Not In Kansas Anymore
How do you know? When you wake up in the middle of the night to what looks like the sequel to the Edgar Allan Poe story, "The Monkey's Paw." Just one of the interesting artifacts in the apartment we're renting.
Silly Techno-Bashers
If I hear one more person talk about how the technology is alienating all of us...! (Especially about how the Internet alienates us.) There couldn't be anything more ridiculous. If you're social, you're going to socialize. I've been socializing on the Internet since the early 90s when I met Marlon Brando, who became a friend, in a chat room on AOL, and my friends Terry Rossio (whose movie with an AOL acquaintance from those days, Bill Marsilli, just came out), and Melissa W., who posts here, and who also became my lawyer...and many, many others who are still in my real (non-virtual) life. I never would have met them without the Internet. Since the days of blogging, I've made many other friends -- blog friends first, and real life friends later -- and some people I consider good friends, but have never actually seen in person.
In keeping with this thinking, there's an NYTimes.com piece by Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good For You, on Thomas Friedman's lament about our...sigh...disconnected society. Friedman had been riding in a car from Charles De Gaulle airport with a driver who talked on his mobile phone and simultaneously watched a movie on the dashboard for the entire trip. Friedman, on the other hand, was writing a column on his laptop and listening to his iPod. Oh, boohoo.
Johnson writes:
This is the lament of iPod Nation: we’ve built elaborate tools to connect us to our friends – and introduce us to strangers – who are spread across the planet, and at the same time, we’ve embraced technologies that help us block out the people we share physical space with, technologies that give us the warm cocoon of the personalized soundtrack. We wear white earbuds that announce to the world: whatever you’ve got to say, I can’t hear it.Cities are naturally inclined to suffer disproportionately from these trends, since cities historically have produced public spaces where diverse perspectives can engage with each other – on sidewalks and subways, in bars and, yes, in taxicabs. Thirty years ago, the typical suburban commuter driving solo to work was already listening to his own private soundtrack on the car radio. (If anything, cell phones have made car-centric communities more social.) But for the classic vision of sidewalk urbanism articulated by Jane Jacobs, the activist and author, the bubble of permanent connectivity poses a real threat. There can be no Speaker’s Corner if everyone’s listening to his own private podcast.
I take these threats seriously, but let me suggest two reasons I am a bit less worried than Friedman is about the social disconnection of the connected age. One has to do with the past, the other the future.
First, there’s a tendency to sentimentalize the public spaces of traditional cities. More than a few commentators have remarked on the ubiquity of the white earbuds on the New York City subways as a sign of urban disconnection. (Steven Levy summarizes and rebuts these objections elegantly in his recent book “The Perfect Thing.”) I rode the subways for almost 15 years before Apple introduced the iPod, and I can say with confidence that the subway system, for all its merits, was not exactly a hotbed of civic discourse even then. On the good days, most everyone was engrossed in their newspaper or their book. (On bad days, we were just trying to steer clear of all the subway vigilantes.) Now at least we have an excuse for not talking to each other.
It’s telling that Friedman draws upon that very distinct form of social contact – the cabbie and the fare – since there are few other conventional urban situations that regularly produce substantive political conversation between strangers. The barstool conversation and the public hearing also come to mind, but I’m fairly sure the iPod hasn’t infiltrated those zones yet.
...So the idea that the new technology is pushing us away from the people sharing our local spaces is only half true. To be sure, iPods and mobile phones give us fewer opportunities to start conversations with people of different perspectives. But the Web gives us more of those opportunities, and for the most part, I think it gives us better opportunities. What it doesn’t directly provide is face-to-face connection. So the question becomes: how important is face-to-face? I don’t have a full answer to that – clearly it’s important, and clearly we lose something in the transition to increasingly virtual interactions.
But just as clearly, we gain. I think of the online debate over the Atlantic Yards project here in Brooklyn – hundreds of voices working through their differences in sometimes excruciating detail. I’ve made a few volleys in that debate, and while it’s true I haven’t had face-to-face encounters with the other participants, the intensity and depth of the discussion has been far greater than any conversation on any topic that I’ve ever had with a stranger on a subway. The conversations unfolding across these sites are, for the most part, marvelous examples of strangers exchanging ideas and values, even without the subtleties of facial expressions and vocal intonation, and the ideas and values they’re exchanging all eventually come back to a real-world place. Yes, they can sometimes get contentious. But so can Speaker’s Corner. Contentiousness is what it’s all about.
Back For More!
I'm blogging this from the Northwest Lounge where Gregg and I are waiting for our Air France flight to take off. More Paris blog items to come!
photo by Gregg Sutter
More Like This Guy, Please
Moderate Muslim Jamal Miftah writes in the Tulsa World:
My message to Ayman al-Zawahri and Muslims of the world: "Islam" means submission and is derived from a word meaning "peace." Islam, Christianity and Judaism have the same origin, the Prophet Abraham. The prophet of Islam has said that God has no mercy on someone who does not have mercy for others.I ask that al-Zawahri look at his deeds and those of his master, Osama bin Laden, and other so-called Islamic jihadists.
Because of lack of knowledge of Islam, Muslim youth are misguided into believing by the so-called champions of the cause of Islam that the current spate of killings and barbarism, which has no equal in the recent civilized history, is jihad in the name of Islam. They are incited, in the name of Islam, to commit heinous crimes not pardonable by any religion and strictly forbidden in Islam. (Hmm, really?)
Cowards like al-Zawahri and bin Laden are inciting the ignorant and innocent youths to commit suicide bombings to kill innocent civilians including children, women and the elderly, while they hide in spider holes and caves. They never send their own sons and daughters, born out of half a dozen of their wives, to get killed in the name of Islam. They are themselves hypo crites, cowards, thugs and liars. For 12 years they misappropriated aid received from the U.S. and the West to fight Russia. Now they are ensuring smooth flow of petro dollars from Arab countries in the name of jihad against the West.
Even mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S. and around the world have become tools in their hands and are used for collecting funds for their criminal acts. Half of the funds collected go into the pockets of their local agents and the rest are sent to these thugs.
They are the reason for branding the peaceful religion of Islam as terrorism. The result, therefore, is in the form of Danish cartoons and remarks/reference by the Pope.
I appeal to the Muslim youth in particular and Muslims of the world in general to rise up and start jihad against the killers of humanity and help the civilized world to bring these culprits to justice and prove that Islam is not a religion of hatred and aggression.
I appeal to the Muslim clerics around the world that, rather than issuing empty fatwas condemning suicide bombing, they should issue a fatwa for the death of such scoundrels and barbarians who have taken more than 4,267 lives of innocent people in the name of Islam and have carried out more than 24 terrorist attacks on civilian installations throughout the world. This does not include the chilling number of deaths because of such activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is well over 250,000.
I appeal to al-Zawahri and his band of thugs to hand themselves over to justice and stop spreading evil and killing innocent humans around the world in the name of Islam. Their time is limited and Muslims of the world will soon rise against them to apprehend them and bring them to justice.
Naturally, for his efforts, he was kicked out of the local mosque and threatened with violence by other members of that "religion of peace."
Lack Of Civilization And Its Discontents
Why do suicide bombers do it? (Actually, either "homicide bombers" or simply "mass murderers" is more correct.) A French filmmaker named Pierre Reh0v interviewed their families for a film called "Suicide Bombers," and has a few ideas on the topic. Here's an excerpt from an interview with Rehov on MSNBC's "Connected":
What insights did you gain from making this film? What do you know that other experts do not know?I came to the conclusion that we are facing a neurosis at the level of an entire civilization. Most neuroses have in common a dramatic event, generally linked to an unacceptable sexual behavior. In this case, we are talking of kids living all their lives in pure frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness or even understanding from the opposite sex. The separation between men and women in Islam is absolute. So is contempt toward women, who are totally dominated by men. This leads to a situation of pure anxiety, in which normal behavior is not possible. It is no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil. Since Islam describes heaven as a place where everything on earth will finally be allowed, and promises 72 virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution.
What was it like to interview would-be suicide bombers, their families and survivors of suicide bombings?
It was a fascinating and a terrifying experience. You are dealing with seemingly normal people with very nice manners who have their own logic, which to a certain extent can make sense since they are so convinced that what they say is true. It is like dealing with pure craziness, like interviewing people in an asylum, since what they say, is for them, the absolute truth. I hear a mother saying "Thank God, my son is dead." Her son had became a shaheed, a martyr, which for her was a greater source of pride than if he had became an engineer, a doctor or a winner of the Nobel Prize. This system of values works completely backwards since their interpretation of Islam worships death much more than life. You are facing people whose only dream, only achievement is to fulfill what they believe to be their destiny, namely to be a shaheed or the family of a shaheed.
They don't see the innocent being killed, they only see the impure that they have to destroy.
You say suicide bombers experience a moment of absolute power, beyond punishment. Is death the ultimate power?
Not death as an end, but death as a door open to the after life. They are seeking the reward that God has promised them. They work for God, the ultimate authority, above all human laws. They therefore experience this single delusional second of absolute power, where nothing bad can ever happen to them, since they become God's sword.
...Is there a suicide bomber personality profile? Describe the psychopathology.
Generally kids between 15 and 25 bearing a lot of complexes, generally inferiority complexes. They must have been fed with religion. They usually have a lack of developed personality. Usually they are impressionable idealists. In the western world they would easily have become drug addicts, but not criminals. Interestingly, they are not criminals since they don't see good and evil the same way that we do. If they had been raised in an Occidental culture, they would have hated violence. But they constantly battle against their own death anxiety. The only solution to this deep-seated pathology is to be willing to die and be rewarded in the after life in Paradise.
Describe the culture that manufactures suicide bombers.
Oppression, lack of freedom, brain washing, organized poverty, placing God in charge of daily life, total separation between men and women, forbidding sex, giving women no power whatsoever, and placing men in charge of family honor, which is mainly connected to their women's behavior.
...Why are so many suicide bombers young men?
As discussed above , libido is paramount. Also ego, because this is a sure way to become a hero. The shaheeds are the cowboys or the firemen of Islam. Shaheed is a positively reinforced value in this culture. And what kid has never dreamed of becoming a cowboy or a fireman?
...You say that a suicide bomber is a 'stupid bomb and a smart bomb' simultaneously. Explain what you mean.
Unlike an electronic device, a suicide killer has until the last second the capacity to change his mind. In reality, he is nothing but a platform representing interests which are not his, but he doesn't know it.
How can we put an end to the madness of suicide bombings and terrorism in general?
Stop being politically correct and stop believing that this culture is a victim of ours. Radical Islamism today is nothing but a new form of Nazism. Nobody was trying to justify or excuse Hitler in the 1930s. We had to defeat him in order to make peace one day with the German people.
Your Rights When Stopped By A Cop
How the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments could work for you. A video on what to do and what not to do in a traffic stop. Remember, they have to have probable cause -- a valid reason, like seeing something in plain sight, not just a desire -- to search your car. Do your best not to confess to anything, including speeding, thus incriminating yourself. And remember this line: "I don't consent to any searches, sir."
I don't smoke pot, but I'm against our drug laws, and I don't want to see you jailed because you've got a joint in your backpack -- as long as you're not smoking it while you're behind the wheel.
Go West, Young Diaper!
Oh, what the international singing sensation will do to get noticed. Sexier photos at the first link -- a few of them in projectile bad taste.
"Persecuted Like Me"
Somebody please explain the difference between bigotry and cold-blooded double murder to the LA Times op-ed columnist, Erin Aubry Kaplan, who says she's "not equating racist invective with charges of double homicide," yet feels O.J. Simpson's "justice" was more satisfying than Michael Richards'.
I'm not quite sure why I ended up reading this, because you really never need to read more than one of Aubry Kaplan's columns because they all pretty much say the exact same thing -- "Black people have it hard, and it's whitey's fault" -- the letters and punctuation just get arranged differently.
Oops, I guess my black friends (among them, a syndicated columnist and author and a fashion designer who sells in the USA and Japan) never got the memo about how downtrodden they're supposed to be. They're just as successful as my white friends, but according to Erin Aubry Kaplan, they should be trudging around feeing persecuted (not to mention, working as security guards). And come to think of it, with what must be a salaried slot on the LA Times Op-Ed page, how persecuted, exactly, is the African-American Ms. Aubry Kaplan? The truth is, available cash, and in turn, social class, divides people and opportunity much more than race. But, then, who'd give you a job saying that over, and over, and over again?
Sure, there's discrimination in the world, but black people don't have a monopoly on being hated or kept down. In fact, we Heebs had and have our share, and then some. I'm actually a post-Jewish atheist these days, but try telling that to the people who think you're a kike. Luckily, Jews don't let the hardships get in the way of owning the banks and the media...oh, sorry, that's what the Jew haters told me about Jews when I was growing up. Hey! No fair! I'm short one bank, 13 newspapers, and 6 TV stations!
What was shocking to me were the black people who wanted O.J. Simpson to get a pass on murder simply because he was black. Aubry Kaplan, of course, saw it in a most racist way -- racist because special treatment for blacks is just as racist as shitty treatment for blacks. In Aubry Kaplan's words on the O.J. Simpson verdict:
I do feel, however, that the decision was a rare instance of equal treatment, if not justice.
That's not something you hear a lot of from other groups. I didn't hear mobs of Jews cheering for Abramoff to get off, for example. In fact, my experience, just in my family, was that my parents felt ashamed whenever somebody with a Jewish-sounding name was in the headlines for something criminal.
For Erin Aubry Kaplan, it's all black and white:
Of course, the O.J. indignation is driven in large part by racial indignation: the idea that a black man may have killed a white woman and gotten away with it.
Uh, no. In my case at least, it's the fact that he murdered two people and got away with it. The fact that Nicole Simpson married him in the first place diminished her in my eyes -- and not because he's black, but because he's an illiterate moron with money and position. I didn't think of her as white; I thought of her as an unfortunate golddigger.
On a side note, luckily, I don't date illiterate morons, no matter how much cash and fame they throw around, or, who knows, I might've ended up like Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. I met O.J. Simpson in the early 90s, in New York, when I did a series of short films for the Glamour Magazine Woman Of The Year Awards. (What was he doing there, scouting a kill?)
For some reason, Simpson made a beeline for me, and asked me for my card, which I stupidly gave him, even though I had no idea who he was. Then he spoke a few sentences, and I discovered that his IQ barely skimmed my shins. Luckily, I was living on Christopher Street with Marlowe, one of my Advice Lady partners at the time, so when Simpson called, we put her bird Otto on the phone. Otto sounded just like us, but all he did on the phone is say, "Guten Tag!" over and over and over. Too bad we never could teach him to say "Auf wiedersehen" and "And good riddance!" But, Simpson got the message and stopped leaving messages.
For a smarter take on the Michael Richards incident, read Michael Shermer's column on racism, also in the LA Times. According to Schermer (and to studies I've read), We're all racists...evolution made us that way.
The truth is, whether it comes out as one race against the other, or blonds versus redheads, or some other group vs. group situation, we all evolved to be what could be called "tribal." I read one study a few months back (for my column on "the Asian Fetish") that showed that blacks and whites both fear each other, except when they've dated interracially. That's why I always feel good when I see mixed-race babies. The sooner everyone looks the color of a latte, the harder it will be to hate each other over race. Then again, we may all be dead before that happens, thanks to all the people who hate us because we don't share their religious beliefs.
Father Nos Best
British scientists have invented a male birth control pill -- one men could take hours before a date -- writes Fiona MacRae in the Daily Mail:
The tablet would prevent a man from being able to impregnate a woman, but within a few hours his fertility would return to normal.This would make it much more acceptable to men than other 'male pills' under development, which alter hormone levels and have to be taken over the long term.
It is also more likely to be trusted by women as they are not relying on their man having to remember to take his pill every day for it to work.
The hormone-free 'male pill' was inspired by two medicines already in use and so the scientists hope it could be on the market within as little as five years.
Experts believe it could transform family planning by allowing couples to share the responsibility for contraception - a role that traditionally falls to women.
The new contraceptive is likely to appeal to women who are uneasy about the female Pill's ability to raise the risk of strokes, heart attacks and potentially-fatal blood clots.
Critics argue, that men lack women's motivation to prevent pregnancy, making it hard for women to trust them to take a contraceptive pill.
Men who are smart should be equally doubting when it comes to trusting women to protect themselves. There's a name for men who aren't so doubting: It's "Daddy."
The Presumption Of Perversion
Or FWM, you could call it -- Flying While Male. Once again, men are guilty before being proven guilty of anything at all, simply by virtue of being male. This time, it's on an airline.
British MP Boris Johnson writes of nearly being forced to move to another seat so he wouldn't be seated next to children, on the presumption that any male at all could be a child molester. Oops, but they were his children, so he got to stay.
Echoing Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear, about how we're afraid of all the statistically wrong things, he asks, how many child molesters can there actually be out there? And what is the cost of turning all men into potential criminals?
Even as I write, I can imagine the lip-pursing of some of my lovely high-minded readers. How would you like it, they will say, if some weird chap was plonked next to your kids? And they are right that I would worry about some strange adult sitting next to my children, chiefly because I wouldn't want the poor fellow to come to any harm.To all those who worry about the paedophile plague, I would say that they not only have a very imperfect understanding of probability; but also that they fail to understand the terrible damage that is done by this system of presuming guilt in the entire male population just because of the tendencies of a tiny minority.
There are all sorts of reasons why the numbers of male school teachers are down 50 per cent in the period 1981 to 2001, and why the ratio of female to male teachers in primary schools is now seven to one. There are problems of pay, and the catastrophic failure of the state to ensure that they are treated as figures of authority and respect; and what with 'elf 'n' safety and human rights it is very hard to enforce discipline.
But it is also, surely, a huge deterrent to any public-spirited man contemplating a career in education that society apparently regards all adult male contact with young people as being potentially a bit dodgy, a bit rum, a bit you know…
It is a total disaster. It is not just that both boys and girls could do with more male role models in the classroom. Worse still, it often used to be men who taught physics, and maths, and chemistry, and it is the current shortage of such teachers that explains why 80 per cent of pupils studying physics are now taught by someone with a degree in biology; and that in turn helps explain why the numbers doing physics A-level have halved, and why physics departments are closing all over the shop, with all the consequent damage to our science base.
It has tended to be male teachers who take contact sports. Even if they can find a playing-field, these days, the poor male sports teachers have to cope with a terrifying six-inch thick manual explaining how they must on no account shout at their charges, and above all, on pain of prosecution, they must NOT BE LEFT ALONE with the kids. No wonder our children are apparently turning into big fat Augustus Gloops.
It is insane, and the problem is the general collapse of trust. Almost every human relationship that was sensibly regulated by trust is now governed by law, with cripplingly expensive consequences.
I blame the media, I blame the judges, I blame the lobby groups, and in particular I blame the cowardly capitalist airline companies that give in to this sort of loony hysteria. If you happen to be reading this on a British Airways flight, and have quite rightly sustained a burst blood vessel, then I think you are entitled to an immediate upgrade.
UPDATE: Here's a Michael Alvear talking to Michelle Norris on NPR -- with a cost of this "all men are perps" thinking. He saw little boys flagging him down in the middle of the street, asking him to help find their parents. One of the kids, an 8-year-old, grabbed his hand and led him to their house, and then inside, to show him nobody was there:
I froze. I was in a deserted house, holding the hand of a child I didn't know. Oh, my God, I thought. There's just the two of us and no witnesses. What's to stop him or his parents from accusing me of molesting him?I ran out of the house and banged on the neighborhood doors. Nothing. Nobody was home. In another era, I would have just taken him home and left a note. But those days are gone. All I could think about was being smeared with the label of pedophilia and mortgaging everything I had to fight it in court.
I couldn't stay there but I couldn't bring him home. Calling 911 seemed hasty. The kid said his parents went to the grocery store. I mean, how long does it take to buy milk? I was panicking. I crouched down and said, listen to me, I - I'm going to my house. I want you to stay inside with the doors locked. Don't let anybody in unless it's me or your parents, got it? He nodded.
I left to get some fresh air and figure out what to do. I glanced back and stopped cold. The kid was back on the street flagging cars down. I ran back and grabbed him. I felt like this boy was a ticking time bomb. I had to help him, but I knew the longer we were together, the more I'd be seen as a predator.
Desperate, I called my sister. The police, she said. Call the police and have them meet you and the boy at my house. The police came. The parents had come back - they really were at the grocery store - and the kid was safe.
I, on the other hand was shaken. I had been weighing the pros and cons of helping a child in danger. How could I put my welfare in front of that boy's safety? It was an act as repugnant as it was necessary.
The truth is helping a kid has the potential for ruining your life. My only consolation is that I finally decided I'd rather live with the stigma of an accusation than the same of not helping a little boy in trouble.
It's Hard Out Here For A Wimp
Just posted another Advice Goddess column. Here's the question:
The day of my third date with this wonderful girl I learned that a close friend had committed suicide. I was overcome with grief, but so afraid the news would turn her off, I made up a story to cover why I had to break plans. She believed it, and things went well for a while, but I couldn’t keep up the façade and eventually said a bunch of stupid things. I later left a message on her machine, not only to apologize but to tell her the truth. It came out all wrong. I wrote her a letter, but again failed to explain. I tried a third time, with a letter including my phone number, in hopes I could tell it to her straight. She then complained to our college dean. I still see her at school and feel horrible that I was never able to come clean. Don’t I at least owe her an explanation?--She Hates Me
And here's my answer:
You never know when a girl is a member of that group, Girls Who Don’t Like People Who Know People Who Die.Chances are, however, this girl’s a member of a much larger group, Women Who Like Men Who Appear To Have Emotions, Plus The Guts To Reveal Them From Time To Time. Emotional expressiveness is measured on a scale from emotionally vacant to emotionally available (the ideal) to the emotional equivalent of 26 illegal immigrants packed into an 8 by 10 studio apartment with one semi-functional toilet in the hall. In general, no woman worth having wants some wet dishrag of a man who cries himself to sleep whenever his neighbor gets a parking ticket -- or, at the other extreme, a man who reacts to the death of a friend with all the heart and soul of a baked potato.
If you want women to flock to you, hand out money. Even the worst guy in the world can get a girlfriend who rents by the hour. Of course, your shapeshifting attempts are a version of what those girls do, but instead of strutting your stuff in fuchsia platforms and a miniskirt the size of a paper cut, you’re unstrutting your stuff -- not selling yourself, just selling yourself out. This isn’t to say you should start first dates with “Hi, my name is Joey, I’m an alcoholic.” But, perhaps you heard wrong way back when: It’s “every girl wants a pony,” not a phony.
Everybody makes mistakes. What separates the men from the poodles is how they clean them up. Let’s just say your efforts to “tell it to her straight” weren’t exactly John Cusack/”Say Anything” moments. For the uninitiated, Cusack’s character tries to win his girl back by standing under her window in the middle of the night holding his boom box over his head and blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” And then there’s you, the anti-Cusack, leaving all those cryptic notes and meandering phone messages. That’s kind of like e-mailing the girl to ask her to download the song -- after upgrading to a new operating system, which should only take about 14 hours on the phone with tech support in Calcutta.
Forget trying to “come clean” (any further mousy yet stalkerish attempts to get her back) and focus on coming into some self-acceptance. Without it, girls won’t like you or respect you, and neither will you. Once you’re cool with who you are, all that matters is giving a relationship your best shot -- even if the response from the girl in the window is “Romeo, Romeo…wouldya turn that damn thing down?!”
How Do You Have A Cease-Fire If Only One Side Ceases Firing?
Amy Teibel and Ibrahim Barzak write for The Associated Press:
Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip as a last-minute cease-fire deal took hold Sunday morning, but two major Palestinian militant groups, saying they had no intention of stopping their attacks, fired volleys of homemade rockets into Israel.
Hey, Londoners!
Do you know this creep?
Please link to this, post this photo, spread the word. He's one of two thugs who attacked my friend Jackie Danicki on the Tube in London.
How did she get the photo? As she posted in her comments:
The guy was already berating me verbally (this was after the physical assault) when I took the picture. Maybe it was stupid of me to whip out my camera, but I am defiant that way. After I took it, he said, “You dumb bitch, the flash didn’t go off!” I told him I had plenty of light and didn’t need flash. It was right about that time that the man I mentioned in my comment above got on the train and stood between the guys and me.The other male was about 5′6″, also black (but slightly lighter skinned), with short and very curly hair, wearing a black sweatshirt and black Nike sweatpants/tracksuit trousers (you can just make out his legs and front of torso in the picture).
And, a little more about what happened:
Amy, I would rather not go into detail on what exactly they did, because I have family members who read this blog and I do not wish to upset them any more than they are. (Of course, the police have the full story.) Suffice to say the assault and abuse was both physically violent and sexual in nature.After about 15 minutes, a woman (of course) finally turned around and told the guys that they were repulsive and should be ashamed of themselves. They started calling her a slut and told her to “go back to where [she] came from” (she sounded North American). Eventually, a very big man did come and stand right next to the guys, telling them to shut up and leave me alone. They weren’t really bothered, just continued calling me a slut and making obscene gestures at me. I did thank him, though I was too shaken to do so profusely enough, I’m afraid - I just wanted out of there.
And stuff like this -- people totally ignoring another person in distress on the subway -- doesn't just happen in London. I do love that poor Jackie had the guts and the quick thinking to handle it like they do in New York, when some girl photographed a willie-whacker on the subway:
Again, please link to Jackie's story, and spread the photo around. Somebody knows these guys. Let's get them to come forward.
Our Favorite Bottom Feeder Crawls Out From Under Her Rock
A few years ago, I won a first-place award from LA Press Club for a series on my ad for a man in the LA Times (naturally, as I've been banned since 1999 from the LA Times' features sections for joking about my titties, it ran as a 10-part series in the New York Daily News). Anyway, Gloria Allred was the presenter. Typically, presenters give a talk for a minute or so about the winning piece or series. Not our Gloria! Gloria used her time to talk about, who else? Gloria! Which, in my estimation, is the real point of every case she takes; and, especially, getting her hard, ugly mug on the tube.
Now, not surprisingly, she's surfacing to demand cash from Michael Richards for the guys who met with his racist remarks. Just follow the bouncing video cameras through this FoxNews excerpt:
Two men who say they were the target of a racist rant by actor-comedian Michael Richards at a comedy club are seeking a personal apology and perhaps some money, said their lawyer Friday.The men, Frank McBride and Kyle Doss, both of whom are black, said they were part of a group of about 20 people who had gathered at West Hollywood's Laugh Factory to celebrate a friend's birthday. According to their attorney, Gloria Allred, they were ordering drinks when Richards berated them for interrupting his act.
When one of the members of their group replied that Richards was not funny, the comedian launched into a string of obscenities and repeatedly used a derogatory term for African-Americans. A cell phone videocamera captured the outburst.
Richards, who played Jerry Seinfeld's wacky neighbor Kramer on the long-running TV comedy "Seinfeld," made a nationally televised apology on David Letterman's "Late Night" talk show earlier this week. He has since publicly apologized to two prominent civil rights leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
But Allred complained Friday that he "has not apologized to his victims directly, face to face, man to man."
Richards' publicist said his client wants to apologize to both men, who are black, but has not been able to locate them.
Allred, speaking by telephone from Colorado, said Richards should meet McBride and Doss in front of a retired judge to "acknowledge his behavior and to apologize to them" and allow the judge to decide on monetary compensation.
"It's not enough to say 'I'm sorry,"' she said.
She did not mention a specific figure, but pitched the idea as a way for the comic to avoid a lawsuit.
"Our clients were vulnerable," Allred said. "He went after them. He singled them out and he taunted them, and he did it in a closed room where they were captive."
Oh, please. Ever been to a comedy club, Gloria? (Of course not, as it would be a waste of time and money, since you're clearly humorless.) Well, for the uninitiated, you sit in back if you're afraid to get shit from the comedians. Even then, anybody's a target, and for some pretty cutting stuff.
Did You Pray To Your Demon God Today?
Pat Robertson should like us atheists because we don't pray to any god, demon or otherwise. Unless you're a Christian, however, Pat doesn't have such a high opinion of your particular dude in the sky. A viewer of his cash cow, The 700 Club, asked:
Why [do] evangelical Christians tell non-Christians that Jesus (God) is the only way to Heaven? Those who are Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, etc. already know and have a relationship with God. Why is this? It seems disrespectful.
Robertson explained that the other guys' gods are "demonic powers":
No. They don’t have a relationship. There is the god of the Bible, who is Jehovah. When you see L-O-R-D in caps, that is the name. It’s not Allah, it’s not Brahma, it’s not Shiva, it’s not Vishnu, it’s not Buddha. It is Jehovah God. They don’t have a relationship with him. He is the God of all Gods. These others are mostly demonic powers. Sure they’re demons. There are many demons in the world.
In other words: "My god's cooler than your god. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah!"
The Cleavage Police Are On Patrol
Sexy ad, huh? Clever, too. I liked it a lot.
Unfortunately, it raised the usual howls of protest from the ladies of sexual nonthink, also known as feminists. I have to call myself "an Elizabeth Cady Stanton feminist" (which means I'm for women having the vote and earning equal pay for equal work...and no coddling or special treatment) because I'm always embarrassed to think somebody might assume I'm one of the dour women who automatically follow the feminist marching orders without first running them through their brains.
As was to be expected, when the ad, for a New York clothing company, ran in a Massechusetts legal newspaper, the feminists came out howling. Sacha Pfeiffer writes for The Boston Globe:
"Highly insulting," wrote one reader. "Puerile, tasteless, and offensive," wrote another. "Wrong on so many levels," added a third. Another was even more blunt: "Stop publishing this ad."About two dozen readers have contacted the paper to complain that the insert, for a New York company called Jiwani, objectifies females and undermines gender equality. It is especially inappropriate, many of them said, for a publication that targets the legal industry, where women struggle mightily to achieve the same respect and status as men.
The decibel level ramped up after the paper's publisher, David Yas, wrote a column defending the ad, which he called "par-for-the-course in the fashion industry." Critics, he suggested, were "a bunch of self-important prudes."
That spurred another round of blistering comments, including some that described his response as "stupid" and "sophomoric." It also prompted the president of the Women's Bar Association to weigh in.
"As lawyers, we are obligated to fight against gender discrimination, in whatever form it may take," Kathleen M. O'Connor wrote in a letter in Monday's issue. "We expect more from this paper."
Being that you're lawyers, I'd expect you'd use your brain to think and uncover the facts instead of simply letting it run on autopilot. It seems I'm expecting too much.
Why, pray tell, is it "gender discrimination" to see a woman in a sexy ad? Because you wouldn't see a naked man in an ad appealing to women? That would actually be gender realism. Of course, it helps to understand this if you don't deny the fact that men and women are biologically different, and their differing psychologies conform to those differing biologies. FYI, women aren't into overt sexual display in men, so anybody who advertised to them with that method would be...a moron, and, if they kept it up (and if their product's success was advertising dependent) they'd soon be out of business.
Who objectifies women? We all do. Men fantasize about women as sex objects, and women fantasize about themselves as sex objects. To put it more bluntly, when women see porn, they imagine themselves as the fuck object. Men imagine themselves fucking the fuck object. It’s very parallel to how men’s and women’s bodies are physically. The guy has the big rod, he does the entering. The woman has the hole, she gets entered. Unless, of course, she wears the strap-on in the relationship.
Think, ladies, think. It'll make reading the newspaper -- at least the legal newspaper -- a lot more visually exciting for everyone.
Oh, and get a sense of humor and a bit of imagination. Just because there's an ad of a woman in a sexy outfit, it doesn't mean the jury will think you, as a woman, are a brain-dead bimbo...of course, not unless you are. In fact, sex appeal can be used for power. You might try it sometime. Start by waxing your power mustache, and we'll go from there.
Free-Market Gross-Outs
A friend sends, from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a paper by Alvin E. Roth on "Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets." Now, now, before you start yawning, scroll down for the bit on dwarf-tossing:
This essay examines how repugnance sometimes constrains what transactions and markets we see. When my colleagues and I have helped design markets and allocation procedures, we have often found that distaste for certain kinds of transactions is a real constraint, every bit as real as the constraints imposed by technology or by the requirements of incentives and efficiency. I'll first consider a range of examples, from slavery and indentured servitude (which once were not as repugnant as they now are) to lending money for interest (which used to be widely repugnant and is now not), and from bans on eating horse meat in California to bans on dwarf tossing in France. An example of special interest will be the widespread laws against the buying and selling of organs for transplantation. The historical record suggests that while repugnance can change over time, change can be quite slow.
The Cheapest Distance Between Two Points
Is a phone number in Iowa. Wanna dial international long distance on your cell phone...for free? David Pogue writes:
FREE INTERNATIONAL CALLS You can now call any of 50 countries from the United States, free. Talk as long as you like. You pay only for a call to the access number in Iowa, which is 712-858-8883; if you use your cellphone on nights or weekends, even that’s a free call.There’s no contract, no ads, nothing to sign up for. At the prompt, press 1 for English. Then punch in 011, the country code and the phone number. The call rings through immediately.
Fine print: In some countries, you can reach only landlines, not cellphones. And in part because FuturePhone’s lines have been flooded, its success at placing calls is not, ahem, 100 percent.
But it’s hard to argue with “free,” which, according to the company, it will be until at least 2010.
And yes, of course I have Skype. Free International calls Skype-to-Skype user when you're online, and 2 cents a minute for international long distance. Ladies, when you and the boyfriend or husband are separated, don't forget the power of semi-naked video iChats. Throw the sugartits in a red bra, turn on your camera, and off you go. Of course, for full excitement, you should do a little unexpected striptease.
And, P.S. I got all excited about the Netgear Skype Wifi Phone, which can be used where there's Wifi (but no "browser authentication"...which maybe means not to phone on T-Mobile, etc., outside Starbucks?)...but Gregg told me to wait until the big Mac conference in January, for announcements about the Apple Phone...which could very well have a Wifi function.
Islam, A Religion Of...Uh...
The apologists insist that the terrorists distort the Koran. But, do they? Well, why should they, when the Koran contains statements like these, commanding Muslims to kill anybody who doesn't believe in Allah?
Slay them wherever ye find them and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. - 2:191Fight against them until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme. (different translation: ) Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is God's entirely. - Sura 2:193 and 8:39
Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. - 2:216
(different translation: ) Prescribed for you is fighting, though it is hateful to you.O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends; they are friends of each other. Those of you who make them his friends is one of them. God does not guide an unjust people. - 5:54
Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme - 8:39
It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he has made slaughter in the land. - 8:67
Allah will humble the unbelievers. Allah and His apostle are free from obligations to idol-worshipers. Proclaim a woeful punishment to the unbelievers. - 9:2-3
When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. - 9:5
Fight unbelievers who are near to you. 9:123 (different translation:
Believers! Make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Let them find harshness in you. (another source: ) Ye who believe! Murder those of the disbelievers....As for those who are slain in the cause of Allah, He will not allow their works to perish. He will vouchsafe them guidance and ennoble their state; He will admit them to the Paradise He has made known to them. - 10:4-15
Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal sternly with them. Hell shall be their home, evil their fate. - 66:9
So, is murder a perversion of the Islamic faith...or just a faithful following of it?
Here's another version, over at Accuracy In Media (AIM).
Oh, and P.S. The Bible isn't such a sweet document either. Unfortunately, thanks to The Bible, homophobia still reigns, and from time to time, people (almost always those raised as Christians) murder gay people. Still, there aren't large groups of Christians or Jews running around killing gays, witches, sluts, or nonbelievers -- all of whom are condemned in The Bible. Check this out. Below are a few sweet, loving statements from The Bible:
Kill People Who Don't Listen to Priests
Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)
Kill Witches
You should not let a sorceress live. (Exodus 22:17 NAB)
Kill Homosexuals
"If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives." (Leviticus 20:13 NAB)
Kill Fortunetellers
A man or a woman who acts as a medium or fortuneteller shall be put to death by stoning; they have no one but themselves to blame for their death. (Leviticus 20:27 NAB)
Death for Hitting Dad
Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death. (Exodus 21:15 NAB) Death for Cursing Parents
1) If one curses his father or mother, his lamp will go out at the coming of darkness. (Proverbs 20:20 NAB) 2) All who curse their father or mother must be put to death. They are guilty of a capital offense. (Leviticus 20:9 NLT)
Death for Adultery
If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10 NLT)
Death for Fornication
A priest's daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death. (Leviticus 21:9 NAB)
Death to Followers of Other Religions
Whoever sacrifices to any god, except the Lord alone, shall be doomed. (Exodus 22:19 NAB)
Kill Nonbelievers
They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. (2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)
Kill False Prophets
If a man still prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall say to him, "You shall not live, because you have spoken a lie in the name of the Lord." When he prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall thrust him through. (Zechariah 13:3 NAB)
Kill the Entire Town if One Person Worships Another God
Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him." (Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)
The conclusion: Irrational belief (belief without evidence) in god is dangerous -- but some religions are much more dangerous than others.
The Sky Is Falling (And The Oceans Are Boiling, Too)?
What amazes me is the people I know who have little knowledge of science -- little knowledge at all, let alone an understanding of climatology -- who are just so sure about global warming...why it exists, and that it will necessarily be a great catastrophe.
Yes, we had French class last night, and had another discussion, led by the girl a little too close to the Hollywood left, with her simplistic view of global warming. Now, don't get me wrong, I had a hybrid well before it became the PC limousine of people with private jets, and I carry reusable bags to the grocery store so I won't unnecessarily use resources, etc., etc. Oh yeah, and then there's my campaign against SUVs...which I started around 2000. If there's an early adopter environmentalist, it's me.
That said, I haven't posted on global warming because I don't understand enough about climatology. I'm posting now to air the side not often heard -- the skeptical side about the Cassandras running around shouting that the sky is falling...without an iota of understanding of what they're talking about.
Is the sky falling? And, if so, what should be done? Here's a different sort of take on it in The Brussels Journal by Richard Rahn, who admits the world is getting warmer, says humans do better during periods of warming, and says we are unlikely to be able to do anything substantive enough to slow it or stop it:
There is a wonderful new book, “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years,” by distinguished climate physicist Fred Singer and award-winning environmental economist Dennis Avery. The conclusion of their book in a nutshell is that, yes, the world is getting a bit warmer, but this is just the natural cycle. They provide overwhelming evidence this warming would occur with or without mankind increasing CO2 emissions or doing anything else. The good news is that if we realize we cannot stop global warming, and concentrate on constructively dealing with the problems it causes – which are all manageable at reasonable cost – and then enjoy the benefits, mankind will do just fine.We have already had two cycles in recorded history; the Roman warming (200 B.C. to 600 A.D.) which was a very prosperous period, and the medieval warming (900 to 1300) during which farms were created in Greenland and Iceland. The modern warming period began about 1850, well before mankind was producing massive amounts of CO2.
As an economist, I have been a bit of skeptic about the various doomsday scenarios associated with global warming. It has been well known for decades that the Earth’s temperature is in a constant flux, and there have been many periods with both lower and higher temperatures. Despite the general warming trend since 1850, we have had cooler periods, notably from 1940 to 1978, when many leading scientists were warning us we were rapidly heading for a new ice age. I can still remember those doomsday scenarios being played out on TV specials at the time.
...Mr. Gore causes the emission of several hundred times the CO2 – by flying around the world in private jets, riding in limos, etc. – than the typical person does. Hence you would think if he really believed his scaremongering he would just stay home and give his speeches, etc., through teleconferencing and other electronic media. This would show greater commitment, but it would not be as much fun.
...Responsible critics of the global warming scaremongers, such as Patrick Michaels (professor at the University of Virginia and Cato senior fellow), Bjorn Lomberg (director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center) and, of course, Messrs. Singer and Avery and many others, do not deny that global warming is occurring but only advocate that all current and historical data be examined and that there be a review as objective as possible of the costs and benefits of any expenditures to deal with climate change.
The Singer-Avery book is meticulously researched and footnoted (unlike many of the presentations from the scaremongers), and, as they note: “The 1,500-year cycle is not an unproven theory like the model-based predictions for the Greenhouse Theory. The 1,500 year climate cycle is real, based on a wide variety of physical evidence from around the globe.” (It comes from ice cores, sediment layers, isotopes, etc.)
The sun has far greater influence on climate than most people understand. The sun does not shine with a constant intensity, the Earth does not rotate around the sun in a constant orbit – during some periods it is more elliptical than others, and the Earth wobbles about its axis, all of which cause solar heating to vary. These effects swamp anything humans are likely to do to the climate.
During periods of global warming, some areas will become drier and less hospitable for agricultural, but just as many, or more, areas are likely to become wetter and more hospitable for food production (and living), such as Canada and Siberia. There is no evidence of species extinction during previous periods of global warming. Sea levels have slowly risen for hundreds of years, and the evidence is they will continue rising at the same slow and highly manageable rate. And, finally, the evidence is that severe storms are less frequent and intense during the warm than during the colder periods.
Here's a 2004 piece by Reason's Ron Bailey, who admits:
...the picture is complicated. Overall winter sea ice around Antarctica has been increasing since 1979. However, Antarctica experienced a very rapid decline in winter sea ice in the early 1970s and the area covered today is not quite as large as it was before the decline in the 1970s.But the average temperatures for most of Antarctica outside of the Antarctic Peninsula have been declining since the mid-1960s. So is this evidence that the amount of warming predicted by computer climate models is wrong? Not so fast, say even some climatologists who report on the Antarctic cooling. They insist that their data do not overturn predictions of rapid global warming. Richard Lindzen, a climatologist from MIT and a global warming skeptic, points out, "the Antarctic is not warming and there is nothing in the models that distinguish the temperature trends they predict in the Arctic from those in the Antarctic." Climate is messy.
With so many researchers in the climatological community apparently convinced of the reality of dangerously rapid man-made climate change, why do I continue to rely so much on the skeptical Christy? Christy is the climatologist who has put together the highly accurate atmospheric temperature data from satellites since 1978. And confidence in his data is bolstered by the fact that they correlate nicely with temperature data from radiosondes, which are a completely independent measure of temperature. Christy's data show that since 1978 the planet is warming up at a rate of 0.08 degrees Celsius per decade. The Arctic, according to Christy's data, is indeed warming faster than the rest of the planet, at a rate of 0.39 per decade. But the Antarctic is cooling by 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade.
For the nationalistic, Christy's satellite data find that the lower 48 states of the U.S. are warming at a rate of 0.07 degrees per decade. If temperatures continue to increase by 0.08 degrees Celsius per decade, the planet will warm by 0.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. That compares to an increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius during the 20th century. Not much of a crisis. Richard Lindzen says he's willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now.
Here's Bailey's recent piece, from the 2006 UN conference on global warming in Kenya. And the piece he wrote at the end of the conference. Here's a quote from the first:
Immediate steep global reductions in the emissions of the chief greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, turn out to be a fantasy. This was made plain by a panel discussion today which featured the release of a report by the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies. The panel aimed to outline the "economic case for action on climate change," but the realities of global poverty overwhelmed it.
To put a finer point on that, another quote from his piece:
"Climate change tourists" is how Kenyan Maasai leader of environmental group Practical Action Sharon Looremeta dismissed the diplomats negotiating over what to do about global warming here in Nairobi. "You come here to look at some climate impacts and some poor people suffering, and then climb on your airplanes and head home," she bitterly added. She was expressing the widespread frustration of many African representatives who were hoping that the conference would result in "new mechanisms to help sustainable development in Africa" and "more funds for adaptation." In other words, they expected cash.
Additionally, Bailey points out, the global warming debate may come down to a battle between western people who want to breathe easier and easing the day-to-day hard-scrabble existence of the developing world's poor.
For The Sexual Amateur
Pick up Nina Hartley's Guide To Total Sex.
For specific work in the oral arena, for boys or lesbians, this primer on giving it good to the girls, She Comes First, by Ian Kerner. And He Comes Next, by the same author, for girls aspiring to get better at a job called blow.
Was It All A Set-Up?
About those poor imams howling about discrimination (including the guy with ties to Hamas and Osama), a lady e-mails Jihad Watch:
Having been married to a Muslim (deceased husband) I might add that evening prayers can be said quietly and while sitting in a chair. Those Muslims knew that yet refused to behave properly and respectfully towards the other passengers. It is obvious that they planned to taunt the authorities.
"Airline Security Theater"
That's what Bruce Schneier calls showing some plastic-badged dodo your photo ID and boarding pass before you're allowed through the airport metal detectors. As somebody who worked at a photostat place during college, and first made a fake driver's license at 15 with a little soft pencil, some hairspray, and some concealer, I know how easy it is to fake identification and a boarding pass, especially these days, when we print our own boarding passes at home. Here's a guy who was successful, and here's a very interesting Wired article on it, in the form of a blog item, by Bruce Schneier. An excerpt about what the security really is:
Interestingly enough, while the photo ID requirement is presented as an antiterrorism security measure, it is really an airline-business security measure. It was first implemented after the explosion of TWA Flight 800 over the Atlantic in 1996. The government originally thought a terrorist bomb was responsible, but the explosion was later shown to be an accident.Unlike every other airplane security measure -- including reinforcing cockpit doors, which could have prevented 9/11 -- the airlines didn't resist this one, because it solved a business problem: the resale of non-refundable tickets. Before the photo ID requirement, these tickets were regularly advertised in classified pages: "Round trip, New York to Los Angeles, 11/21-30, male, $100." Since the airlines never checked IDs, anyone of the correct gender could use the ticket. Airlines hated that, and tried repeatedly to shut that market down. In 1996, the airlines were finally able to solve that problem and blame it on the FAA and terrorism.
So business is why we have the photo ID requirement in the first place, and business is why it's so easy to circumvent it. Instead of going after someone who demonstrates an obvious flaw that is already public, let's focus on the organizations that are actually responsible for this security failure and have failed to do anything about it for all these years. Where's the TSA's response to all this?
The problem is real, and the Department of Homeland Security and TSA should either fix the security or scrap the system. What we've got now is the worst security system of all: one that annoys everyone who is innocent while failing to catch the guilty.
via Wendy McElroy
Couldn't Happen To A Nicer Guy
Well, it didn't just happen to him, and he's not just nice, but smart as hell. My friend Jim McCarthy has hit New York -- with the company he started with a couple of buddies, Goldstar Events, which sells half-price tickets to everything from theater to massage (only the clean kind at this time). Here's the story in The New York Times by Roy Furchgott:
After four years of honing its unusual marketing plan in other cities, Goldstar Events is officially opening its New York Web site today, offering steep discounts on tickets to shows, sports events, comedy clubs, lectures and concerts. Mr. McCarthy estimates that Goldstar’s entry into New York could double its revenue to $3 million next year.The task is not easy. First the company has to convince the “seen it all” managers of theaters and arenas in New York that discounting surplus tickets is good for business. It also has to get discounts on popular shows that attract audiences big enough to justify the price cuts. In short, Goldstar has to please two groups with contrary interests. “We are not in this to advance the arts,” Mr. McCarthy said. “We are glad we do, but we are a business. Ultimately, we must provide value.”
Goldstar has 263,000 members. These people sign up online (goldstarevents.com) for one of Goldstar’s eight metro areas. A personalized start page shows events in the region. Members can also browse other Goldstar markets or request e-mail alerts for specific offers like jazz concerts.
Tickets are bought online and usually picked up at the box office. The money goes to the theater or arena. Goldstar makes its profit from a service fee, which averages $4.
Goldstar is unusual for working the opposite end of the spectrum from most ticket services. Brokers, for instance, buy high-demand tickets and sell them at a premium. Sites like stubhub.com let people sell tickets at prices the market will bear, and sites like eBay let people auction to the highest bidder. Goldstar deals in events that have weak demand or surplus tickets. Even hit shows almost always have leftover seats.
Goldstar does not compete with ticket brokers; in fact, brokers have been largely unaware it exists. “It sounds like it is something new,” said Russell Lindmark, president of the National Association of Ticket Brokers. “It’s a can’t-lose for the venues.”
Most of Goldstar (97 percent of it) is owned by Mr. McCarthy and his partners, the chief financial officer and president, Richard Webster, and the chief technology officer, Robert Graff. It evolved from a failed venture called Ticket Club, for which Mr. Graff was a consultant. Ticket Club’s aim, he said, was to stem losses at failing shows by unloading tickets cheaply or even free, helping theaters make up for losses with food and drink sales. But there was not a big market for unpopular tickets. After Ticket Club shut down, Mr. Graff rethought the concept, and consulted a neighbor he had worked with before, Mr. McCarthy.
“Jim’s idea was to do the opposite the Ticket Club was doing,” Mr. Graff said. Instead of focusing on events with weak demand, Mr. McCarthy said the money was in selling leftover tickets to popular shows. “Like the Overstock.com of tickets,” Mr. Graff said.
Hey, New Yorkers, sign up (free!) here, for your shot at cheap (or sometimes free, with a small service charge) theater and events. What kind of theater and events? From the Times article above:
Goldstar offers a wide variety of entertainment. Recent promotions have included $25 tickets to see the rock band Alice in Chains in Chicago, and $7 tickets to a speed-dating event at a restaurant in Arlington, Va. Some of Goldstar’s better-known partners, like the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Philharmonic, declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
P.S. Goldstar's other cities (and areas) include Los Angeles, SF, San Diego, Orange County, San Jose, Chicago, Washington, D.C, Boston, and Las Vegas.
Professor Olbermann On Vietnam
Keith Olbermann gives George “We’ll succeed unless we quit" Bush the remedial education he needs:
Mr. Bush, there are a dozen central, essential lessons to be derived from our nightmare in Vietnam, but “we’ll succeed unless we quit,” is not one of them.The primary one — which should be as obvious to you as the latest opinion poll showing that only 31 percent of this country agrees with your tragic Iraq policy — is that if you try to pursue a war for which the nation has lost its stomach, you and it are finished. Ask Lyndon Johnson.
The second most important lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: If you don’t have a stable local government to work with, you can keep sending in Americans until hell freezes over and it will not matter. Ask Vietnamese Presidents Diem or Thieu.
The third vital lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: Don’t pretend it’s something it’s not. For decades we were warned that if we didn’t stop “communist aggression” in Vietnam, communist agitators would infiltrate and devour the small nations of the world, and make their insidious way, stealthily, to our doorstep.
The war machine of 1968 had this “domino theory.”
Your war machine of 2006 has this nonsense about Iraq as “the central front in the war on terror.”
The fourth pivotal lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: If the same idiots who told Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to stay there for the sake of “peace With honor” are now telling you to stay in Iraq, they’re probably just as wrong now, as they were then ... Dr. Kissinger.
And the fifth crucial lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush — which somebody should’ve told you about long before you plunged this country into Iraq — is that if you lie your country into a war, your war, your presidency will be consigned to the scrap heap of history.
Consider your fellow Texan, sir.
After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson held the country together after a national tragedy, not unlike you did. He had lofty goals and tried to reshape society for the better. And he is remembered for Vietnam, and for the lies he and his government told to get us there and keep us there, and for the Americans who needlessly died there.
As you will be remembered for Iraq, and for the lies you and your government told to get us there and keep us there, and for the Americans who have needlessly died there and who will needlessly die there tomorrow.
This president has his fictitious Iraqi WMD, and his lies — disguised as subtle hints — linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11, and his reason-of-the-week for keeping us there when all the evidence for at least three years has told us we need to get as many of our kids out as quickly as possible.
That president had his fictitious attacks on Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, and the next thing any of us knew, the Senate had voted 88-2 to approve the blank check with which Lyndon Johnson paid for our trip into hell.
And yet President Bush just saw the grim reminders of that trip into hell: the 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese killed; the 10,000 civilians who’ve been blown up by landmines since we pulled out; the genocide in the neighboring country of Cambodia, which we triggered.
Yet these parallels — and these lessons — eluded President Bush entirely.
And, in particular, the one over-arching lesson about Iraq that should’ve been written everywhere he looked in Vietnam went unseen.
“We’ll succeed unless we quit”?
Mr. Bush, we did quit in Vietnam!
A decade later than we should have, 58,000 dead later than we should have, but we finally came to our senses.
Rep. Charles Rangel has been promoting the idea of a draft -- a draft for all young Americans, even those whose parents have bucks and influence. Hmm, do you think if Bush's and Cheney's kids, and the kids of senators and congressmen, were in harm's way...we'd be in Iraq...still...or at all?
'Shrooms With A View
A pity that so many people refuse to either admit or understand that all drug use is not abuse.
When I was at a real low point when living in New York, I knew what I had to do. I'd appeared on a number of radio shows where I'd run into Terrence McKenna, who wrote a book a friend had given me, The Archaic Revival, and who talked to me about the benefits of hallucinogens. I consulted a doctor friend of mine, who assured me I wouldn't turn my brain into toothpaste if I took them. Then, I made the call.
There was a service, back in the day, and maybe still, in New York, called Weed Deliver. You had to be referred by one of their clients, and you'd call a number and ask for a delivery. I forgot what you asked for, specifically, but you couldn't mention drugs.
Anyway, a bike messenger would then show up with drugs. In the early 90s, mushrooms were $5 a "serving." Not bad.
I took them while borrowing a friend's loft and ran around the place naked and wrote down a bunch of my thoughts. You might think that drug thoughts were just an incoherent useless mess, but I actually was able to dig myself out of what I was going through.
At some point, the high got to be too much for me, so I called up my friend Max, and made him take me out for pizza so I could come down.
But for the dumbass drug warriors, we might be using drugs, not only for a little tipsy fun like a glass of wine, but to alleviate pain and help people out of depressions. Here's an LA Times story by Denise Gellene about helpful hallucinogen use:
Resting on a hospital bed beneath a tie-dyed wall hanging, Pamela Sakuda felt a tingling sensation. Then bright colors started shimmering in her head.She had been depressed since being diagnosed with colon cancer two years earlier, but as the experimental drug took hold, she felt the sadness sweep away from her, leaving in its wake an overpowering sense of connection to loved ones, followed by an inner calm.
"It was like an epiphany," said Sakuda, 59, recalling the 2005 drug treatment.
Sakuda, a Long Beach software developer, was under the influence of the hallucinogen psilocybin, which she took during a UCLA study exploring the therapeutic effects of the active compound in "magic" mushrooms. Although illegal for general use, the drug has been approved for medical experiments such as this one.
Scientists suspect the hallucinogen, whose use dates back to ancient Mexico, may have properties that could improve treatments for some psychological conditions and forms of physical pain.
Long dismissed as medically useless, the banned mushrooms — a staple of the psychedelic 1960s — are taking a long, strange trip back to the lab.
The medical journal Neurology in June reported on more than 20 cases in which mushroom ingestion prevented or stopped cluster headaches, a rare neurological disorder, more reliably than prescription pharmaceuticals.
In July, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported that mushrooms could instill a sense of spirituality and connection, a finding that scientists said could lead to treatments for patients suffering from mental anguish or addiction.
The research has been driven in part by the success of mood-altering pharmaceuticals, such as the antidepressant Prozac, which work on the same brain chemicals and pathways.
Nothing scientists have learned so far indicates that recreational use of mushrooms is safe. The psychological effects remain unpredictable. Deaths have been linked to mushroom intoxication. A Ventura County teen was killed by a car two years ago as she wandered naked across the 101 Freeway after eating mushrooms.
Even under the tightly controlled conditions of a clinical trial, some patients have had terrifying experiences marked by anxiety and paranoia; two people in the Johns Hopkins study likened the experience to being in a war.
The drug "takes your thoughts through a prism and turns them around," Sakuda said.
Her drug trip left her with a sense of peace — a serenity she hadn't felt since her diagnosis.
"It was like rebooting a computer," she said.
That's exactly what I found. I called it "mental floss."
When America Goes All Islamic
Well, at least the fanatics will stop killing us or trying to kill us because we don't believe in Allah, and start killing us because we're not in their particular sect of fanatical, homicidal Allah-belief. Gregg Gutfeld on "30 Amazing Things About America Once It Becomes Part Of The New Caliphate." Below are my favorites:
Hustler goes "all-ankle"Zoos closed because chimps not adhering to laws of modesty
Finally decent halftime entertainment at the Super Bowl (beheadings)
Osama FINALLY dethrones Madison for most popular new kids name.
Queer Eye for the Vengeful Allah features the public blinding of all those who lay with men. You will also get a complete makeover.
The Friar's Roast is an actual roast -- of all those old Jew comedians.
Enterprise Rent-A-Mule
In the Pretty Woman remake, Julia Roberts is stoned to death.
In late model cars, integrated circuitry replaced with prayer rug
Global Warming is will of Allah. Al Gore beheaded for blaming science.
We no longer have to wait till drunk to blame the jews
Women aren't allowed to drive, unless accompanied by a suicide bomber
Got any to add...my fellow infidels?
What Bill O'Reilly Isn't Gonna Do
About the O.J. interview airing November 27 and 29:
So here's what I'm going to do as a citizen. I'm not going to watch the Simpson show or even look at the book. I'm not even going to look at it. If any company sponsors the TV program, I will not buy anything that company sells — ever.
But, wait, it turns out OJ is slated to appear on FOX...owned by Rupert Murdoch, same as FOX News is. Here's the Wikipedia page:
In 1996, Fox established the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station. Since its launch it has consistently eroded CNN's market share, and it now bills itself as "the most-watched cable news channel." This is due in part to recent ratings studies, released in the fourth quarter of 2004, showing that the network had nine of the top ten programs in the "Cable News" category.
So...when, exactly, do you think Mr. Morality is going to tell Rupert to take all his money and fuck off?
And here's a question for you...do you think listeners know the Rushes, Seans, and Bill O'Reillys of the world are unrepentant liars and distorters? That that's how they earn their living? That if they told the truth, they'd be poor slobs nobody watches instead of rich, famous slobs? Do viewers and listeners know, essentially, that these shows are, well..."for entertainment purposes only"? (For those who find the inciting of mob hatred entertaining.)
For those who want the truth, tempered with sarcasm, there's Keith Olbermann.
The Lady I Sat Next To On The Plane
Incredible lady, crocheting a Nano case, and knitting these beautiful socks, sitting next to me on the plane to Paris a few weeks ago. She lives in Venice, California, but she and her parents became refugees and immigrated to the U.S. from Hungary decades ago. She told me incredible stories about what they went through at the time, and her trip back to Hungary to see Budapest, and the neighborhood she grew up in. Here are a few of Ana's own words, from her blog:
This is the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution. This is the event that changed our lives, my mother and father and I became Refugees. We had to flee our home and homeland.This is the apartment we lived in the address was Lenin Korut 101. Before the Communist renamed the boulevard it was called Teresz Korut and again after the cummunists regime fell it is again called Teresz Korut as it is today. Located about a block away from the "Nyugati" (West) Train Station.
We lived on the first floor apartment #10. The tree was right in front of our windows. This is one of the main "round" streets in Budapest so during the revolution there was a lot of "action" right in front of our building...
Story continues at the link, with photos. You meet some pretty interesting people when you travel -- and amazingly enough, sometimes they just live a mile or two away from you.
I'm reminded of my time on election night at Schwarzenegger HQ. One of the ladies I spoke to had emigrated from Russia. Never forgets to vote, never takes being American for granted. Like Ana, she really knows, firsthand, how good we have it, how easy we have it, and how lucky we are.
Still Vacant After All These Years
Okay, it's possible to make mistakes even if you're careful. But, every week, as I'm writing my column, I'm horrified at the prospect, and check and recheck words and terms I use until little spots of blood form on my forehead.
It's amazing to me when others in the newspaper biz have a much more...shall we say...casual...approach to what they write: The LA Times' error-prone Susan Spano, for example...who, at least in her blog items, rarely meets a fact she is curious enough to double or even single-check out. (My favorite of her gaffes was her blog item all excited about the nifty tents along the Seine...which anybody who lives in Paris and doesn't have their head totally up their ass knows are for the homeless.)
The latest from our intellectually lazy lady in Paris (temporarily [thank you, LAT!] replaced in her LAT Paris-blogging vacuousness by smart, interesting, and curious travel writer Elliott Hester while she's traveling in Asia for a month) ? Well, here's the correction:
Imaging satellites: An article in the Nov. 5 Travel section about Google Earth ["Talk About Global Outreach," Her World] called the Keyhole satellite system a fictional part of Tom Clancy novels. It is a spy satellite program by the U.S. military.
Of course, another issue, which I blogged about recently, is that she's only now discovering Google Earth, and only because her Los Angeles dentist told her about it. On the bright side, she at least has the good sense to get her dental work done in L.A.
Perhaps it's just me, but I think if you're really lazy about checking the facts, you shouldn't be earning a living as a journalist. I'm obsessed with getting it right. You don't have to necessarily be obsessed, no...but how about...concerned?
And a suggestion for the LATimes: When you run a correction...run a link to the story you're correcting.
Hey, LAT editors, if you want to continue to keep my column out of your pages -- eeuw!...hate those local writers, I know, and perhaps you actually think Amy Dickinson and Carolyn Hax are better -- well, that's your prerogative...but at least run people who make their writing look like it isn't a tiresome afterthought.
On the bright side, I've discovered a terrific (perhaps France-based?) journalist for the LA Times named Alissa J. Rubin. She's had two pieces I've forwarded to friends recently; one on Bertrand Delanoe, the mayor of Paris, and another on Segolène Royal (written with Achrene Sicakyuz); both stories insightful, well-explained, and filled with background that shows a real understanding of the subject matter.
Hellooo, LATimes, more of this, please...less of the Spanos of the journalism world.
Gore Vidal Alert
He's talking at Los Angeles' Central Library Monday night with KCRW's Michael Silverblatt. Info at aloudLA.org.
Barefoot And Pregnant, Here We Come!
National family planning chief needed? Well, who's the fundamentalist, anti-science Bush administration gonna call...but a doctor who talks made-up, unpublished, un-peer-reviewed mumbo jumbo instead of science.
The guy's name is Eric Keroack, and he's an ob-gyn (scary!) who runs "A Woman's Concern," a "Christian pregnancy-counseling organization." What's that? Well, listen to his view on birth control, in this Washington Post story by Christopher Lee, and you'll get the gist:
"A Woman's Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness," the group's Web site says.
Then, there's an example of what a moron the guy is -- a moron spouting off from his unpublished peer-reviewed nuttery on oxytocin-- with fisking posted on an Alternet story by a neuroendocrinology researcher. Here's the idiocy by Keroack:
He teaches that there is a physiological cause [pdf link] for relationship failure and sexual promiscuity -- a hormonal cause-and-effect that can only be short-circuited by sexual abstinence until marriage.
FYI, I have corresponded with the guy who left the comment, and he IS, indeed, a neuroendocrinology researcher:
I am actually a neuroendocrinology researcher at U of Colorado in Boulder.I am reading through this man's report... I don't even know where to start! I can't believe this person has an MD.
The "superior region of the hippocampus" is a "bonding center of the brain" and that "damage" can lead to "pornography"?!
There's no such thing as a "superior region of the hippocampus" and if there were, it certainly is not involved in "bonding"... it's a center for learning and memory consolidation!
I can't wait to sit down and read the whole thing, this is better than the comics or even the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal!
Here's a later post by the same researcher:
You really could do a critique of the linked presentations almost slide by slide. But to make the most obvious critique you don't need to know much about science: how does the body know the difference between pre-marital and marital sex? The gist of his argument is that you can "burn out" oxytocin... but is there a cellular difference among long term relationship sex and marital sex? How about common law marriage sex? It's silly.Also, he talks about oxytocin like it's this magic bullet. These are very complex systems; bonding and love are complex things! Obviously, there's more to it than one hormone.
But you'd think that a guy who talks so much about oxytocin would know something about it! In the power-point slide he says early on that oxytocin does not cross the blood-brain barrier. This is true. Then he talks about some experiments (the only citation he gives is a country's name- like "Germany") where oxytocin was "administered" to patients and they see a brain effect. Huh? It can't cross the blood-brain barrier! So what does "administered" mean? Injected directly into the brain? Nonsense.
The blood-brain barrier is the way our body keeps certain substances out of our very sensitive brains. Normally, in the periphery (rest of the body), there are tiny gaps in the capillaries, between epithelial cells. Not so in the brain- the capillaries are sealed up. So, to get through blood vessel membranes in the brain and into actual brain tissue, a molecule has to be lipid soluble. Peptides are not lipid soluble. So you could inject a gallon of this stuff into your veins and not one molecule of it will reach the brain.
Oxytocin is a hormonal peptide, meaning it is made up of amino acids. If you swallowed a pill made of it, it would get digested. Your body wouldn't know if those amino acids came from an oxytocin pill or a steak. (This is why those infomercials talking about how gonadotrophic releasing hormone pills will give you better erections are bunk. That hormone will get broken down by the proteases in your digestive system.)
Short of injecting it through the skull and directly into the brain, you cannot get oxytocin into the amygdala and demonstrate that it reduced "fear", as he claims.
And that's a critique of just one slide!
Moreover, I looked at Keroack's PDF about oxytocin -- in which Mr. Morality apparently STEALS the work of a number of cartoonists; most notably that of Gary Larson...who writes about how painful it is to have his work hijacked and used without permission or payment here. I didn't get around to e-mailing Creators, my syndicator and his, but I will on Monday.
Unfortunately, I'm on double-deadline for the American holiday of Thanksgiving (an explanatory note for my readers from across the pond), so I didn't get to go through the PDF all that comprehensively. But here's a screenshot from it that I pulled as I skimmed it:
Naturally, Keroack gives zero evidence that any of these are actually any more than made-up notions, and he leaves out the biggie in "damage to bonding ability" -- from John Bowlby, an "attachment disorder."
This guy Keroack is:
1. A doctor?
2. In charge of our federal family planning program?
Sheesh. A quote from the Washington Post story linked above:
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called Keroack's appointment "striking proof that the Bush administration remains dramatically out of step with the nation's priorities."
Yep, that's about the size of it.
And, finally, I just want to thank all my friends who sighed big exasperated sighs when I said electing Bush was too dangerous vis a vis a woman's right to not be a baby pod. Slippery slope look any steeper these days? Yeah, to me, too.
The Bad News
At LAX, taking the red-eye to Detroit, Gregg getting stuck on a plane on the tarmac for four hours.
The Good News: Gregg getting stuck on a plane on the tarmac for four hours next to Stevie Wonder…who had a Braille PDA, and was very cool, of course, of course, and a great guy.
I think he thought he'd stump Gregg when he asked him who first performed The Twist (asking Gregg a musical question is kind of like asking him his middle name). Gregg answered without a moment's hesitation, “Well, Hank Ballard, of course," blowing Stevie away, and then added, "It was the 'B' side of Tears On My Pillow, 1958.”
Wait...We...Won...In Vietnam?
Our president has all the command of American history of a stoned-out valley girl:
Asked if the experience in Vietnam offered lessons for Iraq, Bush said, "We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take awhile."He said "it's just going to take a long period of time" for "an ideology of freedom to overcome an ideology of hate. Yet, the world that we live in today is one where they want things to happen immediately."
"We'll succeed unless we quit," the president said.
Those stupid enough to believe this please confess below.
Abramoff Writes...
Check out the e-mail Abramoff wrote to friends before going to jail. My favorite bit:
One day, G-D willing, we will know why all of this had to happen.
Um...he doesn't know why this "had to happen"? Um, being morally bankrupt, corrupt, and in general, a scamming scumbag might have had something to do with it.
Write to Jack, as I did, and help him understand the error of his ways:
JACK ABRAMOFF
REGISTER NUMBER: 27593-112
FPC - P.O. BOX 1300
CUMBERLAND, MD 21501-1300
Hey, Jack, here's a little assistance right off the bat, from Forbes:
Abramoff, who parlayed campaign donations and expensive gifts into political influence, arrived at about 6:30 a.m. EST at a relatively secluded prison facility in western Maryland. He will serve a nearly six-year sentence for a fraudulent Florida business deal."This nightmare has gone on for almost three years so far and I expect we are not even half way through," Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to friends before dawn Wednesday.
Still hanging over Abramoff is a public corruption case in Washington, where prosecutors are investigating Bush administration officials, federal lawmakers and their aides. Abramoff pleaded guilty in that case and is helping prosecutors.
Who knows, perhaps he'll soon have some friends to keep him company -- all of whom are sure to be equally clueless as to why they're there.
Wokking Tall
Just posted another one of my Advice Goddess columns. This kid loves his Asian girlfriend, and because he's white and she's Asian, and all his friends from his mostly Asian neighborhood are Asian, kids at college look at his MySpace page and accuse him of having an "Asian fetish." He worries that people will never truly believe he loves her, and wants to stop them from getting the impression that he's with her for any other reason. Here's my answer:
Whatever happened to “Hi, howya doin’?”/”Wicked hangover. You?” These people get right to it: “Excuse me, but do you have a racially based sexual obsession?” You could respond with the truth: “Actually, I fell for the girl next door. She’s Japanese, as was the girl next door to her, and the girl next door to her.” But, maybe you’d rather give them what they deserve: “Actually, I’m just biding time with the Asian chick between crawling under tables at the library and trying to suck unsuspecting women’s toes.” In other words, perhaps their time would be better spent pursuing another disturbing coincidence from your MySpace page: Your sordid history of dating women with feet.If you couldn’t get turned on without feet, you would have a fetish -- a sexual compulsion for an inanimate object or non-sexual body part. If they had to be Asian feet, you’d have an Asian foot fetish. The “Asian fetish” you’ve been accused of is slang for an obsession with the stereotypical Asian woman -- submissive, subservient, and demure. That woman is readily available in porn and old movies, but if you’ve got to have her in real life, good luck. I know a number of Asian-American women, all complete failures as “fragile lotus blossoms” -- for example, my comedienne friend Sandra Tsing Loh who got fired from the Los Angeles NPR station for saying a word you’ll never see on one of their pledge-drive tote bags.
Sure, it’s a bit of a surprise for a kid from some Midwestern suburb where everybody’s as white as a paper towel to meet a white guy whose friends are all named Park (the Smith of Korea) or Chan (the Jones of China). If only he’d get knee-jerk inquisitive instead of knee-jerk ugly. Unfortunately, humans have a hard-wired tendency to be “tribal” -- most likely a holdover from when early humans had to band together to make it against the elements, wild animals, and other early humans. Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson writes in “Sociobiology” that xenophobia -- fear and hatred of outsiders -- “has been documented in virtually every group of (higher) animals.”
Yes, The Naked Ape is now a college sophomore with text messaging: “Got geisha?” Translation: “Here you are, selfishly pursuing your own happiness over the comfort of friends, acquaintances, and web-trolling strangers.” It doesn’t have to be that way. The sooner you dump your girlfriend, the sooner people will stop assuming you’re an Asian fetishist and start assuming you’re a girlfriendless loser. Of course, this won’t open their tiny little minds. Your best shot at that is letting them get to know you and your girlfriend. This takes focusing on what’s really important -- not whether people believe you love her but simply that you do. Ultimately, even if college isn’t quite the higher learning experience you thought it would be, with your girlfriend around, at least you won’t have to remember it solely as “Pee-wee’s Bigot Adventure.”
The entire thing is here.
Come To Jesus!
A Polish exchange student, Michael Gromek, 19, has the unlucky fate of being placed with a family of fundies:
"When I got out of the plane in Greensboro in the US state of North Carolina, I would never have expected my host family to welcome me at the airport, wielding a Bible, and saying, 'Child, our Lord sent you half-way around the world to bring you to us.' At that moment I just wanted to turn round and run back to the plane.Things began to go wrong as soon as I arrived in my new home in Winston-Salem, where I was to spend my year abroad. For example, every Monday my host family would gather around the kitchen table to talk about sex. My host parents hadn't had sex for the last 17 years because -- so they told me -- they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They told me I had the devil in my heart.
My host parents treated me like a five-year-old. They gave me lollipops. They woke me every Sunday morning at 6:15 a.m., saying 'Michael, it's time to go to church.' I hated that sentence. When I didn't want to go to church one morning, because I had hardly slept, they didn't allow me to have any coffee.
One day I was talking to my host parents about my mother, who is separated from my father. They were appalled -- my mother's heart was just as possessed by the devil as mine, they exclaimed. God wanted her to stay with her husband, they said.
Yes, he got away. But, not before they could hit him up for doing translations and P.R. (free, I'm guessing) for some church they were building in Poland.
Thanks, Norman.
Joyce Kilmer, Rot In Hell!
I'm working on getting nostalgic for my childhood. It's quotes like this that take me back to my tender years in Farmington Hills, Michigan:
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them." --Bill Vaughan
Thanks, Apple
Terrorists Have Feelings, Too?
A woman in my weekly French class who has way too much contact with the Hollywood left to ever be sensible about national or global affairs was mourning the lot of the Palestinians (ie, at the hands of those horrible Israelis). Another woman and I pointed out, while speaking pretty good French, wowee, that while the Israelis aren't always in the right, they basically just want to live their lives in peace. The Israeli Jews get along just dandy with the Israeli Kurds, who just want to live their lives and do their business.
I pointed out to the woman that Jews aren't exactly the fighters of the globe. The Israeli Jews just want to make money and scientific discoveries and grow oranges; they don't want to be permanently at war. If the Israeli Arabs wanted to live in peace, the situation there would be so much different. Imagine the prosperity -- instead of the dead kids -- if, as Golda Meir once put it, the Palestinian Arabs loved their kids more than they hate the Israelis'.
And, as I've pointed out before, for those who think the Israelis are wrong in their response -- to people who've said over and over that what they want is not to live in peace, but is the destruction of Israel -- think Mexico for a moment. The land claim situation vis a vis the United States is somewhat similar to that of the Palestinians in Israel. Imagine if Mexicans were terrorists in California, and every time you went to pick up your dry cleaning, you'd have to worry, not that you'd get a parking ticket, but that there'd be a car bomb on Wilshire. Casts kind of a different light on it, huh?
I later got to thinking, in the shower, of the general geekiness of Jews, and got to wondering whether the cure for cancer or other terrible diseases was killed in the Holocaust. Perhaps the parents of the person who would've discovered it perished at Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen. Just a mental fantasy of mine, I know...but very possibly the case.
Anyway, this got me to thinking about who the Muslim fundamentalists want to kill. Essentially, it's progress. They're looking for the triumph of primitivism over modernity. They're murdering each other, of course, Sunni vs. Shiite in some sick real-life version of Mad's Spy vs. Spy. But, they're killing the people who might be making the important discoveries for people around the globe, and in the case of the WTC mass murder, the people who make the money to fund the discoveries.
This is no small thing. It's not about "hating brown people" or "the other." I live in Los Angeles, not Michigan, so I can be around more brown people -- and black people, and Asians, among others. What I'm opposed to is anybody who wants to kill to set the world back centuries...and for what? So they can eventually get laid by a lot of virgins in a place there's no evidence exists?
What's the solution? Well, I think globalization could help. Spread money and opportunity (and it won't be easy in the Middle East, with the backward, anti-western, anti-woman cultures) and you might open some minds along the way. Imagine if we'd dropped job vouchers in Iraq instead of bombs?
The Gay Agenda
Is there a gay agenda? Hateful cretins like Michael Savage seemed convinced there is one -- I mean, beyond wanting a right to be attached, in the eyes of the law, to the person one loves, same as heteros. Here's the way the aptly named Savage sees it:
"And I want to tell you something, and I'm going to say it to you loud and clear. The radical homosexual agenda will not stop until religion is outlawed in this country. Make no mistake about it. They're all not nice decorators. You better get it through your head before it's too late. They threaten your very survival. They went after the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is now caving into the homosexual mafia. They will not stop until they force their agenda down your throats. Gay marriage is just the tip of the iceberg. They want full and total subjugation of this society to their agenda. Now, if you want that and if you don't think it's a threat -- believe me, that is what's going to occur in this country," - radio talk-show host, Michael Savage, with 8 million listeners daily.
Even I don't want to see religion outlawed in this country, and I can't think of a gay person I know who hates religion as much as I do. If you want to believe in dumb, unproven crap, go right ahead...part of what I love about this country is that you have the right to do so. Just don't deny gay people rights because of it, thanks.
What people like Savage do is play on mob psychology, promoting fear and hatred to get rich. It's really not that hard to do, playing on people's fears and their basest instincts to earn a buck. Still, I don't know about you, but I'd rather be poor than incite ugly for a living.
Feminists Want You To Have A Mustache And Wear Big Ugly Shoes
And I'm not just talking about men, of course. And idiotic feminist thought about beauty and other issues has trickled down into society to the point where few really question it. For example, there's a blog post, with beaucoup comments below it, criticizing the AP for mentioning the designer of Nancy Pelosi's suit.
She happens to look pretty snappy (for a politician), and in very nice shape for a woman of her age, and I'm not disinterested in knowing she wears Armani...yes...along with more important issues. Just as, when I take a long flight, I like to buy The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The National Enquirer.
For a huffier view on the photo, here's the indignant blog post about the photo caption:
Check out the caption the Associated Press put on this photo. And tell me that they would dare mention the brand and color of suit Harry Reid was wearing. This is sexist and belittling to the incoming Speaker simply because she is a woman.
The original photo is at this link.
Here's the comment I left (repeating the word "institutional" -- I think, as in, institutional misogyny or something, which I spotted in a comment before I posted mine):
It's not "institutional" to care about a woman's looks, but evolutionary (as in, based on our adaptations, which, in the words of Donald Symons, take hundreds or thousands of generations to change). Feminism did some good things -- getting women the vote and equal pay for equal work -- and I'm grateful for them. I'm disappointed that we keep seeing horrified blog posts that people care about women's looks.
Ladies (or do I need to call you wimmin or wymyn or something?)...men and women are biologically different. With those biological differences come psychological differences, both in the individual's behavior and in societal perception of it. Do try to deal with it.
UPDATE: Here's how they do it in France; specifically, how the beautiful Socialist party candidate Segolène Royal does it, from a Reuters story by Crispian Balmer:
Her feminine charms are proving a hit with the electorate, apparently tired of centuries of male supremacy in the French political arena, and a headache for her opponents who are struggling to grapple with a woman rival."The fact that Segolene Royal is a woman makes things difficult for us," said Nadine Morano, a parliamentarian close to conservative presidential favourite Nicolas Sarkozy.
"Her appearance alone represents a break with the past because she is a woman and voters want to try something new," said Morano, who is set to play a prominent role in the election campaign to insure Royal does not corner the gender market.
Royal is clearly aware of the power of her gender and does not hesitate to play up her female attributes, shunning sombre trouser suits worn by many women politicians in favour of flowery dresses and striking skirts.
Asked in a television debate what was the difference between herself and her two male rivals for the Socialist candidature, Royal stepped back and offered a radiant smile. "I can see at least one visible difference," she said, to loud laughs.
Photo of la jolie Royal at the link above. More here.
"My Primitive, Irrational Belief's Better Than Your Primitive, Irrational Belief!"
Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah! That's essentially what the wives of dead Wiccan vets are being told. From a story in the Detroit Free Press by Dennis Camire and Stephanie Clary:
Roberta Stewart is upset with the VA for not allowing a pentacle -- a circle with an inscribed five-pointed star -- to be used on a plaque for her husband, Nevada National Guard Sgt. Patrick Stewart, who was killed in Afghanistan last year.She was told the symbol was not among the 38 emblems of faith recognized for use on VA headstones and memorials.
"Our pentacle represents our spirit and our soul," she said. "It's my eternal connection to my husband."
Wiccans have been fighting nine years for VA recognition of their nature-worshipping faith.
The VA recognizes symbols for Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Native Americans, Sikhs and atheists. In 2003, the VA approved the American Humanist Association's emblem of spirit, a stylized human figure with arms stretched upward.
The problem, Wiccans say, is misinformation accusing Wiccans of practicing witchcraft and worshipping Satan. Part of the problem: Satan-worshipers use an upside-down pentacle as one of their symbols.
Sharona Angel, a teacher of Wicca in Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, and other Wicca followers emphasize that their religion is peaceful and focuses on a central tenant that they must not harm others. They believe in psychic energy and practice their faith through meditations, rituals and other observances.
Hell, plenty of religions advocate nasty, nefarious, and even deadly action against other people. It doesn't preclude their symbols from being represented in the cemetary.
Science Disproves Zombies, Ghosts, And Vampires
Here's the bit on vampires:
If vampires—corpses that rise up to suck the blood of the living—sound biologically implausible to you, you’re not alone. They exist purely in legend, as virtually all scientists agree.A poster for one of the first vampire films, Nosferatu (1922.)
But for any vampire believers undissuaded by biological facts, a professor has come up with a second proof of their unreality, using math.If vampires ever existed in the forms in which movies and books portray them, they would have quickly wiped out humanity long ago, according to physics professor Costas Efthimiou of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Fla.
Popular lore passed down through centuries holds that vampire victims become vampires themselves, and launch their own blood-hunts on hapless humans.
To rule out vampires, Efthimiou relied on a basic principle known as geometric progression.
“If vampires truly feed with even a tiny fraction of the frequency that they are depicted to in the movies and folklore, then the human race would have been wiped out quite quickly after the first vampire appeared,” Efthimiou and a graduate student colleague wrote in a paper posted online.
Efthimiou supposed that the first vampire arose Jan. 1, 1600, around the beginning of a century during which some of the first important modern writings on vampires appeared. The researchers estimated the global population at that time, based on historical records, as 537 million.
Assuming that the vampire fed once a month and the victim turned into a vampire, there would be two vampires on Feb. 1, four the next month, and eight the month after that. All humans would be vampires within 2½ years. “Humans cannot survive under these conditions, even if our population were doubling each month,” which is well beyond human capacities, Efthimiou said.
Please...use math to take on belief in Jesus and the work of Sylvia Browne. Please!
via Machines Like Us
Take It From One Who Knows
It's not "tolerance" we need to concern ourselves with; it's self-preservation.
If you believe in god, astrology, or having somebody wave their hands over you as a form of medical care, I will tolerate you. If you're rude, smell bad, or chew with your mouth open, I'll do my best to move out of range. If, however, you want to murder me because I don't think like you think, well, then, that's a whole different story.
I know I keep saying this, but I keep saying this because it's more and more evident that people are walking around asleep in regard to the danger of Muslim Fundamentalism. Which people? The people who pop up in the comments and call me racist. The people who blame 9/11 on our Middle East policy. Plenty of countries, and plenty of people within our borders have problems with our policies. And there are those few Tim McVeigh's running around. But, generally speaking, most people who disagree with us don't murder thousands of people in hopes of finally escaping their fundamentalist, sex-deprived societies for a lifetime in "paradise" with 72 virgins. (The morons. The best available evidence of what happens to you when you die -- you get eaten by worms.)
But, back to the sick Muslim homicidalists, if you won't listen to me about the danger, maybe you'll listen to this guy -- Dr. Tawfik Hamid -- who trained under al-Zawahiri, and once drank the Kool-Aid. Here are his warnings, from an interview by Michael Coren:
He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. "The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine."I've heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class Muslims -- and never poor Christians -- who become suicide bombers in Palestine."
His analysis is fascinating. Muslim fundamentalists believe, he insists, that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift, and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by Allah. Thus the extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from the Kingdom to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia.
"We're not talking about a fringe cult here," he tells me. "Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys."
He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves to another area, one that he says is far too seldom discussed: "North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.
"Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don't for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism."
A pause. "I know. I was one who accepted it."
This partial explanation is shocking more for its banality than its horror. Mass murder provoked partly by simple lust. But it cannot be denied that letters written by suicide bombers frequently dwell on waiting virgins and sexual gratification.
"The sexual aspect is, of course, just one part of this. But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?"
He's exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."
The Beauty Of Being A Bitch
A friend sent me this Joan Collins quote:
You must appreciate yourself enough to say "no" when you want to, to get that word in, even if you think you're being rude -- and not feel guilty about it, then or later. Guilt is the most useless emotion we can feel, and it probably was invented by bossy boutique salespersons.
This goes especially for girls in their teens and 20s, those least likely to use the word.
Still Justifying After All These Years
Let's all have a big round of applause for the Department of Defense, winner of this month's really bad taste prize!
Check out the Veterans' Day messages from Iraq, taped by the D.O.D., featuring WTC replicas in the back -- as if anybody still believes Saddam had anything to do with 9/11.
Here's a more realistic picture. I particularly liked the bit about how Sarin nerve gas, at the time it was created, in the early 90s, would've had a shelf-life of two months. The analyst said it might not be safe to drink at this point, but it would no longer have the effect of active Sarin nerve gas. And there's much, much more, all of it debunking of Bush's lies and distortions about Saddam's capabilities in biological and nuclear weaponry.
Life Begins At...
A surprising moment of humanity from the church -- in this case, the Church Of England, calling for doctors to be given the right to withhold treatment from seriously disabled newborns "in exceptional circumstances." Like, say, when their lives will be constant suffering. Amelia Hill and Jo Revill write for the London Observer that a bishop admits right to life for newborns is not absolute:
The church leaders' call for some children to be allowed to die - overriding the presumption that life should be preserved at any cost - comes in response to an independent inquiry, which is to be published this week, into the ethics of resuscitating and treating extremely premature babies.The decision by religious leaders to accept that in some rare cases it may be better to end life than to artificially prolong it is a landmark for the church. The Rt Rev Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark and vice chair of public affairs of the Mission and Public Affairs Council, states in the church's submission to the inquiry, that 'it may in some circumstances be right to choose to withhold or withdraw treatment, knowing it will possibly, probably, or even certainly result in death'.
The church's report does not spell out which medical conditions might justify a decision to allow babies to die but they are likely to be those agonising dilemmas such as the one faced by the parents of Charlotte Wyatt, who was born three months prematurely, weighing only 1lb and with severe brain and lung damage.
The report also suggests the enormous cost implications to the NHS of keeping very premature and sick babies alive with invasive medical care and the burden on the parents should also be taken into consideration.
Doctors wanted to switch off Charlotte's life support machine because they said her severe mental and physical handicaps left her in constant pain with an 'intolerable' quality of life. They pointed out that every time she had an infection, staff would have to give injections or set up drips that caused yet more pain.
After the case went through the courts, the child, now three, survived but with severe disabilities. She is now in care as her estranged parents found it too hard to meet her 24-hour healthcare needs.
...But it accepted there were a range of reasons why the final decision to withdraw or refuse treatment should be made, including the question of cost. 'Great caution should be exercised in bringing questions of cost into the equation when considering what treatment might be provided,' wrote Butler. 'The principle of justice inevitably means that the potential cost of treatment itself, the longer term costs of healthcare and education and opportunity cost to the NHS in terms of saving other lives have to be considered.'
Very premature babies run a higher risk of brain damage and disability. If they are born at 22 weeks, 98 per cent of them die, though by 26 weeks the chances of survival has risen to 80 per cent. Different counties have different policies for very tiny infants.
Babies born before 25 weeks are not given medical treatment in the Netherlands and in certain conditions, euthanasia is permitted.
Hmm, maybe, just maybe, being "pro-life" shouldn't mean forcing a preemie to be kept alive to endure horrible suffering...or keeping alive an adult who's a shell of a person. Personally, while I place great value on life, I'm also pro-death -- for letting go when life becomes too painful to live...physically or psychologically. And for devoting medical care funds to people who have a hope of a life beyond laying in a bed like a big turnip. Just because we have extraordinary measures for keeping somebody, or rather, a shell of somebody, alive doesn't mean we should use them.
What God'll Getcha
Not what you think. Via aldaily, an article by Matthew Provonsha in Skeptic, about a new study that suggests god belief does not necessarily lead to healthier society:
Despite the best efforts of “pro-life” Americans, abortion rates are much higher in our Christian nation, and lowest in relatively secular ones such as Japan, France, and the Scandinavian countries (Figures 3 and 4). In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 5 and 6). This would seem to indicate that there is a positive correlation between religiosity and dysfunctionality, but what does that mean?The question is one of causation, and there is no clear answer. Whether religion leads directly to dysfunctionality, or religions merely flourish in dysfunctional societies, neither conclusion from this study flatters religion. The first tells us that religion is a hindrance to the development of moral character, and the second that religion hinders progress by distracting us from our troubles (with imaginary solutions to real problems). This study is complicated enough that I do not think that we can draw definitive negative conclusions about religion. But we can at least conclude, contrary to popular belief in this country, that it is not a given that religious societies are better, healthier, or more moral. What we can be clear about from this study is that highly religious societies can be dysfunctional, whereas by comparison secular societies in which evolution is largely accepted display real social cohesion and societal well-being. As is always the case in science, more data and additional research will help clarify our conclusions.
Charts and the rest of the piece are at the link.
Did You Also Slaughter A Goat?
Daniel Dennett is tempted to ask this of people who say they'd prayed for him during his recent hospitalization with a "dissection of the aorta":
What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility. I translate my religious friends' remarks readily enough into one version or another of what my fellow brights have been telling me: "I've been thinking about you, and wishing with all my heart [another ineffective but irresistible self-indulgence] that you come through this OK." The fact that these dear friends have been thinking of me in this way, and have taken an effort to let me know, is in itself, without any need for a supernatural supplement, a wonderful tonic. These messages from my family and from friends around the world have been literally heart-warming in my case, and I am grateful for the boost in morale (to truly manic heights, I fear!) that it has produced in me. But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said "I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health." What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don't expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.But isn't this awfully harsh? Surely it does the world no harm if those who can honestly do so pray for me! No, I'm not at all sure about that. For one thing, if they really wanted to do something useful, they could devote their prayer time and energy to some pressing project that they can do something about. For another, we now have quite solid grounds (e.g., the recently released Benson study at Harvard) for believing that intercessory prayer simply doesn't work. Anybody whose practice shrugs off that research is subtly undermining respect for the very goodness I am thanking. If you insist on keeping the myth of the effectiveness of prayer alive, you owe the rest of us a justification in the face of the evidence. Pending such a justification, I will excuse you for indulging in your tradition; I know how comforting tradition can be. But I want you to recognize that what you are doing is morally problematic at best. If you would even consider filing a malpractice suit against a doctor who made a mistake in treating you, or suing a pharmaceutical company that didn't conduct all the proper control tests before selling you a drug that harmed you, you must acknowledge your tacit appreciation of the high standards of rational inquiry to which the medical world holds itself, and yet you continue to indulge in a practice for which there is no known rational justification at all, and take yourself to be actually making a contribution. (Try to imagine your outrage if a pharmaceutical company responded to your suit by blithely replying "But we prayed good and hard for the success of the drug! What more do you want?")
Let Arnold Run
I've felt for a while that it's time to change the antique constitutional restriction that prohibits anyone but a "natural born Citizen" from running for president. It isn't just Arnold who'd be a potential candidate. An LA Times editorial mentions the Canadian-born governor from Michigan, Jennifer Granholm. The un-bylined LAT op-ed rightly argues:
A reflection of the framers' worries about meddling in the new nation's affairs by European monarchies, this restriction makes no sense in the 21st century, when even opponents of legalizing undocumented aliens acknowledge that this is a nation of immigrants. It's insulting that a legal immigrant to the U.S. who has twice won election as governor cannot aspire to the presidency.The Constitution shouldn't be amended lightly. But this is a matter of principle: a core principle about the equality of opportunity in our society to strive for the highest office. Congress and state legislatures should adopt a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that would put all citizens 35 and older on equal footing when it comes to the highest office in the land. Americans should be free to decide whether they want to be led by President Jennifer Granholm.
...In this nation of immigrants, there will always be individuals affected by this arcane discrimination, and the urgency to address the matter should not be dampened by partisan concerns that it may help one candidate or another. Indeed, it would be nice to see California Democrats spearhead the movement, even if it could theoretically benefit our Austrian-born governor.
If Americans wanted Schwarzenegger in the White House, the fact that he is a naturalized citizen (who no doubt appreciates his earned U.S. citizenship a lot more than many people born here) is no reason to deprive them of that choice.
In fact, I find that people born in other countries -- like a lady from Russia I talked to at Schwarzenegger HQ on election night -- are often much more appreciative and much less likely to take American freedoms and America in general for granted. For example, in, I think it was 49 years that the Russian lady had been here, she said she'd never once missed voting. How many "natural born Citizens" can say the same?
The War On Sense
We're destroying some Afghanis only livelihood -- selling opium poppies -- and as we do, we're helping the Taliban. Johann Hari writes, originally in the LA Times:
This summer, Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Senlis Council, an independent, Brussels, Belgium-based think tank, commissioned more than 30 researchers to ask why so many southern Afghans were turning to the Taliban when they had cheered their defeat just five years ago. He found that “the Taliban revival is directly, intimately related to the (poppy) crop eradication program. It could not have happened if the U.S. was not aggressively destroying crops. This is the single biggest reason Afghans turned against the foreigners.”The Afghan people are rebelling because the U.S. government is currently committed to destroying 60 percent of their economy. In the name of the “war on drugs,” a U.S. corporation, Dyncorp, is being paid to barge into the fields of some of the poorest people in the world and systematically destroy their only livelihood.
These Afghans are growing poppies — from which heroin is derived — out of need, not greed. One-quarter of all Afghan babies die before age 5. The Senlis Council warns that if Western governments continue this program of economic destruction — and the negative propaganda bonanza it creates — the Taliban may be sufficiently rejuvenated to march on Kabul, depose President Hamid Karzai and pin up a “Welcome home, Mr. bin Laden” banner.
There is an alternative to this disastrous spiral. The world is suffering from a shortage of legal opiates. The World Health Organization describes it as “an unprecedented global pain crisis.” About 80 percent of the world’s population has almost no access to these painkillers. Even in developed countries, for cancer care alone there is an unmet annual need for 550 metric tons more opium to make morphine.
Afghan farmers continue to produce the stuff, only to be made into criminals because of it. At the same time, in a Kabul hospital, half the patients who need opiates are thrashing about in agony because they can’t get them, while in fields only a few miles away opium crops are being hacked to pieces.
The solution is simple. Instead of destroying Afghanistan’s most valuable resource, Western governments should buy it outright and resell it to producers of legal opiate-based painkillers on the global market. Instead of confronting Afghan farmers about their crop, our representatives should be approaching them with hard cash.
This has been successfully tried before. In the early 1970s, the Nixon administration began to demand that the opium farmers of southern Turkey destroy their crops. Every attempt at destruction — carried out by reluctant Turkish prime ministers coerced with threats of cuts in U.S. military aid — failed. Eventually, Turkey was considered to be such a crucial Cold War ally that the United States granted an exception. So Turkey joined India as a legal supplier of opiates for pain-control purposes, and it remains so today. Isn’t Afghanistan even more important today than Turkey was in the 1970s?
It is a strange truth that if President Bush really wants to live up to his rhetoric about saving Afghanistan, he must urgently launch the biggest drug deal in history.
The Middle Wing
David Brooks on who the election was the biggest victory for -- common-sense moderates like me: people who want government that makes sense. For anybody who hasn't been hanging here much, I'm fiscally very conservative and socially libertarian. I think NPR shouldn't be paid for from public coffers, and I think everybody but the poor should pay for their own children's schooling...and I think drugs should be legalized, and so should prostitution. No, that doesn't describe a lot of people in a nutshell, but what I really want is government based on what's economically and politically sensible, not government pandering to the right or left or big business. Here's an excerpt from Brooks in the NYT and IHT, on the moderates who lost confidence in Republican rule:
Their disaffection with the Republican Party was not philosophical. It was about competence and accountability. It was about the accumulation of Rumsfeld, Katrina, Abramoff, the bridge to nowhere and the failure to quarantine Mark Foley. Bill Clinton captured the electorate's central complaint about the Republicans: "They can't run anything right."So voters kicked out Republicans but did not swing to the left. For the most part they exchanged moderate Republicans for conservative Democrats. It was a great day for the centrist Joe Lieberman, who defeated the scion of the Daily Kos net roots, Ned Lamont. It was a great day for anti-abortion Democrats like Bob Casey and probably for pro-gun Democrats like Jim Webb. It was a great day for conservative Democrats like Heath Shuler in North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth in Indiana.
...If you wanted to pick out a stereotypical swing voter in this election, it would be a white evangelical suburban office park mom in a blue state suburb. She's part of the one-third of white evangelicals who voted Democratic this year, as did 20 percent of self-described conservatives. She supported the Iraq war once but believes it has been conducted terribly. She doesn't have a lot of faith in government generally - 54 percent of voters believe government interferes too much, while only 37 percent want it to do more, according to a recent CNN survey - but she does think government should be able to accomplish its core missions.
She embodies the message of E.J. Dionne's 1991 book, "Why Americans Hate Politics," which argues that Americans are sick of symbolic politics, dying ideologies and false choices. Most of all, she's angry that politicians behave in ways that would be unacceptable in every realm of her life, and she thinks they're endangering her country.
In some ways, this election reminds me of the 1974 Democratic sweep. The Republicans have screwed up. Democrats have surged in. But the result leads not to a liberal tide but to Jimmy Carter, who in 1976 ran as a conservative anti-political reformer who won on fiscal discipline and with the support of Pat Robertson.
This election didn't define a new era, but it marks the end of an old one. If Democrats are going to take advantage of their victory, they will have to do two things. They will have to show they have not been taken over by their bloggers or their economic nationalists, who will alienate them from the suburban office park moms. Second, they'll have to come up with ideas as big as the problems we face. Their current platform consists of small-bore tax credits and foreign policy vagaries about, say, "redoubling" our efforts to get Osama bin Laden. (Why not retripling or requadrupling?)
Realignments are achieved by parties that define big new approaches to problems and neither party has done that yet. In the meantime, if I were a Democrat I'd be like Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman and serial commission member. America is hungering for leaders like him: open-minded, unassuming centrists who are interested in government more than politics. If the Democrats are smart, this could be the beginning of a new Hamiltonian age.
If the Democrats are smart...if the Democrats are going to take advantage of their victory...now there's the problem. I don't have faith in the Democrats; I just find them, in general, too stupid and centerless to do as much damage as the Republicans.
The Shrew Must Go On
A woman's husband has an affair, and they decide to put their marriage back together, but she can't stop going psycho. I just posted another Advice Goddess column. An excerpt from my answer here:
Greetings, Spurting Volcano Of Hate! Perhaps you’ve heard that venting anger will make it go away. It won’t. Anger begets anger. It also makes you stupid. Extreme emotional stress unleashes a chemical reaction called the “fight or flight” response, shutting down all systems except those you’d need to either club somebody or run like hell. Sure, this was an extremely helpful survival tool for our ancestors in the cave. And, in some ways, it’s still the perfect response -- for any woman married to a troubled leopard or a tribe of cannibals.Your husband did pledge to be faithful to you. Oops, maybe he crossed his fingers! As upsetting as that must be, be honest: Is it his infidelity alone that turned you into the Denny’s of rage (no time’s the wrong time for a Grand Slam!), or does it have more to do with the head-on collision of reality and your expectations? Wham, bam, like a moose carcass through your rose-colored windshield, suddenly it’s all in your face: He’s human, he’s fallible, he isn’t the tower of ethics you closed your eyes and hoped he’d be. Stop erupting and start thinking, and you might acknowledge a few equally discomforting things about marriage; like, that it isn’t a simple solution to all life’s problems, but a whole new set of problems -- accessorized with a pornographically expensive set of china.
Sure, it’s easier to storm around picturing him naked with her -- which has to leave him picturing you fully clothed with a Home Depot salesman, pricing a nail gun and a couple of two-by-fours. By raging endlessly, you’re doing what he did, just without the sex -- avoiding the real issue, which is figuring out how to be married. But, first things first. Figure out whether you want a marriage more than you want revenge. If you’re up for a rebuild, stop screaming, start talking, and get reading -- “Surviving Infidelity” by Rona Subotnik and Gloria G. Harris and “How to Control Your Anger Before It Controls You” by Albert Ellis and Raymond Chip Tafrate. When you sense an explosion coming on, take deep breaths and think positive: Crazy as it seems, his affair could be the thing that saves your marriage. Yes, who knew? Maybe what it takes for you to live happily ever after is not the mythical perfect man but the real-life perfect floozy.
The question and the rest of my answer is here.
A Republican Makes The Agenda
For the Democratic National Convention for 2008. Funny stuff:
7:00 P.M. Opening flag burning.
7:15 P.M. Pledge of allegiance to U.N.
7:30 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast
7:30 till 8:00 P.M. Nonreligious prayer and worship. Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton.
8:00 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
8:05 P.M. Ceremonial tree hugging.
8:15- 8:30 P.M. Gay Wedding-- Barney Frank Presiding.
8:30 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
8:35 P.M. Free Saddam Rally. Cindy Sheehan and Susan Sarandon.
9:00 P.M. Keynote speech. The proper etiquette for surrender-- French President Jacques Chirac
9:15 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
9:20 P.M. Collection to benefit Osama Bin Laden kidney transplant fund
9:30 P.M. Unveiling of plan to free freedom fighters from Guantanamo Bay by Sean Penn
9:40 P.M. Why I hate the Military, A short talk by William Jefferson Clinton
9:45 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast
9:50 P.M. Dan Rather presented Truth in Broadcasting award, presented by Michael Moore
9:55 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast
10:00 P.M. How George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld brought down the World Trade Center Towers by Howard Dean
10:30 P.M. Nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Mahmud Ahmadinejad
11:00 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast
11:05 P.M. Al Gore reinvents Internet
11:15 P.M. Our Troops are War criminals by John Kerry
11:30 P.M. Coronation of Mrs. Rodham Clinton
12:00 A.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast
12:05 A.M. Bill asks Ted to drive Hillary home
Red, White, And Blue-er
All together now: sung to the tune of Frank Sinatra's "All Of Me":
Sodomy - why not take (come on get) sodomy...
Catchy, huh?
And, quite frankly, plenty of straight heteros want it, too. (Use lube, boys and girls, and take it slowly.)
Oh yeah, and while the religious nutters are against the homos having anal sex, it's apparently become a clever way for all their "chaste" offspring to remain "technical virgins" at 15 while doing stuff that would probably make the Whore of Babylon blush.
The Failed Businessman Does It Again
Maureen Dowd writes about George Bush's latest failed business -- our national and international business:
Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he broke it. So now they’re taking it back.They are dragging W. away from those reckless older guys who have been such a bad influence and getting him some new minders who are a lot more practical.
In a scene that might be called “Murder on the Oval Express,” Rummy turned up dead with so many knives in him that it’s impossible to say who actually finished off the man billed as Washington’s most skilled infighter. (Poppy? Scowcroft? Baker? Laura? Condi? The Silver Fox? Retired generals? Serving generals? Future generals? Troops returning to Iraq for the umpteenth time without a decent strategy? Democrats? Republicans? Joe Lieberman?)
The defense chief got hung out to dry before Saddam got hung. The president and Karl Rove, underestimating the public’s hunger for change or overestimating the loyalty of a fed-up base, did not ice Rummy in time to save the Senate from teetering Democratic. But once Sonny managed to heedlessly dynamite the Republican majority — as well as the Middle East, the Atlantic alliance and the U.S. Army — then Bush Inc., the family firm that snatched the presidency for W. in 2000, had to step in. Two trusted members of the Bush 41 war council, Mr. Baker and Robert Gates, have been dispatched to discipline the delinquent juvenile and extricate him from the mother of all messes.
Mr. Gates, already on Mr. Baker’s “How Do We Get Sonny Out of Deep Doo Doo in Iraq?” study group, left his job protecting 41’s papers at Texas A&M to return to Washington and pry the fingers of Poppy’s old nemesis, Rummy, off the Pentagon.
“They had to bring in someone from the old gang,” said someone from the old gang. “That has to make Junior uneasy. With Bob, the door is opened again to 41 and Baker and Brent.”
W. had no choice but to make an Oedipal U-turn. He couldn’t let Nancy Pelosi subpoena the cranky Rummy for hearings on Iraq. “He’s not exactly Mr. Charming or Mr. Truthful, and he’d be on TV saying something stupid,” said a Bush 41 official. “Bob can just go up to the Hill and say: ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there when that happened.’ ”
The difference between Arnold and W? Arnold made something of himself -- again and again. Bush was handed everything -- and ran it all into the ground. Including this country of ours. What made people vote -- twice -- for a guy who could never even take high-level handouts and make something of them? I guess Reagan is proven right about welfare yet again.
What's Wrong With Eating Pony?
Americans have a real problem with eating cute food. I find cows quite darling, for some strange reason, but I have no problem enjoying a nice rare steak. I do think animals should be humanely killed (which means no Kosher or Halal meat -- animals barbarically let bleed out). Jacob Sullum writes in Reason about the people trying to prohibit the slaughter of horses for meat:
Horses are nice. Killing them for food is mean. This is the gist of the argument for the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.It was enough to convince the House of Representatives, which passed the bill by a vote of 263 to 146 in September. If the ban makes it to the floor of the Senate after Congress reconvenes this month, we are likely to see another lopsided victory for arbitrary sentimentality.
Not content at trying to stop foreigners from catering to Americans’ taste for gambling, Congress is on the verge of passing a law aimed at stopping Americans from catering to foreigners’ taste for horse meat. I generally avoid the phrase cultural imperialism, since it’s often used by people who object to the voluntary consumption of American products by non-Americans. But when Americans want to forcibly impose their culinary preferences on people in other countries, it fits pretty well.
As supporters of the horse slaughter ban never tire of reminding us, Americans are not big horse eaters. The three U.S. plants that slaughter horses, two in Texas and one in Illinois, cater mainly to consumers in countries such as France, Belgium, Germany, and Japan. Since the plants are owned by foreigners and serve a foreign market, the National Horse Protection Coalition asserts, “no U.S. interests are involved.”
What about the Americans who work in the plants or sell horses to them? What about the U.S. interests in fairness, tolerance, property rights, and some modicum of logic in the formulation of public policy?
...The bill says horses “deserve compassion and protection” because they “play a vital role in the collective experience of the United States.” I’m not completely sure what that means, but it does not bode well for fans of bison meat. The bill also says horses, unlike cows and pigs, “are used primarily for recreation, pleasure, and sport.” If it’s the fun-to-food ratio that matters, Americans will have to stop slaughtering pigs once enough of us keep them as pets.
And no, I don't have a problem with people eating dogs or cats. Of course, my little Lucy doesn't have enough meat on her bones to be a real meal.
Ring My Bell!
I'm appearing this morning on the live phone-in TV show, Ring My Bell (Thursday, November 9th between 11AM and 12PM Pacific). Call to speak to me during that time on the Ring My Bell phone line, at 323 603-6312. And watch it live on the webcam at www.ringmybell.tv.
Believing In Dumb, Unproven Crap Can Kill
Or needlessly prolong a lot of sick people's suffering. And why shouldn't we have federally funded stem cell research -- just as we have federally funded cancer research? Get Parkinson's, then talk about how the research should only be privately funded. Here's the brilliant Sam Harris on the idiocy of believing in god, in Newsweek:
It is, of course, taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs. The problem, however, is that much of what people believe in the name of religion is intrinsically divisive, unreasonable and incompatible with genuine morality. One of the worst things about religion is that it tends to separate questions of right and wrong from the living reality of human and animal suffering. Consequently, religious people will devote immense energy to so-called moral problems—such as gay marriage—where no real suffering is at issue, and they will happily contribute to the surplus of human misery if it serves their religious beliefs.A case in point: embryonic-stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine. It could offer therapeutic breakthroughs for every human ailment (for the simple reason that stem cells can become any tissue in the human body), including diabetes, Parkinson's disease, severe burns, etc. In July, President George W. Bush used his first veto to deny federal funding to this research. He did this on the basis of his religious faith. Like millions of other Americans, President Bush believes that "human life starts at the moment of conception." Specifically, he believes that there is a soul in every 3-day-old human embryo, and the interests of one soul—the soul of a little girl with burns over 75 percent of her body, for instance—cannot trump the interests of another soul, even if that soul happens to live inside a petri dish. Here, as ever, religious dogmatism impedes genuine wisdom and compassion.
A 3-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. The truth is that President Bush's unjustified religious beliefs about the human soul are, at this very moment, prolonging the scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings.
Given our status as a superpower, our material wealth and the continuous advancements in our technology, it seems safe to say that the president of the United States has more power and responsibility than any person in history. It is worth noting, therefore, that we have elected a president who seems to imagine that whenever he closes his eyes in the Oval Office—wondering whether to go to war or not to go to war, for instance—his intuitions have been vetted by the Creator of the universe. Speaking to a small group of supporters in 1999, Bush reportedly said, "I believe God wants me to be president." Believing that God has delivered you unto the presidency really seems to entail the belief that you cannot make any catastrophic mistakes while in office. One question we might want to collectively ponder in the future: do we really want to hand the tiller of civilization to a person who thinks this way?
Religion is the one area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give good evidence and valid arguments in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs regularly determine what they live for, what they will die for and—all too often—what they will kill for. Consequently, we are living in a world in which millions of grown men and women can rationalize the violent sacrifice of their own children by recourse to fairy tales. We are living in a world in which millions of Muslims believe that there is nothing better than to be killed in defense of Islam. We are living in a world in which millions of Christians hope to soon be raptured into the stratosphere by Jesus so that they can safely enjoy a sacred genocide that will inaugurate the end of human history. In a world brimming with increasingly destructive technology, our infatuation with religious myths now poses a tremendous danger. And it is not a danger for which more religious faith is a remedy.
Harris' new book is Letter To A Christian Nation, now available for only $9.79 at Amazon. Believe in god? Why not get it and let him talk some sense into you?
During my Pajamas Media interviews the other night, I was with a woman from Pajamas -- a very nice woman -- who heard me get into it with a couple of religious nutters on camera because she was the one operating the camera. They were talking about how it's wrong to allow gays to be parents. Yeah? Maybe their preacher tells them that, but that's not what Judith Stacey's data says, just to name one researcher.
I didn't know my fellow blogger's beliefs until afterward, when I was talking about how horrible the women's beliefs were, vis a vis what wonderful parents the Lofton's in Florida obviously made (the big case Judith Stacey was involved in). I was shocked when she said, "Yeah, but I still believe homosexuality's a sin." To me, this is like saying, "Sure, I could go to the doctor for my tumor, but I think I'll just drop by the witch doctor's and have him put some tomato paste on it and say a few words of mumbo-jumbo!"
And, how come religious people believe homosexuality's a sin, but they don't believe people should be, say, stoned for eating prawns -- another "abomination" in Leviticus?
Here it is from a Brit commenter on another site:
In response to whether I believe that traditional Christian views on eating prawns are the same as hating people who eat prawns...Its complicated, I believe in a tolerant liberal society.
Therefore a Christian who believes that prawn-eating is sinful should be tolerant of the fact that there are prawn-eating people who engage in lawful prawn eating. While remains perfectly acceptable for a Christian to maintain the private belief that prawn eating is sinful whilst at the same time upholding the rights for prawn-eating people to live their lives freely in the public sphere.
Many Christians who I meet and engage with in my role as editor of PinkNews.co.uk and as a columinst continue to maintain that eating prawns is sinful (based on Leviticus rather than Christ's own teachings). However, on the whole, they respect the liberty of prawn-eating people to live their lives in a free way. In a liberal society we must all tolerate beliefs and practices that we do not subscribe to. On that basis, I continue to tolerate those who privately view my actions as sinful.
The course of action, I recommend to the Conservative party is therefore to encourage its members to recognise the two spheres that they operate in. In their private lives, within their homes and families they can maintain that eating prawns is sinful, but when selecting candidates or themselves holding public office, they must be tolerant of prawn eating and just about every other legal practice that those in society engage in. Including gay sex.
How Much Is That Bloggie In The Window?
Bloggers are raking in campaign cash. See the link for a chart of who paid what to whom. Updates and corrections at the end of the post at the link.
Welcome To The American Dream
Last night, I did on-camera interviews for Pajamas Media (none are up yet -- they're probably still being edited) from the Schwarzenegger election night headquarters at the Beverly Hilton. In Maria Shriver's speech, she mentioned something I've thought all along, that Arnold is the living incarnation of "The American Dream." Austrian boy comes to America, becomes a famous bodybuilder, becomes a big movie star, then governor of California.
My syndicator, Rick Newcombe, of Creators, told me a story about Arnold a while back. He met Arnold when he was a newspaper reporter, and, at the time, Arnold was a bodybuilder who barely spoke English, but told him, "I'm going to be the biggest movie star in the world."
"How do you know that?" Newcombe asked him.
Arnold told him, in his heavily accented English, "I zee it through my third eye."
Amazing climb. And, as they pointed out in the video, Californians elected him on faith, but he's learned in office, and has made good. Of course, I lost two lefty friends for voting for him. Oh well, I had too many "friends," anyway!
Here's Arnold with Eunice Shriver.
Here's Arnold's wife, Maria Shriver, who introduced him and gave a speech about him.
Rumsfeld Cuts And Runs
Gregg just heard on TV that Rumsfeld is "stepping down." Yet, just an hour ago, Fox News was reporting "Rumsfeld Has No Plans to Step Down, Despite Democrat Gains." Guess his plans changed!
Corporations remain in Iraq, collecting bigtime. Link is to the Robert Greenwald film, Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers. Apparently, the military can no longer provide for many of its needs, and corporations are scoring in the billions in filling in. The Iraq war has been very good to some people...the ones back in the States collecting the profits.
Aid To Dependent Iraquis
Slate's William Saletan looks for the Reagan legacy in Bush, and instead finds the nanny state alive and well and living in Iraq:
Bush told the crowd, "history will remember Ronald Reagan as the man who brought down the Soviet Union and won the Cold War. And now we're involved in what I have called the great ideological struggle of the 21st century." In the war on terror, Bush argued, Iraq remains central. He pledged that he, like Reagan, would prevail.But anti-communism abroad was only one of Reagan's theories. Another was anti-socialism at home. A government that spends tens of billions of dollars to prop up able-bodied people, year after year with no deadline for self-sufficiency, breeds dependency. That's what Bush has done in Iraq: He has made it the largest, most counterproductive welfare program in American history. Talk about leading your party astray.
...Finally, when critics question whether the program is serving its stated goals, they are vilified as opposing those goals. Throughout his career, Reagan scorned the "war on poverty" for using good intentions to cover up bad results. Poverty, he observed, was winning the war. The real purpose of the "war on poverty" rhetoric, he charged, was to make critics look unpatriotic: "Anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always 'against' things, never 'for' anything."
This critique nails the occupation of Iraq in every respect. Not necessarily the invasion, but the occupation. According to an article by a former Reagan defense official in the U.S. Army journal Military Affairs, Bush's disbanding of the Iraqi army in May 2003 "changed the mission of the American soldiers from liberators to occupiers." Bush, having failed to find weapons of mass destruction, shifted his rationale to nation building. He bragged about funding infrastructure and vowed not to withdraw until the country was exemplary.
Links in the original piece are live at the Slate link above.
The Areola That Changed Everything
NBC Universal chairman Bob Wright takes on the "unmistakable" chill on free speech after the "wardrobe malfunction," noting, among other things, the CBS affiliates who refused to broadcast the doc "9/11" for fear they'd be fined when rescuers' language was a little more "coarse" than "Oh, poo!"
Wright writes in The Wall Street Journal of the idiocy that is the FCC's suggestion for a return of "family hour" on network TV:
...a voluntary agreement first made 30 years ago among the three broadcast networks to offer family-friendly programming during the 8 o'clock hour. But with cable and satellite, access to VOD services, DVD players and digital recording devices, the vast majority of Americans have programming at their fingertips that will meet any conceivable interest at any time of the day or night. That's great news for parents. But it also highlights the flaw in the notion that, in 2006, the government should mandate that a specific hour be set aside for a certain type of programming on broadcast TV, or indeed that the FCC should attempt to regulate all of broadcast network primetime TV based on standards to protect kids.For starters, two-thirds of households do not have children under 18. One could reasonably suggest that government policy should not try to force all of broadcast TV to disregard the programming tastes and desires of two-thirds of all households. But FCC regulators do more than just ignore these households. They are blind to the reality of today's media environment. With more than 50% of homes having Internet access and 85% subscribing to cable and satellite services, the media choice is staggering. The average home receives 100 TV channels. Broadcast channels sit side-by-side with cable; and the under-18 cohort that the FCC focuses on so intently no longer knows the difference. Indeed, kids watch cable significantly more than broadcast and spend time on the Internet with unlimited access to material of every description.
So an FCC policy intent on ensuring that there will be nothing on broadcast TV that is inappropriate for kids during certain hours is doomed to failure. Do the math: 85% of households have cable and satellite, leaving 15% receiving broadcast TV only.
...Thus, the FCC appears to be basing its actions on a policy that is relevant to 5% of households. Moreover, government efforts to regulate content are invariably riddled with unfortunate consequences.
For example, breaking with established precedent, the FCC recently found a live network news program to be "indecent" because a single expletive was unexpectedly uttered by someone being interviewed by a reporter. What public interest is served when news organizations, unwilling to take the risk of incurring a fine, stop interviewing individuals live on camera -- or air all newscasts only after being cleared by a language censor? This ruling also jeopardizes the live sports broadcasts. What if a microphone accidentally picks up a fan yelling something on the FCC's list of bad words? A sports broadcast becomes a multimillion dollar gamble.
So what is the answer? It is certainly not that government should regulate content on cable TV and the Internet. But there is a reasonable solution. Just as parents use technology on the Internet, ratings information and blocking technology are available for TV. Broadcast and cable networks have a ratings and parental-advisory system, and today's TV sets are equipped with V-chips that block specified programming from entering a home. The entire TV industry is striving to provide parents with help to guide them through today's thicket of offerings. To make sure parents are aware of the control they have over programming, the TV industry and Ad Council are collaborating on a $300 million educational campaign.
To make parents aware of the control they have? Um, perhaps if you don't understand the power of the channel changer and the on-off button on the remote, you not only shouldn't be having children, you should probably be living in a group home with constant supervision so you don't hurt yourself.
As I've said in the past, if you have children, YOU parent them. Don't make the government parent them -- and the rest of us in the process. Saturday night, I went to a dinner my friends Stuart and Gabriella arranged in L.A. for a bunch of their friends. Gabriella is Czech, and her sister Christina was there with her American husband and her little boy, Alessandro. And what an amazing kid -- a reflection of exceptional (as in, a rare breed of) parents.
He is 3, and was wearing a tiny seersucker jacket and a tie, and sitting in his chair perfectly behaved. His parents had just moved from the U.S.A. to France, because they want to raise him as not only bilingual, but in an environment where kids are made to behave and have real structure in their lives. I already know that French children are expected to act like little adults when they aren't in a kid environment like the playground; for example, to eat what the adults are eating, to shut up and not take over as the center of attention when adult conversation is going on. Interestingly enough, French parents seem less likely to treat their kids like fragile porcelain dolls. They seem to understand that part of life is, for example, falling down and getting hurt.
But, back to the manners arena, Christina told me, on the playground in France, even at age three, children line up politely to ride the swings, and if they bump each other, they tend to say, "Excusez-moi." Also, if, on the playground or in a restaurant, a child gets out of line, unlike here, where it's heresy to say anything to anyone's child, another mother or another adult will, of course, tell the child to behave (if you're not doing your job or not close enough at hand to do your job as a parent). I told Christina the Eleanor Roosevelt quote I've referenced before:
As Pasadena's Michael Lifton wrote in a letter to the editor about my LA Weekly piece on the brats in the Rose Cafe:I love Amy Alkon’s report of her encounter with a screaming toddler. “Mommy” could obviously benefit from the advice of Eleanor Roosevelt, who said, “Discipline your children, or the world will do it for you.”Why are children bratty? In Toward A Psychology Of Being, Abraham Maslowe writes:
Much disturbance in children and adolescents can be understood as a consequence of the uncertainty of adults about their values. As a consequence, many youngsters in the United States live not by adult values but by adolescent values, which of course are immature, ignorant and heavily determined by confused, adolescent needs.Oh, I'm so sorry, does parenting get in the way of your yoga appointment, your hair appointment, your manicure, your date with your guru?
He Smoked Meth, But He Didn't Inhale
Well, he didn't actually take the meth. But, then, yes he did. But, he didn't have gay sex. But, then, yes he did.
My favorite funny comment from the Steve Gilliard link above:
So, if Pastor Ted was meeting with the President.....Is this what Bush was referring to in 2004 when he stated that the country had given him a mandate?
Man date, heh heh...
But, not to worry, whatever "Pastor Ted" is admitting to or denying at the moment, they're busy, busy, busy over there at National Review Online, twisting themselves into leetle intellectual pretzels trying to stand behind him.
The church is equally twisty in Pastor Ted's defense. (The Jones in the link is Mike Jones, the gay escort Haggart sought out; Brendle is Rev. Rob Brendle, an associate pastor at Haggard's House Of Hypocrisy, uh, mega-church.)
Jones says he found out Haggard's identity several months ago and decided to come forward to "expose the hypocrisy" of Haggard's public support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which is on Tuesday's ballot in Colorado."I think that he seems to be doing what his conscience dictates and my hope is that people's response to him will be one of love and kindness rather than anger and hatred," said Brendle.
He added that the church has openly gay members.
Awww, how sweet! Kind of like being a Jewish storm trooper in 1940.
Brendle said he sees no hypocrisy in Haggard's actions. "To my knowledge, Mike Jones has not alleged that Ted asked him to marry him... No, I do not see this instance as hypocrisy. I do see it as indiscretion, and I am grateful that Ted is repentant and humble."
Honey, what Ted is is caught with his tighty-whities around his ankles, and a meth pipe in his chubby little hand.
Who is (or, rather, was) Pastor Ted? Let's turn to Harpers for a little bio by contributing ed Jeff Sharlet:
Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim.
Or, rather, "Most comfortable while bent over in denim." The story continues:
When Bush invited him to the Oval Office to discuss policy with seven other chieftains of the Christian right in late 2003, Pastor Ted regaled his whole congregation with the story via email. “Well, on Monday I was in the World Prayer Center”—New Life's high-tech, twenty-four-hour-a-day prayer chapel —“and my cell phone rang.” It was a presidential aide; “the President,” says Pastor Ted, wanted him on hand for the signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Pastor Ted was on a plane the next morning and in the President's office the following afternoon. “It was incredible,” wrote Pastor Ted. He left it to the press to note that Dobson wasn't there.
Why, he's a regular Jack Abramoff! Sharlet continues:
...No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life.
Well, there's a lot of money and power in promoting homophobia -- until you get caught with your pants down, smoking both meth and a bone.
...Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil's plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church...
I bet he did. Kind of like church-approved carryout. Sweet!
The atrium is a soaring foyer adorned with the flags of the nations and guarded by another bronze warrior angel, a scowling, bearded type with massive biceps and, again, a sword. The angel's pedestal stands at the center of a great, eight-pointed compass laid out in muted red, white, and blue-black stone. Each point directs the eye to a contemporary painting, most depicting gorgeous, muscular men—one is a blacksmith, another is bound, fetish-style, in chains—in various states of undress. My favorite is The Vessel, by Thomas Blackshear, a major figure in the evangelical-art world.[2] Here in the World Prayer Center is a print of The Vessel, a tall, vertical panel of two nude, ample-breasted, white female angels team-pouring an urn of honey onto the shaved head of a naked, olive-skinned man below. The honey drips down over his slab-like pecs and his six-pack abs into the eponymous vessel, which he holds in front of his crotch. But the vessel can't handle that much honey, so the sweetness oozes over the edges and spills down yet another level, presumably onto our heads, drenching us in golden, godly love. Part of what makes Blackshear's work so compelling is precisely its unabashed eroticism; it aims to turn you on, and then to turn that passion toward Jesus.
Or...not!
...It is not so much the large populations, with their uneasy mix of sinner and saved, that make Christian conservatives leery of urban areas. Even downtown Colorado Springs, presumably as godly as any big town in America, struck the New Lifers I met as unclean. Whenever I asked where to eat, they would warn me away from downtown's neat little grid of cafés and ethnic joints. Stick to Academy, they'd tell me, referring to the vein of superstores and prepackaged eateries—P. F. Chang's, California Pizza Kitchen, et al.—that bypasses the city. Downtown, they said, is “confusing.”
Yeah, like Haggard's sexuality. Perhaps that's part of the big attraction of religion, and why people are so determined to believe, without an iota of proof, in this utterly unbelievable stuff. People like to have stuff figured out for them. They'll ignore the parts that seem wildly implausible, just so they don't have to do any thinking for themselves.
For example: "Gay sex is wrong!"
Really? Why? If the participants are consenting adults, what's the problem? If you don't want to have gay sex, guess what? We won't force you to have it. We won't even take away your right to marry because you're heterosexual.
Hmmm...imagine, for a minute, if the world were mainly filled with gay men and lesbians, and heteros were the minority, and gays and lesbians were all religious nutters determined to keep heteros who love each other from marrying and thus protecting their children, and getting all the rights and privileges married people do. That wouldn't be right or fair, now would it? Any more than denying blondes, redheads, or Latinos the right to marry or adopt children.
How about you all do what works for you, and let everybody else do what works for them, and stop trying to stop them because you believe there's a big man in the sky who really, really cares about you -- like whether you managed to have a bowel movement today or whether you'll be late on your credit card bill again?
Sorry, but there's no evidence there is a god, benevolent, angry, or otherwise, and if there were, do you think god would really be all in your petty little shit? Come on. People say atheism is the height of arrogance -- when really, for me, it's simply saying, "I see no evidence there is a god, so I'd be an idiot to believe in god." Isn't the height of arrogance something else entirely -- namely, stamping your foot and saying there is a god and you know exactly what god wants?
One more thing: If you're a private citizen, or a public citizen who's, say, an architect or a mystery novelist, your sexuality is, as far as I'm concerned, nobody's business but your own. In fact, we'll probably thank you for keeping your big trap shut about it. But, I feel differently about hypocrites in positions of power. Since there are very few, if any, homosexuals who are really closeted heterosexuals, yes, I'm talking about closeted gay men and women who preach or politic homophobia. If you know any, please out them ASAP -- for the public good. So the public can see what a load of religious and political horseshit they're all starry-eyed for.
Here's a comment on this that explains a little further, again, from the Steve Gilliard link, from a guy who gives his name as Kent:
On a serious note folks, regardless of what you think personally about homosexuality or gay marriage or any of those right wing wedge issues, when you think about what the Haggard and Christian right have been doing is insane.I'm straight and I have 3 young daughters. Like most parents, I want them to grow up with happy rewarding lives. Just out of sheer self-interest and logic I want a world in which gays are completely free to live their own lives as they wish without shame or repression or anything else.
Because what happens when you demonize homosexuality? You generate all these repressed self-loathing closeted wackos like Haggard. And you greatly increase the chance that one of my daughters will get caught up with someone like that. Guys who lives a repressed life according to the strictures of a narrow-minded repressive society until everything finally explodes in a whirlwhind of gay hookers, meth, Republicanism and God knows what else.
And if any of my daughters turn out to be gay? Then I certainly want a world in which they are free to follow their own hearts.
The sheer stupidity and evil behind this sort of Christian-right gay baiting is really beyond belief.
Give That Woman Plaque!
I know Internet mapping innovations are really, really old news when I finally get excited e-mail forwards about them from my two 60-something, barely-net-worthy friends (this past spring and summer, in the case of Google Earth -- a toy which I'd tried quite some time before).
Love these daily papers, though, forever mewling about attracting younger readers while keeping out-of-it aging journos on staff. Susan Spano just learned about Google Earth. From her Los Angeles dentist!
I discovered an incredible new travel tool while I was having a tooth crowned recently. My L.A. dentist and I were waiting for my gums to numb when he turned on his computer and asked, "Have you seen this?"He clicked on an icon and up came Google Earth, which gives you a list of sites to visit for information on a topic and also displays almost any location on the planet in 3-D. Google Earth accesses maps, satellite imagery and aerial photography taken in the last three years. That image can be manipulated using a variety of features: navigational controls for tilting, zooming in and out and moving left or right. You'll also find a distance calculator; line or route marker; overlay mechanisms that sandwich different images together; and ancillary video and print information from sources such as the National Park Service and the Discovery Channel.
My dentist knows my love of Paris, so he put the Eiffel Tower in the search panel. Suddenly, I saw the Paris landmark from every direction, including above, as he played with the navigator. Then he moved the cursor a fraction of an inch left and there was the Pont d'Iéna leading over the River Seine from the Eiffel Tower to the Trocadero. I was just about to ask him to show me the street with my apartment when he started drilling.
Drilling on her tooth, of course, since it seems likely she's already been lobotomized.
Best of all, she doesn't understand how embarrassing it is that she's only writing about this hot new thing now. Susan, the pasture is that way.
Days Of Wine And Sloppy Journalism
A couple of my white-wine drinking friends are telling me they're going to switch to red, preference for white be damned, thanks to the articles about a study that showed resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, helped middle-aged mice with a crappy diet live longer.
Not so fast, boys and girls. What you missed in the articles, probably due to the human propensity for believing beneficial information, is the stuff I look for -- the bit about how it takes HUGE volumes of resveratrol to make a difference. But, never mind what I have to say. Via Respectful Insolence, for those of you who'll only take the data from somebody who's, say, an academic researcher and educator with a PhD in Pharmacology, Abel Pharmboy lays it out for you:
The bottom line is that a highly concentrated dose of this compound increases lifespan by 20%, but a human would have to drink 100 bottles of wine per day to acheive a similar effect without supplementation (and obviously die of alcohol intoxication well before any benefits are seen.). CNN, of course, blows the story completely out of proportion, as it were, with the headline: "Fat, boozing mice stay healthy." (Note: the mice drank no alcohol but facts shouldn't stand in the way of a sensational headline, eh?)
Yes, but what of "the French paradox" -- the fact that the French eat a high-fat diet but don't die of heart attacks anywhere near the rate of Americans? Will Clower, the neurophysiologist author of The Fat Fallacy, notes the findings of a massive European study called "the MONICA project," showing that rates of heart diease are three times greater for men from 35 to 64 in Scotland and Ireland than in southern European versions. The dietary difference? Eating high quantities of animal tissue fat daily, such as bacon and sausage. Clower, on page 22, compares this with the kind of fat the French eat:
Dr. Boué and his colleagues looked at the fats typically eaten by a large population of healthy French women. Of the "ruminant fats" (which incluide dairy products, beef, mutton, and tallow), their study showed that a majority of their dietary intake, a full 85 percent of it, came form dairy products like whole milk and cheeses.So here's the French recipe for low weight and decreased heart disease: Go low on animal tissue fats (particularly red meat) and high on other natural fats.
Clower continues to note the irony that you find "the highest bulk of overweight people in the same place as you find the largest commitment to diet foods, diet drugs, and economic markets for weight-loss products and programs."
Now, I used to be a little rounder than I am now, but when I really took off pounds -- and without dieting -- is when I started going to France, and eating the way the French eat: small portions of high-nutrient, really tasty food. No denial. And thus no need to pig out.
For example, I bought a Lindt chocolate bar on Wednesday in France. I'm still eating it. I eat two squares at a time. Period. It cost me a few dollars. But, it's super rich and super tasty, and if you don't gobble it down, if you take a moment to enjoy each piece...who needs more than a tiny bit at a time?
A Ghost On The Huff Post?
Kate Coe, blogging at FishbowlLA, doesn't miss much. She caught Arianna blogging about something she is unlikely to have been aware of as a little girl growing up in Greece. Huffington writes:
Watching the very different--and very telling--ways in which Hillary Clinton and Katie Couric responded to the GOP-fueled John Kerry firestorm, I immediately flashed on Goofus and Gallant.
Kate Coe writes:
FBLA admits that it's possible she subscribed for her kids (but then why use the vintage illustration?), but we think it's equally possible that she's got a pop culture crib sheet.
Or perhaps a room of uncredited wee writerslaves?
P.S. If they do decide to pick somebody for gossip columnist at the LA Times, Kate Coe should be one of the top names on the list. And yes, she's a friend. But, she became a friend because I found her smart, acid-tongued, and witty.
It All Happened So Fast
A photo from my last day at my Paris office. Now back in the States, emotionally preparing myself for croissants the size of suburban homes that taste like drywall.
I am happy to be home, too...with my man, whom I miss terribly when I'm away, despite video iChat. And hot showers with plenty of water pressure. And customer service that actually involves an interest in serving the customer (I'm not talking about the kind you attempt to get on the telephone, of course.)
And, Tuesday night, assuming I survive a combination of my column deadline and jet lag, I've been asked by Pajamas Media to cover the election from Schwarzenegger headquarters at the Beverly Hilton. Pretty exciting. And, in case you're wondering, I voted for Arnold (and lost a couple lefty friends over it!) and wish more Republicans would be like him.
I Hate Corn Syrup
Coke (and Pepsi) taste better in France (and probably in the rest of Europe). I think I know why: They’re sweetened with sugar instead of corn syrup. I think that’s why some people buy coke, um, sorry, Coke, in Mexico.
I’m in supergirl shape after two weeks in Paris, marching up and down subway steps and five flights of stairs to the apartment. I had lunch at Flore with travel writer Elliott Hester who told me he noticed how all the women in Paris have very muscular calves. You can’t help but get them with all the exertion daily life in Paris requires.
I realized, in addition to the crappy American diet -– huge portions of unhealthy, tasteless food -- a big part of the problem in America is suburbia. People have sedentary jobs, they drive to them, and they have to join a gym to get exercise -- and be pretty disciplined about going.
In cities, moving your ass is a part of life. In New York, I rode my bike, rollerskated, and walked everywhere. In Paris, as in New York, I often walked home from all the way across town because there’s always so much to look at.
In suburbia, what is there to see? I’m from suburbia -- Farmington Hills, Michigan -- and it’s one of the more visually boring places I’ve been. So…it isn’t just our diet, but the way our society is constructed that contributes to the huge-ifying of the U.S.A.
Where Tolerance Meets Stupidity
I'm sometimes accused of racism for expressing the view that murder-fomenting (and murder-doing) Muslims have no place in our society:
Sorry if I find it hard to tolerate people who want to murder me because I don't believe in Allah. You can be tolerant, I'm going to be a little afraid at Charles de Gaulle on Friday.I have plans to see my boyfriend Friday night, and I'd like to live to have that happen.
Are you really tolerant of people who want you dead?
I feel the same way about murder-fomenting and murder-doing astrologers or people of other irrational persuasions. I don't hate all astrologers (or really any astrologers). I think any astrologers who'd murder people who don't wear their astrological sign around their neck, and believe in whatever "Leo rising" means (Viagra's working?) should be removed from our society and either put in prison or dumped somewhere where they can't hurt other people.
Sorry, but I'm not really clear on why that would be racist. Can somebody explain? Again, I don't hate any particular people, I'm just not fond of people who want me dead because I don't walk around in a pup tent and believe in Allah. Is that a racial issue, or simply a case of having working brain cells and a modicum of a survival instinct?
As for why I'm going to be a little edgy tomorrow while flying home, get a load of this bureaucratic genius, from an article by Katrin Bennhold in the IHT:
The French authorities charged with assessing security risks at Charles de Gaulle airport have stripped 72 suspect Muslim workers of their security clearance, but about a dozen others are still working in the most restricted areas, including some cleaning planes and handling baggage for flights to the United States, according to a government security official and the airport workers themselves.
Some terrorism experts are asking why the government has not moved faster to suspend access for employees who may constitute a security risk, especially since details have emerged about some of the suspended workers. Several of them are suspected of having trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and one was friends with the "shoe bomber," according to the security official in charge of the case.
...Jacques Lebrot, the official in charge of the investigation, said in an interview that some of the employees who had received the letter were still working because French law required him to give them an opportunity to respond before he could take away their accreditation, and it took time to summon them all.
Suddenly, I'm reminded of George Bush sitting there with glazed eyes reading The Pet Goat as the World Trade Center came down.
Les Hot Links
when we were in the Marais.
One of my cool new Paris friends, Susie Hollands, blogs about the rock venues in Paris my rock 'n roll photographer friend Sue Rynski told her about. The photo Susie thumbnails on the rock venues link above is from Sue's book, just published in Japan, of her photos of the punk group "Destroy All Monsters."
I was reminded of Sue's punk era photos by a mention, by Simon Doonan, in The New York Times, in an article about the surging popularity of Warhol. Ruth La Ferla writes:
“There is a longing for that era in Manhattan of self-invention and discovery, of cultural questioning,” said Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys, who is orchestrating the store’s many-pronged Warhol holiday marketing.
Likewise, Sue's photos, even though they're of an era of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll (with plenty of all of that) have a certain innocence to them. They're of the days art school kids started a band, because, well, what else do you do?...not because their whole lives were planned out, down to the marketing campaigns, at age 10.
Finally, here's a link to a slideshow of the photos from Sue Rynski's "Destroy All Monsters" book. Niagara is the girl with the legs. I love Niagara's anthem, "I'm bored." Could Iggy Pop have...borrowed from that? Hmmm.
Through Susie's blog, I found another link that interested me -- with photos of last year's better campaign to improve public manners in Paris:
They've got a very good point, huh?
And finally, note to Sue and Susie, you have to meet my friend Elliott Hester, a flight attendant turned hilarious travel writer who's just settled down in Paris, and is, at least for November, taking over from the LAT Paris Postcards travel blogger Susan Spano...she of years of lame entries and glaring errors.
In her last entry, she tells people to be kind to Elliott. Wrong. My take on this, posted in the comments on an earlier entry on my blog:
We shouldn't have to be kind to anybody writing for media. They should do their jobs, then we'll read them without ripping them.
And finally, Elliott's first blog entry, which mentions the reputation Parisians have for rudeness:
Before relocating to Paris in July of this year, I was told, repeatedly, that Parisians are “rude.” The warnings came from friends and acquaintances in Australia, Spain, Iceland, the United States, England and more than 10 other countries, including France. But in the four months since arriving in the City of Light, I have been treated with nothing but kindness.I’m not sure why the cashier smiled so warmly when I entered the tabac. Perhaps she was amused when I sheepishly said, “Par-don ma-dame, je ne parle pas Français.” (Pardon me madam, I don’t speak French). Perhaps the waitress at L’An Vert Du Decor kissed me goodbye because I kissed her first. At the Monoprix across the street from my apartment, maybe the middle-age shopper so eagerly helped me choose the right cheese because, drum roll please … I smiled, looked him in the eye and asked if he would help me choose the right cheese.
Rude people live everywhere. So do amiable ones. In order to distinguish the latter from the former you often have to make the first move. Especially in Paris.
Elliott's experience is similar to mine. I don't expect people to be rude, and I do make the first move. People are generally very nice, and very helpful to me. Generally. And then there's the comment I left below Elliott's entry:
I think it's important to realize that French people who are rude to you as an American are, perhaps, rude to everyone. Just like rude Americans. I had this happen a few days ago at a Paris café I frequent. The short waiter, who'd been, well...short...with me before, was not only short with me this time, he'd cleared away the supplementary chocolates my very "sympa" waiter Didier had given me. The contrast between nice and nasty almost had me in tears.Shorty Waiter seemed much nicer to a man I see often there, so I went over and asked him, en Français, "Is this guy angry with me, or with the universe?" He told me he'd seen the guy being very unpleasant with a bunch of French people the other day. I told him the story of the chocolates. Well, it seems the story was overheard by the couple next to me, another couple I see often, with a couple of Yorkies always in tow. Not long afterward, Shorty Waiter came over with a new attitude -- smiled, and left me chocolates. Of course, he didn't apologize or anything! But, it was nice he finally cleared the air.
...And a good thing he did, since I'll be back in Paris with my boyfriend at the end of November, enroute to a noir festival in Italy he needs to attend. My boyfriend's response, upon hearing my story:
Tell this little fucker that if he doesn’t behave himself I’m going to duct-tape him to a skateboard and roll him against traffic down Boulevard St. Germain.
It's so nice to be with a man who so obviously forgot to pick up a copy of the metrosexual dictionary.
Dear Airborne Moron
An e-mail from the spinmeisters at USAirways:
In a message dated 10/31/06 2:34:59 PM, dividendmiles@myusairways.com writes:IMPORTANT NOTICE
DON’T LOSE YOUR DIVIDEND MILESDividend Miles #: XXXXX
Member Since: 1994Dear AMY ALKON:
It’s been a long time since you’ve used the US Airways Dividend Miles program. As an important customer, we want to make sure you keep the miles that you’ve earned.
Mileage balance: 4,500
Your last activity date: 06/11/2004Several months ago, we introduced a new policy that rewards our customers for keeping their Dividend Miles account active. Effective January 31, 2007, you must earn or redeem miles within a consecutive 18-month period in order to keep your account active. If you don’t have activity by January 31, 2007, you’ll forfeit your miles.
No, you introduced a new policy that punishes customers who don't use their accounts very often, and I can't decide whether it's amusing or simply irritating that you think all your customers are stupid enough to believe this spin. I'll make an effort to fly other airlines in the future. Or to transfer my miles to United. Hmm...you could say, I'm introducing a new policy that rewards airlines that appear to treat me less crappily than other airlines.
You know, more and more, I'm convinced, with consumer rage being what it is, somebody could open a business that's more expensive than other options in its area, but make money simply by offering (not just mouthpiecing that they offer) "excellent customer service." As in, you call, a human answers the phone, speaking the language of your country, and with enough brain cells and training to actually solve your problem.
Oh, and US Airways, why not just write me an honest note? It wouldn't make me dislike you any less, but it would help me respect you. Here, I'll give you a template -- out of the goodness of my tiny, coal-like lump of heart:
Dear Customer, We've noticed you haven't flown us for a while, and we think you really suck. We plan on fucking you up the ass the only way we can -- we'll just hoover up miles you rightfully earned. Fuck you! Die painfully! Over and out. --US Airways
Why Would I Have A Problem With Gay Voters?
I love bonehead PR people who send me crap without taking a peek at the contents of my column or blog. Sorry, but do I seem like a person who'd be worried about gay voters? Chances are, they'd vote kind of like me -- live and let live.
Here's a reply I wrote to one of them:
Judith Stacey's research shows that gays make excellent parents; odds are, they'll be better than heterosexual parents, since gays don't have kids by accident (ie, "oops the little strip turned pink!").You seem to be behind a hateful, equal-rights-denying proposition -- perhaps just because that's what you get paid to do -- or maybe also due to a belief, without evidence, in god, and an ensuing belief that everything the church says is true and good...well, except when they're telling little white lies about moving around pedophile priests and such.
How do you sleep nights? I don't care how anyone has sex, or who wants to start a family, as long as they treat their children well -- and having equal protection under the law serves that purpose. You want to see a great environment for children? Look at the Lofton family in Florida -- a family a lot of children of hetero parents would probably petition to join if they could.
-Amy Alkon
And here's George Bush, with homophobia as a Republican campaign strategy, from the IHT, now that fear of terrorism is no longer doing the trick:
The moment the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a ruling on (gay marriage) last week, Bush began using every possible excuse to bring up "activist" judges and gay weddings on the campaign trail.
"I mentioned his love for his family," Bush said at a rally for a Republican Senate candidate in Michigan.
Do gay parents not have love for their families -- along with a good deal of worry that they aren't protected by the rights allowed to married parents? Our panderer-in-chief continues:
"He understands what I know, that marriage is a fundamental institution of our civilization. Yesterday in New Jersey we had another activist court issue a ruling "
The court in New Jersey, for what it's worth, was hardly activist.
The state Legislature had given gay couples the ability to unite in domestic partnerships that gave them most, but not all, of the legal protections available to married heterosexuals.
The court simply said that both kinds of partners deserved the same legal protection, and left it up to the lawmakers to figure out how to do it.
Hardly a thunderbolt from the sky, but Bush took up the cause of protecting the "sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society" as if a cadre of anti-family jurists had just abolished matrimony.
All this is, as everyone knows, just a show for rousing the base. If the last month has taught us anything about the Republican Party, it is that homophobia is campaign strategy, not conviction.
Congressmen who trust their careers to gay staffers vote for laws to enshrine second-class citizenship for gays in the Constitution. Gay appointees and their partners are treated as married people at official ceremonies and social gatherings. Then whenever an election rolls around, the whole team pretends it's on a mission to save America from gay marriage.
And, quite frankly, about all this bullshit language about "the protection of marriage" -- as other non-'nutters have noted before, what can gay people do to break down marriage that straight people haven't already overdone in spades?
Portrait Of The Advice Columnist As A Young, Unframed Woman
Frame Store, rue de Seine, 6th arrondissement, Paris.
Women As Uncovered Meat
Australia's top Muslim cleric let the primitivism spew -- saying women are only safe from rape if they stay home with headscarves. Accordingly, no man is likely be hit by a car, assclown, if he stays home in the bathtub...although he might drown of boredom, and find it rather hard to support himself.
Here are the creep's remarks:
"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside... and the cats come and eat it... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?" Sheikh Hilali was quoted as asking during the sermon."If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab [headscarf], no problem would have occurred," he added.
...He said his suggestion that women who did not wear a headscarf attracted sexual assault had been taken out of context and "misinterpreted".
But he conceded the analogy had been "inappropriate and unacceptable for the Australian society and the western society in general".
While Sydney's mosque association had suspended him for three months following the publication of his comments, Sheikh Hilali indicated at the end of last week he would not resign.
Actually, the problem isn't hearing remarks like these, it's not hearing them. We need to know -- and speak out against -- these walking, preaching tumors of Western society. And pressure them, if they don't like our free societies, where women are allowed the same daily freedoms as men, to leave.
Thanks, Norm, for the link.
Chemistry Settling
Just posted an interesting question from my Advice Goddess column from a girl who doesn't really feel a need for a relationship -- but happens to be in one. She concedes to the usual blather, that relationships "take work." Yeah? Mine isn't. And if it starts to feel like being on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor, I think it's time to end it. Then again, I have the luxury of not needing a relationship because I need discount drool wiping when I'm 80, or somebody to pay for me. And perhaps that's why my relationship is so much fun. Here's an excerpt from the column:
Like many people, you apply the Puritan work ethic to relationships: “All relationships are work.” Maybe so, but some relationships are McJobs....Unbridled passion does have its downsides; for example, couples consumed by it are always so busy ripping their clothes off and shoving china from the dining room table that they never get to count the number of little white bumps on the bedroom ceiling. Also, if you do have a spark, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually be sitting around with your girlfriends complaining you’ve lost it, and that Nirvana is starting to look a lot like a run-down section of Bakersfield.
Even so, you’d walk away from everything you have for a chance at a spark. Who do you think you are, missy, that “good on paper” isn’t good enough for you? Well, for starters, you’re a girl whose sense of self isn’t modeled after a sinkhole. Oddly, you’re still influenced by the relationship version of the “starving children in India” argument. In reality, you can hoover up every green bean in the Western Hemisphere, and it will not cause Happy Meals to rain down on Calcutta. Likewise, while there are legions of love-starved women across North America, your being grateful for what you have -- zero connection, but with the perfect man -- won’t lead these women to unlist their numbers so as not to be annoyed at all hours by random marriage proposals.
I once got “fired” by a shrink after one session for an attitude like yours. I was in my early 30s, and having a hard time finding a boyfriend. The shrink listened, then made her pronouncement: “You have high standards, you accept the consequences, that’s very healthy, I really have nothing else to say to you, don’t come back.” Okay, maybe you do fear commitment, maybe you’re too picky -- or maybe you shouldn’t expect to find a guy who’s right for you while you’re tied up with a guy who’s wrong. If you aren’t unhappy holding out for more, why worry that you aren’t unhappy? Just go back to being without a man and being fine with it, but keep looking. While you’re at it, keep in mind that the couples who seem so effortlessly in love are those who held out for chemistry -- having the physical, mental, and emotional hots for each other -- as opposed to what you’ve had for the past five months: indifference with aspirations. (But, hey, whatever sinks your boat!)