Combat! - Page 206 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Sidewalk funding remains Missoula’s most divisive issue

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized August 15, 2013 0 Comment

Soup kitchens notwithstanding, the most allegorically significant debate in Missoula politics is sidewalk funding. It’s boring on the surface, but once you peel back the layers you find several fundamental questions about this town’s identity, along with some guy’s sprinkler system. My column in the Indy today is about Robert Hubble and his federal lawsuit, in which he alleges that by using its “police powers” to force him to repair his sidewalk, the city of Missoula has violated his constitutional rights. He’s maybe saying that for rhetorical effect, but he raises an important issue: how much do we want to live as a community, and how much do we want to live as people who leave one another alone? In theory I am 100% in favor of both, which produces no end of problems in practice. Give it a read and shake your head at the sad truth that the social contract is not a binary mechanism. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Missoula city council moves to prohibit new homeless shelters

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized August 14, 2013 7 Comments

Without a shelter, a Missoula man is forced to stop being homeless.

This morning, the Missoula city council is discussing an emergency measure to “prohibit new homeless shelters, soup kitchens and similar uses” until it can update municipal regulations. The emergency is that Union Gospel Mission—formerly the 3:16 Mission—has leased the old Sweetheart Bakery building on West Broadway. That’s how it appears, anyway. Councilman Adam Hertz insists the measure is “not necessarily geared at one entity,” even though the proposal would take effect retroactively and therefore block the mission’s plans to move. The important thing to remember, as the city council passes an emergency retroactive law to stop homeless shelters, is that they’re all committed to helping the homeless.

Plaintiffs in Facebook settlement get nothing , but their lawyers get $2.3M

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare August 13, 2013 2 Comments

A Facebook

Adam Liptak at the New York Times alerts us to a possible Supreme Court review of the settlement in Lane v. Facebook, a class-action suit alleging that Facebook violated users’ privacy with the Beacon feature. The Beacon feature, now discontinued, automatically posted video rentals and purchases to users’ feeds in a feature that could never have angered them in any foreseeable way. That’s not important now. What’s important is that plaintiffs’ lawyers in Lane v. Facebook negotiated a settlement in which members of the class got nothing, Facebook had to give $6.5 million to a new charitable foundation it would partly control, and plaintiffs’ lawyers got $2.3 million. Measured outrage after the jump.

On liking Flashman

By Dan Brooks in books August 12, 2013 0 Comment

Last week, in my continuing survey of funny novels, I read Flashman by Geroge MacDonald Fraser. Formally, it is a comic novel, but really it is a historical adventure story. It is the first-person account of the adventures of one Harry Flashman, originally a bully in Tom Hughes’s novel School Days, and now in Fraser’s imagination a hero of the first Anglo-Afghan War. Flashman has three skills: foreign languages, horseback riding, and a powerful reflex for running away. He is a poltroon, but his cowardice always winds up furthering his reputation as a hero. It all ends well for Flashy even though he conducts himself despicably on pretty much every page, so Flashman is a comedy. It is also a brutal rendering of early 19th-century Britannia, replete with rape, the n-word, and generally bad values. So how should I feel about liking it?

Friday links! Old-time conservatism edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links August 9, 2013 0 Comment

Milton Friedman grasps his dome.

I went to the Western Montana State Fair and Rodeo last night, where I remembered that the experience of American culture varies wildly from person to person. For one thing, this year’s clown sucked. His first interaction with the audience was built around the joke, “can a bald man get a hairline fracture?” Fertile comic ground though it was, we did not respond, so he launched immediately into one of those math tricks that involves thinking of a number, adding six, dividing it by three, subtracting the original number, et cetera. Math tricks! Fortunately, he won us back with a dog routine. The people behind us went insane, occasionally describing what was happening with gleeful incredulity—e.g., “He can’t get out!” when the clown get stuck upside-down in a garbage can—and generally reminding us of the values of a bygone era. Today is Friday, and a substantial portion of the populace loves Milton Friedman and Dennis the Menace. Won’t you focus your nostalgia on an age that never existed with me?