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It is estimated that if the controversial Australian poker machine laws are introduced next year the community will lose out on $70 million. As you may not know, poker machines (or slots) in Australia are not only accessible at the local casino – anyone can gamble on the ‘pokies’ at their local pub or RSL.

A recent study revealed that there are over 60,000 problem gamblers in Australia. Government is pushing to introduce an experimental technology whereby everyone will need a license if they intend to play. Understandably, gamblers, casino establishments and pubs are outraged.

The crux of the matter is that getting a license is not going to stop a serious gambler. If they can’t get their slot machine fix at the local RSL then they will inevitably turn to online casino play. Sometimes it can be even better for the really big gambler to play at an online casino sites as they will generally be given large bonuses and other prizes. This will allow them to play free online casino games as well as depositing their own money on occasion.

We’ll keep you posted on what happens next.

Here at Wired Opinion, we like to know what people think about anything and everything. This week we got the dirt on the interesting online casino world. This unique industry is one of rapid pace and the latest technology. We spoke to a few people in the industry to find out the main points that really make this industry what it is.

The casino bonus – most online casinos will offer players a bonus amount to either get them to sign up or continue playing. These promotional offers come in a range of shapes and sizes depending on where you play.
The jackpots – online casino sites are known for their impressive jackpots that pay out on a regular basis. Many online casinos also offer a range of progressive jackpots so these are the ones you want to go for.
The games – one of the best things about online casino is that they have hundreds of games in one place. It’s super easy to change games – all it takes is the click of a button. They also get all the latest games first such as the Lord of the Rings slot machine.

One of the things that’s been happening over the last 20 or 30 years is that well mainstream news media has declined. You see more opinion programs on television and more opinions in newspapers and of course what we read on the internet is mainly opinion. If you have a look at social media sites like Facebook or Twitter you will quickly be bombarded by what everyone thinks about everything! People make decisions too often based on people’s opinion and not on what they really think. Who cares what people think! No matter what you do in life, there’s always going to be someone who will not agree with you so don’t waste your time thinking about it too much. Do what YOU want to do, if your thing is to play online casino, smoke, drink, get married, or chill out, eat well, meditate… It’s YOUR life and you’re the only one living it so make the most of it!! However, if you are lucky enough to play at a casino online and win some big money then good luck to you! If this happens you can surely do whatever you want for the rest of your life.

Today’s Washington Post has the nerve to front this “news story,”titled “White House Puts Face on North Korean Human Rights”:

She showed up at a school in a coastal city in China nearly five months ago and begged for help. Instead, she was deported to her native North Korea and never seen again.Now the case of Kim Chun Hee has made its way to the desk of President Bush, threatening to complicate the first White House visit of China’s leader tomorrow and further irritate an irritable relationship.

… Urged on by evangelical supporters from his home town and other activists elsewhere, Bush has taken a personal interest in human rights in North Korea and decided to make an example of Kim’s asylum case. Alerted to her situation by a South Korean lawmaker, the White House issued a rare statement last month pronouncing itself “gravely concerned” about her fate and chastising China for sending her back.

… Administration officials said Bush feels strongly about the situation. “He’s taken a very personal interest and a fairly significant interest in the issue of human rights,” said Jay Lefkowitz, whom Bush appointed last year as a special envoy for human rights in North Korea. “He fundamentally believes the character of the North Korean regime is defined by its human rights conduct.”

I can’t think of a better example of how the mass media’s obsession with appearing “fair and balanced” serves only to emasculate them and make them feckless mouthpieces of political entrepreneurs.

Here is one of the finest, best-respected papers in the United States, peddling on its front page a human interest sob story which manages to a) highlight the human rights abuses of the North Korean regime, b) highlight the human rights abuses of the Chinese regime, and c) highlight President Bush’s high-minded respect for human rights and deep concern for the fate of this poor woman, who is now not only oppressed but a political pawn for Great Powers.

So we’re reinforcing negative perceptions about major rivals to the United States (it’s not that these perceptions aren’t correct, it’s just that they aren’t news to anyone) and giving White House spokespeople the opportunity to laud the president’s heartfelt Christian concern for humanity (Iraqi civilian death toll now > 35,000).

An information officer couldn’t have written a better piece.

Why isn’t it acceptable news to write:

In an attempt to bolster President Bush’s human rights bona fides, win political points with his Christian base, and reinforce negative public perceptions of major international rivals North Korea and China, White House officials attempted to manipulate the press into reporting that President Bush is deeply concerned with the fate of Kim Chun Hee, a young North Korean woman who, like half of the world’s population, is being abused by her state.

Is this not transparently what’s happening here?

Does “fair and balanced” mean “read between the lines, kids”? When news sources refuse to objectively report the most fundamentally obvious interpretations and analyses of political behavior as fact (given that political behavior is almost inherently coercive and almost always means something other than that which it purports to mean), and their primary sources for political information are government officials, how are they much different from state-run media (I mean in particular cases such as this, not on the whole — I’m not being rash here)?

Via Cosmic Variance, check out the amazing story of Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet officer who saved humanity. Wikipedia, blessed be its name, enlightens us:

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow on September 26, 1983, a time when the Cold War was at a peak … It was Lt. Col. Petrov’s responsibility to observe the satellite early warning network and notify his superiors of any impending nuclear missile attack against the USSR. In the event of such an attack, the Soviet Union’s strategy was to launch an immediate all-out nuclear counter-attack against the United States, as the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction required.Just past midnight, at 00:40 hrs, the bunker’s computers indicated that an American missile was heading toward the Soviet Union. Lt. Col. Petrov reasoned that a computer error had occurred, since the United States was not likely to launch just one missile if it were attacking the Soviet Union — it would launch many simultaneously. …

… A short time later the computers indicated that a second missile had been launched, followed by a third, a fourth and a fifth. Petrov still felt that the computer system was wrong, but there was no other source of information with which to confirm his suspicions. The Soviet Union’s land radar was not capable of detecting missiles beyond the horizon, so by the time land radar could positively identify the threat, it would be too late.

Petrov’s dilemma was this: if he was disregarding a real attack, then the Soviet Union would be devastated by nuclear weapons without any warning or chance to retaliate, and he would have failed at his duty. On the other hand, if he were to report a non-existent attack, his superiors might launch an equally catastrophic assault against their enemies. In either case, millions of people would die.

Understanding that if he were wrong, nuclear missiles would soon be raining down on the Soviet Union, Petrov decided to trust his intuition and declare the system’s indications a false alarm. After a short while, it was apparent that his instincts were right. There were no approaching missiles. The crisis put him under immense pressure and stress, yet Petrov’s judgement had been sound. A full-scale nuclear war had been averted.

… Despite having prevented potential nuclear disaster, by refusing to acknowledge the computer system’s warnings Lt. Col. Petrov had disobeyed his orders and defied military protocol. He later underwent intense questioning by his superiors about his actions during the distressing ordeal, the result of which was that they no longer considered him a reliable military officer.

The Soviet military did not punish Petrov for his actions, but did not reward or honor him either. His actions had revealed imperfections in the Soviet military system which showed his superiors in a bad light. He was given a reprimand, officially for the improper filing of paperwork, and his once-promising military career came to an end. He was reassigned to a less sensitive post and ultimately retired from the military.

Petrov is now a pensioner, spending his retirement in relative poverty in the town of Fryazino, playing safe online casino games. He has said he does not regard himself as a hero for what he did that day, but nevertheless, on May 21, 2004, the San Francisco-based Association of World Citizens gave Colonel Petrov its World Citizen Award along with a trophy and 1,000 United States dollars in recognition of the part he played in averting a catastrophe.

In January 2006 Petrov traveled to the United States where he was honored in a meeting at the United Nations in New York City. There the Association of World Citizens presented Petrov with a second special World Citizen Award. The following day Petrov met with American journalist Walter Cronkite at his CBS office in New York City. That interview, in addition to other highlights of Petrov’s trip to the United States, will be included in the documentary film The Man Who Saved the World, which is expected to be released in late 2006.

Conventional foreign policy by unconventional means: Iran’s pre-nuclear attempt at deterrence.

Iran has readied an “army” of 40,000 suicide bombers to strike targets all over the Western world and Israel as a response to a possible attack on their nuclear facilities, the British Sunday Times reported Sunday morning.

I just decided the topic for my philosophy term paper: a comparative study of the moral philosophies of Nietzsche and Alasdair MacIntyre, a late twentieth-century Scottish ethicist. Check out his book, After Virtue, if you’re interested.

I was just reading for my philosophy class and took a break by perusing my past writing on this web site.

I am from time to time particularly struck by the arrogance of my writing and the arrogance of this entire enterprise; by the tendency of this medium toward egotistical superficiality; and by something like disgust with myself for believing, given the immense complexity of this world and my pitiful lack of experience and insight, that I could offer anything worthwhile in ten-minute, off-the-cuff comments that I scrawl between classes.

I don’t write this to provoke reassurance or encouragement from this blog’s readers, most of whom are close friends and family. Reassurance is not the best path to humility, and humility is something I profoundly lack.

But I am okay, I promise. I am coming to terms with being young and with having as yet little of substance to offer. Maybe youth is a process of coming to terms with itself. I’m not ashamed to admit that I think I have talent as a writer. But pretty writing is only as excellent as its content and its ends. I am not particularly inclined anymore to force diatribe toward an end I frequently can’t even identify.

Perhaps this site can still serve a purpose, though — not as yet another source of shallow polemic, but as an expression of Youth. Youth is really all I have to offer, after all.

Just thoughts. Yours are welcome.

My congresswoman, Rep. Cynthia McKinney (GA-4), apparentlyshoved or punched a U.S. Capitol Police officer today:

According to sources on Capitol Hill, U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) punched a Capitol police officer on Wednesday afternoon after he mistakenly pursued her for failing to pass through a metal detector.Members of Congress are not required to pass through metal detectors.

Sources say that the officer was at a position in the Longworth House Office Building, and neither recognized McKinney, nor saw her credentials as she went around the metal detector.

The officer called out, “Ma’am, Ma’am,” and walked after her in an attempt to stop her. When he caught McKinney, he grabbed her by the arm.

Witnesses say McKinney pulled her arm away, and with her cell phone in hand, punched the officer in the chest.

… A statement attributed to McKinney has been released on the Internet, where she allegedly claims to have been harassed by Capitol Hill Police.

The statement’s writer says that she has been harassed by white police officers she says do not recognize her due to her recently changed hairstyle.

“Do I have to contact the police every time I change my hairstyle? How do we account for the fact that when I wore my braids every day for 11 years, I still faced this problem, primarily from certain white police officers,” the statement says.

• Right-wing hacks will gleefully jump on this as evidence of the shrill, desperate incivility of the Left — a picture of liberal America (particularly liberal black America) already epitomized by Rep. McKinney’s history of self-absorbed antics. The subtext of the conservative outcry will probably have barely noticeable but nevertheless present racial connotations.
• Moderate whites in McKinney’s district, who already despise her (she is elected by a poorer black majority), will, with a pinch of guilty pleasure, be vocally outraged. They will continue to hate (and I mean HATE) this relatively insignificant woman (who is certainly something of a twit, an embarassment, and very likely an anti-Semite) far more than they dislike President Bush (whose arrogance and ineptitude has cost tens of thousands of lives and been generally catastrophic on a global scale), whom they will criticize but always, always, with a squishy and luke-warm helping of respect and “moderation.” 
• McKinney, who is, unfortunately, quite politically astute (on the local level) will probably turn this episode into a political asset; she’ll spin it as an indignant and righteous act of self-defense against The Man (maybe it’s true; I haven’t seen the tape, though McKinney has a history of rash outbursts…)

What are your thoughts, Cousin Eric?

Joe responded to my post, “Apathy Isn’t Sensible,” both here andat CampusProgress.org, where I have been cross-posting some content. In response to my assertion that youth contentment with the status quo is inherently anti-progressive, Joe responds:

Progress is desirable, but not when it comes at the cost of enjoying what we’ve already got. …[I]t’s microeconomics. Very, very micro. At the individual level, being in a state of outrage, in a state of agitation, is a *cost*. Being happy is similar to having more money in your wallet; indeed, it’s all that much better, since money is an uncertain means to happiness, and simply choosing to be happier (by turning off the spigot of energy for activism and protest) is a more direct approach.

There’s no question that contentment is a happier state than outrage or dissatisfaction. But does that make it a better state? Ignorance is bliss, sure, but it’s still ignorance. If you reduce political and social existence to nothing more than a process by which individual utility is maximized, then sometimes you can make a case for apathy.

That’s not a path I’m willing to take. I will not shirk moral responsibility for the sake of my immediate happiness (at least on principle — of course I do this every day). When morality is suboordinated to microeconomics, nihilistic insularity is the product.

But even if morality were irrelevant, there could still be no question that the state of the world poses a basic and immediate danger to individual self-interest. When hateful discontent foments in circumstances of political oppression abroad and when cyclical poverty erodes the base of the American economy and fosters domestic discontent (to name but two pressing issues), our personal well-being — our utility — is directly threatened.

To choose happy complacency over concerned action is dangerous whether you view the world from a purely individualistic perspective or in the context of greater moral purpose.

Joe continues:

Furthermore, allow me to be a bit curmudgeonly about this – it’s the people inside, not the people outside, who make *real* progress. All the activism and outrage in the world doesn’t do much in liberal democracies; it’s good for bringing down authoritarian dictatorships, but that’s about it. In a liberal democracies, it’s the folks on the inside – The Clinton Global Initiatives, the Open Society Institutes, the Rand Corporations, the Trilateral Commisions, The Red Cross/Crescent/Star of David – that really make things happen. …Progress won’t stop; it was rarely driven by the hacky-sack wielding hippies that are always available for these Mass Protests to begin with.

Sure, elites are the most powerful policymakers. But elite opinion and public policy are also products in themselves of wider cultural trends. I’m not an expert, but I think most political scientists will argue that elite-prescribed norms, wider public opinion, and public policy are simultaneously co-determinate. The constituency of young activists does more than play hacky-sack.

To dismiss the importance of grassroots activism is to miss a central force in politics. Regarding the Clinton Global Initiatives that Joe mentions as an example of elites on the “inside” making progress: who is Bill Clinton but a product of his times? His worldview — and thus his agenda — is a product of history, part of the legacy of the counterculture, itself significantly a product of the youthful discontent that Joe is pleased to see departing.

Joe and I agree, I think, that the tone of activism is what must change. The shrill “Perpetual Outrage” (in Joe’s terms) of the activist Left has always been self-defeating. That’s why I maintain that the best course for youth politics is one that will reflect:

a deepening recognition of the world’s problems in tangent with an understanding of the demands of pragmatic politics.

Forgetting about the world’s problems in the interest of contentment will only endanger us.

UPDATE (2/27/06 – 8:25PM): Another thought occured to me on the way to (ironically) my Econ class that should help debunk the notion that political agitation among the young is neither desirable nor important. This recent post at democracyarsenal.org pointed out that many leading European humanitarians in NGO’s and even ministers of government are former student radicals.

These people, who were once clashing with police and rallying against colonialism (and maybe even playing hacky-sack) are now on the “inside,” as elites, making change. If you eliminate the climate of activism and discontent in which their politics were forged, you reduce the likelihood that they will pursue their enduring ideals later in life by more traditional means. It isn’t just a cliche that today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders. Do we want the next generation of thinkers, diplomats, and statesmen to lead from a mindset of contented complacency? I don’t.

Joe, at CampusProgress.org, writes the following regarding the dynamics of youth politics:

Largely mirroring the trends in America, Australia’s young people are also growing up more conservative, or at least more libertarian.Is [this] necessarily a bad thing? …

[It marks] a decisive rejection of the politics of Perpetually Outraged Activism of old. A growing collective recognition that the world, for all it’s faults and follies, really isn’t that bad after all. I think this is good for both America as a whole and Democrats in particular; while the Hyper-Activist Left wasn’t much of a threat to America, it’s been a real impediment to Democrats winning elections … The closer we can make the dynamics of our primaries mirror the general electorate, the better we’ll do at drafting candidates whose values and ideas appeal to a broad range of Americans, even those who are (gasp) on the whole, happy with America.

I like Joe’s thinking, but I strongly disagree.

The “collective recognition that the world, for all it’s faults and follies, really isn’t that bad after all” strikes me as a recognition with the potential to severely impede efforts to improve the world. Satisfaction with the status quo and progress are quintessentially at odds.

The more productive development would be a deepening recognition of the world’s problems in tangent with an understanding of the demands of pragmatic politics. If the “new youth” can preserve the passionate, concerned idealism of the “Hyper-Activist Left” while eliminating the shrill, polarizing tone (Joe’s “Perpetual Outrage”) that has made progressive politics so easy to marginalize, real, sensible change will be possible.

Apathy is no good path to the sensible center It is always best practice to play secure online casinos. And, to me, somebody who looks at this world and decides that “for all its faults and follies, it really isn’t that bad after all” must be apathetic. General satisfaction with today’s world can only be a product of privileged insularity. An attitude of resigned, complacent contentment strikes me as not only wrongheaded but dangerous.

A discourse on the future of youth politics and progressivism is crucial at this historical moment. Some friends and I have been brewing up plans for a project to address this very need. Stay tuned over the next few months for developments in this direction.

I was exposed tonight to a terribly disturbing phenomenon: a series of amateur films titled “Bumfights,” or “Bumhunter.”

In the films, a crew of young white males (in their late teens or early twenties) find and harrass street junkies and the homeless. The victims, who are usually severely intoxicated or mentally disabled, are paid small sums of money or offered alcohol to perform self-destructive acts in the grand tradition of the Jackasstelivision series. Homeless men are goaded into assaulting each other; are bound, gagged, and abducted in their sleep; and are encouraged to do a variety of injurious and humiliating stunts.

You might ask: “Whose worldview is sufficiently perverse to consider these antics remotely acceptable, let alone humorous?” And I would reply, to my chagrin, that groups of males at one of the country’s most elite universities find these films uproariously funny.

Viewing these films and the popular response to them was one of those experiences that leave me seriously in doubt of the integrity of our culture. I appealed to one particularly bright classmate’s sense of ethics. His response: “I don’t really find this upsetting. Homeless people bother me all the time.”

Upon further prodding, his perspective appeared to be rooted in the assumption that the men were homeless for their own poor decisions, that their situation was to be lamented but not pitied, and that the filmmakers might even be doing them a favor by “employing” them in this regard. Besides, he argued, those accepting cash in exchange for the performance of such stunts were surely making a free decision to do so.

This mindset, I think, is a microcosmic manifestation of a generally inaccurate view of economic opportunity in our society. A distorted understanding of class dynamics leads to over-optimistic assumptions that meritocracy is functioning properly; this is a phenomenon naturally more prevalent among the privileged, such as myself.

This is hardly a novel observation. It’s a central justification for the economic and social policies advocated by the American Left, and it’s an assertion frequently undermined by accusations of “class warfare.” My friends — Jon, Ruby, and Schwartz (to name a few) — might roll their eyes at its sheer self-evidence. But it’s hardly – hardly – a point of view met with widespread acceptance, and my experience with these films only reinforces, by way of concrete example, the perception that misconceived assumptions about class and opportunity are massive impediments to social progress.

I grew up immersed in progressivism. I was educated in an environment where the assertion that a homeless man mightdeserve his condition would be tantamount to blasphemy. Even if it is bad decision-making, sheer stupidity, greed, or weakness alone that led to an individual’s fall from society’s grace, surely compassion and empathy would be natural responses; surely no one should be sentenced to a life of gutter-dwelling drug abuse. Surely, no matter how ill-advised a life a man leads, it is at least partially an indictment of greater society that he should find himself doomed to an utter lack of opportunity, to an animal existence.

I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that these values are far from universal. I can accept this. I can work with it. But to know that my peers not only don’t find indigence tragic, to know that they find it humorous, is just mind-blowing. Perhaps it shouldn’t be. Perhaps it’s been a staple activity of well-to-do university boys since the days of Ancient Greece to sit in a common room, imbibing sweet wine and laughing at the desperate circumstances of stupid beggars. Perhaps “Bumfights” is a modern manifestation of some age-old tradition of the rich. But I thought we’d come a little bit further, and it’s deeply discouraging to discover that the progress I want to see in my time will meet far graver cultural obstacles than I had anticipated.

After two Florida teenagers severely beat three homeless men last month, murdering one, pop-psychologists bloviated on cable news channels for a week, speculating as to what sort of unique psychological circumstances could provoke children to such behavior. A small part of the answer must present its ugly self in my generation’s apparent appreciation of these films, an appreciation which can only exist in the absence of thoughtfulness and compassion.

[I won't do the "filmmakers" the honor of linking to their web site, but here is the Wikipedia entry documenting the phenomenon:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumfights]

Zeyad’s latest update from Baghdad:

Apparently, the attackers were fended off in our neighbourhood. The fight ended about 2 hours ago, about the same time electric power returned to our area. Now we are only hearing sporadic gunshots here and there. To have an idea of what was going on, listen to these small audio files I recorded using a cell phone. …Government officials and spokespersons are deliberately suppressing any news of these ongoing attacks on Sunni neighbourhoods and mosques. The official Al-Iraqiya channel is playing a historical movie, while other channels are playing Shi’ite mourning and Quran. The Interior ministry says it only has reports of 19 mosques attacked and one cleric killed. Go figure.

The sound clips are dramatic, and an amazing example of how technology is changing the world. A man in the middle of war-torn Baghdad, on the other side of the world, is providing us with essentially real-time audio footage of the situation there via a cell phone and the internet.

Zeyad, an Iraqi dentist-blogger in Baghdad, is writing from the heart of the storm:

Fierce streetfighting at my doorstep for the last 3 hours. Rumor in the neighbourhood is that men in black are trying to enter the area. Some armed kids defending the local mosque three blocks away are splattering bullets at everything that moves, and someone in the street was shouting for people to prepare for defending themselves. …My father and uncle are agitatedly walking back and forth in the hallway, asking me what we should do if the mob or Interior ministry forces try to attack us in our homes? I have no answer for them.

It’s hard to say what “fierce streetfighting” entails, but nothing on the spectrum of possibilities could be anything less than terrible.

Despite U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch’s claim that Iraqi forces have been “confident” and “capable” in “calming the storm,” many reports suggest that Iraqi police were frequently complicit in attacks on Sunni mosques or at best “did little to contain the violence.” There’s no one entity with a monopoly on force; anarchy and de facto civil war seem to constitute the status quo.

I’ll be reading his blog throughout the week.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

“Apocolyptic”

UMich Professor Juan Cole’s blog on Middle Eastern politics is an essential read these days as the situation in Iraq threatens to spiral out of control. Any Western observer seeking a more complete understanding of the situation there would do well to read his informed comment; he understands and relates the political, religious, and cultural dynamics comprehensively and concisely.

After guerillas yesterday destroyed the sacred Shiite Askariyah shrine in Samarra, Cole deemed the situation in Iraq “apocalyptic.”

The latest Cox & Forkum cartoon, “Toonophobia,” evoked in me an unexpected tumult of emotion.

[click for full size]

Its message is complicated, and some context is necessary. Some months ago, workers at a government office in England wereordered to “remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet” to avoid offending the sensibilities of Muslim employees or clients. Ridiculous, no doubt.

Relating that story to the controversy over the Muhammed cartoons, Cox & Forkum defiantly present both offending images (though images of the prophet with a bomb in his turban are potentially offensive on a much deeper, and arguably more legitimate, level) to assert the absurdity of the recent uproar.

Okay, fair point — though it is a leap to equate images of Porky Pig with images that explicity imply that Islam is inextricably linked with violence. But I understand their point of view.

What really elicited a visceral reaction from me, though, was not the cartoonists’ point, which has its merits and its failings, but simply the presence of Piglet, a cherished character from my childhood, in a cartoon that contains violent religious fantatics and the inflammatory objects of their outrage.

And in that sense, the cartoon is an artistic success. Though I maintain that [tempered, nonviolent] Muslim umbrage over the Muhammed cartoons is justifiable while outrage over Piglet calendars isn’t, the cartoonists, in presenting these images together, powerfully illustrate the point that violent outrage over free expression of any sort is a grave threat to liberal societies. The presence of harmless characters from my childhood makes more stark the contrast between cultures of tolerance and cultures of indignant intolerance.

But, more broadly, the inclusion of Piglet in such political commentary angers me. My anger is not directed exclusively at any party, and least of all at the cartoonists, who made a powerful point. My anger – my outrage — is directed at a world so infused with hatred, discord, and inhumanity that cherished images from my childhood should ever cross paths with images, individuals, and movements that make this world a less peaceful place.

Because just as Muhammed lies in the sacred realm of Islam, Piglet lies in mine. And I write that without irony or sarcasm. When a childhood character who embodies the virtues of love, kindness, and friendship — a character who charmed me as I toddled about in diapers — enters a discourse of conflict, hatred, and destruction, it is an indictment of our people — and my “our people,” I mean humanity.

If you can bear it, hold a few images in your mind’s eye. Imagine a frenzied mob hurling molotov cocktails at an embassy. Imagine warplanes turning a residential neighborhood into hell on Earth. If you can, imagine the Holocaust. Now imagine a little boy, no more than three, sitting on the floor on a Saturday morning watching Winnie the Pooh, grinning ear to ear.

The fact that these images should ever occur in sequence should be cause enough for tears. I feel that I have committed some grisly crime against humanity for even mentioning them in the same paragraph. But this is what our species has created: a world that pits the arrogant passions of political and religious ideologies against the innocence of children. There is much to be protected in this world. Some things are worth fighting for and even worth dying — or, I am afraid to say, killing — for. And all of that, I think, can be symbolized by the image of that little boy. For when the innocence of children is no longer sacrosanct, we have forgotten and cast aside our humanity.

I write this not to belittle the importance of politics. Conflicts between tolerance and intolerance, liberalism and authoritarianism, or oppression and freedom are not petty; they protect the very circumstances that allow children to be innocent. Political conflict is a necessity. Vigilance against threats to cherished values — such as values which protect our children — is a necessity. I write this only to restate the obvious and perhaps the simplistic: a world in which hatred is so pervasive, a world ruled too often by the whims of tyrants and maniacs, is no world for children.

This world is far-removed from the Hundred-Acre Wood. And that’s a tragedy; it really is. A species so uniquely endowed with the tendency to strive for the Good owes itself better.

Richard Cohen argues in Thursday’s WaPo that algebra should not be a course required for graduation from high school. He tells the story of Gabriela Ocampo, a Los Angeles teenager who dropped out of school after failing algebra six times in a row:

So, according to the Los Angeles Times, she “gathered her textbooks, dropped them at the campus book room and, without telling a soul, vanished from Birmingham High School.”…

Here’s the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. You will never need to know — never mind want to know — how many boys it will take to mow a lawn if one of them quits halfway and two more show up later — or something like that. Most of math can now be done by a computer or a calculator.

Cohen’s argument against the dogmatic, inflexible curricula that prevent students from success in life because of difficulty in one course is sensible. But his overall analysis strikes me as incredibly shallow.

First, the fact that Ocampo failed algebra six consecutive times should be a cause for alarm. I can think of only two possible explanations: either she is plagued by a learning disability or the school is providing a woefully inadequate education.

If a student is simply incapable, for some biochemical or psychological reason, of grasping abstract math concepts, she certainly should not be denied a high school degree and thus sentenced to second-class citizenhood. On this point, I agree with Cohen. Just as the blind are not barred from success because of their inherent inability to see, those who are fundamentally unable to conceptualize mathematics should not be categorically denied opportunity.

On the other hand, if the student is simply slow to grasp mathematics and her school had neither the resources nor the wherewithall to guide her toward understanding (the essential objective of education), this is an indictment not of algebra but of the school itself.

To write off algebra as nothing more than a tool for calculating “how many boys it will take to mow a lawn if one of them quits halfway and two more show up later” is asinine. The algebraic method is not merely a means to trivial test-taking success; it is an important way of conceptualizing and solving problems.

An understanding of the dynamics of variables is an essential element of any undertaking in the social or natural sciences and even has broad application in everyday life. The ability to add a quantitative perspective to one’s worldview vastly increases one’s faculties of comprehension and analysis.

Even Cohen’s editorial poses a question that can be phrased algebraically. On the right side of the equation, we see a high school dropout. On the left side, we see an individual, a system of education, a broader societal context, and a specific academic subject. Which of these variables needs to change to produce asuccessful student rather than a failure, and to what degree?

Perhaps Cohen’s admitted mathematical ineptitude explains his incorrect conclusions.

Students who are simply not equipped by nature to succeed at math should of course still be able to succeed in the world. But the denunciation of algebra as a petty and obsolete subject is absurd. In a country where countless students drop out of high school and where shocking percentages of those who graduate require remedial training in basic skills, the question should not be, “How can we eliminate challenging aspects of the curriculum?”

The questions should be, “How can we accomodate the educational demands of challenged students? How can we equip our pathetically underperforming public schools to provide world-class education for every citizen? And what underlying social dynamics predestine poor kids to academic failure?”