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September 18, 2008

Okay. I’m Going to Take a Deep Breath, and . . . Palin.

I have been so gobsmacked by this whole Palin thing that I’ve been completely unable to write anything about it; all I can do is splutter. I have many objections to Palin, but I suppose that if I am to articulate the one, basic thing that has so deeply angered me about the way in which she was presented to the American people, it’s the massively insulting suggestion that women who were excited about the idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency might be anything other than utterly dismayed by the idea of a Sarah Palin vice presidency (and very possibly, presidency).

I personally define feminism quite broadly, and while some readers of this blog will disagree, I think it is entirely possible for a person to be both a political conservative and a feminist (although I’m unlikely to agree with such a person on the particulars of women’s rights). And these people may very well be thrilled with Sarah Palin (although frankly, I think even they ought to see she is a poor candidate), because she represents (I guess?) their values and their interests. But she does not represent the values or interests of Hillary Clinton supporters, and she does not represent the values or interests of liberal feminists.

Feminism holds that what is between a person’s legs ought not to overrule, or in any way reflect on what is between a person’s ears.  Clearly, Sarah Palin has a neoconservative ideology firmly lodged between her ears, and my opinion about that is not the more favorable because of what she has between her legs.

As for the rest of what’s wrong with Palin, here’s what a lot of much smarter people than me have to say (sorry for the very lengthy quotes, but I don’t think anybody really clicks on the links):

Katha Pollitt:

. . . Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex–and blaming their parents for letting it happen.

If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world’s harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl’s privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing abortion and then praise Bristol’s “decision” to have the baby. The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America.

Cintra Wilson:

We’ve been shanghaied. This is sick. We need to slap the face of our bad frat-boy date and walk home from this drive-in movie. Sarah Palin may put out to be popular, but the rest of America’s women don’t need to do the same.

If not, what the hell? John McCain should go the whole Hugh Hefner route and have eight V.P.s that all look exactly like Sarah Palin.

It’s McCain’s world, girls: You’d just live in it.

Ann at Feministing:

. . . Bill Kristol was claiming McCain would pick Palin — and that would prove that Republicans are “much more open to strong women.” Frankly, that’s bullshit. Republicans are more open to a certain type of woman — one who is strongly against things like equal pay, universal health care, and reproductive freedom. In other words, the party is pro-woman-candidates, as long as they enact anti-woman policies.

Rebecca Traister:

In this “Handmaid’s Tale”-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we’re witnessing “a new creation … of the feminist ideal,” the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it’s now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: “put a skirt on.” “I want her watching my kids,” says Deutsch. “I want her laying next to me in bed.”

Welcome to 2008, the year a tough, wonky woman won a primary (lots of them, actually), an inspiring black man secured his party’s nomination for the presidency, and a television talking head felt free to opine that a woman is qualified for executive office because he wants to bed her and have her watch his kids! Stop the election; I want to get off.

Latoya at Feministe compares Palin to Rice:

You can hate someone’s policies and still defend them from ad hominem arguments. I hate when people say that Condoleezza Rice is a sellout and that she isn’t black. That’s a ridiculous assertion to make. However, that does not make Condoleezza Rice a civil rights leader just because she is black and in a position of power.

I hate when people say Sarah Palin is not a woman, or she is a tool of the patriarchy, or any of the other non policy related attacks I’ve seen leveled at her from all kinds of places. But that doesn’t mean you need to start sipping the “this is a victory for women” kool aid. It isn’t. Sarah Palin does not magically become a champion for all women, everywhere, just because she happens to be a woman in a position of power.

Courtney Martin in The American Prospect:

And, in perhaps the most offensive display of her “wimp factor” agenda, she attempted to discredit community organizing by feminizing it. She sarcastically told conventioneering Republicans (along with millions of Americans watching on television), “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” It was an eerie echo of what oblivious men in positions of traditional power have been saying for centuries: that the work of community building — whether it be child-rearing, elder-caring, teaching, nursing, social work, or, yes, community organizing — isn’t really work at all. That, despite being the backbone of our economy and the heart of our civic life, it doesn’t count because it doesn’t involve power suits and bottom lines. What makes this ridicule of community-building even more ironic is that the GOP is simultaneously glorifying Palin’s role as caregiver of her own sprawling family.

(via Feministing)

Jessica at Feministing, on the various MSM journalists who leapt to praise Palin’s feminism:

Take Wall Street Journal reporter Naomi Schaefer Riley, who writes that progressives should rest easy about Palin’s candidacy because “most American evangelicals have wholeheartedly embraced the idea of women in the workplace.” A radical feminist sentiment if there ever was one! But perhaps one should take Riley with a grain of salt, considering she’s the same reporter who wrote that murdered NY college student Imette St. Guillen should have known better than to be out drinking at 3am. Victim-blamers aren’t exactly bastions of feminist thought.

Similarly, Bitch Ph.D. responds to the WSJ article on why feminists hate Palin:

[The argument] isn’t that Sarah Palin is “too good at having it all.” It’s that Sarah Palin has the same needs other women do, but that she refuses to support policies that would supply them to women who, unlike herself, don’t have large extended families, husbands with good-paying flexible work, jobs of their own that pay well and require very few hours, and lots and lots of money to pay for help if and when those other things aren’t enough.

On the other side, Camille Paglia, bless her, is predictably cuckoo for Palin:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

So, okay, feminists (always excepting Paglia) aren’t wild for her on women’s issues.  But what about the rest of her positions?

Well, there are the scandals. That whole Troopergate thing:

Josh Marshall:

We rely on elected officials not to use the power of their office to pursue personal agendas or vendettas. It’s called an abuse of power. There is ample evidence that Palin used her power as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. When his boss refused to fire him, she fired his boss. She first denied Monegan’s claims of pressure to fire Wooten and then had to amend her story when evidence proved otherwise. The available evidence now suggests that she 1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate, and perhaps illegal, though possibly understandable in human terms, 2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative, 3) lied to the public about what happened and 4) continues to lie about what happened.

Also, see this update.

More here at Feministing.

…and the rape kit stuff:

Bitch, Ph.D.:

First, the story breaks that under Palin’s watch, Wasilla women who went to the police saying that they had been sexually assaulted by a man, were charged for the rape kit. In case anyone doesn’t know, a rape kit is an exam done for the purpose of collecting and preserving evidence–it’s not a medical procedure. And yet, despite the fact that it’s similar to collecting fingerprints, taking photos of a crime scene, or doing ballistics analysis, the city of Wasilla insisted on charging women, or their insurance companies, for the kit, rather than using city funds. As of today, neither McCain, Palin, nor anyone on either of their staff teams has commented on this story. What’s the problem-too ridiculous to dignify with a response? Hardly, especially when the former Governor, Tony Knowles, has acknowledged that Wasilla was the only town in Alaska doing it. Prompting the state legislature to pass a law forbidding them from doing so.

Yglesias on both issues.

…and TPM on earmarks.

Juan Cole, on Palin’s religion:

The most noxious belief that Palin shares with Muslim fundamentalists is her conviction that faith is not a private affair of individuals but rather a moral imperative that believers should import into statecraft wherever they have the opportunity to do so. That is the point of her pledge to shape the judiciary. Such a theocratic impulse is incompatible with the Founding Fathers’ commitment to tolerance and democracy, which is why they forbade the government to “establish” or officially support any particular religion or denomination.

Well, and but here’s Christopher Hitchens:

She has inarticulately said that her gubernatorial work would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with god.” Her local shout-and-holler tabernacle apparently believes that Jews can be converted to Jesus and homosexuals can be “cured.” I cannot wait to see Obama and Biden explain how this isn’t the case or how it’s much worse than, and quite different from, Obama’s own raving and ranting pastor in Chicago or Biden’s lifelong allegiance to the most anti-”choice” church on the planet. The difference, if there is one, is that Palin is probably sincere whereas the Democratic team is almost certainly hypocritical. The same is true of the boring contest over who can be the most populist, and of the positively sinister race to see who can be the most demagogically anti-Washington. With this kind of immaturity right across both tickets, it’s insulting to be asked to decide on the basis of experience, let alone “readiness.”

As to the actual issues, there are no pithy quotes to extract, plus she hasn’t done that much yet:

Many liberals are concerned about picking on Palin the person as opposed to attacking Palin the politician. One of the problems with Palin is that her executive resume is so thin there isn’t a whole lot to critique.

…but if you’re interested, here’s a summary of Palin’s views at Firedoglake, which comes to the conclusion that:

Underneath her attractive and youthful exterior, Sarah Palin is no different from the old white guys running the Republican Party. She doesn’t care about good government, she doesn’t believe in science, she wants everyone to live in accordance with her Old Testament Christian values. Basically, she’s Tom Coburn with boobs.

And finally, and most substantively, Lindsay Beyerstein summarizes an in-depth NYT article on everything Palin.

__

In conclusion, I cannot get excited about a woman who plans to use the power she has attained to make it more difficult for other women to follow in her footsteps.  Beyond women’s rights (which is certainly a significant enough issue to stand all on its own, half the population being women and all), I am of course uninterested in a candidate who fully intends to take this country further in a direction which I believe is bad for all of us.

At the end of the day, I guess that’s all I really need to say.

(If you haven’t already seen the Fey & Poehler SNL bit, click here and watch it nowrightnow.)

Posted in Feminism, People, Politics, Rants | 2 Comments »

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September 15, 2008

Wading Ever So Slowly In

I wish that interviews were conducted like debates, and that at a certain point, a buzzer would go off and you would just have to stop talking immediately, right then, no matter what you were saying, you would just have to shut the hell up and put a period on it.

Sometimes I look at a person (for example, an interviewer) who’s found himself on the wrong side of my conversational onslaught, and as I run on, I pity them. I look at them, sitting there helplessly under the relentless stream of my monologue. Perhaps they’ll soon start bleeding from the ears.

They ought to seize control of the conversation, stand up and wrestle it away from me, take charge. They ought to scream, drop it! Drop the conversation immediately and back slowly away from it! I swear to God, miss, if you launch so much as one more syllable my way, I will leap across this desk and tear your throat out with my teeth!

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Also, while I’m talking about interviews, polite social behavior, and first impressions in general, have you ever wondered what those overbearing people who, upon being introduced to a total stranger, (a) initiate far more physical contact than is appropriate or desired; and/or (b) launch into a long, self-promoting recitation of everything they’re up to lately as if the person they’ve just met could possibly give half a shit…have you ever wondered, I say, what those people are thinking? Apparently, they’re thinking that they are creating a fantastic impression:

Another common pattern we all go through is the handshake. Why not do it a little differently?  One of my favorites to do in a social setting (especially with someone you just met recently) is to go for the hug instead of the handshake. They will put out their hand. Just stare it for a second as if you are confused and then open you arms wide and say “I think I’d like a hug instead” with a big smile. People will crack up laughing and instantly you have a connection.

Worst. Advice. Ever.

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As mainstream Christianity in the U.S. continues to be ever more triumphantly dominated by those who consider willful ignorance a blessed virtue, it’s nice to see that the Church of England has made a small concession to reality:

“The statement will read: Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends.”

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Finally, you tell ‘em, Patty Judge.

Posted in Humor, People, Politics, Science | 1 Comment »

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September 8, 2008

The Primaries That Ate My Sense of Humor

Crap, I forgot to post all week again.  I keep intending to go back to posting regularly, and I keep not doing it, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on why.  Blogging just has not been as much fun for me lately.  Then, I read this post, and I realized that it perfectly describes how I’ve been feeling.

If you get too invested in things, there’s a point where ‘everyone’s stupid and I think it’s hilarious’ starts to become ‘everyone’s stupid and it MAKES ME FUCKING INSANE!!!!’  And I think I passed that point some time ago.  I keep drafting amusing little rants only to have them turn into vitriolic endless rants, and at some point during their composition, I leave off typing and begin circling my desk, flapping my hands around and shrieking to myself.

I grew up in the South, where nice people consider public displays of enthusiasm unseemly.  It’s understood that one has one’s political opinions, but to get yourself worked up about it is to show a level of involvement with life outside your immediate sphere that reflects poorly on your ability to manage your own affairs.  Likewise, while it’s expected that everyone be religious (in a general way), those who feel sufficiently possessed with the spirit as to go around talking about God all the time and wearing Jesus accessories are at best tacky, and possibly a little touched.  Nobody wants to be without money, but to admit of difficulties concerning it is to drop down a class level – money should simply flow, unseen and unremarked upon, into one’s coffers, as gently and steadily as rain from heaven.

All of this is to say that my blatant interest in this year’s primaries is making it difficult for me to maintain a cool, ironic detachment.  What’s needed is some perspective:

The two parties are, at heart, not very different from each other.  Neither will totally save us, or utterly damn us.  My complete lack of active (or financial) involvement in anything even remotely concerning politics (or other people, or life outside my apartment) makes any pretense of actual concern about the world in general or this country in particular hypocritical beyond all belief.  My own personal life will be unlikely to change in any significant way as a result of anything short of an apocalyptic disaster, or a profound personal attitude adjustment (which are both equally unlikely).  People are stupid, especially me, and it is hilarious.  Ten people read this blog on a good day.  I have many friends who are actually out there working real, positive changes in the world, rather than just sitting around bitching all the time.  And sometimes, it’s a blessing when the internet goes out.

To sum up:  Oh, wait, I forgot – I don’t care again!

Posted in Humor, Misanthropy, Politics, Rants, Writing | 6 Comments »

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August 21, 2008

Bodies In Motion

It’s the grand reinstatement of Feminist Thursday!

First of all, let me just say I finally found a beer I can drink in good conscience. I’m less thrilled to say that it’s Fosters, as Fosters isn’t that good or widely available, and generally comes in giant oilcans that I’d rather not admit I can drink by carrying around with me. But regardless, I’m tickled pink with them for this, and happy that at long last, here’s a beer company that doesn’t feel it can afford to alienate half the population.  (Although, none of the above is really true, as Fosters advertising is just as offensive to women as all the other beer ads.)

Also, the Olympics have been going on; they’ve provided all manner of things for everybody to get pissed off about, and feminists are not left out:

First of all, are the uniforms too sexy? I don’t know, actually. While I do understand the point here, and while it’s certainly not okay for female athletes to be treated like objects. . . on the other hand, the skimpiness of women’s Olympic uniforms doesn’t really make me angry. Athletes are walking representations of what bodies can look like and what bodies can do, and you know, of course people are going to ogle them. What really upsets me is when men like (or are encouraged to like) ogling undernourished, undeveloped, weak, hairless, diminished women – listless, helpless waifs who closely resemble (or are) prepubescent girls, and whose “sexiness” lies entirely in their powerlessness. Frankly, I think the ogling of Olympian bodies is a huge step in the right direction. If only all young girls could think the best way to be sexy is to look like you can fling your date across a parking lot.

Finally, All Them are upset about this, which, yes, it’s bad, but it’s not like it’s an outrage particular to China. In the U.S., ability completely takes a backseat to attractiveness across the entertainment industry. Okay, so China was more blatant about it, choosing a pretty girl to lip-sync to a less-attractive girl’s singing. But in the U.S., we would have just had the pretty girl sing with her own crappy voice – the less-attractive good singer wouldn’t have gotten the job in any event.  What isn’t a beauty pageant, really?  America has absolutely no tolerance for the uglies – even off-camera civilians here are expected to look like movie stars.

In other (non-Olympics related) news, the UK courts decided that women who were raped while drunk deserve less compensation than those who were raped in all sobriety. Of course, there was a huge public outcry and the decision was reversed. I can’t comment on this any better than these two posts do (one and two), so everyone should just read them.

On a lighter note, how did I not know Hedy Lamarr was so cool? Apparently, she co-invented a torpedo-guiding device. She also said this:

“Any girl can be glamorous,” she said. “All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.”

Holla!

Posted in Advertising, Feminism, Health, People, Politics | Leave a Comment »

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August 20, 2008

Wait, What’s Racism?

All Them* have been railing a lot about affirmative action lately. Frankly, I know nothing whatsoever about affirmative action, and I’ll leave it up to those who know more about it to speak to its efficacy or lack thereof.  But I have to admit, I make assumptions about people getting into colleges for reasons other than personal merit.  I admit it, it’s wrong of me, but . . . I think that Claire Danes probably got into Yale above many other, more qualified candidates just because she’s Claire Danes.  I assume that she wasn’t selected sheerly on the basis of her outstanding merit.  And when I hear that, say, Natalie Portman went to Harvard, I make assumptions about that.  Now, I’m not saying that Natalie Portman is a total dumbass, but I’m just saying I don’t think she deserved her spot more than other people, who maybe weren’t famous and wealthy.  And when I hear that George W. Bush went to Yale…well, I make some assumptions about possible considerations other than merit that may have gone into his admission, as well.

I know it’s unfair of me, since clearly, all selections for everything are entirely based on personal merit, except when the person selected is a minority.  I’ll try to correct my thinking. 

At any rate, here is a helpful little time line of affirmative action policies in the U.S. – if you read that, you now know as much about affirmative action as I do!

I took a race and ethnicity course in college, which basically consisted of an exasperated African professor explaining over and over again, day after day, to a classroom full of mystified young Southern Republicans that what we were discussing in class when we talked about ‘racism’ was institutional racism and not incidental racism. Trying to get this classroom full of students to grasp this concept was an impossible task. It just wasn’t going to happen. I really hope that professor has since transferred somewhere else; by the end of the course, I began to fear he was going to suffer a Jerry McGuire-style meltdown in front of everybody.

He couldn’t get across the concept that, while racial prejudice may be obnoxious and harmful on a small scale, it’s not nearly of as much concern as the fact that black people live in poverty at nearly twice the national rate, and that this poverty rate was in itself racist – that the racism of real concern was the racism built into our societal structure. He kept trying to talk about the economy, and they kept replying that no one in their families would ever use the n-word. One thing that I learned from this class is that before ‘diversity’ can ‘foster a dialogue,’ people have to stop being maddeningly obtuse.

All of this is discussed much more eloquently in this New York Magazine article on racism:

The tendency to turn the commitment to racial liberalism into sheer denial is strong. “I don’t see race” becomes “I don’t see racism.” . . .

Then there are the real-life, on-the-ground, disastrous statistical disparities that burden the lived experience of the majority of blacks, people of color, and the poor in this country: from the still-unrepaired wake of Hurricane Katrina, to the greater infant-mortality rate and lesser life span, to near double-digit rates of unemployment, to cuny professor Harry Levine’s study of stop-and-frisk statistics in New York City (blacks are eight times more likely than whites to be stopped for marijuana possession, for instance), to disproportionately high national rates of foreclosures and homelessness among blacks, Native Americans, and Latinos, to the almost complete resegregation of schools across the land, to a war on drugs so shockingly racialized and so aggressively executed that our rates of incarceration place us first in the world.

And man, if it’s hard to get people to admit we still have a problem with racism now, imagine how difficult it will be when we have our first black President. 

___
*Frequently, when I’m composing blog posts, I write a sentence like this and want to say ‘everybody,’ and then realize I need to specify who I’m talking about when I say ‘people’ or ‘everybody.’ I mostly mean that, among all of the various blogs and news sites I read, skim, or glance at, bloggers, pundits, journalists, politicians and various media types seem to be frequently discussing whatever the issue is, in general, recently. This takes a long time to type. So from here on out, I am going to use the term ‘All Them’ to mean ‘people who speak from public platforms that I have been hearing a lot from lately, and that you may or may not also have read and/or watched.’

Posted in People, Politics | 1 Comment »

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July 22, 2008

Dial 1 For A Real Problem

Should English be our official national language? My opinion is, who the hell cares? But some people care a whole, whole lot.

Here’s a good, detailed discussion of this at Language Log (this quote pretty much sums up what I think):

In short, English is already, for all practical purposes, the language of the nation (not to mention much of the world in many ways), and it’s going to take a heck of a lot more than a growing population of (mostly Spanish-speaking) immigrants – a population that has been shown in study after study to lose their heritage language and adopt English within three generations, as Jon Weinberg helpfully pointed out – to change that. If we make English official, there’s no telling how its currently exalted position would be affected.

. . . In my view, the move to make English official in the US is effectively a political move to disenfranchise minority or otherwise already disempowered groups along culturally-defined lines. Using language for this purpose is particularly insidious.

I am actually quite embarrassed that I only speak English. It was lazy of me never to really learn another language, and traveling made me all the more embarrassed of myself, because it seems like damn near everybody all over the world can muddle along in at least two languages – no matter how broke, rural and otherwise uneducated they are. And mostly what they speak is English (even though apparently it’s one of the most difficult languages to learn if you’re not a native speaker), which is so fortunate for me, because I don’t have to learn word one and still rarely have difficulty communicating anywhere I go. Obama thinks it’s embarrassing, too.

Many Americans, however, are not the least bit embarrassed for only speaking English. They are rather infuriated that anybody would set foot on American soil without speaking English in addition to whatever else they speak, or (if foreigners do speak it) for speaking it poorly, or with a thick accent.

These are people who often say, “I wouldn’t go to a country where I don’t speak the language, so I don’t see why ‘they’ come here.” Leaving aside the obvious stupidity in this statement (people come here because there is money here), what a limited, incurious perspective that statement reveals! Who are these people who wouldn’t go where they don’t speak the language? I’d hate to think that my possible living situations are limited to English-speaking countries. Not only would I happily go somewhere (for a short or long period of time) where I don’t speak the language, but I’d most likely be welcomed there. Speech isn’t the only way to communicate. If two people focus up, they can usually communicate across a language barrier without too much trouble, especially if one or both of them stands to profit from it.

I’ve actually talked to people who complain about having to push 1 for English. Here’s LL again on this:

I find the objection to “press 1 for English” incredibly curious. I would think that a large proportion of those who object would encourage businesses to act in their self-interest by whatever legal means necessary – and making multiple language options available for their (potential) customers is one easy, legal way to increase your business (even if you’ll lose some idiots who can’t bring themselves to press a simple button for their language).

It seems like, before anyone would actually complain about the time it takes them to press 1 for English, they might think for a beat about what life in general would be like to be somebody who has to press 2 for Spanish – talk about inconvenient! – and then count their blessings and shut the hell up.

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Speaking of language and stupidity, is Obama really a great speaker, or is it just that the level of our political oratory has been brought so low?

A major reason that Obama’s rhetoric seems to soar so high is that our expectations have sunk so low. In a new book, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, Elvin T. Lim subjects all the words ever publicly intoned by American presidents to a thorough statistical analysis-and he finds, unsurprisingly, an alarmingly steady decline. A century ago, Lim writes, presidential speeches were pitched at a college reading level; today, they’re down to eighth grade, and if the trend continues, next century’s State of the Union addresses will be conducted at the level of “a comic strip or a fifth-grade textbook.”

(via 3QD)

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Psst.  Hey, English champs: do you know what a grawlix is?

What about mamihlapinatapai? Define that, suckaz! (Yeah, ok, so that one’s not English.)

Posted in People, Politics, Travel | 2 Comments »

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July 17, 2008

How Are Things In Your Country?

Where to start?

In the U.S., Bush wants health care programs receiving federal aid to sign certificates promising they won’t refuse to hire health care workers who won’t provide or discuss abortion and/or birth control and other forms of contraception.

Meanwhile, birth control isn’t something McCain really cares to discuss. He’d rather keep it light, I guess.

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A pregnant illegal immigrant gave birth under custody, and then had her baby taken from her, because of local charges on driving without a license:

Weikal said the sheriff’s office knew the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency planned to release Villegas on her own recognizance because of the pregnancy, but she had to stay in jail until she had seen a judge on the local charges.

Villegas’ attorney, Elliott Ozment, said Villegas was still in jail awaiting a hearing on the driving charge when she went into labor on the night of July 5. She was taken to Nashville General Hospital at Meharry, where she was handcuffed to the bed by her right wrist and left ankle until shortly before the birth.

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Indian sanitation workers were invited to walk the catwalk by the UN:

Today Sharanya at the Indian feminist blog Ultra Violet has a post about a recent UN conference in which Indian sanitation workers walked the runway alongside professional models at a charity fashion show. (Sanitation workers, also called scavengers, are usually Dalit women whose job it is to remove the human and animal excrement from the homes of higher-class Indians.)

What a treat.

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This is amazing: some very young children in Yemen are standing up for themselves against the grown men their families have sold them off to:

Together, the two girls’ stories have helped spur a movement to put an end to child marriage, which is increasingly seen as a crucial part of the cycle of poverty in Yemen and other third world countries. Pulled out of school and forced to have children before their bodies are ready, many rural Yemeni women end up illiterate and with serious health problems. Their babies are often stunted, too.

The average age of marriage in Yemen’s rural areas is 12 to 13, a recent study by Sana University researchers found. The country, at the southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

(via Feministe)

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And we complain about taking our shoes off:

NPR covered a story about security in Baghdad’s Green Zone, which centered specifically on one woman’s protest against the type of body scanning used: it doesn’t see hair or clothing, but sees the body, (I’m assuming metal) jewelry, and any prospective weapons. The body is rendered essentially naked (pictured here; picture from NPR).

Farah al-Jaberi’s objections (which are shared by other female workers) are mainly to male guards seeing their bodies through the scanner, and the worry that “images of their bodies can be saved and viewed by anyone later.”

(There’s an image at the link of what the scans look like.)

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And, as always, to “rape” is not to “have sex with” – and the media should respect the distinction.

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July 10, 2008

Media To Women: You’re Not Having Sex Right

Slate has a long article summarizing all the various reasons why the science behind various studies and books asserting inherent differences between the sexes is thin at best. The article covers familiar ground – a lot of it restates the Mark Liberman posts I’m always linking to over at Language Log – but hopefully, this will help to discredit some of the more oft-repeated (and baseless) claims:

Even on the most hotly contested questions—like whether women have better verbal skills, or are hard-wired for empathy, or have cognitive differences that limit their advancement in math and science—the case for large, innate disparities is messy and, for the most part, underwhelming. This is especially true when it comes to neural and hormonal claims, which tend to be controversial. These writers offer canny caveats about culture and its role in gender difference. But they tend to imply that if a difference has innate roots, it’s likely to be relatively fixed. And that’s not necessarily so. In crucial ways, the mind is malleable. Ultimately, the evangelists aren’t really daring to be politically incorrect. They’re peddling one-sidedness, sprinkled with scientific hyperbole.

And while we’re on the differences between men and women, a nice rant all about orgasms – having them, not having them, faking them and who’s to blame – in response to a totally stupid column by MSNBC’s Brian Alexander:

But the thing that pissed me off the most is how Alexander wants us to look at his “roughly one-third” of straight women always have an orgasm statistic and be impressed by it. Clearly, the language he uses around it tells us that he’s saying WOW! One whole third? What a big number – especially when so many women are sexually defective!

As everyone knows, women love jerks, who, it seems, get laid a lot more. Why might that be?

It’s not always a matter of bad boys wooing vulnerable women into bed and then leaving them; it’s often two people who are both interested in just sex picking each other and calling it a day. Of course, there are no doubt some women who are suckered in by narcissistic jerks; there are also some dudes who are suckered in by narcissistic jerks (just as a Nice Guy). But sex isn’t always a trick men play on women.

What? Women might have different criteria (like looks and availability) for a one-night stand than they do for an actual relationship? No way!

One of the (many) things that really pisses me off is when guys go on about how women don’t like them because they’re too nice. I realize that everybody has to tell themselves something to get over rejection that puts the blame on the rejector and off themselves – women do the same thing (“I’m too intimidating/smart/successful”) – but I hate hearing guys go on about how their whole trouble is they’re just too swell for their own good. You know what? Usually “too nice” really means “unattractive and obnoxious.”

Hey, did you hear anything about these girls who had a pregnancy pact? And then, did you hear about how they actually didn’t?:

In short, the actual news item isn’t TODAY’S TEENS ARE SO IRRESPONSIBLE OMG. Rather, it is PREGNANT WOMEN REALLY WANT TO DO THE BEST THING FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR CHILDREN, EVEN WHEN THEY THEMSELVES ARE PRACTICALLY CHILDREN, AND IF YOU REMOVE THE STIGMA AND GIVE THEM SOME ACTUAL FUCKING SUPPORT IT HELPS A LOT. But that doesn’t fit in a headline, and it doesn’t give people an opportunity to feel morally superior.

Apparently, the problem is knocked-up teenagers aren’t being mocked and derided sufficiently anymore:

When the same girl shows up at the school clinic for five pregnancy tests in one month, shouldn’t somebody be mocking her for it? In fact, isn’t promoting shame through mockery our civic duty?

(via Feministing)

Just…wow.

More on keeping daughters in line:

“Authorities allege that Rashid killed his daughter because he feared that her resistance to a recently arranged marriage would disgrace the Pakistani-American family.”

Sounds so simple right? He killed her because his “culture” made him. Not because he might be mentally ill or pathological. There is no denying that in basically every culture there is pressure put on women to act a certain way and especially with regard to marriage or the ownership of her sexuality. But the way that “honor” killing is discussed in the media you would think it is some normal cultural phenomena, when it is not. It is a sign of illness, culture gone awry and patriarchy at its most exaggerated.

Speaking of other cultures, here’s a few utterly sickening photo shoots in which black women are used as props for white models. Can we please, please, please just completely be done with the fashion industry now? Please?

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I didn’t mention Michelle Obama once! If you need your fix, Michelle Obama Watch is a new blog entirely devoted to the subject. (via Feministing)

Posted in Advertising, Dating, Feminism, People, Politics, Science | 1 Comment »

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July 9, 2008

Some Things Are Unforgivable

I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately like this one, about people working toward achieving forgiveness and reconciliation between the victims of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, and those who participated in it (who are getting out of prison around this time, and returning to their former communities):

In 1994, the poorer Hutu ethnic majority committed genocide against the wealthier Tutsi ethnic minority, killing almost 1 million people. Since 2005, 50,000 of the killers have been released from prison, and now killers and victims are coming face to face once again.

“It’s unprecedented,” Hinson says. Nine months after her initial trip to Rwanda, Hinson packed up her camera equipment and a crew of four film students with a task she now admits was overwhelming: to tell the story of forgiveness and reconciliation through the victim and the perpetrator.

Yeah, it’s unprecedented – unprecedentedly awful. Here’s this idiot again:

“I had to ask myself again and again, would I forgive? Would I reconcile with somebody who killed my family? And I don’t know that answer,” she says.

Don’t you? I know my answer – fuck no, I wouldn’t reconcile with them! I would consider it a massive, superhuman accomplishment if I could keep myself from killing them. These poor people – having lived through a genocide, they now have to live alongside the perpetrators, and endure morons coming over and urging them all to sit down and talk with each other, as if they are nursery school children who’ve gotten into a spat.

Meanwhile, here’s a much better reaction to genocide:

South Carolina has become the 25th state to adopt a targeted Sudan divestment law that prohibits investing in companies that contribute to genocide in Sudan.

Good job, South Carolina. I hope the other 25 states follow suit.

And over at the G8 convention:

Higher prices are taking a particularly heavy toll on the world’s poor. A World Bank study issued last week said up to 105 million people could drop below the poverty line due to the leap in food prices, including 30 million in Africa. . . .To help cushion the blow, officials said the G8 would unveil a series of measures to help Africa, especially its farmers, and would affirm its commitment to double aid to the world’s poorest continent to $25 billion a year by 2010.

Measures are being unveiled and commitments are being affirmed. Hang in there, world’s poor…

Speaking of, in Mongolia:

While the government’s response to the violence–which included declaring a state of emergency, shutting down media outlets, and deploying troops into the streets–was far from ideal, there are reasons to remain optimistic. For one, the violence appears not to be caused by any inherent flaws in Mongolia’s system, but rather by the unfortunate confluence of economic frustrations and cheap vodka.

Before Samantha Power called Hillary Clinton a monster, she wrote pretty much the book on genocide, which I’ve been forever meaning to get around to reading. Here’s what she says should be done about Zimbabwe:

To start, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should appoint his predecessor, Kofi Annan, fresh from brokering a power-sharing deal for Kenya, as the U.N.’s envoy to Zimbabwe. One by one, those African and Western leaders who claim to be disgusted with Mugabe should announce that they bilaterally recognize the validity of the March 29 first-round election results, which showed the opposition winning 48% to 43%, though the margin was almost surely larger. The countries which do would make up the new “March 29 bloc” within the U.N. and would declare Morgan Tsvangirai the new President of Zimbabwe. They would then announce that Mugabe and the 130 leading cronies who have already been sanctioned by the West will not be permitted entry to their airports.

Tsvangirai and his senior aides should do as South Africa’s African National Congress did throughout the 1960s and ’70s: set up a government-in-exile and appoint ambassadors abroad–including to the U.N. That ambassador should be given forums for rebutting the ludicrous claims of the Zimbabwean and South African regimes.

And here’s Robert Dreyfuss responding in The Nation:

I’d say that Africans’ fears of civil war (and close-to-genocidal bloodletting that could follow) are realistic. And it’s by no means clear that Russia, China, and other world powers who are suspicious of US and Western efforts to topple regimes they don’t like would go along with Samantha Power’s plan. So her plan to carve up the world into “March 29″ countries and “June 27″ countries is a recipe for disaster, and it could result in creating animosity, division, and bloc vs. bloc rivalries that could undermine the possibility of diplomatic solutions for the war in Iraq, the showdown over Iran’s nuclear program, the North Korea issue, and others.

Whoa, whoa! Hear that? Refusing to recognize Mugabe would ruin the world.

On a lighter note, Bush and his team massively insulted PM Berlusconi at the G8 summit yesterday:

The White House had to profusely apologize to Silvio Berlusconi yesterday after it handed out a biography of the Italian prime minister that described him as “a political dilettante who gained high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media.” The WP’s Al Kamen notes that the administration even managed to offend “all of Italy” by describing Berlusconi as “one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice.” How did this happen? A cut-and-paste problem, of course. Turns out the bio was copied directly from a Web site and, apparently, the White House doesn’t proofread.

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July 8, 2008

Time Enough At Last

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow:

We are witnessing a globalized political whitewash job, with artists and assorted collectors, dealers, and sycophants pouring a thick layer of avant-garde double-talk over the infernal decade of suffering, destruction, and death that Mao unleashed on his country in 1966. And as we are also dealing with the house of mirrors that is the art world, I have no doubt that somebody is ready to explain that I am confusing appropriation with approbation or that fascism is just another way of spelling freedom.

(via 3QD)

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Better, a roundup of art reflecting desolation, worlds without people and post-apocalyptic cityscapes:

This new ruin romanticism is especially evident in the Flooded London imagery, rendered up by Squint/Opera (the firm behind the visualisations for the 2012 Olympic Stadium, via Archinect – what could be the emotional motivation behind their fascination with rendered ruins?). The imagined ruin has always existed – they have been a staple artistic subject for centuries. Only the focus used to be on abandoned civilizations, the perceived hubris of the ancients. In contrast, the virtual ruination of the modern era is self-imposed schadenfreude, with all the damage and joy turned inwards. It is a feeling made universal by the internet, where planning catastrophes and architectural missteps are all lovingly chronicled and catalogued.

When I Am Legend came out, New York was briefly plastered with posters of Will Smith and his dog, walking briskly down a completely empty city street.  Commuters gazed upon the posters with wistful sighs.

Last night, the boy next door who’s been learning guitar, held a little concert just outside my window.  He went through the entire White Album, and his group of friends was very encouraging of his efforts.  If I woke up tomorrow and found myself the last human on Earth, I think I’d be alright with it.  (And I wear contact lenses, so.)

Posted in Art, Brooklyn, Misanthropy, New York City, Politics | Leave a Comment »

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July 7, 2008

FISA and American Girls, or, How the Obamas Disappointed Me This Week

Get disappointed by someone new, indeed. Everyone’s talking about Obama and FISA. TPM has a good summary of his statements on the matter, and how his position has changed:

Viewing his statements, it’s striking how forcefully he argued in the past that the choice between civil liberties and safety is a false one.

Let the disillusionment begin.

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Here, the women of Slate discuss the American Girls line of dolls. The general opinion seems to be that the dolls, while promoting consumerism, are at least an improvement on Barbies and other bubble-headed bimbo lines, what with the AG’s emphasis on historical context and self-sufficient and adventurous characters.

Well! Trust me to crap all over that! Frankly, I think anybody who buys their kid a $90 doll ought to be ashamed of themselves. If that’s too rigid an opinion, I’m sorry, but I can’t fathom how anyone could argue it’s a positive thing to purchase this hugely overpriced luxury line of dolls and doll-related items for their kid. I loved looking at the AG catalog when I was little – I wore holes in it. But even back then, I saved my breath about the possibility of actually getting one. My parents bought me all kinds of dolls and undoubtedly spoiled me toy-wise, but even if we had been billionaires, I doubt they’d have entertained the idea of spending $90 on such a thing.

To be fair, my opinion about the AG dolls is entirely colored by a specific episode in my childhood that left me with a very bad impression of both the dolls and the families who value them. I went to an elementary school in a hugely wealthy neighborhood, and in third grade, one of the most well-off girls in my class invited everyone to her birthday party. The party was at the Sequoyah Hills Country Club, and it was an American Girls doll party. Everyone was to bring their American Girls doll. This ignoring the fact that most kids did not, of course, own an American Girls doll. I brought my little baby doll that probably cost around $12, and I went with my best friend, who was one of two black kids in my grade. I mention this because at the time (and possibly still, for all I know) the Sequoyah Hills Country Club, in the grand tradition of country clubs everywhere, did not offer membership to black people. It was, however, staffed by them.

The party had big tables for the kids, and little tables for the dolls. The table settings matched – there were big dishes, and matching doll dishes. There was real-people food, and matching fake doll food. There were big-girl party favors, and matching tiny doll party favors. The girl hosting the party wore a sailor suit that matched her Samantha doll’s sailor suit. I wasn’t really friends with anybody at the party, other than my best friend. And I don’t remember much about it, other than that the (exclusively black) men in butler outfits waiting on us were required to go around and pour air tea for the dolls.

I shit you not.

You know, to each their own and all that, but personally, I don’t want to have anything to do with anybody who is even remotely a part of the world I observed that day. Because of this experience, the AG dolls have become a sort of symbol of extravagance and snobbery to me, and as a result, I don’t think much of them, or mothers who think they’re precious (I’m disappointed Michelle Obama is one of them). Samantha may be promoting a more positive message than Barbie, but it’s entirely possible the little girl who threw that party resembles nobody so much as Barbie in her adulthood. The “message” is lost (because the message is beside the point); the consumerism, however, finds its intended audience.

Massively overpriced consumer items have one purpose, and one purpose only – to create and encourage desire and greed (in part by establishing themselves as status symbols: the enjoyment of having a $90 doll depends upon other girls having $12 ones – how else do you know yours is worth $90?), and to profit from it. Period. I don’t care if the dolls are a line of miniature Susan B. Anthonys and Betty Friedans – there is nothing progressively feminist about encouraging your daughter’s desire for a ridiculously high-priced doll and its accompanying outfits, accessories and furnitures.

Rawr! My daughter will have a flour sack with a face drawn on it for a doll, and she’ll damn well like it!

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July 3, 2008

I Wouldn’t Burn A Good One

As those of you paying close attention might have noticed, Thursday is generally feminism day here at Accismus. I have to run off this morning, but wanted to call attention to three things, all from Feministe:

About human trafficking:

A distant relative of mine was trafficked. Depending on what you’ve read and seen in the media, you may not expect this story to look like this: he is male, and wasn’t destined to become a sex slave, but a construction-site slave. Desperate for a job in Western Europe, he left his Ukrainian village with some sketchy individuals, was forced to trek through a marsh in freezing weather, and was eventually discovered on a train by police, still determined to reach his destination. This spring, an article on modern-day slavery was published in the L. A. Times – it warned readers that slavery is far from over, that, in fact, there are more slaves today than before, and that slavery has many faces and many forms.

…on 88% of violent crime in the U.S. being committed by men:

…The fact that, as the headlines above show, perpetrators of violent crime are assumed to be male unless stated otherwise shows just how normalized male violence is. Imagine how much we, as a culture, would be analyzing the socialization of girls if over the course of the past 10 years, 28 young women and no men had gone shooting up schools.

I’m often amazed at how invisible we make the identity of dominant groups in analyzing the behavior of their members, as opposed to the way we imagine that every member of a marginalized group is representative of the entire population of that group.

…and finally, on the male-heavy op-ed pages of our major newspapers:

Apparently a new study shows that academics chosen to write op-eds for three major newspapers are overwhelmingly male. The Wall Street Journal was the worst of the bunch, with 97% of their op-eds by academics written by men.

The study doesn’t get into the fact that this gender bias isn’t limited to op-eds by academics. At the New York Times (which features 82% male writers of op-eds by academics), two out of 11 regular op-ed columnists are women. At the Washington Post, two out of 16 columnists are women.

Now, I don’t necessarily think that having more women write op-eds would be helpful to women. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is a woman, and her ramblings seem to alternately expound on how ridiculous she thinks other women are and questioning the masculinity of any man who doesn’t act like a complete asshole.

I’ve said it before about Maureen Dowd: I suspect the Times hired her on purpose, precisely so that people, when observing how light the Times is on women columnists, would say just what is quoted above. There are tons of women who’d make fantastic columnists for the Times. I read their op-eds every day, both on blogs and in other publications.

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And one more thing – Silence of the City posts short pieces rejected by The New Yorker for its Talk of the Town section, and this particular piece (no permalink, but it’s ‘Measuring Up’ by Sari Wilson) is about a bra shop in SoHo that sounds heavenly. I am no longer a particularly bosomy lady (for now), but over a decade of my life was spent in wrestling with a pair of absolutely unmanageable breasts, which I’m convinced actually conspired with each other to make my life a living hell. One weird thing about boobs is that they seem to fluff up, like bread rising, as the day goes on. Has anyone else noticed this? You leave the house in the morning with everything all tucked in and your shirt spread smoothly over it, but then around 11:00 a.m., you look down . . . and you have four breasts. It’s the most peculiar thing. At any rate, I would have appreciated this:

At one point in the fittings, the Birkinstocked woman found herself maneuvered into a complicated, gargantuan paisley apparatus. After all the straps were adjusted and tightened and she was pushed and pulled into place, the model slipped on a trial T-shirt and it was revealed why there was a need for bra school. Her breasts were wholly transformed: no longer heavy and uncomfortable-looking, they appeared sprightly, lively, and well-formed. As she admired her slimmer, sleeker self in the mirror, the model smiled for the first time that evening.

Posted in Feminism, People, Politics | 3 Comments »

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July 2, 2008

On Small Fees and Donated Funds

Well, since Wesley Clark brought it up, does military service make for better presidential leadership, or no?

. . . [H]istory is agnostic on whether great warriors make great presidents. In the “yea” column you’ll find George Washington. Because I’m feeling generous . . . I’ll thow in Teddy Roosevelt. And if you insist that I expand the column to include borderline cases, we could also talk about Andrew Jackson. . ., Harry Truman, and Ike. The “nay” column is far longer, so I’ll just hit the highlights: Zachary Taylor, U.S. Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and, of course, George W. Bush.  Perhaps more interesting than any of the above, though, is this: the nation’s two greatest commanders in chief, and, not coincidentally, two greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, never served in the military.

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Much about Obama’s tax plan here:

. . . [I]n a better world, the findings from the TPC report would squelch the anti-Obama chatter around his tax plan vs. McCain’s. In that distortion chamber, the fact that Obama raises taxes on families with incomes above $250,000, and only on those families, morphs into a big tax increase on the middle class ($250K and up gets you in the top 3-4 percent, by the way). The report (compare tbls 1 and 6), in fact, clearly shows how topsy-turvy that critique really is. Obama’s middle-class tax cut, about $1,000, is three times that of McCain’s, about $300. Obama cuts the taxes of 81 percent of families; McCain, 56 percent.

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Why the SC’s decision on the D.C. gun ban might be great for the Democrats:

. . . [T]he Court went and struck down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, a decision that, for reasons cultural and chronological, will cast a shadow over every other case this term. And that, I’m convinced, is one of the best gifts the Court has given a democrat since West Coast Hotel. The reasons are simple: D.C. v. Heller takes the Court off the table as an electoral liability, and it takes the National Rifle Association off the table as an electoral threat. The first part of that claim is easy enough: a term that ends with a landmark conservative decision will not be easily spun into an urgent need to remedy what McCain has called federal judges who have “little regard for the authority of the president, the Congress, and the states.”

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And, too, this:

It is possible that Obama does not realize this because he has been imbibed by so much of the propaganda of quislingism and if that is the case as I believe it to be then I tremulantly recommend we halt the malmish adulation heaped upon wretched misfits. If anything Obama has hair in his brain and even though we all are to some extent as hairy Obama sets the bar on the curve that much higher up the mountain.

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Speaking of being pedantic, y’all:  apparently, we’re not supposed to say “correlation does not imply causation.”  Oops.

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The U.S. is suffering from a decline in foreign tourists.  To remedy this, those tourists will now be charged $10 upon their arrival on U.S. soil.

I just want to say that I was charged an exit fee when I went through the Bangkok airport, despite a layover there being the only time I spent in Thailand (about two hours, total, never leaving the airport).  I had gone from one terminal to the check-in desk, and back again, after somebody wrongly told me this was the only way to change from the small Malaysian airline I’d flown in on, to another, larger flight for which I’d booked an entirely different ticket.  When I tried to reenter the terminal after checking in, not only was I forced to pay an exit fee, but in order to do so, I had to exchange money into freaking baht at an airport currency exchange counter.   Man, was I pissed.

I don’t know what that has to do with anything, really, but it feels good to share.

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Humanitarian intervention is one of those complicated issues:

Contrast this with the economists’ way of approaching matters: will intervening do more harm than good? Would this law or that do more harm than good? Sociologists would be another case for comparison: whilst political philosophers (of the Rawlsian/Kantian variety) are predisposed to see democratic institutions as a requirement of justice, sociologists are likely to ask hard questions about whether this or that society has the social structure or culture that makes democracy possible. Historians might ask whether democracies intervening in non-democratic cultures have more often tended to be benign or, alternatively, genocidal.

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Battered animals have 3,800 shelters.  Battered women have 1,500:

A woman who fundraises for a charity dedicated to helping battered women recently told me about her challenges raising money. Called the Retreat, the charity is located in East Hampton, a posh beach community, full of people who make philanthropy a part of their financial and social lives. Yet she struggles to find donors. In response to her requests, she often hears, “Well, no one I would know would be a victim of domestic violence. Besides, I already give money to the animal rescue charity.” The animal rescue charity is one of the best endowed in the area.

I actually have a lot to say about philanthropy focused on animal abuse in general (please don’t infer from my not going into it that I am against such efforts overall), but I’m too tired this morning to articulate my opinions on the matter in an intelligent and mature way.

So, I’ll just limit my remarks to VOMIT!!!!

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Finally, the Phelps family is a good example of just how nuanced hatred can be:

Whence the hatred of a fellow Baptist, a man who seemed to share so many of Westboro’s grotesque views? The answer lies in the past of Falwell himself and of the Phelps family. Falwell was a shameless racist, and the Phelps family were, incredible as it may seem, pioneers of integration in their hometown of Topeka. The Phelps family’s law practice, headed formerly by the patriarch himself, Fred Phelps, took civil rights cases, often for black plaintiffs who had failed to find representation elsewhere. The Phelpses viewed racial discrimination as un-American and contrary to Biblical teaching, and their work helped to effectuate the Brown decision.

See?  Just because somebody’s entire life consists of waving ‘fag-enabler’ signs at funerals, does not mean you should assume they’re racist, as well.

Posted in Do-Gooding, Feminism, People, Politics, Travel | 2 Comments »

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June 30, 2008

Survival Is Overrated

You know, I just want to say that I’m sick of reading all about why Americans are so stupid they can be sold water if it’s packaged attractively. While it’s true that some people can be sold anything, the vast majority of people buy bottled water everywhere now not because it’s attractive, but because water is no longer available for free when you’re not at your house. I don’t buy a billion bottles of Poland Springs for a buck a pop because I think there’s some sort of cachet in it. I buy them because no mini-mart-owner in the city is going to give me a cup of tap water gratis when he could make me spend a buck. Sure, you might get a Dixie-cup-full at Starbucks or something if you buy something else with it, but if you have to keep nagging bored and frustrated service employees to refill your thimble-full of water, only to start the process all over again with another surly teenager after you’ve walked two more blocks and are completely dehydrated again, at some point, you’re just going to buy a damn bottle of water.

And yes, of course, if I thought ahead and always brought a bottle of water from home around with me everywhere, I could avoid this expense. And if I always brought an umbrella, and a light sweater, and Aspirin, and tampons, and Band-Aids and a change of shoes and a novel and an energy bar and a thing of mace, I would always be prepared for every situation, wouldn’t I? But I’m consistently not – I guess it must be because I’m so foolishly attached to overpaying for an attractively packaged commodity that used to be free.

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So, the big news lately is the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the D.C. gun ban. I don’t have a passionate opinion one way or the other on gun ownership, but here’s one thing I don’t understand:

I’ve heard champions of Second Amendment rights pose the hypothetical scenario that, if you let the government disarm you, in a few decades, you will have a more totalitarian society, and then it’s only a matter of time before the nightmare dystopia ensues and the governmental hit squads come banging at your door. And you’ll be an unarmed sitting duck. And I get that – I too believe that inevitably, at some point, society as we know it will crumble and we’ll go into some sort of The Road situation. But it seems to me that even if you have a whole bunker of guns, if a bunch of people come armed to your door with intent to take you in, you’re done. It doesn’t matter if you have weapons – unless you also have more people with weapons than they have with weapons, they will win.

I think that the real key to surviving when the infrastructure crumbles is to be small, fast, and not missed by anybody. And to not have anything that anybody might conceivably want. So, while gun control opponents can’t believe everybody’s so placid and docile and moronic as to allow their right-to-bear-arms to be chipped away at without a fight, I rather can’t believe everybody’s so placid and docile and moronic as to be gigantically fat, out of shape and laden with expensive possessions (and small, stumbling, needy children).

Come on, people. Your only chance for surviving in a post-apocalyptic world will be to dart around on the margins and feed at night — and to have nothing you love and nothing you’ll miss. I promise you, if a posse ever comes to my door, I will not be defending my “property.” To hell with my property – I’ll be out the back window and over the border before they can hoof it up the front steps.

Anyway, the world might end before any of this comes to pass:

I can well understand why the Times doesn’t want to give sustained big play to the possibility that the world will end on or around Labor Day. In addition to the civic-minded concern that this might create worldwide panic, there are practical matters of self-interest. If the possibility weren’t realized, as most scientists seem to expect, then the Times would look foolish. If the possibility were realized, it would have no opportunity to collect a Pulitzer, because the Times, the Pulitzer board, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which gives out the award, and every last Times reader would all be obliterated, along with the rest of the planet.

(Plus, too, the North Pole might be free of ice this year:

“From the viewpoint of the science, the North Pole is just another point in the globe, but it does have this symbolic meaning,” Serreze said. “There’s supposed to be ice at the North Pole. The fact that we may not have any by the end of this summer could be quite a symbolic change.”

via FP Passport)

Really, I’m just not as attached to life as we know it as most people seem to be. If I woke up in the world of Wall-E tomorrow, I guess I’d kind of miss the Internet.

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Why a continued American presence in Iraq can’t be compared to West Germany and Japan after WWII:

But setting all those concerns aside there’s one distinction between the case of Germany and Japan and Iraq today that gets far too little mention. It’s not a matter of culture or religion. It is the fact in the aftermath of World War II, both Germany and Japan had been conquered by the United States and her allies in a wars of aggression that Germany and Japan had started. The civilian populations of each country, whatever their war guilt, had experienced shattering levels of violence and privation in the final years of the war. And both countries were immediately faced by nearby hostile powers they feared much more than the United States.

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Public transit: it doesn’t really hit the poor hardest…

In fact . . . poor people do relatively little driving. They differ from middle class and wealthy people in that utility bills take up a very large proportion of their income. Not only should this specific point be remembered, but one should also recall as a general rule of thumb that if you see a large, powerful, well-organized lobby citing the needs of the poor as the rationale for something or other they’re almost certainly full of it.

…and plus, you can get drunk while you ride:

Carl Zimmer and Paul Ehrlich are talking about the need for alternative modes of transportation. He rightly makes the point that there’s a difference between designing a city for cars, and designing a city for people. Also makes the somewhat idiosyncratic point that with transit “you could at least be having a drink on your way home”

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Rob Cockerham at Cockeyed.com plays pranks, usually on various chain stores. Today, he has a new one involving posting clever signs in Home Depot storage sheds:

Despite an ambitious number of signs, I felt my local home depot wasn’t addressing some of the strongest benefits of owning a garden/storage/privacy shed/mini-garage/closet. I decided to make some new signs and try them out!

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Last but not least, I hope some day to make this list.

Posted in Advertising, People, Politics, Science, Technology | 5 Comments »

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June 27, 2008

Because I Wish To Go…

…here are a bunch of cool photo galleries from around the world!

Iceland, Hotel Everland in Paris, surfing in the Amazon, Artists’ Playground at Sudeley Castle.

(all via Coudal Partners)

And, about Beijing’s Olympic Park:

For a nation that deeply values formal architectural symbolism, creating an iconic shape that simultaneously evokes Heaven (a circle) and the auspicious bird’s nest was genius on the part of the architects. But so mesmerising has it become that nobody mentions the small matter of the 2,800-acre Olympic park and 31 other venues surrounding it. This is probably a good thing. Because the “bird’s nest” might be the ultimate in architectural eye candy, but its neighbours are not. Architecturally at least, the Beijing Olympics are a flop.

(via things magazine)

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It’s not just that Cindy McCain was a drug addict; it’s that she was a real jerk about it:

Cindy McCain stole drugs from a medical charity. It doesn’t get much lower than that. Worse still, she used her employees’ names to obtain drugs, and even enlisted some her her staff to pick up those prescriptions on her behalf. . . . One of the doctors who worked with McCain at AVMT lost his license to practice medicine over the diversion scandal. . . .Ironically, part of her diversion from criminal prosecution involved joining Narcotics Anonymous–which stipulates that an addict must make amends to those she has harmed. That’s not a step Cindy appears to have taken to heart in her dealings with her former emplyee, Tom Gosinski, the main whistleblower in this case.  Gosinski alleges that Cindy fired him from AVMT for knowing too much about her drug habit.  Gosinski also tipped off the DEA to McCain after he left the charity. He came forward in part because he was afraid that Cindy had filed prescriptions in his name, a suspicion that turned out to be justified.  When he sued Cindy for wrongful dismissal, she levied spurious accusations of blackmail against him.

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This is interesting:  a blue/red map of the blogosphere.   (via Crooked Timber)

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On the theme of escapism, 101 Movies to Avoid Watching Before You Die:

But my nomination is more serious: The House of Sand and Fog. I rarely dislike a movie enough to warn people against it, but this is one of the worst, and most unpleasant, movies I’ve watched.

See, now, I thought The House of Sand and Fog was terrific – characters with strong, high-stakes wants in direct opposition to each other, and all that.  But then, I’ve said it before:  I know jack about films.

Posted in Art, Movies, People, Politics, Travel | Leave a Comment »

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June 26, 2008

Lady News

A week ago, the U.N. recognized rape as a tactic of war:

Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, a former U.N. peacekeeping commander, told the meeting: “It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.” Speakers identified former Yugoslavia, Sudan’s Darfur region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Liberia as conflict regions where deliberate sexual violence had occurred on a mass scale. U.N. officials have said the problem is currently worst in eastern Congo. But a recent survey of 2,000 women and girls in Liberia showed 75 percent had been raped during the West African country’s civil war.

(via Feminste)

How fantastic.  I’m sure this problem will get much better, now that the U.N. has passed a resolution – that is, if its peacekeepers can stop raping girls long enough to read it.

Malaysia’s pretty sick of its rape problem as well, so from here on out, women will be fined for going around in lipstick and/or heels:

So not only are women supposed to prevent their own rapes by not wearing high heels or lipstick – which are apparently irresistible invitations to assault, or something – they’re fined if they don’t buy into it. If the Kota Bura Municipal Council is actually interested in preventing rape, perhaps they should focus on the rapists.

Well, really, women wouldn’t keep getting raped if they weren’t so insistent on walking around with breasts and things.

Related, here’s a truly horrifying roundup of everything to do with Islam, virginity fetishism, hymen repair surgeries, etc. (jumping-off point = an annulment in a French court):

I dislike virginity fetishism, but people make their own arrangements and their own marital choices. Fine. But part of living in a country with a secular legal system is abiding by that system; as I discussed in the previous post, maintaining your individual religious beliefs is great, but expecting a secular society to re-shape itself to fit you is not.

…I sure as hell reserve the right to blame the jackasses who peddle virginity as a virtue of utmost importance, and who pin a woman’s personhood and value on her sexual status – and that certainly includes the abstinence-only crowd in the U.S.

Speaking of, Time Magazine has a cover story on that stupid pregnancy pact thing, and I couldn’t agree more with this:

This story is getting a lot of play, and I can’t help but think that it’s in the category of rainbow parties and Satanic cults at daycare centers – that is, it’s a bullshit story published to scare the fuck out of parents.  Did a bunch of teenagers at this one high school actually have a “pregnancy pact”? Sure, maybe. But… why does this merit a story in Time Magazine?

Well, any excuse for America to focus on the sex lives of teenage girls, in such a way that can be dressed up as concern for girls’ welfare, rather than mere prurient obsession, is absolutely guaranteed to saturate the media for awhile.

Moving on from vaginas, I’ve been meaning to link to this post about shared parenting and housework:

Interestingly, the messiness of the house actually bothers me, now, a little less than it does him–at least when it comes to inviting friends in. I’ve decided that fuck it, the mess is my Feminist Statement that keeping a beautiful house is Not My Damn Job, so I invite people in (with a little tummy-tightening and a warning that we do not keep a clean house) and let them deal with it.

This is not entirely on topic with the rest of the above-quoted post, but it’s interesting to me:  it’s difficult to discuss the arbitrariness of household standards, because there are still so many stay-at-home moms who view their life’s work as essential to the health and happiness of their family.  Nobody wants to involuntarily dismiss a woman whose priorities include keeping a nice home for her family (or devalue the lives of their mothers, grandmothers and so forth, who often were stay-at-home moms).  But the very relaxing of standards in itself is sometimes taken as an insult to women who dedicated their lives to upholding the old, ridiculously high ones.

Speaking of women in the ’50s, on Ethel Rosenberg:

Her emotionless mask in public made her seem more unnatural, more evil even than Julius. “There is a saying that in the animal kingdom, the female is the deadlier of the species. It could be applied to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” wrote the World-Telegram and Sun. The Journal-American told its readers that Julius’s “deceptively lumpish” wife had been “even more immersed in communism and its requirements for regimentation” than her husband.

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What patriotism looks like in the American Indian community:

In this, America’s season of intense patriotic display, those of us who are not Indians may be able to learn a few things about patriotism from the Little Bighorn celebration. The first is that American patriotism is not something that you simply have or do not. What that flag means to you will depend heavily on how you regard the history behind it.

(via Bitch Ph.D.)

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Finally, is Godot a member of the Resistance?

Posted in Feminism, People, Politics, Theatre | Leave a Comment »

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June 25, 2008

Semantics

I stopped reading the Times columnists back when the website started charging for that content, and, since I didn’t miss them at all, I haven’t gone back to reading them.  So, granted, I haven’t read any of the columnists in quite some time, but based on my recollections of when I read them daily (before Kristol was hired, but then, I’m familiar with him), I mostly agree with this assessment:

Unlike David Brooks, another Times conservative, Kristol gives the reader nothing to chew over. Brooks is smart — and usually wrong. But he makes me think and sometimes he gets it just right much as George Will does. One of Kristol’s problems is that he clearly doesn’t believe half the things he writes. . . . He has to pretend he cares about choice and low taxes because he is playing at being a conservative. All that pretending produces seriously bad columns, inept columns. Krauthammer’s columns are crazy but his writing is fine because all the hate energizes him. He loves hating and it shows! Kristol isn’t even a good hater.

I can enjoy reading people with whom I entirely disagree, if they write well and with conviction.  I also adore a good, witty, ranting hater, even if he’s hating on the convictions I hold most dear.  (Incidentally, I have next to no patience for conspiracy theories of any kind, but the closest I come to actually holding one is I kind of think the Times hired Maureen Dowd on purpose to make women look stupid.  Really, is there any other explanation for her?  [And the conspicuous continuing absence of any other women on the Op-Ed page?])

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Speaking of paying for content, I can’t access this New Criterion article without subscribing, but I want to quote the intro:

Sometimes I forget and ask for Tall, Grande, or Venti, but usually I ask, defiantly but with some embarrassment, for small, medium, or large, because I resent being forced into a greater intimacy than I desire with the Starbucks corporate culture. I want to be a customer, not a member of the Starbucks Club who validates his membership along with his entry on the premises by speaking the Starbucks idiolect.

I too resent and avoid the Starbucks pseudo-Italian nomenclature, because using it makes me feel like a tool.  I realize that blogging about my refusal to use it makes me even more of a tool, but I can’t help myself.  Seriously, I don’t understand the whole ‘foreign words sure are classy’ marketing trend to begin with.  Many Americans (including me) only speak English, which is embarrassing enough (especially because they then have the nerve to bitch like all Dickens when somebody else can’t speak it to them), but if that’s the case, we should all just fess up to it.  It’s stupid to try to sprinkle foreign terms we don’t understand and can’t pronounce into our commercial transactions, because the unfamiliar sounds expensive (or authentic, which means authentically expensive).

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Vogue Italia has realized black women can objectify themselves and glamorize greed just as well as white women:

Having worked at one time with nearly all the models he chose for the black issue — Iman, [Naomi] Campbell, Tyra Banks, Jourdan Dunn, [Liya] Kebede, [Alek] Wek, Pat Cleveland, Karen Alexander — [photographer Steven] Meisel had his own feelings. “I thought, it’s ridiculous, this discrimination,” said Mr. Meisel, speaking by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “It’s so crazy to live in such a narrow, narrow place. Age, weight, sexuality, race — every kind of prejudice.”

(via Kottke)

Hooray for equality.  Meanwhile:

Over at Supreme Dicta there is an amusing, if disturbing, report by a grader for the Advanced Placement exam in US Government of some of the more comical statements made in response to an essay question about the 15th Amendment. . . . such as the statement that: “Strom Thurman [sic] was the first black man in Congress”. . .

Really, I think that’s how Strom ought to be remembered.

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Yesterday President Bush told President Arroyo that her people sure make good kitchen workers:

I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a nation that — in which there’s a lot of Philippine-Americans. They love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the — of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House. (Laughter.)

Meanwhile, Jim Comey explains why he wasn’t quite sure warrantless wiretapping wasn’t legal:

Well, I suppose there’s an argument — as I said, I’m not a presidential scholar — that because the head of the executive branch determined that it was appropriate to do, that that meant for purposes of those in the executive branch it was legal.

(both via Firedoglake)

On McCain’s foreign policy credibility, Representative Brad Miller writes that no President truly knows and understands another country, and what we really ought to evaluate is how willing a candidate is to listen to the people who do:

After World War II, governments that we thought were stable, governments headed by leaders we found impressive for their western qualities, repeatedly fell to revolutions or coups. To avoid unpleasant surprises, we developed expertise in the State Department and our intelligence agencies to understand other nations. We employed analysts who have lived in different nations and have friends who live there still, speak the language fluently, read the newspapers, watch the television, respect the religion, eat the food, and listen to the music. Our analysts stay in touch with the Americans at universities and in business who travel frequently in those countries and know people there.

With the exception of environmental scientists, no one in the federal government has had less to say about our government’s policies in the last seven years than those analysts. . . . The Bush Administration had open scorn for the analysts who argued that Iraq was an intensely nationalistic society that would resent a foreign army on their soil, and that it would be difficult to establish a government that Iraqis would accept as legitimate.

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I don’t know why I’m suddenly interested in Amtrak:

The number of passengers traveling by train in the US rose significantly in May. Unfortunately, Amtrak is reaching full capacity with no real way to increase the number of trains or routes at its disposal for several years.

I guess just because I really think the age of the personal car is going to eventually end, and I’m curious about how our lives will change when that happens.  I have not had a car since college – I’ve lived in Chicago, and now New York, pretty much the only places in America where you can reasonably live without a vehicle – and honestly, the necessity of getting a car is one huge barrier to my moving elsewhere.  I don’t want to buy one, I don’t want to pay to gas and maintain it, and I don’t want the responsibility of driving.

I wonder:  if public transport becomes more widespread, will inexpensive storage-locker facilities suddenly spring up in all manner of places?  Because that would be good.

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June 24, 2008

Influencing Public Opinion Is Really Haaaard

Obama: still Muslim after all these smears:

“The rule that I was sort of raised on was … you never respond at greater volume and in a bigger medium,” said Mark Blumenthal, editor of Pollster.com and a longtime Democratic pollster. “The problem with that is that no one ever held a press conference [to say Obama is a Muslim], there were no ads, no campaigns embraced the notion of Obama as Muslim, yet it’s everywhere.” . . . “If the information can be disseminated that easily, the old rule can’t apply,” Blumenthal said. “You cannot be passive and be reluctant to engage.”

In addition to being Muslim, according to Karl Rove, Obama is also a judgmental tool:

“Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”

. . . Interesting that Mr. Rove would use a country club metaphor to describe the first major party African-American presidential candidate . . . .

(via TPM)

Meanwhile, the main trouble with Michelle Obama is that she’s just so…black:

She grew up on Chicago’s ethnically isolated South Side — wasn’t poor but was hardly rich, was raised with a keen awareness of racial barriers but was also raised to achieve. She went to Princeton, excelled, retained her racial conscience but also eventually commanded a six-figure salary. All of this confuses white people mightily, far more than Barack’s biracial status. In their frame of reference, Michelle has no reason to be angry and every reason to be content. Portrayed by the media as extraordinary, Michelle at heart is an ordinary black woman whose life experience and ambiguity about making it in white America resemble those of every other 40ish, middle-class black woman I know. This is wonderful news for us — we finally see an accurate reflection of ourselves in someone who may one day occupy the most exclusive address in the country. But for a good part of the nation, this is exactly the problem.

Meanwhile, McCain enjoys the benefits of being of little interest to anyone:

I just saw John McCain very gravely lamenting Barack Obama’s decision not to accept public financing for the general election campaign and opining about what it says about Obama’s ethics and trustworthiness. And I must confess that I’m a little confused why more Democrats are not hitting this preening peacock with the fact that he is as we speak breaking the campaign finance laws and specifically breaking the law on accepting public financing. Having opted into the system and gotten the advantage of it he’s now spending freely in defiance of the caps he agreed not to spend over. . . .It’s almost surreal that McCain is being allowed to get on his high horse on anything remotely connected to the public financing system.

Well, the Democratic Party typically steers clear of conflict:

Practically the entire record of the Democratic Party as a group over the past seven years is one misguided instance after another of “keeping their powder dry” in anticipation of a time when they held a stronger strategic position. . . . The GOP understands and is willing to demonstrate that “powder” is not a finite commodity that must be conserved and that, in fact, using your powder magically generates more powder.

Now, here’s how you influence public opinion:

Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government has spent nearly $500 million on an Arabic language television and radio station.  Now an investigation finds that the project has not only been poorly run and hemorrhaged taxpayer money but is also airing bizarrely anti-American and anti-semitic coverage despite repeated complaints from the State Department and Congress.

–

Secret organizations, on the other hand, don’t wield as much influence as some people think (this article provides a guide to six):

I am a Freemason. . . . A meeting of Masons is as benign as a meeting of good friends around the fireplace. And yes, I know, that’s exactly what a Mason would say, which is why conspiracy theories are so hard to kill off. It is impossible to disprove the notion that somewhere out there is a roomful of people, bound by an oath of secrecy, pulling the invisible strings that make the world dance. The only way to know for sure is to become one.

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On an entirely different topic, here’s yet another article about the nothingness of contemporary art:

It is the artists, and a certain line of thinking about art, that have given the people with the cash permission to buy and sell what amounts to nothing, and to do so for ever larger and more insane sums of money.

(via A&LD)

Well, really, you can substitute any number of other things for “artists” and “art” in the above sentence, and it still holds true.

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June 23, 2008

All Law, All the Time

Dahlia Lithwick on what’s at stake with the next Supreme Court appointment (it’s more than just Roe v. Wade):

Justice John Paul Stevens is 88, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75. David Souter is 68, and it’s widely rumored in legal circles that he wants out (see, New Hampshire, above). All three of these jurists recently voted against the proposition that the government can call you an enemy combatant based on your last name or area code, then hold you without charges for six years at Guantanamo Bay, on the promise that you’re either a bad guy, or will very likely become one after being held for six years without charges at Guantanamo Bay. If just one of these three were to retire, we could easily return to a world in which decisions about who is or isn’t a so-called “enemy combatant” are made by the military, in secret, and with roughly the same sophistication that seventh-grade girls use to decide who’s “popular.”

Also in Slate, on the legality of torture:

If we manage to erase one hideously bad idea from our collective memories of the law in the war on terror, please, please let it be this one: Legal questions are neither “hard,” nor “novel,” nor “open” merely because someone at the White House didn’t like the legal answer that followed them. Easy questions don’t morph into tough ones just because you can find some guy willing to argue the other side.

Bush and McCain have both scoffed at the notion of serving terrorists with papers. Here are a number of reasons why military action may not always be the best solution to terrorism:

First, terrorists often operate in our country, or in friendly countries, which makes military action against them tricky. McCain (through his campaign blog) assailed Obama for favoring “prosecutors rather than predators.” But, when the terrorists are holed up in New York City, as was the case with the 1993 bombers Obama referred to, simply arresting them strikes me as more efficient than leveling their apartment with a drone-fired missile.

(via Yglesias)

In sum, don’t hate on the law. As Matthew Yglesias explains, it’s the law that keeps America from the type of corruption common in countries like Russia:

Here if the government were to ask telecom firms to illegally cooperate with an illegal surveillance operation, we’d ensure the rule of law continues to operate by changing the law so that complying with such requests will be legal in the future and also bestowing retroactive immunity on the cooperating firms. And if the Vice President’s top aide were convicted of a crime, the president would need to step in and commute his sentence. It’s these kind of procedures that keep our country safe and free!

We are a civilized nation, after all.

–

And then, there’s Burma. Here is a detailed explanation of why reform just is not happening there:

In the case of Burma under General Than Shwe and his military junta, no carrots have been tried, to my knowledge. Sticks in many shapes and sizes have been brandished and swung, to little effect. Economic sanctions, asset freezes, arms embargos and travel bans are currently in effect by the US and EU. I posed the question to a Burmese dissident last week. He reflected a moment, then smiled and said, ‘A missile launch pad in Thailand, that’s all we need’. No sticks, no carrots, just elimination: everyman’s fantasy. Were regime change so easy!

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And in Mumbai, people are seriously starving…

“Car-bound charity” is typical in India, where “feudal giving” (e.g, when a patron pays school tuition for the children of his household’s maid) also accounts for much of the nation’s charitable work, reinforcing household and societal chains of command. Anonymous or “checkbook charity” is more popular in Western countries, where parading the poor out on the streets is considered degrading. Drive-by charity, however altrusitic, is clearly not going to cut it as India tries to deal with the global food crisis. As of 2006, the country already ranked 96th — below Nepal and Pakistan — on the Global Hunger Index.

…and China has been buying up the manhole covers.

–

On a lighter note, here are some tips on how to take better candid shots. The trouble with candid shots (I’ve found) is that they tend to piss people off. See if you can guess which of these shots from my party on Saturday are candids, and which are posed:

folk 2

kids

folk 1

girls

Posted in Do-Gooding, People, Photos, Politics | 2 Comments »

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June 20, 2008

Suns and Moons and Earths and Maths

I am so very white that when I walk around showing skin in a blazingly sunny area, like the beach, total strangers have at times expressed concern for my welfare. I look like walking kindling. I am constantly worrying about skin cancer, squinting at my moles and wondering if they’ve shifted or expanded slightly since yesterday, and so this was great news to find on my birthday:

Cassian Yee at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle extracted immune cells from the patient and found that a small proportion of them, called CD4 T cells, naturally attacked a protein found on nearly three-quarters of the cancer cells. Using cloning techniques, Yee’s team replicated these cells until they had more than 5bn of them. When the cells were injected into the patient they immediately began attacking the cancer. Intriguingly, the patient’s immune system gradually began a wider offensive, attacking all the cancer cells in the body, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Two months later medical scans failed to pick up any signs of cancer in the patient.

(via TMN)

And even better, turns out that Bobby Jindal, a possible McCain VP choice, can cure skin cancer with his mind:

Jindal claims that the rite freed his friend Susan of the demon and may even have cured her skin cancer.

I guess I can stop bothering with sunscreen altogether.

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I’m sorry, I know I touched on this before, but I just have to say it again with more emphasis, because damn near every article I’m looking at today is based around some informal or vague ‘polls’ of voters talking about whether or not they’ll vote for who, and why, and what lost them, and these statements are taken as fact, and I just want to exclaim one more time for the people in the back that people’s answers to any questions posed to them ever are completely meaningless. People LIE. All the time. And not just to other people, but to themselves.

Especially when it comes to voting preferences – most people don’t want to think of themselves as straight ticket voters. They want to think they take each candidate on the strength of that candidate’s platform. But really, who over the age of 23 truly does an honest, fresh reevaluation of their entire world view with each election? Come on. You think what you think for the reasons you think it. I’m not saying that no one ever changes their mind over time (I’ve done a 180 since college, politics-wise), but you certainly can’t just wipe your brain every four years.

When someone says, ‘I don’t like McCain/Obama because [insert vague and personal objection],’ I think they almost always mean ‘I don’t like McCain/Obama because I’m liberal/conservative, but I don’t know how to cram my entire political perspective into a single thought.’ Or, ‘I haven’t thought much about this, but I don’t want to sound stupid in front of myself.’ Or, ‘I freaking hate uppity black guys, but I’ll be damned if I’ll admit that to myself, because I’d rather believe I’m a fair, cool-headed guy who just thinks there’s something shady about that Obama fellow.’

When someone says, ‘I’m voting for McCain, because I think Hillary got a raw deal,’ what they might really mean is, ‘Of course, I’ve never actually made it to the polling station in my entire life, but this year I’m determined to vote, and when I get there, that’s what I’m going to do, unless I change my mind again, or stay out late the night before.’

I sometimes tell strangers that I’m a diplomat. (Psst – I’m totally not a diplomat!!)

–

And here’s an opinion about the many people who ‘just don’t like that wife of his‘:

The Right seems to think that every educated and financially successful Black American (and/or woman, for that matter) should simply walk around thanking White folks, and saying “What, me worry?”

People’s extreme dislike of Michelle Obama has really floored me. I mean, the woman has done everything right – she’s successful in her career, active in her community, she’s smart, she’s confident, she’s a committed wife and mother with a strong marriage, she’s attractive and she made her own money…and yet somehow, it’s still not good enough.

I guess because what she’s supposed to say is: ‘I achieved, and so everybody else can, too, if they’ll just sack up and stop whining.’

And instead, she says: ‘I achieved, but that doesn’t mean that other people in my situation aren’t severely and unfairly hindered by disadvantages and prejudice.’

Which is anti-American.

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God, I’m an opinionated little bugger today, aren’t I? Maybe because I’m 27 now, and thus know it all.

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If the world is indeed made of math, there go all my chances of ever understanding any of it:

According to Tegmark, “there is only mathematics; that is all that exists.” In his theory, the mathematical universe hypothesis, he updates quantum physics and cosmology with the concept of many parallel universes inhabiting multiple levels of space and time. By posing his hypothesis at the crossroads of philosophy and physics, Tegmark is harking back to the ancient Greeks with the oldest of the old questions: What is real?

Also, this:

European researchers said on Monday they discovered a batch of three “super-Earths” orbiting a nearby star, and two other solar systems with small planets as well.

(both via TMN)

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The perfect way to bite it? Laughing at one of your own jokes:

Chrysippus (280-207BC), Perhaps the greatest of the Stoics. . . . after an ass had eaten his figs, he cried out to an old woman, “Now give the ass a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs”. Thereupon, he laughed so heartily that he died.

(via Unfogged)

Posted in Health, People, Politics, Rants, Science | 5 Comments »

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