Current mood:	sore
Current music:	Breakingform, "October"
Entry tags:	comics, politics, rant

How much do manners matter?
Catherine Seipp has a great discussion about civility as a virtue - the basic question is whether manners themselves are inherently a sign of civilization. Personally, I'd say "yes." Even though there are certainly uncivilized, brutal people who know which fork to use at a table, the idea that there are behavior-restricting norms is one of the profound things in any civilization. (I do know someone who was once described as "passing etiquitte, but failing manners," but that's another story...) Without this idea, all we have is a morass of individual desires, instantaneously acted upon. Elanit hit on the subject without realizing it: the question of free expression is at the core of the manners discussion. Does our God-given right to express ourselves at all times mean that we have no obligations to sublimate our personal desires before the societal norms? Of course not - there are clearly some forms of expression which are verboten, even in absence of a compelling interest in other ways (i.e. public urination is prohibited for public health reasons). If an example is needed, consider the laws against libel, slander, graffiti, false & misleading consumer ads, political speech at voting places, etc. And then there's the classic "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre-" but you can make a public-health argument there. Not so with slander: anyone who believes in free-expression above all should be against anti-slander laws, because I should have the right to say that person X is a goat-loving monkeyboy, right?
And it should go without saying (but it doesn't, so I'll say it) that the fact that the government can impose limits on speech implies kal v'homer that others can impose stricter limits than the government does.

Is it me, or is the mainstream media obsessed with relatively meaningless "milestone" numbers? Today's example is from CNN, who are going on about the 1,000th person to be executed since 1977. They made a big deal yesterday about the person who was going to be the 1,000th, but his sentance was commuted. Now, what exactly is the significance of the number here? If you're for capital punishment, you're for it, and if you're against it, you're against it. 1,000 over 18 years is under 56 per year, which is hardly a flood given that there are over 260,000,000 people in the country. In fact, all 1,000 of them together comprise less than .0004% of the population. Just to add some perspective, the annual death rate for variant CJD ('mad cow' disease) is about 260 per year here (source), and 56 is well below the annual death rates caused by lightning, chicken pox, and fire ants (source).

A similar approach was used by the media in their "2000 dead in Iraq" business, which was pretty thoroughly debunked by James Robbins as being thoroughly misleading.

Is there some reason why big round numbers are the ones people fixate upon? If being in Iraq is wrong, than ONE death is too many. If being in Iraq is right, then 2000 is unfortunate, but is the price which we must be willing to pay. Was anyone's opinion actually changed by this coverage? (i.e. is the number REALLY news?)

Anyway, enough heavy stuff - here's the comics:

Casey & Andy gives us not one, not two, but three punch lines, ah ah ah... (/count)

Penny and Aggie has an excellent description of my reaction when I met Sarah...

And then to be timely, PVP asks a classic Chrismas question.

And I've gotta say, QC has totally hooked me: they've reached the point where they don't HAVE to bring the funny every day: I care about Faye, and thus her back-story is important to me. That's the mark of good storytelling, in my book.

EDIT: I almost forgot how funny Nodwick is today. :)