THE ROUGH DRAFT of the most important document of this decade was published today. With little uproar, the European Union, soon to encompass 25 states from Ireland to Greece, will functionally take the same step that the individual colonies now called The United States made in 1787. The EU has published a Constitution (PDF file).Right now, the EU really has very little functional power. It’s more of a meeting house for European leaders, subservient to the laws of each individual nation. Of the changes that it has invoked in Europe are a more-or-less borderless internal structure (you don’t need passports to go from France to Spain to Italy, for instance) and the beginnings of a full free market (similar, though slightly more all-encompassing, than the NAFTA agreement in the US, Canada and Mexico).

This Constitution changes all of that.

If this Constitution is ratified, the EU will be functionally more powerful than any of its member states. A German citizen will be able to move to England and vote in English elections, the same way that a Minnesotan can move to Oregon and vote in Oregonian elections. The EU will essentially usurp foreign policy control: Article 1-16: “Member States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union’s common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity…”

While this will cause grave changes in Europe, I must admit my skepticism as to how effective the new EU will be. In the movie “The Substitute”, Tom Berenger notes that “In the absence of compromise, force wins.” The US has been able to stand together as a Union during state v. federal challenges (such as the Civil Rights Era disputes) because the US alone has a standing military and therefore the force to uphold the Constitution when individual states attempt to subvert it. The EU, in typical European style, believes that “the spirit of solidarity” will be enough to halt such challenges to its existence.

It won’t be.

When the next Franco takes control in Spain, Italy or Greece, the EU will have no power except asking nicely to protect the individual rights guaranteed in the EU constitution. That’s simply not enough.

A couple notes on the current EU Constitution: it’s way, way too long. The US Constitution is surprisingly brief, ending with the note that the States are responsible for everything not guaranteed by the Constitution (Article X). The Mexican Constitution of 1911 was hundreds of articles long. The Soviet “Constitution” of 1977 (it’s a good laugh if you’re up for reading through it) is tremendously long. The new EU draft Constitution is one hundred forty eight pages! There’s something to be said for the brevity of “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.”

Also, the EU Constitution grants rights to its citizens from the EU. The US constitution grants rights from “we the People” to the legislative body, on the idea of natural rights (that is, that individuals have a natural right to free speech, for instance, not that the governmnet has the right to invoke and revoke that right). That, again, is a mighty dangerous supposition.

On a separate topic, Freddy Adu is a baller. Forget about Lebron - Freddy is the All-American high school MVP in soccer at age 13. He just signed a $1,000,000 deal with Nike, and is planning to go pro next year. And he’s going to play for the US (he moved from Ghana when he was eight). Our soccer team is about to get damn good, hehe.

High-class newsrag Salon eruditely reviewed The Matrix Reloaded, using such words as pulchritudinous to describe the French lady. But if you have a dictionary handy to work through the piece, there’s a lot of interesting interpretations of the movie within. Most interesting point: Nearly everyone in the real world is not white. There are absolutely zero non-white people in the Matrix (the Oracle isn’t part of the Matrix in the way that Neo’s coworkers were).

The Sound Laser has been invented. An inventor has figured out how to focus sound waves to a specific spot. He demostrated his device to journalists by send them to stand next to a highway a hundred yards away. He then turned on the machine and they could hear the sound of ice dropping into a glass perfectly. When they stepped two feet away, they heard absolutely nothing. They’re planning on doing things like letting the back seat and the front seat listen to different music (and not hear what the other is hearing) with the invention. Sweetness. Now I need my flying car.

So everyone has irrational fears, right? I think my worst one is when I’m walking somewhere alone late at night. For some reason, if I’m going somewhere late at night and no one’s around, I get a little scared, sometimes enough that I end up jogging to wherever I’m going. Completely irrational, yet everyone has some fear of this kind.

Here’s my theory about how the brain works, which I’ve talked about before, with the caveat that this is backed up by no science other than whatever articles I’ve read, so any refutations would be appreciated. The theory is that everything you sense (hear, see, feel, whatever) is recorded in your brain (in that links are made between neurons that make you remember the experience, if only subconsciously). That is, nothing you sense can be completely ignored. If I say “Peace” instead of “Bye”, the idea of peace is linked in your brain in a way that you have absoultely no control over.

Often when we act quickly, these connections are all we have to go by. For instance, when you speak, you don’t have to think about what each individual word means - you just know what they mean immediately (or at least think you know). However, we have the so-called rational capacity, or the ability to alter these connections after they’re made. Say a connection between two ideas has been made in your head (between say, darkness and danger) at a “level” of 500. By considering the statistical likelihood that anything bad will happen when you’re walking in the dark often enough, or for a period of time in the present, that level of 500 connecting darkness and danger can be superseded by a connection between darkness and not-danger, leading your brain to the conclusion that there’s nothing to worry about, and therefore superseding the irrational fear.

I can think of many instances where what I know immediately (based on those connections) and what I know after a few seconds of consideration (using rational capacity) are different. Here’s one: If you asked me until recently what city White Men Can’t Jump is set in, I would have told you Philadelphia straight away. Now if I thought about it for a minute, I know that they play at Venice Beach in the first scene of the movie, and therefore the movie is set in LA. However, the *immediate* mental connection was White Men Can’t Jump’s Setting - Philadelphia. I’m sure I must’ve heard someone mention Philly when talking about the movie when I was young or something, therefore made that connection.

It’s difficult to overwhelm those mental connections sometimes. Here’s an example: Turn on some loud techno (usually techno is 130 beats per minute or so). Now try to tap out a beat of, say, 90 beats per minute (an average rap song). Unless you’re musically trained, it’s somewhat difficult to make a beat of either 130 or 65 (tapping every other beat in the techno song). There’s no logical reason why we shouldn’t be able to tap at 90 - we all know the speed of a rap song. But it’s very difficult for that logic to overwhelm the sensory perception you get through your ears of a 130 beat per minute song.

I’m not really sure what action you could take based on this knowledge, but it seems to me to be a decent description of how ideas come to us (forget Plato and the shadow world nonsense - it’s all about the tabula rasa).

The New Conservatism from the New York Times Magazine. While the article is a bit heavy-handed in its accusation that conservative student groups are the products of some Beltway conspiracy (as if liberal groups don’t also get money from the DNC and Greens), it is interesting in its description of the new Conservative, which is a type of Conservative that I might be able to describe myself as. The New Conservative believes in open government, privacy, immigration, individual rights including gay rights, abortion and assisted suicide, but it still in favor of free trade, realist foreign policy, balanced budgets, welfare-to-work and lower taxes. Trent Lott is not invited.

Prime Cuts

“Under the Blue” by DJ Tomcraft
Next electronica crossover group: DJ Tomcraft. “Loneliness” was bomb trance, but Under the Blue is just as sick with a Groove Armada meets 1980’s Pop sound. It’s tight. “Broken Bones” by Love Inc. is a hot female-vocaled piece of trance, so peep it if you like that sort of thing. I checked out Radiohead’s new songs this weekend too - I mean, I like Radiohead, but damn, the new song “There There” is boring as all get out. I need to turn on some Oasis to get it out of the system, hehe.“Driftwood” by Cursive
See, I listen to music other than rap and techno. Driftwood is a sweet rock track with a little violin interlude, which is always cool. It’s no Exies, but it’s still good stuff. Speaking of music, ask Rachel to hear the song her roommate recorded - girl is a damn good singer.