Safari Post VIII

Welcome to the next installment of the Grand Safari. Having arrived at the Seronera Lodge (Seronera is a sparse settlement in the middle of Serengeti National Park, mainly consisting of lodges and research complexes), we wandered off to find the bar. Er... the tea, yes, the hot tea. On the way there, we were amused by the large numbers of hyraxes wandering around the grounds.

I don't know about you, but I think Hyraxes are very cute. I think I could make a profitable business importing them to the States for pets. There are more pictures (not all of hyraxes) after the jump.


I really liked the Seronera Lodge. The lounge area here--the rooms are very small and only have room for beds, so you don't relax in the room--is most fascinating. All those big rocks are the real thing, not some painted styrofoam Disney set piece.

The lodge is built right onto one of the rock out- croppings the dot the Serengeti, called "kopjes" (pronounced KOH-pees). Mufasa stood on a kopje when he presented Simba to the gathered throng of animals, to continue the Disney metaphor. I grabbed a drink and went out to take pictures around the lodge grounds. I didn't think to take one of the lounge itself, so this picture is from my travelling companion George.

The Seronera Lodge is right in the middle of the Serengeti, and there's no fencing or anything else. It's basically part of the natural terrain, and animals treat it as such.

One animal you'll never forget is this one here, the Marabou Stork, which I think looks rather nightmarish. This guy was just hanging out on the front lawn after the rain stopped. Where he came from and where he went I have no idea. In fact he might have been a she; storks all like alike.

From the front lawn--the stork wasn't bothered by people walking around--we saw some monkeys playing on the roof of the lodge. I think these were vervet monkeys again, but we never got a good ID on them. They played on the roof of the lodge for a while. We didn't see any other monkeys in the Serengeti that I remember apart from these and others hanging out at the lodge itself.

Likely as not they hang by the lodges so they can steal scraps out of the trash. No doubt plenty of tourists sneak them food, too. We saw a baboon at the lodge the next day during lunch, trying to get into the dining room. One of the staff persons chased it away with a broom. Apparently they sometimes get inside the dining room if the sliding doors are left open. That would be a sight.

The lodge consisted of two long two-story residential buildings connected by boardwalks around a courtyard, with the dining room, lounge, and kitchen built into the kopje on the third side. The fourth side of the courtyard was open to the Serengeti. Around the rocks of the kopje was a fairly large resident population of hyraxes, along with some bright purple lizards and other things. The hyrax--these here are specifically Rock Hyraxes--is a cute little social animal more closely related to manatees and elephants than to anything else. That's right.

It's commonly said--I've said it myself-- that the hyrax is the elephant's closest living relative. Actually, the dugong and manatee are closer relatives of the elephant, but both families--both sea cows and elephants--descended from giant hyraxes 40 million years ago or so. These modern hyraxes, of which there are four species, are plant-eating animals. They have multiple stomachs, like cows and such, but do not chew cud. They do not have sharp incisors like rabbits and rodents and so don't need to chew constantly (making them more suited for the pet market, really). They don't maintain their body temperature very well, so they spend much of the day sitting around on rocks in the sunshine. These little cuties here are demonstrating another tactic for both staying warm and watching out for predators: they sit butt to butt in groups. This was not a very warm day and the hyraxes were thick on the ground trying to stay out of the weather.

Now seriously. Aren't these things cute? They're about one to two feet long (males are bigger than females) and weigh five to ten pounds. They don't need to chew to sharpen their incisors like rodents do. They have only 2-3 pups in a litter, which are born with their eyes open and eat solid food after two weeks, plus the parents don't eat their young like mice and guinea pigs (saving parents the need to explain this bizarre behavior to young children still trying to grasp the idea that babies came out of the mommy). They're very intelligent and highly social, and should be easy to litter train (their leavings form a congealed mass so it would be easy to clean up in the litter box). They don't burrow (their feet aren't equipped for digging). Plus they're just so chubby and cute! If I'd been able to catch one napping alone, I'd have tried to sneak him into my suitcase, but the opportunity never arose. I think we all need more hyrax in our daily lives. I think I'll start my hyrax import business once I get out of my current job.

We spent some time in the lounge, reading, drinking, relaxing in a non-jostling setting, and then had some dinner. After dinner you have to be hasty and get your shower done while you can, because the power goes off at 9 and the nights are very very dark out there.

In the morning after breakfast as we were getting ready for our first game drive of the day, another Marabou Stork wandered across the front lawn. I caught him in the lens with my favorite horrible tree, Acacia horrida, the toothpick tree. Those white things are thorns.

We got started on our game drive after breakfast. We didn't bother to fix boxed lunches because we figured we'd just come back to the lodge. It was rather dreary in the morning, not raining but still quite damp and mostly overcast. We headed out into the countryside. The most surprising thing, at least to me, was how scrubby it was. I thought it would be all the vast endless undulating plains that you see on the Discovery Channel, but there are a lot of trees out there.

The Impala don't seem to mind the trees as much as they do the rain. This is a group of bachelor males.

The Impala, like many animals, tend to live in two different social groups: a harem, which is a group of females and young dominated by an alpha male; or a bachelor group, like the ones above. With most females choosing to settle into a harem there are a lot of lonely guys out there. Smitty used to be one, but thank God he found the perfect woman before he got too old for her to fall in love with him. It makes him think of these beautiful little lovebirds here.

Yes, there are there of them. And Lord only knows what they're doing sitting in a toothpick tree. But aren't they just the sweetest little things you ever saw? I mean, apart from the hyraxes?

In post IX, we'll delve deeper into the Serengeti game drives, and stop all this foolish chronological ordering of posts. Next time: The Mighty Wildebeest! Don't miss it!

Safari Post I (Introduction)
Safari Post II (Nairobi)
Safari Post III (Arusha – The Safari Begins)
Safari Post IV - Lake Manyara A
Safari Post V - Lake Manyara B
Safari Post VI - Lake Manyara Lodge
Safari Post VII - Off to Serengeti!
Safari Post VIII - Welcome to the Serengeti

No News II

That's right, there was no news today regarding my job. I hear TPTB spent much of the day involved in unrelated legal issues. Perhaps late today TPTB might have seen my paperwork; if not, perhaps tomorrow. But that's just supposition and for all I know there isn't even any actual paperwork and this is all just a cruel joke. I guess we'll find out tomorrow! Or not.

No News

That's right, there was no news today regarding my job. I hear the powers that be (TPTB) will be sitting down and looking at various legal paperwork tomorrow, and my paperwork might be among the pieces of paperwork. But that's just supposition and for all I know there isn't even any actual paperwork and this is all just a cruel joke. I guess we'll find out tomorrow! Or not.

Safari Post VII: No, Really!

We never did get all the way through the safari, did we? Well, it's time to get started again! Safari was great! We'll pick it up where we left off--heading for the Serengeti--after the jump.

Now then. You may want to go back and review where we were when last we discussed safari. (Links to the rest of the safari posts are at the bottom of this one.)

We left the Lake Manyara Lodge in the morning after packing up box lunches. The plan for the day called for... well, I'm not sure. It called for going to the Serengeti. Did it call for a game drive at the Serengeti? I don't know. In any event, departing Manyara we drove through some of the prettiest countryside we saw on the trip. Tanzania is just an absolutely gorgeous place. Pity it's so poor... but if it was rich like America, this view would be trashed up with billboards and gas stations and tire stores and fast food joints, and instead of a jumble of little farms it would be one big mechanized field owned by ADM. So it goes.

Leaving behind the settled part of the countryside we eventually arrived at the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. You may have heard of the Ngorongoro Crater if you watch any nature shows on Discovery Channel. I didn't realize it but we had to drive right along the rim of the crater on our way to Serengeti. Along the way there's an observation point. We stopped and took photos into the crater. Notice that cloud there in the foreground that looks like so much fog balled up into a cloud? Yeah, quite the cloud...

Anyway, we took a couple group photos as well, but because of my strict "No Pictures of Smitty" policy I can't post those. Nyah nyah! But we did happen to peer over the rim into the crater, and what did we spy there? Cape Buffalo! Walking in a line to a pond to take a drink. And an ostrich behind them. At least, we think these are cape buffalo. They could be something else equally large, possibly rhinos, but these do not look like rhinoceri. At this point we were using my camera like binoculars, because it was a little clearer. Cool, huh? I like my camera.

We drove along the crater rim for a while, then stopped at the Serena Ngorongoro Lodge to pick up some ice for our cooler. Remember we'd purchased beers, ciders, chips and such back in Arusha? They were warm. (Not so bad with the chips, you know, but the beer and cider...) So were the box lunches. And it was pretty warm in Tanzania, too, so we needed to get stuff on ice. The Serena Lodge was gorgeous, just beautiful. You could do the same safari we did, but stay at Serena Lodges every night (except Manyara). Costs several hundred dollars more, but let me tell you, these are nice places. Still, you don't go on safari to stay in nice hotels. We were happy with where we stayed.

In any event, we eventually passed on over the crater rim and started down the back side of the extinct volcano. Beyond the crater itself lies the Maasai Valley, a bit of a misnomer as far more Maasai live elsewhere than live in the valley itself, but it's a pretty spot, no doubt. This is fascinating country, very rough. If you want, you can stop at a Maasai village in this valley. You have to pay some money, and of course it's appreciated if you bring gifts--pencils and paper for the children, mainly, though sodas and other things are appreciated--and you get to go into one of the village huts and look at handicrafts and whatnot. And, no doubt, be swarmed by people selling things. Back in Arusha we had purchased the so-called Maasai Gift Bag, which is a mix of all things they like as gifts, but as our spines turned to jelly on the rutted road through the valley we became inert and decided to keep driving.

One thing we had not counted on seeing--I didn't even know we'd go by it--was the Oldupai Gorge. You know it better as the "Olduvai Gorge," but the guides there will tell you that pronunciation and spelling is incorrect.

This is the famous gorge where Mary Leakey first discovered footprints of early humans frozen in the million-years-old ash of the eruption of the volcano that created Ngorongoro. It is one of the most important paleoanthropology sites in the world. And it was on the way. Bryson asked if we wanted to go, and I think largely on my urging we agreed to do so.

On the road down to the gorge welcome center, we passed five giraffes galloping along in a line, one behind the next. Fascinating to watch. Giraffes walk differently from most other four-legged animals. When ambling around, as they generally do, a giraffe moves his front and back legs on the same side at the same time. This creates the amusing "loping" gait they have that you've seen at the zoo. But when they really get cranking--and giraffes can run at about 30 mph--the giraffe moves his back legs together, and then his front legs. And, with each step, the two back legs land ahead of and outside the front legs. It's extremely strange; I'd never seen it before. Here's a video so you can see what I'm talking about. He starts running at about 0:48.

We went to the Oldupai Gorge visitor center, and looked out into the gorge. The ranger will give a talk, and you can walk through the museum.

It's very pretty there. We ate our lunches and looked over the gorge, and fed shockingly bright ravenous little yellow birds. While we were eating a fellow came up through the gorge, leading cattle and goats in search of some good grazing. It brought some interesting points to mind. Oldupai is not the most hospitable of areas. It's quite dry; although areas around there get a lot of rain, much of what falls between the Serengeti and Ngorongoro falls on very hard ground and runs into dry creekbeds. It's semi-arid, like southwestern Texas or southern Colorado. Humans evolved here, or in areas much like this in Ethiopia and elsewhere. But once modern humans left here... well, what impact did modernity have on this area? None, really. The Maasai have domesticated animals and crops, but apart from that--and agriculture itself is thought to have arrived in these parts about 8000 years ago--there was nothing but hunting and gathering. Modern humans--and anatomically modern humans lived in these parts by at least 100,000 years ago--hunted and gathered here, in the Oldupai, almost from the time they appeared. Anatomically... well, we could have been 100,000 years in the past. Even 10,000 years ago men were here, and they hunted animals (which are in abundance) and gathered edible plants (not quite so many in this area), and the Maasai do this now. They herd their cattle and goats, but they do still gather edible plants, and, outside of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the national parks, they hunt wild game. Modernity has arrived for them in the form of fat white tourists with cameras. But here was one, in the gorge, in this place where man has done what he does for untold millenia. To us on the ridge, it was food for thought. To the herdsman down below... did it really even matter?

We left the Gorge and headed on toward Serengeti. On the way we passed two Maasai children with a herd of goats and several camels. Camels are funny looking animals. Ben attempted to take a picture of the herdsmen--boys, really, they were probably 14 or 15--and has a terrific picture of a hand. No pictures without money. This is the change modernity has wrought. So it goes.
As we drove along it slowly grew darker and more ominous. Thunder could be heard. Rain was coming.

We finally made it to the Serengeti National Park entrance. Technically of course we'd been in the Serengeti plain for some time, though it was mostly a sparse and desolate area. Rain seemed imminent as we pulled in at the entrance at Naabi Hill. Bryson had to go into the office and clear paperwork. A few of us decided to get out of the truck and climb up Naabi Hill, which is a low rock hill with a nice path. Some pretty trees had bright red seeds on them that were too tempting for me to leave behind, but I misplaced them in my luggage and never got the chance to grow them at home.
We climbed up the hill and stood and looked out in the distance across the vast Serengeti--a Maasai word meaning "endless plain." The name was appropriate.
Unfortunately as you can see, the rain was coming. We didn't make it down the hill dry.

Bryson came back and we headed out into the endless plain. The rain was pretty endless, too. I don't know how far we drove, but it was slow, painfully slow. Tanzania has this theory about roads, see. The roads through the national parks cannot be paved; so far so good. A nice packed dirt path is fine. Gravel works, too. Hundreds of tires driving over it every day will compact it down just fine.

But that's not good enough. The Tanzanian government, for whatever reason, employs crack Road Disimprovement Squads to see that nature is not allowed to take its course on the national highways. We first noticed these before the rain hit. Every mile or so, there will be, say, a dozen or so gigantic lumps of fresh red clay dumped in a neat line on one side of the highway. These lumps are as big as the safari truck. They're just sitting there, baking in the sun. We saw these all the time, all over the place, but never did I see a road where the lumps had been recently flattened out to "repave" the highway.

No surprise, when the rain started coming down in torrents--it was literally raining gnus and gazelles, or at least it seemed that way--the fresh piles of red clay turned into six-inch-deep mudpits, and worse. This is the main highway from the city of Mwanza, at Lake Victoria, to Arusha and Dar es Salaam, thus the main route for freshwater seafood from the Lake to the consumers at Arusha and Dar and the great wide world. Trucks hauling fish were stopped axle-deep in mud all along the highway. It was only a matter of time, of course... you remember the picture of our safari chariot, back in post 3? Remember those two big tires on the back of the truck? Turns out we need them. We managed to get a flat. Now, I don't quite know how this happened, to be honest--I mean, it wasn't like there was anything hard or sharp in that mud, it was just... sticky, deep mud. But whatever. We got a flat. I mean, Bryson had been driving over ruts in the mud like he was driving a motocross, so I guess it was only a matter of time. He got out, jacked the truck, changed the tire--all this in the pouring rain, while we fat white Westerners sat on our duffs inside (adding 850 pounds to the weight of the truck) and ate chili-lemon chips.

Okay, it wasn't that bad. Jim and I at least got out and, you know, stood around and looked at the tire. Which is what men do, you know, is stand around and watch. We don't help, we watch and comment. But then it started raining harder and we got back inside, at Bryson's insistence. Can't blame him.

Soon enough the tire was replaced, the flat one rehung on the back of the truck to be patched or retubed or whatever at the next lodge, and we were on our way. We passed more animals, all of them standing in the rain looking vaguely annoyed. When at last we arrived at the Seronera Lodge, the rain was letting up. There was no power at the lodge, however--they only have electricity during certain hours of the day, from about 5-9 morning and night, and I guess some at lunchtime. They did have fresh pineapple juice, though, and once we were unpacked into our rooms we went into the lodge's main hall, where there was ample tea and coffee and wine and nice comfy seats that weren't jostling us around. It was nice.

The next day we went on our first Serengeti game drive. Lots of fun pictures!

Safari Post I (Introduction)
Safari Post II (Nairobi)
Safari Post III (Arusha – The Safari Begins)
Safari Post IV - Lake Manyara A
Safari Post V - Lake Manyara B
Safari Post VI - Lake Manyara Lodge
Safari Post VII - Off to Serengeti!
Safari Post VIII - Welcome to the Serengeti

Hooray Pots

This weekend is the big Art for the Garden sale at St. Pete Clay. I went over there on Friday to trim up a few new pots, and set my shelves up all pretty-like so people might actually buy some of my stuff. Sales haven't been going that great for me lately and it's too expensive to keep my membership up if I'm going to be working only part time. Here's hoping the sale went well yesterday and when Smittygirl and I head over there later today there are tumbleweeds blowing across my shelves...

Anyway, here's the first selection.

You've seen many of these before in other pottery posts. The pickle jar at the front right is new, although believe it or not I made it about the same time as the one I've been making pickles in for the last two years. Took a long time to get it fired. The pitcher on the far left is one of the first things I made; it's been on the shelves too long so I put it up on the top in plain view and priced it down. Here's hoping, right? The jug in the center is beautiful and I'm not pricing that down; if folks around here can't appreciate 1 gallon jugs then I'll take it home myself.


Second shelf. Lots of stuff here. Of course you'll recognize the cockroach traps in the front. I'm a big fan of the two half-pink jars over on the right. In front of them is a tiny little jug I made ages ago and decided to put on the shelves and see if it sold. It's five dollars. It's cute, for five dollars. Ah, but there are two new things on this shelf, too, behind the cockroach traps: two bottles. One is sort of a genie bottle. I had a lot of fun making that. Then a more standard bottle-shape is beside it. I really like both of these and was sure to take a few extra pictures of them by themselves.


And here's the third shelf. I didn't use the bottom shelf this time, since it's so hard to see things down there. I crammed all these guys on the third shelf right up near the front so people could see them. A lot of these are old, as in "from college." Which I don't like to think of as old but, you know, I didn't get carded for the wine I bought yesterday, either (though I did on Thursday). Savvy observers may note that there are no pots here glazed with RF Blue, but there are two with Oh My God Yellow.



And here's the fourth shelf, which is actually next to the second shelf. These are some of the nicer things; that jug on the right has about the nicest shape of any jug I've made, though it's a bit small (less than a half gallon). The bowl on the left is nice--very nice, in fact I was surprised by it when I was cleaning the shelves Friday. It had been on the bottom and collected a lot of dust. Perhaps I was hoping it wouldn't sell so I could keep it... The two jars in the center are also some of my favorites.

I just hope some of it sells. It's not that I don't want to keep my membership at the studio, because I very much do. But the cost is just far too high given the impending financial restrictions I'm about to face. I think I'll have time to get to the studio more frequently when I'm in law school, because, let's face it, I'll need a little time to use my hands for something and I'll already be over in St. Pete a lot anyway. But there's the second problem, which is, if the stuff that's already on the shelves doesn't go away, there's no room for anything else anyway. What am I supposed to do then? I already have a shelf completely full of unglazed pottery awaiting... well, awaiting me to get over there and glaze it, but awaiting shelf-space, too. As it is I barely have room for the things that are there.

Here. Here's my shelf of new stuff:

See? It's nice! Like the martini shaker in the back center, or the flower vase on the right. It needs to go on the shelves, too.

Call your friends and tell them to go shopping at St. Pete Clay.

One Month Later

This is the laundry tree. Remember, a month ago I posted a picture of an ash seedling that sprouted from a seed that had been through the laundry in my pocket? I wanted to give an update on it. Still going strong, as you can see. I'm hoping it will start developing compound leaves soon.

Set Phasers on Stun

I borrowed Steven Casey's Set Phasers on Stun from Lucky Bob because it sounded interesting and Lucky wrote a good review. I did the borrowing back in... oh, December. Really. It's been on the sidebar a long time, huh?

Well, I made the mistake of setting the book by the bed as a little before-bed reading. Unfortunately, though it's interesting, it gave me kafka dreams if I read it right before bed. I mean, the whole book is about situations where there was a small error in engineering--generally, where a product was designed without the end-user in mind--and sadly most of these ended in tragedy, one life or many. Not the best bedside reading.

So I read almost all of it in the last couple weeks not at bedtime, and it was much better. It's a very interesting book, and I can see why it was a textbook for an engineering design class. Now I just have to figure out how to get it back to its rightful owner.

Set Phasers on Stun

I borrowed Steven Casey's Set Phasers on Stun from Lucky Bob because it sounded interesting and Lucky wrote a good review. I did the borrowing back in... oh, December. Really. It's been on the sidebar a long time, huh?

Well, I made the mistake of setting the book by the bed as a little before-bed reading. Unfortunately, though it's interesting, it gave me kafka dreams if I read it right before bed. I mean, the whole book is about situations where there was a small error in engineering--generally, where a product was designed without the end-user in mind--and sadly most of these ended in tragedy, one life or many. Not the best bedside reading.

So I read almost all of it in the last couple weeks not at bedtime, and it was much better. It's a very interesting book, and I can see why it was a textbook for an engineering design class. Now I just have to figure out how to get it back to its rightful owner.

What next?

As you may recall, late last month I received word that I may finally be getting to leave my current horrible job. Hooray! Holy shit!

Well, the first of two potential deadlines for that to happen passed a while back with nary a peep from the powers that be. The second of the two deadlines is this coming Monday. Should I count on hearing something? Should I expect that this deadline will indeed mean that this long pointless nightmare will at long last be over? Find out after the jump.

Nah. I mean, this is, what, like the seventh or eighth solid deadline I've been given over the past two years? These people couldn't organize a game of Red Rover, much less manage the details of a large and complex personnel system. I've often said that with my employer, you can't be sure anything is going to happen until it already has. And so here I sit, nothing having happened yet.

But I'm not going to give up that easily, either. I have no choice but to assume I'll shortly be out of a job (a blessed occurrence indeed, though I must assume it will only feel that way for a brief while), so I'm looking at my open options for the next... um... thing. The next thing that I'll do with my life. Yes, that sounds good and neutral.

I've been talking with an outfit that helps people like me move into teaching--helps get a temporary certificate, pays for classes and such to earn a permanent certificate, helps with job hunting, that sort of thing. I'm waiting on a transcript from Clemson to arrive so I can send them all the information they need, but then we'll see what happens.

There's also still the open possibility of law school, at Stetson. Deep breath. This seems like maybe the right time to give this a try. I've got the scholarship, the school is here in town (sort of--it's about 26 miles away across Tampa Bay, which is not the greatest but survivable; need to check on PSTA bus trips across the bay), I can use the GI Bill to help support the household. I really think I want to do this. But... but I really don't know if I actually want to do this, or if I'm just afraid of closing a door. If I don't like it... well, that's another bridge for another time.

Still, do I want to commit to something for three years? That's half as much time as I spent with the current employer, but I'd be making... oh, let's see, approximately nothing during that time frame. And to do what with when I got out? I don't know exactly. That's a problem, too. Property law (both intellectual and real) interests me the most, but that's not a specialization Stetson offers. They offer a semester exchange program at Franklin Pierce, in New Hampshire, which would be cool, but I don't want to go to New Hampshire for a semester; a few weeks would be nice. In the autumn, you know. Anyway. That's not really foremost in my mind right now. Foremost is the following:

Three years.

Is that a stupid thing to be bothered by? I mean, I'm inclined to think so. After all, if I enjoy it, three years won't seem very long and will certainly be well worth it, a good investment of time. And no question a J.D. opens doors... since I'm so concerned about closing them, lately, it makes sense to try something that might open a few now and then.

Ah, but then there's the other thing that bothers me. It's a conservative field. Not politically, but culturally. Things have to be just so. There are specific expectations of behavior, of appearance. Courtesies must be rendered to people on the basis of their position, their rank, rather than anything they've actually done or any behavior they've shown. That sounds too damn much like my current job. And that's the part of my current job I hate more than anything else. Standards of behavior, standards of appearance, you must render the proper respect to people who've done nothing to earn it apart from being around longer than you. My God, people. Where did this needless hierarchism come from? Why does society require us to bow and scrape before those on high pedestals simply because of the pedestals, not because of the people?

Does anybody out there truly believe that everyone in a "position of respect" or a high rank in our society got there because they deserved it? Because they have proven themselves worthy time and again of the respect of others by constantly earning it through their actions, their integrity, their decency? It seems to me that throughout all of society at every level we've created hierarchies and instituted a system of levels of respect, based not on a person's qualities but on his or her position. Based, in other words, not on who we are, but what we are. I must offer you proper courtesy and respect because of the position that you fill, not because of the person that you are. That's a terribly empty sort of respect, isn't it?

It isn't that I want to be a jerk. I'm a decent human being, after all. I try my best most days to be polite to everyone, to help everyone who needs my help, to treat everyone I meet and work with the way I'd like to be treated. I want to be a nice guy, after all. They do finish last sometimes, nice guys, but they also sleep a lot better at night and have more fulfilling relationships. Certainly I have bad days, but we all have those; the point is, I'm not looking for an excuse to treat people like dirt and ignore etiquette. But I want to be decent and respectful on my own, because it's the right thing to do. I don't want to be required to greet a person, to speak to them in a certain way, to dress in a certain manner when I go before them. I'm more than happy to do those things, but I don't want to be told to, or forced to. Forcing me to behave in such a manner denies me any opportunity to be a decent person; I end up simply doing something because I must, being polite or courteous because I must, not because I want to be or because I should. It denies an aspect of my humanity, and damn it that's what's been pissing me off so much the last six years. It's like I can't be trusted to act on my own, I have to be told what to do at every opportunity. Here are the rules you must follow because we know we can't trust you to do the right thing on your own. Here's your peghole--jump right in! You'll fit, we promise! (We'll make you!)

Fuck 'em.

Ugh. Well, if you have anything to add to this raging moral dilemma please do so. I'm going to go have breakfast.

Lightning!

We had one heck of a thunderstorm here in downtown on Monday afternoon. It hit my workplace, too, though after I'd left for the day. Tuesday I found out there were multiple lightning strikes on the tarmac at work--21 of them, to be exact. On the tarmac. There were probably many others in places less noticeable. Anyway, here are some pictures of the end result of the lightning strikes. This is why they make everybody come inside during storms.

Resurrection, Inc.

Smittygirl's best friend recommended this book to me, and although it's not normally my genre I always like reading other peoples' favorite books (and I'll lend anybody copies of my favorite books if they want). The book is out of print now but if you click on the cover you'll be taken to BN.com's used book area. At least that's what supposed to happen. Anyway, on to the review!
Having just read Fierce Invalids, I caught something interesting in this book that I might not have picked up on otherwise.

Switters, our fearless hero from Fierce Invalids, has this idea that government and industry combine to keep the great mass of people entertained by meaningless garbage--Jessica Simpson, movie box office totals, the latest tawdry Hollywood affair, sports stars using steroids, even politics presented purely as a horse race--because it keeps them from getting curious about anything else, keeps them too happily occupied to ask questions about what the government or corporations are doing. Thus they can do what they want without much inquiry from thinking people.

The antihero of Resurrection, Inc., Francois Nathans, believes he is setting humanity free by creating undead Servants to fill menial tasks--and finds out that the majority of people set free in such a manner are bored, incurious about government or industry or, indeed, anything at all. Nathans had hoped they would take up the arts, sciences, anything--give in to natural human curiousity. Instead, they didn't--and Nathans sets out to eliminate them once and for all.

What an interesting perspective. Is Switters right, that without constant entertainment people would actually ask questions about the world around them? I like to think he is--curiosity and a desire to learn are hallmarks of humanity. But what if Kevin Anderson, the author of Resurrection, Inc., is right? What if, deprived not only of constant entertainment but of menial work, many people would just sit bored, turn to crime or riots not out of a need to support themselves but simply because they can't think of anything else to do?

One of the books on my reading list is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, one of many futurist books set in a post-scarcity world, where the only things that are hard to come by are good seats in restaurants and short lines at theme parks. Post-scarcity worlds have been treated before by science fiction writers (see the Culture cycle by Iain Banks, the Queendom of Sol by Wil McCarthy, and E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops or Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars, though I haven't read any of these; even The Matrix is a sort of post-scarcity society, at least for the machines that control the place), and occasionally there are looks at the world as it struggles to get to that post-scarcity plain. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson shows a society approaching post-scarcity. And Resurrection, Inc. shows one man's attempt to push society in that direction.

Writers are divided on whether post-scarcity is good or not (in Riders of the Purple Wage, Philip Jose Farmer notes that artists, though they are the toast of society, often run out of inspiration for their art because the society is free of conflict). Francois Nathans seems to have believed it would be great. Though his Servant revolution (Servants are recently deceased people who's bodies are preserved and implanted with microprocessors and synthetic fluids to allow to function as androids would--except androids are prohibitively expensive and there's an endless supply of the dead) would not have ushered in true post-scarcity economics, he did create the means for vast improvements in efficiency in most industries and commerce, meaning many people lost their jobs but were supported by bouyant governments and welfare (presumably in turn supported by immensely more profitable industry). Nathans and his company (Resurrection, Inc., of course) might have started the machinery of the post-scarcity age to come.

But what happens when nothing is scarce and thus no one needs to work? In Resurrection, Inc., we see that a lot of people don't even bother to get up in the morning. A version of online gaming (the book was written in 1988 so MUDs existed at the time, but Anderson still made a good guess at where multiplayer online games were headed) occupies many people, and others simply sit around, bored, start riots, or turn to petty crime. In the world of Resurrection, Inc., scarcity matters--without it, people's live become meaningless.

I suppose this is the danger of defining yourself through your work--when you have no work, you have no self-definition, either. Though I doubt that was Anderson's goal in telling this story.

Indeed, this is a pretty ripping yarn all the way through, and I haven't even mentioned any of the main plot points. Bear in mind I referred to Francois Nathans as the antihero--because he's certainly no hero. After all, as wonderful as Servants may be, even if the people they freed from work found constructive things to do, everything wouldn't be quite hunky-dory, now would it? What if, through a quirk of the resurrection process, some Servants retained the memories of their previous life... and death?

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

Good book. You'll probably find it a well-stocked local library.

Resurrection, Inc.

Smittygirl's best friend recommended this book to me, and although it's not normally my genre I always like reading other peoples' favorite books (and I'll lend anybody copies of my favorite books if they want). The book is out of print now but if you click on the cover you'll be taken to BN.com's used book area. At least that's what supposed to happen. Anyway, on to the review!
Having just read Fierce Invalids, I caught something interesting in this book that I might not have picked up on otherwise.

Switters, our fearless hero from Fierce Invalids, has this idea that government and industry combine to keep the great mass of people entertained by meaningless garbage--Jessica Simpson, movie box office totals, the latest tawdry Hollywood affair, sports stars using steroids, even politics presented purely as a horse race--because it keeps them from getting curious about anything else, keeps them too happily occupied to ask questions about what the government or corporations are doing. Thus they can do what they want without much inquiry from thinking people.

The antihero of Resurrection, Inc., Francois Nathans, believes he is setting humanity free by creating undead Servants to fill menial tasks--and finds out that the majority of people set free in such a manner are bored, incurious about government or industry or, indeed, anything at all. Nathans had hoped they would take up the arts, sciences, anything--give in to natural human curiousity. Instead, they didn't--and Nathans sets out to eliminate them once and for all.

What an interesting perspective. Is Switters right, that without constant entertainment people would actually ask questions about the world around them? I like to think he is--curiosity and a desire to learn are hallmarks of humanity. But what if Kevin Anderson, the author of Resurrection, Inc., is right? What if, deprived not only of constant entertainment but of menial work, many people would just sit bored, turn to crime or riots not out of a need to support themselves but simply because they can't think of anything else to do?

One of the books on my reading list is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, one of many futurist books set in a post-scarcity world, where the only things that are hard to come by are good seats in restaurants and short lines at theme parks. Post-scarcity worlds have been treated before by science fiction writers (see the Culture cycle by Iain Banks, the Queendom of Sol by Wil McCarthy, and E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops or Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars, though I haven't read any of these; even The Matrix is a sort of post-scarcity society, at least for the machines that control the place), and occasionally there are looks at the world as it struggles to get to that post-scarcity plain. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson shows a society approaching post-scarcity. And Resurrection, Inc. shows one man's attempt to push society in that direction.

Writers are divided on whether post-scarcity is good or not (in Riders of the Purple Wage, Philip Jose Farmer notes that artists, though they are the toast of society, often run out of inspiration for their art because the society is free of conflict). Francois Nathans seems to have believed it would be great. Though his Servant revolution (Servants are recently deceased people who's bodies are preserved and implanted with microprocessors and synthetic fluids to allow to function as androids would--except androids are prohibitively expensive and there's an endless supply of the dead) would not have ushered in true post-scarcity economics, he did create the means for vast improvements in efficiency in most industries and commerce, meaning many people lost their jobs but were supported by bouyant governments and welfare (presumably in turn supported by immensely more profitable industry). Nathans and his company (Resurrection, Inc., of course) might have started the machinery of the post-scarcity age to come.

But what happens when nothing is scarce and thus no one needs to work? In Resurrection, Inc., we see that a lot of people don't even bother to get up in the morning. A version of online gaming (the book was written in 1988 so MUDs existed at the time, but Anderson still made a good guess at where multiplayer online games were headed) occupies many people, and others simply sit around, bored, start riots, or turn to petty crime. In the world of Resurrection, Inc., scarcity matters--without it, people's live become meaningless.

I suppose this is the danger of defining yourself through your work--when you have no work, you have no self-definition, either. Though I doubt that was Anderson's goal in telling this story.

Indeed, this is a pretty ripping yarn all the way through, and I haven't even mentioned any of the main plot points. Bear in mind I referred to Francois Nathans as the antihero--because he's certainly no hero. After all, as wonderful as Servants may be, even if the people they freed from work found constructive things to do, everything wouldn't be quite hunky-dory, now would it? What if, through a quirk of the resurrection process, some Servants retained the memories of their previous life... and death?

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

Good book. You'll probably find it a well-stocked local library.

Fourth of July

Standing under a tree on a muggy evening with no tripod is not the best way to photograph fireworks. Who cares?! It was fun! A taste of St. Petersburg's 4th of July fireworks celebration:

So it begins...

Yesterday I spent $1400 on a washer and dryer. We still need a dishwasher.
I have to get the current washer and dryer out of the house (hello, craigslist!) and have an electrician come move the dryer outlet, and I need to patch some holes the drywall I made in the closet, before we can bring the new machines in.

We still need to buy a dishwasher. We've settled on cabinets, mostly, though I failed in my attempt to get out of work in time to get over to the cabinets place and put down a deposit and schedule the work.

We haven't picked a new floor yet, but that needs to be done. By the end of the summer the place is barely going to be recognizable. Well, the kitchen and baths and closets, anyway. We might just get rid of the cabinetry in the bathrooms, too, and buy a vanity for the guest bath and install new cabinets in the main bath. Can't be too much more expensive, right?

I'm doing all this and I'm about to lose my job? I really hope I get a severance package.

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

Verbose, aimless, disorganized, overstuffed, and incredibly delightful. There's just so much going on in Tom Robbins' Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates it's impossible not to like it. My review follows the jump.

If I wanted to, of course, I could find plenty of things wrong with it. Robbins just loves his big words, almost abuses vocabulary. And with a lot of other authors (myself included, probably), that just gets annoying. Here it's generally a pleasure, only occasionally a bother. The book seems barely contained, asides and tangents spring up amid the fertile soil of Robbins' pen and wither on the ground, leaving the reader lost in the garden and desperately trying to catch up. Again, this sort of thing could be annoying, but here... here, it's not.

I've never read Tom Robbins before. I think his best-known work would be Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, which was made into a movie a few years ago. But that book is from another era; Fierce Invalids was written in the late 90's and the world of its main character is clearly recognizable. I had a great time and I'm going to go out looking for his most recent novel, Villa Incognito, but that doesn't mean I'd recommend this book to everyone.

Robbins breaks the fourth wall. He does so in the fourth chapter quite blatantly, and occasionally throughout, though most noticeably (and, I'm afraid, distractingly), right towards the end, and the beginning of Part 4. The book veers dangerously close, at times, to polemic, as Robbins (through his character and mouthpiece, Switters) decries the state of everything, from American society (controlled by a government and corporations that want everyone kept dimwitted and incurious) and foreign policy to organized religion and the nature of life itself.

This could get tedious if readers aren't receptive to this sort of thing. If, for example, you would be offended by Switters' assertion late in the book that "terrorism is the only rational response to American foreign policy," there will be plenty of other things in here you will be so annoyed by that you won't enjoy the book. If, on the other hand, you could care less what Switters thinks about foreign policy (being a fictional character, after all), or you agree with him, then you'll enjoy it.

There's no question but that Robbins' phrases are wonderful. In this one book you'll come across so many fascinating new metaphors you'll wonder why anyone ever resorts to cliche (well, not everyone is blessed with so fecund a mind as Mr. Robbins). Read it for the words, for the joy of reading, as much as anything.

But it's actually about something, too. And that's where it gets fun. Our hero, Switters, is a man of contrast, of inner contradictions--as, says Robbins, are we all. But unlike most of us, Switters is not concerned about taking one side in his inner life. He takes both. He loves his 16-year-old virgin stepsister, and a 46-year-old nun at the same time. And even to the last page he's trying to figure out how to have them both. Switters' message to is to embrace our inner contradictions, for to do otherwise is a betrayal of both our beliefs and ourselves. At one point he points out that being willing to lie to protect a belief is just one step away from being willing to kill for the same purpose. And much, if not all, of the world's suffering has stemmed from that very evil. Better to embrace our own inner contradictions first, thus be ready to accept the contradictions thrust upon us and our beliefs by the outside world.

All this is somewhat lost in the mysterious coda, however. The last several paragraphs take Switters to Thailand, and while I don't suppose they detract from Switters' character or our understanding, I don't see how they add anything to the story. Oh well. Nothing, and no one, is perfect.

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

Verbose, aimless, disorganized, overstuffed, and incredibly delightful. There's just so much going on in Tom Robbins' Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates it's impossible not to like it. My review follows the jump.

If I wanted to, of course, I could find plenty of things wrong with it. Robbins just loves his big words, almost abuses vocabulary. And with a lot of other authors (myself included, probably), that just gets annoying. Here it's generally a pleasure, only occasionally a bother. The book seems barely contained, asides and tangents spring up amid the fertile soil of Robbins' pen and wither on the ground, leaving the reader lost in the garden and desperately trying to catch up. Again, this sort of thing could be annoying, but here... here, it's not.

I've never read Tom Robbins before. I think his best-known work would be Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, which was made into a movie a few years ago. But that book is from another era; Fierce Invalids was written in the late 90's and the world of its main character is clearly recognizable. I had a great time and I'm going to go out looking for his most recent novel, Villa Incognito, but that doesn't mean I'd recommend this book to everyone.

Robbins breaks the fourth wall. He does so in the fourth chapter quite blatantly, and occasionally throughout, though most noticeably (and, I'm afraid, distractingly), right towards the end, and the beginning of Part 4. The book veers dangerously close, at times, to polemic, as Robbins (through his character and mouthpiece, Switters) decries the state of everything, from American society (controlled by a government and corporations that want everyone kept dimwitted and incurious) and foreign policy to organized religion and the nature of life itself.

This could get tedious if readers aren't receptive to this sort of thing. If, for example, you would be offended by Switters' assertion late in the book that "terrorism is the only rational response to American foreign policy," there will be plenty of other things in here you will be so annoyed by that you won't enjoy the book. If, on the other hand, you could care less what Switters thinks about foreign policy (being a fictional character, after all), or you agree with him, then you'll enjoy it.

There's no question but that Robbins' phrases are wonderful. In this one book you'll come across so many fascinating new metaphors you'll wonder why anyone ever resorts to cliche (well, not everyone is blessed with so fecund a mind as Mr. Robbins). Read it for the words, for the joy of reading, as much as anything.

But it's actually about something, too. And that's where it gets fun. Our hero, Switters, is a man of contrast, of inner contradictions--as, says Robbins, are we all. But unlike most of us, Switters is not concerned about taking one side in his inner life. He takes both. He loves his 16-year-old virgin stepsister, and a 46-year-old nun at the same time. And even to the last page he's trying to figure out how to have them both. Switters' message to is to embrace our inner contradictions, for to do otherwise is a betrayal of both our beliefs and ourselves. At one point he points out that being willing to lie to protect a belief is just one step away from being willing to kill for the same purpose. And much, if not all, of the world's suffering has stemmed from that very evil. Better to embrace our own inner contradictions first, thus be ready to accept the contradictions thrust upon us and our beliefs by the outside world.

All this is somewhat lost in the mysterious coda, however. The last several paragraphs take Switters to Thailand, and while I don't suppose they detract from Switters' character or our understanding, I don't see how they add anything to the story. Oh well. Nothing, and no one, is perfect.

The School Cases

Certain unnamed parties requested that I post something coherent about the recent Supreme Court decision in Parents Involved v. Seattle School District. It's been all over the news. It's either a long-awaited return to reason and sensibility by the new hero of the right, Chief Justice John Roberts, or a dreadful backsliding return to the wretched days of segregation by the new villain of the left, Chief Justice John Roberts. Or it's neither. I'm pretty sure it's neither.

Like most posts of this sort this is a long one, so you'll get the rest after the jump. A lot of people would write this and say, "I don't claim to be an expert, but, here's what I think anyway." Not me. I actually claim not be an expert, in fact, I am specifically not an expert. But I'm also not a partisan ideologue. More erudite discussions of this case can be had at the Volokh Conspiracy and SCOTUSBlog, in the blogroll to the right, if you are so inclined. If you disagree with my interpretation on a substantive basis because I have my facts wrong, please do correct me. If you wish to debate my viewpoints keep it civil.


The decision came to 185 pages and had five authors. It's here if you wish to be driven insane. It's worth noting that this was not a 5-4 decision. It was a 4-1-4 split (like a 7-5-10 in bowling), and the most important part of the decision is that penned by the 1 in the middle, Justice Anthony Kennedy (no relation to Teddy and Bobby and Jack.)

There were two cases. In both of them, students in the applicable school districts have some degree of school choice, in the sense that they may apply to schools other than those in which they are districted. I'm not familiar with the particulars; being a Florida boy I'm used to the notion that about the only chance you have not to go to your districted school is to have a parent who teaches at another school in the district, and that's the only other school you can go to. Certain special circumstances sometimes prevailed but by and large we didn't have school choice. I'm inclined to argue these people should all just shut up and come down to a really bad school system and see how much they want to complain about how they did it back home. But that's just me.

The Seattle school district classified all students as either white or non-white and used the classification as a determinant in whether their applications to given public schools were accepted. All schools in the district had target limits for "white" and "nonwhite" students--so that, in other words, no school in Seattle was permitted, under the plan, to have more than (making up numbers here) 60% white students, or more than 60% nonwhite students. However, there were no "quotas," no goal of a set amount of diversity, and all schools had the same limits. Students applying to a school well within the racial-diversity goal range were assured of acceptance; schools that did not meet the racial diversity goal could not accept students of the wrong race. That said, students were not ordered out of neighborhood schools that did not meet the diversity goal. The entire case was based around students willfully applying to attend non-neighborhood public schools that did not meet the district's racial diversity goal.

The Jefferson County district (Louisville, KY), did exactly the same thing, with one key difference: they created racial classifications consisting of "black" and "other." Thus in Seattle, and black kid, a hispanic kid, and an Asian kid were the same thing. In Louisville, a white kid, a hispanic kid, and an Asian kid were the same thing. Fundamentally the programs were the same, although Louisville's was at all school levels and Seattle's seems only to have operated at the high school level.

Most of the commentary out there has been on the Seattle case, mainly because everyone seems to think Jefferson County got it wrong when it created its race categories (black and non-black) and its case was doomed anyway. Or else nobody thinks Kentucky is worth talking about. Could be either one.

My facts may not be completely right on these two programs, but this is as I understand it. In any event, though, you can see what was at issue: Can a school district approve or deny your application to a non-neighborhood public school solely on the basis of your race?

The school districts both argued they can. Promoting racial diversity in schools is a compelling state interest (cite numerous examples from case law starting with Brown v. Board) and the method for doing so doesn't unduly discriminate against people because A) presumably all the public schools are the same now, right? After Brown? Right?, and B) the districts did not use quotas (illegal by several Supreme Court decisions), and C) the system was "narrowly tailored," meaning race was only an important factor in a few uncommon situations and not a determinant across the board. The Seattle district said that because the plurality of students in the district are white, their two categories were created to ensure that the students of the plurality did not predominate in certain areas. Jefferson County, which was under a federal desegregation order from 1964-2001, said that the students of concern were black, the issue of concern was quality of predominantly black schools, and therefore their racial category addressed that issue and did attempt to discriminate against students individually.

Both school districts were a little loopy. Seattle had white and non-white, but the majority of students in the district were non-white and there were in fact more Asian kids than blacks or hispanics. Ergo, under the Seattle program, black kids and hispanic kids--the two racial groups most likely to come from poor economic situations--were the same as Asian kids, who predominantly (in Seattle anyway) came from better socio-economic strata than white kids. So a school could be fully integrated, under the Seattle plan, if it was (say) 50% white and 50% asian. Meanwhile another school in the poor part of town might be 40% white, 25% black, 25% hispanic, and all poor, and be equally integrated in the eyes of Seattle as the white-asian school.

This is pretty silly, but it's not really unconstitutional.
The Jefferson County case was brought by a black child seeking to attend a predominantly black school in another neighborhood, who was not admitted because the school was already too black. Just like the girl in Greenville you mentioned. Also pretty silly, but not unconstitutional.

Now then, there were five opinions. What might have been the majority opinion was penned by Chief Justice Roberts. He is pretty harsh. He argues, to begin, that while integration is a compelling government interest, it does not apply in either case since Seattle was never ordered to desegregate and Jefferson County's desegregation order was dismissed in 2001. Therefore, by his reasoning, unless the federal government decrees a school system is segregated by race and orders it to desegregate, it is unconstitutional to use race to integrate a school system.

By itself this presents school districts with a bit of a catch-22, but Justice Kennedy rescues them later on.

Elsewhere, Roberts makes a lot more sense, at least if you ask me. In sum his argument is that schools can not use race as the sole determining factor in school admissions, which was essentially the case here. Obviously neighborhood schools are required to accept students from within their district, so leaving that aside, non-district students applying to a school were assigned a racial classification, upon which their admission depended. If a school was happily integrated the racial classification mattered not--but then, neither did any other classification. But if a school was not satisfactorily diverse, then race was used to determine admission. At its most basic level, this means that race was the sole determining factor, and that has been decreed unconstitutional for quite some time.

Roberts notes at one point--I'll paraphrase--that if the goal is to be race-blind in school admissions, then the proper way to achieve that is to in fact be race-blind in school admissions.

Roberts would not prevent schools from considering race in other ways--collecting data on race to guide statistics, for example. But he would not permit a school district to consider race in any way as it relates to an individual student in choosing whether or not to send a student to a particular school. The key here is that an individual student's race must not be a consideration.

Justice Thomas, in a concurrence, goes much farther, and would limit school districts from
using race in any way. Though he is not explicit on the matter, I would take from his concurrence that school districts shouldn't even gather data on race, and that using race to guide the drawing of district boundaries would be entirely forbidden. This is pretty standard stuff for Thomas and has gotten very little coverage in the press.

On the other side, Justice Breyer writes a fairly irritated dissent, in which he takes issue especially with Roberts' notion that it's improper to use race except when under orders to desegregate. This is where he brings up Brown and claim's the majority's opinion (not really a majority, though) would turn back the clock. Breyer argues that in fact the school districts in question are within constitutional bounds, per A, B, and C above. The dissent argues that reasoning such as apparent in Chief Justice Roberts' opinion presents a slippery slope back from Brown.

Breyer's reason relies largely on existing court precedent. Existing precedents, created over half a century of integration case law, argue that racial categorization must serve a "compelling interest," which he finds in these cases, and be "narrowly tailored," which he also finds they are, and in fact argues they are so clearly narrowly tailored he doesn't even bother to explain how. They meet the prevailing definition of narrowly tailored because, as I noted above, they don't apply to all students, only to out-of-district students applying to schools that do not meet the district's definition of integrated. By rights of precedent (stare decisis in the legalese), Breyer is correct. Additionally, Breyer argues that

real-world efforts to substitute racially diverse for racially segregatedschools (however caused) are complex, to the point where the Constitution cannot plausibly be interpreted to rule out categorically all local efforts to use means that are“conscious” of the race of individuals.

What he's saying is, going back to the Constitution to try to fix a nuanced problem like this that the founders never anticipated (the writer of the document was a slaveholder after all) is using a 2x4 to swat flies. Whether you agree with him or not is the key point in how you feel about this decision.

This is also the distinction between the "liberal" and "conservative" legal theories. The "liberals" would have it that the Constitution is a neat little guide and all, but really, it has to live and breathe with the times or it will become hopelessly outdated and totally uncool, plus some of the stuff in there is like way old, you know? The "conservatives" argue that the constitution is more infallible the Walter Cronkite and God Almighty combined and any attempt to read any nuance into its aged script is nothing short of blasphemy, and we shall live in the 1780's for all eternity the way the Founders intended.

Most of the commentators screaming about this decision fall into one of these two intellectually simplistic camps, because they're intellectually simple themselves. The Justices are not so easily pigeonholed.

Justice Stevens writes an even more annoyed dissent and joins in Breyer's dissent but, ultimately, has little different to add.

So the key writer here, indeed the key Justice--indeed, the most key Justice in 40 years (he was in the majority in 69 of the 71 cases he heard this term)--is Justice Kennedy, and his opinion, although not officially the opinion of the court, is the one that matters.

Justice Kennedy joins Chief Justice Roberts in the majority, and so the two school districts have to go back to the drawing board and come up with another way to ensure racial diversity without discussing race. As do many other school districts around the country, no doubt. But Kennedy provides more leeway than Roberts. Kennedy argues that racial integration is a compelling interest for all school districts no matter what, regardless of whether they're under a desegregation order or ever have been or not. In other words, though Roberts--who wrote the "court's" opinion, says otherwise, in fact the Supreme Court did NOT decide that integration is not a compelling interest, because Kennedy sides with the dissent, making that portion of the case a 5-4 the other way. Thus even though Roberts wrote for the majority, Kennedy is the real author of the decision here.

Kennedy goes on to say that white/non-white (or black/non-black) is not sufficient racial classification in a diverse school district. If indeed a school district has only two races, then fine, but in Seattle's case in particular the largest racial subgroup after whites was asians, and whites in any case were not a majority. Kennedy thus argues as that a situation such as I described above might be legal under Seattle's plan but did not at all amount to true diversity or integration--and since integration and diversity were the compelling interest, it didn't suit the district to half-ass matters.

Furthermore, although race should not be used as the sole determinant as it was in these cases, it may be used even unto the point of dealing with individual students as long as the district has taken other factors into consideration apart from race. He even goes on to suggest possible ways school boards can achieve integration without use race as a direct determinant in student admissions. School boards could, for example, explicity site new schools based on expected racial makeup of the neighborhood, or could even redraw districts so that "neighborhood" schools took in kids from a more balanced group of neighborhoods. To what degree this sort of racial gerrymandering of school districts would be permitted is not stated, but we can assume it would have to be a very gentle gerrymander to pass any reasonable scrutiny, since at some point a neighborhood school ceases to be such. (Note that Justice Thomas would rule this out in any case.)

Kennedy suggests school districts could assign all students to schools randomly by lottery. In a geographically small district this could be quite effective but would almost certainly be riotously unpopular with parents and students (and hence politicians). That said, as in the Seattle case the school board could have simply admitted non-district students on the basis of a lottery, since in reality the numbers of such students probably were not so high as tip the balance of diversity much in any direction.

Kennedy's opinion carries the day. Integration and diversity are still compelling government interests that school boards may pursue. They may not use race exclusively in pursuing those interests to determine which school a child will attend, but they may use race as one factor among many in siting new schools or drawing boundaries, and may continue to be creative in finding ways to ensure diversity.

Ultimately this is neither a disaster nor a great victory. Instead, like most Supreme Court cases, it's sort of a change and hardly the whole story.