AM radio shows as broken windows

In an 1982 article, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling announced their "broken windows" theory of crime:

Broken windows theory is a criminological theory of the normsetting and signalling effects of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. The theory states that monitoring and maintaining urban environments in a well-ordered condition may prevent further vandalism as well as an escalation into more serious crime.

Here's more from Wikipedia:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.

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Bullying

I've been hesitant to write about this, because the tendency to indulge self pity creeps in around the edges. I'm hesitant because for me this is personal. But in the past year we've seen a rise in attention being paid to a great human tradition---bullying. A gay youth outed by his peers committed suicide. Other gays under a microscope all over the country have found themselves driven to the edge. National "movements" to deal with this problem have sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain. The last time we witnessed this level of discussion about bullying was after a couple of disaffected youths murdered several of their peers at their high school and then took their own lives, leaving behind ample testaments that what had driven them to do this had been years of bullying. A recent episode of Glee dealt with the subject, the lone out gay boy in the school having come under the daily assault by an oversized pituitary case who, for no apparent reason, had decided to make life hell for the outsider. I suppose it was this episode that prompted me to write about this. Because it indulged some pop psychology, which I stress is not baseless, to explain the bully's behavior---he, too, was a closeted gay who hated himself for it. The idea being that we hate that which we are which we cannot accept in ourselves. [More . . . ]

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The Dollar Got More Annoying

This is not about the falling value of our currency with respect to the rest of the world, but rather a reprise on my 2007 post, In God We Trust wherein I complained about the propagation of the cold war addition of God to our money in the latest series of presidential dollar coins. The had stamped "In God We Trust" around the edge, along with the date. But the latest dollars have God on the face, and hide the date and the uniquely and importantly American "E Pluribus Unum" on the edge. Do they think that Sacajawea trusted in in the Old World God? I really think that we should get rid of the old cold war legacies, and take God back off of our money and back out of the pledge to the flag (as I discussed in The Changing Recipe of Pleasure Lesion Stew). One could argue that this would show the world that we are confident of our faith, instead of protesting it too much.

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What to do with bullies

A chuckling acquaintance recently talked up a television show called "Bully Beatup. The idea of the show is that victims of bullies report the bullies to the producers of "Bully Beatdown." The show's host, Jason "Mayhem" Miller, offers the over-confident bully $10,000 to get into a cage with a highly-skilled mixed martial artist. In sum, then, the idea is to see a highly-skilled fighter beat the shit out of a neighborhood bully. There are some rules:

Each fight features two three-minute rounds: the first consists of grappling (no striking allowed), and the second round involves kickboxing. The bullies begin each round with $5,000 in potential earnings; each time the bully taps out in the first round, $1,000 of his potential earnings go to the victim, and if the fight is stopped in the second round by KO, TKO, or referee, the bully loses the entire sum. In the unlikely scenario that the bully can KO the MMA fighter, he wins money in addition to his first round earnings and the $5,000 from the second round.
If you're in a mood for schadenfreude check it out. This episode lays out the method of the payback, and presents the case of "Vince" the nightmare roommate. A highly confident 6 foot 7 Vince ends of facing an imposing fighter named Michael Westbrook, formerly an NFL wide receiver with tae kwon do and other martial arts training. I suppose that we need shows like this to serve as a counter-weight to less visceral approaches to conflict, such as love thy neighbor. This show is painful to watch, even when the bully gets what he has coming, but immensely memorable.

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Worms, Roxanne! Worms!

New Oxford American Dictionary blog editor Lauren Appelwick is reporting “refudiate” as the 2010 Word of the Year, joining past recipients “unfriend”, “truthiness” and so many other wonders of the internet age. Lexicographer Susie Dent makes her subjective choice each year (many collected here). As she is employed by the Oxford University Press, additional credibility is lent to her selections I can only assume by virtue of “Oxford” and “University” being used in the same sentence. Thus, an internet search for “word of the year” often tags the “Oxford” or “Oxford Dictionary” or some similar modifier to the “WOTY”. I have fun fracturing the mother tongue all the time. But I don’t expect any of my misconstruations to make their way into the lexicon of American English. Particulalry when they are disavowed as mistypes then claimed intentional. I don’t know about you, but for me, “Oxford” unfairly or not conjures up images of staid and primped stuffed shirts. Make no mistake. They never got over our insurrection and are mocking us again. And that is ginormously discombobulating.

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