Incertus

That's a lot, even by Facebook standards

2010-06-08T00:07:00.001-04:00

Who knew BP was even that popular? Almost 19,000 fans for BP. Huh.

Yes, I'm doing this in hopes that Google Ads will dump some BP ads on me, so you can click on them, and I can do my part to drain a few pennies from BP. That's British Petroleum. Got that Google Ads? British Petroleum.

Sigh

2010-06-07T17:55:00.000-04:00

This is what demonizing a population gets you:

At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.

"Go home," several shouted from the crowd.

"Get out," others shouted.

In fact, the two men – Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry — were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called "The Way." Both said they had come to protest the mosque.

It got so bad that police had to come to the rescue of the two Egyptian Copts. Mind you, I don't have a lot of sympathy for anyone involved in this story, from the ignorant non-Arab protesters who consider a mosque to be an insult to the ignorant Arab protesters who consider a mosque to be an insult. One of the charges we have as citizens of a secular, inclusive country is to make room for and tolerate all different beliefs. Notice I didn't say "respect"--I said tolerate. More on that later.

The first thing I thought of when I read this article was "that's what happens when you spend eight years conflating Muslim with Arab." When you have know-nothings like the ones who were in charge until January 2009 constantly saying Muslims are terrorists and yet downplaying the fact that not only are there significant numbers of non-Arab Muslims in the world, but that there's a sizable non-Muslim population in the Middle East, it's no surprise that you'd have an ignorant mob fail to notice that the Egyptians at the protest are on their frigging side. After all, we've seen politicians and pundits argue that anyone who looks like they're of "terrorist descent" (thank you forever, Aaron Magruder, for coming up with that) should be profiled before being allowed to board a plane--why shouldn't the public assume that everyone with a name like Karam isn't ready to blow up a crowd of people? Besides, Idol's on, and the news media's biased anyway.

I wish I had any confidence that anyone involved in this mess would learn a lesson from it, but I don't. I'm cynical today--I'm cynical a lot when it comes to the intersection of religion and politics these days, because we can't seem to get the basics of human interaction down. We're all sharp elbows and hurt feelings and looking for a shortcut to get mad at each other, and religion doesn't help that. The people who are going to get along are going to get along, and if they're religious, they belong to some moderate faith which uses some variant of the "all roads to the same place" metaphor. And the people who are looking to hate on the other are going to hate, and if they're religious, they're going to relate to some version of the "we're right and you're going to hell/should die, infidel" metaphor. Add in a dash of racism and you get what happened in this story--a case of mistaken identity nearly causing a (sort of) fratricide.

There are a lot of things I could rant about here, lessons that could be taken away. The first would be that this is a great example of why profiling is foolish, but no one who matters is going to listen to that one. None of the people in that mob would listen to it. They're the kinds of assholes who carry signs to identify themselves as "A Proud AMERICAN Infidel."

But I want to go back, instead, to what I mentioned in the first paragraph--tolerance. In the past, I've thought that we need to be more than tolerant of other faiths, or other belief systems. I've said that I think we need to respect those systems. Not anymore. I can't do it. I can't respect faiths which treat women as less, which demonize non-believers or different-believers, which preach peace and loving kindness one week and justify war and death the next. I can't respect Islam either (see what I did there?)

But I can tolerate them, because I neither expect nor even desire everyone else to think the way I do. I'm not one of these Pollyanna atheists who thinks the world would be unquestionably better if everyone gave up God, because it's not belief that makes us assholes (though it doesn't help)--the assholes are just assholes. Some of them use religion as an excuse for acting that way, just as some truly wonderful religious people use their religion as a justification for being wonderful (like they need it).

All I ask--all I demand, as a citizen of this nation--is that you tolerate my non-belief, and that you tolerate your neighbor's different belief. You don't have to like it, you don't have to pretend to like it. You just have to tolerate it, just like they have to tolerate you. And that means that if some New York Muslims get all the necessary clearances and permits to put a center up in the general vicinity of the former World Trade Center, and you don't like it, tough. I don't like that the Catholic Church is still allowed to run elementary and junior high schools given their recent record, and I don't like that creationists can open up "museums" that show humans and dinosaurs walking together, but I deal with it. That's the price of the United States. We're diverse. We're secular. Get used to it.

I should never read Thomas Friedman

2010-06-02T09:21:00.000-04:00

I really shouldn't, because all it does to me is make me shake my head and wonder about the world he inhabits, and why he's getting a paycheck for this. Take today's column, for instance. Hell, take the first paragraph:

As a friend of both Turkey and Israel, it has been agonizing to watch the disastrous clash between Israeli naval commandos and a flotilla of “humanitarian” activists seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Personally, I think both Israel and Turkey have gotten out of balance lately, and it is America’s job to help both get back to the center — urgently.

Sounds reasonable, except for those snarky, sarcastic scare quotes around the word "humanitarian." Why put those in, unless your motive is to suggest to supporters of a two-state solution that you're anti-Israel? The scare quotes are there to suggest that the supplies headed to Gaza weren't really aid at all, but we're all going to pretend they are for the sake of this conversation. John Cole has provided a graphic with a partial list of what's forbidden by the blockade--take a look at it and then tell me if Friedman's scare quotes are anything other than a dick move.

It's not Friedman's last, either.

I have no problem with Turkey or humanitarian groups loudly criticizing Israel. But I have a big problem when people get so agitated by Israel’s actions in Gaza but are unmoved by Syria’s involvement in the murder of the prime minister of Lebanon, by the Iranian regime’s killing of its own citizens demonstrating for the right to have their votes counted, by Muslim suicide bombers murdering nearly 100 Ahmadi Muslims in mosques in Pakistan on Friday and by pro-Hamas gunmen destroying a U.N.-sponsored summer camp in Gaza because it wouldn’t force Islamic fundamentalism down the throats of children.

Of the four instances he mentions, the first two were criticized loud and long by many of the same people who want the Gaza blockade lifted, and I'm not exactly sure what the last two have to do with this discussion, other than to try to link opponents of the blockade with Muslim extremists. Note to Friedman--it's entirely possible to be a supporter of Israel's nationhood and the two-state solution, and acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Supporting an end to the Gaza blockade is not equal to supporting Hamas, no matter how much you would like it to be so.

I'm also curious as to exactly how Friedman thinks this flotilla was a "setup." Israel's done a pretty good job on its own of making itself look bad in recent years. To treat this situation as though Israel is the victim of crafty opponents is insulting to anyone who's followed this story. It's offensive.

Shorter Bishop Olmsted: Women's lives are irrelevant

2010-05-16T11:00:00.000-04:00

I'd like to think that some day, the Catholic Church will be nothing but a bunch of men yelling about how unclean women are while the women who were once Catholic shake their heads and wonder what took them so long to leave an institution that seems to hate them.

Suppose you're a woman, a nun, working at a hospital as an administrator, and as part of your job, you're asked to help decide whether the hospital can perform an abortion on a woman who's 11 weeks pregnant in order to save her life. Now at 11 weeks, the fetus is nowhere near viable, and the mother can't survive long enough with this fetus inside her to get it to viability, so the options really are 1) do an abortion and save the mother or 2) let them both die. The nun chose option 1. She's since been rebuked by the local Bishop and has been reassigned to different duties.

Lest you think my title was unfair, here's Bishop Olmsted's reasoning on the matter:

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, indicated in a statement that the Roman Catholic involved was "automatically excommunicated" because of the action. The Catholic Church allows the termination of a pregnancy only as a secondary effect of other treatments, such as radiation of a cancerous uterus.

"I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese," Olmsted said in a statement sent to The Arizona Republic. "I am further concerned by the hospital's statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother's underlying medical condition.

"An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means."

Olmsted added that if a Catholic "formally cooperates" in an abortion, he or she is automatically excommunicated.

The arrogance in that statement is overwhelming. Forget a health-of-the-mother exception--Olmsted doesn't even see a life-of-the-mother exception for rape--and yet Olmsted is described in the very next paragraph as "the voice of moral authority over any Catholic institution operating in the diocese." I don't see anything moral about that stance.

There's nothing moral about telling a woman who's alive today because medical professionals did their job that she should be dead based on your misogynist and archaic value system. There's nothing moral about telling all women that it's better that they die rather than have a fetus (one that has zero chance of survival in this case) removed. There's nothing moral about telling a woman that her current life is worth less than the potential life she's carrying around inside her. At least, there's nothing moral about that to me.

What about the Cubans?

2010-05-14T11:09:00.000-04:00

This morning, The Miami Herald reported that Republican candidates for statewide races had come out firmly in support of Arizona's recent immigration laws, and have suggested Florida should follow suit. (Rubio isn't quoted in the Herald, but he's in support of the law as well.) But I think this could very well backfire on all of them--could, I emphasize.

A big part of Florida's problem with immigration has to do with the different ways we deal with the various groups who show up on our shores. If you're from Cuba, the law says that if you make it to land, you can stay, and in a year you can apply for residency. If you're from anywhere else and you come here in less-than-legal ways, you're out of luck, assuming you get caught. And your chances of getting caught is, of course, dependent on how you look. Let's put it this way--if you go to one of the many Irish pubs in the area, there's a decent chance that someone working there is here on a tourist visa or has overstayed a visa or just came in through some other means. In other words, they're illegal. But the chances they'd be asked for documentation by a local cop should Florida pass an Arizona-type law? Practically none.

But Cubans? If Florida adopts this sort of law, some Cubans can expect to be confused for Dominicans and other Latino/as, if only for this reason--not every cop is going to discerning enough to differentiate between them (assuming the cop makes an attempt in the first place). So there's a big chance for insult, right alongside the insults that every other legal Latino/a immigrant is likely to face.

But if that's not enough to convince you, then think about this. Arizona is already getting economically pummeled by boycotts. Our economy is beyond fragile right now, and we can't handle a hit to our tourism industry in the best of times. We need people to come here not only from the rest of the country, but from other countries, and if we become Arizona 2: Immigration Bougaloo, we'll see an economic hit that makes the bursting of the real estate bubble look like a hiccup.

So there's two good reasons to not adopt an Arizona-type immigration law. The problems Arizona faces with racial profiling are multiplied here, and the potential economic hit is too much to bear. How much confidence do I have that Florida Republicans will come to their senses and not do something like this? Not much.

Dear Republicans:

2010-05-10T16:54:00.000-04:00

To the RNC in particular, which is acting pretty stupidly right now, I have some words. I understand that, for any political party, the nomination of someone to the Supreme Court is an opportunity for fundraising, and that the party is going to go to some pretty outlandish lengths to raise outrage, even when there's nothing to get outraged about. But this is pretty freaking stupid, even by that measure.

In its first memo to reporters since Kagan’s nomination to the high court became public, the Republican National Committee highlighted Kagan’s tribute to Marshall in a 1993 law review article published shortly after his death.

Kagan quoted from a speech Marshall gave in 1987 in which he said the Constitution as originally conceived and drafted was “defective.”...

“Does Kagan Still View Constitution ‘As Originally Drafted And Conceived’ As ‘Defective’?” the RNC asked in its research document.

You know who else felt the Constitution, as originally drafted and conceived, was defective? The people who wrote the damn thing. That's why there's a method for amending it written into it. That's why they added ten amendments to the damn thing almost immediately upon ratification--because it was defective. It lacked some things they felt were necessary. And it's been amended an awful lot since then, in order to meet the needs of a changing society.

Marshall was talking about the 3/5ths compromise as a defective part of the Constitution, but let's go with something nearer and dearer to Republican hearts--the right to bear arms. Not in the Constitution as it was "originally drafted and conceived." It came later, in the form of an Amendment. Given that, conservatives should be first in line to acknowledge that the original Constitution was defective.

This is one of the main reasons I'm tired of people who deny that the Constitution is a living document, and who argue that the original intent of the Framers should be the end of the discussion. The Framers obviously knew that they were putting together an imperfect document, and that the needs of the country would change over time. That's why they made it possible to amend the thing. To deify the Framers is to do them a disservice. We do ourselves a disservice as well, because we assume that a group of men who lived over two hundred years ago have a better grasp on our world than we do today. How does that make sense?

Again, it's not all about you

2010-05-10T11:05:00.000-04:00

Tina Harden brought the books back, she says because she'd brought attention to the issue, and not because of the attention she'd received. Or the fact that others had donated more copies of those books to the library (so many that the library is refusing to accept them now). Or that public opinion was pretty solidly against her. Nope--she'd done what she set out to do, she claims, and now it's over.

Oh, and she'd like that $85 fine waived now too, please.

"It's not that I lost the books or I didn't feel like turning them in," she said. "I want us to work together. Hopefully they have the same goals as I do."

The Seminole County Library Services Manager has said they can't waive the fines, and I hope she sticks with that. There's a principle at stake here, and it's not the money. The $85 is nothing. I don't know Harden's financial status, but even if she couldn't afford the fine, there are enough people out there who support what she's doing that someone (or a group of someones) could pay it without blinking.

The principle is that there has to be some cost, some payment you have to make if you break the rules, even if (maybe especially if) you're breaking them in what you consider a good cause. If I chain myself to the fence outside the White House to protest DADT or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm doing so knowing that I'm likely going to spend some time in jail, and probably pay a fine and court costs. I'm not going to get to dodge that simply by saying I did so as a matter of conscience. And if I think a book should be removed from a library (which I wouldn't) and take it upon myself to do so, then I bear the expense of that, whether it means I get sent to a credit agency for a bad debt, or lose my library privileges, or have to pay either late fees or for a new book. That's the deal. If you don't pay a price, you're not really making a statement. You're just being a douche.

Gone for the Green, Green Grass

2010-05-08T14:35:00.004-04:00

About a month ago, I went down my driveway to go to work, and I saw my neighbor had torn up his lawn. It wasn't just a part of the lawn, and it's not a small lawn: we're talking a half acre of land turned to naked dirt. Our neighbor has a lawn maintenance business, so I knew he'd done this himself, on purpose. But I was mystified as to what would bring a man to take such drastic measures. Had there been some toxic spill on his lawn that required draconian clean-up? Was he installing some massive new sprinkler system that meant digging up the whole plot? Turned out, he'd dug up his lawn because he had weeds. He'd decided it was easier to re-sod his entire property with fresh-farmed Bermuda grass than to try to get rid of those weeds. A few days later, his yard was (once again) a flat plane of green.

It no doubt annoys my neighbor, but my yard is ALL weeds, 100% pure natural Native Florida wild-growing groundlings that float in on the wind. My landlord pays our neighbor (the same one who tore out his own lawn) to come over once every couple of months and beat them back with a weed-wacker, but if he didn't, they would grow about a foot high. And stop there. They ain't bamboo.

Although we do have a stand of lovely bamboo in the front yard, which I love: it shades the house in evening and provides a little privacy. But our neighbor who takes care of the place, who de-turfs at the first happy dandelion, hates the bamboo. If it were up to him, our yard would look like his, complete with a sign warning:

Comical in its over-politeness (I picture a lab on his hind legs reading this over the rim of his glasses, a newspaper under one arm), but the message is clear: this is a household that cares about its lawn. Don't tread on this.

I will admit I feel a constant glare of disapproval coming from that house. This is a free country, and every family maintains its property the way it chooses, but one person's "au natural" is another person's "au neglect." One person's shady, privacy-granting bamboo is another person's nuisance.

It reminded me of a short (27 minute) documentary I'd watched recently, about grass. I met the filmmaker, Isaac Brown, at an artists' conference, and he generously handed out DVDs. Most of us are busy, and most of us are not looking for new things to be outraged about, but after watching Gimme Green, I definitely feel it's worth at least 27 minutes for us all to become aware of what our lawns (or our neighbors' lawns!) are up to.

I love the length, by the way. Compare that 27 minutes to a TED video, which is usually about 18 minutes, and those are just "person on a stage with slides" videos -- Gimme Green moves and travels, it gives us great "characters" and great visuals. It's perfect for the web. Go here to watch the full movie, but here is the trailer:

There's a fellow in the film who shows the film makers his yard: it's lovely. Lots of tall trees (probably ficus?) protecting a cool, shady ground where grass won't grow: a great place to sit and relax, a cool comfortable haven from the hot Florida sun. But then the man points out that he's being hassled by his neighbors and code enforcement. They want him to cut down his trees and lay squares of sod. It seems to run in the face not just of individuality, but of common sense: in Florida, where it is steamy and hot, a flat plane of green grass is a useless patch of work: you must mow it and maintain it and you will derive no joy from it. A cool shady grove is not just his choice, it's a wise choice.

But as the film's interviewee's frequently imply, that flat, useless product of pointless labor we call a "lawn" is a signifier about one's relationship with a god, or his neighbors, or the state of one's life or mind, and what it seems most to signify is "a nice, safe nothing": that there is nothing unique (and therefore nothing threatening) about the person or his mind, that his "god" is a mindless platitude (safe), that his concept of his neighbor is of nice, safe strangers, that his life and mind are nice, safe blanks, too terrified of a thought to do anything unexpected. The flat lawn is the blank slate of the subconscious, sitting in the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, made obvious through a ritual so accepted as necessary that people who live in desert places sacrifice their water to it.

I'm not going to sum up the film or give a blow-by-blow, but I do want to point out that the film primarily takes place in two places, Florida and Arizona, and that these two places are as different as can be. Florida has its droughts, but it is generally a wet and sunny place; things grow here. But when we learn that in Arizona (in the desert, where massive projects have already diverted all the water than can be diverted and it is running out) that households are pouring three times as much water onto the ground as they drink or use to flush the toilet just to have those plots of grass -- grass that has no business being in a desert at all, it smacks of the same madness that drove the Easter Island people to destroy themselves.

Hey, those Easter Islanders may have cut down every tree and destroyed their civilization, but look at that sweet lawn!

It seems to be an article of human nature that we will destroy ourselves for our totems. In one society that might mean a giant statue, but in ours it means (at least in part) a clean square of green.

This is the fourth in my series on Florida Artists, especially the ones I just met. Previous posts here and here and here. Cross-posted to The Electronic Girl.

It's Not All About You

2010-05-07T11:44:00.000-04:00

Amy told me about this yesterday--Tina Harden is an Orlando mom who thinks she ought to be able to decide, unilaterally, which books belong on the public library's shelves.

Longwood parent Tina Harden was so disturbed by references to sex and drugs and foul language in the world of fictional teenager Jenny Humphrey that she is ignoring overdue notices and phone calls from her neighborhood library and its bill collector.

Harden refuses to return several books connected to the Gossip Girl series that detail Humphrey's life, even though she's had them since 2008.

"If I turn them in, they will be put back into circulation and they'll be available for more young girls to read," said the mother of three, who keeps the four books hidden in a closet. "Some material is inappropriate for minors."

I'm going to make a quick prediction here--the daughter that Harden is trying so desperately to "protect" from these books is going to try all those things that Harden is trying to protect her from, possibly in very public and foolish ways. That's what teenagers do.

Harden has every right to restrict her daughter's reading material. I think it's a little silly and a little late--Harden, after all, didn't discover the nature of the books until after her daughter had checked them out and read them--but that doesn't mean she has the right to steal from the library just because she disapproves of the content of those books. Harden justifies her actions this way:

That's not good enough for Harden, who said that as a taxpayer she should have a say in which books land on the libraries' shelves. "They're supposed to be public servants," she said.

There's a couple of interesting things going on in this argument. First, there's the idea that being a taxpayer gives you the right to set the rules for everyone else. The fact is that Harden, just like everyone else in the community, gets to "have a say" in which books show up on the shelves. You can "have a say" by donating books, by requesting certain books be carried, or by objecting to certain books. What you don't have is the final say--the librarians do--and that's what's cheesing off Harden, because she obviously feels that they're not good enough to make those decisions.

Why do I say that last part? Harden said "they're supposed to be public servants," and in the context of this disagreement, that seems to me to throw a lot of weight on the "servant" part of the sentence, as though the librarian is supposed to be the serf who bends to your every literary demand. But she neglects the "public" part of that construction, or rather, she narrows it. I figure it works this way:

The librarian is a public servant.
I am a member of the public.
The librarian is my servant.

The flaw in that argument is apparent to anyone who doesn't think the world revolves around their arrogant asses. You are not the public--you are only a member, and there are other members with equally valid positions, some of which may gasp! differ from your own. And that's why we give public servants a fair amount of autonomy, because they have to balance all these competing interests.

If there's a good thing to take away from this, it's that the library has come off as completely reasonable in the article, and the journalist illustrated the important and difficult jobs that librarians have, especially given the cutbacks they've had to endure the past few years. I'd be interested to know just how Harden votes when it comes to taxes that support the library her daughter frequents.

Foreign Until Proven Innocent

2010-05-06T22:25:00.000-04:00

Note: this piece ran earlier today at The Rumpus.

Joe Lieberman is introducing something he calls the Terrorist Expatriation Act--TEA Act for short, though the redundancy seems lost on them--which would make it possible for the State Department to strip the citizenship from anyone they determine is "involved with terrorist activities."

Lieberman claims that he's simply trying to update existing law. Current law makes it possible for a citizen to be stripped of their citizenship if the state can prove that the citizen intended to revoke it. One way of doing that is by joining the armed forces of a state engaged in hostilities with the US. Lieberman's legislation would expand that to include "providing material support or resources to a Foreign Terrorist Organization, as designated by the Secretary of State." So why is this such a big deal?

It wouldn't change the action that got the undershorts of Lieberman and many others all twisted up, namely, the Mirandizing of Faisal Shahzad. Due process rights extend to everyone arrested in the US, citizen or not. You'd think a US Senator would know this. What this legislation would allow, however, is for people like Shahzad to be tried by military tribunals instead of civilian courts, at the discretion of the State Department, and that's what he's really after.

It's hard to come to any conclusion other than that Joe Lieberman likes the trappings of democracy, but not the hard work of it. Any chance he gets, he's in favor of trading trials for tribunals and saying that law enforcement isn't up to the task of convicting and punishing those who would use terrorist tactics as a way of disrupting our day-to-day lives. Lieberman is, as today's NY Times Editorial pointed out, "co-author with Mr. McCain of a bill that would require that anyone arrested on any terrorism-related charge, including American citizens, be declared an enemy combatant and tried in a military court."

Lieberman, and those who side with him including Senator John McCain and Representative Peter King, are cowards. (Peter King is a hypocrite too, of incredible proportions, but that's another story.) The Framers of the Constitution included certain protections because they had seen just how much an unchecked state could abuse those under its power. They could have limited due process rights to citizens only, but they didn't. They took the more difficult path because they felt it was necessary to the existence of a free and open government (even if that government was only free and open to white male landowners at the time).

Here's what I think really puts Lieberman's position in perspective, though. Who do you think said the following about Shahzad?

He's a citizen of the United States, so I say we uphold the laws and the Constitution on citizens. He has all the rights under the Constitution. We don't shred the Constitution when it’s popular.

Some ACLU lawyer? Some hippie law professor from Terrorist Coddlers University? Some poet with no idea how the real world works? Nope. Glenn Beck. When the rodeo clown is making more sense than you are, you need to seriously reconsider what you're doing.

Oklahoma's full of liars

2010-05-04T10:00:00.000-04:00

Someone else must have pointed out the glaring contradiction in the reasoning between two of Oklahoma's recent abortion laws, but it bears repeating here. The ultrasound law is based on the idea that women should have every piece of information possible before having an abortion, even if that information is obtained via an extraordinarily invasive procedure. That law's implementation has been delayed temporarily while the state retains the services of Teresa Collette to defend it. Collette said this: "It would be remarkable if a women would undergo a medical procedure and a doctor would not have an obligation to describe the procedure and the results of that procedure to the patient." Indeed, that would be remarkable. In fact, that makes the bill sound somewhat reasonable, if you ignore the whole invasive procedure against the patient's will part of it.

But let's assume, against all evidence, that the state of Oklahoma and Professor Collette are arguing in good faith. Why, then, this?

Under this new law, a doctor may withhold information, mislead or even blatantly lie to a pregnant woman and her partner about the health of their baby if the doctor so much as thinks that fetal test results would cause a woman to consider abortion.

This is HB 2656, passed at the same time as the first law, and whose veto was overturned at the same time. So the state mandates an invasive procedure--the ultrasound wand has to be inserted vaginally if that will produce the clearest image--ostensibly because the doctor has an obligation to describe the results of all tests and procedures to a patient, while simultaneously giving the doctor the option to lie to the patient about the results of that procedure if he or she thinks those results would cause the patient to consider an abortion. If Oklahoma isn't the Republic of Gilead yet, it's real close.

It's possible--even likely, I'd argue--that the legislators who voted for these measures didn't see this contradiction when they voted on, or even when they wrote this legislation, because it's very obvious how they feel about women. Women, in their minds, are incapable of coming to the "correct" decision on an abortion, and so must be forced into that decision by whatever means are available. If that means they have to make doctors rape their patients with an ultrasound wand and turn the screen toward them while describing what they're seeing, it's a small price to pay as far as they're concerned. And if a doctor thinks that telling a woman that her fetus might be born with SMA or Down's Syndrome would cause her to consider getting an abortion, well, the doctor knows better, and the woman should just deal with the consequences.

Not that this should be surprising. After all, one of Oklahoma's Senators is a doctor who was accused of sterilizing a woman against her will and thought there was an epidemic of lesbianism in Oklahoma high schools. Okay, that second one isn't really relevant, but it does show the kind of people who can get elected to statewide office in Oklahoma. Oklahoma politicians respect women the way radical Muslims do--women can't be trusted to make their own decisions about their own bodies and so must have that ability taken away whenever possible, contradictions be damned.

I'm tired of this excuse

2010-05-02T21:46:00.000-04:00

At Balloon Juice, it's called "hoocoodanode," the excuse that lots of people come up with in a weak attempt to cover their asses when something bad happens. It's all the more frustrating to hear when what happened was pretty predictable. The one that sticks in most peoples' memories is from Condoleeza Rice in 2001 with her "no one could have predicted someone would fly planes into buildings" (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) when in fact the author Tom Clancy had written just such an event into a novel some years earlier. Forget the PDB--a fiction writer had come up with just such a scenario.

And the list is miles long. The latest version comes from BP spokesman Steve Rinehart who said "I don't think anybody foresaw the circumstance that we're faced with now." Well, the governments of Norway and Brazil did, Steve. They require another failsafe above and beyond what your rig had on it, which means that they felt what you had might not be enough in the case of a catastrophic failure. Guess who was right? That's not to say that the actions Norway and Brazil would have absolutely stopped this sort of failure, just that they saw the potential for a problem and decided to require one more level of security.

I'm not saying we can plan for every eventuality (though I grew up hearing stories about the odd things the US military had planned for, just in case--I bet there's multiple plans of action in case a UFO shows up on top of the White House, for instance), but we ought to stop taking a Titanic-esque view of our technology. Anything can fail, and fail badly, so we ought to try to plan out ways we can deal with worst case scenarios. Take a look at this bit from the first piece I linked above:

BP did not build the containment devices before the spill because it "seemed inconceivable" the blowout preventer on the rig would fail, Rinehart said.

I'm going to pass up the opportunity for a Princess Bride joke here and instead say that it was also inconceivable that the Titanic would sink, but it happened anyway. Or actually, that it wasn't inconceivable. It was unlikely, perhaps. It was improbable. But not inconceivable.

And I'm not just nitpicking over words here. We need to do a better job of conceiving potential disasters, because we're capable of doing incredible damage to our eco-system, damage we might not be able to rebound from one day. We need to do a better job of figuring out if the potential damage from a worst-case scenario is worth the short-term economic benefits.

I keep thinking about a sign I often see behind the desks of office workers, which says "failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part," and very often I agree with that sentiment, even if I'm the one who failed to plan enough. But in these sorts of cases, the failure of people in places of responsibility to plan can cause an emergency for me, and for all of us.

Photo from the Mississippi Gulf Coast

2010-05-02T12:19:00.000-04:00

My daughter lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and she went to the beach this morning to see what effects the oil spill were having. So far, this is the only animal she's seen washed up, but it certainly won't be the last. She told me that it was dead. I'll pass along more photos as she sends them to me.

Should I really be upset about this?

2010-04-28T12:01:00.000-04:00

So I go to Balloon Juice this morning and I see a link to this, something called "The Lady's Brunch Burger" from Paula Deen at the Food Network. Check out the picture.

If that picture looks familiar, it might be because it's a sandwich that's been around for a long time. It's called the Luther, and I wrote about it over 4 years ago. The name supposedly comes from Luther Vandross, either because he ate them or he invented them--no one really knows for sure. It's famous enough that it warranted an entire scene in season 1 of the animated series The Boondocks, in the episode titled "The Itis." And if I could find the video of Granddad making it and Riley eating it, I'd post it.

But no mention of it on the page where Deen re-invents it as "The Lady's Brunch Burger." When I posted this on Facebook, Amy replied with "By "lady" I assume she means 400 pound post-amputation pre-stroke diabetic in an Ambien fugue." So I started to wonder, might it be a good thing that Deen "created" this burger for a different (whiter) audience? Maybe I just ought to lay low on this one, for the good of everyone involved.

More Important Things to Worry About

2010-04-26T07:52:00.000-04:00

I keep seeing this pop up in my Facebook feed--"So-and-so and 18 of their friends joined the group 'Petition to remove facebook group praying for President Obama's death.'" Here's the "prayer."

DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN

In other words, it's a joke. Not a particularly good one, and not an original one either, as there was one circulating earlier which put George W. Bush in the place of Barack Obama, and a former student of mine put Fred Phelps in there as favorite preacher. And the people who are part of the original group aren't exactly covering themselves in glory--neither are those attacking the members of the page, I should point out as well. Put on boots if you're going to wade through that morass.

I think the people who are calling for this group to be removed are overreacting more than a little. Obama hatred is irrational but not illegal. And the joke? It's on the members of the group. All of the people the joke references died in 2009, so if the members are serious about this, then either God told them to piss off, or Obama's mojo is stronger. I'm cool with either result. What's more, the joke misspelled the names of two of the people it includes--Patrick Swayze and Farrah Fawcett.

But Brian, no doubt someone will reply, these people are fomenting hate against the President of the US. Perhaps. Then again, look back (or don't) through some of the things I wrote here during the Bush administration. You won't find the same poor quality of grammar or spelling, but you will find similar levels of vitriol, all aimed at George W. Bush and his administration.

Lastly, even if this were an actual attempt to pray Obama to death, objecting to it doesn't really make a lot of sense. If you actually believe in a benevolent, omnipotent God, then you'd have to have faith that He's not going to be swayed by a group of Facebookers with questionable language skills, wouldn't you? The kind of God who'd cave to those people wouldn't be worth worshiping. And of course, if you're an atheist, then you're not worried about it having any effect. And on the plus side, a Facebook group like this makes it easier for the Secret Service to track people who might actually take this sort of thing seriously.

Some questions

2010-04-20T16:59:00.000-04:00

This flier started appearing on campus today, which is fine--I fully support conservative groups bringing on people to help advocate for their positions. And there's no hiding the agenda here--the Heritage Foundation is mentioned at the bottom and in the credits for the primary speaker. So good for them--open and free exchange of ideas and whatnot.

If I were going, and if there were a Q&A at the end that I could get to the microphone for, though, I would have some questions about the premise of some of the claims mentioned on this flier.

For example, the claim that Big Government is bad for free markets seems, at least from recent experience, to be pretty ludicrous. I mean, unless you like seeing market collapses across the board complete with massive unemployment, you know, the way we did pretty much all the time before and during the Great Depression. We had small government before then, I'd say, and it didn't work out so well for anyone but the Robber Barons.

But if the free market claim is ludicrous, the environment one is exponentially worse. Before big government got involved in the form of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and the EPA, the Cuyahoga River used to catch on fire, and pollutant levels were off the charts. Before big government got involved, you couldn't breathe in LA (and elsewhere) because of the smog, and acid rain was a part of daily life. Industry didn't slow polluting because it was bad for business--they did so because big government made them do so, and as a result, our air and water, while still not as clean as we'd like, are demonstrably cleaner than they were even thirty years ago.

And that's much the same story when it comes to energy needs. Big government forced higher efficiency standards on housing and automobiles and industry, and as a result, we produce far more per unit energy than we were thirty years ago. Would we have made some improvements without the prodding from big government? Undoubtedly. Would they be as far-reaching as they have been? I have my doubts, mainly because industry showed no inclination toward such changes when they were less-regulated.

I suppose those aren't really questions so much as they're statements, so here's the question I'd ask. Given industry's dismal track record on free markets, the environment, and energy production and conservation, why should anyone trust them over big government, whose results are easily recognizable and beneficial?

Good Idea

2010-04-18T19:48:00.000-04:00

This is a great idea. We drive through Wilton Manors nearly every day, and we see the danger for pedestrians there. We were there the night one of those pedestrians was killed crossing the street, and we applauded when they dropped the speed limit from 35 to 30 mph. Wilton Manors has done some other things to try to improve the situation--installing more crosswalks and better lighting along with better enforcement of the speed limit has done wonders--but it seems to me that the only way to really make the situation better is to do what the locals are suggesting, and that means making it less accessible to fast traffic. Taking Wilton Drive down to one lane and emphasizing the pedestrian aspect of the town would be excellent, and I say this as someone who would be fairly inconvenienced if it happens, because I use Wilton Drive as a way to cut through from Sunrise to Oakland Park Blvd. all the time. Wilton Manors is one of those rare places in south Florida which is amenable to foot traffic, and we need to encourage those, nto discourage them. I hope this goes through.

Whither the Rubio Love?

2010-04-12T16:09:00.000-04:00

Jesse Taylor of Pandagon asks "Can anyone tell me why conservatives love Marco Rubio like he was made of frosting and bacon?" Not in 140 characters, which is why I'm on here instead of grading papers. (Work out the logic of that statement on your own.)

Part of the reason has to do with what conservatives see their problem as being. They honestly believe that they have the more popular positions on issues, and that the only reason Obama won was because he had the press on his side and because he was young, handsome, and could sell his story. Rubio, they feel, is their Obama, or he could be anyway. He's Cuban-American, but born in Miami. He's young--younger than me, which stings a little--and he's good-looking. Plus, he's full blown wingnut, and uncompromising about it. So in Rubio, conservatives see a savior--a right-wing Obama--and they figure that if they can counter liberal media with Fox News, and young-handsome with young-handsome, and not-white with not-white, then maybe the election gets reduced to issues, and they can win that fight.

There are some major problems with that. For starters, conservative ideas aren't the most popular out there, and they never have been. If Rubio runs for President some day on a platform of repealing Medicare and Social Security, he'll lose like Goldwater. Plus, Rubio is way dirty financially speaking. Crist is starting to hit him hard on that, and I hope that Meeks will too, if Rubio wins the nomination. It's one thing to just be a hypocrite on fiscal responsibility--it's another to be personally corrupt. On the other hand, he will have the full backing of Fox News and the rest of the wingnut press.

But for Rubio, the near future all rides on this Senate campaign. If he wins, he can be a rising star, and the wingnuts will indeed continue to love him like he's made of frosting and bacon. If he loses, either to Crist or to Meek, he's going to have a hard time coming back from that.

How Apt

2010-04-05T20:12:00.000-04:00

My daughter tweeted this earlier. No idea how old it is or where it's from, but I thought it was too funny not to share.

Ross Douthat and Charlie Crist

2010-04-02T08:53:00.000-04:00

Ross Douthat takes on E.J. Dionne's column on the Florida Republican Senate primary in a blog post at the NY Times, and assails Dionne for praising a "'nonpartisan, non-ideological' Charlie Crist, with his 'sunny' attitude and his 'buoyant moderation.'" Douthat does this because Dionne is criticizing the Tea Partiers for being hyper-partisan and Douthat doesn't want to acknowledge that he's, well, one of them in a lot of respects.

Douthat claims that Dionne fails to acknowledge any of Crist's failures as governor, and suggests that this is the real reason why Tea Partiers have deserted the once-popular governor, as opposed to the rabid know-nothingness that they display fairly regularly.

Notably absent is any defense of Crist’s actual record as governor, which has been “moderate” in the worst sense of the word: Fiscally irresponsible on taxes and spending alike, and eager to use bailout dollars to delay the hard choices that Crist’s own profligacy created.

Douthat conveniently overlooks one major problem with his own argument here. Crist doesn't set the budget alone. The Florida legislature has a prominent hand in it, and who's been serving in a prominent position in the legislature of late? Oh yeah--Marco Rubio, who was Speaker of the Florida House. What--he gets credit for being fiscally responsible? Marco of the sketchy spending of party and state funds? And Rubio's not alone--the Florida legislature has been in the hands of conservative Republicans for quite some time now, with many of the spending policies that Douthat calls profligate instituted under the governorship of Jeb! Bush, whose conservative credentials never seem to be called into question.

In fact, the closer you look at Florida's fiscal wreckage, the more it becomes clear that it's hard-right conservatives who ought to be getting kicked in the teeth, not moderates, and especially not liberals. They've been in charge while the economy down here went careening off into the ditch, and if it hadn't been for Crist's embrace of the stimulus package, we'd have slid down even further. Funny how that never occurs to Douthat, isn't it?

A brief word on oil drilling

2010-04-01T07:56:00.000-04:00

I don't like it. It's unnecessarily damaging to the environment, both from the drilling side and from the usage side, and the longer we drill, the longer we push off the necessary pain of switching over to clean, renewable energy sources. But I'm also incredibly cynical about human willingness to endure even slight discomfort in the short term for amazing benefit in the long term. I've been dieting for the better part of a year--I know of what I speak here. Even though I've dropped 25 pounds and kept it off without any major trouble, I still have another 25 (or so) to go, and that'll get me down to a hirsute 5'10" and 225. But pass up a chance to get a Popeye's three-piece? Can't do it, even though my heart would no doubt thank me later.

It's the same with us--humans--and oil. Drive a smaller car to save gas, or even better, use public transportation or buy an electric car? Heaven forfend! Use less plastic? What are you, a commie? No--we'll drill until there's nothing left to wring out of the earth and until south Florida is under water because we've melted off the icecaps, because we're crap at changing and sacrificing. Maybe some new technology will save us, but we can't count on that.

Am I disappointed that the Obama administration is pushing for more oil exploration? Absolutely. Am I surprised? Not at all.

Anti-God?

2010-03-28T00:04:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about this off and on all day, since I saw this story over at Pharyngula. I have to admit that I was a little surprised by the way the story was framed, not by the general slant but by the actual language used. It's a story about a billboard in Orange Park, FL, not far from Jacksonville, with an ad purchased by the Northeast Florida Coalition of Reason. You probably know where this is going. Here's the ad.

But here's the odd thing. The article refers to the sign, in both the headline and the body, as an "anti-God billboard." Anti-God? Of course the sign isn't anti-God. It's simply suggesting that if you're an atheist, you're not alone, which isn't even a particularly radical thing to say. I mean, you might feel alone if you're an atheist, since we atheists don't tend to group together in mutual support of our lack of belief, but it's a long leap from a factual statement about the existence of other non-believers to an active dislike for an entity that, well, we discount the existence of in the first place.

I wonder, though, if I am anti-God, at least as concerns the typical understanding of the capital-G God, i.e. a personal, interfering-with-everyday-life, thou shalt have no others before Me, binary, good vs. evil, disobey me and spend eternity in torment kind of god. And I think I am.

Amy and I talk about this a lot, especially as it deals with narrative and story. She believes, and I agree with her, that religion is the most successful fiction ever created by humans, and that for the last couple thousand years, monotheism has been the most successful religious story type. Monotheism is so successful that more than half the world's population, to some degree, think it accurately depicts the physical state of the universe. (There's a wide range of belief encompassed here, from vague notions of a consciousness to young-Earth creationism--I'm talking about about how successful the meme is right now.) So why does that matter?

It's the binary part that drives me round the bend, because it reduces complex questions to simple good-bad, right-wrong dichotomies, and mature minds recognize that there's rarely a moral circumstance where the answer, every time, is absolutely clear.

I'm far from a scholar of ancient civilizations and their religious practices, but I have to say that it seems to me, at this far remove, that there's something to be said for looking at your gods as beings to be placated rather than imitated. After all, the gods have disagreements; they wind up on opposite sides of wars; they cheat on their spouses; rape; steal; kill their parents and each other (depending on the culture). They also, on occasion, work together in common cause, and they've been known to hash out agreements and compromise when necessary. They are, in short, reflections of humankind.

But here's the important bit. Because they are often petulant and moody, and because they change their minds as often as three-year-old children, they can't really be looked to for moral leadership. They're looked at as warning examples of what not to do rather than as shining examples of what to do, and so the responsibility for deciding what is socially acceptable and unacceptable devolves to the humans in that society. As a result, they're already equipped to deal with moral ambiguity, because their religious universe is filled with it.

But monotheists don't have that challenge. They get to point to a single deity who's provided some sacred writings with some occasionally contradictory requirements and directions for salvation and say "that's what we have to do." Doesn't it have to be more difficult to deal with moral ambiguity if your religious experience is based on the binary of good and evil? If you look at the spectrum of Christianity in the US, you discover that the more fundamentalist the person, the more extreme he or she is on almost any political or social issue. The more locked into a single God they are, the more they're likely to be a hardliner.

Obviously, I think the world would be a better place if the population were a lot more atheist or at least agnostic, and approached life as though this were the only one we have and so we'd better make the most of it. But if that's not going to happen just yet, I think I'd rather have the dominant worldview be one where there are lots of gods who are all horribly flawed in multiple ways, because that, at least, is closer to reality than one in which an all-powerful, all-knowing God gazes down on the suffering of His servants and does nothing to alleviate it while simultaneously claiming to be the ideal of benevolence and justice. If that's God, then yeah, I'm anti-God.

No

2010-03-27T12:37:00.000-04:00

I think I have to pass on this invitation.

You Might Be Surprised By This

2010-03-24T09:58:00.000-04:00

I really don't have a problem with the stunt Senate Republicans pulled yesterday by refusing to give unanimous consent to allow hearings to continue after 2:00. It's a matter of consistency for me.

There were a number of times when Democrats were in the minority in the Senate when I wished they would do the same thing to oppose legislation. Just off the top of my head--some of the Bush tax cuts, the expansion of the war in Iraq, after the Gang of 14 allowed some egregious choices to make it to the federal bench and the filibuster was threatened (a position I came around on not long after that). And of course, I've been in favor of making Senators who threaten to filibuster actually make good on it, rather than do the fakey version we have today. The ability to slow down government deliberation is a good one to have at times, and what I and others may see as petulance, others may look at as a necessary action to slow down harmful legislation. It's all a matter of perspective.

Which is not to say I agree with the current Republican obstructionism. Critics of it are correct when they say it's the equivalent of a temper tantrum from a spoiled child. The most obvious reaction to Sen. McCain's threat that Republicans were going to refuse to help after health care reform passed was, after all, "so what's different now?" But I do understand where it comes from, because there have been times when I pleaded with my own Senators to engage in those types of tactics.

I'll be surprised if it lasts--there are too many ways for Democrats to create a backlash against it, and this health care win seems to have provided them with a feistiness they're often accused of lacking. And then things will return to normal, until the next major legislation comes up for a vote, and we'll get to hear how this is the WORST THING EVER!!!! and how Democrats will lose more seats than actually exist unless they immediately cave in to every demand the Republicans make. And so on.

Give Them Some Space

2010-03-22T10:50:00.000-04:00

If, like me, you welcomed the passage of health care reform legislation last night--even if you were wishing for greater reform--you probably wanted to express your joy. If, like a lot of people, you're connected to others through social networks, you probably went there to celebrate, and you might have been surprised/disappointed/upset when you realized that not everyone shared your excitement over this legislation. I wasn't surprised by the reaction so much as I was surprised by some of the people who reacted the way they did.

I wasn't surprised by the reaction because I saw the same reaction less than a year and a half ago when Barack Obama was elected President and conservatives were lashing out. Then, in the post-mortem, when lots of my fellow lefty bloggers were offering what they considered to be sage advice to conservatives, I said we needed to mind our own business. I said we needed to remember what it felt like to be on the losing side and how incensed it made us to have the winners gloating and telling us what we needed to do. And it bears repeating today.

Yes, the reactions coming from conservatives are overwrought. I called out someone last night because he used the word "traitor" to describe House members who voted for the legislation. And in the face of that sort of reaction, it would be easy to gloat, to remember the way it felt to be on the receiving end back in 1994, or 2000, or 2002, or 2004, and to jam it back in their faces. But it would be unwise, and more importantly (to me anyway), it would be unkind.

If you're on Facebook and you see someone you went to grade school with having a really bad day over this legislation, let it slide for now. They're hurting and lashing out. You can be Walter Sobcek or you can be The Dude. Just abide.

Health Care Roundup

2010-03-21T15:56:00.000-04:00

I did this post over at The Rumpus and thought I'd repost it here for anyone who isn't clear on what this legislation is going to do.

The debate over this round of health care reform has been nasty for a long time, and yesterday it reached epic proportions when protesters reportedly called Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) "faggot" and Reps. John Lewis (D-GA) and Andre Carson (D-IN) "nigger." Perhaps this will die down a little once the votes are counted this afternoon, and it almost certainly will (assuming the bill passes) once those in opposition realize that their fears aren't coming true. And it's with that in mind that I've collected the following links--stories which focus on what this legislation will actually do, and why it's necessary.

For starters, here are ten immediate benefits that you'll get when health care reform passes.

Ezra Klein explains how this reform will reduce costs, as well as who health care reform helps.

This study, published today, shows that lack of health insurance causes an additional 45,000 deaths a year, and "that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts."

Jonathan Cohn looks at the closing arguments in this debate as the final votes near.

Art that Makes you Squirm

2010-03-19T23:31:00.001-04:00

It is not uncommon for artists to create work that aspires to disturb. And I believe this is a worthy impulse. Much of what we encounter from day to day does not move us. Often things that should move us do not, because we're used to hearing about such-and-such number of deaths as bombs blast some faraway land, or about the young lives cut short by a traffic accident on the highway a few miles away, or about the little child in the neighborhood, or related to a coworker, stricken by the terrible disease for which there is no cure. Always we are surrounded by suffering and pain, yet it is human nature to limit just how much we feel. It is good and adaptive. It gets us through our days. It keeps us productive. But to be human, we must do more than get through days and be productive; we must feel, even when it's inconvenient. One of the most important things that art can do is snap us out of our platitudes and euphemisms, even if just for a short time, and make us look at the naked reality of our lives: the fragility, the unfairness, the pain, the truth.

It is not uncommon for artists to create work that aspires to disturb. But it is very rare that I am disturbed.

The exception to this is Janis Brothers. Janis Brothers is an artist who is from and who works in rural North Florida, and, she told me, she worries that others won't get her work, that it doesn't have a universal appeal, because it is so personal to her. Brothers' art preserves and recreates the tragedies she's witnessed and suffered from, true, but just as a small town in the hands of William Faulkner can seem to contain the world, so can a single tragic car accident in the hands of Janis Brothers seem to crystalize the universal emotions, and questions, that we all experience in the face of death.

And none of us are untouched by death. You might just manage to dodge paying taxes, but death? It is the ultimate universal topic; the paradox is that every death is supremely individual. I have not yet seen one of Brothers' installations in person, but I had the opportunity to see images of her work, and to talk to her about it, and now she is the only artist who comes to mind whose installations I both fear and deeply desire seeing.

To me, the most disturbing project Brothers has shown is a film called "Squirm," an apt description both of the content of the video and the reaction it will evoke. Squirm shows a collection of dead mice stuck to a glue trap, surrounded by flies, as one last mouse struggles for survival and ultimately succumbs.

Now I know what you're thinking: that's gruesome. Yes. But mousetraps are a big business in this world, and with good reason. Drive down any street in America and you are passing houses where rodents are being trapped and killed. It's a matter of what we choose to look at and what we choose to ignore.

Brothers found the opportunity striking because of the connection she made between the struggles of the mouse and a tragic car accident she'd witnessed. I'd like to quote her directly:

When I saw that one mouse was still alive but stuck to the trap, I decided to film it even though I did not have a particular plan as to how I might use the footage. To remove the mouse would have been impossible.

In review, the struggle was similar to the experience I encountered with Cleansing, a reaction to the experience of witnessing a car accident. All four of the passengers died. The crash was so severe, the car had to be cut away to remove the victims. The struggle to hang onto life only to die is a tragedy and very difficult to witness.

The video of the dying mouse reminds me of the films I've seen lately (Fast Food Nation, Temple Grandin) where they show cows being slaughtered. No one likes this. Many look away. But those deaths are frequent realities we seem, as a people, in no hurry to stop. And we know, as a people, that we could save human lives by (for example) outlawing cell phones in cars and lowering speed limits, but we don't. We like to drive fast and talk on the phone. So some must die. We allow it. Why don't we feel this?

Tonight, while Brian and I were taking the lawn waste to the curb, we heard a series of screeches and bangs. Because I grew up on a busy street, I consider my familiarity with the sounds of car crashes better than average. "That's a bad one," I said right away. "They got several cars with that one." We walked out to the intersection (so did several dozen other people, by the way -- the first time I've seen most of my neighbors!) and there was one small Toyota terribly mangled, struck from several directions. Three larger trucks had their front ends smashed in. We watched for a moment, the emergency vehicles came, and we turned and went home. I told a joke, and he laughed. What could we do? Accidents happen... all the time.

So yes, Squirm shows mouse death, but Cleansing is about the deaths of four human beings. I'm posting some stills from these pieces, but I encourage you to go to Janis Brothers' website and look around. Here are just a few photos:

This picture shows the medical equipment, and we get a sense of the four individual lives lost from the four stations.

This detail (latex obscures the news clippings, but not so much that you can't read them) shows that four were killed in a fiery crash -- the same kind of article we see all the time and usually think little of, the kind of information that does little more than put a barrier between us and the horror, the tragedy of the event.

The medical equipment drips its blood into religious vessels: vitrines covered with pristine cloth and communion wafers. The transmission of the blood from the medically to the religiously symbolic vessels is particularly meaningful I think, and says more than words can.

After the exhibition, the vitrines and wafers are permanently transformed, destroyed, bloodied.

What I love about this piece is its layers: the news layer, the medical layer, the religious layer, the way the pristine thing is transformed/destroyed by the blood/wine while the news article with its emotional distance and professional tone is kept at bay behind latex, its words visible but muted while the things themselves enact the deaths -- that one-way movement through time -- the taking of a person with flesh and blood and hope and need and desire and fear and destiny down, via this destruction, to simply the blood and flesh.

We have all lost people. I have lost people. Each of those deaths was individual, an event indivisible from the unique person whose life was lost. You can no more generalize about death than you can generalize about people. And I think that's why Brothers' art really works for me, why I feel she's managed to transform the personal into the universal -- her work is careful and respectful, and she never loses sight of the individual who lived and was lost. And through that care and respect and clarity of vision, she makes us feel that moment, that universal sense of loss and tragedy. The unwanted that came. The desperate desire to just reverse that one thing that happened whose consequences were so outsized, so awful, so beyond comprehension -- and so utterly irreversible.

And I both love it and am left profoundly unsettled. But it is an unsettling that I want to feel, because this is life, and it is too important not to.

Brothers also has a piece on sex offenders that would surely chill even the most hardened heart, but I would like to stop with these two pieces, and encourage you to view more on her website.

This is the third in my series on Florida Artists, especially the ones I just met. Previous posts here and here. Cross-posted to The Electronic Girl.

Like Jesus in the Toast

2010-03-17T11:21:00.000-04:00

This is the only thing that might get me to pick up a copy of Newsweek.

Why is there a portrait of Karl Marx in the apple sitting in front of our “fashion icon” First Lady, in her latest appearance on the cover of Newsweek (which replaces her bulbous giant belts with Nosferatu nails as the de rigeur accessory for spring)?

Right. Karl Marx is in the apple, and the White House is so appalled by this that they had the picture cropped.

Early this morning, 3/16/10, it looks like the White House ordered Newsweek to crop the photo so the apple is no longer visible online. Newsweek has cut the table out completely, now, because whatever’s going on in this photo was noticed by the public.

Of course, that won't keep the millions of copies of Newsweek with the actual image on the cover from being seen by poor impressionable souls in checkout lines and doctor's offices everywhere.

I'm not sure what the deal is here, though. Let's set aside sanity for a moment and assume that there really is a picture of Karl Marx in the apple in front of Michelle Obama. Why? Presumably, Newsweek would have put it there. If they did, then either they did it as a subtle commentary on what Michelle Obama wants to do to the schools or they did it at her behest as part of her great indoctrination program that will turn our nation's youth into communists. If it's the former, and the White House indeed objected, then wouldn't it make sense for Hillbuzz to celebrate Newsweek's brave stand against a communist power structure? And if it's the latter, then why would the White House have the picture pulled?

I just don't get conspiracy thinking, I guess.

Electronic Motherhood

2010-03-13T16:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon, I became a mother. It happened quite suddenly. I was browsing facebook, happily making snarky comments on people's news stories and supportive comments about people's cats' health problems, when an alert pops up telling me that Brittany Spears (my boyfriend's daughter) has made a "family request." I'd never seen a "family request" before, so I clicked right away with more than average curiosity. And here's what I saw:

I will admit my heart pounded a bit out of my chest. Here is a strange new circumstance: a facebook request suggests I am someone's mother, then gives me the options "confirm" and "ignore." The emotional implications of ignoring motherhood need not be mentioned; the emotional implications of confirming motherhood, however, are not to be taken lightly.

But then, this is facebook. I have dozens of "facebook friends," which is a category quite distinct from "friend." A "facebook friend" is someone that you may or may not have even met. You may or may not actually talk to this person via facebook. You might even find some few "facebook friends" kind of annoying, or even just republican, and so choose to silence them from your news feed. Aside from appearing on your list of friends, these "facebook friends" have no real presence to you at all.

"Facebook motherhood," though, feels like a less callous category. And while I don't want to get into the long and complex history between Brittany and me, needless to say it's long and complex. When Brittany asked me to be her facebook mom, it's probably the sweetest, most loving thing she's ever done towards me. (And when I accepted, that may have been the sweetest and most loving thing I've ever done towards her -- "long and complex" history, after all, is a term that applies just as well to the Israelis and Palestinians, China and Taiwan, Hutus and Tutsis, as it applies to us.)

And of course Brittany has had other moms. She has her real mother and her mother's long-time girlfriend, too, and they are much closer to her than I am. But I've always known that and never tried to "compete." Far from it. I'm not technically old enough for her to be my daughter, so I've always resented the parenting role a bit. I've been more comfortable thinking of Brittany as a cousin. But of course she's not. A cousin is an equal. She's my boyfriend's daughter. It's not the same thing.

So being a "facebook mom" is actually the best possible description of our relationship. We're not family, but we are family. We love each other, but there's this weird barrier. We know each other well, and maybe over time we'll get closer, because we'll share news stories and updates about our pets.

Driving up the highway last night, to visit with friends, I found myself reminded that earlier in the day I had become Brittany's fb mom. It made me feel a little different, I realized. I little more motherly. I guess I'm getting older. But there was also this neat little fact: I'm writing a book about an electronic daughter. And now I have one.

Cross-posted to The Electronic Girl

Onward Christian History! An Update.

2010-03-13T11:06:00.000-05:00

A month ago, I blogged about an attempt by the Christian fundamentalist community in Texas to change the history and social sciences curricula for K-12 textbooks. There's been a fair amount of reporting on the story since then, most recently in the NY Times, and the changes that have been pushed through so far are disturbing.

That I find these changes disturbing shouldn't be taken to mean that I think the current curricula in history and the social sciences are sacrosanct or above criticism. Every area of study should be reviewed and updated periodically, with scholars and educators taking the lead, bringing in new understandings and material and discussing what works and what doesn't in the classroom. But that's not what's happening in Texas. What's happening there is far more agenda-driven.

And the people pushing their agenda aren't shy about the fact that they have one:

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

And presumably they know this because they are experts in these fields, perhaps engaging academic discourse, researching and promoting their views using time-honored scholarly methods, right?

There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.

This would be bad even if all they were doing was nibbling around the edges, like their desire to include "'the unintended consequences' of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation" (which is lightly coded racism and sexism) or the replacing of the word "capitalism" with the phrase "free-enterprise system." But some of their choices are insane, most notably this one:

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone.

It's one thing to add in Aquinas, Calvin and Blackstone and make the curriculum deeper, richer, more complex. But to remove Jefferson? You know--the third President of the US, drafter of the Declaration of Independence, Founding Father. The man's face is blasted out of the side of a mountain, for crying out loud. But he also coined the phrase "wall of separation between church and state," and for that, he has to disappear from this list.

The most disturbing thing about this push is that, as I've written before, what happens in Texas doesn't stay there. No, because Texas is such a large purchaser of textbooks (and because California's economy is a hot mess and unable to act as a counterweight), the textbooks which get approved in Texas become the standards for textbooks in other states. And this should be a concern, because that means agenda-driven fundamentalists with little regard for scholarship or accuracy are writing the textbooks that your children could be learning from, even if you live far, far from the heart of Texas.

Math and Translation

2010-03-10T21:14:00.000-05:00

I believe that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the purest fiction ever devised. And when I say "pure" I mean that it is centered directly and wholly in the genre of fiction. Most stories wander into poetry from time to time, and dance rhythmically around in the domain of drama. But Alice in Wonderland is fiction, pure fiction.

My test for this is translation. Translation is a trial by fire for any work of art; translation is the Darwinian test. A novel that can be translated into drama, into film perfectly or even near-perfectly, no longer needs to exist. It has evolved into a preferred form, a form more likely to survive in our current cultural ecosystem.

My favorite examples: Breakfast at Tiffany's. Midnight Cowboy. In both cases the book is better, but in both cases, for most people, the movie is good enough.

These two novels were replaced in our cultural consciousness by the movies made from them because at their hearts both stories are dramas about characters and events.

To me, "pure" fiction is distinguished from dramatic fiction or prose-told drama by its uncompromising allegiance to ideas. A fiction will violate all good dramatic standards of character and plot and sense itself to communicate its ideas.

Most everyone knows that Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson was a mathematician, and I think this recent NYTimes Op-Ed does a great job of explaining to we lay-people how Dodgson's Alice wandered through a wonderland of ideas -- of mathematical concepts he brought to life through fiction.

There are have been more than two dozen attempts to turn Alice into a film, and while some have had more impact than others, none has ever threatened to replace the fiction, the prose as Dodgson wrote it. I believe none ever will: because film shows drama, and this story doesn't dance in dramaland, it frolics in fictionland, Wonderland, the land of questions unanswered, the land of nonsequiturs more true than sense, the land where ideas and concepts and abstractions come to life.

The single most amazing thing about mathematics is that, while the world of numbers appears to be entirely man-made, math describes our real, actual, natural world better than anything else. One, two, three, four -- these neat, discrete units of precise size and order are themselves ideas and ideals (in the platonic sense), concepts, abstractions. And yet: everything around us can be described through these strange little creatures that seem very much to be an invention and yet indicate at every turn that they are instead a discovery of something fundamental and (literally) universal.

It seems that the more dedicated we become to describing the world in terms of empirical fact, the more necessary these abstract ideals become. And it seems that the deeper we go into the misty magic land of these numbers themselves, the closer we come to that everyday complexity that seems to belie the cleanliness of a mathematical approach.

Consider the art of Nathan Selikoff: I've been considering it for days, ever since I met Nathan at an artists' workshop last weekend.

You're looking at "Chinese Warrior," a fraction of a much larger work, called "Faces of Chaos." Selikoff produced numerous images based on complex math, then sorted through the images, selecting 1024 that looked like things we could recognize. This is something like watching clouds, and making out shapes, only with much more discernible detail, and with absolute clarity on what numbers and what processes created the image.

This piece is called "Helios," (not to speak for the artist, but, very likely) because it looks like the sun. It's part of a separate project called "Strange Attractors," but it shows a similar idea: simple math gives us spheres and cubes and triangles, sure, but when the math gets complex enough, the images seem to leave that world of ideals and take a place in our real world: it looks like the sun not just because it is round and seemingly-spherical; there's more discernible detail than that:

This is a detail of "Helios" I made from a screen grab of the image on Selikoff's website: the seeming-sphere seems to have a surface, as you can see, and something seems to be radiating from it, some kind of dusty liquid heat -- a plasma. We see this image and recognize other images we've seen...

...like this actual image of the surface of the sun. And the most astonishing thing of all is that the image produced by an artist through mathematics is more clear and detailed than the image made through optics by a scientist.

I look again at Selikoff's image and I ask myself: do the numbers tell us more than our eyes and instruments? Can the mathematical models predict the physical nature of the universe? Sure, this image looks like a Chinese Warrior, and this one looks like a star, but what about all those others? What other shapes exist in the universe that we do not recognize because we have not yet seen them?

I look again at "Helios," at the ribbons of energy that move "within" the "sphere" and I wonder if these lines tell us something about the movement of energy within a star that it may take scientists decades or centuries to confirm? We know numbers are useful in describing the world we understand, because we understand it; we can compare. But what about all those numbers who are useful in describing the world we do not yet know?

What Wonderland can they reveal? Only the Artist-Mathematicians like Dodgson and Selikoff can show, and tell.

This is the second in a series of posts on Florida Artists, and how I experience their work. I would love references to more artists, working in any medium, in Florida.

Cross-posted to The Electronic Girl

Go! Go! Ru-bi-o!

2010-03-10T20:49:00.000-05:00

Don't freak, everyone--I haven't changed sides. I'm just rethinking my earlier position on the Crist-Rubio race. Back when I wrote that, Rubio hadn't opened up a lead on Crist, and I underestimated just how much the teabaggers had taken over the Florida Republican party, and how well Rubio would be able to make himself palatable to Republicans as a whole.

So what's the current situation? Rubio's winning now, but in a head to head with Kendrick Meek, it's close, 44-39, and with more Democrats undecided than Republicans, PPP says it's probably closer than that. Independents are breaking Meek's way for now, but it's way early.

So how have I changed? Well, back then I was rooting for Crist in the primary in part because I thought that if Crist won the primary, Rubio might run as a third party to his right and siphon off enough votes for Meek to win. But it looks now like if Crist runs as an independent, it helps Rubio.

In a hypothetical three way contest Rubio leads with 34% to 27% for Crist and 25% for Kendrick Meek.

Crist gets 32% of the Democratic vote but only 18% of Republicans running as an independent. He also leads among independents with 35% to 24% for Rubio and 22% for Crist.

Crist's overall approval rating now is a 35/51 spread. He's most popular with Democrats at a 45% approval rating followed by independents at 29% and Republicans at 28%.

I knew Crist had been cratering, but I had no idea just how large a crater we were talking about. This is extinction of the dinosaurs quality. Crist could conceivably pull it out, but it seems less likely every day, so now I'm left hoping that Crist does everything he can to drag Rubio down with him, leaving Meek unscathed and looking like the only decent one in the bunch (which he is).

But the polls right now are pretty clear. Meek has a shot against Rubio, if he can shore up his base, get us excited, and hold the independents. That's a lot to do, but it's possible. It would be great to see that seat go back to the Democrats, when the rest of the country is looking shaky.

Spring Break Woo!

2010-03-09T22:02:00.001-05:00

We spent this afternoon at Shark River Valley, biking the trail with three friends. Last time we were there, it was the dead of summer, and the wildlife wasn't very wild. There was a lot more variety in the bird life today, and way more alligators, though they weren't moving much. We saw one swimming, but that was it.

The herons always seemed to be posing for us. Lovely birds.

This picture makes the gator look way scarier than he actually was. He was big--probably 16 feet long--but he was also completely uninterested in us or any of the other tourists who stopped to take photos. And I maxed out the zoom lens on him as well. No need to take chances.

Lovely bird. This shot doesn't do it justice, I think.

You can see all 25 pictures I took here. If you're down in this area and you're interested in seeing the Everglades, the Shark River Valley bike ride is a great way to do it. It's about a 15 mile ride, and the weather right now is perfect for it.

Perception and Image

2010-03-08T22:28:00.012-05:00

We spend our lives wondering what the world is, what the universe is, what our experience is, and whether our experience means something objectively, whether we can translate from our perceptions some kind of larger truth, some understanding of the world.

It's a question for the philosopher in each of us: is there one reality, one objective truth? Or are there as many truths as there are conscious minds, as many versions of reality as there people and cows and bees and bacteria and trees?

I feel that reality is like a jewel with infinite facets, that we are born in the middle of one: it stretches to the horizon; to us it is large as a planet. And we can stay there. We can sit in the middle of our own point of view and we can see things our way: my country is the best country, because it's mine. My mommy is the prettiest mommy, because she's mine. It's where we all begin, and we have the option to stay. Or we can travel: we can wander far to the border where one side meets another, we can stretch our necks across that angle, let our fingers grip the sides, try to see what life looks like from that other point of view.

Even kindergartners wonder, when you see blue, is it the same blue I see? And even they discover there is no way to test the question. It is good to explore how sensory information translates itself in our minds to a three-dimensional reality with aspects we can call "depth" and "dimension" and "color": that's difficult enough. But how can we ever know if what we perceive is close or far from what others perceive? In some ways, our lives are dedicated to negotiating this unknowable gap.

Art is one of the few ways we can try to understand the way others see the world.

This weekend I met many talented artists, all of whose work affected me in various ways, and I understand those effects and those ways better in some cases and less well in others. The drawings of Christine Eckerfield (the picture above is "Palms in Full Sun") have the particular effect of making me question my eyes.

I see palms, and I recognize them with my own context: the shape, for me, a native Floridian, is familiar and ubiquitous and has been since childhood. Others might see these as signs of the exotic, but I see the familiar, the most often ignored shapes, the shapes that always linger just above our busy heads.

And I see the angle of regard: the framing of the image tells me how I am holding my head. I am questioning. I am surprised. I have looked up by accident, and lost my busy head mid-thought, not because of the beauty of the palms or the sky, but because I have been confounded by the light. And I am alone. I am certain of this: I am alone.

The light asks questions I can't answer. It asks: have you ever seen the world...? It asks: has anyone seen it? It asks: do you know what goes on while you look away?

The sky is mild, washed out, burned out as eyes burn out in mid-day sun. I'm reminded that in Vietnam they don't have separate words for blue and green, that to them, blue and green are two shades of the same color, like fuchsia and pink to us. I consider that there are millions of people who see sky and trees as a continuum of the same color, as we see sky and sea.

And I look at the light.

Light is the soul of quickness, always moving. By the time I have had time to wonder about how we see blue and green, the moment has changed. The image has the power of memory, potent memory, pure in the single mind, unspoiled by other people's recollections or by photographs.

Many times in my life I have seen a large and beautiful moon: I grab a camera. I snap a picture. The photograph shows a small white dot.

The record of light is not the experience of light. 5 million cameras would record a beam of light the same way. No two people will experience it the same.

This is the magic of this image: yes, it reminds me that we do not all see the world in the same way. But how? By letting me live a fleeting moment long. By letting me set this singularity of experience -- in which I am certain I am alone -- beside my own.

I don't know if her blue is my blue, but I know, I feel, that her moment is unique. And this makes me believe that her blue is not, cannot, be my blue -- that my blue is not even my blue from one experience to the next. The image makes me feel that the strangeness is the sameness, that the sameness is the strangeness.

I look at these palms, these common trees, and I think that, despite the intimate familiarity I have with the basic shape, the light, the moment, portrayed is utterly alien to me. And yet it is the feeling of alienation that lets me live in the image: it is the thing I recognize most of all.

This is the first in a series of posts on Florida Artists, and how I experience their work. I would love references to more artists, working in any medium, in Florida.

Cross-posted to The Electronic Girl

You have to read the whole thing

2010-03-08T21:28:00.000-05:00

It would be understandable if, when you saw a headline like this, you figured you had enough of the story, got your chuckle, and moved on to the rest of the interwebs. After all, what more need be added to "Havoc on the highway: woman was driving while shaving her bikini area"?

Perhaps nothing has to be added to that headline, but there was lots more in the story. This was the best part, though.

"She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ready for the visit," Trooper Gary Dunick said.

But wait--there's more. She was in the driver's seat, but her ex-husband had the wheel while she was shaving/driving. Yes, her ex-husband. And this all happened a day after she was convicted of a DUI with a prior and driving on a suspended license. This might be the most awesome story I've read all year.

The 60's Weren't Family-Friendly

2010-03-08T12:54:00.000-05:00

It's never much of a shock when a state legislator indulges in some gay-hating--the state doesn't even matter, because state districts are so small that some manner of bigotry is bound to not only be acceptable, but applauded. This particular case is from Florida, which is why I clicked through to the story, but it could have been from anywhere.

Stephen Precourt isn't all that unusual--he's a white-bread Republican from the middle of the state with a really limited view of US history. Some background: Florida lawmakers are trying to pass a $75 million incentive package to lure more filmmakers to the state. We already have a program that offers an additional 2% tax break if studios make "family-friendly" programming (which screams Disney giveaway to me, but whatever), but this package would modify that provision.

Family-friendly productions are those that have cross-generational appeal; would be considered suitable for viewing by children age 5 or older…and do not exhibit or imply any act of smoking, sex, nudity, nontraditional family values, gratuitous violence, or vulgar or profane language.

Think Progress is focusing on the "nontraditional family values" part of the legislation, since that basically means "no gay allowed" in today's construction, and because, when asked, Precourt said he thought shows with gay characters "would not be the kind of thing I’d say that we want to invest public dollars in.” But notice what else Precourt said he thought the legislation meant.

State representative Stephen Precourt, whose district includes Disney World, says the purpose of the credit is to encourage movies to depict cinematic life from the 1960s. “Think of it as like Mayberry,” Precourt told the Palm Beach Post News. “That’s when I grew up — the ’60s. That’s what life was like. I want Florida to be known for making those kinds of movies: Disney movies for kids and all that stuff. Like it used to be, you know?”

Now, if Precourt is talking about encouraging Disney to go back to making movies like the ones they made in the 60's, well, that's not going to happen. There's stuff on the Disney Channel or ABC Family now which wouldn't get a G rating then, and a 2% tax break won't cover the box-office beatdown Disney would get if they tried to release a new version of "The Apple Dumpling Gang" without spicing it up a little.

But if Precourt is suggesting that the values in the Disney movies or Mayberry of that time were a reflection of real life, well, that's not true. It's not even true if you were a white male with money, though it was closer. What that period was known for more than anything was that facades were important, that the everything was okay as long as it looked okay, and never mind the festering illness beneath. Domestic abuse, racial tensions--Disney and Mayberry didn't have those problems, but the rest of the country did. In Mayberry, white men ran everything and whatever problems cropped up were taken care of with a grin and a handshake and a very-important-lesson learned. No wonder Precourt would like the movies to reflect that world--it would make life so much easier for him.

But for most people in the US today, our society is far friendlier to families than it was then. Women can leave bad or abusive relationships without being shunned by society as a fallen woman. Inter-racial relationships and families aren't considered a big deal anymore, much less an affront to all that is good and proper. And yes, quel horreur! gay couples not only live together openly, but sometimes they raise children--they're families. What's happened is that our idea of family has evolved, and that's made the situation better for everyone, yes, even for the traditional patriarch, because it's taken some of the pressure off him to be this ideal that he could never live up to before.

Professional Artist!

2010-03-08T09:50:00.008-05:00

This weekend I participated in a professional development workshop for artists organized by Creative Capital and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs -- two organizations to whom I am absolutely grateful, for the opportunity, the funding, all of it.

The workshop was a really unusual for a creative person. I think the life of a creative person is analogous to the experience of being gay: you always know you're "different," although there does come a specific crisis point in your life when you put a name to your difference and realize what it means for you. In some, small circles, it opens doors and makes you "a part of" something. But in the larger circles of the world it closes doors and makes you "apart from" things.

There are probably 500 ways of characterizing what Creative Capital is doing with artists in these workshops, but one simple way of putting it is that they're bridging the divide between artists and an important part of that world that artists are traditionally apart from: money.

Artists do not undervalue their work intellectually or emotionally, but they have trouble translating that value into the material world. It sounds weird to an artist to suggest that, because your work is valuable to the human condition, you "deserve" better living conditions - and even weirder to suggest that there are simple business-like steps you can take to achieve a greater impact with your work, spend more time on your art, and live comfortably, with, like, the money and time to take vacations and stuff, and... okay (so saith the peanut gallery:) who's painting this pink pony purple here? No one's buying this!

But this weekend I was convinced: in part through reason, in part through example, since artists who are making a living as artists led the workshop. It was a lot of information to process, and I'm lucky I've got spring break this week to think things through and make some plans, but it feels like I've gone from treading water to touching sand, and land is just a matter of walking in the right direction.

This weekend I also met some amazing people -- not just the group leaders, but artists like me, who are still in earlier stages of their careers. I was the only fiction writer in the room, so I got a glimpse of a lot of brilliant new work going on in Florida outside of literature -- painters, sculptors, filmmakers, and more -- and I'm going to write about each of them over the next few weeks. I hope you'll come back and read about them all: they are amazing!

Let me suggest an alternative

2010-03-05T12:13:00.000-05:00

Republicans have spent much of the last twenty years trying to canonize Ronald Reagan and give him a place in US history alongside not only 20th century giants Franklin Roosevelt and John F Kennedy, but even among the Framers. He has an aircraft carrier and highways and even a massive federal building named after him--Richard Simon thinks this last one is ironic, but given the extent to which Reagan expanded the federal government and the national debt, I think it's entirely appropriate.

And it's with that part of Reagan's legacy in mind that I propose the following alternative to replacing Ulysses S. Grant's picture on the fifty dollar bill with Reagan's: bring back the $500 and put Reagan on that instead.

The big problem with the debate about putting Reagan on money is that if he goes on under current circumstances, someone else has to go, and everyone currently on money has their champions, as Simon points out. I'd be opposed to replacing Grant with Reagan not because Grant was any great shakes as a President, but because we'd be replacing the man who led the Union to victory in the Civil War with the one who made the myth of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen standard fare for right-wingers everywhere. No thank you.

There's a cynical part of me which says we should replace Jefferson on the $2 bill with Reagan--after all, Jefferson is already on the nickel, and no one likes the $2 bill except as a curiosity. Cashiers hate it even more than they do the dollar coin. But Republicans would never go for it, unfortunately.

So back to my original suggestion--the $500, complete with Reagan on it. This would appeal to Republican vanity, as the $500 would be the largest denomination in circulation, and the people most likely to carry them around would probably be fat-cat Republicans. And Working class people who suffered the most as the result of Reagan's policies while President would rarely, if ever, be faced with the prospect of seeing his face on money. It's a win-win. Plus, I think we've gone through enough inflation since the $500 was withdrawn from circulation that the objections to the denomination size are largely moot now. So seriously, if Republicans are desperate to put Reagan on money, let's do it this way. They'll finally shut up about it and I'll never have to worry about seeing the thing.

Anti-Choicer Takes a Stab at Honesty, Misses Wildly

2010-03-04T11:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the recent silence--this is the week before Spring Break, which means the grading pile had to be thinned out lest it start exerting its influence over the tides.

But I'm back for the moment, and just in time to discover something I should have seen two weeks ago when it was reported, namely that an anti-choice Florida legislator named Charles Van Zant has filed a bill criminalizing most abortions currently allowed under state and federal law, to the degree that doctors who performed such procedures could face first degree felony charges which could carry life sentences.

It has little chance of passing, and even less chance of being upheld if it does, even though Van Zant has said that his goal is to get it before the Supreme Court so they can presumably overturn Roe v Wade.

To Van Zant's credit, he's acting in good faith, up to a point. I mean, if you honestly believe that abortion is murder, then you have to support this kind of legislation, right? It's not just murder, it's capital murder, and in a state with a death penalty, it should be treated as such, and so carry not just life in prison, but a death sentence--if you accept the premise. No exceptions for rape or incest either, though if the life of the mother is at stake, you can argue that an abortion is self-defense.

But here's where he misses, and where most anti-choicers miss: there's no penalty for the mother in his bill, and if you're going to argue that doctors are committing murder when they perform abortions, then you have to say that the person who makes an appointment voluntarily, goes to the doctor, pays the required fee, and submits to the procedure even many times more guilty of the same crime. Don't you? I mean, anti-choicers would love to be able to claim that Planned Parenthood workers are cruising around in abortion vans, kidnapping innocent women off the streets and hoovering out their precious fetuses to use in their Satanic worship circles, but it just isn't happening. Women who get abortions aren't having it done against their wills--in fact, given the obstacles that anti-choice activists have managed to place between women and abortion providers, there's no question that women who are having abortions aren't doing this on a whim.

So I have an idea. Why don't we contact Rep. Van Zant and ask him why he doesn't want to punish the people most responsible for abortions. Let's see if he has an answer. I doubt he will.

How many stories are there here?

2010-02-28T09:18:00.000-05:00

As an onlooker, I love stories like this one about divorce and religion and child custody and the legal system because I can imagine all these different ways of the people involved getting huffy and feeling justified in their moral outrage. I can only enjoy this because I'm an onlooker, though, and even then only to the point where I consider that the three-year old kid at the center of it is going to suffer for something stupid, and then I get upset as well. The arguments are fun in the abstract, but kids don't exist in the abstract.

Here's the story: Jewish woman and Catholic man get married, he converts. They have a kid, and get divorced. Judge gives her primary custody and they agree to raise the child Jewish. Husband decides to renege on the deal later and has her baptized. Wife gets a restraining order. Husband takes the kid to church and gets news cameras to come along, loudly proclaiming that his rights to worship as he chooses have been violated. Ex-wife's lawyers demand he be held in contempt and spend the next six months in jail over this outrage.

See what I mean about all sorts of opportunities for outrage here? This story is complicated by the fact that both religions involved have traditions that strongly dissuade marriage outside their faith--my former religion has a similar tradition--and proponents of that tradition can point to this case as an example of why breaking that tradition is a bad idea. And they'd be perfectly justified in doing so.

People who argue that forcing children into a faith from such a young age is tantamount to child abuse could point out that the real victim in this case is the child, who's being torn between two sides of her family over an issue she can't possibly understand, nor will she be able to for years. And it's hard to argue against the basis of that conclusion, given that disagreements over faith are at the heart of this fight, and that she is no doubt suffering some mental anguish over this disagreement between her parents.

People who argue for the rights of people to express their faith without governmental interference but with governmental protection (how that works in practice is a mystery to me) can find themselves on either side of this debate. The mother says her religion tells her she has to raise her child in her faith, and that she had a deal with the father. The father says he has the same obligation, and that he only converted and then later agreed to the deal under duress, which should nullify the deal. Whose religion gets primacy here? No answer will satisfy both parties, at least not if both sides are devout.

And then there are the personal stories, the ones that aren't really mentioned here. Why the marriage? Why the divorce? Why the conversion? Why the insistence later on exposing the child to a second religion? How much of this is based in the anger between two people who couldn't stay married wounding each other through the only avenue of contact they have left? So many opportunities for outrage. So many chances for spin. And all perfectly justified, if you've chosen a side.

But it's all going to end tragically unless the parents back off their entrenched positions on their child's faith. One or both will find their relationship with the child irrevocably damaged, and there's a good chance that half the extended family will find themselves shut out of the child's life at some point. To the mother who's concerned that her daughter will be confused by going both to a Jewish school and a Catholic Mass, I say your child will grow up in a multi-religious world. Get over it. To the father who's calling a press conference to bring his daughter to church I say stop being a damn douche and think about how this is going to affect your daughter. And to both of them I say this: you're grownups. Solve your differences accordingly.

A Pet Rescue Story

2010-02-27T22:50:00.000-05:00

Meet Gladys, our latest cat. We've had her for about 3 months now, I guess, maybe slightly longer, and hers is an interesting story.

We've mentioned before that there's a problem with feral cats in our neighborhood. In the eight months we've lived here, we've captured and fixed six cats, and adopted or found homes for three. The other three aren't tameable, so they live in the back yard along with a couple who are smart enough to avoid our trap, and we feed them and try to care for them as much as we can. We've even named them, and we consider them to be our pets (as far as the legal system is concerned).

And then there's Gladys.

Amy was feeding the outside cats one morning and heard something that sounded like a cross between a groan and a demand. It was on the other side of the fence, and when she opened it, Gladys walked right past her and to one of the food bowls and started eating. The outside cats treated her like she was diseased or something, and honestly, she looked it. Her hind legs were wobbly, she was bone-thin, and she was covered in dirt.

Later on, Amy opened the front door to our Florida room, and Gladys walked in like she owned the place. She'd been a house cat--that was obvious. But we didn't know what kind of shape she was in. We put together a bed for her, some food and water, a litter box, gave her a combing and then thought about it. She looked ancient, and was so malnourished we weren't sure if she'd survive. Even our vet said he didn't know how old she was, but she was missing at least one front tooth and had whip worms, which meant that she'd been so hungry she'd eaten feces at some point.

And she was crabby as well. She loved (and still does) sitting on laps, but doesn't want to be petted for a long time, and if you persist in doing it, she'll take a swipe at you. We suspect she was abused by her last owner, and I think probably by a woman, because Amy's more likely to get swiped at than I am. She was extremely defensive around our other cats, though they're starting to get along better now (by which I mean there's less hissing now around the food bowls than there once was). In fact, when I took that picture, she was on the futon with two of the other cats. They'll probably never cuddle up together, but at least the hostility is disappearing.

We have no idea how old she is or how long she lived on her own. We think she probably has a cataract and some hearing problems too. But her hind legs have filled out and she's gotten more spry since we moved her indoors and she has more room to move around. She's our fourth cat, which is one more than we ever wanted to have. But she's a part of the family now, so expect to see the occasional photo on here or Facebook.

I am confused

2010-02-27T20:44:00.000-05:00

Can someone explain to me what this picture has to do with this ad? Seriously, I'm baffled.

When the mobs come

2010-02-25T08:51:00.000-05:00

with torches and nooses, don't act surprised, okay?

Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers....

As Greece’s financial condition has worsened, undermining the euro, the role of Goldman Sachs and other major banks in masking the true extent of the country’s problems has drawn criticism from European leaders. But even before that issue became apparent, a little-known company backed by Goldman, JP Morgan Chase and about a dozen other banks had created an index that enabled market players to bet on whether Greece and other European nations would go bust.

It's amazing to me that the banking industry isn't more reviled than it is. Between the games they're playing with the fates of hundreds of millions of people and their near-constant whining about how they're being forced to take slightly smaller while still obscenely large bonuses this year because of a crash they were largely responsible for bringing on, it's a wonder they haven't been strung up like a deposed dictator.

Coral Ridge Ministries

2010-02-24T13:32:00.000-05:00

Coral Ridge Ministries is horrid even by mega-church standards. The founder was a right-winger who hated gays and abortion and the teaching of evolution and added nothing of any social benefit to the world around him, and the people who took over after he died aren't any better. They've kept a lower profile for the last couple of years, and that's been a good thing, but I guess you can't keep the bile down for long or it backs up.

With President Barack Obama convening lawmakers of both parties Thursday for a televised health care summit, Fort Lauderdale-based Coral Ridge Ministries is pledging to do “everything possible to stir grassroots opposition to this budget-busting monstrosity.”

Coral Ridge Ministries, founded by the late Rev. D. James Kennedy, has for years been a proponent of conservative politics, especially related to social issues. It’s opposed abortion, gay marriage, teaching of evolution and abortion.

The organization is now calling the latest version of the Obama health care plan “more of the same from a president unwilling to bend in his fierce determination to impose a government health care takeover on the American public.”

In a statement, Coral Ridge Hour host Jerry Newcombe said: “Like Captain Ahab, the President won’t stop in his drive to harpoon his great white whale of health care ‘reform.’ If he succeeds, he will only bleed one-sixth of the American economy of its energy and efficiency.”

Apparently the bile backs up so much it makes preachers unable to understand the basic plot of Moby Dick. If health care reform is the white whale, then doesn't that make the Republican party Captain Ahab? I mean, it's been a long time since I read the Illustrated Classics version (though I have seen "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" recently), but I'm pretty sure Ahab wanted to kill the white whale. So if President Obama is Captain Ahab, then they should be cheering him on if they want health care reform to die, right? He gets it sort of right at the end when he says 1/6 of the economy will bleed energy and efficiency, I guess, but seriously, how hard is it to get something like that right? Assuming you've read the book you're taking your metaphor from, that is.

I'd just like to point out that Coral Ridge Ministries' position is particularly douche-y for a couple of reasons. One, as a ministry, they're tax-exempt, so they're already a drag on the government's ability to respond to economic difficulties. Two, they're supposed to be looking out for the poor--Jesus said something about that, right?--and yet if you go to their website, they're not exactly touting their charitable works, assuming they do any at all. So in two ways, Coral Ridge Ministries is contributing to the problems that health care reform is trying to address.

There's a part of me that wishes this sort of advocacy would be cause for the IRS to yank their tax exemption--there's a bigger part of me which thinks that any tax exemption for a church is a travesty, but that's another blog post--but I know it's not going to happen. It's still frustrating, though.

The Slow Death of Colonel Reb

2010-02-23T08:59:00.000-05:00

If this keeps up, I might have to quit hating on Ole Miss. I have to confess, I didn't know that the school had dumped Colonel Reb as an on-field mascot years ago (though they still sell tons of memorabilia with his image on it), so I was pleased to learn that. It's also important to recognize just how far this school has come in recent memory.

In 1997, the school ended the waving of Confederate flags at sporting events. Then Colonel Reb was booted off the field. Last year, the band stopped playing the fight song, "From Dixie with Love," to discourage the fan chant, "The South will rise again."

Make no mistake--those flags would be flying today if it weren't for the ban, and while the university has made some moves away from its more immediate and overtly racist traditions, racial tensions are still high, especially among alumni.

Alum Bob Dunlap, 80, who's in the tire business, said he has donated about $1 million to Ole Miss athletics over the years, but he'll likely stop if Colonel Reb is removed from the campus entirely. He said the vote is unnecessary.

"Everybody liked that little guy at those ball games," Dunlap said. "They just create a lot of bad feeling when they do these type of things."

Gee, I wonder who Dunlap is talking about when he uses the pronoun "they"?

On the plus side, the school is headed in the right direction, even if it's taken them a really long time to get going. The students who support the old mascot are fighting a losing battle (though their inevitable loss will only feed into the martyr complex that the lost cause so powerfully embodies in the old south) and in a few years, maybe Ole Miss will have a core of student leadership that questions the wisdom of having a team name that represents treason in defense of slavery at all. And some alumni and students will shout and mourn the loss of southern heritage and the rest of us will nod and perhaps even applaud a little and wonder what the hell took them so long.

I hope so, at least. But I feel pretty solid in my hopes. Race is becoming less and less an issue for younger people, even in places where racial tension has been an open wound for, well, forever. My students don't look at race the same way I did, or do for that matter. It's barely a blip on their radar screens, and I don't see why they would regress. Makes me feel good.

Oooh, shiny...

2010-02-23T08:16:00.000-05:00

I feel fairly big time now. Okay, not really. But I'm still enough of a goober to take a screen grab of this moment in my interwebs life.

Fiction in the Information Age

2010-02-20T11:35:00.002-05:00

In an information-obsessed age, fiction and poetry have the disadvantage of not being information. They are written, which is a format associated with work, research, tasks; but they are not information. The exception is a work of fiction so popular (like Twilight, or Lord of the Rings) that knowing it well becomes a kind of social currency – in other words, the details of the story become information, with a clear and specific value, same as cash.

Otherwise, to have value amongst readers, fiction must seem to be a form devised to disguise information so scandalous or dangerous it cannot be told in the form of fact. Fiction becomes the act of obliquing: saying, “I have a friend who has this problem,” instead of admitting to your problem. Only more so, more removed. Because fiction claims it is not even the life of your friend, but of an entirely made-up person. In this, it is closer to religion than to fact.

Religion is of course the fiction that transcends its form: it is a fiction accepted as information by a large group of people, and within that group the “facts of the story” are vital information, information that is often utilitarian: it tells them their future, and how to behave, and what to eat, and who are friends, and who are enemies. Is there any more important and essential information in this world than that?

So fiction has become, to us, the form that speaks the truths that can’t be said. But this identity for fiction requires the subterfuge remain intact. We cannot go into a work of fiction aware that we are reading disguised facts. If we do, the disguise fails, the truth is found out, laid out for all to see. The author is exposed, and embarrassed, or shamed. See Orenthal Simpson, How I Did It, as an example of failed fiction. We must suspend not only our disbelief in the fiction, but we must suspend our belief in the ur-fact we imagine the story is derived from. And so the primary stated purpose must always be something else: entertainment.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is simple coincidence. The story is fiction in whole – entirely made up for your entertainment. Here, friend, is a great lot of bullshit. Enjoy! And yet there is a wink behind that bullshit. Greater truths are being told than mere information could tell us. More than any other, fiction is a form that requires mental feats of derring-do. The mind must be capable of holding two contradictions at once: everything I read is true, some of what I read is false; everything I read is false, some of what I read is true. Religion, too, requires adherents to accommodate contraries and contradictions, and this extraordinary imaginative act, this resolving of opposites, has long been the fount of creation itself: it has created states, wars, paintings, cathedrals, treatises, dramas, stories. One could argue it has created culture itself.

Contrary ideas held in one mind are the matter-antimatter reaction of the human soul: the mind explodes with energy and that energy is set to resolving the problem, explaining how things may be both up and down, both yes and no. From this conflict spins a narrative. We want and need to believe in the narrative if we are to make sense of the world. And so the function of fiction is to be real, to stop being fiction, while insisting quite convincingly that it is nothing more than an entertaining lie.

So that's what I was thinking about this morning. Let me know what you think. :)

Unsurprising. Still Depressing Part Two

2010-02-19T12:12:00.000-05:00

About three weeks ago, I wrote a piece called "Unsurprising. Still Depressing" which talked about the results of a Gallup poll showing that there's a huge percentage of people who either think that humans have only been around for about 10,000 years or that evolution and creation are compatible. What I didn't realize at the time I wrote that piece was that Gallup's poll was actually 3 years old--I went by the date at the top of the screen which said it had been updated the day I wrote about it. Completely my fault because everything else on the page pointed toward the older date.

But I didn't feel too bad about it because I figured the chances that those numbers would have changed significantly away from the depressing situation they represent were slim. And at least as far as Texas is concerned, I was right.

Let me preface what I'm about to say about these results this way: I'm not going to bash Texas, nor am I going to suggest that Texans are any more ignorant than other parts of the country. In fact, I think Texas is a pretty decent slice of America--it has large rural areas, a vibrant immigrant population, respected public and private universities, and urban areas with, dare I say, progressive sensibilities. They have their wackos as well--as Amanda Marcotte mentioned yesterday in her piece about the Austin asshole who flew a plane into a building (I'm not naming him in keeping with our editorial policy to refuse even posthumous recognition of those who take lives in order to gain notoriety), this is the state that gave the nation both Ross Perot and Ron Paul--but every state has its extreme element. The differences tend to be a matter of flavor more than substance.

What the poll results seem to suggest to me is that people don't really know what they believe when it comes to the origins of humans and other life on this planet. Look at the different percentages you get between these three questions:

• 38 percent said human beings developed over millions of years with God guiding the process and another 12 percent said that development happened without God having any part of the process. Another 38 percent agreed with the statement "God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago."

• Asked about the origin and development of life on earth without injecting humans into the discussion, and 53 percent said it evolved over time, "with a guiding hand from God." They were joined by 15 percent who agreed on the evolution part, but "with no guidance from God." About a fifth — 22 percent — said life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.

• Most of the Texans in the survey — 51 percent — disagree with the statement, "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." Thirty-five percent agreed with that statement, and 15 percent said they don't know.

Notice that one group stays pretty static--the group that leaves God out of the equation stays in the 12 to 15% range, which is about what agnostic/atheist came in at in a recent national poll measuring religious belief (this poll got 6% from the sample group). The biggest group is the "evolution guided by God" group, which says to me that they're comfortable with the idea of evolution, but they don't really get it, and adding in God allows them to avoid the potential conflict between the two ideas.

As you'd expect, there's a huge correlation between how religious a respondent claimed to be and how they answered these questions, but this was the breakdown that actually made me chuckle a bit.

An overwhelming majority said their religious beliefs were extremely important (52 percent) or somewhat important (30 percent). Only 35 percent go to church once a week or more; 52 percent said they go once or twice a year (29 percent) or never (23 percent).

82% said their religious beliefs were very or somewhat important, but only 35% go to church once a week or more, with a max (if I did my math correctly) of 48% saying they go to church more than once or twice a year. So that means roughly a third of the respondents say their beliefs are very or somewhat important, but not so important to cause them to head to church more than a couple times a year. "Somewhat" is a pretty flexible word, I suppose.

Which brings me back around to the point of that last post--language is important. That's why I refuse to say I believe in evolution--belief isn't part of the process here. Evolution occurs whether I believe in it or not, whether Texans believe in it or not. I continue to worry about the effects that this lack of understanding about evolution will have on our society over the short term. If we continue to allow false controversies over basic scientific understandings infect the discourse, we'll find ourselves falling further and further behind the rest of the world in terms of innovation and discovery, and given that we've already done bad things to this planet that we might not be able to resolve, we can't even afford to stand still. We have to be moving forward.

Driving Peeves

2010-02-16T08:22:00.000-05:00

When you get to my age in the US, assuming you haven't lived most of your life in a city where you have ready access to public transportation, you've probably been driving more than half your life. You probably have a love-hate relationship with the practice as well, though that's not as universal an experience. The love part for me was captured very nicely by Stephen Dunn in his poem "The Sacred", which closes this way: "how far away / a car could take him from the need // to speak, or to answer, the key / in having a key / and putting it in, and going." When I was a teen living in Slidell, that's what a car meant--a bike could take me anywhere I needed to go during the day, but not in the rain (which was ever-present in the summer) or at night, or anywhere beyond the city proper; the highways in and out of town didn't have paved shoulders and the drivers weren't exactly bike-friendly.

The other love part comes from my multiple drives across the country, whether because of moves or just for vacations. Amy and I have seen mind-numbingly beautiful sights on our trips--Utah may be the most gorgeous state in the continental US, by the way--and there's a peace that comes from the long drives, the miles eaten away, the conversations, that can't be replicated by plane or train (though trains come closer). The potential for discovery is much higher on those sorts of trips than any other in my experience.

But then there's commuting, and the delicate dance one has to perform with a bunch of Brawndo-fueled, distracted and disgruntled rage machines on I-95 and the surrounding streets. Very often, it seems, vehicles become weaponry, turn signals become challenges to one's parentage, and traveling at less than ten miles over the speed limit in the HOV lane is an insult which cannot be tolerated.

It's the last that aggravates me the most, and which spawned this post. We drive to Boca a couple of days a week, and we do it early enough that we're catching the first moments of rush hour, but we're able to bypass it mostly because we're two in the car, which gives us access to the HOV lane. The speed limit on the stretch we travel is 65, but I routinely go 75 unless there's a backup in the regular laves--more than once I've had someone jump into the HOV lane and had to jam on the brakes because they miscalculated how quickly they could accelerate. But 7 out of every 8 trips, I'd estimate, I'll find myself with someone--this morning it was the driver of a Porsche Cayenne--crawling up my tailpipe for miles on end. "So just move over and let them by" you say. I can't. There's car-to-car traffic to my right and about 10 yards at most of follow space ahead of me. Even if I move over, there's nowhere for them to go, except up the next person's tailpipe.

The really ridiculous thing is that because I drive such a small car--a 1995 Saturn SC2--the people behind me generally know that I'm not holding up production, that I am keeping pace with the traffic around me. They can often see that better than I can from their lofty perches in their SUVs. Maybe they just don't see me down there, or maybe they don't realize just how close they are to my rear bumper. Or maybe they're just Brawndo-fueled assholes who resent having to share the roads with anyone. I really don't know.

What I do know is that they make the already stressful driving experience worse. Give me a grandpa doing 53 with the left blinker stuck on any day--I'd rather deal with that than with the pressure to move over so the-most-important-driver-in-the-world can move forward an extra 30 feet and make someone else's life miserable.

So what is it that most angers you on the roadway? What increases the likelihood of your middle-finger flying of its own accord?

Onward Christian Historians!

2010-02-13T08:59:00.000-05:00

If you're the kind of person who keeps tabs on the latest from fundamentalist Christians in the US, the story I'm about to link to might contain some facts you weren't aware of, but nothing particularly surprising. The NY Times Magazine is running a piece on the continuing efforts by the Christian fundamentalist community to recast early US history in a very religious light.

The problem--besides their ability to pretzel facts with the ardor of a television prosecutor with a looming election--is that Texas has an outsized effect on the school textbook industry (for now, at least--e-books might lessen that grip in the future). What Texas wants, Texas tends to get, and that spills over into other states because textbook publishers don't want to make multiple editions of the same book. So if Texas wants Magruder's American Government to call the US Constitution an "enduring" document instead of a "living" document (even though the book has called it "living" since World War I, hardly a period of radical liberalism in US history), Texas gets the change.

I don't want to overblow this and suggest that we, as a society, are staring doom in the face if we don't band together against the attempts by Christian fundamentalists in Texas to make K-12 history books more religion-focused. Even if they get their wish and textbooks throughout the land argue that the country was founded as a Christian nation, or that there's no wall between church and state inherent in the First Amendment, they can't change the reality that the US is not now the same country it once was. The Founders' intent is kind of beside-the-point now, because we don't live in that country anymore, and we never will, despite every attempt the fundamentalist Christian right makes to roll back the clock.

But there is still a danger in allowing the history books to be rewritten to the degree these people wish. Orwell was right when he said "who controls the past, controls the future," only in this case, the past I'm concerned about is not in the books, but in the memories of the kids who'll read those books. The people pushing for these changes aren't looking for nuanced view of early America--they want a curriculum loaded with Christian Dominionism and American exceptionalism, because they're hoping to convert people to the cause, and a good place to start is in the public schools.

2010-02-07T23:21:00.000-05:00

If you do this, you will die

2010-02-05T12:56:00.000-05:00

but a Superbowl drinking game is probably inevitable, so here's one example from my old friend Chris Tusa's Facebook page.

Saints Super Bowl Drinking Game

1. Every time they mention hurricane Katrina, drink 1

2. Every time they show Kim Kardashian in the stands, drink 5

3. Every time Reggie Bush gets negative yardage, drink for 5 seconds

4. If they mention Tim Tebow for any reason, funnel a beer

5. If Jeremy Shockey pretends to be hurt after dropping a pass, drink 2

6. Every time they show a Saints fan yelling "Who Dat", drink 1

7. If Brett Favre is mentioned for any reason, take a shot of cheap liquor

8. Every time they compare hurricane Katrina to the Haiti earthquake, drink 1

9. Every time they show Archie Manning, chug 2 & mention how he sucked

10. If they show Ray Nagin, drink 5 and punch someone in the face

I'd add Bobby Jindal to number 10 as well, and suggest that anyone left standing at the end of the game be awarded this painfully awesome Hello Kitty Chainsaw as a prize.

An Attempt at Pure Fandom

2010-02-04T22:10:00.000-05:00

My third post on this blog, just over six years ago, was about the Superbowl and the Moveon ad that CBS refused to air. I was pulling for the Carolina Panthers that year because Jake Delhomme was a former Saint and a Louisiana native and I figured that gave me a (very small) dog in the hunt, but I can't say I was devastated when they fell short. In fact, in my entire time as a football fan, I can only cop to one year when I really cared who won the Superbowl, though in that year, 1999, I wasn't rooting for a team. I was rooting against the Atlanta Falcons. I can't even tell you who won--I just know the Falcons lost, and that's enough for me.

But this year, obviously, is different. And that has caused me to completely rethink how I'm approaching the game.

See, most years I want a good game, exciting, taut, down to the last second. Last year, for example, was incredible, and I enjoyed every second of it. But I don't want that this year. Nope. I want a blowout. I want one of those Niners-Broncos 55-10 beatdowns, and here's what will surprise you--I don't care who's on the winning side.

Sure, I'd love it if the Saints do the beating down, but what I really need, for my sanity and my blood pressure, is a convincing win by one side or the other. None of this overtime-coin-flip-wins-it garbage (I particularly hate that debate, by the way). I want it to be over by halftime, so the celebration/sorrow-drowning can begin early.

But even if I don't get that, even if this turns into a double-overtime ulcer-inducing nailbiter, I'm still going to try to have a "pure" fan experience. What do I mean by that?

No divided loyalties. No bets, even on the coin-flip. No taking the points or either side of the over/under. No football pools. I don't want to do anything that would compromise my whole-hearted pulling for the Saints. I don't want to drown my sorrows at a Saints loss with the 25 bucks I won when the Colts kicked a field goal with 7 seconds left. I don't want to be satisfied with the Saints covering the spread, or hoping that the Colts will score again near the end so I can get the over.

If I'm going to be sad, I want to wallow in it. I want the misery or I want the elation--no interference by outside interests. I've waited 35 years for this. I'm going to savor every second of it.

Dear High School English Teachers: I love you, but...

2010-02-03T10:50:00.010-05:00

Most semesters I teach at least a few freshmen writing students. And every semester I do I am dismayed that somewhere out there high school English teachers are teaching them to do very dumb things. I'm hoping a few high school English teachers will read this and change their ways. Or maybe I just want to complain.

1. Stop telling students it's smart to start essays with dictionary definitions. Since the beginning of time and rhetoric writers have known that openings must be attention-getting and intriguing, and there are few things in this world less attention-getting and intriguing than a dictionary definition. Teaching this technique is teaching them to suck. Stop it.

2. Stop telling students they're "not allowed" to write questions. Rhetorical questions are a powerful technique. They're trying to do something good, and probably failing at it, so you tell them not to try at all. You're retarding their growth as writers and preventing them from using every technique in the writer's toolbox. Stop it.

3. Stop telling students that you can't use "you" or "I" or "us" or "we" or "me" in academic writing. Have you ever read a piece of real academic writing? With few exceptions, everyone, from physicists to anthropologists to economists, uses these pronouns. And every essay we assign them to read uses these pronouns. So what you're teaching them is that they're never expected to model the good writing they see; they're supposed to produce another creature: lifeless gutless bullshit guaranteed to bore. Stop it.

4. Stop telling students "commas go where you take a breath." There are seven fucking ways that a comma can be used in a typical English sentence. Seven. Go look them up you lazy bastard. Then teach your students to use them. Seven for fuck's sake: they fit on ONE powerpoint slide.

5. Stop telling students not to use contractions. I know why you're doing this: you're doing this because writers who don't use contractions can't possibly confuse "it's" with "its" or "you're" with "your" or "there" with "they're" or "can't" with "cant" or "we're" with "were" (and I could go on): you're tired of marking those errors. I get it. But what you're really doing is making someone else have to teach them the difference between those words later, when they're of legal age to own a home and marry. Or perhaps you're making it so they never learn them at all, and will simply look like fools for the rest of their lives. How nice of you.

6. Stop telling students that concluding paragraphs just reiterate the essay's points. If that's all a conclusion does, there's no point in reading it. Conclusions bring the essay's emotions full circle and emphasize the importance of the topic; they tell the reader why she should care about the subject. If you make your students think about this, the idea that it's their job to persuade the reader that their topic matters, they will become better writers. If you ask them only to reiterate, they learn that writing is a pointless exercise in repetitious bullshit, whose main purpose is to fill blank spots on the page even if that means saying things they've already said.

I hate to get down on high school English teachers. I know it's a really hard job. I know they've got too many students and too few hours in the day. I know that education has been highjacked by standardized testing. And I know that people who choose to become teachers are good souls who mean well and want only good things for the future of their students and their country.

But what gets me is that none of the problems I encounter are about the students falling short: it's not that students are coming to me only understanding 3 of the 7 ways to use commas, or are still confusing a few contractions with similar words; no, it's that they've been actively taught these weird "rules" (that they follow religiously), and these "rules" prevent them from progressing as writers. It's not that they're attempting to write well and failing, it's that they've been taught to write badly and are succeeding.

Rhetoric is one of the Western World's oldest, most firmly-established, most well-developed disciplines. We have thousands of years of examples of great writing, and thousands of years of examples of lesson plans, going back to the ancient Progymnasmata. And there is nothing more important to the students' individual fortunes and the success of their society than their ability to communicate clearly. Yet English teachers are out there distributing "folk wisdom" like the witch doctors in Africa who tell the HIV-positive that sex with a virgin will cure them. Sure, it's a little harder to get your hands on AZT than a virgin, and it's a little harder to teach the seven uses of a comma than it is to say, "where you take a breath." But there could not be a greater gulf between the quality of the results.

I Suspect This Is Where We're Going

2010-02-01T19:02:00.000-05:00

Via Pandagon, I present Colofado Springs, CO. Colorado Springs is home to, among other things, the Air Force Academy and Focus on the Family, as well as Ted Haggard's former mega-church, Saddleback. If you think this means the population skews Republican, then you're awake and cogent. So what else, other than Hippie Jesus (because they love their gun-toting version instead), do these brand of Republicans hate? Taxes. But that hatred of taxes is now coming back to bite them on the ass.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

We've already seen cuts of this nature in Broward County, though not of this magnitude. Yet.

I say yet because I have to believe they're coming. Even if Democrats in Florida get a double winner next year in Kendrick Meek and Alex Sink--far from likely, I'd say--unless there's some massive turnover in the Legislature, we won't see any tax increases or reforms which would increase revenues for municipal services. This legislature has already made clear that they adhere to the Republican dogma that tax and budget cuts are the only tools they are willing to wield when it comes to balancing a budget, and there won't be any Washington stimulus money to bail them out this time.

I'd like to think that these sorts of cuts will wake voters up, once and for all, to the realization that you can't have services if you won't pay taxes, and that paying taxes is, in fact, a patriotic thing to do. I'd like to think that, but I have little faith that people will learn the lesson, because there are too many steps between local park closings and Tallahassee Tea Party rhetorical flourishes. I fear we'll just get more of the same.

Six Years

2010-02-01T15:41:00.000-05:00

It's been six years--just a hair over, technically--since I started this blog. At the time, I was living in San Francisco, attending Stanford as a Stegner Fellow, working part-time with a valet company, and spending too much time reading Daily Kos and Eric Alterman, among others. Today I live in south Florida, teach college students how to write effectively, and spend too much time reading about politics, only now it's more on Balloon Juice and Pandagon and Ta-nehisi Coates. I also edit the poetry section at The Rumpus and tweet a lot.

Last December, this blog almost shut down. I was burned out on a lot of stuff, and I still have my mood swings related to it. I don't feel as impelled to blog as I once did, but that's a good thing because it means I'm making more time for the rest of the world--poetry, teaching, other writing, and just enjoying south Florida.

Blogging is dangerous in a way. There's no outside editor tapping you on the shoulder and saying "that's a bit over the top" or "you're not making sense" or "take a closer look at that date before you go on a tirade." You're just out there on your own, and if you say something stupid--and man, in the last six years, I've said an awful lot of stupid stuff--there's no one to take the heat for you.

And you can't really go back through your archives and disappear any of that stuff because it's probably archived somewhere, and even if it isn't, that's dishonest. I own what I wrote, even when owning it hurts.

I don't remember exactly how long ago I put a sitemeter on the blog--fours ago perhaps?--but since then, this blog has received nearly 200,000 visits and over 250,000 page views. Even in the times when I wasn't blogging much, we still got around a hundred visits a day on average, and there have been times, thanks to people who've linked to us (like when Batocchio subs for Mike at Crooks & Liars) when we've gotten over a thousand in a day. My honest and sincere thanks to anyone who spends the time to read something I've posted and especially who chooses to comment on it.

I have no idea how long I'll keep blogging--as long as I feel I need to, I suppose. Here's to another year of it.

The End of the Lecture

2010-01-31T14:21:00.007-05:00

When I started teaching college freshmen in 2000, we joked that while it was nice teaching twice a week instead of three times, students didn't have the attention span for an 80 minute class. A 50 minute class, and you had their attention from bell to bell. But an 80 minute class, you lost them between minutes 60 and 70, for sure. Oh, MTV, how you've shortened our attention spans!

Ten years later, and things have changed. My students are now capable of focusing on a lecture for about 15-20 minutes at best. After that, even the best most attentive students' eyes glaze over, and they begin to fidget. And by fidget, I don't mean "jiggle their legs." I mean they check out, move on, pull out a phone, pull out homework from another class and set to work with a graphing calculator. They fidget mentally. Their brains jerk and jog onto other things.

I tried all the usual counter-measures: strict prohibition of cell phones, calling out students who sit there doing math homework. I tried making the lectures more entertaining: peppering them with ribald expressions and examples, using zesty presentation slides with lots of colorful pictures and the occasional animation. I got a few compliments on my slideshows, but the problem persisted: most students just couldn't hang onto a topic for longer than 15-20 minutes.

Then about a year ago I read in the news that MIT had abandoned the large lecture class format for physics. They explained all the reasons--students haven't been absorbing the material, or coming to class--and since this is MIT we're talking about, brain science got involved:

In an article in the education journal Change last year, Dr. Wieman noted that the human brain “can hold a maximum of about seven different items in its short-term working memory and can process no more than about four ideas at once.”

“But the number of new items that students are expected to remember and process in the typical hourlong science lecture is vastly greater,” he continued. “So we should not be surprised to find that students are able to take away only a small fraction of what is presented to them in that format.”

(Italics mine.) So I thought that if the smarty-Charlies getting into MIT needed a new classroom structure, so might my working-class heros at FAU. In the Fall of 2009 I started a teaching experiment: Tuesdays they did group work (a sheet of interpretive questions that I directed each group of four to debate and come to a consensus on), Thursdays I lectured concepts and pointed out finer details in the writing. By the end of the semester, I would describe the pattern simply as, "Tuesdays my students are alive, Thursdays my students are driftwood." Same students, two days later, but the difference was astonishing (and, for me, torturous).

On Tuesday they would talk, laugh, have thoughts -- often somewhat deep ones! -- about the novel they'd read. They'd debate the best way to phrase their answers, and the best quote to offer as evidence. They would call me over to ask about terminology, and tentatively ask about alternate interpretations to get my feedback on their relative merits. That was Tuesday. On Thursday they would watch me talk for 20 minutes, then fall asleep.

So, results in, I restructured my class again. Starting this semester, Tuesdays and Thursdays have the same format: the first 15-20 minutes of class is an overview of concepts, the following 30-40 minutes is group work on interpretive questions, and the final 20 minutes is a discussion of their various answers that I try to spin into the other important details of the book. So far, it's worked brilliantly: my students are awake, engaged, and coming up with fantastic work.

There's just one problem.

They're complaining.

That's right: they're complaining. "Oh my Gawd, group work, again?" It seems they actually want to sit in the class and stare off into space while I say things they won't remember. (Students are also increasingly allergic to taking notes in class -- they expect anything "important" to be emailed to them or posted to a website or server. But that's a post for another day.)

There is the faintest suggestion in their complaints that I'm somehow dodging my responsibilities as their teacher by having them work in groups. In actuality, producing good questions for them, working with them as they answer them, and then grading the results is far more work than just showing up and talking.

There is also some naked laziness involved: during a lecture they can sit passively, ignoring every word, learning nothing, totally anonymous and unmoved by the teacher's irritation at their silence and lack of engagement. That's obviously much easier for them, and it seems that that's what some of them would prefer to do.

But the truth is, I've never heard such smart things come out of students' mouths (and pens) as I've heard this semester. I'm making them think, and learn, and interpret, and while some of them seem to resent it, it is having a good effect, the exact intended effect, so I'm going to keep doing it. I just hope they don't try to take something out on me come teacher-evaluation time.

Unsurprising. Still Depressing

2010-01-31T10:42:00.000-05:00

There's a lot to mourn about this Gallup poll on Americans' views of evolution: the raw numbers of people who believe humans have only been around 10,000 years or so; the correlation with religious activity and political party; the nearly one-quarter of people who simultaneously believe in evolution and creation, for starters. But it's a wholly unsurprising result. This is what happens when science and faith are treated as equally valid ways of looking at the natural world.

I also blame sloppy use of language in part, and I think even those who understand the evolutionary process are guilty of slipping into this from time to time. I've complained before about using the word "believe" when it comes to the evolution v. creation debate. It's a bad word to use because it's incorrect--one does not believe in evolution; one understands how evolution works--and because it shades the debate toward the mystical. Belief in this context requires a leap of faith, whether we're talking about an Evel-Knievel-rocket-over-the-Snake-River-Canyon leap (young earth creationism) or a hop over a ditch (watchmaker god who set us in motion and forgot about us), but there's no leap required for evolution. We've seen transformations of species in our lifetimes. Our entire medical system is based on understanding evolution. No belief required--just the ability to understand basic biological processes.

Science education also plays a major role in this issue, and there's plenty of blame to spread around. The lion's share, in my view, goes to the activists who have invaded school boards and pushed creationist/intelligent design nonsense into the curriculum, and who have backed politicians who either share their views or who want their money and votes bad enough to pretend to share them. Those of us who didn't fight back (or who don't fight back today) are also to blame; they were more politically active than we were, and now we're paying for it.

But I also blame universities, especially Education departments, and here's why. For the most part, this isn't an issue if science teachers actually know science, as well as education theory. But in my experience--which is admittedly limited--most people who get degrees in Education don't take more than 8 classes in the subject they're going to be teaching, and often take fewer than that. And in some cases, these are simplified courses---it's not uncommon to hear of classes called "stats for teachers" or "chemistry for teachers" by students. This isn't so big a deal when you're talking about elementary education, because the ideas being taught aren't all that complex, but middle and high-school teachers need to know their subjects, especially when it comes to science, and there's plenty of indications that they don't.

And I think Biology departments ought to be pushing back on this as well, because poorly trained teachers make them look bad, and make their jobs harder. (That's the case for every department, really.) I'd rather teachers get degrees in their subjects and do a separate accreditation period in education theory for anything above elementary education. Know your subject first, then learn how to teach it.

And finally, we have to do something to address, long-term, the problems with education in this country. I got into an argument on Twitter a few days ago with Adam Serwer, a blogger for Tapped who I generally respect, because he was all over this story about how teachers unions protect incompetent teachers instead of letting them be fired. He never seemed to get that the ability to fire teachers is a sideshow that allows administrators and administrations to ignore the real problem, which is that our classes are too crowded and teachers can't do their jobs well most of the time. Even good teachers are handicapped by having 30 kids to a class, 6 times a day. That's too much work, no matter what the pay. Let an administrator fire teachers without any due process and you'll wind up with a show of action and no real change. There will be more stats-juking, and we'll still wind up with under-educated kids.

And we'll continue where we are today, or perhaps get worse, where nearly half (or more, depending on the question asked) the population of the US believes that God created humans in pretty much their present form about 10,000 years ago. And if that doesn't depress you, well, you're in a way better place than I am.

Only One Way to Beat a Big Corporation

2010-01-30T19:38:00.000-05:00

Kick them in the public relations. And maybe have a Senator on your side. The NFL is backing off its actions (though no word on their claim) to force local merchandisers to stop selling and producing "Who Dat" merchandise. This announcement came quick on the heels of a statement from "Diaper" David Vitter daring the NFL to sue him for printing "Who Dat" t-shirts.

But here's the reality. David Vitter doesn't make that dare without some serious outrage in his state, and nationwide. That outrage was fed by lots of people both on traditional and new media, making a stink over an issue that frankly, no one individually had the money to fight over. Local retailers don't have the resources to go to court over an issue which has a pretty limited life span. Even if the Saints win the Superbowl, no one outside the Saints' fan base is going to be buying "Who Dat" gear in two months. The NFL counted on that and figured--rightly so--that they could scare locals out of the marketplace with a cease and desist letter, because this is the kind of case where the facts aren't as important as the resources each side can marshal. Sure, a local t-shirt maker could win, but by the time they did, they'd be financially ruined, and they know it.

What was different this time was the volume of the response. The NFL found itself in a shitstorm of bad public relations--a storm the Saints organization managed to dodge, somehow, though they're as much to blame as the NFL--and it didn't want this being an issue going into the crown jewel of its season, a Superbowl between the two best teams all year. They were hurt in about the only way you can hurt a big corporation--in its reputation.

I suspect it will be a temporary victory. At some point, the Saints and the NFL will seek to enforce that trademark, and a friendly judge will do so because no one will have the resources to stand up against them, and because it will happen in the off-season, or when the Saints aren't media darlings anymore, the outrage won't be as loud or widespread.

But for now, it's a win, and I love it. Still not buying any NFL merchandise though/

I'm actually a little sad about this

2010-01-29T11:07:00.000-05:00

The Tea Party Convention is apparently floundering a little. Members are upset at the $549 ticket price and the $100,000 Sarah Palin will be getting for her appearance. (I imagine a half-empty convention hall with people screaming "tell the lipstick joke again!" before they break into Glenn Beck tears about their love for their country.) They've lost Michelle Bachmann, and when Bachmann figures a place is too crazy to be, well, be scared.

I'm sad, though, because I really hoped that this would be a turning point in American politics. For ten years now, I've been hoping for another schism on the right, for the truly insane to separate themselves from the merely greedy, and it looked like this might be the vehicle. Racism, know-nothing-ism, sexism and various other forms of vitriol all rolled together into a single, seething mass of political ugly, just waiting to get out there and drag the country back to 1843. I was hopeful because this group of people, at their most powerful, isn't more than 30% of the country--which is a terrifying number, to be sure--but it isn't enough to win power on their own. The net effect would be that Republicans would find themselves frozen out and forced to choose sides, because the one thing Democrats and Republicans have been bipartisan at is at making this a two-party country. No room for a third party to muck things up or force coalitions.

It could still happen. You can't stuff crazy back in the box, and this crazy seems to have a special yearning to be free. But crazy also tires itself out and doesn't organize well--downside to being crazy, after all. I hope they hold it together long enough to scare moderates away for a generation, though I'm not all that hopeful it will happen.

This is Your NFL

2010-01-28T22:55:00.000-05:00

That's right--your NFL, because I don't want anything to do with them anymore. That's not to say I won't watch games--I'll be having a heart attack while the Superbowl is on just like every other Colts or Saints fan will be, and I'll watch games on tv when they're broadcast, but I'll not give them a penny in any other form, as long as they're doing this:

In letters sent to Fleurty Girl and Storyville, the NFL ordered the retailers to stop selling a host of merchandise that it says violates state and federal trademarks held by the New Orleans Saints.

Among the long list of things the NFL says is off-limits without a licensing agreement are some obvious violations like the official logo of the Saints and the team's name. But the one that stands out is "Who Dat."

There are real issues over who owns the rights to "Who Dat," but the NFL--and to be fair, the New Orleans Saints team--are throwing their considerable weight around threatening locals who use the term on t-shirts and other merchandise.

The really funny thing about this whole deal is that I don't like the phrase. I never have, even when it started in the 80s when the Saints were making their moves from full-tilt suckitude toward mediocrity, and eventually toward winning. I thought it was ignorant, and I really found it funny when I discovered that Cincinnati Bengals fans were aping it with their very own "Who Dey" chant. I even mentioned elsewhere at the beginning of the playoffs that it would be hilarious if the Saints and Bengals met in the Superbowl so their respective fans could engage in a festival of ungrammatical chanting.

And yet, now that the NFL is being such a shithead about it, I suddenly want nothing more than to find a vendor selling non-licensed Who Dat gear and stock up. T-shirts, ball caps, strap-ons--if it's got a fleur-de-lis and a #whodat hashtag, I'm all over it. And while I've never been a ~~huge~~ purchaser of NFL merchandise before, one thing is for certain--I'm definitely not buying anything from them now.

Not that I'm surprised by the NFL's move here. If anything, I'd be surprised if they hadn't made this move. It's who they are--corporate hogs who leech locals for every penny they can while simultaneously protecting every penny they feel belongs to them, and some that probably don't. But they have lawyers and resources and the backing of the state government and t-shirt stores have, well, rent to pay instead of lawsuits they really can't afford to get fund.

So NFL, I've got one thing to say to you. Don't ever ask for a penny from me, not in merchandise or ticket sales, not in satellite packages or taxes to fund your stadiums. You won't get it, not willingly. I'll find other places to spend my money.

Choice is Empowering

2010-01-27T19:20:00.000-05:00

The Superbowl ad guaranteed to get the most media exposure this year won't feature animated animals or boner pills. It'll be the Focus on the Family ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mom talking about how wonderful it was that she didn't follow her doctor's advice when and terminate her pregnancy. And you know something? That's a nice story. I'm glad it worked out for them. I don't like CBS's hypocrisy on accepting what is unquestionably a political ad when in previous years they've turned down ads from MoveOn and the United Churches of Christ for the same reason, but that's another discussion. The economy is worse this year than it was then (mainly because we're paying for that bubble right now), so maybe CBS was having problems finding takers for the spot. I'm feeling generous for some reason--probably has something to do with the Saints being in the Superbowl.

Anyway, there's been some blowback about the ad, and not just among liberal bloggers and pundits. CBS Sports' Gregg Doyel about blew a gasket over the ad, not so much because of the content, but because CBS is breaking its rule and airing a political commercial during the Superbowl. He wants it to be as commercial and apolitical as possible, and I think he's right. The commenters who gave him flack said that abortion isn't a political issue, to which I can only snort derisively while extending both middle fingers at the screen. Do you have any idea how hard it is to type a reply while doing that?

And of course, Sarah Palin had to weigh in, via Facebook, because that what all the kids are talking with, too. Also. She's mad at NOW for protesting the ad, and says so in her own inimitable way:

What a ridiculous situation they're getting themselves into now with their protest of CBS airing a pro-life ad during the upcoming Super Bowl game. The ad will feature Heisman trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mom, and they'll speak to the sanctity of life and the beautiful potential within every innocent child as Mrs. Tebow acknowledges her choice to give Tim life, despite less than ideal circumstances. Messages like this empower women! This speaks to the strength and commitment and nurturing spirit within women. The message says everything positive and nothing negative about the power of women - and life.

Bolding mine. Notice the contradiction. Mrs. Tebow chose to extend her pregnancy while risking her long term health, and perhaps her own life. It wasn't forced on her by laws which restrict womens' options. And why was she able to make that choice? Because of groups like NOW which fought to empower women to be able to make it.

The extent to which Mrs. Tebow is a hero for taking her pregnancy to term is directly related to the fact that she had a choice in the matter. If abortion is illegal across the board, then there's no heroism here--there's only obedience to the law. And there's the tragedy of every woman who wasn't as fortunate as Mrs. Tebow and wound up dead as a result. If you don't have choices, it's because you don't have power--your decisions are being dictated to you by others. Sarah Palin has to know that on some level--she's not that thick.

Anti-choice groups can't have it both ways. If women are heroes for choosing to have babies, whether in difficult circumstances or not, then that means they have to actually have a choice in the matter. This is why pro-choice people argue that the abortion debate isn't about babies at all--it's about power. It's about allowing women to actually have the power to make choices about their health and their futures. So when pro-life groups talk about the courageous choices women have made in having their babies, remember, no choice = no power. Choice = power.

More Good News on Florida's Gay Adoption Ban

2010-01-26T23:41:00.000-05:00

Yet another judge has declared Florida's ban on gay adoption to be unconstitutional, and did so while signing an adoption order completing the process. And there was no hesitation in her order either.

"There is no rational connection between sexual orientation and what is or is not in the best interest of a child," Sampedro-Iglesia wrote in her order, obtained by The Miami Herald. "The child is happy and thriving with [Alenier]. The only way to give this child permanency...is to allow him to be adopted" by her.

Wingnuts had a thrombo at the news.

Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, called Sampedro-Iglesia's ruling "evidence of judicial activism" that violates state law.

"A judge is not a legislature onto oneself," Staver said. "Judges don't have the ability to write laws any way they desire. They have to follow the rule of law, and this judge did not."

Mind you, a judge's first duty is to interpret the law as it pertains to the Constitution of the United States, so as constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe said, she was "taking seriously [her] oath to the supreme law of the land."

It's pretty clear I don't have much use for people who want to treat the LGBT community as second-class citizens, and that goes double for people like Matthew Staver and Liberty Counsel, whose idea of religious freedom means Christians are privileged and everyone else can rot, and who hide behind that religious freedom as an excuse to spread hatred for anyone they find objectionable according to their narrow view of what is moral and immoral. Seriously, if their headquarters were swallowed by a sinkhole, Florida would be a better place. The world would be a better place.

But regardless, on this issue, they're on the losing side, not just with this adoption, but in the long run as well. The LGBT community will be recognized as equals sooner rather than later, and people like Staver will be viewed by history the way George Wallace and Bull Connor are today--as relics of a hateful past that most decent people are ashamed of. Our kids, and their kids in particular, will wonder what in the hell took us so long.

How did I miss this?

2010-01-26T08:39:00.000-05:00

Examining the Empire's point of view isn't a new idea--Kevin Smith used it in "Clerks" to good effect when he had Dante and Randal and a customer debate the responsibility that contractors have for their personal safety when they take on jobs. The comparison there was between the Empire and a mob boss, with the customer taking the position that if you take the job knowing who you're working for, and you get caught in the crossfire, you have yourself to blame.

But this take on it is more subversive, in part because of the comparison--the destruction of the Death Star is compared to the attack on the Twin Towers, complete with a nod to the controlled demolition conspiracy theory--but mostly because of which side gets identified with the Empire.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The US's national mythology casts us in the position of rebels, and that's how we continue to see ourselves individually (and in many cases, as a nation). I expect our collective cognitive dissonance about how we can simultaneously be the world's sole hyperpower and its great rebel could be the subject of several very large books. But the reality is that we're the Empire--our aircraft carriers are Death Star, if you will, projecting military power around the globe. We've made jokes about this recently--Darth Cheney, anyone?--but I haven't seen anyone make the point as deftly as the makers of this video did.

We like to see ourselves as the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars, the scrappy underdogs fighting to throw off the oppressive chains of the Empire, because we've internalized our mythology. But we're not the 13 colonies fighting for the right to keep our own tax money, and we haven't been for a long time. We've been an empire in our own right for more than a century at least, and since the end of World War 2, we've been dominant on the world stage, sharing the spotlight with the Soviet Union for a while and with China now. There's nothing rebellious about us.

But disturbing as that realization might be to some, the really subversive part of this video, the thing that no doubt makes heads explode, is the subtext. If we're the Empire, which is looked at as oppressive and domineering, then who does that make the Rebel Alliance? Who's Obi-Wan Kenobi? The notion that Al-Qaeda could very plausibly fill the role of the hero in the Star Wars story would send lots of people around the bend. But they could, depending on your perspective and on how you identify yourself in the narrative.

What else does this video do? It humanizes the Stormtrooper, which doesn't happen in the films. Again, this isn't new--other web videos have played with this idea in the past. One of my favorite is the one which puts Stormtroopers on Tatooine as cops on patrol with a camera crew riding along. That one, though, doesn't have the same affect this one does because we see the Stormtrooper at work. This video, though, has them at a bar, having a drink after work. If it weren't for the costumes, you wouldn't know they were Stormtroopers. But by doing that, the filmmaker makes the Stormtrooper sympathetic. They're no longer the soldiers who can't shoot straight--they're guys with lives, with friends who were killed at the Death Star, who were supposed to be there that day, who are trying to put some meaning into what happened that day. They're no longer ciphers, and as a result, we're forced to recognize them as humans and acknowledge that not everyone who wears the armor is either evil or a mindless lackey of Darth Vader. If you're still identifying with the Rebel Alliance as the heroic side, this might make you uncomfortable, since you're now faced with the idea that your heroes killed some people who weren't wholly evil, i.e. the Rebels killed people, as opposed to caricatures.

Put simply, this video made me re-examine the Star Wars saga to a far greater degree than all the prequels put together. I'd pay to go see a movie about these guys--as long as Lucas didn't direct it.

Aw, what happened?

2010-01-25T11:39:00.000-05:00

Did your team lose last night, Kevin Berard?

Between God and a Hard Place

2010-01-24T09:53:00.000-05:00

James Wood has a terrific op-ed in the NY Times today with the above title about theodicy and responses to the Haiti earthquake. One of my favorite things about the piece is how Wood gets at the ugliness behind the notion that earthquakes (and by extension, any natural disaster) are examples of divine wrath. After addressing Pat Robertson's comments, Wood moves on to someone you might not expect: President Obama.

In his speech after the catastrophe, President Obama movingly invoked “our common humanity,” and said that “we stand in solidarity with our neighbors to the south, knowing that but for the grace of God, there we go.” And there was God once again. Awkwardly, the literal meaning of Mr. Obama’s phrase is not so far from Pat Robertson’s hatefulness. Who, after all, would want to worship the kind of God whose “grace” protects Americans from Haitian horrors?

Well, I can think of a few prominent people who worship said God, and they've got some followers who would agree, but Wood's point is a good one, because it illustrates that most people don't actually think about what they're saying when it comes to religious truisms. They mouth the platitudes and then go on with their lives, because if they actually looked at what they were saying, they might be horrified by themselves. Wood continues with this:

If the president simply meant that most of us have been — so far — luckier than Haitians, why didn’t he say that? Perhaps because, as a Christian, he does not want to believe that he subscribes to such a nonprovidential category as luck, or to the turn of fate’s wheel, which is really a pagan notion. Besides, to talk of luck, or fortune, in the face of a disaster seems flippant, and belittling to those who have been savaged by such bad luck. A toothache is bad luck; an earthquake is somehow theological.

I disagree that to talk of luck in such a situation is flippant or belittling--blaming God, or worse, people who have refused to serve God in the manner he apparently demands seems far more belittling to me, because of the way it makes God look. If I were a believer, I think I would be angry at people who cast my deity in such a horrible light, as the kind of god who would punish innocent and guilty alike and without distinction.

This was something that always bothered me when I was a believer, but it's gotten more pronounced in the last few years, the reconciliation of the notion of a just God with natural disasters and human suffering. Wood sums up this conflict nicely in the conclusion to his piece:

Terrible catastrophes inevitably encourage appeals to God. We who are, at present, unfairly luckier, whether believers or not, might reflect on the almost invariably uncharitable history of theodicy, and on the reality that in this context no invocation of God beyond a desperate appeal for help makes much theological sense. For either God is punitive and interventionist (the Robertson view), or as capricious as nature and so absent as to be effectively nonexistent (the Obama view). Unfortunately, the Bible, which frequently uses God’s power over earth and seas as the sign of his majesty and intervening power, supports the first view; and the history of humanity’s lonely suffering decisively suggests the second.

And I would only add that to worship the former would make me an accessory to that cruelty, and to worship the latter would be useless. There are more important things to worry about.

Creepiest Thing I've Read Today

2010-01-23T15:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Blog for Choice, marking the anniversary of Roe v Wade. I didn't blog at all yesterday, so I guess you can consider this my entry.

Scott Roeder's trial for the murder of Dr. George Tiller is going on right now, and much of the early commentary on it has revolved around Dr. Warren Wilbert's decision to let Roeder's attorneys put on a voluntary manslaughter defense, even though there's no guarantee the jury will be allowed to consider it. Roeder's attorneys are going to argue that Roeder believed that by killing Tiller, he was saving the lives of unborn children.

Inside the anti-abortion movement, there's a wide range of beliefs. There are some who identify as "pro-life" who also claim to support the finding in Roe v. Wade. We call these people confused. Others think there should be restrictions on 3rd trimester abortions but think Roe means the state can't do that. We call these people misled. If I had to guess about where the majority of anti-abortion people come down, I'd figure they're the folks who want exceptions to an abortion ban for rape and incest and the health of the mother, and if pressed would acknowledge that there's some inconsistency in their stance. They think abortion is icky and think that sluts who got pregnant should have to pay the price by raising a kid. Or something.

And then there's this woman, who gave me the reason to write this blog post.

A Roeder supporter seated in the public gallery grinned widely and swayed visibly in her seat as the gruesome photos were shown — leading a sheriff's deputy to quietly issue her a stern warning.

This is during the part of the trial when the pictures of Doctor Tiller's corpse are being presented to the jury. And while I will not nut-pick and claim that this woman represents the entire anti-abortion movement, I think it is fair to say that most anti-abortion activists have much more in common with her than they do with pro-choice activists.

Long ago, a friend of mine gave me this advice about politics: look at the nuts, and decide which ones you'd rather be lumped in with, because it's going to happen. That's a big part of the reason I'm a liberal, and why I'm pro-choice--because our nuts aren't the kind of people who would show glee at the death of a person who was carrying out a completely legal act.

Confusing Metaphor with Reality

2010-01-23T11:15:00.002-05:00

In her scathing piece for Slate about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Dahlia Lithwick compares the Supreme Court's actions to those of the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio, saying that they turned "a corporation into a real live boy." Lithwick doesn't try to peer into the future (like Greg Palast does), but she does highlight what is, to me, the most important issue in this case, and in any case involving corporations--their legal personhood.

Lithwick quoted an earlier case in which former Chief Justice William Rehnquist said that treating corporate spending as the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech is "to confuse metaphor with reality," and that the metaphor won a real battle before the Supreme Court. And it did, no question. My question for the Justices who made this opinion is this: where will corporate personhood stop? Will Coca-Cola get to vote soon? Can the corporation run for President? It's over 35 years old and a natural-born citizen of the US, after all. And who would actually make the day-to-day decisions the President makes--the CEO of Coke? The shareholders? But we didn't elect him or her, or them.

We can take it farther, of course. If a corporation breaks the law and is convicted, who goes to jail? If people incorporate themselves, will they get two votes--one for the person and one for the corporate person? If corporations are truly citizens, should they be counted in the census for the purpose of apportionment of Congressional representatives?

See, this is where the metaphor starts to have problems--when it clashes with the real world. Because even at their most effective, metaphors are only analogs, descriptions, comparisons. They're necessary for communication, but they never do more than approximate the world they try to describe or inform, and when you try to subject them to the rigors of actual existence, they fall apart because they're not real.

Which is not to say that the conservative Justices who wrote this decision haven't thought out the consequences of their decision--I suspect they have thought them out very carefully, and decided they wanted to play the part of the Blue Fairy and bring Pinocchio to life. And like the Blue Fairy, they'll be able to avoid the fallout of their decision for the most part--they are protected by money and privilege and age and the fact that they're the least accountable political figures in the country. They can flit away and concern themselves with other matters, while the rest of us get to figure out what to do with the new kid who's a hundred times our size and is a bully besides.

Crossposted at The Rumpus

It's Looking Like This Kind of Day

2010-01-21T08:21:00.001-05:00

Not good.

If Jesus was going to pop a cap in your ass, he'd use this brand of scope.

2010-01-19T21:50:00.000-05:00

Someone, anyone, tell me a part of this story that's not effed up, because I can't find one.

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the U.S. military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

Old Testament verses wouldn't be a big deal, seeing as Yahweh was an ass-kicking, name-taking, Rowdy Roddy Piper of a god. Taking out the Egyptian army by letting the Red Sea wash back over them? No problem. Toasting the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and only leaving a survivors a guy who offered the citizens his daughters as sex toys and those daughters? Gangster. Knocking down the walls of Jericho and slaughtering everyone in there? That's his style.

But Jesus? New Testament God was all love and peace and sacrifice. He was the new way, right? Healing Calchas's ear after Peter cut it off and going to his death willingly so that all mankind might be saved doesn't quite jibe with high-powered rifle sights. I doubt that the man who reportedly said "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life," would have been cool with a reference to that inscribed on a part of a weapon. Jesus wasn't George Lucas or whoever owns the rights to The Simpsons these days--I think he'd have a problem with some product endorsements.

And via Pandagon, the story gets even worse.

However, a spokesperson for CentCom, the U.S. military's overall command in Iraq and Aghanistan, said he did not understand why the issue was any different from U.S. money with religious inscriptions on it.

"The perfect parallel that I see," said Maj. John Redfield, spokesperson for CentCom, told ABC News, "is between the statement that's on the back of our dollar bills, which is 'In God We Trust,' and we haven't moved away from that."

Let me explain it in small words for you, Major. God is a vague term, which could reference Yahweh, or Jesus, or Allah, or Zeus, or any of a thousand other deities, which basically leaves only hardcore atheists bothered by it (and some of us don't figure it's worth the aggravation). But the second you reference the New Testament, you specify a god (sort of--the whole nature of Jesus has been up for debate since the earliest days of the church), or at the very least, a particular set of beliefs, something the US government cannot do under the First Amendment.

Not to mention that it's just stupid. It really puts the lie to any claims made by the military that these wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are anything other than Crusades, religious wars. How do we deny it now?

Oh, the irony

2010-01-18T20:25:00.000-05:00

Do you think the Palins understand what they're saying here?

I especially like that it's on the cover of In Touch magazine. That couldn't be more precious.

Sex workers are not sex offenders

2010-01-17T21:08:00.000-05:00

I've written in the past about how this country needs to rethink the way it deals with sex offenders--the story about how parolees in Miami have to live under the Julia Tuttle Causeway because there's nowhere else they can go without violating their parole is just one example of how ridiculous our system is.

But this story is worse, and it pains me because it comes from a city I love, namely, New Orleans.

New Orleans city police and the district attorney’s office are using a state law written for child molesters to charge hundreds of sex workers like Tabitha as sex offenders. The law, which dates back to 1805, makes it a crime against nature to engage in “unnatural copulation”—a term New Orleans cops and the district attorney’s office have interpreted to mean anal or oral sex. Sex workers convicted of breaking this law are charged with felonies, issued longer jail sentences and forced to register as sex offenders. They must also carry a driver’s license with the label “sex offender” printed on it.

There's a part of me which would like to follow any district attorney or cop who's been involved in one of these arrests and convictions with a video camera, and see if I can't catch them involved in a "crime against nature" myself, because I'd take any odds that they're all guilty of it, given that definition.

And the cruelty here is unspeakable. We're talking about people who are at the bottom of the economic food chain, who are already abused daily, and the legal system--because I can't call this justice--is crapping on them even more. We're not even talking about cops being able to consider the number of condoms you're carrying as evidence when deciding to make an arrest for prostitution--we're talking about a sex offender tag that gets marked on your driver's license for 15 years.

Again--we're not talking about child abuse here. We're not even talking about a crime where the person being arrested is harming anyone. And most importantly--we're talking about actions which over 90% of the population take part in regularly. I'd think that this law is unconstitutional after Lawrence v Texas, but what do you suppose the chances are that one of the people who gets arrested for this will be able to mount that sort of a defense?

The rest of the article will break your heart. People who are trying to get themselves straight are being tagged as sex offenders--and seriously, no one on this planet thinks "prostitute" when they see "sex offender." We think "kiddie diddler"--and so can't get hired for jobs. And if you wonder why some of these people don't challenge their sentences, well, according to Josh Perry, a former attorney with the Orleans Public Defenders office, “The way Louisiana’s habitual offender law works, if you challenge your sentence in court and lose, and it’s a third offense, the mandatory minimum is 20 years. The maximum is life." Why would you take the chance, if the system has already crapped on you like this?

Usually, this is the part of the post where I urge people to get involved, where I ask them to change the way they look at the world and try to do something about it, but right now, I'm at a loss. I'm despondent over this, because I don't know how to respond to this sort of hypocritical cruelty, to this willingness to actively ignore the humanity of others. It makes me angry--it makes me want to punch the next smug, moralistic sonovabitch I see right in the goddamn face. And then find another one.

Luck and Circumstance

2010-01-15T11:22:00.000-05:00

This is going to come off as real hippy-dippy, I imagine, but it's what's on my mind right now. The Haiti blogging here and The Rumpus has really driven home to me the fact that people who live in first world countries are incredibly fortunate and we have little to complain about, especially if we're in relatively stable economic conditions.

I'm feeling right now what some of my religious friends mean when they say "I've been blessed," only I don't ascribe my situation to God--it's just dumb luck or circumstance that I was born in the US white, male, pretty healthy, moderately intelligent, and that I made it to adulthood with no more scars than anyone else.

And I remind myself of that in order to make sure I don't start thinking I've accomplished something on my own, or worse, that my life is crappy because even when I'm at my most stressed, even when I'm at my most broke, I've got a life that 90% of the planet would kill to have, and I didn't do a thing to earn it. I just got born in the right place.

Universities Organizing Haiti Relief

2010-01-13T21:03:00.000-05:00

This is what I've been able to find so far about local universities organizing relief efforts. If anyone out there finds something I've missed, please forward the information to me at incertusblog-at-gmail-dot-com.

Florida Atlantic University is working with student organizations such as Konbit Kreyol and the Caribbean Student Association with support from Student Government, to collect donations for relief efforts. Donations of canned food, non-perishable items and clothing may be made on the Breezeway of the Boca Raton campus from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the remainder of this week. All donations will go directly to Haiti for disaster relief. Links if they become available.

The University of Miami is working with the United Way and the medical school already has a presence in Haiti. Five doctors are on-site and casualties could be flown back to Florida for treatment.

Florida International University recommends donations be made to the Red Cross, and has made resources available to their students and faculty who have been affected by the earthquake.

That's all I have for now. I'm sure students at Broward College, Nova Southeastern, and the other local colleges are making relief plans, but I couldn't find anything on the university websites.

Why Pat Robertson Pisses Me Off So Much

2010-01-13T19:11:00.000-05:00

I probably shouldn't get as mad at Pat Robertson when he says something as horrifyingly stupid as he did in the clip below. After all, he's not the only religious freak who thinks his god kills innocent people for the "sins" of their ancestors, or who equates resistance to slavery with resistance to Jesus. And it's not like he's never done this before. He connected abortion to Hurricane Katrina and agreed with Jerry Falwell when he famously linked "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way" to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. I would be surprised if he hadn't said something stupid today.

And yet it still set me off, and I don't really know why.

I suppose it has to do, in part, with the story Pat Robertson sells. Religion is already (as Amy likes to say and will hopefully write about some day) the most successful fiction ever, so successful that most people take it as a literal reflection of the world they live in. But Robertson's story is insultingly stupid. It's SyFy Original Movie stupid. Haiti wasn't the victim of plate tectonics--it was another example of God's revenge on them for making a deal with the devil two hundred years ago in order to throw off their chains. New Orleans wasn't hit by Katrina because hurricanes are natural occurrences--it was hit because abortion is legal and his god doesn't like that.

It's also because Pat Robertson isn't just some crank. Robertson is a powerful man in the religious right. His "ministry" takes in nearly $500 million a year, and he established Regents University Law School, which gave us Monica Goodling and a large number of other lawyers in the Bush administration. Politicians of all stripes show up on his tv show in order to reach his audience--an audience which presumably doesn't have any problem with his claims about his god smacking around innocent bystanders for the supposed sins of nonbelievers or the long dead. Even though his story is dumb, it's still popular.

And it's dangerous. It's dangerous because the more people believe that a god is able and willing to send a hurricane spinning toward a city, the less they're likely to believe that sounder construction codes and levees will save lives, and the less they're going to believe that emitting carbon into the atmosphere will eventually result in more powerful storms.

Most of the Christians I know look at Pat Robertson like he smells bad. They're also people who know the basics of plate tectonics, who understand that AIDS is not a plague sent to kill gays, who understand the basics of biological evolution and are worried about the environment. They're not stupid, and the god of their stories is more complex than Robertson's, who seems to be a two year old autistic child. I should just ignore him, because the chances his "ministry" is harmed by this latest inanity are small, and what people do walk away will likely return before long. And if things go well, I won't think about Pat Robertson for a long time, perhaps until he dies.

Or until there's another natural disaster, and he blames it on rap music.

Fuck Pat Robertson in his stupid face

2010-01-13T13:50:00.000-05:00

Shorter version--Haiti got hit by an earthquake because they did a deal with the devil for their freedom from the French.

Haiti--Ways to Help

2010-01-13T12:51:00.000-05:00

This is the post I put together for The Rumpus, which has a readership a thousand times larger than I do, but I figured it might be helpful here as well. I'm updating as I go.

I can't begin to tell you how bad the destruction is in Haiti after the massive earthquake yesterday. Reports right now are that the death toll is expected to be in the thousands and that bodies are being piled in the streets. I'm going to post a list of links for places where you can follow the news, but first, here's how you can help.

If you want to donate money but are a little short right now, the State Dept. has set up a way to donate via text message. Text "Haiti" to 90999 and a donation of ten dollars will be added to your next phone bill and forwarded to the Red Cross.

You can also give directly to the Red Cross here.

Mercy Corps is also there--you can donate to them here.

Partners in Health is already on the ground in Haiti.

Save the Children.

Yéle Haiti was established by Wyclef Jean and is also on the ground (though his server is really slow right now). You can also donate here via text message. Text "yele" to 501501 to donate $5 to the relief effort in Haiti.

The Mennonite Central Committee has been in Haiti since 1958 and is planning their efforts right now.

Mother Jones is also following the story and providing aid information.

Democracy Now! speaks with Edwidge Danticat and Kim Ives.

Richard Morse is in Haiti and tweeting details.

Some really rough photos posted through Twitter.

If you have suggestions for links to add, send them to me at poetry@therumpus.net. I'll be updating this as the day goes on. Spread the word, but also open your wallets.

Haiti Relief

2010-01-13T10:50:00.000-05:00

If you want to donate to the Red Cross for them to help with Haitian relief and you don't have any money right now (like us), the State Department has a solution for you. Text the word "Haiti" to 90999 and ten dollars will be added to your next cell phone bill as a donation to the Red Cross.

If you're on Twitter or Facebook or some other social media network, please post the link to the State department's website. And if you're on Twitter and you think you've been raising awareness and doing your part by re-tweeting other peoples' posts, you haven't been. Make a tangible contribution.

The Nazz

2010-01-11T22:41:00.000-05:00

It's not Lord Buckley, but I couldn't find a full version of Lord Buckley doing this piece. It'll have to do.

The Freak Show Begins

2010-01-11T20:29:00.001-05:00

The news today of Judge Warren Wilbert's ruling that Scott Roeder could present what is basically a justifiable homicide defense in his trial for the murder of Dr. George Tiller got about the reaction you'd expect. Pro-choice people like me are outraged because of the fear that more people like Roeder will consider a 5-year term a small enough penalty to pay for doing what they consider to be the Lord's work, and that abortion providers who already face intense danger for doing something that is completely legal will be put in greater jeopardy.

I would like to point out that abortion is a great example of how, for most people who consider themselves pro-life, the walk doesn't match the talk. After all, if abortion is murder--and that is the common construction used--then the mother who gets the abortion is guilty of premeditated murder, isn't she? The medical personnel who perform the procedure are guilty of the same, presumably, and anyone who either helps the mother get the abortion, like a husband or boyfriend or relative or close friend, is guilty of being an accessory. But you never hear much from your run-of-the-mill anti-choicers about suggesting that anyone but the doctors going to jail, and sometimes not even them. And you really don't hear much about people like Scott Roeder who, if you take the anti-choice movement's stated claims about abortion seriously, are doing what follows logically, namely, trying to stop a holocaust.

And there's a simple reason why you never hear any of that from mainstream anti-choice groups--because they know that if most people who claim the tag of pro-life just stopped for a moment and thought about what they're arguing, they'd shrink in horror from the conclusions, because to do anything else makes you a monster. Their support would dry up faster than Randall Terry can make an ass of himself at a press conference, and they know that. So they hide behind slut-shaming and nonsense about life beginning at conception (even though 40% to 60% of fertilized eggs never implant and many of those spontaneously abort) and support ever more onerous restrictions on women who are already making a very difficult choice and they never acknowledge that they created Scott Roeder.

That's right. They created Scott Roeder. He took what they said literally and went to the logical conclusion, which was that Dr. George Tiller was committing murder and that the law wasn't going to stop him, and that it was worth whatever penalty the law could place upon him even unto his own death if it meant that Tiller wouldn't kill any more babies. That's the case Scott Roeder is going to make now, thanks to Judge Warren Wilbert (assuming he doesn't change his mind after hearing objections today). It would be easy for me to sit back here, as a blogger and English teacher, and say "bring it on!" (as our numbskull former President did once upon a time). "Let the freaks get in front of the camera like they did with Terry Schiavo!" It's easy for me to say because no one will be taking a shot at me for doing my job--a completely legal, constitutionally-protected job in the case of abortion providers.

But they will shoot at abortion providers, and the volunteers who escort patients in and out of the clinics, and the patients themselves, and they'll be encouraged to do it more if Roeder is allowed to present this defense to the jury, because there are more people who are willing to sacrifice five years of their lives to God than are willing to go the whole hog and really stick their necks out for their beliefs.

The only good that can come out of this ruling, assuming it stands, is if the media actually covers the freak show and shows it for what it is. If that happens, maybe, just maybe they overreach like they did with Schiavo--same people were involved in that fiasco--and the anti-choice movement takes a hit with people who are on the fence. But that's a longshot, and it's not worth it to me to take the chance that truly innocent people might be murdered by a psychopath who doesn't understand biology and thinks God has his back.

Ross Douthat and Faith

2010-01-11T09:46:00.000-05:00

If I were feeling less generous, I would suggest that the only interesting idea in Ross Douthat's column today was the pull-quote on the front page: "If you treat your faith like it is too vulnerable to be disputed, you ensure that nobody takes it seriously." It's a great pull quote, and kudos to whichever editor grabbed that gem out of Douthat's piece, a piece, I will say, which is better than his usual attempt.

Indeed, I found myself nodding on multiple occasions while reading Douthat's column this morning, which might be a first for me. His description of the theoretical deal liberal democracies have struck with religion is cogent, as is his breakdown of the situation as it exists currently. His description of the reaction to Brit Hume's ridiculous comments about Tiger Woods is a bit over the top--"A great many people immediately declared that this comment was the most outrageous thing they’d ever heard" seems a bit hyperbolic to me, but I will admit that I too found some of the reaction against Hume's comments a little ludicrous. Of course, that's because my reaction was a little closer to Ta-Nehisi Coates' than most of the others I heard, namely that Hume's error was in doing it on a news show rather than in private.

I even liked the general thrust of this paragraph:

The tendency to take offense at freewheeling religious debate is widespread. There are European Christians who side with Muslims in support of blasphemy laws, lest Jesus or the Prophet Muhammad have his reputation sullied. There are American Catholics who cry “bigotry” every time a newspaper columnist criticizes the church’s teaching on sexuality. Many Christians have decided that the best way to compete in an era of political correctness is to play the victim card.

Douthat describes the current situation pretty well, I think, though it's not political correctness that created the current environment, but a backlash against it.

But while Douthat is ecumenical here, he leaves out one group who also criticizes religion. Other than a nod to non-believers in the opening paragraph, Douthat doesn't mention atheists, even though we're often portrayed as the greatest attackers of religion on the planet, and we're constantly accused of lowering the tone of the discourse. The funny thing about this is that if Douthat really believes his thesis, that "if you treat your faith like it is too vulnerable to be disputed, you ensure that nobody takes it seriously," he ought to be thanking the New Atheism, because we dispute, we challenge, we question the very premise of religious belief. When Douthat says "Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them," we agree--we just tend to emphasize the negative aspects a little more and suggest that there are other ways to achieve the positive ones.

And if the debate Douthat wants to have really does center around the question How then should we live?, then atheists should have a place at that table, because we'll offer insight on the perspective that this life is the only one we have, that our resources as a species are in many cases finite, and that if we want our species and our accomplishments to live beyond us, we'd better take concrete steps to ensure our descendants have an environment and eco-system they can survive in. Not believing in an afterlife can have that effect on you.

Of course, not every atheist looks at the subject this way. There are many who look at the lack of an afterlife--particularly one which doesn't result in punishment--and use it as an excuse to indulge in every possible excess. But even that is a perspective worth debating alongside the rest.

The most interesting thing to me about the question Douthat poses, though, is that it's a question we really don't want an answer to, nor, I think, should we. The human race would be awfully boring if we worked out the answer to "how then should we live?" Theology at its best doesn't provide answers--it provides more questions for adherents to explore. Atheists mostly look at the world that way already, as a jumbly mass of unasked questions--we've just taken God out of it.

Ted Olsen on Same-Sex Marriage

2010-01-10T22:17:00.000-05:00

Ted Olsen's conservative bonafides are unquestionable--he was at the first meeting of the Federalist Society, he ran The American Spectator and was one of the leaders of the Arkansas Project, which did everything it could to destroy Bill Clinton's presidency. He was lead counsel in Bush v Gore and was considered for the Supreme Court slot that Harriet Miers was nominated for and which Samuel Alito eventually filled (after some nomination switcheroo-ing).

And yet, in 2009, he joined with David Boies to challenge California's Proposition 8 which outlawed same-sex marriage, and in the latest Newsweek, he's written a good editorial outlining why he feels federal recognition of same-sex marriage is a conservative cause, or at least it should be. The whole thing is worth reading, though I doubt many minds will be changed by it. Yes, there's movement toward greater acceptance of same-sex unions in almost every poll, but I think that's due more to younger people who aren't hung up on homosexuality replacing older people who aren't willing to address their bigotry.

None of the arguments Olsen puts forward are new to anyone who's been engaged on this issue, but I like the way Olsen wraps his editorial up. Look at these two paragraphs.

California's Proposition 8 is particularly vulnerable to constitutional challenge, because that state has now enacted a crazy-quilt of marriage regulation that makes no sense to anyone. California recognizes marriage between men and women, including persons on death row, child abusers, and wife beaters. At the same time, California prohibits marriage by loving, caring, stable partners of the same sex, but tries to make up for it by giving them the alternative of "domestic partnerships" with virtually all of the rights of married persons except the official, state-approved status of marriage. Finally, California recognizes 18,000 same-sex marriages that took place in the months between the state Supreme Court's ruling that upheld gay-marriage rights and the decision of California's citizens to withdraw those rights by enacting Proposition 8.

So there are now three classes of Californians: heterosexual couples who can get married, divorced, and remarried, if they wish; same-sex couples who cannot get married but can live together in domestic partnerships; and same-sex couples who are now married but who, if they divorce, cannot remarry. This is an irrational system, it is discriminatory, and it cannot stand.

California's marriage laws are a clusterfuck of epic proportions and I doubt they'll stand, but I fear that the Supreme Court's conservatives, terrified that if they overturn Prop 8 and reinstate same-sex marriage in California will have to hear a Full Faith and Credit case soon afterward for someone in another state, will instead find a way to invalidate the 18,000 marriages that were performed when it was legal. And Scalia will probably lead the way, ignoring all his previous rhetoric about states' rights in the process. (Olsen takes a nice shot at Scalia on page 2 of the piece, which is nice.)

It's also nice to see Olsen completely dismiss those who argue that homosexuality is a choice. He could have done it in stronger terms--I think that it's better to argue for LGBT rights on the basis of individual liberty rather than biology--but he states quite clearly that being gay is no more a choice than being left-handed, and he uses the dreaded s-word, science, to make his point.

Like I said, it's a good piece all the way around. It's worth the 15 minutes or so it'll take you to read it.

A Note on Comments

2010-01-10T16:03:00.000-05:00

I close comments on posts that are more than 30 days old. This is why. The widget I used to have on the sidebar that posted recent comments was wonky at best, and it cluttered up an already full sidebar. What this means is that if you comment on a post that's, oh, over a year old, the chances you'll get a reply are insignificant. If you're hoping for a conversation, you'll be disappointed, and if you're taking a shot, no one other than me will notice, because it gets shipped to moderation and I deny them out of hand.

If either I or Amy have something else to say on a subject that we've blogged about--and we often do--we'll address it in another post rather than carry on a conversation that's long since died. If you're a regular visitor--and I hope you will become one if you aren't already--then you'll get a chance to add to the conversation then.

One other thing. We don't get many conversations going here, but I still have no problem deleting comments I find offensive, racist, sexist, or which don't deal with the subject of the post. I allow for drift, certainly, but I won't hesitate to slap down threadjackers or spammers.

Religion and Women

2010-01-10T11:51:00.000-05:00

Oh, Nicholas Kristof, now you've gone and done it. You've said aloud, and in the Sunday Op-Ed pages of the nation's biggest newspaper what anyone who has looked at religion objectively has long known--that religion is used as a tool to oppress women.

Notice what Kristof (and I) didn't say. We didn't say that religion oppresses women, because that removes the agency from the oppressors. It's a tool oppressors use to justify what they were going to do anyway; instead of oppressors having to acknowledge that they think women aren't as valuable as men, they use their holy writings (and interpretations of them) to say "God thinks women aren't as valuable as men, and we have to agree with God."

But Kristof isn't going to catch hell because he said anything inaccurate. He's going to catch hell because he said it at all. Those who defend the oppressive system will accuse Kristof of being intolerant of religion and will completely ignore the latter part of his article where he notes that some churches are trying to empower women. Others will accuse Kristof of painting with too wide a brush, as though thousands of years of history filled with example after example of male-dominated power structures oppressing women in the name of whichever god or gods are dominant in that area don't warrant a brush the width of I-95.

It's good that there are some religious groups which are trying to change the way women are treated and provide them with greater power. I applaud all efforts in that vein, even if I think the structures these groups are working within are hopelessly compromised. Obviously, I think a better way to do it is to remove god(s) from the equation, if only because it's clear that the god(s) created by the current dominant religious structures are misogynist. The holy writings of these religions are clearly opposed to equality between the genders--the best you get is when there are calls to limit the abusive treatment of women. Religious groups which argue for gender equality have to start from the premise that the holy writings their religion is based on are faulty, which immediately makes both doubters and fundamentalists wonder why they accept any of it as holy writ.

And both groups have a point. As a doubter, I think that most of the positive things one can get from religion are available from outside--the friendship and fellowship, the emotional support, the acceptance and the drive to make this world a better place aren't limited to religious groups. When I was a fundamentalist, I had an all-or-nothing attitude toward the Bible, though I'm still not clear on how we finessed the whole slavery thing, and so people who played the "some of the Bible is symbolic" card in an argument immediately lost any credence I'd given them.

Which isn't to say that all atheists are champions of gender-equality--we've got our share of misogynists as well. We just don't have a god to blame that misogyny on.

An Appreciation of John Mackey and Whole Foods

2010-01-09T15:39:00.000-05:00

John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods is a douchebag--this isn't really in question. He's anti-union, he claims to be a libertarian, and the latest is story is that he's a global-warming skeptic. And he's gotten rich by pandering to progressives--people like me who worry that big-agriculture and the processed meat industry are taking shortcuts with food quality and safety that can affect both our short and long-term health.

We don't shop at Whole Foods, but not because of the recent movement to punish the company for Mackey's political stances. We don't shop there because we can get the quality of food we want, organic and otherwise, from Publix, which is cheaper and closer (though there's a Whole Foods not far from where we live). But the reason we can do that is because of John Mackey. Douchebag or not, he proved that there was a market for organic products, even if the word organic is now starting to get stretched to cover things it shouldn't. We have better selection at Publix now because Whole Foods grabbed that part of the market and Publix responded by changing their selection.

And it's not just organic produce and organic processed foods I'm talking about here. Grocery stores everywhere now are offering specialty items like artisanal breads made in-house--ten years ago, that was hard to find outside of high-income or major metropolitan areas. Not so much anymore. And in a way, we have John Mackey to thank for it.

But thanks is about all I think I'll give John Mackey these days. He's rich enough, and I have other options.

While I'm on the subject...

2010-01-08T10:57:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I'm thinking about crappy drivers and traffic because I'll start the commute again next week, or perhaps it's just a coincidence that I saw both these stories on the same morning, but after reading the piece below, I think I'd like to see more places take up this theory of handling traffic violations.

In 2002 Swiss voters approved a system that replaces prison terms for some offenses, including speeding, with fines based on your income. According to the Zürich based Tages Anzeiger (english translation here), the 53 year old man has an annual income of more than $820,000 and is worth well over $20 million.

And another tip if you are caught and given a hefty fine in Switzerland, don’t make any big claims to try and get out of the ticket. The Testarossa driver was initially fined almost $90,000 by the local jurisdiction. That fee was raised to more than $145,000 by the next court. The driver had claimed diplomatic immunity saying he is diplomat from the Republic of Guinea-Bissau.

Apparently that didn’t sway the courts and the fee was raised again to the $290,000 fine.

“The accused ignored elementary traffic rules with a powerful vehicle out of a pure desire for speed” the court said.

I have to admit that when I read this story, the first image that came to mind was the scene from "The Breakfast Club" where John Bender and Principal Vernon get into a pissing match which ends with Bender receiving seven (or eight) weeks of detention, depending on who's counting. But then I realized that I was siding with Vernon and I felt old, which wasn't cool at all. But then I realized that in no universe is anyone who drives a Ferrari Testarossa as cool as John Freaking Bender and it all worked out. I'm rambling.

I don't know where I'm going with this, really. I guess I just liked seeing someone with money and power get smacked down, even in some small way, by a locality that decided he deserved a smack.

A Modest Proposal

2010-01-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

There's only a couple of ways I can think that automakers putting the internet on the dashboard of your car is a good idea. The first--and I'm serious here--is that it will force a leap forward in computer-controlled cars and massive automated traffic systems. The more potential distractions drivers have to deal with, the more traffic accidents there will be, and by extension, the more traffic fatalities there will be. There's no way we're going backwards and removing the potentially distracting devices, that's clear, so the next logical step is to remove drivers from the equation and turn the driving over to something else.

I expect there will be some intermediate steps--bans on anything that might distract the driver, for example, as is being tried (with not much success as I understand) with mobile phone use--but in the end, I think we end up with computer-driven cars, which would be terrific for people like me who often get out of the car after a commute questioning the collective intelligence of the human species. For the people who invoke that feeling, it's probably not a good thing, since control of their toys will be taken away.

The second way that automakers putting the internet on the dashboard of your car could be a good thing is that it could potentially thin out the gene pool of people who aren't showing the good judgment necessary for driving anyway. And I have a recommendation--once this hits the streets, certain lanes of traffic should be designated for non-internet capable vehicles, and one lane--both ways--for those which are internet-capable.