self-described "pop rock" bands in the entire country. I know the word "pop" is short for popular, but among rock musicians it's rather short on popularity.

Still, everybody wants an award. Nobody's going to say no to a Wammie just because it says "pop rock." If I were to one day win a wammie in "pop rock," I would do my best to feel proud and be happy I had it, and not spend the rest of my life envying Ian Svenonious for winning a real one. But seriously, by that same inconsiderate logic, Wammies, you should be proud of all the awards I've offered you above. Please comment to let me know where I can send the certificates.