Rarely is the question asked, 'Is Our Kids Electrocuted Enough?'

Throughout our great and tolerant nation, more and more school security employees are being issued Tasers to stem the growing threat of children disobeying the power-starved rent-a-cops patrolling their high school campuses. Publicly lauded by police departments across the country, Tasers are often described as a "non-lethal" means of control for high school police officers, who clearly have good reason to fear hormone-possessed teenagers hell-bent on using their cell phones on school grounds.

Except they're not.

Tasers have claimed over 300 lives since 2001, a number that pales in comparison to many other deadly weapons but is staggeringly high for a device that is so widely praised as...well, not supposed to kill people. Turns out passing a 50,000-volt electric current through your body isn't the safest thing to do, especially in the keeping-your-heart-beating department. Proponents will claim that it's not dangerous because the pulses are constantly interrupted, rather than continuous, which would be far more deadly. You'll excuse me for my brutish rejection of such a well-conceived subtlety, but I'm not impressed by the humanity of lots of short 50,000-volt shocks rather than a single, extended one.

Further exacerbating the problem is the increasing level of Taser abuse against people who could easily be restrained by a large dog, much less a person whose career hinges upon their ability to protect us from real criminals. Cops have now been caught Tasering women in their 70s, a 13-year-old girl (weighing in at an intimidating 65 pounds), and pregnant women at routine traffic stops. Isn't it dandy that society is now openly endorsing abuse of women as a legitimate means of fighting crime?

Now, we're supposed to rally around the supplying of Tasers to police officers assigned as security guards in high schools. Well, fuck that. I went to a public high school where it was considered a quiet day if you didn't see at least a few instances of people trying to beat the living shit out of each other. The number of people that died from these encounters? Zero.

That being the case, I'm a little reticent to buy into this idea that additional force is needed to keep our nation's teenagers in check. I'm even more reticent to believe that the use of "electronic control" is needed to keep a student from using his cell phone or acting out in class, both of which have been cited as reasons for the use of Tasers against kids.

And I'm absolutely loathe to believe that anyone thought it was a good idea to tase 43 children of prison employees on Take Your Son/Daughter To Work Day. With their parents' permission, these kids were Tased by prison guards who evidently thought, "These kids just won't appreciate how awesome this thing is unless I pump them full of electricity myself."

Children. Tased. For fun.

To be perfectly honest, I think the most indignant people here should be the police officers. They're being sold the "Big Lie" that Tasers are perfectly safe, when in reality they pose a very real danger even to people who display no pre-existing heart conditions or other indicators that they shouldn't be Tased. Imagine being the cop whose face is plastered all over the evening news because he killed a kid, having been told by Taser distributors that it could never happen.

Even under the banner of safety, I was always under the impression that the philosophy of law enforcement, at least, was to use minimal force to take control of a chaotic situation. In too many of these cases, Tasers are clearly overkill. When six security guards can't remove an unruly student from a John Kerry speech without a Taser, which side of the conflict really deserves the full brunt of the media's scrutiny? I'm worried if the burly guys swaggering around campus don't feel confident that they can take down scrawny, unarmed college kids without lighting them up like a Christmas tree.

You can certainly disagree, but if you do, I'm inclined to believe you're the kind of person who sees disobedient children as one of the really serious problems in America today. Warm up some more milk, Grandpa, the good ol' days are over.

I'm Getting A Monkey

...and there's nothing you can say to stop me.

Why?

1. There is a wealth of scientific knowledge we can glean from monkeys.

A couple of years ago, an article published on the surprisingly well-rounded Cracked.com introduced me to the concept of the Monkeysphere. To condense a long, fascinating article to a digestible blurb, here's what it says:

Monkeys form monkey societies. Turns out the number of monkeys in these societies is directly proportional to the size of their brains. Bigger brain, bigger monkey society. This can be applied to humans. Based on our brain size, we are psychologically capable of considering the welfare of up to 150 people -- your Monkeysphere. Therefore, even people who serve vital functions in our lives often do not make it onto our mental radar. For instance, the garbage collectors make sure you don't have to live in a mountain of your own filth. Did you send any of the garbage people holiday cards last year? No, because they don't have a spot in your Monkeysphere. Case closed.

I'd like to see you stand toe-to-toe with Jane Goodall and still maintain that there isn't anything we can learn from monkeys. (Yes, I used a straw man argument. I know you didn't say there's nothing we can learn from monkeys. But unless I have an imaginary person disagreeing with me, I can't get indignant on the behalf of monkeys everywhere. And this post wouldn't be written. I think that's a cause we can all get behind.)


2. My monkey is smarter than your dog/cat/other boring pet.

In fact, unless you have a dolphin, my monkey is smarter than any animal you possess. And if you do have a dolphin, you're harboring a murderer and a rapist.

Anyone who has seen the phenomenal program Ape Genius knows that monkeys are ridiculously smart. What they may not know is that even captive monkeys can do awesome things.

For a year or so now, monkey experiments have been of great personal interest (read: obsession) for me. In one of these experiments, monkey scientists (humans who study monkeys, not the stuff of Charlton Heston's nightmares. Especially because he's dead. Time to take that gun away from him.) put two monkeys on either side of a plexiglass sheet with a small window in the middle. On one side, one monkey had a container with hazelnuts in it. On the other, a different monkey had a piece of flint, which Monkey #1 needed to open the container.

What a to-do!

What happened stunned the world (read: me, as I watched this video). Monkey #2 passed the flint to Monkey #1 through the hole. Monkey #1 opened the container. Then Monkey #1 reached a pivotal moment in monkey history. He was faced with the decision of keeping the 6 nuts from the container, or sharing them with Monkey #2. After some soul-searching, Monkey #2 shared the nuts with Monkey #1 -- equally. 3 nuts for each monkey. Most humans I know aren't that nice. For the record, the video is available on YouTube. Search "monkey cooperation".

If you think people at a party wouldn't be impressed by such a display, you've never been to a party with monkeys performing tricks. What a disappointing social life you lead.


3. My monkey is smarter than your child.

For a series of reasons.

In a different experiment (right about now, you're asking yourself, 'How many monkey experiments does this guy watch?' Answer: a lot.), monkeys were put in front of a computer screen and trained to understand a game that came up. On the screen, a sequence of numbers from 1 to 10 would appear, which the monkeys had to push in order, for which they would be rewarded with nuts.

When the monkeys had grasped the concept of the game and learned to push the buttons in the right order, the scientists increased the difficulty by making the numbers appear in random parts of the screen. The task was the same -- numbers in order, reward of nuts.

Now, the interesting part: when these monkeys were pitted against children, the monkeys won. Solidly. They basically embarrassed the kids. For the rest of their lives, even when they grow up, those kids will never be able to say, "I'm smarter than an animal." That's domination in my book.

And that's not the only thing monkeys beat kids at. Freshman year psychology classes taught me about a concept called "object permanence". It's the idea that once something leaves your sight, it still exists. Babies don't get that, which is why Peek-A-Boo is such an interesting game to them. They think you're Harry fucking Houdini when you put your hands over your eyes.

The same monkeys that participated in the flint-for-nuts experiment above were part of another experiment. They were given small chips, which they could exchange with the scientists for rewards. One monkey could exchange a chip for a dry biscuit. The other monkey, using the same chip, was given a grape. Biscuit Monkey did not take kindly to this. Grape Monkey was getting the food equivalent of John Belushi to Biscuit Monkey's Jim.

When Biscuit Monkey saw Grape Monkey approaching for another transaction, he noticed that the experimenter's hand was closed around an unknown object. Anticipating the injustice about to take place, Biscuit Monkey carpe'd the diem for all monkeykind, jumping in to pry the experimenter's hand open and stealing the grape.

Biscuit Monkey revolutionized our understanding of what monkey brains are capable of. With one action, he demonstrated both his grasp of fairness AND his ability to conceive of object permanence.

Monkeys 2, children 0.

If you're still not convinced, bow before further evidence:

Baby Morons Trumped By Monkeys
Children Fail to Understand Simple Directions: Monkeys Advance
Monkeys Display Complex Economic Theories: What Did Your Child Do Today?


4. My monkey will protect me.

Wild monkeys are vicious killers. They fashion long spears to kill other animals, the first instance of animals creating tools for specific purposes in nature.

In 2007, the mayor of Delhi, India, was attacked by monkeys who forced him off the balcony of his terrace. He sustained major cranial injuries and later died.

I tell this morbid story not to depress you, but to instill in you the fear that you really should have of monkeys attacking you. If you think I'm being alarmist, consider this: the majority of the population has at least one phobia, an irrational fear. This fear is very rational. A 90-pound monkey is 3-4 times stronger than the average human -- even the females. Is it any more ridiculous to be scared of that than it is to be scared of spiders?

Maybe you would find solace in the fact that monkeys are very trainable. Just don't approach one in the wild thinking you'll conquer the beast like your ancestors did. Your ass will get handed to you. In several pieces.


5. Monkeys love getting wasted.

This one requires very little explanation and is much more enjoyable to watch than to read about. To make this brief, monkeys in the Caribbean have been known to steal tourists' drinks and get plastered. Monkey life is essentially one big frat party -- drinking to excess, throwing things, and occasionally displaying extreme resourcefulness when food or mating is on the line.

Behold.


Oh, your dog can roll over? Awesome. My monkey is well on his way to performing derivative calculus.

The Gospel of Michael Bay

A recent internet (read: unscientific, unreliable, probably inaccurate) poll reports that by a two-to-one margin, people take Michael Bay's side in his feud with Megan Fox.

The war of words began when Fox asserted that, based on the requirements of her for Transformers, Bay wasn't interested in getting great performances out of his actors, but was more concerned with how well they could scream and run away from CGI explosions. Bay retorted, saying that Fox had "a lot of growing up to do" and claiming his status as something of a king-maker in Hollywood.

The real issue I have with Bay's inflated comments is the complete lack of evidence that exists to support them. In his initial retort to Fox, Bay claims, "...I 100% disagree with her. Nick Cage wasn’t a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in Armageddon. Shia LaBeouf wasn’t a big movie star before he did Transformers — and then he exploded."

Whoa. There's a lot of debunking to be done here. First of all, Bay is referencing his casting of Cage in The Rock, a movie whose action sequences are adequate but which includes lines of dubious merit, like "Do you like the Elton John song 'Rocket Man'? Well, I only ask because it's you -- YOU'RE the Rocket Man!" Cue rocket hitting baddie. Yawn.

Before the doubtlessly genius The Rock, however, Cage had acted in a much lower-budget and well-received Leaving Las Vegas. The film earned Cage a Best Oscar win at the 68th Academy Awards in 1995, making him the fifth-youngest man ever to receive it. History remembers his work in the former rather than Bay's overblown nonsense.

Next: Ben Affleck did indeed star in Bay's Armageddon, an equally visionary (read: unwatchable) film about American space cowboys blowing up an asteroid. Prior to his role in soap operas from space, however, Affleck had received his own Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with writing partner Matt Damon for the unanimously better Good Will Hunting.

In Bay's delusions, Affleck's and Cage's careers would have been nothing without his Midas touch. Unfortunately, the truth shows a decidedly different outcome. After Leaving Las Vegas, Cage worked on more than ten films before hitting another project that yielded positive reviews: 2002's Adaptation. Affleck waded through Pearl Harbor, Daredevil, Gigli, and Jersey Girl (among others) before joining successes like Hollywoodland and Gone Baby Gone. The reality of the situation seems to be that Bay, rather than saving the careers of his actors, has nearly derailed them. As for LaBeouf...well, anyone claiming his excellence as an actor has a pretty big case to build.

The real crime here is that Bay has demonstrated little to no concern about the acting abilities of those he casts. Fox did not read any lines during her audition for Transformers. At Bay's insistence, she donned cut-off shorts and a tank top and washed his Ferrari, while he filmed her (the tape, for the record, has been mysteriously "lost".) Somehow, "hubris" doesn't quite capture the self-image that Bay has cultivated.

Perhaps Megan does have some growing up to do. Unlike Bay, however, she may actually grow into a talent worth watching.

How This Works

For a long time, I struggled with the idea of starting a blog.

After an aborted attempt to write a blog that was purely political, I realized where I was going wrong. The blog was very limited and lacked appeal. Half the posts I wrote were interesting because I was invested in what I was writing, but the rest were written to fill an emotional quota and suppress the feelings of non-commitment that I had towards the blog. I had drawn invisible boundaries that prevented me from feeling enthusiastic about everything I wrote.

I thought, "What can I do to fix this?" I was dealing with a double-edged sword because not only was I writing bad posts for the blog, but I was also neglecting to write about other, non-political (but still interesting) thoughts that I was having. Like Oedipus, I was ruining two different concepts in two different ways.

The solution turned out to be simpler and more elegant than I had imagined: deconstruct those boundaries, and write about anything. I had initially avoided this idea for the same reason that most people avoid Twitter, i.e. the concern about feeling like you were producing intellectual pornography by writing such a self-serving blog. I thought, "Surely no one will care about the mundane musings I have."

However, I eventually let go of that feeling. I came around to the opinion that having a no-boundaries blog is similar to having any kind of regular writing assignment, like a weekly column. I figured that as long as I limit myself to thoughts that are relevant and have public appeal, I won't ever be in danger of boring the masses. Time will judge how wise that thinking is.

To further mitigate possible self-obsession, I opted to include others in the process, thinking that other voices would prevent me from becoming solipsistic and disconnected from other points of view. It's easy, after a while, to think that all your opinions are right and that someone would have to be less intelligent than you to think otherwise. Therefore, I see this not as being my own brainchild, but as a collective endeavour. It fits with my thinking that many of the problems in this world could be ameliorated by forcing people to consider opposing viewpoints.

Whether it proves to be a force for good or the literary equivalent of Frankenstein's monster, this blog is now open for comment.