A Case in Point

Here's an interesting story from the Associated Press:

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.

You can read the rest here.

Two key questions to consider next time you talk politics with someone else:
1. Why is this viewed as a fight between the states and the federal government?

A key feature of the Boston Tea party (for which the current Tea Party movement is named) was that it was staged in protest of taxation without representation. This is not the case today, for any state. All states have representation in Washington. So,

2. Wouldn't it be better to work through, say, electoral means to get the desired end?

Rhetorical third bonus question:
3. Does anybody, anywhere actually make an attempt to agree without being disagreeable?

If not, who is at fault? In broad terms, the Republicans are being obstructionist and the president is trying to get things done his way, with them or without them. This is no way to run a country.

Thrilling Tales of Extra Credit

One of the most interesting lessons in humor I ever learned came from a psychology class I took in college. It was an elective for me, since I was an electrical engineering major at the time, this being either 2004 or 2005.

One day, for extra credit, the professor gave us one of those unfinished cartoons from the back of The New Yorker to complete. If you've never read The New Yorker: At the back of each issue is a cartoon image without a caption. Readers are encouraged to make up their own captions and send them in to the magazine. I have no idea what bearing this had on the class I was taking; I suspect the teacher may have just been bored.

The cartoon image was of a group of businesspeople who were gathered around a boardroom table that was located, for some reason, in a subway car. If I remember correctly, the guy at the end of the table had his mouth open, indicating speech.

In the end, only two people from the class turned in captions for the cartoon - me and one other guy. My caption - "Well, this is an improvement over the taxi cab" - was met with moderate amusement. His caption - "Who farted?" - engendered uproarious laughter, including my own. "Who farted?" is definitely the funnier of the two, but I don't know why - which actually makes it funnier.

It's worth mentioning that that's the clearest memory I have of that entire class, with dimmer secondary memories including such highlights as winning a bag of marshmallows by correctly guessing their number, and also something called "projection," in which people assign their pathologies to those around them.

So yeah, hooray for college.