Miniver Cheevy

Ayn Rand be my God

2012-01-30T15:37:00.000-08:00

I created this image for use elsewhere, but I thought it might be a good idea to have handy here.

Just to be clear: that's Ayn Rand's fans speaking in the caption, not me. I think Ms. Rand is a terrifying psychopath. The image is in the spirit of Infamous Brad's comment in Christians in the Hands of an Angry God:

There's always a catch. In this case, the catch must have been this. The traditional Republican party is the party of Satan himself, and thereby unpalatable to nearly all of the 90% or more of the US public that self-identified as Christian. I am not exaggerating here, not one tiny little bit. (Nor am I alone in this. Remember, I've met and done volunteer work alongside Dr. Michael Aquino, the founder of the largest Satanic church in the world, and you have never met a more staunch Republican in your life. Nor did he make any bones about why: he is a Republican Party loyalist because the Republican Party stands in total opposition to the Christian scriptures.) Throughout the gospels, take everything that Jesus said. Now reverse each and every statement. Each and every one of those reversals is a traditional plank of the Republican party platform.

Geeky parenting

2012-01-24T15:37:00.000-08:00

I'm fond of telling folks about the very modest contribution I have made to my nephew's moral development; less because I feel that my contribution is all that important than because I take a lot of pleasure in seeing him working things out for himself.

My nephew knows me as having a puzzling un-adult enthusiasm for talking about superheroes, and we were having a lively discussion about Batman while he was playing a video game in which he guided Batman in bringing the Joker to justice.

“Why are they fighting?” I asked.

“Because Batman's a good guy and the Joker is a bad guy.”

“How do you know? Batman looks pretty scary. Maybe he's the bad guy.”

“No he's not!”

“How do you know?”

“Because he fights the Joker, who is a bad guy.”

“How do you know that the Joker is a bad guy?”

“Because he fights Batman, who is a good guy!”

“So they fight each other,” I said. “But how do you know which one is good and which one is bad?”

“Yeah. It can't be the fighting.” The light had clearly gone on about the circularity of his original reasoning. He paused a long time to think, then said, triumphant, “Joker steals things and Batman gives them back.”

Some time after that, he was video gaming the Hulk, fighting monsters and smashing things up. I asked him whether the Hulk is a good guy or a bad guy.

“The Hulk is always breaking things, but I don't think he's a bad guy.”

“Why? Breaking things is bad.”

“Yeah, but he fights these monsters that are trying to eat people. Protecting people is good.”

“What about those Army guys he was fighting? They're not monsters.”

“Oh yeah. That's bad.”

“Did he just attack those Army guys? Why did he do that?”

“No, they attacked him first.”

“Aha! What's that about?”

“They want to stop him from breaking things. But when they attack him, it just makes him angry. So he gets stronger.”

“They're afraid of him,” I suggested. “After all, he is the Hulk. He's pretty scary. What does the Hulk want?”

“He wants to be left alone. But he's always getting into fights.”

“So is he good or bad?”

“He's kind of both.”

I couldn't resist making a suggestion. “The Hulk is like a force of nature. Maybe he's not really good or bad.”

My nephew liked that idea. “Yeah. He's not good or bad. He's just the Hulk.”

At Christmas I gave him a big collection of the initial run of the Fantastic Four. I can't wait to talk to him about the Mole Man and Galactus.

I say all of this as an introduction to a couple of surprisingly moving items I found on the internets.

First: Adam Rodgers' little essay What Batman Taught Me About Being A Good Dad.

Second: Moviebob points us to Drew “Moriarty” McWeeny's series about watching the Star Wars movies with his kids for the first time.

Yes, I got the order right there. Or rather, McWeeny did. Read the series and see why.

The universe is weird

2012-01-23T09:01:00.000-08:00

A user on Reddit asks folks to tell their stories about experiencing “a glitch in the Matrix”. The stories are amazing.

What's wrong with the world

2012-01-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

Here's a first draft for a short list of the central challenges for building a good society. It's why I'm skeptical of anarchists, for example.

Critical thinking skills are difficult to teach and cognitively expensive to exercise
Solutions don't scale, but our intuition expects them to
Expertise means learning where common sense is wrong
The Dunning-Kruger effect
Most people are emotionally adolescent
Most people are dumb
A few people have severe psychological pathologies — psychopathy, narcissism, borderline personality disorder — which are highly destructive to the people and social order which encounter them

Save the internet

2012-01-18T08:22:00.000-08:00

I changed my site for the day so that every page said this instead:

Today, Wednesday 18 January 2012, countless websites have “blacked out” to raise awareness about the serious problems with proposed Federal legislation in the United States that threatens the free exchange of ideas: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Online Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

I regard the threat of this legislation with utmost seriousness, and have joined the protest.

To learn more:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation works to secure rights and freedoms for individuals and information on the Internet and in other electronic media. They have a brief discussion of the problems, a set of links to more resources, and a a one-page PDF you can print out about the legal threat.

Google has blacked out their logo and has links and references explaining why. Reddit proposed the blackout, and other big-name websites including Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia are protesting as well.

Technology book publisher Tim O’Reilly explains why these laws are a bad idea and points to a very detailed exploration of the problems.

If corporations, nonprofits, publishers, and civil libertarians aren’t enough to convince you, even the conservative Heritage Foundation opposes these laws because they threaten “a host of unintended and dangerous consequences”.

To take action, EFF has a toolkit for activism and a tool for contacting your government representatives. On Tuesday 24th January 2012, the US Senate will vote.

Gold standard

2012-01-17T16:26:00.000-08:00

I really need to get around to writing a post about (or rather, stitching together some good links about) why fretting about fiat money is a canard and abolishing the Federal Reserve Bank and switching to a gold standard are incredibly bad ideas. But in the meantime, I have a fun info graphic about the gold supply which should make clear many of the reasons why a gold standard is silly.

Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

2012-01-16T10:08:00.001-08:00

For more than a decade, I've been spamming people with this note every year. Time marches on: this year the primary medium for that will be Facebook. If you were here this time last year, read it again anyway.

Really. Take a few minutes. I think it's important ...

Most people have forgotten that at the civil rights march on Washington DC on 28 August 1963, Martin Luther King was not the featured speaker. He was not the icon of the movement that we think of today. He was a major player, yes, but there were others more famous, respected, and important at that time. The speech he gave — the one you know — changed that.

The importance of the speech is distinctively American. The United States, unique among nations, is a frankly artificial creation. France is the place in Europe where people speak French, but the US has no ethnic definition — this place is full of immigrants who decided to be Americans, and their children. Japan is an island, but there's nothing natural about the borders of the US — this place wound up a nation through a chaotic combination of war, purchase, legislative decisions, and (oh yeah) genocide. The US is an idea. Something we just made up.

This is why we have the peculiar veneration of documents that we do. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are the holiest of holies in our civic religion because they are made of words, made of ideas. Through acclamation over the years we have chosen a handful of other documents that tell us what the United States is, like Lincoln's Gettysburg address and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech. In that speech, the power of King's rhetoric and ideas was so great that hearing it transformed our understanding of what the nation was about. I know, I know, that's a White guy thing to say: it's not like plenty of folks didn't know about American racial injustice. But on the level of shared understanding of shared destiny, King gave voice to ideas implicit in the American national promise that had too long been denied. And still are denied today.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

Go read it right now. It will only take five minutes of your time. With no exaggeration, I think it's your duty as an American. Yeah, this year we can celebrate it seeming almost unremarkable to have a Black President of the United States, but reading it you cannot help but realize that we have a lot of work left to do.

And while you're at it, take a little more time and read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I know you did it back in school. It's worth doing again.

And if you really want extra credit, go read what he said on the last full day of his life.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you ...

Homework

2012-01-15T08:57:00.001-08:00

I need to read up on populism.

Red Tails

2012-01-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

Dig the trailer for this movie, coming out next week:

I'm excited about catching this opening weekend.

There's politics involved, but let's start with how the story of the Tuskegee Airmen is as awesome a subject for a movie as you could hope for. You've got ærial dogfights, just about the most cinegenic subject ever. You've got heroic underdogs whom nobody believes in, but who will win the respect of the people who doubted them. You've got a battle with the forces of evil. It's a heartwarming true story. You couldn't ask for a more perfect example of what Hollywood does well. It would take a rare talent to make a bad movie from the material, and the advanced word on the movie is that it's good.

Plus the politics are important. Hollywood believes that you cannot sell a Black cast to a White audience. They believe that you definitely cannot sell “Black history” (which is to say, ahem, American history) to a White audience. In 1997, John Singleton tried to prove that wrong with Rosewood, and staked a great deal on delivering an epic true story with an all-Black cast, but despite being a very good film it did poorly at the box office. That's certainly a reflection of racism in America, though I suspect that the movie being a downer was also a major contributing factor. Hollywood took the wrong lesson, and decided that they weren't making any more big movies that Black again. Red Tails only happened because George Lucas reached into his deep pockets and bankrolled the movie's production and distribution; the rest of the film industry wouldn't touch it. Opening weekend box office numbers are going to send a message, and I want to vote with my dollars.

I also want to vote with my face. I spent most of New Years' Day on a protest march commemorating the death of Oscar Grant, and not only because I care about the Oscar Grant incident in itself (though I do) but because it's important for there not only be Black faces in the crowd when there are people gathered around “Black issues.” There are times when White people need to represent. This is one of them. If it helps a little bit for a theater owner to see White people showing up to see Red Tails, if it helps for a Black moviegoer to see White people showing up, then I want to show up.

Plus I have to confess that I get a selfish extra benefit from that. There are some movies for which the quiet politeness of a White audience is not what I want. One of the best moviegoing experiences of my life was seeing Blade with a Black audience. Look at that trailer again and check out those ærial dogfights. This is a movie I want to see on a big screen with an audience that will raise the roof.

Dear New York Times

2012-01-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

I just sent this letter.

After twenty-five years as a reader of the New York Times, this is my first missive to the paper.
I read with interest and incredulity your article Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante? I had to double-check whether I was reading The Onion.
Yes, I would like the New York Times to do its best to inform me about what the truth is. I am, in fact, mortified that you even think this is an open question. What else do you think your job might be?
I recognize that this will result in accusations of “partisanship”. Most of those accusers have already demonstrated that they will claim “partisanship” whatever policy the paper takes, so I do not see how you can regard them as relevant.
I recognize that this opens questions about what constitutes relevant truth. Yes, opinions do differ on the shape of the Earth. But you are journalists. You can figure it out.

Bonus: A nice burn from the editors at Vanity Fair.

Update: Public editor Arthur Brisbane thinks that people like me didn't understand his question.

I disagree. I think he didn't understand his question.

He asks whether the Times should rebut false claims by “newsmakers” in the article in which those people are quoted. Let me clarify the implications of that question. By “newsmakers” he means People In Power. So he is asking whether the heart of the story is the fact of what People In Power have said, or the facts of the subject that People In Power are talking about. If the former, it is incumbent on the paper to not distract from the core story by interjecting a rebuttal of a Person In Power. If the latter, it is incumbent on the paper to support the core story by rebutting People In Power when they deceive.

I am very clear on which I need and expect from a newspaper. Why isn't he?

Confederacy

2012-01-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

A friend reminds me of John Scalzi telling us that the Confederacy was evil and the Confederate Battle Flag symbolizes evil.

His key point is the debunking of the canard that “the Confederacy was about States' rights, not slavery.” He has a long quote from a speech on the subject by CSA Vice-President Alexander Stephens. Here's a juicy bit:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

This is not Stephens' idea alone. The seceding states all published decorations of their causes and they are very clear. I have a few samples ready, for your convenience.

Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery

Texas:

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law.

South Carolina:

an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.
....
all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

That last calls for a rebuttal. I have Abraham Lincoln right here.

Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, “Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery.” But we do let them alone — have never disturbed them — so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them.

I first learned about Lincoln's Cooper Union address through Digby, who rightly notes that it remains very relevant to the political culture of our time.

Andersen Consulting

2012-01-09T13:39:00.000-08:00

A decade ago, I used to make this witticism about companies that were crawling with employees who weren't employees, but rather consultants from Andersen:

It's like an evil alien parasite in a science fiction story that enters your body and gives you weird superpowers. Like now that you have the slug from the planet Zax living in your small intestines you now only need to sleep two hours a night and can see into the deep infrared. But music only sounds like noise to you now. And you have started blinking your eyes disconcertingly often. And then you have started to develop troubling cravings. So you go to the doctor, and you're like, whoa, get me off of this train. But he runs a bunch of tests and tells you that if you remove the slug, it will kill the host.

Whoops.

This metaphor turns out to have multiple applications.

Sounds like a whisper

2012-01-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

A recent dKos diary post by Nicholas Carroll reflecting on Occupy Wall Street in the context of revolutionary movements around the world has me thinking about a number of things.

Foremost for me is a telling distinction between revolutionary movements and rebellions, with OWS in the former category.

Mainstream media has made an effort to portray OWS protestors as lacking specific demands. This is laughable when a protestor is carrying a sign reading “Restore the Glass-Steagall Act.” I have never seen a more specific demand at a protest. And “How about a Maximum wage?” might seem frivolous, but it's advocating legal caps on executive pay.
The protesters know quite well what they want. It just happens to be a long list, with the solutions not always immediately apparent.
....
This puts them in sharp contrast to rebellions, which are inherently conservative. Rebellions shout “quit pushing us!” and demand a return to previous benefits and rights. Their demands are inevitably more specific than those of revolutionaries, since rebels want the exact things they used to have, whether it is a freedom from daily floggings or a return to lower gas prices.

This points to something I've noticed about conversations I've had about Occupy in the last few months. Early on, I talked to some people who shared the mainstream media's problem in getting what Occupy was really about. And I notice that problem has mostly gone away.

Occupy's rejection of many of the tropes of traditional protest politics, including the refusal to issue a succinct set of specific limited demands, reflects a revolutionary critique. The problem Occupy addresses is so broad and systemic and invisible that first we need to wake and acknowledge it before we can have a discussion of what to do. Though I should now say not “the problem is” but “the problem was.” We now have a national conversation about “the 99% and the 1%” in a way that seemed inconceivable last summer. The battles in the streets have quieted, but the Spirit of Occupy now has claimed a firm enough place on stage that it will be difficult to dislodge. That's a victory.

Carroll explores how the revolutionary moment feels, talking about experiences in countries around the world.

When I no longer had access to classified diplomatic warnings, I got my news from four sources:
Foreign newspapers
Protest demands spray-painted on the walls
The expressions on locals' faces
The attitudes of the middle class

One might take the tone of the comments on the post to be a sign of revolution in the air. The comments are worth checking out: reading folks lining up behind the Occupy critique, you'd never know how contentious the discussion on dKos ordinarily gets.

Still, dKos is a hotbed of lefties, so it isn't exactly barometer of the national mood. But I'm not sure what would be. Which has me thinking of another of my obsessions, the relationship between politics and suburbanization. Because the erosion of public space created by suburbanization makes it hard to use Carroll's measures #2 & 3 to scent revolution in the air. I think, with all seriousness, that suburbanization has been a powerful force in American politics which has been corrosive to both democracy and our sense of shared social and political destiny. Not for nothing has Occupy claimed the importance of public space.

Still, it does seem like something is brewing, which is thrilling but also frightening. In the wake of revolution, the new order is shaped by the best-organized ....

Infamous Brad

2012-01-03T09:59:00.000-08:00

Brad Hicks is a blogger who writes only very occasionally, but at length, on a range of subjects, always insightfully. I am reminded of this by his review of Amy Schalet's book Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex.

I am, for the second time in two years, convinced that I live in a country full of superstitious, primitive, blood-thirsty savages.

Good stuff. And a good excuse for a set of links to my personal list of The Best Of Infamous Brad.

Christians In The Hands Of An Angry God is his best-known essay, and for good reason.

How did so many seminaries and so many preachers and so many authors get converted to this false gospel? What deal did they make with Satan himself, and why? What did they think that they were doing? These aren't rhetorical questions. I've met one of the people who “signed” that deal and helped enforce it. He was quite proud of his achievement, and years later told many of us about the meeting where that decision was made. It is only recently that I came to understand just who the other side in that deal really was, as opposed to who the fundamentalists in that room thought they were dealing with.

Fascinating, and very relevant to the relationship between politics and religion today. It's a five-part series; click through the next entry links at the top of each page.

Yes We Can Put Americans Back To Work. We Probably Won't, Though. A look at the history of the Work Projects Administration emphasizing a point that I'm baffled isn't more apparent to people, that the WPA built the backbone of American infrastructure that we depend upon every day.

In that four months, CWA [precursor to the WPA] workers had already built 1,000 rural airports, built 40,000 school buildings, built or resurfaced a quarter-million miles of roads, and laid twelve million miles of sanitary sewer lines, some of the first sewer lines laid in most counties. In four months. Right-wing Democrats and anti-tax pro-corporate Republicans screamed bloody murder about all the money that the CWA was “wasting,” but (and this is a point I'll come back to again) we're still using almost all of that stuff today. 75 years later, those “worthless” “make-work” projects are turning out to be some of the most valuable stuff the government had done in its first 150 years of existence.

He makes the case that we need to do that again, and he's right.

Atlas Shrugged 2: Shrug Harder is a meditation on the works of Ayn Rand.

I don't know how many of you realize that Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's science fiction classic, is actually only book 1 of a trilogy? Hardly anybody knows this, because she never got around to writing the missing middle volume. She wrote book 1 in the series. She wrote book 3 in the series, but didn't explicitly label it a sequel to Atlas Shrugged, she and her agent marketed it as a stand-alone volume. She never got around to writing the middle volume that bridges the two.

Nobody Will Ever Believe How We Got Here #OWS is about the weirdness of the origins of Occupy Wall Street.

Millions of Americans have been told by the corporate media, ever since the 1980s, that nobody but a handful of dirty hippies, and evil Satanic commies, and lazy welfare bums, and illegal immigrants, and of course more recently al Qaeda, but other than those people, nobody else but you has a problem with winner-take-all laissez faire oligopoly capitalism.

Not That the Actual Forbidden Knowledge is as Interesting as That There Is Forbidden Knowledge explores a chilling fact about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Don't say I didn't warn you that you may not want to know. But if you're reading me, maybe you do.

The Dark Knight Returns

2011-12-29T07:08:00.000-08:00

When Christopher Nolan's third Batman movie comes out, I hope to take time to analyze his whole series of Batman films as a response to the odious ideas implicit in Frank Miller's watershed comic The Dark Knight Returns. But much as I hate what DKR stands for, it's a frikkin' masterpiece of the comics medium; A D Jameson at Big Other has a fascinating series describing why.

Government monopoly on force

2011-12-29T06:42:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Ron Paul, I just had to explain to someone one of the reasons why libertarianism is stupid. So I'm sharing.

Libertarians will tell you that “behind every law is a man with a gun,” and I actually respect the hell out of the clear-eyed skepticism about violence which motivates this comment. But libertarians thus conclude that since violence is bad government is bad and we should eliminate it. Which is stupid.

I vigorously believe in the state's “monopoly on violence” ... provided the state in question is a liberal democracy.

The “liberal democracy” piece is key. That means not liberal in the sense of the liberal-conservative axis in American political discourse, I mean in the political science sense of Jefferson's “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among people, which hold their just powers by the consent of the governed”, that is a state constructed to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens and accountable to its citizens for its actions and institutions. Looking at our own government on those terms, it is easy to see that it is extraordinarily accountable and protective of individual rights if you compare it to most societies through the world and history, but is also well short of the ideal. I believe that it is possible to construct government institutions that deliver categorically better liberal democracy than we have now, and that is a worthy and achievable project.

A liberal democratic state's monopoly on violence is desirable for two reasons: some people are inclined to resort to violence, and some people are schmucks.

Because some people will resort to violence, you cannot eliminate the state. This is why those of us who dismiss libertarianism point to the Somalia example: in the absence of the state's public use of force, there is no check on personal use of force, which is a problem for all the familiar reasons.

Libertarians operate from the fantasy that we can wish that problem away. (And no, privately-employed security guards won't do the job as well as the state; the arguments why not should be familiar.)

Because some people are schmucks, you cannot eliminate the state. To have a functioning society, you have to make a million decisions about shared norms. Some of those norms are arbitrary: Either you drive on the left side of the street or the right. Some of them are about how you define property: Does someone own Harry Potter? Mickey Mouse? Sherlock Holmes? Hercules? Some of them are expressions of values: Do you allow advertisements to lie? How much pollution do you allow in a river?

Libertarians operate from the fantasy that it is most democratic to allow shared norms to emerge organically from a marketplace of individual actors. But in reality, schmucks can spoil the party by violating the norms that most people prefer: driving on the wrong side of the road to save a little time, publishing books they didn't write under their own byline, selling arsenic as penicillin, dumping toxic waste into that river. You need an agent of public will with the power to enforce norms, which requires the use of force.

It is right to find the use of force discomforting, but it is naïve to think we can wish it away. The solution is to make our agent of force institutionally limited and institutionally accountable to the populace: a liberal democratic government.

Do not parse HTML with regular expressions

2011-12-28T20:39:00.001-08:00

Seriously, don't. The results are Lovecraftian.

Republicans for Revolution

2011-12-28T09:52:00.000-08:00

On the train this morning, I read Mark Lilla's New York Review of Books piece Republicans for Revolution, on Corey Robin's book The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. As in most NYRB articles, it's really less a review than an article that uses the book as a point of departure.

Lilla is sharply critical of Robin for ignoring important distinctions between different strains of conservative thought. I can't speak for Robin's book — it's sitting on my shelf, thus far unread — but Lilla's description of Robin's thesis lines up with Phil Agre's masterful summation of conservatism, which suits me just fine. The result of this objection is useful, though: Lilla uses it as a springboard to provide a quick survey of different conservative schools of thinking and their history ... bringing us to our contemporary Republican party, with its “mainstreaming of political apocalypticism”. I like to think that I know a bit more about the history of conservative thought than a lot of lefties, but I don't know as much as I think I ought to, so I got a lot out of Lilla telling it from the perspective of a thoughtful person sympathetic to conservatism but profoundly unsympathetic to the turn that American conservatism has taken in recent years. Terrific stuff.

The ending of Lilla's essay, though, drives me bats. He has drawn a clear line from the history of conservatism to postwar American conservatism to the madness of contemporary Republicanism, and expressed a proper terror about that last. Then he concludes:

All this is new—and it has little to do with the principles of conservatism, or with the aristocratic prejudice that “some are fit, and thus ought, to rule others,” which Corey Robin sees at the root of everything on the right. No, there is something darker and dystopic at work here. People who know what kind of new world they want to create through revolution are trouble enough; those who only know what they want to destroy are a curse. When I read the new reactionaries or hear them speak I’m reminded of Leo Naphta, the consumptive furloughed Jesuit in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, who prowls the corridors of a Swiss sanatorium, raging against the modern Enlightenment and looking for disciples. What infuriates Naphta is that history cannot be reversed, so he dreams of revenge against it. He speaks of a coming apocalypse, a period of cruelty and cleansing, after which man’s original ignorance will return and new forms of authority will be established. Mann did not model Naphta on Edmund Burke or Chateaubriand or Bismarck or any other figure on the traditional European right. He modeled him on George Lukács, the Hungarian Communist philosopher and onetime commissar who loathed liberals and conservatives alike.

Cue Rick Perlstein:

I get the question all the time from smart liberal friends: what is conservatism, anyway? They're baffled. “As far as I can tell, anything someone on the right does is, by definition, ethical. It's not about the act, or even the motivation. It's about who's perpetrating it.” It has become the name for a movement that can scream from the rooftops that every Supreme Court nominee should have an expiditious up-or-down vote, then 15 seconds later demand tortuous proceduralism when that nominee is Harriet Miers. Flexibility is the first principle of politics.
I'm trying to make here an argument not about instances, but about a structure of thought. It is the structure of thought betrayed, I think, by Ahmed Chalabi, explaining his deliberate deception of U.S. intelligence: “We were heroes in error.”
Is Chalabi, or Jerry Falwell, a “principled conservative” or a “pragmatic conservative.” That's a question I'd like to pose to you all. My head hurts just thinking about it.
This part of my talk, I imagine, is long after the point a constitutive operation of conservative intellectual work has clicked on in your minds: the part where you argue that malefactor A or B or C, or transgression X or Y or Z, is not “really” conservative. In conservative intellectual discourse there is no such thing as a bad conservative. Conservatism never fails. It is only failed. One guy will get up, at a conference like this, and say conservatism, in its proper conception, is 33 1/3 percent this, 33 1/3 percent that, 33 1/3 percent the other thing. Another rises to declaim that the proper admixture is 50-25-25.
It is, among other things, a strategy of psychological innocence. If the first guy turns out to be someone you would not care to be associated with, you have an easy, Platonic, out: with his crazy 33-33-33 formula--well, maybe he's a Republican. Or a neocon, or a paleo. He's certainly not a conservative. The structure holds whether it's William Kristol calling out Pat Buchanan, or Pat Buchanan calling out William Kristol.
As the Internet's smartest liberal blogger, Digby, puts it, tongue only partially in cheek: “ ‘Conservative’ is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals.”

Federal Reserve

2011-12-26T17:47:00.001-08:00

For future reference: Political Research Associates debunks canards about the Federal Reserve.

Piracy

2011-12-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

There are times when I think that the media companies have no one to blame but themselves.

Apple had to trick the music industry to save it, with their “easier than stealing, and almost as cheap” solution.

But the people who control video rights are still too dumb to take my money.

2011-12-15T10:11:00.001-08:00

Hollywood, geekkultur, and Moviebob

2011-12-07T07:40:00.000-08:00

Bob “Moviebob” Chipman at The Escapist has a great little video series about the history of Hollywood. Nothing in it is news to a cinephile, but if you have an idle half-hour to spare and have a casual interest in movies, it's well worth your time.

Note that the page design at The Escapist is pretty bad, so you might miss the link to the next installment; you can find it a few lines below the video player.

Moviebob is a terrific Web raconteur, using his voice plus a few simple slides to tell his story with humor, wit, and no small measure of real insight. I think of him as an example of the intersection of web culture, pop culture, and geek culture at its best, and have watched most of the videos in both his Escape to the Movies review series and his The Big Picture series of ruminations on all manner of geeky pop culture topics. Though I'm tempted to say that his occasional exclamation that comics ... are ... weirrrrd is my favorite part of his schtick, he really shines in digging into some bit of pop culture obscura and coming away with surprising and interesting insight. The signal example is his piece The Collar, examining the real reason why Yogi Bear wears a necktie ... which opens the door to an examination of the relationship between cartoon storytelling and the economics of the animation business. Seriously, check that one out, and maybe you'll be hooked on MovieBob too.

Ron Paul

2011-12-03T13:54:00.001-08:00

I know a few people who have been touched with Ron Paul Fever, and it seems like new examples crop up all the time. So it seems I cannot put off any longer making the case against Representative Paul.

I get the appeal. He vigorously opposes American military adventurism and the military-industrial complex. He has pointed out how the financial industry has perversely benefitted from the financial crisis they created. He speaks in defense of civil liberties and has fought against attacks on them like the PATRIOT Act. He calls the War On Some Drugs the madness that it is. And often he says this stuff well. When we cannot even reliably expect Democrats to step up on these subjects, Rep. Paul's rhetoric can be refreshing, even thrilling.

But if you dig into him, it becomes clear that Representative Ron Paul is an evil crackpot.

He stands against bad government policies because he wants to dismantle practically the entire Federal government, which makes him against just about any good government policies you can think of, too. Including, for example, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And Social Security and Medicare. And the Environmental Protection Agency.

Many conclude from this that Rep. Paul comes from a radical libertarian political philosophy. You have probably met folks from this school before; because Heinlein made the libertarian utopia of the lunar colony in his novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress feel so plausible while you're reading it, they think that a stateless anarchist utopia actually is plausible, et cetera. I think that kind of libertarianism doesn't hold any water, but I can at least respect its radical grounding in personal liberty, and its bullheaded commitment to philosophical integrity is at least intellectually honest.

The argument goes that Rep. Paul's opposition to the Civil Rights Act reflects his libertarian conviction that, morally wrong as segregated lunch counters may be, they are the price we should accept for a government with a seamless commitment to the important rights of private property and free association. A government empowered to meddle in who a restaurant will serve has the capacity for all kinds of other mischief more destructive to our important liberties. Such libertarians will usually argue that the free market will naturally put an end to such a restaurant as the public, repelled by the odor of racism, will refuse to patronize it. I find that unpersuasive, and call this school of libertarianism a wrongheaded philosophy in part because it ends up opposed to the obvious good of the Civil Rights Act.

That doesn't yet give us Representative Paul as an evil crackpot, but the reading of him as a libertarian is just plain wrong. Ron Paul will tell you that his devotion to sharply limited government comes of being a “strict constitutionalist”, and he frequently references Constitutional limits on Federal power. But this “strict” reading of the Constitution has a strange flavor. It contradicts constitutional scholarship and legal precedent, which upholds the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act, Social Security, et cetera. He sees no separation of church and state in the Constitution. And he does want the government doing more in one area: stopping abortion, in service of which he has introduced a bill defining legal personhood as beginning at conception and has run a bizarre anti-choice propaganda television commercial for his campaign in which he alludes to his “faith.” What kind of “strict constitutionalist” and “libertarian” is that?

Let's add some more ingredients. Representative Paul opposes the United Nations, because he's worried that it will produce a One World Government that will lead a atheist socialist revolution that will come take your guns. Ron Paul is a gold bug who wants to abolish both the Federal Reserve Bank and the Federal income tax, and return to the gold standard, a form of crackpot economics that should sound familiar.

If you know to recognize them, the signs are clear that Ron Paul is, at best, a John Bircher, the school of crackpot American conservatism which called Dwight Eisenhower a communist agent and William F. Buckley purged from the Republican party for being too reactionary even for him. (Update: I have video of him addressing the John Birch Society as an honored guest a few years ago.)

Which brings us to the evil crackpottery. James Kirchick at The New Republic has tracked down some of Ron Paul's old newsletters.

What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays.

(Update: A few samples from the newsletters; the flavor is unmistakable.)

(Update #2: The Washington Post reports persuasively that Paul must have known what the newsletters contained.)

Evil crackpot.

If you want more:

Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic writes at length about the newsletters, the reaction to them, and why Ron Paul should be held accountable for them.
James Kirchick's long story on Ron Paul in The New Republic from early 2008 gets referenced by many of the articles which came later, so in addition to being good in its own right, it's essential reading if you have an interest in the meta-story of how the news media is covering Ron Paul.
Orcinus is one of my favorite blogs on the web, delivering journalism and analysis about the crazy far right in the US and its complex relationship with more conventional conservatism and the Republican party. It has some great stuff on Ron Paul, including an overview of Kirchick's article, an index of Paul's voting record in the House of Representatives, his detailed examination of Rep. Paul's grounding in scary, evil rightwing crazies' ideology and the implications of his obvious appeal to those folks.
Corey The Reactionary Mind Robin points to two problems with Ron Paul: his pseudolibertarian federalism and the fact that the left has failed to produce a visible spokesperson in opposition to the military-industrial complex.
Fred Clark at Slacktivist responds to Corey Robin, makes a telling distinction between civil liberties and individual liberties, and offers a roundup of links to yet more commentary about Paul.
Living national treasure Ta-Nehsi Coates weighs in, comments on Paul's mercenary willingness to publish the newsletters, underlines how defenses of Ron Paul connect to the history of racism in American politics, and makes an instructive comparison between Paul and ... of all people ... Louis Farrakhan.
Digby gives us video of Ron Paul speaking as an apologist for the Confederacy. Paul gives us the canard that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, which just isn't true. Over at Daily Kos, chaunceydevega looks at Paul and plumbs the meaning of neo-Confederate slavery apologetics.
Apropos of un-libertarian views when it comes to reproductive rights, Paul supports the State of Texas raping women with sonogram probes. Really.
Video of Ron Paul making a clumsy, incoherent defense of his position on the Civil Rights Act. What, did he think he'd never get the question?
Charles P. Pierce at Esquire sketches how Paul wins the support of Americans of the Paranoid Style.
Reason Magazine — who are real libertarians — has an investigation into how the newsletters came to be, and a damning timeline of Paul's comments about them.
At Addicting Info, Summer Ludwig has a quick 10 Reasons Not To Vote For Ron Paul and Justin “Filthy Liberal Scum“ Rosario lays out the racism angle in Is Ron Paul A White Supremacist? Absolutely!
Talking Points Memo has a story about Paul's Iowa campaign actively courting Christian theocrats who want “Biblical law” including the death penalty for homosexuals.
“Former African Dictator Mobutu Sese Seko” followed up his Vice article Ron Paul Is A Racist Leprechaun with numerous scans of Paul's old newsletters and a damning review of their contents at his personal blog, where he also has replies to common pro-Paul arguments.
Respectful Insolence has a long post providing links to troubling information about Ron Paul, including a lot about his alliance with quack medicine.
Alternet's Adele M. Stan has 5 Reasons Progressives Should Treat Ron Paul with Extreme Caution, including a close relationship with scary Christian theocrats.
Phenry has a four part Daily Kos diary hitting a range of highlights:
- In His Own Words
- The Radical Right's Man In Washington
- Dude Is Wack
- Ron Paul Hates You
Michelle Goldberg at the Daily Beast explores Paul's relationship with Christian Reconstructionism, illuminating why Paul's faux libertarianism is winning the support of many Christian theocrats.
Tim Wise has harsh words for liberals who think that the issues they agree with Paul about outweigh the ones where they don't.
Salon has been covering Ron Paul and the implications of his ideas pretty well.
Digby calls Ron Paul's anti-Federal pro-State philosophy “antebellum libertarianism”, in reference to the Civil War, and explores how this connects to Christian Reconstructionist theocrats.
A damning “defense” of Ron Paul from Eric Dondero, a former congressional staffer of his.
Harvey Gold at Addicting Info has a review of why the gold standard is a stupid idea, though I'm looking for a better one.
Newsone lists suggestive, but not quite conclusive, ties between Ron Paul and avowed White Supremacists.
If you really want to dig deep, Ron Paul Exposed has a mountain of resources and anti-Paul rants, but I cannot vouch for the signal-to-noise ratio.

This article has been linked on Reddit and a local BBS and other places. Bracing for impact.

Jefferson on taxes

2011-12-01T08:45:00.001-08:00

I just stumbled across a fascinating web resource of quotations from Thomas Jefferson talking about taxation. It turns out that Jefferson clearly favored progressive taxation.

I approved from the first moment of... the power of taxation [in the new Constitution]. I thought at first that [it] might have been limited. A little reflection soon convinced me it ought not to be.

Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.

the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings

Interestingly, the quotations give us a Jefferson who supports tariffs as the primary source of government revenue because imports are luxury goods used by the rich. I didn't know that.

Since quasiliberarian conservatives like to claim Jefferson as the great minarchist of the Founders, I suspect that this will come in handy. (Apropos of which, if you haven't seen it, dig a quote I blogged a while back about John Locke supporting redistribution of wealth.)

Chili

2011-11-28T10:56:00.001-08:00

A disconcerting article about what tomatoes are for:

Corn and potatoes became almost immediate staples the world over, but tomatoes took a surprisingly long road to popularity.
....
The reasons given for this lag have been several: tomatoes are a secondary crop and fell in the shadow of the other New World imports; they were misconstrued as ornamental fruits and used for display (thus the golden apples, the pomodoro, of Italy); they were quickly recognized as a relative of the poisonous belladonna by peasants who refused to grow them (they are a member of the “nightshade” or Solanaceae family, along with chile and bell peppers, potatoes and eggpant) — but I propose another, more curious reason.

What's the reason? I'll give you hint: Soylent Green presumably includes tomato flavoring ...

The economics of the McRib sandwich

2011-11-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

An unreasonably fascinating speculation about the economics of McDonald's McRib sandwich:

Fast food involves both hideously violent economies of scale and sad, sad end users who volunteer to be taken advantage of. What makes the McRib different from this everyday horror is that a) McDonald’s is huge to the point that it’s more useful to think of it as a company trading in commodities than it is to think of it as a chain of restaurants b) it is made of pork, which makes it a unique product in the QSR world and c) it is only available sometimes, but refuses to go away entirely.

If you can demonstrate that McDonald’s only introduces the sandwich when pork prices are lower than usual, then you’re but a couple logical steps from concluding that McDonald’s is essentially exploiting a market imbalance between what normal food producers are willing to pay for hog meat at certain times of the year, and what Americans are willing to pay for it once it is processed, molded into illogically anatomical shapes, and slathered in HFCS-rich BBQ sauce.

The McRib was, at least in part, born out of the brute force that McDonald’s is capable of exerting on commodities markets.

I am now sold on this theory.

My first hand account of the Black Bloc fiasco during Occupy Oakland strike, as well as the pro-violence flyer in circulation.

2011-11-04T03:25:00.000-07:00

I didn't write this: I'm reprinting it here to help the link circulate, since the original is on Facebook, which is a lousy place to read and archive long posts.

My first hand account of the Black Bloc fiasco during Occupy Oakland strike, as well as the pro-violence flyer in circulation.

by Kallisti Partridge

Before I give my account, I'd like to request that anyone commenting actually read the entire post first, and of course, please share this. I don't mind if you disagree with me; all that I ask is that my writing ONLY be shared in its entirety, so that my words are not taken out of context.

On Wednesday, November 2nd, I spent 13 hours in the streets of Oakland witnessing what was quite possibly the most stunning display human interaction and cooperation that I've ever seen. I can honestly say that, until recently, I never thought I'd live to see the day where the people of this nation would join together in a realization that we can take our power back and avoid what has seemed like a downward spiral crash course that this planet has been on. When I saw news reports of the people in Egypt joining together to form road blocks in their own neighborhoods, I had no idea that I would soon find myself on the port in Oakland, doing the exact same thing with people in my bay area community. I could see this same sentiment in the eyes of everyone else there as well; the people, by golly, realized, some possibly for the first time, that we are not powerless. This awe inspiring observation served to counter balance what I'd seen earlier in the day, which was far more disturbing than simply a small group of hooligans breaking windows.

Right before the afternoon march, I noticed 2 men with military style haircuts displaying suspicious looking body language. Suspicious indeed, it turns out, as they very quickly proceeded to mask themselves, and proceeded towards a group of some others that had done the same. One of them affixed a black flag to what looked like a retractable baton. At this point, they mostly fit in with the others, aside from the slight difference that all of their gear appeared to be high end, and brand spanking new right off the corporate sales rack. Their shoes had NO wear whatsoever, unlike those in the group they approached. I decided to follow them, because my "spidey senses", to say the least, were raising curiosity with an air of alarm. I followed them throughout the entire rampage.

The two men followed the rest of the black flag group, though only appeared to talk to each other, looking around nervously while seemingly conferencing on their strategies separate from the others. They all took to the front of the march as we approached the first bank. Immediately, the windows were smashed, as they were with the next bank, and the next, only skipping, from what I saw, the bank of the Orient in Chinatown, and stopping short of citibank at the end of the march. One of the two very suspicious men I noticed earlier was one of the main window smashers, and while I did see some of the others in the masked black flag group join in, most of that groups' vandalism actually consisted of paint and the throwing of objects that stood in our way. I didn't see the second man in question smash anything at all, but rather, he put his energy into yelling out things to instigate the crowd into escalating the vandalism ("Let's go! Smash that shit!" etc.), and encourage the crowd to cheer when it happened. Just in time for video and photo being presented to the rest of the world.

This is the point when the crowd started turning against each other. An older gentleman I overheard speaking of the unions earlier was brawling with one of the masked men, and everyone was screaming. The aforementioned instigator informed everyone within earshot that Whole Foods claimed they would fire anyone that took the strike day off (a claim some say now is actually false) and everyone started marching towards the store. By the time we got to whole foods, it was total pandemonium.

Chairs, tables, paint, everything was flying through the air as some people tried to protest Whole Foods while also shielding it from the chaos. By the time we got to the University building, a brave man was blocking the door screaming "Peaceful Protest! This is my city, and I don't want to destroy it!" He cracked his knuckles, ready to take on an attack. Behind the doors were men in badges. After all of the police brutality, even unarmed men being murdered for the apparent crime of of class or skin color, I was now watching a black man shield cops from a protest. Insanity.

The black flag group began pointing out those attempting to stop them, chanting "The peace police must be stopped", and I was, personally, rather disgusted by the strategy of comparing peacefully pissed people to police which have acted out violently against peaceful protesters. By this time, we had come almost full circle back to where we started, to the Wells Fargo that I, along with other demonstrators, had shut down earlier without incident. An individual commenced to more smashing, and a man next to me burst into tears saying "This was supposed to be Non-Violent!" A female, unmasked and without a black flag, was following around the last of the vandals, and handed the upset man a flyer saying "But didn't you get this?", extending a sheet of paper. I looked down, and lo and behold, it was the same Pro-Violence pamphlet that people have been upset about all over interweb land. All of a sudden I realized I needed to be documenting what I was seeing with the camera I brought, something that hadn't crossed my mind in all the chaos. She was unmasked while handing these out, which says to me that she doesn't mind her face being associated with this flyer, so for now I can presume that it must be okay to display her photo here with my post. If she asks me to remove it, I most certainly will. The two men I was following had now vanished. It gets worse.

[Photo removed as requested; see comments]

Today I approached the internet nervous to see what the media would say about this. What do I see? Talk of the eeevil anarchists in our midst that are bringing down the movement, "not part of the 99%" some say, and my heartbreak deepens. I'd like to ask anyone reading this to get really honest with themselves about the labels they are throwing onto living, breathing people, and their own associations with what those words mean.

Now there is debate over whether property damage is "violence" or not, and I'd like to take a moment to say this with great conviction: The most important thing we need to do right now is examine these labels collectively before using them, and most of all, get clear, collectively, about the word "violence."

Our culture is rather violent, I think it's safe to say, as there is massive profit on human suffering all across the board. Men in uniforms with guns, threatening to kidnap (imprison) other humans while robbing them of their homes; That, I'd call violence. It's endless- we've allowed death and misery to those that cannot contribute to the wealth of a health care system which, it seems in many cases, hurts more than helps as a front for drug companies. It's sick (pun intended) from my perspective, as I've had several teeth pulled at homeless clinics, and even extracted one of my own wisdom teeth in lieu of proper care I couldn't get. My father worked in a factory in Compton for 35 years, so I've had a LOT of time to observe what's been happening to the bottom of the proverbial 99% barrel in this country. I remember people in my community shooting at choppers during the L.A. riots, so I've had a hell of a lot of time to think about violence too. I don't think that smashing objects should be put into the same category. I've broken dishes that belonged to my loved ones out of anger, and I know that these things can be cleaned up and fixed, as the Clean Up Occupy Oakland party today has shown. To anyone freaking out or anguished over some broken windows, I'd like to ask that you calm yourself and please bear with me here, because I'm about to say something that might sound totally f&%$ing crazy. Wait for it...

It's common knowledge that the most dangerous animal you will ever meet is a mother protecting her young. If you don't understand that, try approaching a grizzly bear cub in the forest and see what happens. My own cat attacked me once as a child when I attempted to touch her newborn kittens. Cops shooting unarmed men, and a window breaking are given the same label: "Violent." That means that someone attempting to rape your sister, for instance, can be labeled the same as the person whom uses physical force to stop that same rapist, should they get hurt in the process. Self defense and brutal attacks getting the same label is a problem. That means that a peaceful protester that falls under a violent attack with chemical weapons can also be called violent when, in desperation with this struggle, they decide to simply toss an empty bottle in the direction of law enforcement (whom won't be hurt by that in their robo cop style riot gear) Language is magical like that. Spellbound= bound by spelling. Anyone old enough to remember the red scare, and all the societal insanity that revolved around calling someone a commie in those days, knows what a label can do to a real person. That said, are you ready for my crazy opinion? Here it is:

Much like the mother grizzly bear, I think it's incredibly likely that some misguided individuals did what they thought was just out of love for those whom they identify with: the 99%. A patriotic soldier can feel something similar, and it's undeniable that America, and the entire planet, may be in the throes of a massive class war as I type this. Unfortunately, the end result of their actions might have "violent" consequences to the movement as a whole in the end, not only due to the negative press, and the resulting actions of law enforcement that needs these acts as an excuse to bring REAL violence like Scott Olson received, but also in the way that it instantly began to split the people up into those who are with the evil ooga booga anarchists, and those whom are not. Don't let anarchists become the new commie style scare. That's just stupid.

I don't identify with any political party specifically, as my personal philosophy is oh so simple. My personal position always comes down to my own eternal truth which is this: Love is The Law. I think our entire political system could potentially be corrupted beyond repair at this stage of the game, and could be scrapped for an entirely new way of conducting human society as a whole on this planet. I would like to see the rule, as we currently know it, to become obsolete so that The Law (as I've defined it here) can be returned. In fact, I think we most certainly *have* to do this if we don't want to go extinct, destroying the planet with ourselves. Some people say that makes me an anarchist, or an anarcho-primitivist. Black Bloc is not a group or political party. It's a tactic of using strategic protest methods in small organized groups within the whole. How this came to mean "smash everything", I'm not sure. I definitely understand the satisfaction that would result from smashing something belonging to the oppressor, but didn't take part because I can see how it cannot be productive in this situation. It's counter productive all across the board, most likely. A broken window doesn't hurt the racket that is wells fargo, just the movement that takes the blame. Now, you're not going to like this, but it gets worse. MUCH worse.

Copwatch participants have been working hard for a long time to expose harmful and illegal activity among those we pay to protect us. I don't believe that each individual working in law enforcement is to blame for grievances against their department in general; I think we also need to recognize that Oscar Grants' murderer, along with the others guilty of police brutality make them all look bad as they serve as slaves to a corrupt organization that is costing us a fortune. Why does the department demand that their employees have an IQ that is average or lower, but never above average? Copwatch recently released a video exposing two undercover infiltrators at Occupy Oakland that work for law enforcement. Other documentarians have exposed agent provocateurs at protests in Montebello (they admitted it!), and the most disturbing footage I've seen are in an excellent documentary called "Into the Fire", where these agents are seen causing a ruckus at the G20 summit in Toronto to serve the intentions of a militarized police force that acts ABOVE the law to squash voices of dissent exercising their right of freedom of speech. Unacceptable.

If such efforts are underway, let's turn the tables. If such plans exist to harm a peaceful message, why not refuse to be stupidly predictable in our handling of it, and instead, let it backfirein a way that benefits us all. It already started today as occupiers helped reverse some of yesterdays actions. I work for an environmental clean up crew called Playa Restoration, that makes sure there is NO TRACE LEFT BEHIND after a festival of 50,000 or so people, and we spend a month or more in a brutal desert in order to do so. As volunteers. We do it out of love for our community and the land. That said, I know it's possible for people to organize big action together. The police don't protect our safety oftentimes. Let's band together to do it ourselves. How many women in Oakland get attacked/raped every year? I don't know, but why not replace the endless anarchist argument with discussion about ways to band together and protect women from this which is DEFINITELY violence? In the face of schools being closed in favor of spending in ways we don't want, Occupiers are answering by attempting to create community libraries and education. A center for outreach for the homeless, foreclosed and vacant, has been reclaimed by occupiers for these means (while stating that they welcome the re-opening of the center for it's purpose.) I was there, at the reclaimed building last night. It was beautiful. Why not exert our energy in that direction? If the city chose to attack us in the name of "sanitation" rather than using our tax dollars to clean up the park, and if the money extorted from the public is going to be put into militarizing a police force against our will, then pardon my language, but I say fuck them. We can do it ourselves.

And, my final note: As nice as it is to discuss these things on the internet, the most important thing we can do is show up for the General Assemblies. When OPD attacked the small collection of people at Oakland Oscar Grant Plaza camp, the people responded by showing up in very large numbers to agree on a strike. Now the entire world is talking about this mass action. Typing is great- but first and foremost, we need to be out there, facing each other, and addressing more constructive efforts than finger pointing. If someone is willing to physically destroy a target and risk jail or worse for a cause they love that much, why not have a goddamn NON-violent discussion among everyone with the pretense of coming to a compromise that won't damage a movement? What if people within our community are being influenced by a force that serves to keep the people down with agent provocateur actions that have been documented- shouldn't we want to protect those people in our community?!? Last night, Oakland law enforcement, along with agents from departments across the state, were sent in fully armed in response the remaining crowd, some of which appeared to be random drunk people that happened across our celebration of what we'd accomplished. I don't know who broke into the coffee shop, but frankly it's hard to be concerned when armed agents are sent in by the state with their names and badge numbers CONCEALED. That is illegal, and in my humble opinion, an EMERGENCY topic that this entire nation needs to address IMMEDIATELY. Mainstream media reported some broken windows instead. If it's safe to assume that covert opposition are present, we surely have to agree that anything destructive to our goal, however well intentioned, must be kept seperate. Indeed, that puts us in the awkward position of struggling to protect the rights of agents in our midst that oppose us, but let's just suck it up and accept that job as ours. We need more jobs everyone keeps saying, so there you go. There is a LOT of work to be done in this country (for starters.) I've worked with a collective called Food Not Bombs in the past, which operates in an anarchist fashion despite a wide range of political views among its participants. I never witnessed violence— I witnessed mostly poverty stricken individuals working via cooperation rather than under a heirarchy to feed those even more poverty stricken than themselves. I think we need our own definitions for our words, so I haven't looked it up in a dictionary, but I'm pretty sure that's what an anarchist movement does: Work cooperatively, making the 1% obsolete.

Interview about the Occupy movement

2011-10-10T15:02:00.000-07:00

Devin Hunter of Pagan Newswire Collective conducted in email interview of me for an article about Pagans and the Occupy Wall Street movement. As is the way of things, only some of my comments fit into the finished article, so here I have the full text of my comments.

The Occupy Wall Street campaign has been launched to highlight the economic, health, and taxation variances between the ruling 1% of the American population and “the other 99%”. Do you feel that as a Bay Area citizen you have witnessed a distinct variation between the lower and middle class and the upper-class?

Living in San Francisco confronts one with juxtapositions of class in a way that one does not see as often in suburban America. In an ordinary day — or even an hour — walking around San Francisco one can rub shoulders with well-to-do professionals, hardworking poor immigrants, bohemians both rich and poor, dot-com millionaires, the impoverished underclass, service industry workers just scraping by, and even the stratospherically wealthy. For a while I was working in an office in the same building as Gump’s, a big store which sells beautiful, useless, inconceivably expensive tchotchkes to rich people, yet fifteen minutes’ walk could take me to the charity kitchen under Glide Memorial church in the Tenderloin. I suspect that a similar overlap between rich and poor in everyday life in New York City contributed to the Occupy Wall Street movement beginning there.

This all comes at a time when both the US and World economies are experiencing extreme fluctuations in stability, in your opinion how does this effect your own life as well as those within your immediate community?

I count myself lucky that I work as one of the skilled professionals relatively insulated from the recent shocks in the economy, but I still find these times frightening. Technocrats like me live on a shrinking ice floe, in danger of falling out of the charmed circle: you see it in our obsessions with our careers and our kids’ educations. In the Bay Area, I know a lot of left-leaning professionals who feel frustrated at our complicity in a machine we help to run but cannot seem to change because even we do not hold the real power.

In my greater community, the economic shift has had unmistakable effects. I know a lot of people facing very hard times with no end in sight. Solar Cross has had to set aside our financially ambitious community center project for now, and focus on more tactical projects, because the economy has made the necessary fund-raising impossible.

As a pagan community leader do you feel this is the beginning of the next “American Revolution?”

(I'm not sure I qualify as a “pagan community leader.” I think of myself as just an articulate guy who keeps heavy company.)

I feel the temptation to think of Occupy Wall Street in revolutionary terms, and believe that it has exciting implications if its momentum continues to build, but I hesitate to call it a harbinger of “revolution” just yet. If the Occupy movement proves as resilient as I hope, the next stage will take a form no one can predict. But we cannot yet say what, if any, lasting significance OWS will have. Significance on the scale of the original American Revolution remains a stretch, and much more than we can likely expect of this particular movement, but I hold out hope. The rhythm of American history includes a punctuating crisis once each human lifetime — the Revolution, the Civil War, the Depression/WWII era — and if the pattern holds, that time has come again, so perhaps Occupy Wall Street will prove to be a manifestation of great change brewing.

For the first week of protests media coverage of the events was slim to nonexistence. Reports of major media covering-up the protests by not providing them the appropriate coverage have been made. As a citizen how do you feel about the supposed media cover-up?

I would not call the early invisibility of Occupy Wall Street in news media a “cover-up,” exactly. Never attribute to malice what one can explain better with incompetence. The early hesitation by mainstream news institutions to cover OWS reflects an inability to fit it into the standard narratives they understand. As the growth of the movement has finally compelled attention, we see the media’s limited narratives in another form as they reach for their tropes of hippies and political demands and so forth and stumble trying to describe OWS on those terms. Mainstream American news media is, by definition, a mechanism of our social/political/economic order, which makes it unable to apprehend a movement like OWS which makes a radical critique of that order. The media’s inability to cover OWS properly is frustrating, but unsurprising; if they could tell the story of the fundamental systemic problems that we face, we wouldn’t have those problems the way we do in the first place, and wouldn’t need OWS.

On the first day of protests Comedian Roseanne Barr called for a combination of capitalism and socialism and a system not based on "bloated talk radio hosts and that goddamn Ayn Rand book.” In your own words do you feel that incorporating Socialistic policies into our Capitalistic government is a good thing or bad thing, please explain.

Market capitalism provides enormous benefits. It efficiently allocates resources, produces a cornucopia of goods, and fosters innovation. The abundance it produces sustains modern civilization. But market capitalism for all its undeniable strengths does a lousy job of other things that you want in society, like ensuring that the goods it produces get distributed to people fairly. If you regard prosperity for all as a goal of your society, as I do, then you cannot rely on market capitalism as the only organizing principle in the economy.

The term “socialism” gets overloaded and confused in the US, so I would rather talk about what Europeans call “social democracy”: a society which uses market capitalism to address the many problems it handles well but also uses government to mitigate its rough edges, ensuring that people get fair access to their share of society’s wealth. In the US, we have some elements of social democracy already, like public education and social security, but I believe that we can and should do much more.

To frame this in Pagan terms:

Hermes stands on top of Grand Central Terminal in New York City, cresting a sculpture entitled “The Glory of Commerce;” directly at his back lies the New York Stock Exchange, an institution whose history and spirit descends directly from the agora the Greeks held as sacred to Hermes. I honor Hermes and make an offering to him every day. But a wise Pagan knows that the gods’ purposes differ from our own, and you do not want to live a life of All Hermes All The Time any more that you want to live in Morrigan World or Skaldi World or any god’s domain exclusively. The Pagan sensibility, rightly, sees exclusive devotion to one god as neither desirable nor even truly possible, seeking balance in evoking each god in its time and directed to its proper purpose. So too with market capitalism, a force I respect but wish we had better balanced with its more egalitarian cousins.

The collective movement has proposed a list of four demands for the outcome of the protests which are— One, to protect the environment. Two, to care for the people. Three, to tax the rich. And four, to end the wars. How do you feel this relates to the ethical, spiritual, and economic values of pagans? How do you feel it relates to the Bay Area?

I believe that thinking in terms of conventional demands, even ones as broad as “protect the environment”, misrepresents the nature of the Occupy movement. At this stage at least, OWS offers a radical critique that comes prior to any specific policy solutions. In its rhetoric of “we are the 99%”, Occupy Wall Street says that we have developed a social and political order that does not serve 99% of us properly, that the wealthiest 1% control the system, that therefore that 1% have responsibility for the system, and that until we recognize and address this fundamental failure of equity and democracy we cannot meaningfully talk about more specific problems.

I believe that presuming Pagans to share a set of ethical, spiritual, and economic values which translate in to a specific kind of politics or political agenda misrepresents the diversity of the Pagan movement. Politically and culturally liberal Pagans like me tend to imagine that we represent the core of Pagan culture, but we do not, any more than politically and culturally conservative Christians can rightly claim to represent the core of Christianity. We must respect how Pagans span the full political spectrum, left, right, and otherwise.

Many argue that as Pagans universally call nature sacred, Pagans share a political commitment to environmentalism, but even that seemingly uncontroversial claim of Pagan unity casts our community too simply. Obviously many Pagans have deep ties to environmentalism, and I count myself among them, but that can mean very different things to different people. For example, many environmentalists, Pagan and otherwise, find nuclear power abhorrent, but I myself have come to favor nuclear power because the vital importance of reducing carbon emissions makes it worthwhile to get electricity by every emissions-free method possible. For example, I know a Pagan — not a suburbanite who casts circles in the backyard but someone living very close to nature, deeply committed to reducing his environmental impact — who is also one of the most vigorous global warming skeptics I know. Assuming that “Pagan” implies any particular politics misses the breadth of Pagan culture.

As a Practitioner of paganism, what do you feel as a culture pagans could be doing to support the effort — if at all? If you do not support the protests how could pagans help put an end to them?

I believe that Pagan diversity precludes a general Pagan political agenda, but I also believe that Pagan visibility is important. When Pagans speak and act either for or against the Occupy movement, if we identify ourselves as Pagans that will help to make Pagans visible as citizens.

That said, as both a vigorous supporter of the Occupy movement and a Pagan, I would urge Pagans, as I would urge anyone, to take a close look at the statements from Occupy Wall Street and seriously consider supporting both OWS and their local Occupy movement, as I hope and expect that many Pagans will share my enthusiasm.

On October 6th the ongoing movement moved to the streets of San Francisco which included a march from Mission to its base of encampment at 101 Market Street where is continues. Have you experienced the protests first hand? Do you intend to?

I have contributed supplies to both Occupy Wall Street and Occupy San Francisco, and have visited Occupy San Francisco a few times now, though I did not participate in the 6 October march. I expect to continue to vigorously support both, and I hope to spend significantly more time participating in discussions among Occupy San Francisco participants in the weeks to come.

Protesting and demonstration have been a large part of movements commonly associated with paganism such as Women's Rights, the Green and Environmental Movement, and Native rights. Do you feel that this movement is of spiritual significance to the pagan community and/or US population?

I believe that Occupy Wall Street, like many activist movements, reflects for many people a spiritual hunger that many Pagans would recognize. American bourgeois consumerism in itself leaves a vacuum of meaning and purpose in society and in individual life; at the level of society, the hunger to fill that void can bring people to social justice movements like OWS, while at the level of the personal that hunger brings people to spiritual practice, Pagan or otherwise.

Cornell West famously said, linking the spiritual and the political, “never forget that justice is what love looks like in public,” and I believe that a spiritual yearning ultimately motivates OWS.

How do you feel the political climate has changed since the beginning of these protests?

I confess that like many politically-aware people, I had fallen into a kind of despair in the last year; in the wake of the supposedly-transformative 2008 election, too little had changed, suggesting that the American political process could not admit, much less affect, the grip which the wealthiest 1% held over our society. The plutocrats had driven the country into a ditch, crashing the economy with terrible consequences for most of us, and yet they still prospered and had the instruments of government supporting and favoring them. It seemed that nothing could loose their grip or get us to even name what we see happening. I spoke dismissively of the possibility of a mass popular uprising confronting the situation, and I was wrong.

Occupy Wall Street has already done more to name and confront the systemic problems in our society than I had believed possible, so I cannot help but feel excited and optimistic about what comes next. I know that other people feel the same way, and I suspect that there are a lot of us.

What do you feel is the best possible outcome from these ongoing protests?

My greatest hope for Occupy Wall Street is that it permanently changes the way we think and talk about politics in America, that we routinely ask the fundamental question, “What is society for, if not to provide for the needs of all of our citizens? What can we do to accomplish that?” I hope that OWS unlocks the yearning for justice and equity which most Americans feel, turning it into effective action. If we can break the hold of wealth and power over our current politics, and make building a social and political order of justice and equity our new politics, the results would be truly revolutionary.

Declaration

2011-10-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street has issued their Declaration of the Occupation of New York City. The whole thing is worth reading, but I want to call attention to a segment of it.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power .... We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

That's followed by a list of specific grievances. Emphasis mine; I read that and thought bingo; if it sounds familiar to you, too, it should. The title of the statement is no accident. Here's the US Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

The Declaration of Independence, of course, follows with a list of grievances as well. Occupy Wall Street shows that they understand and respect American founding documents a whole lot better than the Tea Party does, for all their claims.

The conclusion of OWS's Declaration is interesting, too.

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

In other words: yes, this is connected to the Arab Spring, and if our leaders won't step up to encourage that global movement, then we will.

Nice work, Occupy Wall Street. Keep it up.

More on Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T00:25:00.000-07:00

That's a picture taken by Matt Harris of the spontaneous memorial to Steve Jobs in front of the Apple San Francisco store tonight.

I am moved by this. I am kin to the people who did this.

And yet earlier today, I invested hours and a big chunk of money into procuring and ferrying supplies for the Occupy San Francisco folks. The Occupy Wall Street movement is a protest of the unjust wealth—and more importantly, of the unjust power—of the wealthiest people in America. And make no mistake, Steve Jobs was one of those guys.

Let me underline that. I hesitated to say this today, not wanting to speak ill of the dead, but it's important to understand that an important but mostly-unhearalded part of Steve Jobs' business mojo was his understanding of manufacturing. It was the main focus of his attentions during the last few years before he was forced out of Apple in the mid-80s, and his attention to manufacturing is integral to Apple's current ability to field devices that deliver more for the money than competitors. So when it came out that conditions in Chinese iPhone factories were so horrific that workers were driven to suicide, there was no doubt in my mind that while he likely didn't know the specifics of the story before they came out in public, he did know fundamentally the kind of work situation at his suppliers. When the story came to light, Jobs didn't rush to change what Apple was doing but rather actively defended what Apple had done. I am very clear on that. I am very clear that though this may be the most horrifying skulduggery Apple has perpetrated at Jobs' direction, it's not the only example by a long shot.

How can I reconcile this with the urge to be among those building an altar to a fallen CEO?

Let me offer something I have said about Apple under Steve Jobs for years. Apple is a vast machine for making exactly the tools that Steve Jobs wants for himself, and in order to pay for the exorbitant cost of making them it sells copies of Steve's toys to all the rest of us.

People in the industry chuckle when I say that because it describes an important part of how Apple works, but I say it now in order to confess that there's an important way in which my quip gets it exactly wrong. Just yesterday I pointed to an article by blind blogger Austin Seraphin saying that the iPhone is “the greatest thing to happen to the blind for a very long time, possibly ever.” Apple has aggressively worked on accessibility for users who are blind or deaf or have other limitations, an effort that makes no “business sense” but surely makes human sense if you read that or any of the countless other articles about what a boon the iPhone has been to the blind. Today I see Susie Bright saying that her pioneering magazine of lesbian liberation, On Our Backs, was not just the first magazine created on the Mac. It was only possible to publish it because of the Mac. Both of these stories, and countless others that people are telling today, tell how Apple products empowered and delighted them in ways that are impossible to imagine without Steve Jobs. Speaking for myself, the profession which I practice and love could not exist in the form I enjoy today without the Macintosh and its success and the influence it has had, so in an important way I owe the life I love to Steve Jobs.

That is what Apple is for. Yes, Apple makes money, but that is instrumental to its true purpose. That was what Jobs' life was about. Yes, Jobs made a mountain of money himself and had his legendary ego gratified, but those are byproducts of his mission of making beautiful things that deliver power and pleasure to people. There are more important things, yes, but that's pretty darned good. It's why people are laying flowers at the door to his store, and why I am with them in spirit.

Bringing it back to Occupy Wall Street, consider:

Is such a memorial to any other CEO even conceivable?

Is it all that hard to see why it isn't?

I'd leave it at that but there's just one more thing.

I dig this picture of the original Macintosh development team blogged in a fascinating remembrance by John Siracusa.

Notice that there are a lot of women in that picture? That it's mostly White people, but not entirely? Both in an era when tech skewed even more White and male than it does now. And notice that there's a fella holding his baby right in front there?

This sure looks to me like a shaggy bunch of goddamned hippies who have cleaned up for Picture Day. Which is no surprise: Jobs himself was a goddamned hippie who once lived on an ashram and dropped acid and did his major corporate announcements dressed in a black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers and referenced Gandhi and Bucky Fuller in advertisements and thought that finally adding the Beatles to iTunes was an announcement on a par with launching a whole new product line. Jobs was a hippie who built a hippie organization.

I submit that it's no coïncidence that this hippie organization is now arguably the most successful company in the world. Because while we shouldn't pretend that Apple isn't ruthless, isn't exploitive of its workers, isn't deeply concerned with bean counting, and all that, just doing those things doesn't explain Apple's success, either in making money or in inspiring love. Making great products and services that serve people is what did it. And that, I submit, comes of taking a bunch of smart oddballs and giving them a mandate to do something great. That comes out of a culture, not just in the sense of “corporate culture” but in the sense of culture at large.

Goodbye Steve

2011-10-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs

1955-2011

Titan of industry

Look at his face at 4:00:

He's not smiling for the applause. He's smiling because he got it done.

The loss of him would have been news if had he only created the personal computer industry. Or if he had only committed to turning the Xerox Star into the Macintosh, “the first computer good enough to be worth criticizing.” Or if he had only founded the first major computer animation film studio. Or if he had only rescued Apple from the brink of disintegration. Or if he had only led the Macintosh renaissance of OS X and the iMac et cetera. Or had only rescued the music industry from their own stupidity. Or had only captained the creation of either the iPhone or the iPad.

Having done all of those is hard to conceive, even knowing it to have happened. A life well lived.

Let's memorialize him by making it unexceptional that a corporation should make beautiful products that empower people and bring them joy, shall we?

Marxist imagery

2011-09-29T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've had an eye out for a thorough discussion of the history of the Marxist cartoon image of the gluttonous, well-dressed capitalist for a while, and haven't had any luck finding one. I know that it dates back at least to the 1920s. Here's a good example of the type from that era:

Here he turns up in the first Soviet animated film:

(There's a good description of both of these images over at Raymond Owen's film blog, where I found them.)

It's a surprisingly resilient image. In American popular culture it has become deracinated from its Marxist roots in figures like Scrooge McDuck, the Batman villain The Penguin, and The Monopoly Guy.

My hunger to get at the history of the image arises from seeing this country music video a few years back, Montgomery Gentry's “You Do Your Thing:”

It's basically a propaganda film for Republican talking points, and half of it is built out of old Marxist cartoon imagery. It's not only deracinated from its communist roots, in a bizarre reversal we are offered presumptively left-leaning cosmopolites as the gluttonous, well-dressed villains with contempt for the common people.

This comes to mind because at the Occupy Wall Street protest, there was an amazing life-imitates-propaganda moment as champagne-swilling Wall Street WASPs looked down over the protest.

Is there a chance that American lefties can reclaim this old image?

Update: The Gothamist has uncovered the Facebook event invite to the “Anti Hippy Protester Champagne Toast.” Only check it out if you'd like to feel a little rage.

Indiana Jones was right

2011-09-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

A little something I made for a friend a while back.

So true.

Disenfranchised

2011-08-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

David “The Wire” Simon, from an interview with Bill Moyers.

These really are the excess people in America. Our economy doesn’t need them—we don’t need 10 or 15 percent of our population. And certainly the ones who are undereducated, who have been ill-served by the inner-city school system, who have been unprepared for the technocracy of the modern economy, we pretend to need them. We pretend to educate the kids. We pretend that we’re actually including them in the American ideal, but we’re not. And they’re not foolish. They get it.

William Wall connects the dots in the UK riots.

We are told variously that there is no political context, no political motive, no political enemy – it is ‘criminality pure and simple’. This is because violence against the police (and therefore the state) is not considered in itself to be political. It is because the envy of, the desire for and the acquisition of luxury goods such as plasma TVs and jewellery is not considered political. The political class and the commentariat cannot conceive of themselves as enemies of the people who live in areas like Tottenham where Tory cuts are closing youth centres, which suffer massive unemployment even while the City is booming, and which are the objects of legislation designed to disadvantage them even further.

Approval ratings

2011-08-08T17:21:00.000-07:00

Think about how poisoned the word “liberal” is in American political discourse.

Now think about this: almost 1 in 6 Americans disapprove of President Obama's job performance because he is not liberal enough. And the number is climbing.

If it was a snake, it woulda bit me

2011-07-31T09:31:00.000-07:00

Matt Zoller Seitz perfectly explains something I didn't even realize should have an explanation.

Hollywood is a dream factory run mostly by and for raging narcissists with power and money. Its mass-produced dreams are overseen by people who want to be constantly reassured that they're talented, sexy, charismatic warrior-poet visionaries, and that you can absorb such invaluable knowledge by being around them that the abuse they heap on you is totally worth it. That's why the preferred dramatic configuration of ensemble TV shows is the ragtag band of eccentric professionals (read as: creative types), led by a well-dressed, middle-aged boss who reflexively needles and insults people and throws temper tantrums and sometimes puts on an expensive jacket and sunglasses, hops in his expensive car or on his expensive motorcycle, and takes off for parts unknown without warning, forcing underlings to wonder where the hell he is and talk about him nonstop until he reappears unannounced and provides them with the final piece of whatever puzzle they were trying to solve in his absence. These shows exist to kiss the asses of people who approve shows.

As always, the structure of an institution is reflected in what it produces. Of course.

Not that this will blunt my enjoyment of House, M. D..

Terrorism and compassion

2011-07-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

A Norwegian movingly responds to the terrorist attack in in his country.

He wanted to save the world from the muslim threat. He was afraid. Fear, fear, sickening fear permeates his writing. It is clever. He is well-read. It has all the good, rational ways of explaining a point of view. He is afraid. Nothing in his writing says it clearly.
....
I am proud of the fact that we arrested this murderer alive. How would that have played out in USA? Even in this situation, norwegian police was able to catch him alive. It is horrible to have to talk about this. If a sniper bullet could have saved a single life more, of course that would have been immensely much better. But somehow, he was stopped without being killed, and if that happened without risking any more childen's lives, yes, that is a good thing.
My bodily reaction was a sudden wish to have him torn apart by horses. But that is my feelings. Fear. Rage. Disgust. This rage for vengeance is not what makes us human. It is the victory of abstract thought, of faith, that makes us human. The faith that any human can be something different tomorrow than they are today. To him, maybe killing children gave him a physical reaction. For his own sake, I hope he is a complete psychopath, if such a thing exists. If he really did this just to bring attention to his thoughts, and he will now have to face it like a human being ...

I agree with him that the only thing that can truly defeat terrorism is compassion. Violence just won't do the job. A few were wise enough to see this from the beginning, but we remain all too few.

The Dark Knight Concludes

2011-07-23T07:57:00.000-07:00

Like any good geek, I have a lot of love for Christopher Nolan's Batman films, and I eagerly look forward to the third and final installment of the series, The Dark Knight Rises.

Someday I mean to write something lengthy about Nolan's Batman as a response to Frank Miller's two hugely successful Batman graphic novels, Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns. Anyone familiar with Miller's books can see their influence on Nolan's movies, but I think a lot of folks miss how Nolan offers a commentary which does not look kindly upon his predecessor. Maybe this just reflects me projecting, but I suspect that Nolan has caught on to Miller's fascism and wants to critique it.

So I believe that Alyssa Rosenberg has it right in her reflection that Nolan might put Bruce Wayne in a wheelchair by the end of his movie, and that he should.

If Batman Begins was about the virulence of criminality, and The Dark Knight was about the limits of government institutions in the face of unspeakable evil, it would make sense for The Dark Knight Rises to be about the fragility of the superhero enterprise as a whole. Batman may be able to stop a small number of very dangerous criminals and terrorists. And society may be able to accommodate his violations of rules—such as bans on electronic surveillance—because he’s one man, and because he isn’t broadly challenging norms. But if Gotham can’t or won’t change its institutions in the name of building a safer, less corrupt city, and instead relies on one man with a limited license to break the rules, then the city is awfully vulnerable to that man’s destruction.
....
His Batman has been a fragile, limited bulwark against chaos, occasionally surprised by a flash of human goodness. If Nolan breaks Batman, he’ll provide a sharp rebuke to his fellow superhero storytellers. And he’d be the first among them to tell a truly complete story, to make a cohesive argument about superheroism, in the three movies allotted to him.

I particularly like her point about the advantages of telling one big story with the trilogy. No less an expert than the greatest English-language comics writer of all time, Alan Moore, tried to tell the DC Comics editors this very thing twenty-five years ago:

As I mentioned in my introduction to Frank's Dark Knight, one of the things that prevents superhero stories from ever attaining the status of true modern myths or legends is that they are open ended. An essential quality of a legend is that the events in it are clearly defined in time; Robin Hood is driven to become an outlaw by the injustices of King John and his minions. That is his origin. He meets Little John, Friar Tuck and all the rest and forms the merry men. He wins the tournament in disguise, he falls in love with Maid Marian and thwarts the Sheriff of Nottingham. That is his career, including love interest, Major Villains and the formation of a superhero group that he is part of. He lives to see the return of Good King Richard and is finally killed by a woman, firing a last arrow to mark the place where he shall be buried. That is his resolution--you can apply the same paradigm to King Arthur, Davy Crockett or Sherlock Holmes with equal success. You cannot apply it to most comic book characters because, in order to meet the commercial demands of a continuing series, they can never have a resolution. Indeed, they find it difficult to embrace any of the changes in life that the passage of time brings about for these very same reasons, making them finally less than fully human as well as falling far short of true myth.
The reasons this all came up in the Dark Knight intro was that I felt that Frank had managed to fulfill that requirement in terms of Superman and Batman, giving us an image which, while perhaps not of their actual deaths, showed up how they were at their endings, in their final years.

I cannot imagine that Nolan has not encountered this argument.

Let me add another speculation to Rosenberg's. I notice that Nolan makes a point of showing that Batman requires more than just Bruce Wayne in a cape. We can see his Batman as a conspiracy of tough old guys. Without Gotham cop Jim Gordon, technical whiz Lucius Fox, and right-hand man Alfred Pennyworth, Batman cannot function. Plus, Nolan's Bruce Wayne regards Batman in a very instrumental way; he sees Batman as a tool for fixing Gotham City.

Contrast that with Frank Miller's Batman. While working on Dark Knight Returns, Miller said:

Bruce Wayne is Batman's host body. Bruce Wayne died when his parents got blown away. He really loves fighting crime.

Nolan gives us a completely different Bruce Wayne. He does not want the job but he feels compelled to do it. Unlike Miller's Batman, who cannot retire, Nolan's Wayne wants to. Maybe a crippled Bruce Wayne will look at the world without Batman and decide he likes it better that way. Maybe the tough old guys can do the job at least as well without him. Maybe Nolan won't just have Bruce Wayne relieved to hang up the cape ... maybe he will make us feel the same way.

The Secret Origin of Captain America

2011-07-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

An extra thought in honor of the Captain America movie: John Seavey's wonderful speculation that Steve Rogers must have been a red diaper baby.

Captain America

2011-07-21T16:32:00.000-07:00

So being a geek, I've enjoyed the embarrassment of riches in superhero movies this summer. Thor was good fun and Asgard looked great. Green Lantern was kind of hokey and soulless, but impressed the heck out of my nephew. X-Men: First Class was, despite a few false notes, terrific.

But the one I was excited about opens tomorrow.

A few years back, in the pages of Marvel comics, Captain America took an assassin's bullet and died. (Don't fret; being a comic book superhero, he eventually got better.) A friend who isn't geeky—but knows that I am—asked if I could shed a little light on what it signified, but I couldn't think of anything to say. Cap has never been a character I've cared much about. Save for his memorable guest appearance in Daredevil's “Born Again” storyline, as written by the unstoppable Frank Miller, I've not felt much interest in him.

The one idea I do have about Captain America didn't do me much good in that situation, but the nifty trailer for the movie sold me completely, because it demonstrated that the filmmakers obviously have been thinking the same thing.

If you care about that sort of thing, read on ...

Captain America has a terrific arch-nemesis. Possibly the best.

Those are strong words, because the quality of your opposite number is a big deal in the superhero business. Many comics fans would say that I'm wrong about Captain America having the best foe, since the Joker obviously takes the prize. Surely Joker is an all-time great: he's the common sentiment Clowns Are Scary, made into supervillain form. Plus he plays well opposite Batman, which is important. Thanks to Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight film, you don't have to be a comics geek to know about this symbiotic relationship between superhero and archnemesis; when Joker says to Batman “you complete me” it's scary and funny, but most of all it's uncannily true, and you can see how it cuts both ways. Batman ain't Batman without the Joker to fight, and vice versa.

While we're on the subject, Batman also benefits from a deep bench of second string enemies, including supervillainous versions of a Sexy Catburglar, Earth First!, not just one but two Insane Psychologists, and many more, all contributing to Batman's general superheroic coolness. Similarly, Superman has a big rogues gallery helping to make him super, and his arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor, is great fun because he's basically Supervillain Thomas Edison.

A good enough villain can elevate a mediocre superhero into the big leagues. Nobody cared about Daredevil until Frank Miller gave him Kingpin, The Capo of All The Mafia In The World, as his nemesis, then topped that with Elektra: Your Psycho Ex Girlfriend Has Become The Deadliest Ninja In The World. (Miller is both a terrific writer and a sexist creep; Elektra remains an excellent character, nonetheless.) Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four is made much more interesting by having as his nemesis Victor von Doom, whose story is “I have lived out every damned trope in the entire Gothic literary tradition, we were best friends in college, and I have conquered an entire Eastern European country as the first step in my plan to kill you.” Superhero fans reading this may want to argue that Galactus, who is sort of Supervillain Jehovah, is Reed's greatest foe, but I think we have to reserve him as nemesis for the Silver Surfer ....

Point being, to be a superhero, you should have a cool supervillain to foil.

So who is this arch-nemesis for Captain America, who beats out the Joker, Lex Luthor, Galactus, Doctor Doom, and all the rest?

Comics fans are probably rolling their eyes reading this, because Captain America's nemesis is generally accepted to be a guy called the Red Skull, who is your basic evil megalomanic with endless cannon fodder minions and one plan after another to conquer the world. You can see him in the trailer, if you know to look. The Skull is pretty cool, but he's not in the very top tier. But I submit that Red Skull is just a stand-in for Captain America's real nemesis: Adolf Hitler.

And I don't know about you, but Lex Luthor, Darth Vader, and the kid who took my lunch money in 5^th Grade can all get in line; in my fantasy life, there's nobody I'd rather punch in the face.

The people who made this film obviously know that. So count me in.

Politics

2011-07-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

Timothy Burke, in the middle of struggling with why we should even talk about politics at all, says a bunch of things I think:

I think individuals, institutions, communities don’t always or even often just defend their particular self-interest. I don’t think they often accurately understand or clearly express their interests, any more than I believe human psychology or agency is well-described by the sketch version known as homo economicus. I think political agency, whether expressed narrowly in the drafting of policy or broadly in the mobilization of resources and constituencies, frequently leads to unanticipated or surprising consequences, some unexpectedly good for almost everyone and others terrifyingly destructive even to the agents who initiated a particular course of action. I think it’s intellectually possible and morally desirable to understand people unlike yourself, even people whose aspirations and worldview are genuinely antagonistic to your own. I think totalizing ideologies and totalizing social philosophies are intrinsically ill-suited to explain the human past or set a course for the human future. I think language isn’t just a framing device or an instrumental apparatus for the production of consciousness and subjectivity. I think every imagined alternative to liberalism and modernity ends up reinstating both of them under the table as well as using both of them to generate complaints about their shortcomings.

Yeah, pretty much.

Yes, Minister

2011-07-11T09:47:00.001-07:00

Yes, Minister is one of the funniest, cleverest television shows ever made. It's also a work of political propaganda.

To espouse the ideals behind public choice theory, Sir Anthony Jay began writing Yes Minister. Once you understand the philosophy behind it, it becomes impossible to view the show in any other way. The public servants, as exemplified by Sir Humphrey Appleby all work to thwart the government where it tries to break down the barriers preventing social progress. But even though the politicians express a desire to help the people, they ultimately end up only serving their own interests as well. The only real difference between Humphrey and Hacker is that Humphrey is at one with his selfish nature, where Hacker cannot admit it to himself. This lack of self-awareness allows Humphrey to easily manipulate him. Most of Hacker’s noble plans are shelved because Humphrey either shows or engineers it such that to pursue the noble policy would damage Hacker’s own self interest.

I first learned this through the amazing Adam Curtis' long documentary The Trap, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

Federal deficit

2011-07-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

Conservatives consistently talk about reducing government spending. Lately we've been hearing a lot of talk from them about the evils of deficit spending. Fundamentally I agree; we cannot rely on running a deficit year after year without screwing up the economy.

(Actually, economists I respect argue that if the economy is growing, modest deficits are safe and even healthy; I won't quibble. And I vigorously believe in the Keynesian argument that temporary large deficits are desirable in deep demand-failure recessions like we're in right now. But my point is that you cannot run big deficits year after year indefinitely.)

But in understanding what's going on with this conservative rhetoric, one must look at both the past and the future.

The past: Throughout Bush's administration Republicans held the House. Four out of eight years they held the Senate as well, and the other four years the Senate was exactly split between the parties. Republicans were steering the bus. They turned the balanced budget from the end of the Clinton administration into rising deficits. And no, we did not hear conservatives talking about how the deficit was bad.

Now that we have a Democrat in the White House, conservatives are talking a lot about deficits. This pattern arouses my skepticism.

The future: I was inspired to write this post because a conservative was telling me that conservative commentators promise to hold Republicans' feet to the fire about the deficit ... which they want to see addressed only through spending cuts, not by raising taxes.

This tells us that the deficit itself is not the priority. If it were, tax increases would be worth discussing. Combine this with conservatives' silence about the deficit during the Bush administration and I conclude that conservatives are insincere with their concern about the deficit. The point is cutting spending, the deficit is just rhetorical support for that project.

Well okay, conservatives are unmistakably consistent in talking about cutting spending. But most conservatives and practically all Republican politicians are evasive about what spending they would cut. Saying they want to eliminate “waste” and the Department of Education isn't enough. What will it take?

Federal spending consists of four roughly-equal major chunks:

Military
Social Security
Medicare/Medicaid (and miscellaneous other health insurance stuff)
Everything else (embassies and the FBI and maintaining the interstate highway system and NASA and farm subsidies and federal prisons and keeping the lights on in Washington DC and the immigration and naturalization service and the CIA and on and on ....)

The deficit is currently about 30% of total expenditures. So you have to cut two of those in half, and then some, or eliminate one of those entirely and sweat something else down significantly. If you're sincere and serious about cutting spending then you have to say which of those it's gonna be.

But conservative commentators and Republican politicians don't do that, because most Americans are in favour of Items 1, 2, and 3, and if you cut significantly into Item 4 you can count on hitting something they care about there, too.

So: Shenanigans, I say. Shenanigans.

I'm sincere and serious, so here's my plan:

Fix the weak-demand recession with as much deficit-funded stimulus spending as Paul Krugman says we need. This is a temporary measure, so it should focusing as much as possible on one-time infrastructure investments.
Cut the military in half.
Raise taxes on income over $100k to fill the gap.
Switch our broken health insurance system to Medicare For Everyone so we start working on long-term cost controls. (No, this doesn't have to cost more money; most rich countries with universal government health insurance spend no more per capita than we already do.)

The Jerusalem of our imagination

2011-07-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

David Shulman at the New York Review of Books blog offers hope that the Arab Spring is inspiring Arab Palestinians.

A Mediterranean variant of Gandhian-style mass protest has by now taken root among Palestinian communities in several parts of the West Bank: Ma’asara, Nabi Saleh, Dir Kadis, Na’alin, and Bil’in, to mention only a few. There is by now a clear awareness among many that non-violent resistance is far more likely to be effective against the Israeli occupation than violence; and these days the humane principles of Gandhi and Martin Luther King are frequently and clearly articulated in Arabic by grass-roots Palestinian leaders.
An eloquent statement of the philosophy and method was delivered on June 5 by Bassem al-Tamimi, one of the leaders of the Nabi Saleh protests, at his trial at an Israeli military court for organizing demonstrations. Al-Tamimi’s text will, I am sure, someday be taught in schools, maybe even in Israel; it is remarkably reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi’s famous statement to a now forgotten British judge in Ahmedabad in 1922, when the judge sentenced him to jail for six years.
Non-violent resistance is also the official policy of the Palestinian government in Ramallah.

He isn't fooling about the statement from Bassem al-Tamimi. It's good stuff.

I organized these peaceful demonstrations in order to defend our land and our people. I do not know if my actions violate your Occupation laws. As far as I am concerned, these laws do not apply to me and are devoid of meaning. Having been enacted by Occupation authorities, I reject them and cannot recognize their validity.

Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws which lack any legitimacy; laws that are enacted by authorities that I have not elected and do not represent me. I am accused of organizing peaceful civil demonstrations that have no military aspects and are legal under international law.
....
Regardless of how just or unjust this ruling will be, and despite all your racist and inhumane practices and Occupation, we will continue to believe in peace, justice and human values. We will still raise our children to love; love the land and the people without discrimination of race, religion or ethnicity; embodying thus the message of the Messenger of Peace, Jesus Christ, who urged us to “love our enemy.”

The example of the Arab Spring presents a great opportunity to break the tragic deadlock in Israel and Palestine. May we, for once, miss the opportunity to miss the opportunity.

Independence Day

2011-07-04T07:52:00.001-07:00

Today is Independence Day in the United States.

Independence Day is the High Holy Day of American political identity. If you think about it, the Fourth of July is a strange choice of date. Consider the French equivalent, Bastille Day, which commemorates the storming of the Bastille and thus the event which demonstrated that the French monarchy was over. By similar reasoning, we should be celebrating when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown on 19 October, the battle of Lexington & Concord on 19 April, or (my favorite, with my soft spot for lefty activism) the Boston Tea Party on 13 December.

But we don't. We celebrate the day that a bunch of guys signed a piece of paper.

I've posted before about how the American veneration of documents in our political culture reflects our Enlightenment conception of the nation as a human creation, composed of ideas, rather than any essential volkish link from country to nation. Nowhere do we see this more strongly than in our choice of the Fourth of July, the day men signed the Declaration of Independence. The nation was born not when people used force of arms to secure the nation, either for the first time or the last time. Rather the nation was born when the idea of the nation was first named clearly.

It's easy to forget what a rhetorical achievement the Declaration really is. The world of 1776 was a world of kings, and finding a way to think and talk about a political order without kings was very, very hard.

Here's David Hume working to name a moral theory for equality, taking pains to say that there's nothing special about a king.

Whatever actually happens is comprehended in the general plan or intention of Providence; nor has the greatest and most lawful prince any more reason, upon that account, to plead a peculiar sacredness or inviolable authority, than an inferior magistrate, or even an usurper, or even a robber and a pirate.

Here's John Locke trying to talk about individual human rights, taking pains to say that this makes sense if you think about it carefully.

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

Now here's Jefferson summing it up in the Declaration, asserting that these things are obvious givens.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

There you go. There's the fundamental principles of human rights, democracy, state legitimacy, and revolutionary action, rolled up in two hundred and three words.

I'd like to say that you couldn't improve it by changing a single one of those words. It's very, very close. But—forgive me getting feminist for a moment—those two uses of the word “Men” really stick out. I'm prepared to forgive Jefferson that one; he was a man of his time. He knew that the principles he describes meant that America was engaged in a terrible evil in the form of slavery. Check out his rough draft of the Declaration in which this is the longest complaint against the King of England.

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

So I believe that Jefferson understood the radical implications of the idea that all people are equal, but didn't think to fit it into the language.

I gave you the best part, but hey, you really ought to take a few minutes in honor of the day and read the whole thing — it's really good stuff.

Bonus posts:

Me on Hollywood movie stars and liberal patriotism—plus those movie stars reading the Declaration

Brad DeLong and Don Herzog on Jefferson, rights, and Nature's God

Hilzoy on Abstract Words, Too Noble To Neglect

Fredrick Douglass on What is the 4^th of July to a Slave?

Midrash

2011-06-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

Yes.

The only way to cultivate organic symbols is midrash. As a discourse, midrash is completely different from scientific discourse. [...] Scientific analysis strives to reveal the conceptual world of the creators of symbols; midrash tends to ignore the conceptual world of these symbol-creators. Scientific analysis sees the symbol as a means to reach the past; midrash sees it as a way to reach the future. Scientific discourse aspires to be objective; midrashic discourse is intentionally subjective. Midrashic discourse takes symbols out of context; scientific discourse strives to place symbols in their contexts.
....
Children do not like to be spoken to in the analytic mode of discourse. They are eager for midrash of organic symbols. At a very young age, they discover that the world is round, but their inner world stays pre-Copernican, and angels climb the ladders of their world and slide down slides into their sandboxes.

Identity politics

2011-06-22T23:55:00.000-07:00

Lady Gaga: “Essentialized conceptions of gender, sexuality, and other identity categories compel a celebration of diversity. Also, at Haus of Gaga we're bored with Matthew Barney videos and have started watching a lot of Kenneth Anger and Ken Russell instead.”

Weird Al: “Your Ladyship, if anyone is a demonstration that gender, sexuality, and other identity categories are performative, it's you. Also, don't go all highbrow, you're ripping off Madonna's act more than anybody else's, and I started doing that before you were born.”

Advantage: Weird Al.

On the behalf of all Generation X cultural theory nerds, I'd like to offer our apologies to the Millennials. We tried really hard to sort this identity stuff out in the ’80s and ’90s, but it's harder than it looks. And I'm afraid it's not getting any easier; now we have the transgender liberation movement trying to make both arguments at the same time ...

Lifestyle advertising

2011-06-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this clever little trifle today. It's a takeoff on Ice Cube's “It Was A Good Day,” depicting a good day as a young tech startup employee in San Francisco. I recommend you watch it. It's cute.

It filled me with disgust.

The romanticized vision it offers of this character's life ... or, I should say pointedly, lifestyle ... is part of the waters I swim in. I meet folks all the time who want to believe in this romantic image, want to live it, want to think they are living it now.

I myself am living something like it. And I believe in the embodied life, the urban life of simple pleasures and bonhomie and all that. I believe in it fervently, like I believe in democracy and feminism and good design. I believe that making The Good Life happen is a technological, personal, social, political, even spiritual victory in a struggle with a world that too often conspires against it. No small thing.

I know I'm overthinking this, but I felt that the video makes that profound little victory somehow small, just the sum of its pleasures. Less than the sum of its pleasures, with the implication that small pleasures are not only important, but the only thing. And the video is actually — in a weird recursive loop of self-reference — a San Francisco startup advertising their product. It's lifestyle advertising, selling both the product as a marker of the lifestyle, and the lifestyle itself as an object of desire. And the video represents the victory of the transformation of the rakish San Francisco of my youth — the transformation that began with the first dot-com wave in ’99 — away from countercultural and toward being merely hip. And the video deracinates the Ice Cube song “It Was A Good Day” that has more than a bit of political context.

I'm not too serious to enjoy trifling celebrations of The Good Life. I actually think the product advertised is quite a good one, made by a good company. I don't wish for some kind of unchanging San Francisco, trapped in amber. I'm in favour of playful, artful remixing of culture. I'm not radically opposed to any of these things I'm complaining about.

But still. It's smug. It irked me.

Sorry. I'm being a cranky middle-aged man today. Haters gotta hate. I guess I'm a hater.

X-Men: First Class

2011-06-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

X-Men: First Class is elaborately plotted, smart, and melodramatic. It's full of in-jokes, sexy ladies in absurd costumes, and symbolic subtext. It plays clever games with the continuity established in the other X-films, and opens up opportunities for endless sequelæ. It ends with sock-o action and anguish.

In short, it's even truer to the spirit of the Claremont X-Men comics I grew up on than Bryan Singer's two marvelous X-films.

There's a lot to like. McAvoy and Fassbender are terrific as Xavier and Erik, both individually and playing off of one another; it's a tall order to play characters who are going to age into Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, and they deliver the goods. As villain Sebastian Shaw, Kevin Bacon is even better; he's as terrifyingly convincing a psychopath as Hopkins' Lecter. There are a number of other good performances as well, including some pleasant surprise appearances by great character actors like Michael Ironside, and Nicholas Hoult as an anxious young Hank McCoy. The production design is marvelous, with great little winks toward the world of early James Bond movies. The movie delivers good superheroics — incredibly it even sells Banshee's power of flying by yelling really loud, which seems goofy even in the comics — with nifty special effects and the characters using their distinctive powers intelligently. The movie is smart and fun and a lot of the characterization is rich.

That said, it has a few serious flaws. There are patches in the middle where it bogs down with Too Many Mutants; my non-comic-book-fan companion fell out of the movie at that point, and never quite found her way back in. Surrounded by good performances, January Jones' Emma Frost stands out as, well, looking great in '60s hair. The uncanny blankness of her Betty Draper in Mad Men is apparently the only note she can hit; the computer-generated diamond version of her is a better actor. The evocation of '60s sexism, which could have been witty, is undercut by the sexism of the movie itself. Among other things, having established that movie Mystique walks around blue and nude, and having included Emma Frost as a character, you'd think there was more than enough womens' skin showing, but no we have see every female character in her lingerie at some point while the men get all the good lines. There's racism to go with the sexism; all of our central characters are White ... though there is one Black guy in the movie. Just guess how things work out for him. I try not to let that sort of thing get under my skin too much, but it is especially disturbing given the Civil Rights Era subtext of X-Men in general and the choice of the early '60s as the setting for this story.

Still, First Class is a much, much better superhero movie than I was expecting, and suggests that the series will recover from the hugely disappointing X-Men: Last Stand. Joe Bob says check it out.

Magick, reason, and science

2011-06-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

This, in a nutshell, is how I reconcile magickal practice and the understanding of reality we get from the natural sciences.

I take Uncle Al's maxim “The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion” to mean that magick is to one's personal, subjective experience of one's life as science is to the physical universe. Your life is the material you're working with in magick.

Obviously your subjective experience is profoundly conditioned by your encounter with the material cosmos. What you see is shaped by what's in your head, yes. But what you're looking at, outside your head, also has a big effect. (At least, it does if you're sane.)

Science organizes the application of reason to the physical universe through the use of meticulous experimentation and observation within controlled conditions, confirming its models of the world through reproducible results. These rigorous standards produce High Quality Truth. Let me say that again. Science produces High Quality Truth. If you are wise, you will not fuck with it.

Magick organizes the application of reason to your life through the use of meticulous experimentation and observation ... but in your life you cannot have controlled conditions, and you cannot get neatly reproducible results. In studying your life, it is impossible to use the full rigorous standards of science. But you can still apply reason and experiment to get very useful results.

Science produces models of how the physical universe works. Models are regarded as strong to the degree that they predict what the universe does, using the simplest explanation of the widest range of phenomena. Again, this marvelously rigorous standard gives us extremely reliable models. These models tell us that at the scale we live in the cosmos has crisp, mechanical rules for causality in which the operations of the mind do not directly affect what the cosmos does.

Yeah, yeah, quantum mechanics, I know. QM does not apply at human scales. Do not kid yourself with some What The Bleep bullshit about how QM proves that the universe is just craaaazy. It does not. That is fucking with the High Quality Truth of science, and I warned you about that. The world of people and teacups and cheeseburgers that we live in is Newton's clockwork automaton. But don't worry, it has plenty of room for magick.

Magick produces models of how your life works. Consider two types of models that can describe the effects that you get: Consciousness and Spookiness. In the Consciousness model, you understand a magickal operation as having altered the processes of your mind, resulting in changes in behavior and perception that produce the effects that you get. In the Spookiness model, you understand a magickal operation as having connected to spooky patterns in the cosmos (gods! angels! demons! egregores!) which use spooky means to reshape the cosmos, bringing the effect to you.

Both models provide explanations of the results you get from magickal practice. Early in your magickal practice the Consciousness model seems tidy and straightforward — “after the ritual for A New Job, I started talking to people about A New Job more, started preparing for it, started looking for it, so it's no surprise that I was able to bring myself A New Job when I bumped into it in the form of Jane at that cocktail party” — while the Spooky model seems elaborate and tortured and, frankly, a little goofy. This is comfortingly consistent with Newton's clockwork universe that we know about from science; you can see all the material, causal connections at work. But as your magical practice progresses, the Consciousness explanations you can come up with for the magickal effects you get become increasingly elaborate and tortured ... while the Spooky explanations become increasingly tidy and straightforward.

Models should be regarded as strong to the degree that they predict what your life does, using the simplest explanation of the widest range of phenomena.

Both explanations will always continue to apply. You will never get magickal results that outright conflict with a Consciousness model consistent with the scientific understanding of the material world. But your life is inherently a great big irreproducible result, with plenty of room for the improbable. Looking at your life, performing magickal experiments, seeking the simplest explanation, things can get very, very Spooky.

SlutWalk

2011-06-10T16:19:00.000-07:00

I just succumbed to the temptation to respond to someone who said this:

I do not want anyone to assume this is anything to do with trying to excuse the actions of the perpetrator.
What I want to talk about though is that I think we should be able to acknowledge that people should try to not put themselves in bad positions. Lets be realistic. The world is not a perfect place, in fact very far from it. Should we be working to make it a better place? Absolutely. But in the mean time we also have to live in the world as it is.
....
What I am saying is that the “slut walk” is absolutely right to be trying to change the culture, but I think it got started for the wrong reasons. I think the police were absolutely right to suggest that people make decisions to improve their own safety in the imperfect terrible world that we have to live in.

Damn. Duty calls. I responded with this:

There's a meaningful distinction between blaming victims and talking about what behavior is wise in an imperfect world. Surely there is stuff that would be wrong to say to someone who had just been victimized that is entirely appropriate to say during a safety training.

Let's look at the incident that sparked the SlutWalk movement. It was a safety training, but it wasn't even an appropriate comment in that venue.

Constable Michael Sanguinetti made the stunning remark during a meeting about safety at Toronto's York University.
While a more senior officer was talking, Mr. Sanguinetti interrupted and reportedly said: ‘You know, I think we’re beating around the bush here. I’ve been told I’m not supposed to say this, however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.’

So what's wrong with this picture?

There's the important context that we live in a culture where there is a lot of victim-blaming going around. So one should step carefully to avoid reïnforcing that pattern. Constable Sanguinetti didn't make any effort at that; in fact, he alluded to having been warned about it and dismissed that warning.

If you look at his comment, he implies that dressing differently is reliable protection against being victimized. He's not talking about improving your odds; he's implying that it's a way to be safe. Which we all know isn't true. You may protest that I'm reading the comment too closely, and that the constable meant to say only that dressing provocatively increases the risk of being raped. If we grant him that meaning — which in his position as an expert offering his expertise he should have made more clearly — then he's still wrong because there is no reliable evidence that how a woman is dressed significantly affects her risk of being raped. (Look it up.) So even if we set aside the cultural politics, this was a very irresponsible statement.

And he didn't say “dressed provocatively,” did he? He said “dressing like sluts.” Sluts. Not a neutral term, a derogatory term for women who are “too willing” to have sex. Using the term “slut” at all is using a slur; using it linked to the threat of sexual violence is even worse.

So no, the police were not absolutely right.

Lasagna sauce

2011-06-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

I used to go for cocktails at a restaurant bar near my old apartment, where they sold “soup shots,” which were exactly what they sounded like: soup served in shot glasses. It sounds like a goofy restaurant gimmick. It was a goofy restaurant gimmick. But they were also really good. Eventually, I figured something out about them which explained to me something about the old TV series Moonlighting.

I was a teenager when Moonlighting was first shown, and found it exhilarating. I saw a few episodes recently and it doesn't look as good now — we forget how clusmy TV was before our current Golden Age — but at the time it was one of the gutsiest, craftiest, most inventive things ever broadcast. The show was ostensibly about a detective agency, but the episode's mystery was almost incidental to the the point of the show, which was much more about banter between the characters and the show's generally surreal tone. Usually the mystery only took center stage in bookends at the beginning and end of each episode: a prologue at the beginning which often excluded the show's the recurring characters in favour of the guest stars who inhabited the mystery, then an encounter when the main characters solved the mystery at the end. Often the prologue had an intense thriller / noir tone quite different from the rest of the show's comedic voice. I'd think that the mystery, while it was onstage, was wonderfully gripping and intense, and wish for a different show which delivered more of that.

But I eventually realized that the tone of the mystery sequence was actually unsustainable: so intense that it would be laughable if you tried to maintain it for an hour of TV. It only worked because it came in such a small dose.

Like the soup shots.

I figured out the soup shots because I do the same thing when I make lasagna. If you use your normal spaghetti sauce recipe to make the tomato sauce for lasagna, it doesn't work right. You have to overspice the sauce, or else it will get drowned out by the other lasagna ingredients. Like the thriller portion of Moonlighting.

It seems to me that this is a design pattern useful for a lot of things.

Affluence

2011-06-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

Via Rick “Nixonland” Perlstein, I learn of a disconcerting article about the demographics of affluence in Ad Age, seen through the creepy lens of appetite for luxury goods.

Before the downturn, luxury marketers embraced the concept of “mass affluence.” Buoyed by fatter stock portfolios and exploding equity in real estate — and encouraged by easy credit — a larger portion of the population, mainly in the Aspiring tier, considered itself wealthy enough to buy luxury goods. But in 2011, these consumers no longer “feel rich,” and they are not particularly likely to graduate into affluence later on (and thus are not a particularly promising future market for luxury brands to seed). In 2011, those in the Aspiring tier firmly self-identify as middle class.

This article points to something that I suspect is going on in our current process of increasing income inequality. Lefties like me talk a lot about the stagnant wages and weakening security of the lower 80% or so, and the stratospheric wealth of the upper 1%, but I see a great deal of weirdness in the in-between of technocratic professionals where I live.

I'm sure that this is partly a symptom of living in left-ish San Francisco, but among folks like me I'm seeing an awareness that the unforgiving American economy is treating us relatively well combined with several kinds of anxiety. First, there's class anxiety that we directly experience in our working lives how we are the courtiers hard at work running the country for the benefit of wealthy oligarchs. Second, there's political anxiety that the majority of the American people rightly should see us as complicit in running the system that screws them. Third, there's the economic anxiety that our economic class lives on a slippery and shrinking ice floe, and it's easy to fall off of it; you see this particularly in the sense of barely contained panic parents have about their children's education.

There's also a weird frustration with what my relatively good income will and won't buy. I think I'm not alone in this. I'm conscious that not worrying about money day-to-day is a profound luxury, and I enjoy a number of small luxuries as well — more restaurant meals than are really responsible, a few nice pairs of shoes, some spiffy consumer electronics. But I cannot afford a fancy car or take elaborate vacations or enjoy many of the other trappings of “wealth.” I don't have as much money saved as I'd like. And I don't feel confident that my economic fortunes are secure in the long run.

I do indulge in one very big luxury, which is not living in the great American suburban wasteland. This not only makes my housing breathtakingly expensive, it also nickels-and-dimes me with every carrot and bar of soap. Suburban living is actually more resource-intensive than urban living, but we've made it cheaper through a whole range of public policies. It is decidedly weird that a smaller living space, relying on public transit, and encountering hungry, miserable people asking for spare change every day is an expensive luxury.

That last point is exceptionally frustrating. Being acutely aware of the systems of social injustice that I participate in, even benefit from, I make an effort to contribute to charities and such. But another one of the things which I want but just cannot buy with my relative wealth is social justice.

Manhattan Projects

2011-05-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

In a couple of recent conversations, I've heard folks invoke the Manhattan Project as a demonstration that given a vigorous enough government commitment, scientists can be directed to secretly invent the seemingly impossible. Unfortunately, that's just not true.

I think a lot of people imagine that one sunny day in 1942 the US government came to the scientific community and said, “we need a city-busting bomb, and we'll give you resources to do it,” and the scientists quietly whipped up the Bomb to order. But that is the reverse of the way it happened.

Physicists had been designing atom bombs on blackboards as a “thought experiment” since the 1930s. Seeing the theoretical possibility of the Bomb wasn't hard to figure out. It was the scientists who came to the government, aware of the potential to make the Bomb and horrified by the prospect that the Germans might develop it leaving the Allies at their mercy. It wasn't the conceptual difficulty of the Bomb which necessitated the mammoth effort of the Manhattan Project. Yes, having a large team of scientists did help do it more quickly, and resulted in the team delivering two different successful Bomb designs. But it was the materials problem of separating the uranium isotopes that required the magnitude of the Manhattan Project. Scientific discovery and technological invention do scale with investment, but only to a degree.

And as a secret effort, the Manhattan Project may be unique. Obviously we still have secret military research in the US, and totalitarian nations can conduct big secret projects, but it's difficult to imagine keeping something as big as the Manhattan Project under wraps again. Scientists tend to be garrulous and iconoclastic; only the uniquely galvanizing threat of Hitler with the Bomb could have kept so many of them both engaged and careful to keep the secret.

Judeo-Christian

2011-05-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

A few months back, I snarked to a friend that few things say “culturally conservative American Protestant hegemony with an ‘I'm not an antisemite’ fig leaf” like using the word “Judeo-Christian.”

But I just learned from an article in Tablet magazine that it has complicated, interesting origins.

When and how did America start to think of itself as a Judeo-Christian country, rather than what it historically has been, a Protestant one? That is the question Kevin M. Schultz asks in Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise (Oxford), and he gives a very concrete answer. The change came about in the 1930s and 1940s, thanks primarily to the concerted effort of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, a lobbying and educational group founded in 1927.
....
The NCCJ had its origins as a reaction to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, with its anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic hatreds, and took new urgency from the rise of Nazism in 1930s Europe. Its most popular programs were the so-called Tolerance Trios, in which a priest, minister, and rabbi would tour the country conducting public discussions.

This was a vigorous propaganda effort.

the marching band formed into a Star of David and played a rousing version of “Ein Keloheinu,” before reforming as a cross and playing “Onward Christian Soldiers”

The past is another country.

Limbaugh

2011-05-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

Conor Friedersdorf, in an article on Rush Limbaugh's comments on Osama Bin Laden's death, delivers some of the best analysis of Limbaugh's technique that I've ever seen.

Osama bin Laden's death caused a bunch of curiosity seekers to tune into Rush Limbaugh's radio program. Would the man who said he wanted President Obama to fail congratulate him on this success?
....
His problem was that he couldn't come out Monday morning swinging. Sure, some of his listeners would stick by him. But the Limbaugh audience is largely made up of nationalistic War on Terror hawks who wanted bin Laden's head on a pike as much as anyone. Opening with a direct attack on Obama after an event that brought out the jingoism in NPR listeners wasn't going to play.

Longtime Limbaugh watchers won't be surprised by his ingenious if cowardly solution.
....
In order to fully grasp his mastery of the strategically ambiguous monologue, let's go back to the line I flagged before: “Last night I was as proud as I have been of the U.S. military in I don't know how long.” Earnest praise for the troops? Sure seems like it on first listen. Mocking allusion to Michelle Obama's controversial "proud of my country for the first time" remark? Also plausible! Especially in context. Certainly some of his listeners heard it that way and chuckled. But also totally deniable if necessary! The important thing to realize is that there is no right answer, other than whatever happens to be more convenient for Limbaugh at a particular moment in time.

For pathological narcissists like Limbaugh, there is no truth of what they really mean when they say things; it's rhetorical strategies all the way down.

Noir magick

2011-04-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

James Ellroy is to noir fiction what Herman Melville is to fishing stories, and the word is that his life is not so different from his stories.

I've just started reading his memoir The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women and it contains this striking passage.

The overall text buttressed religious lore I believed in then and believe in today.
There's a world we can't see. It exists separately and concurrently with the real world. You enter this world by the offering of prayer and incantation. You live in this world wholly within your mind. You dispael the real world through mental discipline. You rebuff the real world through your enforced mental will. Your interior world will give you what you want and what you need to survive.
I believed it then. I believe it now. My many years in the dark have confirmed it as a primary article of faith. I was nine then. I'm 62 now. The real world has frequently intruded on my spells in the dark.

I thought some of my occultist readers might recognize the sentiment.

Iggy

2011-04-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

Curse you, internet! Ordinarily I would never have known about Iggy Pop's surreal, mortifying performance on American Idol. But there was no escape.

Understand: “surreal, mortifying performance” is part of the point of Iggy, right? A friend insists that she's never seen any other performer project as much energy from the stage as he does, and I know better than to argue with that. Say what you will about the American Idol nightmare, Iggy is unmistakably still working it, which is more than you can say for most graying punks.

Checking the “Official” Iggy Pop Shirtless Aging Timeline you can see that Iggy retained his louche glamour dancing shirtless into a much more advanced age than anyone could reasonably expect, especially considering the punishing demands upon his own health of his lifestyle. I used to say that he looked a kind of good-yet-scary that you can only look through sustained regular drug abuse. But then it appears that sometime in 2004 he decided that the only way to maintain his vigor was to allow himself to be bitten by a zombie.

Footnotes from a boozy afternoon

2011-04-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

House of Games was the first film David Mamet directed, featuring Joe Mantegna as a con artist. My favourite line in the film is when he says, “It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine.” Some of the best management advice I've ever heard.

Howard Rheingold's Wired magazine on the Amish and their debate over whether they would adopt cellphones, Look Who's Talking, is an instructive meditation on the cultural impact of cellphone technology that was years ahead of its time.

Ray Kurzweil is the leading prophet of the Singularity, the idea that within our lifetimes technology will accelerate to transform our world beyond what we can imagine. Ninety percent of the time I think he's full of shit. I hope I'm wrong.

James Howard Kunstler is more likely right that Peak Oil is going to make advanced industrial civilization impossible, knocking us back to mostly nineteenth-century level technologies, though this won't be an entirely bad thing since it will destroy the suburbs, the creation of which he calls “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” His mini-website Eyesore of the Month chronicles the horrors of our built environment; I have a favourite entry, of course.

James McMurtry sings the political song “Can't Make It Here Anymore” about the breakdown of American society, though my favourite song of his is, of course, the wicked redneck saga “Chocktaw Bingo.”

Sex at Dawn is a book about sex and human biology which is astonishing both because of what it says and because it dips into evolutionary psychology without turning into bullshit.

The Infamous Brad has an essay Not That the Actual Forbidden Knowledge is as Interesting as That There Is Forbidden Knowledge which explains Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. You may not want to know.

The Starship and the Canoe is a fascinating book about the physicist Freeman Dyson and his son George. There's an anecdote in there that I call the ninety second intelligence test. I won't tell you what it is, but if you meet me in person I'll perform it on you.

And I think that Digby is the most important political commentator in America.

Naming convention

2011-03-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

Who
What
I don't know
Why
Because
Tomorrow
Today
Don't give a darn

The Homosexual Agenda

2011-03-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

You've heard of the “homosexual agenda,” right?

On this week's episode of Glee, we got a proper kiss between two gay characters. Broadcast television has been giving us gay characters for a while, now, but while they talk a good game, they are uncannily chaste when they're actually on stage. So this was no small thing, and occasioned a little visitation from the shade of Vito Russo when I saw it.

But gay characters kissing on television isn't the homosexual agenda. This is:

Inconceivable when I was their age.

OK, there's lots left to do to make a just and loving world. But seeing that makes me feel, at least for a moment, like we really can get it all done.

What are games about?

2011-03-16T09:37:00.000-07:00

I don't have answers, but I like the questions these games ask.

Brenda Brathwaite's Train

John Tynes' Power Kill

FPS Mod on XKCD (as always, hover your cursor over the image to get the ALT text)

Jason Rohrer's Passage

Ken Levine on BioShock

Bradley Manning

2011-03-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

President Obama says he accepts the Pentagon's assurances that Bradley Manning's treatment in custody is right and appropriate:

No it isn't. Manning, who has yet to stand trial, has been locked up in a cruel insanity machine. He has been accused of helping leak documents that compromised not the security of our people but the dignity of our leaders.

I'll say it again: I was ready for Obama to disappoint me. I was not ready for him to horrify me.

2011-03-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

In reference to this clip of Senator Paul complaining about his toilet.

Men's reproductive rights

2011-03-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

This morning I got into a Twitter discussion with feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte about her recent article mocking Men's Rights Activists, and came smack up against the limits of what can be discussed in 140 character snippets, so this very long post is an attempt to outline my thinking on a touchy subject.

There was a lot to like about her article. I agree wholeheartedly that the way to address most MRAs' concerns is more feminism. And MRAs are eminently mockable misogynists. But I confessed to her that I was disappointed that she didn't grapple with some of the more meaningful and tricky questions that MRAs raise, offering feminist alternatives to their horrific solutions.

The key example in my mind is that MRAs commonly propose that fathers be given strong legal rights to control a partner's decision to have an abortion. “She shouldn't be able to abort my baby without my consent,” and “I should be able to make her abort a fetus if I don't want that baby.”

This invasion of women making decisions about their own bodies is of a piece with countless patriarchal invasions of womens’ autonomy; it casts women as empty vessels for the exercise of men's wills. I take it as beyond debate that women's right to control their own bodies and destinies requires that women have total autonomous discretion over abortion. A woman must not be compelled to take an unwanted pregnancy to term. A woman must not be compelled to have an abortion. That MRAs reach for these solutions reflects their misogynist contempt for women.

But I submit that MRAs are not speaking only from a desire to control women; they also have a motivating concern that I think deserves a thoughtful response. Thanks to women's access to abortion, men have categorically less control over their ~~reproductive~~ parenting destiny and responsibility than women do. [Change added after the original post.]

Now it's important to note that access to abortion isn't all it should be. It's a serious problem, and for the record, I'm someone who has contributed money to NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and I mailed my first coathanger to a politician during the Reagan administration. I understand that women's control over their reproductive destiny is really only true of some women. But let's talk about those cases, which are reasonably common.

If Alice and Bob are unmarried lovers and Alice gets pregnant, she now can make a decision. If Alice does not want a child, she can abort the pregnancy without consulting Bob, however ardently he may want a child to care for. On the other hand, if she decides to bring the pregnancy to term, he is legally responsible for eighteen years of financial support, however unwilling he may be. This requirement is very strong, as demonstrated by extraordinary legal cases like a woman who fished the condom out of the wastebasket to impregnate herself.

Recall also that men have fewer birth control options than women do. There's condoms, sterilization, and abstinence. The first has a host of disadvantages; for the purposes of this discussion, most important among them their imperfect reliability. The second is permanent, and young men often have difficulty getting access to it even if they choose it. And I'll have a word about the last, beyond its obvious disadvantage, in a bit.

I have found that few women have given any real thought to the fact that men can be subject to a decision with such big consequences completely outside their control. But I assure you that most men have given this a great deal of thought. That feminists — who have a central preöccupation with reproductive rights — should ignore it is puzzling. I believe that having MRAs and creepy Cathy Young be the only folks who prepared to address this nudges otherwise reasonable men toward sympathy with MRAs and antipathy toward feminism; I really wish we had a feminist take that wasn't just dismissive.

MRAs' answer to addressing this imbalance — giving men control over the abortion decision — is unacceptable. But I submit that it is not the only possible response. I imagine a reform something like this:

A pregnant woman has an absolute right to have an abortion or not. No one else may affect this decision.
If a married woman gets pregnant, her husband is responsible for the support of the child if she brings it to term. That's part of the package when you get married.
If an unmarried man gets a woman pregnant, he has a short span of time — say, 48 hours — after he learns of the pregnancy in which to decide if he's going to take responsibility for the child if she brings the pregnancy to term. If he decides he won't, he can never make a claim of any parental rights afterward. If he decides he will, he cannot change his mind afterward either. If he doesn't make an explicit decision, it defaults to him having taken responsibility. [Bold text added after original post; see Update 3 below.]
If an unmarried woman does not inform her partner that she has gotten pregnant, he is presumptively not financially responsible for a resulting child until she informs him. If he is informed about the pregnancy after it's too late for abortion to be a meaningful option — including years after a child's birth — he has the same choice about whether to accept the package of parental responsibilities and rights, with a longer window of time in which to make the decision.

I'm not necessarily attached to this particular solution, but it's the best that I can come up with, and has a number of virtues that I do consider important. It's not equal — given the material realities, it cannot be — but it's more fairly unequal. It protects women's right to control their bodies. It ensures that neither men nor women are compelled to childrearing responsibility they didn't choose. The short decision-making window for men ensures that a woman in this situation makes a decision about what to do that's meaningfully informed. I think any serious response to this question needs to address those virtues, or justify why they're not important.

There are several responses to this kind of proposal that I find particularly galling when they come from feminists:

He should have thought of that before he had sex; he has to take responsibility for a possible baby if he engages in sex

The penny drops about abstinence. That argument isn't funny when antis say that to argue that women shouldn't be allowed to have abortions. I don't see why it should be kosher when it's applied to men; in fact I think this drifts into sexist rhetorical territory that assumes that sex is something men take from women.

You're arguing for men having more ways to walk away from supporting their children

Point taken; we have a lot of men doing that without strong enough enforcement to stop it. I agree that we need to do a categorically better job there. My proposal presumes and supports that, and I think it might help make the case that men walking out on their children are breaking a commitment they made explicitly.

This argument also implies that a pregnant woman's fetus is a “child,” and it should be obvious why that is a bad idea.

Patriarchy visits injustice against women, not men, so who cares?

Patriarchy certainly visits much more injustice against women. But I submit that this is an injustice against men. I don't believe that the reality of male privilege means that anything unjust we do against men is therefore OK.

Maybe this is unfair, but men are going to have to wait in line; there are bigger injustices to correct first

Feminists are familiar with this argument. “Your issues will have to wait until we've corrected the greater injustices of racism first.” Or the class system. Or homophobia. Or whatever. It's nonsense; we should be addressing all injustices; indeed, fighting any injustice helps address other injustices, rather than hurts.

Ms Marcotte, I hope you're reading this, because I love a lot of your work. And I hope you have a serious response; if my thinking is screwy, here, I'd like to have it laid out for me.

Update

Over at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte has a long post largely concerned with this question and our dialogue a about it on Twitter. (I am @miniver, she is @AmandaMarcotte.) Unhappily, I believe that she has significantly misrepresented my comments in both places.

I'll try to resist the temptation to respond point-by-point to what she says there. I think I actually predicted much of it in my original post above, and responded briefly to some key points. But the centerpiece of her argument is a clarifying description of the legal argument for abortion rights, which she says is grounded in women's bodily autonomy.

Reproductive rights are derived from the right to bodily autonomy. Becoming pregnant or impregnating another person is a big deal, so your right to exercise bodily autonomy over these aspects of your body is a fundamental right.
....
Abortion rights are about the right to terminate a pregnancy, not to say no to parenthood.
....
If abortion rights were actually about getting a “window” to say no to parenthood, then women who give birth without knowing they were pregnant would be offered this option, but they’re not.

Legally, abortion rights may not be “about” getting to say no to parenthood, but I think it's very clear that the urgent importance of abortion rights is about this very question.

A woman risking her life with a coathanger in 1955 (or 2005) isn't doing so to protect some abstract concept of her bodily autonomy. She's likely doing it out of an awareness that if she births a child she will not be able to care for it properly, and she takes that responsibility seriously enough that she'll risk her life rather than take on a responsibility she cannot meet. As an aside, I have long found it profoundly offensive that so many anti-choicers frame this as “selfishess” when it is exactly the opposite.

My fundamental argument is that, given our level of medical technology, we should think of “reproductive rights” not simply as the right to control over your reproductive organs, but the right to control over your reproductive destiny. This is not some fanciful new idea I've invented to rationalize what I want; it's as old as Margaret Sanger.

But there is a fundamental limitation in the control over their reproductive destiny that men have, because women's bodies are so much more profoundly involved in the process of reproduction that their right to bodily autonomy trumps any right men might claim. I don't know how I could have been more clear that I take that with the gravest seriousness.

Marcotte's post counters the claim by some unnamed MRAs to a right to “paper abortion,” allowing them to shirk responsibility for born children at will. She lays out the objections to this quite well, and I agree with her that this straw argument that I didn't make is awful. That's why my proposal tries to tread carefully, and creates a very tight limitation on how and when men may declaim responsibility for their offspring. It's an attempt to balance situation which is inherently imbalanced by the mechanics of reproduction. Maybe my proposal is still a lousy idea. But it isn't the lousy idea she attributes to me.

One last thing: Marcotte refers to me as

a guy claiming to be sympathetic to feminism freaking out because men don’t have “reproductive rights”

I'm not freaking out. I'm raising the point. As she says, there are a lot of other things more urgent. But it's nonetheless a real issue, and I confess that I am frustrated that it's so difficult to get to the point where we're actually talking about it.

And I confess that this “claiming” business gets right up my nose. I invite readers skeptical that I'm not at least sympathetic to feminism to check out the contents of the feminism label on this blog (which applies to more stuff than my blog is configured to show you at that link; disappointingly, my attempt at a definition of feminism doesn't make the cut) and the tweet I addressed to Ms Marcotte about Victoria Woodhull just yesterday.

Update 2

The Twitter conversation between Marcotte and me remains lively, and at the time I write this it has evolved to a point that better addresses my proposal here ... including some interesting criticisms of the legal implications of what I've said. When time permits, I'll find a way to transcribe the tweetstream into a relatively readable form here, and comment more thoughtfully than the Twitter medium permits.

Update 3

I just added a snippet of text clarifying that a father who refuses responsibility for his offspring must do so when he learns of the pregnancy, rather than after the child is born. Evidently some MRAs advocate something like the latter meaning, calling that a “paper abortion,” an idea so stupid and mortifying that it simply hadn't occurred to me as a possible reading of what I'd described. It certainly explains why Marcotte seemed so intent on a seemingly willful misunderstanding of what I'd suggested.

Update 4

Discussion here and elsewhere has made it clear to me that my original proposal was embarassingly irresponsible in failing to talk explicitly about how we should provide for children's needs. Taken in itself, giving unwilling fathers the legal power to evade responsibility for the costs of childrearing harms children. That's an unacceptable bottom line.

But if we accept that the state has a compelling interest in ensuring that children's needs are supported—and I believe that it does—then we should ask not only whether compelling unwilling fathers to provide that support is better than leaving those children unsupported; we should ask whether unwilling fathers are the best solution altogether. And framed that way, I find it impossible to claim that it is. Depending on unwilling fathers is, in fact, a sloppy and ineffective solution for ensuring children's welfare. Setting aside the questions of enforcement and father's willingness, imagining that all unwilling fathers nonetheless provide what support they can, the vagaries of fathers' fortunes will too often leave children wanting.

I was wrong to ignore the problem of children's material needs in my proposal, but to say “let fathers take care of it” and leave it at that is dismissive of the same fundamental problem. We need a better solution that provides for all children, and it's hard for me to imagine such a solution which doesn't involve a categorically greater level of government investment than we have now. That is a necessary precondition for the kind of policy I proposed above.

Supporting reproductive freedom for men isn't the most important reason to make a government commitment to ensuring that children's needs are provided for, but it is a nice side benefit.

Budget

2011-03-02T09:48:00.000-08:00

TomDispatch offers an expansive accounting of the military budget that tallies it at $1.2 Trillion/year. I'm not sure if I buy those figures, as I've not looked at them closely yet, but I'm posting the link here so I don't lose it.

Coördinate systems

2011-02-13T18:15:00.000-08:00

Cartesian bears can be found in temperate climates closer to the equator, where longitude lines can be treated as approximately parallel. Further north, as this approximation begins to introduce significant errors, polar bears have the significant advantage of using much simpler trigonometric terms.

The speech it's not too late for Obama to make

2011-02-10T14:35:00.000-08:00

Good evening to the American people, the people of Egypt, and the people of the world.

Hosni Mubarak's government in Egypt has long been a valued ally of the United States. On the world stage, a nation must often respect and work with governments one does not always agree with. That is not just a callous pragmatim. It reflects a humble awareness that it is right and necessary for a people to chart their own course, without undue interference from their neighbors. And in the spirit of that respect, I have hesitated to speak against the Egyptian government.

But that was a grave mistake, and I will correct that mistake now. Because more important than loyalty to governments who have been our allies is loyalty to the principle of democracy which is the bedrock of our nation. And so I cannot ignore the dedication, the commitment, and most of all the courage which the Egyptian people have shown in demanding a government which truly represents them.

It was this commitment to the principle of democracy that led the American people to support the invasion of Iraq. We believed that we might liberate that country from a brutal despot, and birth a democracy. But it is not so simple, as we have seen vividly demonstrated the years since that invasion. Though I remain hopeful that the Iraqi people will build a vibrant, democratic nation, their future remains compromised by the scars of war. The United States remains committed by both our will and our duty to help bring Iraq to the future it deserves, but America should not try again to grant democracy to a people at the point of an American sword.

It is far better for a people to claim democracy for themselves than to try to build it in the wake of another nation's intervention. We should know that, having created our own nation in rebellion against the greatest colonial power of its time.

Better for a people to claim democracy for themselves, and best for them to do so without raising a gun at all. There are those who will say that to stand up against an oppressor without shedding their blood is too idealistic. Despots' grip on power is too great, they say. Only military force can break their grip.

But we have seen it happen in Eastern Europe in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Empire. We have seen it when India stood up for independence. And we have seen the power of nonviolence right here in these United States in our own Civil Rights Movement.

The United States simply cannot stand behind a tyrant who refuses when his nation's people call for him to step down. Nor can we oppose a nonviolent democratic movement like that we have seen in Egypt. To do so would be to break our covenant with the Founders of our own nation.

So tonight I say to the people of Egypt: the people of the United States stand with you. Tonight I say to Hosni Mubarak, who can hold no legitimacy with the free people of the world, the government of the United States is no longer your ally.

I say to the people of the world: the United States stands with every nonviolent movement for democracy in the world, today and tomorrow, wherever it may arise.

I say to the world's tyrants: the United States may meet with you in diplomacy and trade, but we will never stand with you against your people. Where democratic movements arise, we will remember what America stands for.

I urge the American people to join me in praying for an Egypt liberated without bloodshed. I urge the Egyptian people to accept an offered American hand of friendship. And I urge the people of the world who yearn for democracy to stand up with the courage of your Egyptian brothers and sisters.

Thank you, and good night.

2011-02-03T11:53:00.001-08:00

Via Ben Jervey at Good magazine.

Protest

2011-01-28T15:52:00.000-08:00

Cairo yesterday:

Washington DC 1967:

Dr Martin Luther King, Jr

2011-01-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

Really. Take a few minutes. I think it's important ...

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

Go read it right now. It will only take five minutes of your time. With no exaggeration, I think it's your duty as an American. Yeah, these days we can celebrate it seeming almost unremarkable to have a Black President of the United States, but reading it you cannot help but realize that we have a lot of work left to do.

And while you're at it, take a little more time and read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I know you did it back in school. It's worth doing again.

And if you really want extra credit, go read what he said on the last full day of his life.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you ...

True Hollywood story

2010-12-16T08:08:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across an old interview with Gary Wolf, the author of the original novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? My favourite little bit.

I can say that Bugs has a tough agent. He and Mickey had to appear on screen for the exact same amount of time, they had to be in every scene together, and they had to have exactly the same number of words of dialog.

Why am I not surprised?

Bertie Wooster, Batman

2010-12-15T10:31:00.000-08:00

Alfred Pennyworth has so much in common with Jeeves.

“Enough talk about that, Jeeves. I think I’ve made it quite clear that the cape represents my bat-wings, for I am a child of the night, and so forth.”
“Could not some other form of abstraction suffice, sir?”
“Well, without the wings, I’m hardly a bat, am I? I’m sort of a black badger.”
“I understand badgers can be quite nasty in a pinch.”
“Yes, but it’s not like a great roaring badger came smashing through my window at Brinkley, is it? It was a bat. That’s an omen, Jeeves. Can’t mess about with omens, that’s bad luck.”

PasswordCard

2010-12-13T11:11:00.000-08:00

Via @acrylicist, I learn about PasswordCard, a cunning little web utility that helps with the problem of remembering lots of strong unique passwords. Frustratingly, I find it almost useful. But I have some ideas for how to make it so that it would be a great solution for me, and I think a lot of other people.

PasswordCard generates a unique batch of random alphanumeric characters for you, arranged in a grid:

The idea is that you keep your PasswordCard with you, and then any time you need a password you use this proceedure, described on the PasswordCard website:

Pick a direction. You don't have to go from left to right to read your passwords, you can go from right to left, up or down, or even diagonally. It's probably a good idea to pick one direction though, even if you use your PasswordCard for multiple passwords.

Pick a password length. Eight is pretty secure and usually acceptable. Again, it's a good idea to pick one length.

Pick a colour and a symbol for each password. You can use one password for all your sites, but that still wouldn't be very safe. It's a good idea to at least have different passwords for very important sites, such as Internet banking sites.

So if you use 8-character passwords and read to right-to-left, and you remember that your Facebook password is “green diamond”, then you know that your Facebook password is r8tzkE5H.

It's a very clever idea, but I have a problem with it. You need to remember the color and symbol for each password you have. If you're like me, you have a lot of passwords; I would not feel confident that I will remember the mnemonic for every password I create.

But with a slight change to the design of the card, that's easy to fix:

With the grid organized this way, you can have the name of the thing for which you need a password act as the mnemonic that tells you where on the card to start. So let's say you do the first letter of the name of the site from the top list of columns, and the second letter of the name of the site from the side list of rows; that makes your Facebook password jdFQqeea. This makes your passwords a bit more exposed if someone gets hold of your card, since the key mnemonic isn't in your brain, but you could be clever about where you start: instead of the first and second letters of the site name, you could use the third and fourth ... and shift over by two from there ... and so forth.

For folks who still want to use the card the old way, I've left the colored rows.

The weird extra set of characters at the bottom of both formats of card is a seed number which will produce the PasswordCard again at the website. That way, if you write down just that seed number somewhere secure, if you lose your PasswordCard you can reproduce it exactly. But it would be nice if you could use any arbitrary key you want, that you already have memorized, and then have the option to leave that off of the card.

Slices of film

2010-12-12T11:45:00.000-08:00

The New York Times Magazine offers us a beautiful piece: Fourteen Actors Acting: A Video Gallery of Screen Types, a series of little vignettes. They offer about the minimum of what you need to qualify as “cinema:” each features a single actor shot in black-and-white in a single take that lasts about a minute, with a simple music score. Each repeats a cinematic trope you'll undoubtedly recognize.

I have a soft spot for this sort of thing in part because it provokes a confrontation with the nature of the medium. How little can a scene contain and still tell us something? What comes from story, and what from pure action? Why do we love these iconic scenes so much that we create them again and again in films? What makes them work? And what makes them work again and again, in countless movies, without becoming stale?

And, apropos of the collection's title: What do actors do, really? I started asking that question after I read Stephanie Zacharek's review of Monster, which she opens with that haunting question. All of the performances in these micro-cinematic efforts impressed me with the magic of acting, and they act as meditations on what makes film actors interesting. Robert Duvall's clip gave me a chuckle because he reminded me of showrunner Ron Moore talking about how Edward James Olmos shaving constituted one of the major themes of Battlestar Galactica. Vincent Cassel reminded me of my theory that God gave us movies so we could watch people dancing beautifully, which explains why we make so many action movies these days — they provide a substitute for the musicals which have gone out of style. James Franco manages to make a two-character scene work through the use of a mirror. Matt Damon revealed a series of thoughts and emotions without benefit of either his voice or much time on screen. (I've sung the praises of Damon's gifts as a physical actor since I saw the scene in The Bourne Identity in which, early in the film, his amnesiac character gets awakened on a park bench by a cop's nightstick, and Damon communicates with a little shrug hey, I just realized that I know how to take this cop's nightstick away from him and beat him up with it, which I find both astonishing and disturbing. How did he do that?)

And Michael Douglass provides an utterly compelling performance by pretty much just sitting there.

Which brings me to If We Don't, Remember Me. When I started writing this post, I had meant to call it a different take on the same project, but I realize that in truth it has a profoundly different project.

Remember offers a series of animated GIFs made from great movies. I ordinarily think of animated GIFs — a technology for showing brief looping animations — as the scourge of the web, but Remember does something marvelous with them. Stills taken from movies generally seem surprisingly sterile; movement plays such an essential part in what makes well-composed film shots work that taking a single frame out, even if we choose carefully, loses much of the magic. Remember gives us not stills but what we want from stills: a single, atomic moment, including the essential movement. And by essential movement, I do mean essential: often the faceless author of Remember has included only the movement in one part of the frame, or has the image hold perfectly still for a second or two before showing something small move in a flicker, or includes just a tiny sway or flick of an actor's eyes.

The moments captured by Remember don't really show us acting at all, I think. Acting means revealing a character through action. (There it is, lurking in the word itself!) The moments of Remember don't do that, they show no progression, else they would not work as endless loops the way they do.

But they often do show a thing that film actors do — the thing that Michael Douglas did in his Fourteen Actors clip — which has only a loose connection with acting: exhibiting screen presence, that subtle and mysterious quality by which some actors can hold our attention. Some actors, indeed, have very modest acting abilities but an extraordinary screen presence: think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ruth Gordon, Keanu Reeves, or countless classic-era stars like Bogart, Hepburn, John Wayne, Rita Hayworth, Jimmy Stewart. I suspect that skilled actors can cultivate this, but some actors just have it.

How the heck does that work?

Airport groping

2010-11-21T16:42:00.000-08:00

Furry Girl at Feminisnt gives us what may be the blog post of the year: My experience mocking TSA security theater at Seatac as a nearly-naked enfant terrible. Like Dancing Matt, it's delightful in part because it is at the intersection of so many things of our particular historical moment: security theatre gone haywire, sexual politics, the democratization of video, feminism, situationist social criticism ...

The TSA wanted to feel me up or see what I look like without clothes. I get it. I'm a sex worker. My main porn site gets about 3 million unique visitors a year, and clients pay $4 a minute to see me naked on my web cam, so the TSA's interest in me came as no surprise. Normally, I would charge for such a service, but this one was on the house. Duty, country, sacrifice, patriotism, all that.

So that link is, as the saying goes, Not Safe For Work.

(And Furry Girl, if you're reading? It breaks my heart that you feel like you can't fit into a “silly feminist framework.”)

Deficit spending

2010-11-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

Brad DeLong explains why deficit spending is a very good idea right now.

The principle to which Interfluidity refers is that when times are bad--when your present and expected future resources fall--you should cut back on your commitments. The fact is that these are bad times for private economic actors: their current incomes have fallen, and the high interest rates charged them means that their future resources are worth a lot less than they used to be when translated into claims on today.
But things are completely different for the government.
The terms on which the U.S. government today can borrow are extraordinarily, unbelievably good. The government's current resources have declined with the decline in tax revenue, but the taxes the government will receive in the future are--according to a bunch of calculations John Cochrane made when he came to Berkeley to give a seminar--worth roughly four times as much when translated into claims on goods, services, and labor today as they were worth three years ago. The resource constraints binding private economic actors have become much tighter. But the resource constraints binding the government have--because of the extraordinary falls in interest rates--become much looser. And high unemployment and slack capacity mean that the terms on which the government can get goods, services, and labor are significantly more advantageous than they were three years ago.
Every single particle of logic is crying out that now is the time for the government to pull its spending forward from the future into the present and push its taxes from the present back into the future.
The argument that “governments should be prudent in the same way as households” is not a moral argument: it is a stupid argument. It blindly closes its eyes to the reality that times feel very different for credit-worthy governments than for potentially insolvent private economic actors, and that what is prudence for the second is sheer idiocy for the first.

Tea Party

2010-11-08T10:32:00.000-08:00

A terrific, sharp-tongued summary of the Tea Party's principles Digby:

hatred of government
a loathing for liberals (and other assorted unreal Americans)
the Bible
a cartoon constitution
a fantasy America in which everyone agrees with them and does exactly what they want

Passion

2010-11-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

Michael Been
1950-2010
Singer and songwriter

I just discovered the Michael Been, songwriter for The Call, died a few months back. I'm saddened, and selfishly disappointed that this means he won't be gifting me with any more songs.

I am by no stretch of the imagination a Christian — though I'm syncreticist enough to refer to תפארת, अनाहत, Buddha Compassion, or Christ Love as occasion demands — but that surely isn't Mr Been's fault. Just as Johnny Cash sang about the severe American Christ the Judge so that even if you didn't believe in Him you could see how it felt if you did, Been sang about a universal Christ of Glory and Mystery. And like Cash, he didn't do it so it was a chore, taking your medicine — The Call was a rock ’n’ band, and they rocked.

I'm badly outvoted on how the cosmos works. If they're right and I'm wrong, I expect that Been is now standing at God's right hand now and singing His praises. And someday Peter will ask me in life, did you accept Jesus Christ into your heart? If that does happen, I think I might be able to get away with answering Peter that no, I did not ... except during the time I spent listening to Micheal Been sing.

More of my obits

Prufhop

2010-10-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

As part of my ongoing coverage of allusions to my favourite poem, I give you T. S. Elliot's Lost Hip Hop Poem:

Via @tristissima who knows from slam poetry.

Inconceivable!

2010-07-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to create a web image for this for a while. It should have a number of applications.

Huh?

2010-07-13T17:26:00.000-07:00

Ezra Klein offers us this puzzling graph:

Digby explains:

Americans worship winners and they don't really care about unfair process. This is the nation that reveres the quote “winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.”
....
Similarly, the party in power is expected to do what's necessary to pass its agenda. If it can't, it is held responsible for the failure, not those who stopped them from doing it.
....
And there is another dimension to this which especially applies to the Obama administration. Since he ran explicitly on the promise to end the bickering, change Washington and create a post-partisan consensus, people see the failure of those things to materialize as a measure of his failure to deliver on his promise.

We can expect more Republican obstructionism to come.

Good recommendations

2010-07-13T14:31:00.001-07:00

Good recommendations
Originally uploaded by Miniver Cheevy

Well, I should think so.

Amor vincit omnia

2010-06-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

A friend pointed me at this picture from a remarkable photo essay about the protests at the G20 summit.

It reminded me of an old favourite.

Reading on the iPad

2010-06-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

I'm finding that the two most useful applications on my iPad are Instapaper and GoodReader.

Instapaper is a service for reading long articles published on the web. There's a little javascript link that you can bookmark in your browser that tells the Instapaper service that you want to read the article. The service then intelligently extracts the article content out from the navigation, advertisements, and other cruft, and makes that content available in a standard, readable format at InstaPaper.com and on your iPhone and iPad.

Over the past several years I've read more and more long-form stuff on the web, and it's always been a pain: often the articles are published in poorly readable formats, and more significantly if you find something you really want to read, you have to either read it right when you find it or keep track of the link to find it later. With Instapaper, I can find something interesting, hit the link to tuck it away for later, and know that I will read it eventually.

GoodReader is a PDF reader, and it has completely changed my relationship to PDFs. It used to be if there was something I wanted to read that was published as a PDF, I resented it: it meant either reading from a computer screen or printing it out and schlepping around the printout. This has deterred me from reading a lot of stuff. Now, I'm delighted when something is published as a PDF, because it means that I can get it immediately and I'll have it with me to read at my convenience.

Since I bring my iPad with me almost everywhere, with these two apps I know that even if I cannot connect to the internet, I always have a wide variety of interesting things to read: long and short, light and serious, improving and entertaining. Since I'm about to transition into a more public-transit-intensive lifestyle, this is a godsend.

Both applications include a simple foldering system for organizing your stuff, and after a little experimentation I've converged on a satisfying set of folders that I use for both:

Art
Big ideas
Design
Games
Kulturkampf
Occult
Popkultur
Public interest
Technoscience
Weirdness

I'm almost embarrassed by how much I enjoy looking at that list.

California election day

2010-06-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

What, again?

Vote early. Vote often. Vote no.

Except for 15 and (though I resent having to vote on something that passed the legislature with a supermajority already) 13.

Mengele

2010-06-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

Physicians for Human Rights has a new report:

In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals’ involvement in the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.

They were researching ways to torture better.

How I wish I were surprised.

Tricks for Entourage on the Mac

2010-06-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

I just learned one of these tricks from a colleague, and circulated the other two to my coworkers in return, and it occurred to me that I might have readers who might find these tricks useful as well. So if you're doing email in Entourage, read on ...

Grouping conversations

If you don’t like the way Entourage’s default “Arrange By: Conversation” sorts messages within a conversation from oldest to newest instead of newest to oldest, you can create your own custom sort.

From the menu: View > Arrange By > Edit Custom Arrangements... > New
Do the following settings:
Custom arrangement name: Conversation (Newest to Oldest)
Group items by: Conversation
Sort groups by: Received | Newest on top
Sort items within groups by: Conversation Index | Newest on top
Default display for groups: Expanded

Instead of deleting

Since Entourage’s Trash buffer doesn’t work the right way, I simulate the correct behavior by dragging unwanted emails into a folder named ZZZ. I periodically purge ZZZ, but always leave the last few days’ worth of emails in place. I also do an actual delete of emails I’m sure about not needing again, but having some recoverability in ZZZ means that I’m much more willing to z-delete items of only transient interest.

Managing my work queue

I fell off the wagon with my personal email, but I maintain Inbox Zero with my work email. Every message I receive I file into a folder as soon as I’ve read it. If I need to keep an email “on my desk” (usually because it’s something I need to do), before I file it into its topical folder (Design, Reference, Administridia, et cetera) I click the red flag. When I want to survey what I need to do, first I purge my Inbox of anything new, then I look in my saved search for flagged items. Then when I’ve dealt with the flagged item, I click the red flag again; it disappears from my saved search, but is still retained in the topical folder.

Here’s how to create the saved search:

Go into the menu bar: File > New > Saved Search
At the top of the workspace, click on All Messages
Leave “Match if all criteria are met” dropdown in place
Click “Item contains” dropdown to switch to “To Do Flag” then switch the secondary dropdown to “Not Completed”
Click [Save] in the upper right of the workspace
Name it “Flagged”
(If you don’t have the favorites folder bar shown below the icon toolbar at the top) Go into the menu bar: View > Show Favorites Bar
(If you don’t have the folder list shown on the left) Go into the men bar: View > Show Folder List
In the folder list, find Mail Views at the bottom. You should see your Flagged search listed among the default views
Drag the Flagged search you created into the favorites folder bar below the icon toolbar, so you can find it again

Escalation

2010-06-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

Kevin Drum says what I've been thinking about Israel's attack on the ship bringing aid to Gaza.

It's also a little hard to write about since I don't have anything original to say. A million people have already said it. Fanatics on both sides have been in control of the region for years — the hardline Orthodox population relentlessly gaining influence in Israel and Hamas terrorists among the Palestinians — both convinced that they can win if they can only provoke enough insane overreactions from the other side. Which they do with depressing regularity. Hamas's rocket attacks are indefensible, the Gaza embargo in return is indefensible, the blockade runners in their turn were plainly hoping to provoke an overreaction that would force Israel's hand, and the Israelis then went insanely beyond anyone's expectations by landing commandos on one of the ships and killing more than a dozen people while it was still far off in international waters. And now, there are rumors that the Turkish navy might escort the next ship that tries to run the blockade.
In David Petraeus's famous phrase, How does this end?

Not well, obviously. I despair.

iTunes

2010-05-31T14:25:00.000-07:00

So I'm listening to music on iTunes, and Gnarls Barkley's cover of the Violent Femmes' “Gone Daddy Gone” comes up. I'm digging it, so I ask iTunes' Genius feature to create a set for me of other stuff like it. You never know what Genius is going to give you; sometimes it seems to throw up its hands and say, “hey, you don't have anything in your music collection that is, by my silicon logic, ‘like that,’ so here's just a crazy mix, okay?” That element of adventure is part of the fun of Genius, and I wondered if Genius would somehow find me more remixes of '80s alternative songs lurking in my music library. Here's what the computer gave me:

“Hit the Road Jack,” Ray Charles
“What's Going On,” Marvin Gaye
“These Arms of Mine,” Otis Redding
“Green Onions,” Booker T. & the MG's
“Everyday People,” Sly & The Family Stone
“Pusherman,” Curtis Mayfield
“Don't Leave Me This Way,” Thelma Houston
“It's Your Thing,” The Isley Brothers
“My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It),” En Vogue
“I've Got A Woman,” Ray Charles
“We Can Work It Out,” Stevie Wonder
“I'm Every Woman,” Chaka Khan
“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” Aretha Franklin
“Duke of Earl,” Gene Chandler
“Do What You Wanna (Mr Scruff's Soul Party Mix),” Ramsey Lewis & Mr Scruff
“Try a Little Tenderness,” Otis Redding
“Family Affair,” Sly and the Family Stone
“Stay Loose (Lyrics Born Remix),” Jimmy Smith
“Mess Around,” Ray Charles
“My Guy,” Mary Wells
“Fight The Power, Pt 2,” The Isley Brothers
“You've Really Got a Hold On Me,” The Temptations
“(Ich Steh' Auf) Berlin,” Ideal
“Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” Oleta Adams

At first I look at this thinking whiskey tango foxtrot? This stuff sounds nothing like the track I started with. OK, “Do What You Wanna” and “Stay Loose” are both from Verve Remixed, which kind of fits. But what do “Hit The Road Jack” or “Duke of Earl” have to do with either the Violent Femmes or Gnarls Barkley?

And then—remembering the classic Wall Street Journal article “My TiVo Thinks I'm Gay”—I realize that iTunes thinks I'm Black. (And maybe gay, too: there are three tracks there from the Dancing Queens compilation album of drag queen lipsynch classics.) Every artist on my Genius mix is Black. I had to check Mary Wells and Gene Chandler, since I didn't know. I suspect that the Ideal who created that next-to-last track are White, since they sing in German, but I'm guessing that iTunes mistook them for a different band that is Black.

If a human DJ had put that mix together for me as a response to me asking for “more like ‘Gone Daddy Gone,’ ” I wonder if I might have been troubled by the racism demonstrated by their logic: “more like Gnarls Barkley” means “scour my music collection for more Black artists,” buddy? Obviously my computer isn't a Klansman. But it's using metadata with American racial categories woven deeply into it.

I don't know which creeps me out more: that the world is full of data that implicitly teaches racial categories to computers, or that the same data goes into human brains ...

Mine too

2010-05-27T10:43:00.001-07:00

The Big Caption says:

Image from the Boston Globe's amazing collection.

A word about the Lost finale

2010-05-24T11:03:00.001-07:00

I was reminded of Roger Ebert's review of The Village:

To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.
And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets.

Jimmy Kimmel's gag alternate endings were better than what we got.

Movie landscapes

2010-05-19T14:08:00.001-07:00

Paramount Studio map of California's geographical facsimiles, fron The Motion Picture Industry as a Basis for Bond Financing, 1927

Via Warren Ellis, originally uploaded by Ambrosia Voyeur

You know, it's amazing how the English countryside looks in no way like Southern California.

—Austin Powers

The horror continues

2010-05-12T12:41:00.001-07:00

Via Digby, I learn that the International Committe of the Red Cross confirms that the US is operating the torture prison at Bagram which the US military has been denying. Jeff Kaye has horrifying details.

Prisoners held at Tor, according to investigations by BBC, are tossed into cold concrete cells, where the light is kept on 24 hours. Noise machines fill their cells with constant sound, and prisoners are sleep deprived as a matter of policy, with each cell monitored by a camera, so the authorities will know when someone is falling asleep and come to wake them.
Prisoners are beaten and abused. According to BBC’s article last month, one prisoner was “made to dance to music by American soldiers every time he wanted to use the toilet.”

As Auschwitz was a murder factory, that's an insanity factory. Even the US military admits that most of the people held there are not terrorists. And do I even need to tell you that no one there has stood trial?

We need to let those people free, make apologies and recompense to them and their loved ones, raze the prison to the ground, salt the earth where it once stood, and send everyone involved to the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity, up to and including the President of the United States if he knew this was happening.

President Obama, I'm looking at you. I voted for you, and reason ^#1 was that I trusted you to do the right thing about this. I've been trying to believe that you've been slow to correct Guantánamo because institutional inertia has been stopping you. Fool me twice, and I won't get fooled again.

Elves vs Fairies

2010-05-06T07:42:00.000-07:00

Patrick McGee, republished on Roger Ebert's blog, warns against losing a tooth on the wrong day.

Santa had a son who fell in love with the Tooth Fairy's daughter. Because Santa could not abide such a mixing of the species, he had the Fairy's daughter killed. The Tooth Fairy responded by killing Santa's son. So began the blood-feud. Elves and Fairies have fought and died by the thousands over the ages. But, most critical, is what happens on Xmas Eve. Should a child be unable to prevent the loss of a tooth on Xmas Eve, it's possible that the Tooth Fairy and Santa end up at that very house at the same time. When this happens, the resulting battle destroys several city blocks.

I should have known.

Cinco de Mayo

2010-05-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

In the unlikely event that you saw Grindhouse, you undoubtedly recall the witty trailers for faux exploitation movies that didn't really exist. Perhaps you have heard that Robert Rodriguez was so pleased with his trailer for Machete, with the inimitable Danny Trejo in the title rôle, that he actually fleshed it out into a real movie, coming soon to a theater near you.

Well, Mr Rodriguez and Mr Trejo have a special message, just for today.

Ain't It Cool News helpfully informs us:

Rodriguez is calling this his “Illegal” trailer. You see, Robert talked Fox into letting him put together a Cinco De Mayo message for ARIZONA — given. Well, the way things are in Arizona at this moment — it is kinda insane that there is a movie that was shot over a year ago waiting to be released that is about — THIS EXACT ISSUE... but if, Danny Trejo and buddies went Revolution Wacko as a result.

So I felt I needed to share.

Colours

2010-05-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

Randall Munroe, who draws xkcd, “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language,” did a survey of people's use of colour names.

First, a few basic discoveries:
If you ask people to name colors long enough, they go totally crazy.
“Puke” and “vomit” are totally real colors.
Colorblind people are more likely than non-colorblind people to type “fuck this” (or some variant) and quit in frustration.
Indigo was totally just added to the rainbow so it would have 7 colors and make that “ROY G. BIV” acronym work, just like you always suspected. It should really be ROY GBP, with maybe a C or T thrown in there between G and B depending on how the spectrum was converted to RGB.
A couple dozen people embedded SQL ‘drop table’ statements in the color names. Nice try, kids.
Nobody can spell “fuchsia”.

What's that about SQL? It seems that a lot of his readers remembered the comic “Exploits of a Mom.”

Lots more under the link. His discussion of his methodology is pretty interesting.

Deadly karaoke

2010-04-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

Norimitsu Onishi at the New York Times offers a mindboggling piece about karaoke and violence in the Philipines.

Mr. Gregorio, 63, a witness to countless fistfights and occasional stabbings erupting from disputes over karaoke singing, did not dare choose one beloved classic: Frank Sinatra’s version of “My Way.”
“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”

The article is primarily about “My Way,” but there are some really interesting digressions ...

A subset of karaoke bars with G.R.O.’s — short for guest relations officers, a euphemism for female prostitutes — often employ gay men, who are seen as neutral, to defuse the undercurrent of tension among the male patrons. Since the gay men are not considered rivals for the women’s attention — or rivals in singing, which karaoke machines score and rank — they can use humor to forestall macho face-offs among the patrons.

There's more, though the article leaves out this important tidbit from Wikipedia:

In the Philippines it was believed that [Syd] Vicious' version was inspired by deposed dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, where in the first part of the song Vicious attempted to imitate the voice of the late dictator.

Of course.

MRE

2010-04-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

Ragnell at Written World has an intriguing theory about the design of military Meals Ready to Eat.

All joking aside, MREs are an incredibly social food. Most contain an entree, a sidedish, a dessert, a snack, and a drink. Only one or two of these things will be edible to you (or you've gotten the only meal that anyone seems to feel is entirely good: The Chilimac. This is an anomaly, also no good for me because I don't like the entree--everything else on the menu rocks, though), the rest will either be disgusting or something you personally hate. You can, if you're hungry enough and alone, give up on your pickiness and just eat what you get. But I believe part of the point of the MRE (or an important side effect, since the main point was probably to make a meal that you could quickly eat a little bit of, work or get into a firefight, and then eat a little more of when the action dies down without it spoiling or spilling) is to build unit cohesion by forcing you to sit with the rest of your flight and trade food pouches to build an edible MRE (unless you got the cheese omelet, then you're shit out of luck. Though you probably will attract a crowd as it is such a legendarily disgusting entree that people will want to see your face when you eat it.)

Ragnell also has some good things to say about superheroes, especially Wonder Woman.

Walk on the mild side

2010-04-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

That Lou Reed, such a nice young man:

We chatted for a while, and she asked me what my favorite music was. I said the Velvet Underground — assuming, of course, she'd have no clue who they were. Her face lit up and she said, You mean Lou Reed's band???? It turned out she was the cleaning lady for Lou's dorm when he was at Syracuse, and she LOVED him. She said he was the sweetest of all the boys in the dorm, the most well-mannered and the kindest to her. She'd bake cakes and treats for him, and when he left college he would write to her. She said they still corresponded.