...is actually a repeat, but a good one, in light of Durga Puja starting in India tomorrow. Anyhow, Tagore's (even though he wasn't Hindu) Sonar Tori (Bengali text here):

Clouds rumbling in the sky; teeming rain.
I sit on the river bank, alone.
The sheaves lie gathered, harvest has ended,
The river is swollen and fierce in its flow.
As we cut the paddy it started to rain.

One small paddy-field, no one but me --
Flood-waters twisting and swirling everywhere.
Trees on the far bank smear shadows like ink
On a village painted on deep morning grey.
On this side a paddy-field, no one but me.

Who is this, steering close to the shore
Singing? I feel that it is someone I know.
The sails are filled wide,
Waves break helplessly against the boat each side.
I watch and feel I have seen the face before.

"Oh to what foreign land do you sail?
Come to the bank and moor your boat for a while.
Go where you want to, give where you care to,
But come to the bank a moment, show your smile --
Take away my golden harvest when you sail.

"Take it, take as much as you can load.
Is there more room?" No, none, I have put it aboard.
My intense labor here by the river --
I have parted with it all, layer upon layer;
Now take me as well, be kind, take me aboard.

No room, no room, the boat is too small.
Loaded with my golden harvest, the boat is full.
Across the monsoon-sky clouds heave to and fro,
On the bare river-bank, I alone remain--
Everything I had is gone: the golden boat took all.

I have been chastised, and rightfully so, for not being sufficiently sympathetic to my fellow teachers. I live on a Peace Corps allowance that’s far more generous than I lead local people to believe, and I have no hospital bills or children’s university tuition to worry me. Even when I move out of my host family and into an apartment on my own, my housework will still be far less than these women’s, who must clean and cook for a family.

I came to Kazakhstan thinking of teaching as a full-time job, but it’s not here. Or maybe it is, but full-time here is something different than the American 40 hours a week. School is in session from 8:30 am to 7:00 pm, with the first shift for the older students and the second for the younger. No teacher teaches all twelve classes daily. Instead, 18 to 20 hours of teaching a week is fairly common. This is the lower end of full-time. Many teachers would like 30 hours a week, for their salary increases as their workload increases.

But — and while this is common in many Kazakhstani schools, I cannot say if it happens at mine — the school director’s wealth does not increase if he assigns fewer teachers more hours of work a week. Would-be teachers often pay school directors a bribe in order to secure a teaching position at a school. It’s in the director’s best interest to hire as many new teachers as possible (I’m not sure whether it would be cost-effective for a teacher to bribe a director for more hours).

And a teacher’s salary for 18-20 hours is, so far as I can tell, relatively more miserable than the salary for an American teacher of similar seniority. They are left trying to find other ways to support themselves. Often it’s a husband’s salary, though he may also have a job that pays poorly. Many farm as much of their food as they can, and try have some to sell at the bazaar. Those who can tutor private students do, for the hourly pay for English lessons is good, but in my town of seven schools, only one teacher speaks English well enough to establish such an informal business. (And then I try to explain that I am not allowed to tutor private students for money. Inconceivable.)

Making the situation even more delightful, American private enterprise has come to Kazakhstan. Mary-Kay, Amway, and the like. I suppose the cosmetics are of good quality, but they’re still quite relatively expensive lipsticks. For a local twist on things, the Mary-Kay salesladies aren’t some door-to-door stranger in a pink Cadillac, but the school vice-principals and regional methodology inspectors (a post at the Dept. of Education). The teachers are afraid not to buy Mary-Kay. I haven’t heard a specific threat of what happens if a teacher doesn’t buy — perhaps none have experimented — but the fear is there. I have no intention of buying any, but I have more leeway an I don’t fear repercussions.

That same pattern of fear and money repeats itself. The Sanitary and Epidemiological Committee from the hospital inspects the schools to make sure they are clean, and neither too hot nor too cold. If a school does not pass, the vice-principals are fined. And if the vice-principals’ pocketbooks are hit, they make life miserable for the teachers, though how the teachers are expected to correct their rooms’ temperatures, I don’t know. Should they buy their own windowpanes to replace the broken ones that let in drafts, or saw through layers of paint to that the hinges work again and windows are no longer sealed shut, making for stuffy summer days? Teachers are responsible for much in Kazakhstani schools, down to things beyond their real control. If the students do not learn, it is the teacher’s fault. The students get off fairly scot-free if the don’t learn because they don’t put in the effort. Responsibility here, as with the room heating, is not resting on entirely the correct shoulders.

All these mitigating circumstances noted, logic still fails here to astounding degrees, and I can’t bear to keep my mouth shut about some of it. The same hospital committee also checks the students’ health. They measure their height, weight, and blood pressure. All fine so far. But many of the students were wearing winter sweaters; some wore jackets. Nearly all of the girls wear 2-inch heels. A handful were carrying their purses. None of this was removed prior to measuring! (Doctors are paid even less than teachers). And when their blood pressure was taken, the students did not roll up their sleeves; the cuff was laid on over their sleeves. (Don’t mind me as I gape at all this; I haven’t been to med school. Who am I to say that the doctors are doing their jobs wrong?). I watched the statistics from this being entered into a book, which is probably carefully guarded, and always written in with the proper shade of blue pen.

I’m not joking about school books. They’re treated like talismans on which life depends (salaries, too). There has developed a great respect for the written word (and also a belief that novels make acceptable toilet paper. It’s no Charmin). What is written is the gospel truth, and if not, it must become so. At my friend’s university in Shymkent, an English textbook that was supposed to be studied completely over the course of a year was written into the schedule as a textbook to be completed in the first semester. Because the schedule is written, it cannot be changed. And so the scheduling error has been converted by ordering that English class to simply study the textbook twice as fast.

As I said in an earlier post (9th October, Responding to frustration), unmarried females in Kazakhstan are called girls, and not women. Churchill — “Up with this I will not put.” —, yes? But I’m a scientist’s daughter who believes in running experiments and who has decided that being the local troublemaker might just be a good source of amusement. At least, if I’m the troublemaker, it means that what I say is taken seriously (and given that my vice-principal happened to be watching that day’s class, word just might get around. My co-teacher was seriously shocked by my words).

Yesterday, I asked my 8th grade class if I were a woman. There was some extra time at the end of class that needed to be filled, and that 8th grade class has my favorite students in it, a group of boys who will stretch their English knowledge to the fullest to try to draw me into a discussion of politics or history (Jim Carey. John Kerry. Two different people. Kazakhstanis seem to be about as aware that Americans fought in WWII as Americans are aware that Kazakhstan fought). Their attempts to to get me off-topic often work, since they tend to ask the most interesting questions I face all day. The 8th grade has a core group of talkative students who’ll defend their own opinions. Today’s question, though, got almost all of them talking.

Resoundingly: No, I am a girl. If a female is 63 and unmarried, she is a girl. The bias isn’t sexist, though. A 42 year-old unmarried male is a boy. The students concocted the terms ‘grandgirl’ and ‘grandboy’ to describe them. I don’t know of any Kazakh words that would translate as ‘grandgirl’ and ‘grandboy;’ such people would be called by terms meaning “respected older sister” and “respected older brother,” as their married counterparts are also addressed.

I ended the class by informing the students that I was a woman and I did not need a husband in order to use that word; I was a woman because I was responsible for my own self. I don’t know how much, if any, they might have taken it to heart. I’d like to do a lesson on what it means to be an adult and a citizen, and what responsibilities those entail; and then return to the question of whether I’m a woman.

As has long been demanded by some of my co-bloggers, and if our technological luck holds, posts on Crescat may occasionally have comments (But see, Anthony Rickey, Can Crescat Have Comments?). At least, this is the tentative move. It may also change, given that some of my less vociferous co-bloggers oppose comments even more strongly than I do.

See, for example, Douglas Lichtman's post below on the V-Chip.

Now, for some reason, the fact that our site is too ponderously overweight to rebuild is making it hard for those comments to appear unless you come to this site from the main page, www.crescatsententia.org.

I am the sixth of seven children. When I was born, my parents said, "That is it! Enough! No more kids! Six is enough!" (One wonders why it took them six kids to say this. I'm a handful, but no more obnoxious, rebellious, and cantankerous than my older siblings.)

There was only one problem. See, the family was one boy and five girls. And the boy -- who came near the older end of the family -- was more obnoxious, rebellious, cantankerous and downright stubborn than anyone. He was also a bit of an organizer. Within a matter of years, he had a campaign for a Seventh Child. Wait. No -- that would be a campaign for a New Baby Boy. His campaign slogans were catchy, yet disturbing: "If it's a girl, I'll flush it down the toilet! If it's a boy, I'll teach it to be like me."

"No," said my parents. "No more babies. No more kids. That's it. Six is a good number." But the kids -- all six of them, including me when I learned to talk -- nagged Mom and Dad. We want a baby brother. Have another kid. Yes on Measure Baby. Think of the children! (Think of the overpopulation, of course, never occurred to us.) "No," said my parents, "No more kids. We have enough. How will we ever feed you all?" Three years after I was born, my parents announced that my mom was pregnant again. And it wasn't even a mistake (I believe them when they say this, because Mom has said that I was a mistake). They buckled. They gave in. And why? As my older brother gloatingly told my parents, "Kid Power is stronger."

Now, why this long rambling entry? I'm telling you. We clamor and clamor for comments here on Crescat. "No," says Will. "No comments. Down with the revolution. Mutineering Crescateers will be hung, drawn, and force-fed artificial butter." "Please, sir, can't we have some comments?" we asked. To no avail. Alas!

It turns out that in the world of Crescat, Professor Power is stronger. All hail Doug Lichtman, bringer of comments.

I wrote yesterday about the captive audience doctrine and my own view that sometimes captive audiences should remain captive. I want to consider today a related topic: government efforts to facilitate self-help.

Consider, for example, the recently enacted National Do-Not-Call Registry. Before the registry was enacted, telephone subscribers could avoid unwanted calls by using caller ID to screen their calls or by refusing to answer the phone during dinner or other inconvenient times. Lawmakers thought those options insufficient, and so Congress announced that vendors are not to call any phone number listed on the national registry. The registry thus facilitates an interaction that looks a great deal like self-help: homeowners decide for themselves whether to list their number, can themselves grant exceptions in favor of firms in which they have an interest, can themselves choose not to report a firm that calls without permission, and can at any time remove their numbers from the national list entirely. Yet the government does have an obvious role in this example, and the statute that created the list in fact survived constitutional challenge only because the Tenth Circuit rejected as inadequate untainted forms of self-help like the aforementioned option of using caller ID to filter unwanted calls.

Why are courts skeptical of government efforts like these?

As I stressed with respect to the captive audience doctrine, one reason is that government intervention of this form typically reduces the amount and diversity of information received. That might not be desirable, as sometimes a listener should be forced to consider information and confront viewpoints that he would avoid if given the choice. Another reason is that efforts to facilitate self-help almost inevitably turn out to favor certain types of speech over others. The V-Chip, for instance, is a government-facilitated technology that helps parents filter television content. Television manufacturers are required to build the filter into every new model 13 inches or larger; and the filter works by reading ratings that are encoded onto broadcast television signals. Those ratings evaluate each program based on a scale that focuses exclusively on sexual content, language, and violence, and the scale thus makes it easy for parents to filter based on these characteristics. But (and here is the problem) the scale does nothing to help parents filter based on other characteristics, such as religious overtones or political content. The result is that parents who might have previously sat down and helped their children to make educated choices based on a combination of all five factors might now opt for the easier approach of just focusing on the government-facilitated three. To whatever extent that happens—an open question right now given how few families currently use the V-Chip—the government’s facilitation will have skewed content decisions: the importance of the favored characteristics will be amplified at the expense of characteristics not included in the official rating scheme.

Admittedly, there might be reason to allow this sort of skew in certain instances, just as there reasons to in certain instances protect captive audiences. My point is only that the First Amendment should evaluate government efforts to facilitate self-help with a skeptical eye, asking whether the public interest might be better served either by reducing government involvement or by altering it in ways that lessen the skew. Suppose, for example, that the V-Chip were designed not to filter based on three predetermined characteristics, but instead to filter using collaborative filtering techniques. My family would identify fifteen programs that we deem appropriate. The collaborative filter would use those choices to identify other families with similar tastes. Then the filter would use the choices made by those other families to make recommendations to my family, and it would use future choices made by my family to make recommendations to those other families. Never would any of us need to be explicit about what characteristics drive us to disapprove of one program while favoring another. And, rather than being limited to choose based on the government’s three characteristics, our pattern of choices might end up being a complicated balancing of hundreds of different characteristics: namely, ones on which we and like-minded families implicitly agree. The government-imposed skew inherent in the current system would be removed; and the very same First Amendment interest championed by self-help in the classic examples--namely, a sharp reduction in the chance that government regulation will intentionally or inadvertently favor one perspective or subject over another--would at the same time be vindicated.

Comments?

Do not question the non-existence of this entry. Assume it is like the inverse of the emperor's new clothing, which is to say, it does not exist.

This is a demonstration of something that does not exist. As we all know, this is a logical impossibility.

Phoebe Maltz, Jeremy Blachman, and Waddling Thunder have all rightly heaped scorn on this Jane Brody column for belaboring the obvious:

Some unprocessed fruits and vegetables come ready to eat, needing perhaps only a rinse. They include bananas, apples, pears, grapes, berries, tomatoes, mushrooms and celery.

Raw mushrooms, sliced into salad, on sandwhichs or eaten whole are excellent. However, I always learned that mushrooms were grown in dung, and therefore required a thorough scrubbing before eating. "Perhaps a rinse" seems a bit risky.

Mushrooms are most certainly not grown in dung. They are grown in a specially prepared soil that is actually quite clean. A quick rinse is sufficient.

Furthermore, the researchers noted in their report, while much attention was paid to synthetic chemicals that were deliberately or inadvertently introduced into the environment, very little concern had been raised about the much larger amounts of natural carcinogens people were exposed to on a daily basis. For example, they said eating one raw mushroom a day or drinking a daily cup of comfrey tea was far more hazardous than daily consumption of nitrosamines formed from the additives used in bacon.

I mentioned yesterday that Judge Ann Williams had been carjacked in Hyde Park. For those who were concerned, the Chicago police now have suspects in hand. Via How Appealling.

What kind of geek does it make me if, while reading Alan Moore's Watchmen, I kept wondering what enumerated Constitutional power was used to justify Congress's passage of the Keene Act (outlawing vigilantism)?

UPDATE: Comic-book geek extraordinaire Jacob Levy weighs in:

Well, this was the 70s, when Congress didn't even usually bother to mention that it was waving its magic commerce clause wand. But better claims would be had under 14.5 (regulate vigilantes like you regulate the Klan, and hold them liable under federal criminal law for violating criminals' civil rights) or under militia-regulation-- literally, in the sense of 'making regular.' The masks who became regular military forces were allowed to stay in business, the rest, not. The latter's actually my guess.

When is it okay for an art gallery to take down an offensive piece of art--in this case, a photograph of three young boys that an artist had modified by painting a fourth being fellated in the background--because a wealthy patron objects? Why, when there are potential copyright issues involved. Because as soon as copyright gets in the mix, "it's not a freedom-of-expression issue," as a gallery director at the art school is quoted as saying.

As Will has done before me, I'd like to draw the reader's attention to Judge Kozinski's lyrical "What's So Fair About Fair Use?", with its pointed remark about how much harder it is to get an injunction prohibiting dissemination of military secrets than an injunction destroying potentially copyright-infringing books.

When public mores are in the balance ("Fuck the Draft!"), it's still a freedom-of-expression issue. When national security is in the balance (Pentagon papers), it's still a freedom-of-expression issue. When someone's reputation is in the balance (Hustler v. Falwell), it's still a freedom-of-expression issue. But if there's a possibility that copyright is in the balance--as Kozinsky says, "it's Nuremberg time!"

In other news, this little study details how a fake complaint from an unverifiable Hotmail account resulted in 7 out of 10 Dutch ISPs taking down a homepage containing a clearly public-domain work (first publication 1871). As an extra bonus, one of the ISPs even sent the fake complainant all the personal information about the accused customer. (Via Boing Boing.)

But definitely not a freedom-of-expression issue.