STB Smart People

Non-negotiable Issues

2011-06-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder, separation of Church and State is not particularly encouraged by Catholicism. I particularly enjoyed the use of quote marks around marriage, there.

Non-negotiable issues. Like the choice to die with dignity, or conduct medical research, or show even a trace of compassion towards those denied recognition of marriage.

What the HEK

2011-06-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

A friend recently shared this article from the ever-charming Examiner, with injunctions to boycott Pepsico (BUT WHERE WOULD I GET MY FRITOS), because Pepsico was flavoring our drinks with dead babies.

Really?

I couldn't quite believe that. So I did a swift google search ("fetal cells enhance flavor"):

The-prolifers seems abuzz. And here is LifeSiteNews with its breaking news article!

Well, breaking news in the 70s, maybe. See, basically what's at issue here is using a cell *line* from HEK 293. In other words it's a maintained cell line that originated from some embryonic tissue cells, the same one that's been used in drug testing and virus research for years.

Now, I'm not saying the pro-lifers can't take issue with HEK 293 and be consistent with their principles--they do, after all, decry abortion, and these cells originated from an aborted fetus. But do pro-lifers decry organ donation with this much vim and vigor? I think that disagreeing with abortion and disagreeing with the use of fetal cells (in a freaking cell line like HEK293) are two very separate arguments. I doubt many pro-lifers would agree, but I thought I would throw that one out there anyway.

The shit that really bugs me is the inaccuracy of this flaming, Satan-is-coming-now, The-World-is-Evil reporting. You won't get the courtesy of even a cursory summary of what HEK293 is from the pro-lifers, of course. Let's take a look at the Examiner article I linked to above:

...fetal cells are being used as receptors to test new and different flavors by Senomyx, a company that contracts with Pepsi.

It’s bad enough that babies are being aborted at all, but to then use them to create a more delicious Pepsi is just nauseating...

"Fetal cells" is pithier, I imagine, than "cell line originally derived from aborted embryonic tissue, a cell line which is biotech standard and has been used to construct a number of vaccines and conduct virus research."

And the muck of the internet is even better, overflowing with pious Catholics conjuring images of baby-debris floating with the ice in your Diet Coke, thezombieapocalypsebegins.

Anyway, I'm waiting for more credible sources than LifeSiteNews to take a shot at this one, but as far as I can tell HEK 293 is what Senomyx is using, if anything.

Religojacking

2011-05-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

Ah, FarmVille. Time-waster, fake crops, Path to Righteousness.

Smiley Faces

2011-05-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

I'm just gonna leave this one up here for you guys.

(click to enlarge)

Debt Free

2011-05-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

When I heard that Newt Gingrich was once half a million in debt to Tiffany's, I thought to myself, "How sweet! Is the GOP finally proposing to Fox News?"

Gingrich's comments are, as per usual, from OppositeLand, where being frugal is apparently the same thing as racking up hundreds of thousands in debt.

The Liberal Conglomerate

2011-05-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

Scene: Liberal Fortress of Evil, probably in Homosexxx, Massachusetts, but possibly in Fruitjob, California.
A dark night, heavy with the scent of rain and new taxes.

Pompous Liberal Butler, hired to serve his masters like a mindless drone from their boyish days at elitist institutions like Princeton, Yale, and Harvard, strikes the granite floor with a staff made from wood recently requisitioned from a mom-and-pop small business store.
"Stand for His Honorable Most Glorious Highness and Future Tyrant of the Universe, Obama!"

The Liberal Conglomerate stands. Obama swirls into the room wearing a cape embellished with Muslim, African, Marxist and Nazi symbols.

Obama: Let the meeting begin.

Chief Environmental Officer/Idolatry Promoter: Lord Obama, sir, we've been making headway in subverting the American consciousness and infiltrating it with our messages of "compassion" towards the "environment." Greenies--as I like to affectionately call them--have been moving out of our sleeper cells in California and moving across the continental United States. Even Sarah Palin-

Obama (thundering): What did I tell you about that name?! THAT NAME!

Chief Environmental Officer: Oh, sorry sir, my apologies, I mean--her, she--the umm, the frightening one, as it were--

Obama: Oh, to hear her very name is to hear a piercing beacon of clarity that plunges the jagged blade of righteous truth into my twisted liberal heart! I cannot bear it!

Chief Environmental Officer: Yes, um, very good sir--she's foul--but any way, even she took to promoting the wilderness on her so-called television program, which we're choosing to take as proof of our Greenies' influence.

Tea Party Persecutor: Outrageous! That thing has been a thorn in our side from the very beginning! I need to contact our people in the media and have them exploit her children some more.

Chief Environmental Officer: Well, silver linings...

Tea Party Persecutor: Ooh, do you think she has some grey in her hair? Can we run a few old-looking photos of her?

Obama: All right, all right. Our media is valiantly fighting to besmirch the Palins as we speak, let us move on.

Tea Party Persecutor: Lord Obama, it's getting a little ugly. The mighty wagon of truth that is the Tea Party has done much damage to our carefully structured lies and got a lot of Republicans elected in the midterm elections.

Obama: Republicans? So? They're not doing anything remotely in line with the Tea Party.

Faux Conservative/Liberal Collaborator (chuckles nervously): Yes, well, we of course sing the song to get elected--

(Jeers and boos from the Liberal Conglomerate)

Faux Conservative/Liberal Collaborator (hastily): But look we're not going to DO anything, I mean we're going to bluster, and whine, but you know most of us are spineless, idea-less politicians who are more scared of the Tea Party than you are! And we certainly haven't got a coherent plan of action!

Obama: It's correct. This is a roadblock, but ultimately all will proceed according to our nefarious designs. After all, within a few short years the federal government will have abolished private property. And then we will make owning private property a requirement for voting, and then the federal government will be the only one with a vote. How will they like that for conservative values?

(general applause)

Obama (raises one hand delicately, with a small smile): Fear not, followers. We shall quell them. We shall quell them, with reform. With better healthcare, with lower federal taxes, with saving our economy from plunging even further into the gutter. We shall quell them by promoting sensible, rational discourse about complicated problems!

(Scattered, slightly confused applause breaks out)

Obama: Next on the agenda, don't forget; Undermining the American Family, Dissolution of the White Population, and Blatant Disregard for Special Privileges for Churches, unless of course they are mosques.

Liberal Butler: All right, ladies and gentlemen, if you will please rise for the closing prayer.

(all chant)
Hail the Glorious Rise
of the Obama Empire, the Marxist triumph
Destroyer of Faiths, Liberator of the Dissolute,
Obama the Magnificent, true heir to Hitler,
He who shall crush under his heel of taxes the hissing head of the serpent, Small Business,
Preserver of the Rainforest, Hater of Babies,
Gateway to the East, bring us Terrorists, and China.
AMEN.

Gates of Heaven

2011-05-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

I am pretty sure that Glenn Beck is ticked off that the Rapture is taking attention away from his brand of crazy.

Protestors

2011-05-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

Don we now our Takei apparel! If recent polls are any indication this position is getting more popular.

Apparently Colbert is doing what he does best--sticking it to the right-wing:

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court nixed federal laws that limited corporations from donating unlimited money to candidates and political causes. Many Republicans began taking advantage of the development by acquiring tens of millions of dollars, and political observers believe it was one of the reasons the party was able to take back the House of Representatives.

Colbert now wants to do the same, explaining he believes in the American Dream....The FEC’s decision could shape the PACs of several Fox News commentators.

As Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen puts it at politico.com, it could expose “the clear conflict of interest that Fox media has as they allow political figures to promote their PACs on a supposedly neutral media outlet.”

The whole Rapture thing? Imagine being a kid and having your parents think that the world will end tomorrow. Apparently these kids have managed to keep in touch with reality while their parents have gone wildly insane on a level that puts even my own uber-religious upbringing to shame.

donum superadditum

2011-05-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

And....this is why I'm not Catholic anymore.

Well, that, and I have both brains and heart.

Lord Speaker of the Church

2011-05-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Oh, wholly objective morality! So obvious once you get away from those absurdly emotional philosophers who have been debating the question for centuries.

In today's Ex Catholic News, Boehner's title of Lord High Supremely Self-Righteous American Catholic is being challenged by a group of, well, people who take Catholicism beyond the realm of right-wing bolstering and abortion-slamming.

A group of professors is challenging Boehner's self-proclaimed sanctity by pointing out the basic social teachings of the church that the right-wing consistently ignores: file this one under "Christianity sure has a lot of good messages nobody listens to."Cutting aid to programs such as WIC and Medicaid and giving preference to the wealthy is in direct contradiction with some of the most indisputable tenants of Christianity, and these professors are calling Boehner out on his heinous track record of taking from the poor and giving to the rich. This isn't Christian, they argue, not our Christianity.

Right-wing sticking points--gay rights and abortion--are seized on by politicians and used to obscure and circumvent any number of other complicated issues. For some reason giving lip service to being pro-life covers a multitude of war-mongering, health care-obstructing, and bad economics.

Hey, "some of my best friends are Christian." Lately I've been trying to be a little more open-minded with regard to the actual beliefs of actual Christians, rather than the salient craziness of their politicians. But I can only continue to do so as long as Christians and Catholics speak out in accordance with their supposed principles of compassion, social justice, and peace.

Evacuate the Dance Floor

2011-05-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

Republicans! They are pretty much hilarious. Wait, we may actually be voting for our own shenanigans?

This one requires a bit of explanation:

In an attempt to highlight deep divides in the Republican caucus. Dems switched their votes -- from "no" to "present."

Panic ensued. In the House, legislation passes by a simple majority of members voting. The Dems took themselves out of the equation, leaving Republicans to decide whether the House should adopt the more-conservative RSC budget instead of the one authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. As Dems flipped to present, Republicans realized that a majority of their members had indeed gone on the record in support of the RSC plan -- and if the vote closed, it would pass.

-SOURCE

1912 and 2011

2011-05-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

Story of my Life.

I'm not entirely certain about the origins of this illustration, but it's purported to be from a 1912 issue of Life magazine.

The treacherous staircase of feminism! Or something. I'm a little confused by the logical progression (love, marriage, children and home are all good, but abruptly the "bad" begins at ambition, I assume?), but the vindictive meaning is clear. How brave those suffragettes and early feminists must have been, swamped beneath societal condemnation at every turn.

And here in 2011, we have HR 3. I'm aware that federal funding for abortion is a tricky issue, but the bald attack against choice ensconced in this act is frightening and far-reaching. HR 3 is going to make it nearly impossible for an insurance plan that offers abortion to compete, and presents a host of other problems including my old favorite, the re-definition of "rape."
It's doubtful that HR 3 will pass in the Senate, but it's another piece of blatant evidence that the GOP-dominated House cares little for women, personal choice, or the progress feminism has made in the last century.

Protest Song with Brains

2011-04-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

Hugh Laurie has the answer, you guys. Hugh Laurie always has the answer.

Side note: I wonder if this is true.

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

Make the sacrifice worth something!

Have a good Easter, go bite the head off a bunny or something.

A chocolate bunny. Sheesh, you people!

Today's Feminist Moments

2011-04-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

Favorite moment: 4:24. Oh, MRAs!

Also:

[Today] every girl is expected to have: Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes. Everyone else is struggling.

-Tina Fey, Bossypants

Fun and games with Portal 2, feminism, gender archetypes and Emily Dickinson:

Through a feminist lens, let’s explore GLaDOS’ strange morality and design. Is GLaDOS the symbol of a system gone amuck, or is she the victim of such a totalitarian system?

While one may be skeptical at reading commentary on gender roles into Portal, there are hints that not only are we meant to read GLaDOS as a feminist icon, but as a stand-in for one of the greatest woman poets ever.

Why Do You Think We Fought at Omaha Beach?

2011-04-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

WATCH. THIS.

Now THIS is the kind of Republican I can get along with. Why do we not hear from people like this more? Why are people like this, with their obvious heroism and clarity of compassion, being excluded in exchange for maniacs like Palin and Bachmann, with their rage and bigotry?

Source.

doing it for the lulz

2011-04-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

In ur skoolz teeching evolution, mayking ur kids aytheeist.

" So far this year, seven states have proposed bills that would weaken evolution's standing in the classroom. The legislation is often couched as supporting academic freedom, points out the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a group that defends the teaching of evolution in public schools. But critics say each bill has been, in fact, an attempt to foster the false belief among students that evolution is "just a theory" with "significant holes" that is wide open to competing ideas. And those competing ideas favor a deity."-- full article.

Liberal Arts

2011-04-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

THIS is really raising my ire today:

Two days [after Cronon made critical observations of the power conservatives wielded in Wisconsin], the state Republican Party filed a freedom-of-information request with the university, demanding all of his e-mails containing the words “Republican,” “Scott Walker,” “union,” “rally,” and other such incendiary terms. (The Op-Ed article appeared five days after that.)

The party refuses to say why it wants the messages; Mr. Cronon believes it is hoping to find that he is supporting the recall of Republican state senators, which would be against university policy and which he denies. This is a clear attempt to punish a critic and make other academics think twice before using the freedom of the American university to conduct legitimate research.

The Wisconsin GOP, unsatisfied with attacking unions, is leveling their vitriol at an individual, an academic, attempting to use their pompous self-importance to undermine, harass, and generally silence him.

Why? Because he disagreed with their legislation, and made critical note of their power. The times article notes:

He pointed to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group backed by business interests that circulates draft legislation in every state capital, much of it similar to the Wisconsin law, and all of it unmatched by the left.

There are questions about the legality of which emails the GOP can demand.

This is appalling, and horrifying, and I am disgusted that an academic's freedom of speech is being so openly and blatantly persecuted. The GOP's message is clear: think twice before you do your research and come up with anything negative to note about the Republican Party.

Those of us in academia had better be outraged at this bullying directed towards one of our own. The power the GOP wields so unconscionably in this nation is absurd, frightening, and impermissible.

Unpacking

2011-03-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

Well, after a hiatus from politics, I'm back! I intend to plunge into some research and find something to get bugged about shortly.

So, what's going on with the crazies?

Planned Parenthood is under attack?

Michelle Bachmann is actually still being taken seriously?

Jan Brewer's still going strong?

Rick Santorum's...just...insane...(wow, a lot of abortion stuff lately)

At least the economy got fixed, right...?

Damnit.

Gas and Hot Air

2011-03-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

Sarah.

I have an addiction. I'm a junkie. She's lethal to me. It's an ache I just can't shake.

Sarah.

She's my conservative kryptonite*, my beautiful Alaskan loon. No matter how many equally kooky right-wing characters join the GOP clown-parade, no one can take her place in my heart.

I've got a fever, and the only cure is more Sarah.
Being categorically and pathologically incapable of silence, Ms. Palin obliges. She publishes a grand facebook note (the media expression outlet of kings), capitalizing (haha, get it?) on Pain At the Pump, the high gas prices, the Obama administration's immoral strategies to inflate these prices.

First of all, she's just so fucking wrong. There is basically no way federal drilling policies can impact gas prices like this, as economists agree. It would take years for drilling policy changes to affect gas prices right now. Seriously, google anybody with a decent understanding of how this works and you'll see that she's speaking nonsense, spouting unrealistic and unreal economics. Here's a start.

fact: there are high oil prices.

fact: Obama is president.

ERGO: Obama = high oil prices.

Ok, now that I've gone over her wrong wrongness of being wrong, let's move on to a different point she makes. Coincidentally, this one is also fucking wrong. She acts like oil drilled in the US will be a nationally-exploited resource, apposite to our economic woes and an instant boon of plenty. We are living in a land of milk and honey and oil, y'all!

Oil...companies drill oil. Oil companies sell oil. On the global market, I might add, and under a GOP reign, apparently with an unbelievably low amount of regulation. So whatever happens, it won't be a magical resource the Good People of these United States will be able to line up for dividends on. Sarah, like a good Republican, is in it for the big companies.

Oh, and just for kicks, let's take a look at the real crazy in her facebook note:

"This was no accident. Through a process of what candidate Obama once called “gradual adjustment,” American consumers have seen prices at the pump rise 67 percent since he took office. Let’s not forget that in September 2008, candidate Obama’s Energy Secretary in-waiting said: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” That’s one campaign promise they’re working hard to fulfill!"

For the price levels in Europe bit, she pulls from a WSJ piece about alternative energy (a valid discussion worth having, not a dark threat to our pocketbooks but an important investment in the future. Ye gods, those environmental wackos!). Here's a part she forgot to mention:

"But Mr. Obama has dismissed the idea of boosting the federal gasoline tax, a move energy experts say could be the single most effective step to promote alternative energies and temper demand."

Hm, let's see, Sarah. Your economics are wrong, your facts are off, your understanding of energy policies is surpassed by knowledge my readers can accrue in fifteen minutes from judicious googling, and the only leg you're left to stand on is wild idiotic conspiracies about how Obama is blatantly and forcefully inflating gas prices himself. In short, you are staying true to yourself.

*fun fact: google "Sarah Palin kryptonite." Way more results than I would've predicted, they're a common pairing. Journalists need to read a wider range of comic books and they can start saying things like, "Ron Paul may be Sarah Palin's color yellow!"

Rational Relativity

2011-03-13T20:26:00.000-07:00

Not even kidding, this is totally where my morality is at right now, philosophically speaking. I'm all, "Peter Singer's dilemma? Meh. I guess the baby can just die."

Not practically speaking, friends, don't worry. I'm just saying, why is our collection of elements more important than any other particular combination? A little existential crisis on the eve of your monday.

Just in case you needed a final push into Charlie-Sheen-like insanity, our beloved Sarah Palin is here to provide. Speaking, it seems, from the deluded authority of "takes one to know one," Palin says that union bosses need to turn down the rhetoric.

That Sarah! She is practically the Miss Manners of Politics, doling out gentility with a side of polite humor. For sure, the first person that springs to my mind when I ask, "Who is the champion of civil discourse in American politics?"

Plus, as Sarah notes, there have even been some death threats involved in the heated debates over the de-unionizing of Wisconsin. And that is a reason to call for toning down rhetoric...unless you're talking about right-wing rhetoric, and an actual shooting was involved. Anybody remember Palin's reaction to we left-wingers calling for a tone-down of rhetoric, then?

Cancer and Perversion

2011-03-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

Didja hear that, you hussies? Cervical cancer and STDs aren't a matter for mature, compassionate medical treatments. No indeed, women's deaths are a cause for smug celebration and nose-thumbing.

I can just imagine these prolife/anti-sex groups getting together to brainstorm on this one:

"What can we co-opt for our campaign of slut-shaming...how about cancer deaths?"

"Genius! Nothing says 'joke's on you!' like being stricken with cancer."

Oof. After the attempts to cut funding from Planned Parenthood, this is just too much. At least we still have some checks in the Senate.

The Mary Sue

2011-03-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

The internet is reading my mind.

Word on my cyber street says THIS is the hot new geek-girl blog in town. Let's see if it lives up to its aspirations to create the oft-longed for safe space for female geekery.

From their introductory postings:

Because even if we want to play with the boys, there is a value to having our own space.

Until advertisers, producers (of, say, The Big Bang Theory), and the larger society cease to assume that if you’re into sci-fi or videogames then you’re universally male; until the Big Two of American comics figure out that the way to get women to read comic books is not to pander to the demographic, but simply to make consistently good comics; until videogame makers finally figure out exactly why booth babes are flagrantly, shockingly sexist… the voice of the female geek needs to be heard.

Lately On My Mind

2011-02-24T09:08:00.000-08:00

On the topic of female nerdery recently discussed, here is more on sexism in tech culture from Geek Feminism. Money quote:

More women than men discuss sexism, and it is not because we find the topic more fun, entertaining, or enjoyable than men. It is because sexism gets in the way of our freedom. I blog about sexism in geek culture not because it’s my passion, but because it gets in the way of my passions. My struggle against my marginalization is not my hobby.

I'm glad to see this issue being batted around with increasing frequency. Sometimes it feels like we're in a post-90s backlash of sexism in certain realms.

Rush Limbaugh criticizes Michelle Obama's weight/health habits. I'm just gonna leave it at that.

Another brilliant Republican idea: have all miscarriages investigated under the suspicion they may be prenatal murders. This is probably the most rational, compassionate, wonderful idea I've ever heard, second only to the idea that we should strip women of their vocal chords and ship them off to large forced-birthing facilities.

On the upside, facebook and Hawai'i both add civil unions.

Denied

2011-02-23T14:41:00.000-08:00

The Powers That Be at Google have rejected my appeal to them to allow me to reinstate ads on the blog, and this makes me sad. It's an injustice! A travesty!

Like this:

Bad Medicine

2011-02-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

For those of you resting in blissful, modern medicine-filled ignorance, NFP = Natural Family Planning.

I'm sorry honey, but you can't just decide Science backs up your archaic beliefs. It doesn't work that way.

Advice

2011-02-21T18:01:00.000-08:00

Six Pieces of Commentary From People Who Straddle The Ungraceful Line Between Friend and Co-Worker, Titled With My Predominant Character Flaws

1. Being too friendly.

It's embarrassing, really. You're making everyone uncomfortable with your gestures of invitation, your suggestions of "we should hang out sometime!" Stop trying so hard, you talk too much.

2. Not dating them.

Who do you think you are, Cleopatra? You smiled over the free coffee that one morning, didn't you know that was the universal sign for "Let's be in a relationship now?" Why did you say we should hang out if you didn't want to date--didn't you notice we're not the same gender?! Well, apparently we're not dating and I'm going to treat you like it's all your fault. Bitch.

3. Eating too little.

God, you're skinny! Haha. I mean you look great. You're so beautiful! Keep up the good work. Do you ever eat a hamburger? You must run a lot. It's great that you care about your health. Oh loosen up and eat a damn hamburger, how about. Look at your little salad. I hate skinny girls. Haha! Totes kidding.

4. Being too shy.

You know you have this totally stand-offish air, don't you? Oh sweetie you're so quiet. And it's elegant! It's so elegant! But you know you should come out to more parties. You should drink more. You should be more outgoing, because you're obviously a recluse. It's pathological, sweetie.

5. Dating them.

You should really settle down and focus more on work. Stop wasting your time. You're so immature.

6. Eating too much.

Wow, you're getting a whole sandwich today, huh? Haha! Oh I guess I will too. I mean I'm sure I won't be able to finish it. I wish I had a metabolism like yours, if I ate what you eat I would just explode. This sandwich is huge. There's no way I can finish this. Portion control is sooooo annoying. If I didn't watch myself I would just eat everything in sight! Haha! Wow I cannot believe that's your lunch!

For Your Excursions

2011-02-21T13:06:00.000-08:00

source.

He included Dinotopia! No one ever remembers Dinotopia.

Firewalls

2011-02-19T18:04:00.000-08:00

Thanks to facebook fan Jesse for recommending this blog. Interesting quote from a musing on file-sharing, techno-geek culture and feminism:

Women are systematically left out of techno-geek culture. It’s a boys club that’s reinforced socially and culturally. It creates a space that is so undesirable for women to be in that they don’t want to or they aren’t given the opportunity to participate. -- source.

I don't wholly agree with this blogger (I wouldn't be a feminist if I didn't disagree to some extent with every other feminist out there...it's part of our handbook), but this one is so very true.

And frequently, when we geeky girls do brave the heavily-male world of whatever geekery we're into, we get completely swarmed with often-unwanted sexual attention and constant comments on our gender. It tends to leave us feeling alienated, scrutinized, and like decoration rather than active and welcomed members of a community. We need a t-shirt: I'm a person, not your nerd-girl fantasy.

Femiwhatzi

2011-02-15T23:37:00.000-08:00

Five Things I really don't have f***ing time for right now:

1. People who claim "feminism is sooooo outdated and unnecessary!" Do you have a mother? A sister? A girlfriend (haha! As if)? Maybe a daughter (may she be helped by Shiva, the Destroyer)?

Can that woman vote? Can she go to college? Does she have a better chance of learning to read than getting raped, unlike women in South Africa?

Yeah, you're welcome, oh and read a little bit about the millions of women who live outside of your idealistic, entitled, snot-nosed little utopian fantasy.

2. People who whine, "We're not on any side because we criticize Republicans too" and weakly say, "Yeah Bush sort of spent a lot" while they take a brief breather from lambasting Obama/democrats with more zeal than the raccoons that go through my garbage every morning at 3am sharp in what I can only assume is a speed-fueled frenzy.

3. Inconsistent neocons. Healthcare reform? The Founding Fathers would stroke out over it! Patriot Act? Ummm....that had something to do with not burning flags, right? Imperialistic takeovers of other countries? Why not?! After all, Washington would've approved.

4. People who decry the gang-banging, tattooed, welfare-draining, bad-word-using, bad-driving, morality-eroding, bad-English speaking, nonwhitemidwesternnorthamericanism Hispanic/Chinese/Native American/African American/sympathetic liberal (traitors!). Hey! Guess what! We can all see through your little gauzy mask of "patriotism" to the pathetic, terrified, racist bigot underneath.

5. People who harp on the GOP wins in the recent midterm elections as a "mandate" for total and complete annihilation of the Obama administration, despite the fact that they saw the election of Obama as a clear sign that the majority of Americans were possessed by a horde of communist demons and needed an exorcism from the few, privileged conservative white knights still able to see through the lies of the anti-Christ to God's True Plan. Are you a minority or a majority? Is the American public overwhelming supporting your conservative agenda, or are you swamped underneath a tide of unfair, incredible liberal bias and power? Make up your damn mind.

Seriously, gfy.

Catholics Making Choices

2011-02-11T12:28:00.000-08:00

Good job, Catholics for Choice. But I'm just going to have to tell you right now, calling yourself "Catholic" is a stretch when the entire church hierarchy disowns you.

The thing is, being a Catholic isn't just about believing in the Catholic god. There's a lot less leeway here than in a lot of Christian denominations: Catholicism is (at least in its current historical manifestation) a strict hierarchy with strict rules for who belongs, and who doesn't.

A lot people on the outside don't necessarily recognize that aspect of Catholicism. And of course, this isn't to disown the dissenting Catholics (the majority of them) who use birth control in flagrant disregard for the hierarchy and claim they have no Catholic identity. But Catholicism really does have an aristocracy of clergy in place, clergy who make the rules about what "counts" as Catholic and what doesn't. Is change ever going to come from "the people" in the Catholic church? The people who use contraception, and have far more nuanced positions on and compassion for/acceptance of homosexuality than the Magisterium?

I've seen this divergence between the laity and the clergy time and time again, both now and back when I was a Catholic. And yet I see no evidence that the rigid hierarchy of the Catholic church is willing to even listen to voices from the laity; every ounce of power and decision-making regarding church teaching is held by the (all-male, need I remind you) clergy. It certainly makes one wonder.

Uncertainty

2011-02-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

--Freud

It's sunday morning and I no longer have a religious service to attend. I sometimes find this a bit saddening since the certainty of that world eroded itself out of my life. In lieu thereof, I occasionally philosophize. This morning I was thinking about uncertainty, and I'll leave you an unsatisfying, question-full post as both commentary and poetic meta-commentary, just like my old church services but sadly lacking in post-discussion donuts and hot chocolate. Go grab some for authenticity's sake.

I'm floored with a lot of uncertainty in my life at this moment, and it's more than a little distressing. Parallel universes, alternative endings, ladies and tigers.

People often think science is about certainty, but it's about doubt. It's about strong inference, because we're simply limited in our ability to ever move deduction outside of the realm of beautiful abstraction. All we can do is throw alternatives out into the world and choose the explanation with the least contradictory evidence. So even the most resolutely pragmatic human intellectual experience has to wrestle with constant uncertainty, in fact has to make a philosophical commitment to preserving uncertainty for the sake of constantly being able to self-critique and improve. Perhaps uncertainty is necessary for growth.

Cognitive behavioral therapy co-opts scientific strategy for dealing with doubt and negative thoughts, from what I understand; one puts thoughts on trial and marshals evidence against them. Compelling, except it becomes more difficult than this as soon as you realize that you are dealing with clouds of feeling, amorphous regions of mental space painted in dark and swirling colors, meshing and entwining and mimicking normal cerebral functioning. If one's own thoughts are on trial, which thoughts serve as judge?

I feel the pull of certainty as much as anyone else--perhaps more than some. A willingness to engage in ideological struggles within one's own mind is an open invitation to the demons of doubt, a hello-and-how-are-you to the anxiety of visits in Hypothetical Land. Oh, Hypothetical Land! The stay is free but don't underestimate the cost.

But--perhaps uncertainty is necessary for growth. Perhaps the benefit outweighs the cost, in this case. Perhaps there is simply no other - or no better - way to live than to give in to the occasional doubts, allow oneself the terror of considering contradicting evidence. Radical idealism, radical political positions, radical religious positions all provide a beautiful sense of certainty and this siren call eases anxiety like no other. But in the end, you lose. If nothing else, you lose the strength and breadth of mind to experience anything outside of your narrow choices, and in such a short life on this tilting ball of rock, dismissing experience seems profoundly sad. When you lose the perspective to recognize that your choices are choices, you are left with a very dangerous worldview indeed, because living in outright, unflappable, wholly secure certainty seems incongruent with reality.

Is this the linchpin of why Freud speaks to the importance of ambiguity? Do we all live our lives battling the temptation to give in to too much security? Having answers regarding the nature of uncertainty would be antithetical to the nature of this post, so I'll ask one more thing: what have you doubted today?

my life

2011-02-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

Too occupied to gather my thoughts, thoughts too scattered to blog.

Occupied with what?

citation.

F You, Special K

2011-01-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

Following up on my thoughts about eating issues , I was noticing the diet plan on a box of Special K cereal this morning: Lose Six Pounds in Two Weeks!

3 pounds a week, for realz? That's a lot. How do you propose we do this, Special K?
I see, replace two meals with two bowls of special k cereal? Oh well that sounds perfectly...
Wait, WHAT? You seriously want me to eat two bowls of cereal instead of real meals? You want me to nosh on your tiny little granola bars and slash my caloric intake to sub-par metabolic levels just so I can shout "It worked!" over the phone to my passive-aggressive girlfriends while trying to hold back tears of deprivation, tears which will later come pouring out under the pressure of real nutritional needs propelling me into a starvation-mode binge attack as I continue a cycle of yo-yo dieting and unhealthy deprivation?

I'm not the first to notice how lame this Special K diet is. It simply does not follow healthy guidelines, and as such is nothing more than an exploitation of insecurities.

Seriously, f*** you, Special K.

Family Shield

2011-01-26T10:47:00.000-08:00

source.

Hey, you know what protects young children? Try NOT teaching them fear, ignorance, hatred, or that shunning human beings is ok and somehow linked to "family values."

Waste Not

2011-01-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

This morning I was using one end of a q-tip to take off some eye makeup and then I stood in front of my mirror and stared at it wondering, "Should I really throw this away? Because there's an entire half of unused q-tip here."

And then the Marley showed up and was all, "Dude, we need to talk."

Sensitivity Disorders

2011-01-22T09:27:00.000-08:00

When I was a freshman in college, my classmates and I were herded into large lecture halls to watch orientation videos about various College Terrors, including but not limited to binge drinking, drug use, peer pressure regarding drug use, what to do when you suspect your friends of drug use (a lot of them seemed to focus on "drug use"), and how to avoid getting your car impounded on campus (answer: buy our exorbitantly-priced permits).

One of them focused on eating disorders. What they were, what to do if you thought your friend had one, how they were ridiculously common on college campuses. And I remember sitting there in that darkened lecture hall feeling stricken, shocked, horrified--not by the emaciated images on the screen, but by the hoots and hollers and laughter from the teenagers around me.

Everybody around me was laughing. Everybody, that is, except for those of us hunched down uncomfortably in our seats, watching pieces of ourselves displayed on the screen. For some reason the anorexic and bulimic behaviors seemed hilarious to the college freshman crowd, like absurd caricatures, like intoxicated madness shambling around on the screen and distorting the human experience just enough to be hysterically funny.

Those of us hunched down in our seats didn't all have eating disorders (although I'm sure some of us did), but we'd all been somewhere that hurt when it came to food, body image, weight, and the gaze of others. We'd felt searing judgment in the eyes of everyone around us, we'd felt the rejection, the obsessive calorie-tracking, the cognitive haze that comes from hours of standing in front of a mirror hating oneself.

That laughter rang in my ears for a long time, and it still does. I opened up to a friend about how I have trouble eating enough when I got stressed out, and he scoffed, "Oh poor you, what a problem to have!" I went to lunch with a work colleague who frowned at my sandwich and said, "Well, you must work out a lot." I've heard eating disorders called a disease for rich, overprivileged, spoiled white brats and I've seen them glamorized more often than I can count, a disease for gorgeous ballerinas and exotic, intellectual, whip-thin women. Nobody explicitly endorses it, but everybody wants to be a little anorexic.

We've made a lot of progress in dealing with mental illness with compassion and clarity, but there are still vast amounts of ignorance where these and other disorders are concerned. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, at least 10 million women and 1 million men in the US are struggling with anorexia right now, and countless others with various forms of eating disorder. Even more are subject to unnecessarily severe body image dissatisfaction. At the same time, and clearly psychologically related, we are dealing with an unprecedented obesity rate, further underlining the fact that we don't know how to eat. More importantly, we don't know how to look at ourselves in the mirror.

I don't have big solutions; I wish I did. I don't think we even understand how fundamental things like eating relate emotionally to our self-image and how to deal with when this basic function becomes a proxy for control, or comfort, or whatever explanations there are behind disordered eating. I wish we could understand the connections behind rising obesity and rising eating disorders better, understand the unhealthy messages we ourselves may be contributing. This issue is of course connected to the overarching issue of mental healthcare in this nation, a dire need too-often ignored.

I don't have big solutions. But I never act surprised at the size of someone else's portion, I try not to complain about my weight or fitness around my girlfriends, I try to respond to joking self-deprecation from them with real affirmation. Maybe I come off as over-sensitive, hyper-serious about this issue. But at least I will never be one of those people laughing.

Thoughts Around the Webz

2011-01-20T14:29:00.000-08:00

Somebody took my idea for an infinitely regressing hate-blog tautology seriously. Where do I sign up to participate?

There's such an uproar over this whole "be a stricter mother, like the Chinese!" book/article. I already have a perfect solution: child-free by choice!

Growing tired of Palin? I refuse to believe it. I'm already building a bunker in preparation for her winning in 2012. It's gonna be awesome. Finally we liberals will get to be the holed-up, rifle-toting revolutionaries.

In case you're still undecided about the children thing, think wolves.

I'm hiring Abed to express my feelings about the world, most other people, and especially the internet, today:

Voices

2011-01-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

(google doodle is from MLKjr day)

Well, that's good to see.

Woah! Tell us how you really feel, internet.

A little conflicted, but still, highly positive. I'm beginning to get suspicious about who's in charge here...

I knew it. It's obvious who's running the show.

Pigeons and Pants

2011-01-13T22:11:00.000-08:00

omg, FYReligion Pigeon has totally been talking to my seventh grade Catechism teacher!

In light of this, I give you my New Year's Resolution aptly expressed by RPC:

blogviews by country, time: past 3 days

2011-01-13T16:57:00.000-08:00

What's up, Republic of Latvia?

Universes

2011-01-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

Life on the Enterprise was clearly awesome.

I never liked the new Star Trek as much as I liked TNG (Sir Patrick Stewart FTW! Nothing goes with sci-fi as well as Shakespearian acting), but the universe still manages to make me smile. Perhaps the loveliest part of sci-fi, its most compelling charm, is that good sci-fi creates a world--however silly, campy, ludicrous or dark--much like fantasy, but sci-fi itself often specifically focuses on these ensemble casts like, say, the crew of the Enterprise.

And we love that, we human beings. We are such social creatures that a group dynamic steals our hearts away with amazing ease; I remember the histrionics college girls nation-wide had over the finale of Friends, let alone the famed devotion of fans of Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr. Who, various Marvel worlds, etc. What's so striking about this is the personal identification we take up with these characters and these landscapes. Often, we fangirls and boys indulge in an emotional identification with individual characters that provides easy fodder for stereotypical mockery. But why does this happen, beyond the fact that sci-fi draws in people who like the odd, the complex, the intricate? Why is it so personal, for so many of us?

Plummeting away from the harsh edges of reality into the exponentially expanding universes of science-fiction is an escape. It beckons to all kinds of people, but has a particular appeal for those who especially need escape--those who are different, alternative, who are smart enough and imaginative enough and sensitive enough to seek escape through fiction and narrative and constructed worlds. As any good liberal nerd knows, our geeky circles tend to be pro-gay and tolerant of difference. Beyond giant labels like sexual orientation, we tend to be tolerant of quirks and oddness and unusually intense obsessions, respectful of little-lauded expertise in something like theoretical engineering problems in Iron Man and their theoretical solutions.

Some of the classic themes in sci-fi include things like getting a large, diverse group of strong-willed people to work together, exploring far-off worlds and breaking away from pre-conceived notions of how the universe should look, all the while maintaining worlds big enough to let us delve into passions for design, physics, psychology, political commentary, and more. Watching unique individuals create a place for themselves in the world gives us a vicarious experience of such acceptance, and promotes a world where this kind of agency is possible. Beyond the camp and the fantasy, the absurdity or the darkness, there is something at work creating a world wherein unusual, often-marginalized people can feel at home.

I wub you too

2011-01-13T12:13:00.000-08:00

Darling annoyed people, the solution for your broiling rage about my blog/facebook page/overuse of the dash is obviously not to send me snippy comments and/or emails.

The solution is for you to start your own blog, and we can have a blog-blood-feud and make sarcastic commentary on everything the other writes, and create an epic rivalry echoing the squabble between Achilles and Agamemnon.

It's Annoying When...

2011-01-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

...right-wingers get apoplectic (perhaps rightly so, in some cases) at the finger-pointing at Palin, and then start to cite the Communist Manifesto and the shooter's former classmates in order to claim the guy is "left-wing."

In the media, and in my own internet world of forums and facebook (a very representative source, I know!), I'm starting to feel dizzy with all the politicking going on. And it's going on, on both sides. Much as I dislike Sarah Palin, I doubt the shooter has any direct link to her. But I do think that this event sheds needed light on the tenor of the rhetoric and, more importantly, the ideological stances of the Republicans. It is only natural that a political party not currently in power should build its platform on resistance to the majority, but this attitude seems to prevail regardless of whether or not the Republicans own the majority or not. This is a legitimate topic for debate: do we want healthcare repealed, after all of our fighting? Do we want Congress to function in angry opposition to Obama? Is it appropriate for Palin and the tea party to claim that anyone who disagrees with them is a traitor, is unpatriotic, to flame ridiculous rumors about birth certificates and to send the message that angry opposition is the correct response to disagreement?

Well, it's all political theater and we all indulge in it. But for Palin and Beck to take the accusations against them as an opportunity to whine about their own persecution by the supposedly biased "liberal media" is just another level of theater, and people who live in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones. The majority of the people directly blaming Palin aren't high-level democrats, and taking this opportunity to focus on the attacks on herself rather than the tragedy which occurred and how such violence could be prevented seems self-centered and just as exploitative politicking as anything they're accusing liberals of doing.

Right-wingers pointing out (correctly, I feel) that you can't prove anything about the motives of a psychopath who then go on the rant about how the shooter was an atheist who liked communism....well. Annoying.

Tragic Hate

2011-01-08T13:17:00.000-08:00

They really need to realize that the rhetoric and firing people up, and, you know, even things for example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, you gotta realize there's consequences to that action.

--Rep. Giffords

The tragic shooting in Arizona today has horrified us all and brought messages of condemnation from politicians across the board, as one should only hope.

I am attempting to control my outrage, but it is difficult when one recalls that Sarah Palin targeted--no, actually targeted--this woman on her infamous crosshairs map only a short time ago. Even if this shooting had nothing to do with politics, even if this shooter is simply a raging psychopath, the fact remains that violent right-wing rhetoric has gone too far, has infiltrated our minds again and again, has played its part in fomenting rage and insanity towards public figures.

I cannot wait for the accusations to begin. I cannot wait for this to shed some more light on the heinous "lock and load!", war-cry propaganda of the psychotic right-wing. I am sure that we will soon see Fox News blustering about how this had nothing to do with politics, Sarah Palin screeching about how her message and conservatism has made her a target for media smears; I am attempting to control my outrage. But it's hard.

Rhetoric, hatred, promoting violent thinking and acting like rage is an appropriate reaction when one disagrees with a political position--all of these things have an effect on people. It is time that the radical right-wing took responsibility for their blind exacerbation of the moral and intellectual corruption of the American people. They have the nerve to decry liberals for being "immoral," to whine endlessly about gays in the military, while they continue to send people the message that the only way to resolve dispute is to shout "liar!" and say "no!", to thunder about guns and war, and above all, to hate.

This is why I have such a huge problem with Republicans, with conservatives, with Tea Partiers, with right-wingers. Even the moderate ones. The movement has a dark core of hatred, and hatred breeds more hatred faster than rational discourse, tolerance, and compassion can combat it. Because rational discourse, tolerance, and compassion take work, and time and energy, and the courage and resolve to work together. Steadily, the Republicans and the right-wing in general have been claiming that "working together" is traitorous, disallowed, even threatening. And they have the nerve to act as if they don't know where the messages of violence are coming from.

Diamonds in the Rough

2011-01-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

Fueled, no doubt, by too many readings of Ender's Game and a teenage crush on both Howard Gardner and Daniel Tammet, I really like unusual people with unusual and sometimes secret talents.

I Won't Ask, So Please Don't Tell

2011-01-06T11:05:00.000-08:00

Been encountering some truly interesting, complex, nuanced arguments about DADT...

...oh, who am I kidding. Jackasses.

Left Behind

2010-12-27T12:41:00.000-08:00

You know the Tea Partiers who decry the state of our nation and want to rend from it any citizen who does not match their qualifications, through skin color or sexual orientation or liberal beliefs or irreligious tendencies?

Sometimes, I wish they would get exactly what they are wishing for.

I was recently directed to observe the it-would-be-so-funny-if-it-were-less-awful MRA community* (Men's Rights Activists, and I'm not even going to link to a site like the dash spearhead) with their near-constant avowals of boycotting American women. In addition to being sexist and homophobic, MRAs tend to be racist in weird ways. They have a particularly hilarious fixation on Asian or Middle Eastern women, and not in an openly-avowed, fetish sort of way--just in a "perhaps this is a woman who will let us knock her around ye gods Feminism is So Evil let us boycott all American Women Forever!" sort of way.

*not to be confused with the occasional macho radical libertarian who finds himself slightly in this camp, they're a bit more consistent and intelligent, but I'll save it for the Field Guide.

Oh, thank you, FSM. Gracious, am I ever so glad these men are deciding to take themselves out of the dating pool. This is a maaaaarvelous way for them to handle their disagreements with humanity and I approve.

Now listen up, Tea Partiers, because this is what you should be doing! No more of this "reclaim our country" crap. You've said so yourself--the country is freakin' lost. The liberals have taken over. You've been watching Beck, you already know all about the conspiracies! Hell, you've already purchased your limited edition solar-powered emergency radio and stockpiled an Apocalypse Seed Starter Kit.
Now just take your thinking one step further. It's time to remember your Old Testament and realize that you, the Tea Party, are the modern incarnation of the tribes of Israel, being led by Moses to the Promised Land! Are you with me? Do you realize the implications of your special covenant with god? It is time to abandon the formerly great United States and seek refuge elsewhere.

Glenn Beck model I: right after parting the Red Sea he peddled Goldline

That's right. I said it, and you're denying your own god if you refuse. My logic is unassailable. Go to Mongolia or something, I don't care where you go, but go somewhere you can conquer and take for your own with your rifles and Bibles and hordes of children. Set up a land full of edicts about private morality and above all, remember that corporations are As Children Unto the Lord and Ye Shall Not Make Rules Upon Them, even unto the recessions at the end of days, for lo, god writes with an Invisible Hand the free markets of the earth. Don't stick around here protesting, don't try to vote--you are just buying into the liberals' system if you do that! No, you are above that. Let Beck lead you into the light, and away from this place.

Oh god (not that there is one but I refuse to try and purge my language of religious cusswords like some of my atheist friends, life is just too dang hard already), let it happen. I mean, holy crap. We can develop amazing medical innovations with all the embryonic stem cells we want, and their society can devolve to the point of disallowing anesthesia because pain, after all, is man's lot according to the Bible. Of course, the liberal utopia will probably have truly annoyingly long debate sessions. We'll have a damned hard time coming to consensus (which is why I favor a dictatorship headed by yours truly, but we'll get to that later). There are details to work out.

It's like the heaven/hell dichotomy. My sexual practices and inability to stop questioning religious beliefs and conventions are going to land me smack dab in a pile of fiery doom, according to the Catholic rector down the street. And then where will I be? Well, toasty warm with a bunch of other perverts, misanthropes, and people who are too snarky for their own good. It's exactly the kind of company I want to keep.

Pppppparty every day-hey-hey-hey, party every day!

Oh, dear Tea Partiers, please leave us alone. You have been decrying our vast numbers and vast power, disavowing everything about the way our country operates including its legal authorities, and tying yourself to the Judeo-Christian tradition in a way that boggles my heathen mind. Please, take your thinking to its ultimate conclusion and go find your promised land.

Shit That's Bugging Me: Holiday Edition

2010-12-23T20:47:00.000-08:00

The way my mom looks woefully at my plate and sighs every mealtime (being a Jewish mother, she's convinced I don't eat enough)
The way everyone in my family insists on keeping the house ten degrees cooler than my comfort zone (I'm a tropical creature)
The way my devoutly religious sister calls me to inquire about whether or not I've accepted god yet (I ask if she's accepted science yet)

The way I forgot my socks (see above complaint about temperature)
The way I'm getting set up with various single sons of parents' friends (siiiiigh)
The way I resolve to accomplish weighty intellectual work, but end up watching three hours of Battlestar Galactica while eating barbecue potato chips on the couch (in my defense there was a blanket on the couch, it was the only place to keep warm)

But--I do love Christmastime.

Gay Sleeper Agents

2010-12-23T02:14:00.000-08:00

Dear DADT Advocate,

I realize that in your newly-discovered zeal for DADT, you've scoured the internet for the most widespread conservative arguments about how openly gay individuals will stain the face of our brilliant military, miring Dedicated Patriots in their homosexual wiles. Your recent googlings have probably produced quite a bit of material which you are just aching to spew forth, a miniature McCain.

But let me stop you. I've been hearing a lot lately from you and your fellow Fox News-sustained clones, and I've got some things to say too. That is, if you can hear me through all the tin foil wrapped around your head.

You say repealing DADT contributes to "the moral degradation of America." Your concern for our morality as a nation is touching, as is your obvious concern for the separation of Church and State. I won't even try and convince you of the obvious reality that sexual orientation has nothing to do with morality because I know that I'll just get a face-full of holy water for my troubles. But I will say that your voracious attempts to dictate everyone else's behavior is despicable. Also, you're a fascist.

I assume that you'll be expelling any and all soldiers who commit adultery, get a divorce, oh and kill. Killing's kind of a big deal in the Bible--god forbids it explicitly in the Ten Commandments (we'll ignore the times he commands it, for now), supposedly a clearcut guide for your morality, right? I mean you do seem to love to adorn courtrooms with them.
Your own morality is obviously flexible. Let's try and remember that before we cite Bible verses, mkay pumpkin?

Oh, yes, the "where will they shower" argument. I point you to this lovely answer, that is if you can survive the aneurysm watching Barney Frank undoubtedly gives you. Also, sexual arousal is contextual, you complete and utter nitwit. Just because someone can be attracted to people of their own gender does not mean that any and every situation between this person and others of their gender is rife with sexual desire, tension, or even attraction. Just ask nudists, doctors, and anyone who's visited hot springs. And for real, what's with the fixation on the way in which, and with whom, gay people have sex? Come on. We don't constantly talk about "the straight identity" in terms of a simple, single sexual act. Did I mention you're a fascist?

I'm going to level with you, now, since we're friends and all. Do you want to know something incredibly frightening?

There are already gay people in the military.

OMGEEZ! I know! I swear to your god, I am not making this up. Ask anybody. There are gay people in the military and they have been hiding, in secret, which makes them gay sleeper agents. There they are hiding out in the military, fighting and dying for our freedom, and nobody even knows that the whole time they are carrying out some kind of sinister Homosexual Agenda by their very existence. If you ask me, this is what we need to be concerned about! We need to somehow figure out some way of fixing it so that we don't have all these secretly gay people in the military, constantly trying to hide their sexual orientation.

See? You and I might be on the same page after all.

P.S. We won't even touch the subject of transgendered individuals and the plethora of possible identities which American Patriots might choose for themselves, because I'm afraid your brain will explode.

Funding Life and Death

2010-12-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'

-Isaac Asimov

Scientists attempting stem cell research, in particular embryonic stem cell research, continue to be under-funded and subject to relentless criticism and attack from the religious right.

Oh for the day when scientific progress will be allowed to progress unhindered by histrionic, judgmental, illogical religious tyrants who invoke god in attempting to play him arbitrating what we shall or shall not understand about the universe. Research has long been stifled by historically-situated dust-ups about what isn't an appropriate viewing matter for the human race--ultimately many of these arguments boil down to "sanctity," the notion that anything edging to close to 'life' is simply too awful and mysterious for our dissection. A blatantly backwards notion, to my mind.

Life is complex and mysterious, and I do believe in (secularly-determined) ethics. I believe that bioethics is a legitimate concern for stem-cell research, cloning, and seemingly life-affecting biology. However, I cannot help but remember antiquated claims such as early religious objections to anesthesia. It would be good to recall that our definitions of life, conceptions of what constitutes "tampering" with said life, and sense for what is "normal" are in a constant state of contextually-dependent flux. One's "gut instinct" (which provides the basis for most religious positions on bioethics, in my experience) is hardly the indisputable guide for what we should research.

A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. If our concern is about suffering in this universe, it is rather obvious that we should be more concerned about killing flies than about killing three-day-old human embryos… Many people will argue that the difference between a fly and a three-day-old human embryo is that a three-day-old human embryo is a potential human being. Every cell in your body, given the right manipulations, every cell with a nucleus is now a potential human being. Every time you scratch your nose, you’ve committed a holocaust of potential human beings… Let’s say we grant it that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. First of all, embryos at this stage can split into identical twins. Is this a case of one soul splitting into two souls? Embryos at this stage can fuse into a chimera. What has happened to the extra human soul in such a case? This is intellectually indefensible, but it’s morally indefensible given that these notions really are prolonging scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings, and because of the respect we accord religious faith, we can’t have this dialogue in the way that we should. I submit to you that if you think the interests of a three-day-old blastocyst trump the interests of a little girl with spinal cord injuries or a person with full-body burns, your moral intuitions have been obscured by religious metaphysics.

- Sam Harris on stem-cell research, ftw.

EDIT: And, the latest xkcd is beautifully congruent.

Asked, Told

2010-12-19T17:42:00.000-08:00

Countries that allow gay people to serve in the military:

Albania
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Colombia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
The Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Romania
Russia
Serbia
Slovania
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
United Kingdom
(UK) Bermuda
Uruguay

United States of America (finally)

First Amendment

2010-12-18T21:32:00.000-08:00

source.

Don't tell the Tea Party.

Fun With Google

2010-12-18T17:59:00.000-08:00

Clearly my work is cut out for me.
However, still a little higher than Blag Hag, and I'm a fan of that one.

DADT repealed!

2010-12-18T14:53:00.000-08:00

Does the repeal of DADT cancel out the failure of the DREAM act?

My emotions are a little confused.

Burden of Proof

2010-12-18T12:06:00.001-08:00

If only.

SOURCE.

The Power of Myth

2010-12-18T11:51:00.000-08:00

eyeroll.

The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

-Krugman, SOURCE

First Day of Saturnalia

2010-12-17T13:14:00.000-08:00

VIA...

Party for a week? Hell yes.

Courageous Identities

2010-12-17T00:47:00.000-08:00

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'

- C.S. Lewis

The Personal is Political.

- Carol Hanisch (debated; early feminist slogan)

Today I heard some delightful news. Two old friends from my days in the conservative midwest re-connected with me through the powers of Facebook, and we three ended up sharing about our transitions from conservative to liberal over several group chats and virtual drinks together. It was a mutual surprise; we had all masqueraded rather successfully as the prototypical religious adherents that the social pressures of our school demanded.

And yet here we were, years later, heathens all. We toasted Obama, came out of various closets, revealed the range of verboten experiences we'd been lucky enough to have. Over and over again, we kept saying--"Wait, you think this? ME TOO!" My friends had become liberal, tolerant, pro-gay marriage and anti-war. They'd had poly relationships and monogamous relationships, flings and love affairs and heartbreaks, been disowned by conservative families or embraced by siblings who were able to come out of their own closets as well. Most of all, my friends had become themselves, were finding great happiness as I have in being open about the values they held.

But all was not sunshine and unicorns. I don't know if the emotional journey from an excessively conservative and constrictive worldview to a liberal one can be wholly understood by someone who hasn't traveled that path. Especially when you truly, sincerely believed the world you were raised with.
It may seem absurd, but where I grew up, even going to college was a questionable endeavor for someone my gender and under the umbrella of our particularly harsh interpretation of Scripture. Let alone striking out in pursuit of a career or living out an alternative sexual identity. Even my most mainstream, neutral career triumphs raise eyebrows among old friends and family. Daring to be open about my sexual or feminist beliefs is liable to prompt heart-attacks and exorcisms.

The kind of courage it takes to question fundamental precepts about how the world operates does not come easy, and that questioning always comes with a cost. Our lives had been shadowed with lost friendships, lost love, self-doubt, and fear. Fear lurks in the corners of your mind, doubt whispers along mental schemas built and reinforced with years of learning "this is wrong, this is wrong," you are wrong. Coming into an identity which you've only been shown through a lens of disgust is not easy.

But here, dealing with this mess, facing change and standing in the face of doubt, my friends and I are more ourselves. Whether or not our families ever accept us again, we ever find anyone to understand all facets of our complex identities, we are more compassionate people, more attuned to the suffering of others, more able to explore the possibilities of our own identities. And this is why it's worth it.

This is why I take pride in identifying myself as a liberal, and in being committed to a life of tolerance and free from dogmatic thinking. It's not about snarky politics, it's not even just about social justice, it's about life--my own life. It's about feeling inner conflict and plunging right into it instead of running away, because understanding yourself is worth something. It's about being able to have the courage to throw away the beliefs which are stifling you, and venturing out into a world even when you've only ever been told that you won't be strong enough to take that world on. And then, maybe you'll have the opportunity to tell someone else that they are also just that strong.

Life's not perfect, and self-discovery never ends. I have no doubt that I will continue to deal with the isolation and ostracism I've experienced from my conservative former life. And my friends and I are far from reaching a nirvana state of self-actualization. But at least for a moment, it was wonderful to be able to say, "You, too?"

Predators

2010-12-16T19:40:00.000-08:00

Everybody's looking for somebody to love.

In Case You Were Wondering.

Certain Interpersonal Behaviors Make You Seem Overly Predatory, For Instance:

Trying the whole back-handed, negative-compliment-insult thing. Especially recommended if you're five years old, or taking interpersonal cues from How I Met Your Mother. There's nothing I love more than a person who's willing to take the time to be passive-aggressively manipulative with me.

Taking advantage of people in front of me. This includes but is not limited to shoplifting, berating servers, and begging for money from your mom.
Interrupting me while I'm in the middle of performing some task and telling me that you can do it better. This is especially effective if you frame it in terms of a stereotypical gender difference and it has to do with something I own, like my car.

Seriously. I can do it.

Calling me "dollface."

Now you're predatory and retro. What are you, a Mad Men fan? Get out of my face and go home. You're fooling no one.

Clash

2010-12-15T17:26:00.001-08:00

In case you were wondering why we all can't worship at the Temple of Palin, here's an explanation:

Black Swan

2010-12-09T22:31:00.000-08:00

Anyone who's ever suffered from an eating disorder should probably stay away from Black Swan; that shit's total ED porn. Already many of the thinspo sites I'm familiar with are touting this movie's triggering potential and glam waste themes.

Any film with a graphic rape scene or something brutally triggering would carry more of a warning than this one; it's interesting to realize how trivial watching someone struggle with eating issues can seem to those on the outside. The glamorization of eating disorders continues in our culture, mowing the girls (and some boys) down for the sake of edge or shock, capitalizing on our deep need to be loved and desired at any cost.

I'm certainly not against a film tackling and portraying difficult subjects like eating disorders and the like, and I'm not saying this is a bad film by any means. Art should find a way to portray any situation, and expressive treatment of dark subjects is powerful and incredibly valuable. But it does prompt one to think long and hard about the line between artfulness and exploitation, the mixed messages regarding what is or is not beautiful and desirable. While Black Swan's two petite starlets were purportedly opposing characters with opposing lifestyles (one disciplined, one partied; one starved, one ate), they both lost weight for the roles in order to live up to ballet's harsh standards (Mila went from 117 to 95, gracious). As Alastair Macauley so kindly reminded us in his weight-critiquing review, this is accurate filmography.

Most of all, this film prompted me to think about the apathy and lack of understanding our culture still exhibits, as celebrities garner more negative attention for weight gain than for drug abuse. The solution is not, of course, to not make a film like Black Swan (although it may be helpful to make its message less ambiguous), but to promote more dialogue not just about the disorder itself, but its disturbing glamorization. Because it's hard to protect oneself when self-destruction seems so beautiful.

Down to Five Moose Packages

2010-12-09T11:48:00.000-08:00

(note--don't worry, the below clip isn't the graphic one you may have been hearing about)

My relationship with Sarah Palin is a lot like my relationship with fudge. I know it's no good for me, but I'm irresistibly drawn to it, particularly when I'm feeling a little bit down on myself. I get a lot of enjoyment out of consuming more than I should, and then it ends up making me feel sick.

How many things do I love about this clip? There are so many. There's Sarah's headband, managing to be both redneck and hippie at the same time. There's the charming way she eeps and meeps over marsh and bog, so obviously pandering to her camera. On that note, there's the mind-expanding possibility for contemplating the mise en abyme that is Sarah Palin's Alaska--apparently there isn't a grocery store for 500 miles, but there is certainly a film crew.
I adore this professionally-produced show about a professionally-made-up Palin in her supposedly rugged natural environs...sprinkled with such gems as "We're down to just, ya know, five moose packages, three caribou packages" and "I'm ready-freddy!"

"We don't have the advantage!" Sarah gushes. "The animals have the advantage."
Over you, Sarah? Maybe.

American Dreams

2010-12-07T23:40:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow they're voting on the DREAM act. From the wikipedia article cited (don't give me your "I can't believe you're using wikipedia as a reference"--it's ridiculously reliable when it's being rigorously edited by people who care):

This bill would provide certain illegal and deportable alien students who graduate from US high schools, who are of good moral character, arrived in the U.S. illegally as minors, and have been in the country continuously and illegally for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency if they complete two years in the military or two years at a four year institution of higher learning. The students would obtain temporary residency for a six year period. Within the six year period, a qualified student must have "acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or [have] completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor's degree or higher degree in the United States," or have "served in the uniformed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, [have] received an honorable discharge."

Now here is a piece of legislation that I very much support. It is only reasonable that minors who have been brought here and are living good lives should be given an avenue through which to continue those good lives. It is heartbreaking to think of these young people being deported back to Mexico after coming or being brought here as children to escape from poverty and violence.

Predictably, support for this bill is shattering, under the old explanation of "political games" and the tired fear-mongering about "amnesty for millions of illegals" from our ever-big hearted friends at the GOP. Meanwhile, children suffer.

Robotics

2010-12-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

Recently, the Denver police engaged in a tense, hours-long stand-off with a tiny toy robot who was accused of being a potential source of violence. Ultimately, this was a tragic decision given that the robot was innocent and lacking in any detonation equipment. Even though the toy robot was clearly being coerced, in that it was cemented down, the Denver PD Bomb squad detonated the robot itself, living out an inevitable cycle in the endless of loop of mindless explosion-causing.
(SOURCE)

Through this story and others like it, it has been brought to my attention that there may be some resentment towards and prejudice against robotkind floating about our species' consciousness. Through our entertainment industry, we indulge these fears in vague thrillers which serve as nothing more than an exploitation of the uncanny valley and foster dangerous luddite tendencies which will greatly increase the number of years I have to wait before I can have a mechanical slave who monitors the tire pressure of my car. As an impassioned fan of robotics, I feel it's my duty to keep sharing the reasons for promoting robots and their ilk as a boon to our society. To that end, I am detailing three very unemotional, goal-oriented reasons in the hopes of appealing to the greedy, materialistic side of humanity (this is the side that gets things done, don't even bother trying to deny it).

Three Utilitarian Points Regarding Our Need for Robots

We Cannot Drive.

Seriously. One of the most irritating things in the otherwise delightfully mechanical (for me, that's a compliment) feature film I, Robot is that it has a moment of rather hilariously defending human driving (under the guise of defending the sanity of its protagonist). Will Smith has been driving in manual rather than choosing the automatic driving feature of his piece of shameless product placement, and he's crashed. Granted, this crash was due to a huge van of mad attacking robots, but I think we can agree that traffic accidents are at ridiculously high levels only rendered commonplace by the fact that they are, unfortunately, commonplace. Robotic driving would be significantly safer, given that such a system could integrate enough information into its analysis which doesn't seem at all unlikely.

(Other) Dangerous Stuff.

Technology has been making our lives safer ever since we figured out how to weld metal into armor. Coincidentally, this was at the same time as we were welding it into weapons, or perhaps slightly after. So the first order of business for technology is actually to make our lives more dangerous. Then we realize the discrepancy and attempt to bring defense technology up to speed. This is about where a lot of our industrial technology has led us. We're now able to do things like, oh I don't know...drill oil underneath the ocean. However if disaster ever strikes, we all suffer the consequences because our clean-up, defensive technology exists only as an after-thought.
Robots could change this dramatically. We could have legions of robotics technology dedicated to safety concerns. We need to have robotic workers taking on the more dangerous tasks and relieving humanity of this risk.

Companionship.

Oh, you may scoff. But loneliness is a serious problem in this country and others. Loneliness cuts into people's lives, distracts their attention, and drains productivity like nothing else. Think for a moment of how many divorces there are taking place right now in the working demographic, and hence how many people are dragging themselves to work with significant personal turmoil on their minds. Think of the elderly, the disabled, veterans, sick people...now imagine that we had robot companions programmed to a high degree of sophistication able to keep tireless, perpetually-affirming company with anyone and everyone who wants one.

Perhaps you are still scoffing--"No robot could ever take the place of a human being!" I'm not saying they necessarily will. But in the name of the FSM, people use cats to take the place of human beings. There's a vast literature on the positive impact emotional therapy animals have on people with anxiety conditions, veterans, etc. A well-designed robot could certainly be as useful as an animal, and probably much less stressful to care for. Without a doubt, a robotic companion could provide a very meaningful source of consolation and affirmation to the stressed, sick, or lonely. And without a doubt, this would boost our productivity greatly and help the emotional health of the nation as a whole.
Mind you, I'm not advocating that robot relationships take the place of human ones, which is of course the source of horror for this plan. We haven't disallowed pets because they provide emotional support to people; give the human race a little credit for nuance in our emotional affairs. I'm sure we could manage to have robot companions as well as human ones, and like I said before the boon to those who are lonely right now would be immense.
And if you're scowling at my snuggy-feel-goodiness...it is utilitarian, perhaps the most utilitarian out of all three of these points. Creating more emotional stability in our ranks would only service humankind in our ability to think rationally and deal with problems calmly. Our robotic companions would be programmed to a fine degree in order to give us helpful and corrective feedback, a form of constant cognitive-behavioral therapy. Just knowing that one had a positive, animate presence in one's life would take a great deal of stress out of everything else--relationships would be less desperate, concentration and productivity would increase, caretakers would be less burdened.

I admit that these points may raise a number of concerns, especially the triune basis for most anti-robot arguments:
Robotic rebellion (the Terminator factor)
Robotic rights and independence (The Asimov factor)
Robotic supplementation of human caretaking, e.g., robots raising babies (the Matrix factor)

You may look forward to a post in the future addressing these concerns. But until then, I hope you will join me in a moment of silence for our poor, cemented robot friend who has been blown to kingdom come due to nothing more than fear and sad, sad ignorance.

Discoveries

2010-12-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

We interrupt what is otherwise a too-busy-to-blog day with some scientific discovery:

All life on Earth - from microbes to elephants and us - is based on a single genetic model that requires the element phosphorus as one of its six essential components. But now researchers have uncovered a bacterium that has five of those essential elements but has, in effect, replaced phosphorus with its look-alike but toxic cousin arsenic.

SOURCE.

And...

Talking at the NASA conference, Wolfe Simon said that the important thing here is that this breaks our ideas on how life can be created and grow, pointing out that scientists will now be looking for new types of beings and metabolism that not only uses arsenic, but other element substitutions.

SOURCE.

More thoughts to follow, but I'm kind of excited.

EDIT:
As always, smart people, be sure and read the news' attempts at reporting science critically:

Eulalia!

2010-12-01T16:54:00.000-08:00

Today I was stricken with a thirst. A thirst for blood.

Taking Sarah Palin as my inspiration, I'm not going to rest until everybody who annoys me is hunted down "with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders"* I've ordered hits on everyone from the guy at the salad bar who forgot my dill pickles to the girl in my seminar who would not shut up about her eye-tracking research.** They will rue the day.

But seriously folks, at least Sarah's the only one making this kind of....oh WAIT.

Personally, I haven't quite made up my mind about the whole Assange situation, but HERE's some better reading on the topic than Palin-fluff.

*then again, judging by the effectiveness of Bush administration in such pursuit, Julian Assange should be pretty safe for a while.

**here's a tip: if your results are measured in milliseconds, outside of your field nobody cares.

Atheism in Pop Culture

2010-11-30T15:56:00.000-08:00

I know I'm on a serious atheist kick right now, but as long as that's today's theme I thought I would highlight another fun article from Overthinkingit. Taking the Little Mermaid as a secular humanist treatise, they write:

From the moment Ariel signed Ursula’s contract [Triton, the representation of God] was powerless. God could not save Eve from Satan. But Prince Eric [the representation of secular knowledge] could, because Disney believes that people don’t need God to protect them from the influences of evil. What they need to bring to the fight is knowledge. Eve defied God and had a dangerously close brush with evil, but she survived because she was helped by the very knowledge God had forbidden.

It’s all very Humanist. And that’s what makes the real difference.

Read the whole article HERE.

Hey, and it goes along with our Disney Princess theme, too!

It's a War Out There

2010-11-30T12:48:00.000-08:00

SPECIAL FOX NEWS UPDATE...also on the ATTACK: McDonald's, Old Spice, and Victoria's Secret, which companies have all established their forces through billboards along the Jersey Turnpike.
There are also unconfirmed reports of a blitz on tv viewers by Glade air fresheners.

Atheism =/= Despair, nor Ugliness

2010-11-30T12:29:00.000-08:00

(or even if it did, is that an argument against it?)

SOURCE.

If you've been reading my posts you might have noticed that I sometimes reference "my religious friends." I can assure you this isn't a rhetorical gesture; I actually do know and get along with people with a wide range of belief systems as well as political stances (at least, I get along with the religious...perhaps not the political). Of course, they don't read this blog...

That being said, I've come to notice a few different distinct characters which emerge when my religious friends stumble upon the fact that I'm an atheist when I, say, roll my eyes at the "under God" in the pledge of allegiance or eat a baby for breakfast. There's Righteous Anger, Sanctimonious Preaching, and Condescending "It's a Phase"-ing. But by far, the most common type is what I affectionately call the Oh-You-Poor-Dear.

OYPD is a sympathetic soul. She cares. She is also confused, wondering how I get out of bed in the morning instead of burying my head in the pillow and wailing WHY?! Oh WHY is there no god?! Life is so meaningless!

The Atheists, OYPD knows, are sad sad souls (not that they know they are souls) trapped in the oblivion of meaninglessness brought on by their own over-rationalizing little brains, unable to see beyond chemistry to embrace the all-encompassing mystery of divinity and its ultimate purpose-giving to us all.

Even Joss Whedon knows it, benighted atheist though he might be. Didn't you realize Dr. Horrible was a gospel meditation?

Well. We all struggle with meaning and teleology, especially those of us cursed with analytical minds and too many philosophy seminars. But I resent the implications and baseless arguments that my life is meaningless because I don't believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving deity. I don't honestly believe that god gives much purpose to anything, and if he does, what an odd purpose to think that one's life will culminate in misty song-singing on a cloud (I know, I'm being unfair in my characterization of heaven. But try as I may I haven't been able to glean a more exacting description).

For some reason, the atheistic world is supposed to be sterile, barren, cold and bleak. If atheists had their way, OYPD knows, we would live in vaguely glowing white cubicles and no one would ever be allowed to paint. Atheists must be sad, because they live in a pathetic world where existence is reduced to atoms and chemistry.

This is a caricature of rationalism carried to the extreme, of logic without emotion and a society built to extinguish human creativity, as if that were somehow a conclusion logic would come to. It's a fun dystopian rumination embedded with a sinister core of anti-intellectualism, something our nation would do well to begin discouraging. But beyond that, it's a silly kind of disparagement to make. Why is a scientific worldview (even presuming that is what we atheists all share) supposed to be so depressing? As Minchin so famously put in Storm, isn't the world beautiful enough? Just because I do tend to see things through the lens of "science," why does that render everything unhappy?

We all go crazy in the end.

My life is meaningful. I love people, I think I'm doing meaningful work, I attempt to contribute to the rational progression of human civilization as much as I can. And I struggle with what that all means as much as I did when I was religious. Sadly, I don't believe that a remedy for the existential questions can really be answered by belief in god. Perhaps the OYPD's of the world believe differently, but I can't condone that kind of security.

The atheistic worldview is not devoid of meaning, love, conviction, or art and music. We do not sit at a table on a first date and imagine the person across from us as a collection of molecules (not to say we might occasionally have these thoughts...). We laugh, even. We still have someone to thank--usually someone just a little closer to home than up in that misty cloud region.

Much of human history is bound up with religion, such that much of our art and expression has been heavily influenced by the religion of the people involved. This is only natural--but it's led some of my more religious acquaintance to falsely equate beautiful human expression with deeply religious sentiment. When I spent six months in Europe I was deeply impressed by the cathedrals I saw...but I saw them as wonderful testaments to human creativity and ingenuity. And as an atheist, I didn't feel excluded from that. I did rather wish that these gorgeous buildings could be dedicated to learning and education and we could start pouring our industry into universities rather than churches...

Atheists don't lack beauty. We see meaning and beauty in a million places, perhaps even more than the religious, since we are able to appreciate things on their own terms rather than having to reach to the skies for some kind of extra explanation.

Gothic architecture is one of my favorites.

Do I worry about death? Don't we all. At least biology gives me the assurance that my body will remain part of the system in this universe, becoming new life, in a much more understandable and verifiable fashion than religion. Again, I appreciate this system. I find it significant and fascinating and utterly satisfying. Atheism improves my view of the things, and I don't feel I've lost anything from discovering this as my worldview.

SOURCE.

Princess

2010-11-29T21:32:00.000-08:00

Disney Princesses recast as superheroes by Deviant Art-ist Kruegan.

It doesn't really need any more commentary other than this just made my day. I wanna be Jasmine. No, Snow White! No wait, Cinderella! No, I've got it, I want to be Belle and do Tania with a side of Sleeping Beauty. There.

SOURCE.

(apologies if you're more up-to-date on your geek tyrant reading than I am. Being a sexy-librarian-by-day/vampire-slayer-by-night takes time.)

North and South

2010-11-26T22:37:00.000-08:00

If you're a fan of Sarah Palin Media Coverage, you've probably heard about her radio interview with Glenn Beck last wednesday. Discussing the situation in North Korea, Sarah took the usual opportunity to bewail the supposed incompetency of the Obama administration and its responsibility for North Korea, the recession, the Cold War, and the West Virginia Sago Mine disaster of '06.

Not to mention my annoying commute. Thanks a lot, Obama!

Best moment in the interview was when Sarah mistakenly mentioned "our North Korean allies", gently corrected by Beck, a slip-up which has been gleefully replayed by some on the left.

In response Palin of course snidely made comments about Biden and anyone and everyone else's verbal errors. And perhaps this one slip-up is not resolute proof that she is wholly and completely ignorant about foreign policy. But that's all right--she provides us with this proof in the rest of her interview.

To the point; comments from Mitchell Bard on Sarah Palin's ignorance (full post HERE):

The real damning Palin quote in the Beck interview is the one in which she worries if "the White House is gonna come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea's gonna do." Putting aside her usual butchering of the English language, she takes a complicated problem facing the United States (and the world) and reduces it to a talking-point political attack on the president.

Her comment reveals that she has no understanding that we are dealing with a North Korean leadership that may not be rational and may even be self-destructive. And one with the firepower to kill legions of South Korean civilians. To her simplistic, politics-driven approach, it's only about how the Democratic president isn't tough enough. (As an aside, she is talking about a president who has increased troops in Afghanistan, stepped up drone attacks on the enemy, and taken out more Taliban and al Qaeda leaders than George W. Bush ever did, but I digress... )

Oh, America. Can we really reduce foreign policy issues to questions about what's "strong enough"? The Republicans think we can, obviously. Do their followers even note the ambiguity and incompleteness of the GOP's language? We must be "strong"! We must "cut spending"! We must...what, exactly? Sarah Palin represents all that I loathe about the Republican party, and one of the reasons I remain an emphatic, embittered (I admit it!), snarky, sarcastic liberal. She regularly displays appalling ignorance to thunderous applause. This woman has built up an empire of mediocrity, taken Bushlike folkiness to a whole new level. Mocking her has gotten old. Pointing at the tv and asking the right-wingers, "Really?! This, really?!?" isn't working. Her fans wander dreamily about in their delusions, spouting "You betchas!" and discussing retreats vs. reloads.

Democrats, I vote that we fulfill Glenn Beck's fever dreams and have the Obama administration repeal the first amendment and ban all Palins from the media.

Please?

But then, what would I have to rant about?

Pixar's It Gets Better

2010-11-23T14:21:00.001-08:00

Pixar continues to solidify its place in my heart.
So very worth watching. Another reminder that we need to speak up loudly and often to let those who feel different and alone know that they are valued and wanted.

Inalienable Human Right

2010-11-22T11:48:00.000-08:00

I'm not the biggest fan of Catholicism, but it was very interesting nonetheless to see THIS very strong statement from Pope Benedict XVI about healthcare being an "inalienable right." The Vatican Secretary of State explicitly stated that justice requires universal health care.
From the article cited:

Because an individual's health is a "precious asset" to society as well as to himself, governments and other agencies should seek to protect it by "dedicating the equipment, resources and energy so that the greatest number of people can have access."
"Justice in health care should be a priority of governments and international institutions," [Pope Benedict] said, cautioning that protecting human health does not include euthanasia or promoting artificial reproductive techniques that include the destruction of embryos.

Considering that conservative American Catholics have had their politics co-opted by American conservatism in general, this is certainly going to be a difficult pill to swallow. Many of my more liberal Catholic friends have argued for a while that Catholic social teaching seems to promote much more "socialist" policies than their libertarian counterparts are comfortable with, and this statement is pretty undeniable support for their positions. Back when I was Catholic myself, I felt nauseated by the idea that conservative politics were somehow intertwined with this particular religion. No longer restricted by religion, I am still happy for the Catholics I know who possess a more liberal bent on matters of social justice.

I'm not going to get into the difficulties (in this post, anyway) we may have with the Catholic Church's stances on euthanasia or birth control et al., and will instead simply let myself grin like the Cheshire Cat over my own smugness. Inalienable right of man! Spin that, anti-healthcare reform Catholics!

Oh, I know they'll find a way. But it still makes me feel vindicated.

Obamaonics and Gulf Casualties

2010-11-21T21:01:00.000-08:00

On facebook lately (I know, I know) I've been trying to discuss the economy with some righteous conservatives and I thought I would share with you their coherent insights:

(Oil rig workers in the Gulf are casualties of Obama?)

In response, I made the point that federal taxes are lower under Obama --basically the only point I had time to make. In response to my statistics, she writes:

I chose to laugh instead of cry.

Thoughts on the Times: General Motors

2010-11-18T13:14:00.000-08:00

Our dear friend Boehner had this to say a while ago about Obama's plan with GM:

Does anyone really believe that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington can successfully steer a multinational corporation to economic viability?

Other GOPers claimed that disaster would be, in the words of Franks (R-AZ), "predictable." Hangs were wrung, teeth were gnashed, torches were lit.

Dollar for dollar, no one protects you from Mayhem like the GOP.

In this Times article, we note that today General Motors made a public offering of stock:
...now that General Motors has shown that it can be profitable, a complete exit by the government could happen even within the next two years. With the offering, G.M. is shedding its ties to the government faster than expected, cutting the Treasury Department’s ownership stake to 26 percent, from nearly 61 percent.
The offering, President Obama said on Wednesday, continues “our disciplined commitment to exit this investment while protecting the American taxpayer.”
The administration had argued that saving G.M. was not just about one company, but about an entire web of businesses connected to its fortunes. On Wednesday, the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research released a study saying that government aid to G.M. and Chrysler saved more than 1.1 million jobs in 2009 and 314,000 jobs this year — the highest figure yet reported.

Oh, snap.

Conspiracy of Theories

2010-11-17T14:38:00.000-08:00

It was late the other night, and we were at a fancy restaurant. The kind of restaurant with a wine list longer than the menu, and "chef's whim" entrees with no description available. Kind of like an adult version of the kids' ice cream treat they used to have at Friendly's with a surprise at the bottom.*

In between critiquing the newspaper-wooden-shoe-bird's-nest construction on the wall behind us and challenging the waiter to various trivia games**, the conversation turned to SCIENCE.

Specifically, since my friend and I are both of the same annoyingly snarky sinistral bent, the conversation turned to the notion that SCIENCE is a conspiracy. You've heard it, I'm sure. The anti-global warming crowd, the even crazier anti-evolution crowd? The "we're just concerned Moms" anti-vaccine, anti-medicine, anti-modern technology crowd? (not to disrespect any Luddites I might have in the audience--hypocritical ones I assume by your access to this blog--I occasionally catch a whiff of the countryside, wonder what it would be like to join my aunt on her technology-free farm, and let the rest of the world perish in slow electronic turmoil, crushed by one too many search engines. But I digress.)

What we both found so hard to fathom, in particular, is that anyone could genuinely believe that scientists are somehow colluding in a massive conspiracy against true Americans. The level of distrust even your average American has towards lab coats and sterile beakers is hard for we nascent researchers to believe. "We don't get paid that well," my friend laughed, "We make our livings criticizing each other. We're rewarded for trying to find faults with science! How could we possibly launch a conspiracy?"
It was ridiculous, he concluded.

Furthermore it was ridiculous that the right-wing radicals were able to cast being educated and reasoned as spinelessness, as "elitism" (whatever that means), as somehow an undesirable thing. It is an amazing show sometimes, politics on the good ship USA. Christine O'Donnell is only the most recent example of the 'just like you' argument, Palin or Paul or any number of other right-wingers get away with claiming ignorance as if it were proof of sincerity. Why is it that scientists and Harvard grads are supposedly less trustworthy than the blue collar, 'I'm like you' spiel of the midwestern Republican politician?

We wondered. We had few answers that didn't devolve into a lambasting of a certain demographic's intelligence and their personal emotional security in said intelligence (it was late, after all). But distrust of "the elite" and in particular, distrust of science, worried my friend and I quite a bit. "Leave the discovery of bad science to people like me," my friend laughed. "I'm trying to base an entire career on arguing with other scientists. But to attach sinister deception to science itself? Lunacy."

Then again, my friend's biased. He's launching into what to all intents and purposes promises to be a very successful career in one of the hardest of the hard sciences. He's spent years dealing with the ins and outs of research, obtaining funding, and critiquing theories. Oh wait...perhaps that doesn't make him biased, perhaps it makes him well-informed.

Which, of course, makes him undeniably untrustworthy. If only he were a plumber.

*The surprise was Reeses Pieces, and I knew it because I got it every time, and they knew it, and yet we all played along because it was just that exciting.

**This is why I am not usually taken to fancy restaurants. That and my habit of pointing out how fancy they are.

Evangelization

2010-11-15T15:51:00.000-08:00

From a sage conservative mind:

Liberals don't just hold false beliefs. They're also lost souls, participants in a false and destructive way of life. They need to hear the good news that liberalism is false and there's a better way for them and for America. And we conservatives need liberals to hear the good news so we can have hope of igniting a counterrevolution that will restore a properly-ordered (or at least tolerably-ordered) American society.

(-Alan Roebuck, HERE)

Ah, evangelization. What a lovely sentiment. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to have a debate with a conservative that's ended up in my realization that they see themselves casting the Life Preserver of Arrogant Salvation into my Sea of Ignorance, attempting to pull me forcibly onto the goodship Holier Than Thou. It's interesting to me when religious emotions and secular policies become so intertwined as to be addressed with the same language...interesting and frightening. But how convenient of them to combine two of my least favorite things--rabid proselytization, demonizing of liberalism--into one convenient bundle.

Am I any better than these evangelizers, spouting my leftist opinion (or at least caricature thereof) and attempting to convince others in my life that my positions are "the good news"? It's a good question. I like to think I'm a little bit more tolerant and a little bit more open-minded. I'm certainly not calling for religious marriages to be declared illegal or unconstitutional, even though I disagree with religious practices (think of the children!), for instance. But I watch enough Jon Stewart to occasionally ruefully recollect that saying "No I'M the victim!" isn't a productive counter-argument to right-wing hysterics. But I would still hold that this country is much more permissive when it comes to right-wing radicality than any other sort--look at the millions raked in by Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, Palin and Hannity, etc. Sure, you could point to Olbermann but MSNBC doesn't come close to Fox's power and influence.

But really. This "revolution" talk gets so very old. Are these right-wingers really so bored and saddened by their humdrum lives that they have to create an imaginary civil war to make themselves feel like heroes? Are their causes really so trite and meaningless that they have to flame passion through wild stories like "Obama's a Kenyan socialist" and "healthcare reform will bring death panels"? Are their arguments and policies so unable to stand on their own that right-wingers must resort to religious, dogmatic language in order to make their ideas sound powerful?

Science and Wizards

2010-11-15T13:26:00.000-08:00

I'm unabashedly psyched for the midnight premiere of the latest Harry Potter movie, to which I am going accompanied by a cohort of friends who are not shy about wearing capes, ties, and/or wholly unrelated costumes to any midnight fantasy/sci-fi movie showing. In celebration, here is a clip of Daniel Radcliffe being awesome:

The Flood

2010-11-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

John Shimkus, R-IL, Intellectual Warrior

Woah. Woah, woah, woah woah woah. Hold on there, climatists. Hold on there, ye who worship at the grand church of Al Gore and insist in the face of all evidence (unusually cool summers! Occasional snowstorms, for gosh sakes!) that global warming is a problem we should concern ourselves with.

John Shimkus (R-IL) has something to say, something which will set you deluded water-hoarding, sign-carrying, energy-regulating bastards straight. And what is his eco-shattering argument? His unassailable logic?

Climate change is simply incompatible with the Bible.

First, he noted God’s post-Flood promise to Noah in Genesis 8:21-22.

“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though all inclinations of his heart are evil from childhood and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.

“As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.”

“I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for his creation,” Shimkus said.

(HERE)

He also quotes Matthew 24:31: "And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of the heavens to the other."
The world will end this way, John Shimkus tells us, not through a Flood. The Flood already happened, and God promised it wouldn't happen again. And when God promises, he totes means it. Human beings have never ever suffered from floods since that Biblical whammy way back when.

It's worth noting that John Shimkus, R-IL, is currently making an attempt to become the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the most important and powerful committees in Congress, with influence on legislation ranging from public health to national environmental policy to biomedical research.
It's also worth noting that John Shimkus, R-IL, already serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The situation is so absurdly Idiocracy-worthy that commentary actually strikes me as a tad superfluous. But the atheist in me observes that Shimkus is an evangelical Christian, using the Bible as justification for his not simply preposterous, but dangerous ideas. Religion is dangerous and enabling, a handy tool for those who are naturally drawn towards dogmatic and infallible ways of thinking. I have a very big problem with any group of individuals who claim ultimate knowledge about the ways in which our universe operates, not permitting any question or correction. Dogma and infallibility is the antithesis of science, the enemy of improvement and progress. And we're letting it govern us.
This man has power and influence over our energy policies, policies which will affect our planet and our progeny and our entire species, even if only in a small part. This man has authority to dismiss the scientific community and their findings, nay as a member of ECC he has a responsibility to evaluate scientific evidence on environmental concerns. And his ultimate authority is an infallible book written centuries ago which also postulates that the flat earth is surrounded by a giant sky-dome. What's his excuse for not believing in that?

Very Model of a Modern US President

2010-11-09T23:32:00.000-08:00

As a longtime fan of both Gilbert and Sullivan and President Obama, I approve this message.

Lies and Backfiring

2010-11-09T19:36:00.000-08:00

I guess it's been a week for reading good articles. HERE is a nice one by Andrew Sullivan:

If a black Republican president had come in, helped turn around the banking and auto industries (at a small profit!), insured millions through the private sector while cutting Medicare, overseen a sharp decline in illegal immigration, ramped up the war in Afghanistan, reinstituted pay-as-you go in the Congress, set up a debt commission to offer hard choices for future debt reduction, and seen private sector job growth outstrip the public sector's in a slow but dogged recovery, somehow I don't think that Republican would be regarded as a socialist.

And HERE's another one, a news article on recent election results in one of my favorite states of all time, Oklahoma. As you may or may not know, Oklahomans in all their bigoted glee voted for a state constitutional amendment which would order judges not to consider Islamic or international law. In other words, in a panic because of Sharron Angle's utter nonsense, Oklamites decided they would ban sharia law.

Hilariously, apparently this ban may apply to the Ten Commandments as well, preventing judges from referencing the Ten Commandments. Furthermore, if taken seriously this measure throws a serious wrench into any consideration of international treaties...for instance, any issue of human rights? The Okies are now struggling to come to terms with the insane measure they just passed and how their vendetta against one religion may apply to their own. As a nonreligious person, I have to snicker at the poetic justice.

From Rick Tepker, Oklahomician law professor and one of the few sane people in the state:

Many of us who understand the law are scratching our heads this morning, laughing so we don't cry. I would like to see Oklahoma politicians explain if this means that the courts can no longer consider the Ten Commandments. Isn’t that a precept of another culture and another nation? The result of this is that judges aren’t going to know when and how they can look at sources of American law that were international law in origin.

Open Letter from Tim Wise

2010-11-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

Here is a bit of angry therapy for those of us who are smarting at the recent midterm elections, gnashing our teeth over Texas' attacking their Medicaid, or rolling our eyes at Palin's recent attempts at fiscal criticism.

Tim Wise, antiracist author, strikes again in his own marvelous fashion:

In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart.

There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach about them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious feelings, or those of the so-called “greatest generation” — a bunch whose white contingent was top-heavy with ethical miscreants who helped save the world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of it here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil rights struggle.

It’s OK. Because in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it...

...You have had this confidence before, remember?

You thought you had secured your position permanently after the overthrow of reconstruction in the wake of the civil war, after the elimination of the New Deal, after the Reagan revolution, after the Republican electoral victory of 1994. And yet, those you thought you had cowed and defeated are still here.

Because those who have lived on the margins, who have been abused, maligned, targeted by austerity measures and budget cuts, subjected to racism, classism, sexism, straight supremacy and every other form of oppression always know more about their abusers than the abusers know about their victims.

Read the whole thing, so worth it, HERE.

Dream

2010-11-07T11:43:00.000-08:00

I didn't much care for "Teenage Dream" until I saw this video clip. Kurt's face! One of the best moments I've seen on Glee so far, another win for one of the first shows that manages to both tackle important social issues (despite all its camp) and be quite popular. Cheesy and campy, but straight kids have a million and one cheesy and campy teenage stories to help them through their growing up and GLBT kids need that too, now more than ever.

Oh to walk into a room and find your place. Maybe someday.

Miracles of Life

2010-11-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

Whole article HERE.

Parthenogenesis is just one of a million different reasons I can't buy many of the conservative arguments about what constitutes "the sanctity of life." I like life, I really do. I don't advocate wanton destruction of it. Nor do I advocate its close-minded regulation from the point of view of archaic religious principles, such as the Catholic church's stance against in-vitro fertilization, birth control, homosexuality, pre-martial sex, abortion and assorted types of freakiness (phew! And that's only the beginning of the list).

On that note, why would a god's "natural order" allow such conceptual confusion about conception with things like parthenogenesis (let alone the strange situations found while examining the evolutionary history of reproduction)? Catholics tend to argue that their positions against homosexuality, for instance, result in some kind of superior and oh-so-obvious application of 'natural law,' that deluded philosophical construct clung to like a life raft by those entrenched in conservatism enough to be scholastics in this day and age (therein lies a critical differentiation between Popes John Paul II, who at least had the decency to be a phenomenologist, and Benedict, who is a Thomist as far as I can tell). It's a fantastically arrogant argument to make given that the world simply doesn't operate according to these clear-cut, "obvious" rules.

What is obvious is the historical embeddedness of a scholastic, natural law argument. How bizarre to think that these culturally-situated mores are having such an impact on our worldview today. How sad to think that people are struggling to understand the realities of human experiences through this blurry lens. If nothing else, we should learn to relax a little bit after surveying the plethora of life around us. Sex and conception in the animal kingdom is weird, as so aptly documented at BlagHag.

Results

2010-11-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks, STFU Conservatives.

Also, it's ok when Boehner cries, eh? I mean thank 'god' he's not a woman or something, or these tears would be evidence of mental incompetence.

I knew it was coming. People simply don't have a good enough memory or a good enough understanding of how Obama couldn't have waved a magic wand and fixed eight years of crazy. Bad always leaves a longer aftertaste than good, you guys. Besides which, who knows where we would have been if McCain/Palin (oh great Shiva The Destroyer, PALIN) had prevailed. It's a blow to lose the house and I'm worried about the enormous blockades to progress these dimwitted hypocritical Repugnakins will set up, but ultimately I'm still happy because of the beautiful first family we have in office.

So let's keep it going. Now we will have more crazy to observe and deride in American politics, and I look forward to exercising my "I Told You So" muscles. This backlash and swing was inevitable but I believe the Tea Party doesn't have much steam left in it after this one.

Let's try to keep our collective chins up after these results, fellow socialists. It's only a matter of time before the Dark Overlords of China come to rescue us, after all.

Cashing In

2010-11-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

Hah! Reference.

Conservative mind 'splode.

Voting

2010-11-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful morning. I live in a beautiful place and I get to say that a lot, but this morning was particularly lovely. Cool and bright, with fresh air that belied the vast amounts of traffic usually present on a tuesday. There were even bunnies.

I went to a polling place to vote. There was one nineteen year old lounging on a couch flipping through his list of propositions, texting friends about the details--a rather communal vote, there. There were five poll workers drinking coffee and talking about their grandkids. It was peaceful. I got a sharpie and a ballot from the poll workers and took up a concordant lounging position with the texting kid on the comfortable white couch.

This is why I genuinely love politics. Not for the bluster, not for the games, not for the virulence and the fear-mongering and the speeches. I certainly enjoy riding those moments of propaganda and insanity, I enjoy cavorting through the theater of radical demagoguery, I wish Shakespearian insults were allowed on the Congressional floor to ramp the drama up even higher. I like insanity.

But this day, this walk to the polls, this is what I love. My voice going out there, taking a stand, making a choice and a promise. And a politics party with friends tonight, watching the news, having some drinks, getting together over what we care about. Caring, that's what voting is. Beyond the screeching media and the creepy campaign ads and the protesting, there's that walk to the polls on a lovely morning to say here, do this.

I'm anticipating getting a little bit defeated in these elections, my side's going to lose some. But that's ok, because I got to run our country this morning, just a little bit.

Just How Good Are Their Ad Algorithms, Anyway?

2010-10-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

Life. In Screenshots.

The fact that most of these are from Facebook is also meta-(media)-commentary on my life.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-26T14:11:00.000-07:00

Here is a piece of indescribable horror to get you in the spirit (haha!) for Halloween. Combining two things that terrify me beyond measure--babies and fanatical religiosity--this video is hands-down more frightening than the entire Fright Fest lineup I've been watching on SyFy this week.

Costumes

2010-10-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be a zombie this Halloween, and I'm going trick-or-treating with my little cousins, because if I went to any of the parties I've been invited to this year I'd have to wade through so many girls dressed as cats I'd probably get an allergy attack.
Honestly, I have serious feline allergies; people should be more politically correct about such a sensitive topic.

It's funny...you'd think I'd be all over dressing up for Halloween. I actually made professional costumes for years. I love superheroes, I love characters and cosplay, I'm a fan of multiple genres and universes that present a plethora of identity possibilities. But I think that's just why I don't like joining in on the adult version of Halloween. People usurp the identities I have serious affection for, and it always feels a little bit sad somehow to see the beer pong-playing crowd prostitute my fictional friends for their own self-centered jocularity.

I prefer the world of my eight year old cousin, for whom Halloween is still an exercise in social pressure-less creativity, no alcohol required to dissolve into utter hilarity.

English

2010-10-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

Stephen Fry gives a beautiful, beautiful commentary on language and how we should love it without snideness. A much better expression of the point I was trying to make here.

I think if you combined Stephen Fry, Morgan Freeman, David Attenborough and Liam Neeson's voices and used the result on the unsuspecting public, you could make anybody do anything.
Also, kinetic typography, if you like that kind of thing!

Naming Problems

2010-10-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to feel like Christine O'Donnell is the subject of a STBSmartPeople witch-hunt (heeheehee), but at this point I almost feel like she's persecuting me. Taunting me with the money she's raised simply by flouting her own blinding ignorance, horrifying ideas and pretty, radical rightwing face at Tea Party fanatics. I mean why couldn't I turn myself into a smiling, stumbling moronic radical and also get money to pay my rent?
Christine O'Donnell is the legit, real, authentic GOP candidate for Senate, not some school board position (as if those aren't important), not some third party who hasn't got a shot. The Republican candidate!

Quote from Coons in the clip below:

Someone who has no experience crossing the bipartisan divide!

Understatement of the week. Try someone who has no experience with rational thought processes, or even the simple task of memorizing members of the Senate.

Picturebook Watch

2010-10-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

Today in rediscovered wonderfulness:

Graeme Base -- even his site is cool, check it out.
I love this author/illustrator, with the kind of love I typically reserve for Brian Jacques, the Wind in the Willows, the 90's X-Men cartoon show, and my mom's noodle kugel--fond memories from childhood all.

I picked up a Graeme Base book for the first time when I was taken to The Golden Goose, a delightful old-fashioned toy store that sold hand-made wooden toys and a veritable library of high quality kid's books. It was my eleventh birthday and I found The Eleventh Hour; it was fate, my tween mind decided.
My siblings and I pored over this book for days afterward and such attention is warranted given the scrumptious quality of Base's entertaining artwork.

If you're a fan of children's books and gorgeous illustrations, I highly recommend this book and all the rest of his work.

It Gets Even Better

2010-10-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

You know the beginning of the Consolation of Philosophy, where Lady Philosophy shows up and throws out the doleful Muses who are singing laments with Boethius? "F*** off!" she scolds (I may be paraphrasing here), "moping around is only getting in the way of philosophical analysis! From which comes true peace, as philosophy majors everywhere can attest!"*
*What? The Consolation of Philosophy wasn't *your* favorite book when you were 11?

I took that lesson to heart. Sad music is beautiful and sometimes great to listen to, but when you're really going through tough times, wow, you need to be careful to surround yourself with music that has hope in it. We need music that speaks to the pain in our lives, for sure, but I've always believed that you need to surround yourself with strength even when you feel like you have none. Especially when you feel like you have none.

Here are some people who agree, and while it's not my favorite kind of music ever, it's more support for the Trevor Project and they asked for sharing, so here's to sharing:

Thoughts on Emigration

2010-10-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

*gags*

I need to have a liberal post-traumatic stress intervention after watching this video. I would like all my most leftwing friends to come give me hugs and watch The Daily Show with me and read excerpts from Obama's most inspiring speeches and remind me that we passed at least a semblance of healthcare reform and that they believe in evolution, they believe in separation of church and state, and if need be we can all move to Sweden together.

Pieces

2010-10-18T00:58:00.000-07:00

Some days you wake up to grey skies, rainclouds, and a freezing bed. It's at times like that you need friends to remind you: some days just have to be gotten through, some mornings will be cold, some moments will be lonely. Some days you need friends who are willing to be there even though they know they can't fix you.

Too often we focus on frenetically trying to piece everybody back together. We don't trust enough in the healing power of time, the resilience of the human heart. Make no mistake, human beings are remarkably resilient...in letting yourself accept your own fragility, you might be astounded by how strong you really are. It's surprising how things will get better when you stop trying to force yourself to change, and just let time do its work for you.

I'm grateful for friends who will let you be who you are, feel what you feel, and sometimes, be a little broken. Because it's ok to not always be ok.

A Night at the Movies

2010-10-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

Everybody's a little frustrated with Barack, I know. The economy's not fixed, change seems to have gotten clogged in the drains of bureaucracy, perhaps you think he's too hesitant or too aggressive, it's just not a bright and shiny time for America right now and the Republicans are sure to capitalize on that in the upcoming midterm elections.

But wait, why was it that we were all mad at the GOP and excited about electing Obama two years ago again?

meep.

Oh yeah. Because the Bush Administration sucked. Because bad decisions were made. Because we needed change.

Need a couple of reminders?

Still need a couple of reminders?
I suggest you check out Standard Operating Procedure by highly gifted documentarian Errol Morris, perhaps best known for The Thin Blue Line. This is a remarkable film not only for its cinematic quality but its important subject matter. But be forewarned, this film deals with intense and graphic situations of abuse and torture and displays such imagery.

I was lucky enough to view this film at a special advanced screening and got to discuss the making of this film and its subject with Errol and one of his producers, a powerful and emotional experience. The lack of public perception in this country and amount of apathy towards the manner in which we have been conducting war for nigh a decade is deplorable. It's certainly not a black and white issue, an easy solution of deciding that one party is wholly to blame (I think you'll find Errol's point far more subtle than the easy scapegoating of American soldiers), but it's an issue that at least deserves serious scrutiny. Instead, these wars have been marked by a lack of accountability and abundance of distortion. Abu Ghraib is but one frightening example.

With more entertainingly Hollywood tones, Fair Game is coming out soon and while this movie is obviously going to be sensationalistic, the story itself is rather unbelievable. Check here for an interesting piece on the Wilsons and their struggle. Another impressive example of the power of the GOP to demolish whom they will.

I hope you're now in the mood for a paranoid, anti-government thriller, so get some popcorn and a teddy bear and your Democrat voting guide and hunker down on the couch for an evening of reflection on why you can at least feel marginally better that it's Obama right now, not Bush.

More on It Gets Better

2010-10-14T11:25:00.001-07:00

Staff of Life

2010-10-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of what some would optimistically call my adult life, I went to live in Rome. The plane ride was long, the weather was frightful, and the cab ride from the airport was an unbelievably expensive private tour of the most vandalized seedy underbellies of a city that must have had as many graffiti artists as centurion impressionists.

Granted, the ancients left us plenty of graffiti so it's kind of a tradition

I was miserable. Months of daydreaming about my Roman Holiday had led me to believe I would waltz into the city in a chic pleated skirt and ride a motorcycle past the Forum by midday. I was supposed to be an artsy, adventurous twenty-something sketching gorgeous impressions of Italy, not a bedraggled, jet-lagged, obvious American getting smashed against the side of a smelly subway and elbowed by aggressive tourists.

Walking down an admittedly picturesque cobblestoned street contemplating how many of my international minutes it would take to call my mom and sob that I needed to come home, I spotted a tiny cafe and went in for a much-needed coffee and pastry break. A wave of freshly baked flour products washed over me as I opened the door, and as simply as that I was transformed into the artsy, definitely bedraggled, still pretty obviously American, but happy student I got to be for my stay in Rome.

Bread. The stuff is great. For me, bread still conjures up profound nostalgia for Europe and happy memories of my time working in a bakery, warmth and giving and nourishment and a Norman Rockwell community full of good times.

Bread and bakeries have had this symbolic value in western societies for quite a while, evidenced in our literature and wheat-paeanic expressions. So it seemed particularly appropriate to me that when I was volunteering for a soup kitchen in Chicago, trucks from Panera would roll up every morning and drop off baskets and baskets of truly excellent bread, which we then distributed to the hundreds of impoverished individuals--many children--who needed some food that day.

I thought it was a wonderful company then, and I think so now, because of this article. Panera is continuing to model charity by opening a "shared responsibility" restaurant where patrons are allowed to under- or over-pay for their meals. I like the socialism...and the socialness. This is obviously not a viable business solution for their entire chain, but it's a wonderful example of giving back to the community. I was particularly struck by this:

"The goal is to let customers who are feeling the strain of the weak economy dine with dignity among regular customers."

Warm bread and dignity. Two things good society needs.

(The Milkmaid, Vermeer)

Also, art. Rome taught me that much.