Most of us have a notion in our head of what Chinese, Spanish, German, and maybe a handful of other languages sound like, even though most of us don’t speak a word of anything other than English. That is, we can recognize a language without speaking it based on its tone, meter, and phonemes. The comedy show Who’s Line Is It used to have a skit whereby the performers were required to do a scene using a foreign language they didn’t speak. They used this same meta-knowledge about a language to spout gibberish in another tongue.

But have you even wondered what English sounds like to those who don’t speak it? I’m unsure of the motivation, but an Italian singer wrote an entire song using English sounding gibberish. Listening to it, your brain is definitely recognizing the lyrics as “English”, and it’s frankly pretty frustrating because you can’t help but try and make sense of it, despite it not being decodable.

In retrospect, it’s a little like listening to a Bob Dylan song.

Newton South High School in Massachusetts exempted a student from an assignment to read parts of the Bible because the student said he was an atheist. This was part of a unit in Honors English on cultural traditions.

While atheists should not be required to believe the Bible, they do not get to opt for cultural ignorance by refusing to understand it. The Bible is one of, if not the most, important book in the entirety of western culture. Regardless of your religion, you’re a fool to not appreciate its influence on the very culture you live in. School is about education. It doesn’t mean you’re exempted from hearing anything you disagree with.

As for the school, what is the precedent they have set here? Will pacifists be able to opt out of studying war? Will pretty much everyone get out of studying Greek mythology? This was a bad decision plain and simple. Bad for the school, bad for the student, just, well… bad.

The Senate’s 60-vote majority required to pass any substantive legislation sans filibuster has been enormously frustrating of late. And no, I’m not just talking about healthcare. This extends well back into Reagan’s tenure, but has been particularly problematic for the last three Presidents.

In thinking about this the other day, it occurred to me that the Constitution was pretty clear about the Senate requiring a simple majority to pass a bill. Further, I knew that the filibuster was introduced as a Senate rule and was not specifically defined in the Constitution. So I reasoned that given the filibuster’s resultant effect of being able to prevent a simple majority from passing a bill, shouldn’t it be unconstitutional?

I was pretty sure I wasn’t the first person to ask such a question, so a little research was in order. I came upon a pair of articles written by Vikram David Amar for FindLaw.com in 2003. They are a wee bit wonkish, but well worth the read if you have a few minutes. It’s also interesting that the articles were written to assess Republican chances to change filibuster rules to prevent a Democratic minority from subverting their narrow majority will. Today, we find the Republicans desperately clinging to the filibuster as a way to retain power in the Senate. Yesterday’s sword is tomorrow’s shield.

It turns out my fleeting analysis was overly simplistic. While the Constitution does say the Senate requires a simple majority to pass a bill, it also allows both houses of Congress to establish their own rules and procedures, and doesn’t provide much constraint on those rules. There are essentially two Senate rules at issue here. On the one hand is the cloture rule requiring 60 votes to end debate. But the stickler turns out to be the rule changing rule that requires a 2/3 majority to change a Senate rule (such as the cloture rule). Without the rule changing rule, a simple majority could change the cloture rule, which in effect would nullify the filibuster’s power.

Interestingly, the rule changing rule was created by a simple majority, and that turns out to maybe be the hinge on which this whole thing turns. The question is, should a simple majority be able to impose its will on a future Senate? It would seem the answer is no. With the exception of the Constitution itself, no legislative body should be able to do something that is not reversible by future legislatures.

Taking this to a somewhat goofy extreme for illustrative purposes, let’s assume that a simple majority were to pass a law outlawing boxer-briefs. No dithering. Pick one or the other. Further, let’s assume the law added a requirement that this law could only be overturned by a unanimous vote. Effectively, that law would now be immortal. I think pretty clearly that law would be struck down by the courts, not because of the goofy underwear constraint, but because it tried to make it illegal to have itself undone.

However, the rule changing rule is essentially the same. A simple majority created a rule that a simple majority cannot undo. Part of the rule is essentially insuring that the rule itself cannot be undone, at least easily. And to Amar’s point, that is likely the unconstitutional part of this mess.

While that’s all fascinating, it doesn’t really address the question of why the Senate or the courts don’t work to overturn a rule which has essentially rendered the body inert. I doubt the courts will want to intervene uninvited into the inner workings of another branch of the government, and I don’t blame them. That’s not a precedent we want to set. Yet the Senate must be somewhat self-aware that is has become dysfunctional under it’s own rules. Why don’t they act?

I suspect it all stems from a desire for power and a recognition that over time, each party will occupy the minority position. As Frank Herbert noted in his novel Dune, “The power to destroy a thing is the power to control a thing.” As the minority party, they may not be able to create anything, but they can destroy it, and destructive power is power just the same. And I think that Senators fear little more than the prospect of being powerless.

Rochester’s City Council voted Tuesday night to overwhelmingly approve the installation of red light cameras at 50 intersections. I’ve written before about why these camera systems are disingenuous at best. Usually they are touted as safety measures while the credible evidence suggests they are actually road hazards.

Curiously, local coverage of the council’s decision didn’t even attempt to position this as an effort to make the roads any safer this time. It was all about the money. Nonetheless, they cited Mayor Duffy as downplaying the projected windfall for the city, and also left the math as an exercise for the reader. However, they did provide the raw numbers in various paragraphs of the article. The city is projecting $3.5m in revenue and will pay $3,750/mo/camera. Crunch that up, and we are looking at about $1.25m to the city’s bottom line as a result of this program.

It’s understandable why these programs are financially attractive to local governments. I just wish they’d be honest with us and maybe with themselves about why they are doing this. Especially when you consider the additional incremental cost to citizens in terms of life, health, property damage, and insurance rates due to the increased accidents at monitored intersections.

Creators.com syndicates a number of newspaper features that are run in local papers around the country. One of their advice columnists, Dr. Robert Wallace, authors an Ann Landers styled piece called ‘Tween 12 and 20″ that is geared toward teenage troubles. This was the lead letter his most recent column:

DR. WALLACE: I am a Christian. My boyfriend is a wonderful fellow, but he happens to be an atheist and says he will remain an atheist until the day he leaves this earth.

I love Jake and he loves me, and we plan to get married in a year. My parents are also Christians and are against me marrying an atheist. They are horrified at the thought. I keep telling them that once we are married, I feel I can help him to become a Christian, but my parents do not see it as a possibility.

What do you think? I will never become a non-believing atheist. —Nameless, Lake Charles, La.

NAMELESS: I think it would be a big mistake to enter into marriage with the idea that you can encourage your husband to convert from an atheist to a Christian, since you will never become an atheist. If you believe this is possible, this conversion should take place before the marriage.

I can understand why your parents are horrified. Their Christian daughter is about to marry an atheist. If you do your very best to convince Jake to become a Christian and he refuses, forget about marriage. It would also be difficult for Jake to be married to a non-atheist. You both need to find more compatible future mates.

Wallace begins his response on solid ground. Entering marriage with any sort of Pygmalion Project in mind for your future spouse is a recipe for disaster. This is true whether you expect them to change religions, quit smoking, give up video gaming, or simply start picking up after themselves. If you can’t accept your prospective partner for who they are now, get out while you can.

Then Wallace heads off into the land of the ignorant and insensitive. He understands why her parents are “horrified”? Really? Horrified? Concerned maybe, but horrified? If she was planning to marry a man of a different race and Wallace empathized with their horror he’d be loudly vilified. He then goes on to assert that atheists and theists are incompatible mates. This is a broad generalization, one that 50 years ago might have been said about mixed-race couples, but today would earn you a well deserved racist label.

Certainly, every couple must work through their differences and come to some agreement on how to coexist. Religion is but one of many components. Managing money, rearing children, and how to properly install the toilet paper roll must also be dealt with. But the notion that two people of different faiths cannot marry is beyond naive.

I strongly suspect that if Jake were Jewish, Wallace’s advice would not have been the same. I suspect he might have urged the parents to be tolerant, and urged the girl to make sure they had understandings about how the kids would be raised, how holidays would be celebrated, and so forth before tying the knot. His advice regarding an atheist shouldn’t be different.

The young couple clearly have some level of tolerance for each other’s religious positions already. Yes, some atheists could never respect a theistic spouse’s faith, and some Christians would never entertain being unevenly yoked. But I suspect if either of those positions were true, they wouldn’t be talking about getting married a year from now. Further, it’s not clear from her letter that she’s so concerned about turning him Christian. Rather, it seems to be a bone she’s throwing to her intolerant parents.

Yes, they both need to proceed with caution and maturity. Good advice for any young couple. But for Wallace to determine they “both need to find more compatible future mates” is misguided, ignorant, intolerant, and okay… stupid.

In the wake of the new Facebook privacy settings that have many fretting that Facebook is becoming too open, C-Net’s Matt Asay asks whether or not it might still be too closed. Many of us recall the early days of the Internet where providers like Compuserve and AOL created “walled gardens”. In essence, little fenced off sections of the network that were inaccessible unless you were a member of that particular service. The advent of service providers like Yahoo! that were independent of ISPs led consumers quickly to the conclusion that there was value in open unfettered communication. The garden walls quickly fell.

However, Asay is wondering if tools like Facebook are creating the same problem all over again. He cites a problem near and dear to me where a blogger has posted a piece on his blog where it’s available for all the world to see, but most of the interesting commentary is on the corresponding Facebook post which is only open to his friends. While I see the similarity Asay is going for, I think it’s really a different problem.

Facebook addresses a need that’s different than blogs and different than Twitter. It does create walled groups of friends, and I would contend that for a lot of the content posted there, this is appropriate. The difficulty is that some of us have a variety of portals to which we broadcast a variety of content. And that content is intended for different audiences.

In my case, I have this blog that I’ve run for many years. The content here is intended for a broad audience, and is open for everyone. Further, the blog provides for reader commentary and discussion. For the convenience of my readers, the posts to that blog are available as an RSS feed, a Twitter feed, or on Facebook. It’s all the same content, it’s just in all those places because people have different preferences for how they access my posts.

Because it is my personal blog, I don’t have separate Facebook pages set up for the blog and my personal page. It’s all one, and it’s not open. If you want to read my blog on Facebook, you have to be my friend. Why not open my Facebook page up? Simply because there are things post on FB that I don’t blog. Things that are related to my kids or updates that while not secret would have no interest to a larger audience. I like the distinction between the walled FB world and the open blog. The only thing that messes it up is the commentary.

Ever since pushing my blog posts to Facebook, the comments on the blog page have decreased significantly. A lot of that discussion now seems to take place on Facebook. And a lot of that discussion I think would be interesting to other non-Facebook readers. But they will never see it.

While opening up my Facebook page to the world would be one solution, I don’t think it really fixes the problem. Non-Facebook readers are not likely to try and locate the corresponding Facebook entry in order to read the comments. The better solution would seem to be having Facebook distinguish between native-generated and imported content. Native content would be handled as it is today. Imported content would allow for the export of the commentary to other vehicles like blogs. In that way, my posts would continue to be imported into Facebook, and the Facebook commentary would be exported back out and placed on my blog.

This is the best of both worlds, and I think more sensible than prying Facebook open so all the world knows when you’re doing laundry.

The other week I was out teaching my son to parallel park. He asked the reasonable question, “If you’re parking between two cars, how do you know if you have enough room?”

I responded that you just sort of get a feel for it with practice, and that when driving big trucks like mine, often you just don’t. Silly me. It turns out there’s an equation for figuring out this very thing. Just crunch the formula below and it will yield the incremental distance you need over the length of your vehicle in order to park in the spot.

Of course, this assumes you’ve already taken some careful measurements of the car you are driving so that you know the radius of the car’s turning circle and such. But the clever math whiz will simplify the equation by plugging all that data in ahead of time. In that case, you only need to hop out, measure the width of the car you’re parking behind and the length of the open spot. Hop in, do one square, one square root, and a little arithmetic, and you’re ready to park!

Granted, by then the store you were heading to would have closed, or some cute girl in a Kia would have slipped into the spot you were eying up. So in the end, while this is interesting, it’s not too useful other than being something Kim can roll her eyes about.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the beloved Facebook, has been “outed” as a result of his own new extremely liberal default privacy settings. Zuckerberg’s prfile has historically been pretty limited in what it exposed to non-friends like you and me. However, his company’s new default privacy settings opened up all his photo albums for the world to see.

At right, we see Mark enjoying a cold one with a friend. Based on the respective cup choices, we have to assume that Mark is the designated driver. “But Officer, I’m more sober than he is!”

He’s also shown with his girlfriend, his teddy bear, and a couple of other decidedly non-CEO-ish poses.

Now maybe Zuckerberg allowed this intentionally. If so, at least he’s taking his own medicine. But given that he’s never been this open before, I suspect he just got had by his own policies. I suppose the proof will be to see whether or not these albums get locked up in the near future.

In the meantime, it might be worth checking the umpty-b’jillion privacy settings in your new and improved Facebook account just one more time.

So much for the virtues of living a squeaky clean vice free life. (Sorry Dad.) Two news stories this week indicate that drinking coffee and drinking beer may each aid in preventing men from developing prostate cancer. In retrospect, I’ve been working most of my adult life to forestall prostate problems, and I see no reason to start taking chances now. Just remember Honey, I’m doing this for you.

At the rate I’m going my prostate should be healthy until two years after I’m dead.

Electrolux has taken Dyson to the cleaners. While Dyson wants us to believe that what people really want is a vacuum cleaner that rolls and turns easier, Electrolux recognizes that navigation pales next to making a quiet one that doesn’t make you ears ring after a few trips across the rug.

Their new “Silence Amplified” unit is so quiet they’ve equipped it with an iPod dock and speakers just to make the point. Sure, that makes about as much sense putting a toaster in your TV, but what the hell.

Then they went one step further and discovered that people listening to jazz while cleaning tend to be more thorough, while people listening to hard rock tended to finish quicker. And most everyone found vacuuming more aerobic and burned more calories as they just couldn’t help but dance while they sucked. Which I suppose is a step up for those of us who usually just suck while we dance.

Uganda has always been at the forefront of criminalizing homosexuality. It’s been illegal in that African nation for decades. In fact, a recent bill introduced there proposed to go as far as to execute gays in an effort to protect their children. That’s now been scaled back to 3 to 7 year jail sentences, and includes the ability to extradite Ugandans found being gay in other counties back to their homeland to be punished. More troubling were the connections of American politicians like the C-Street gang, religious figures like Rick Warren, and other activist groups who supported or encouraged this hateful Ugandan law.

Not surprisingly, Rachel Maddow has been quite vocal about the insanity and has used her TV and radio shows to vilify most anyone connected. Below is an interview she conducted with Richard Cohen, an “ex-homosexual” therapist who is head of the “International Healing Foundation,” which purportedly helps gay people become straight. Cohen’s work has been cited by Ugandan politicians and is being used as justification for the anti-gay policies. Maddow is masterful in her ability to be respectful of her guest and yet not let the guest get away with spinning the story on her. She’s at her finest here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I’ve run into numerous surveys recently touting percentages of people that believe in global warming, believe in evolution, believe in the Big Bang, and other tenets of science. In most cases I wind up yelling at the TV or the newspaper because of the sheer arrogance that goes into asking the question. As if democracy is so all powerful that we can alter reality by sheer force of will. As if we could fly by simply collectively voting gravity out of existence. Newsflash: the universe really doesn’t care what you believe. Although I suppose this is sort of the Wikipedia approach to the world. It’s certainly the approach Conservapedia has taken as they are on a mission to reshape science and history to fit their world view.

At any rate, I ran across this xkcd comic which I thought just summed the mess up nicely.

An interesting battle is brewing in Asheville, North Carolina. Cecil Bothwell was recently elected to hold a City Councilman’s seat there, but opponents are arguing that the self-avowed atheist should not be allowed to assume the office.

At issue is Article 6, section 8 of the North Carolina state constitution which says:

“The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

There are a couple of issues that arise here. First and foremost is the legality of the constitutional clause, and it is this conflict that will likely be addressed by the courts. The overriding U.S. Constitution is pretty clear in Article VI where it says:

“no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Given that “God”, in any form, is definitionally “religious”, it’s pretty hard to see how requiring that office holders not deny the being of Almighty God is not a religious test. Granted, it’s a little backward in that you might ordinarily think of a religious test as requiring that you do believe in something, where this test requires that you don’t not believe. But it’s clearly still a test. Based on this alone, it’s pretty hard to imagine the courts won’t rule the state’s clause as unconstitutional.

However, the unique wording of the clause raises another, more interesting, question. Does being an atheist mean that you deny the existence of God? Certainly some atheists actively deny the existence of God. Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (among many others) make no bones about their outright rejection of God, but they do not speak for atheists as a whole.

Atheism, by definition, is simply a lack of belief, a passive action. While denial is an active action. Atheists don’t personally believe in any gods, but they can’t prove they don’t exist. And I think they are foolish to actively deny their existence as, ironically, denying the existence of God actually requires a leap of faith. Bothwell’s assertion supports this active/passive distinction, “I don’t ‘deny the being of Almighty God;’ I simply consider the question of denial or acceptance irrelevant.

The key here is that denial requires an active position. You can’t passively deny. Not saying yes is not the same as saying no. So it seems to me that even under the existing state constitution Bothwell is fully qualified for office.

Yum…

Despite the fact that several women of my acquaintance have been done with this year’s holiday shopping since Labor Day 2008, it’s not too late to get get out there and stimulate the economy. As a courtesy to my readers, I thought it appropriate to present you with some gift ideas for those hard to shop for people on your list. As a courtesy to me (because I’m lazy), and because Dave Barry is way funnier than I’ll ever be, I’ll just link to his list.

I mean c’mon… who doesn’t need a nose shaped shower gel dispenser? And I’m thinking of getting my sweetie a pair of the metal detecting sandals so she can comb stroll the beach on our upcoming vacation and happen upon the pirate treasure that’s buried pretty much everywhere down there in the Caribbean. Goodness knows, we could sure use a few extra doubloons.