Not for nothing

It turns out that zero is a relative newcomer to the land of numbers. Although the Sumerians got us started with counting a good six thousand years ago or so, zero didn't have a name and a function until much later, when it seems to have been discovered by an Indian religious philosopher in the early seventh eighth century. It was another five hundred years before those benighted Europeans started to make use of it -- which could, but probably does not, explain why, to this day, the "first floor" of an English building is on the second floor.

As I have clearly demonstrated, I'm no math whiz, but even I can see that trying to make numbers work without zero is a fool's game. Algebra, calculus, set theory and all sorts of nifty mathematical hi-jinks can't be undertaken without the useful little oval. So I have nothing at all against zero qua zero. Really I don't. My complaint arises when zero, as it so often does these days, makes itself the enemy of liberty and common sense (or any sense at all).

Zero is what leads to honor an student being suspended and labelled a terrorist, when she pointed "finger gun" during a discussion of detective fiction, even though assault finger bans never seem to work. Consider that even six-year-olds are evidently able to get hold of finger guns, even if they are themselves promptly suspended.

Zero, is bludgeon in the hands of censors who, like the fictional Matthew Harrison Brady, do not think about things they do not think about, and sanctimoniously punish any student who dares to do otherwise.

Zero is the portal through which meddlesome, officious do-gooders enter a private home and, upon finding there such dangerous and exotic precursors as batteries and household cleansers, do not merely suspend the student who dared to draw forbidden images. No, such academic punition, no longer new, is evidently insufficiently severe to satisfy zero, which now demands such a scribbler be arrested.

Zero turns out to have a complex, dramatic history. It seems the notion of nothing took a while for the human mind to codify and for human society to accept, so that in some times and places, the very idea of zero was considered dangerous.

Considering the use to which zero is routinely put these days, I cannot disagree.

Neener neener neener.

Update below.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been the fat kid. Maybe I simply lack the requisite zero-tolerance school administrator sensibility that somehow must rationalize the winner of any fight into the bad guy. Maybe I'm a creature of another, simpler age. But I am damned if I can see how Casey Heynes did a thing wrong.

You probably have seen the video by now, despite the fact YouTube keeps taking it down. Casey Heynes, a 16-year-old high school student in Australia, is being tormented by a gang of nasty little bullies. They are taunting him for his weight while the lead cur in the pack steps in and punches Heynes in the face. He capers around Heynes, laughing and trying to hit him again, while Heynes fends off the blows. Then Heynes has had enough. As I have described here before, Heynes reacts violently enough to end the threat.

As it stands, both students are suspended from Chifley College where, the school says, they provide “a safe, supportive and productive learning environment to promote individual achievement and self-responsibility.” An official there has stated that  both boys will face consequences because the school "does not tolerate any violence.” But that is clearly a lie.

The only explanation for these events is that violence has been tolerated there for quite some time. How else to explain the fact that the vicious little snot who gets his comeuppance 41 seconds into the video clearly believed he could attack Casey Heynes with impunity? If similar assaults hadn’t happened before this – and often – how to explain that anyone that size thought he could hit someone Heynes’ size and get away with it? And how else to explain that the vicious, tech-savvy tormentors were ready to record Heynes latest humiliation?

I don’t know what’s going to become of Heynes and his academic career. I hope all this publicity will end up being good for him, but I have to doubt it will. I'm not sure if Australian authorities and parents have more sense than American ones, who -- if the events occurred here and now -- certainly would expel Heynes, then arrest him for assault and try him as an adult, while the scrawny little "victim's" family sued in civil court.

Happily, 35 years ago, when I was the fat kid and a freshman at St. Ignatius High School, similar events only earned me six weeks of Saturday detention,* awarded by an assistant principal who privately gave me a pat on the back for standing up for myself. Most importantly, they earned me a subsequently peaceful three and half years of high school, free from further taunts or bullying of any sort. (Whack a guy in the belly with a locker room stool, then kick him while he writhes on the ground, and word tends to get around.)

Unless the miserable little weasel Heynes put on the ground is stupid, as well as cruel, I suspect Heynes' actions will have at least that same effect.




* Despite having copied out all of the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" several times over those Saturdays, I find I remember almost none of it, except that it contained a recipe for albatross. Truth to tell, I still have a lingering grudge against Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 


UPDATE: When the school says it does not tolerate "any violence," I wonder if they know what the words "any" and "violence" mean exactly. Consider this incident at the same school from about a year ago.

I'm so sorry, Uncle Winston.

As Dave Barry is fond of saying, I'm not making this up. (Not that I won't make up a news story when it serves my nefarious purposes. I'm just not making this up.) And let me add that, despite some evidence to the contrary, my heart is not entirely hardened to the British. They did a fine job in World War II, for example, with the added benefit that for those few years they were somewhat distracted from evicting, bashing, imprisoning and generally oppressing the folks on the Irish side of my lineage.

But as further evidence that a once great nation is in its final decline, we have this news item from The Press (proudly serving North and East Yorkshire since 1882):

.22 bullet found in Fossgate, York

A STARTLED man has told how he found a bullet lying in a York city-centre street.
Tim Stark said he was unloading items into the MOR Music store where he works in Fossgate yesterday morning when he spotted what he believed to be a live .22 bullet gleaming in a puddle.

He said he immediately called police, who came and took it away.

“I have no idea what it was doing there,” he said.

A North Yorkshire Police spokesman said the bullet had been put into safe storage, and CID had confirmed it was not thought to be connected with any incident currently under investigation.

He asked anyone with any information about the bullet and how it came to be in Fossgate to phone the force on 0845 60 60 47.

Mr. Stark was "startled." The bullet was taken away by the police (I'm imagining a teeny-little bomb squad van built out of a Mini Cooper). The bullet was "put into safe storage". (An old crumpet tin?*) The knicker-twisting** hysteria contained in this account is Python-esque. More so the Upright Citizens Brigade tone of the accompanying comments.  My favorite:

Well done that man from the music shop! Where else would one responsibly dispose of a 'live round'?? The bin? I think the right action was taken, if I had any live ammunition in my drawers I would jolly well ask the police to dispose of it!

But then I saw that this comment was attributed to Elton Trowler of Wetwang. (Again. Not making this up.) Surely, I thought, this was proof that the entire story was just The Press having us on.*** But a quick visit to Google Maps confirmed that there is indeed a town called Wetwang in Yorkshire.

Still, there's a chance this is all a hoax, right? I mean, the British don't really say "jolly well," do they?





* I'm unclear on exactly what constitutes a crumpet, and unsure if they come in cans, but I do the know the English call cans tins, so no one can say I'm not being all "hands across the sea" and whatnot.


** See what I did there? Instead of panties in a bunch?


*** Could have been a cheeky colonial and insisted on saying "pulling our leg." Didn't.

No good deed.

Julius Caesar contended that "cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once."* At the biggest corporation in the world, that philosophy is slightly revised. There, cowards may die many times before their deaths, but the valiant get terminated.

Just ask Layton, Utah, Walmart employees Gabriel Stewart, Shawn Ray, Lori Poulsen and Justin Richins.

You can read the news story and the police report. In short summary, loss prevention workers Poulsen, Ray and Richins caught a fellow stealing a computer. They stopped him at the door, took him to the loss prevention office and were joined by assistant manager Stewart. Once everyone had crowded into the small room, the shoplifter -- a convicted felon named Trent Allen Longton -- drew a pistol, put it to Stewart's back and demanded to be released.

No one was able to shoot Longton to the ground, since Walmart policy disarms its employees.** So the workers took the thief's gun away from him and sat on him until the police showed up. In terms we've used here before, they acted violently enough soon enough for long enough to end the threat.

They did not panic and decide that they were helpless victims. Nor did they allow this armed criminal to flee into the crowded store it was their job to protect, there to threaten or harm or abduct someone else. That the circumstances seem not to have given them any other real options -- as one employee describes it, there really wasn't anywhere for the four to flee even if they had wished to -- makes their actions no less valiant or correct. Many are those who might not have reacted so well. Not that these four need me to validate them, but given the available descriptions, I'd say their actions were tactically and morally perfect.

And so, you reasonably ask, what was Walmart's reward to these heroic folks? Are they even now being whisked to the Bentonville headquarters via private jet,*** there to be honored for their service, perhaps to be awarded the Sam Walton Medal for Valor?**** Will they get a lifetime membership to Sam's Club? Would you believe a free chewy pretzel?

No, none of this. Instead, Walmart gave all four employees some time off. Well, more accurately, they gave all four employees forever off. Walmart fired them all. Walmart shill, er, spokesman Dan Fogelman put it this way:

We appreciate the intentions demonstrated by our associates in this situation, but the actions taken put their safety -- and potentially the safety of our customers and other associates -- in jeopardy. In their roles within the store, they were aware of our expectations regarding safety and, unfortunately, their actions have led to them no longer working for the company.

The first sentence contains a lie. It has to be a lie because no human being capable of speech could be that dumb. The employees' actions didn't increase the danger to the others in the store. Once Langton produced the gun, and given the options available to them,  the loss prevention people were right to defend themselves, disarm the bad guy and contain him away from others he might have attacked.

But a lie from a fellow in Fogelman's position is no big deal. What's really foul is that last unctuous, passively evil clause: "[U]nfortunately, their actions have led to them no longer working for the company."

Bad enough that cowardice is evidently Walmart corporate policy. Worse that Walmart "associates" -- even the ones who exchange heroism for minimum wage -- are disposable. What stinks worst of all is that Walmart's cowardice is so complete that it cannot even take responsibility for its own actions in firing these people. Don't blame the company, it's just "unfortunate" that these employees' actions somehow "led to them no longer working for the company."

The fact is that Walmart expects its loss prevention people to use "reasonable force" to detain shoplifters, unless and until the shoplifter produces a weapon, at which point the employees are supposed to "disengage." Although that policy is desperately flawed on about three obvious bases, let's let it lie for now. Because the policy isn't the problem this time. The problem is Walmart's mechanical application of the policy and its struthious disregard of the circumstances -- and of the effect on the lives of four people. That's management by cowardice, plain and simple.

Still, I have to believe that Stewart, Ray, Poulsen and Richins won't be long out of work. Surely Layton, Utah must be home to at least one employer who values something more than low prices.



 *Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene II, Wm. Shakespeare. 

** Repeat Robert's Rule with me now: "Gun-free zones aren't"

*** Walmart's private fleet is the largest of any company.


**** No such medal exists, although Sam was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bush 41 in 1992.

Sponge-headed.

I think I've said all that can profitably be said about the inherent idiocy of zero tolerance, so I'll keep this short.

Police in New Jersey have arrested and criminally charged a seven-year-old for possession of a Nerf gun. A five-dollar Nerf gun, which my Christmas forays into Toys R Us tell me is a very small Nerf gun indeed. You don't even get a large-capacity Nerf magazines at that price.

Dr. Dan Blachford -- doubtless a bright and guiding light in the firmament of New Jersey pedagogy -- explained:

We are just very vigilant and we feel that if we draw a very strict line then we have much less worry about someone bringing in something dangerous.

Something dangerous. You know. Like a seven-year-old armed with foam rubber.

A mom at the school -- evidently less of a pedagogue, as she doesn't know the difference between "then" and "than" -- was relieved:

I would rather them go a little bit too far for the safety of all the children then to say "okay, it was probably nothing."

 Nothing. You know. Like a seven-year-old armed with foam rubber.

No offense.

The first Christmas after we were married, my wife and I invited my parents to come visit, promising better-than-Cleveland weather, the opportunity to meet several score of new in-laws, and the chance to experience Noche Buena. My adoptive mother's response: "Oh. I don't know if I can eat all that hot, spicy food." Whereupon I spent the next few minutes setting out the cultural and culinary distinctions between Mexicans (one of which my bride is not) and Cubans (one of which she decidedly is). Having analogized yuca to the more familiar potato, having drawn a distinction between jalepenos and comino, and roast pork being no stranger to Mom's table as both child and adult, all fears were soon eased.

I couldn't blame her for her ignorance. Before moving to Miami, I was hardly better informed. Little did I -- the Cleveland-raised Irish/German child of Czech adoptive parents -- realize that what had seemed from a distance to be a great Latino monolith was, on closer viewing, a mosaic of discrete cultures. I quickly learned that if the distinctions between, say, an Argentinian and a Venezuelan, or a Cuban and a Puerto Rican, were then too obscure for me to discern, the members of those groups had no such trouble.*

Since then, in part because of my status as el unico gringo in a very large Cuban family, and in larger part because I have done all I can to reach into the multifarious life of this unique city, I have sat at many a noisy and cheerful table while folk from every Caribbean, Central and South American land held forth in goodhearted passion on such weighty topics as arroz con gandules** versus gallo pinto,*** or the inherently superior qualities of each one's native rums, newspapers, governments, soccer teams, mountains, beaches and women.  I've shared a table with a Haitian buddy and a Dominican one -- not for nothing, their peoples share an entire island -- and found that all anyone could manage to agree on is that we ought to order another Mexican beer.

Decidedly, the cultural fault lines, while narrow, can run deep and so warrant close attention. Even a common language can be a minefield. I suggest you do not ask the Cuban lady at the fruit stand if her papaya is ripe,**** nor should you ask your Mexican dinner guest if he is lleno,***** nor ought you yell to your Honduran soccer teammate to ¡coger lo!****** if the ball is headed out of bounds. But, with just a little bit of good will, all of us gringos, Boriquas, Catrachos, Trinis, Ticos,  Guanacos and the rest manage to get along well enough most days.

Sadly, however, good will is sometimes in as short a supply as common sense. And so we have Robert's Rule, which clearly states that "If you look carefully enough for an insult, you will always find one."  For a perfect demonstration of this principle -- and a counter-example to the corollary, which holds that "The sufficiently robust cannot be effectively insulted." -- consider this "news story" out of a South Florida classroom today. For extra credit, be sure to read the comments.



* Joke told to me by Argentinian shooting buddy: How do you kill a Venezuelan? Push him off of his own ego.
   Joke told to me by Venezuelan shooting buddy: How do you kill an Argentinian? Push him off of his own ego.

** Rice and beans.

*** Beans and rice.

**** Unless you are seeking a date, or a slapped face, inquire, instead, about the state of the fruita bomba.

*****  "Full" to most Spanish speakers; slang for "drunk" in Mexico.

****** "Get it!" to most Spanish speakers; something decidedly more intimate in Honduras.

You've got to be carefully taught.

UPDATED below.

Clay Duke has lessons to teach us. He didn't come to school to teach. Instead he came to die, and quite possibly to kill. But that only makes the lessons more important.

Here is Clay Duke's instructional video. An alternative view can be found here.

Clay Duke, a paroled felon with mental health issues and angry over his wife’s termination, left a suicide note on Facebook on Wednesday and went to a meeting of the Bay County School Board toting a can of spray paint and a pistol and planning violence. Stepping to the public comment podium he sprayed a symbol from the graphic novel “V for Vendetta” on the wall, shooed the audience out of the room, drew the pistol and held the board members hostage for about six minutes.

Here are just three lessons from an incident brimming with them.

Lesson One: Act violently enough, soon enough, for long enough to end the threat. This incident turned out as well as it was ever going to – bad guy dead, no one else hurt. The security officer who took the shooter down is of course to be commended. But it’s only thanks to the Clay Duke’s lousy shooting that innocent people didn’t die before he did. Because the security officer waited until after the gunman had fired a shot to begin shooting himself. That was far too long to wait.

The time to shoot Clay Duke was when he first produced the handgun. Or when he first started ordering people around with it. Or when he first told the board members to stay put at point of the gun. Or when he raised the weapon and pointed it at a board member for several seconds before pulling the trigger. Or any time before he started shooting.

Lesson Two: Gun free zones aren’t. Anywhere in the U.S., it’s illegal for a felon to possess a firearm. In Florida, it’s illegal to bring a gun onto school board property. It’s illegal to bring a gun to a government meeting. It’s illegal to conceal a weapon without a permit. Not for nothing, it’s illegal to threaten people with a gun, to hold them hostage or to shoot at them, too. Little surprise, though, that Clay Duke – mentally ill, despondent and intent upon his own death – did not heed these laws. I don't know, but will presume he walked right past a "no guns" sign on his way into the meeting hall.

The “gun free zone” in which the school board met was, like all gun free zones (including those the size of a city), only free of lawfully possessed guns in the hands of law abiding citizens, who were thus deprived of the ablity to defend themselves.

No prohibition or statute or sign or board policy was going to discourage Clay Duke or protect those board members.* What might have protected them, however, was the wherewithal to lay down a cross fire of sufficient volume.

Consider the little old lady with the enormous purse who takes a swing at Clay Duke early in the incident. Her actions – while admirable in a sort of vaguely comical way – were utterly and inevitably futile. But imagine if that enormous bag had held a pistol. She had the drop on Clay Duke, who clearly didn't see her. Suffice to say a bullet in Clay Duke’s brainstem would have made for a shorter video.** Even if you are squeamish about engaging in this exercise, you still have to answer this question: Which do you consider the morally superior picture – Ginger Littleton (the little old lady) standing over the dead body of Clay Duke, a smoking pistol in her hand; or Clay Duke standing over the dead body of Bill Husfelt (the superintendent who bravely offered himself if the gunman would let his colleagues go)?

Lesson Three: Handguns are lousy man-stoppers. Watch the video closely. You can see Clay Duke fire his first shot, then he lowers the pistol and unintentionally discharges another round, obviously inadvertently,*** into the floor. He’s then hit from behind with the officer’s first two shots. Nevertheless he is able to advance on the dais and fire two more shots at close range, before he is hit a third time as he goes to the ground. Although shot to the ground, Clay Duke is still able to fire his weapon. In a portion of the video obscured by CNN, he shoots himself in the head. He might just as easily have rolled toward the security officer and sent rounds that way.

Handguns are not magical talismans; they do shoot a death beam like a Star Trek phaser. Hollywood may have you convinced that the impact of a handgun round will blow the bad guy off of his feet and  through the conveniently placed plate glass window. Certainly no television news report ever refers to any handgun used in a crime as anything but “powerful” or "large-caliber."  But the truth is that the only time handgun rounds are terminally effective is when they are placed very well. You can only count on a handgun to end a bad guy’s aggression by either disconnecting his central nervous system, or by breaking apart the structures that hold him up and allow him to act, or by causing him enough blood loss that he loses consciousness.

So, be prepared to act. Be equipped to act (not only with a weapon, but with the knowledge and will to use it). And keep shooting until the threat is neutralized.

UPDATE: From an interview with security officer Mike Jones, we learn that he had to go to his car to retrieve the weapon he used (sigh) and he hesitated to shoot Clay Duke, because his shots were going to hit the gunman in the back and he was worried about being charged with a crime (double sigh). So we have these additional lessons: There is no use in good intentions or wishful thinking. The only firearm you can use to protect yourself and others is  one you actually have. And: Life is not a 1950s movie Western. If you are justified in using lethal force, then you are justified in using lethal force. Trying to ensure a fair fight is a good way to die or get others killed.


*Which it makes it nearly certain, in the aftermath of this incident, that some politician somewhere will propose a new law to "prevent this from happening again." As if any law could.

** She’d have needed to watch her angle of fire to ensure she didn’t endanger the other board members. “Know your target and what’s beyond it,” as Col. Cooper taught us. That was likely the challenge for the security officer as well, who appears to have had the school board members directly in line with his target as well.

 *** Col. Cooper also taught "Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target."

The treason of images.

A few days ago, a little boy went back to school in Broward County after a year away. He came within a bureaucrat’s whisper of being expelled for good. After all, he brought a gun to school.

Except of course, he didn't bring a gun at all. He brought a toy. A clear plastic toy with a red plastic tip. Not even the most hoplophobic school board member could ever have mistaken it for a gun.  Not even the most nearsighted lunch lady could have been shaken down for extra Tater Tots. Not even the most vulnerable, sensitive little soul could have been traumatized by the boy brandishing his toy on the playground  -- which he didn’t, by the way. And if he had done, not even the most gung-ho school resource officer could have been led into a mistaken overreaction.

Try though you might, you cannot fashion a set of circumstances, however fanciful, under which the little boy or anyone around him was in more danger from this particular toy, than from a clear plastic bunny of equal mass. Instead, the potential for danger was entirely emotional and administrative, the boy was the only one at risk, and all the danger abided entirely in the minds of policymakers and bureaucrats.

It doesn’t begin or end in Broward County. Lest you think, or perhaps pray, that this was isolated idiocy, Google “toy gun suspension” for score upon disheartening score of stories as bad or worse. Toy guns are the least of it. If you are a child in the wrong school, then drawing a picture of a gun, making a gun out of your thumb and index finger, carrying a book about guns, wearing a t-shirt that depicts a gun – even in the hands of a Minuteman – all can get you sent home from school for the afternoon, for the semester, or for good. Don’t even ask about your permanent record.

This nonsense isn’t limited to guns. A Tylenol may have the same effect in some jurisdictions. So might a harsh word. Principals are no longer breaking up schoolyard tussles between little boys – they’re calling the law and the law is prosecuting. And a second grade kiss in the coatroom? Sexual harassment if the miscreants are lucky, some variety of assault if they are not.

School board types' reflexive justification for the stochastic and draconian effects of zero tolerance  is usually the ceaseless invocation of the policy itself, as if the policy were not of their own making, and susceptible to their own better impulses, should any such arise. (Discussing this so-called reasoning, the temptation to violate Godwin's Law ab initio is a strong one.) But if one can get proponents past such circularity, the most likely articulation will have something to do with "safety."

You know what makes people safer? Common sense makes people safer. Good judgments based on real facts make people safer. An understanding of what danger really looks like makes people safer. A willingness to forcefully confront true evil makes people safer. The thoughtful, restrained – even reluctant – application of a government’s power to its own free citizens certainly makes them safer.

But mindless, reflexive, self-justifying authoritarian excess? I’ve got no tolerance for that at all.