A note on this blog

This particular blog has had a bit of a schizophrenic existence.  I started it initially as a place to dump backups of my old LiveJournal posts; however, given that there was no simple way to cross-post new ones, my inherent laziness reared its ugly head and it went neglected for a while.  Then I started using it to write more long and involved posts with pictures (of the sort that are trickier to do in LiveJournal’s more basic publishing platform), but again, laziness, and those petered out as well.

So now it’s basically just here so that the linked posts have somewhere to point to.  A fossil record, if you will.  On the other hand, if you find my thoughts fascinating and want to read more, my most recent ramblings are at my LiveJournal.

Thanks for stopping by!

Climbing aboard the economic roller-coaster

The Hen-House Crisis

While economics is usually a strong suit of mine, I want to say right up front that I’m not qualified to summarize the current financial goings-on. I’ve spent only a cursory amount of time investigating what, exactly, all this crap means, and while I’m certain I could understand it quite well with more study, I just haven’t found the motivation to invest the time and effort necessary to do so.

That said, the above-linked piece saddens and worries me greatly. Not because I’m willing to accept the metaphor as true without condition – my critical-thinking skills are a tad more developed than that, thank you very much – but because that is very much how this whole thing appears. A $700 billion bailout plan may or may not be necessary to secure the world economy; I must say that I have my doubts about how effectively our government might manage such a plan, but I’m not going to dismiss the idea out of hand. I do find it very interesting that the Bush administration, this same administration that ran on a platform of low-oversight free-market non-interference, is pressuring Congress to take action with money that we frankly don’t have, but that’s more of a political quibble than a constructive criticism. (And besides, there’s plenty of conservative lawmakers bringing up that exact point.)

No, what really bugs me the most about this whole debacle is the attitude with which the government is pursuing this plan. $700,000,000,000 isn’t exactly a small amount of money – it’s more than we’ve spent on the entire Iraq War, for chrissakes. And while I’m certain that there are arguments, perhaps even convincing ones, to be made in support of this plan, no one in our government is making them. The White House is far too busy pressuring Congress to take action, Congress is far too busy bickering about different aspects, and not one person is taking the time to address the American people – the taxpayers who are supposed to be paying for this plan – to say, in easily-understandable terms, “Hey – this is what’s going on with our economy, this is why we need to take on this much debt to fix it, and” –most importantly– “this is what we’re doing to make certain it doesn’t happen again.” Unsurprisingly, there’s been a not-insignificant amount of resentment building among those who are being asked to pay for this plan without a full understanding (or even a satisfactory partial explanation) of what it entails.

I think the Washington Post hits the nail on the head when they point out the similarities between the pervasive attitude in Congress now and just after 9/11. Both situations involve a crisis in which lawmakers are under enormous pressure to take action, and in neither of these situations has there been a clear path available that would simultaneously solve the problem and keep everybody happy. So in both cases, the Bush administration has chosen the worst possible solution – come up with a plan, push it through Congress, and cow the citizenry with scare tactics if they protest. “If we don’t pass the Patriot Act the terrorists will win!” “If we don’t bail out Wall Street, the world economy will crash!”

I feel I should note for the record that I am far from a populist. I agree very strongly with the immortal words of Winston Churchill, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” We live in a republic for a reason; government by democratic majority alone, when combined with human nature, is a disaster waiting to happen. That said, am I alone in believing that the representative members of our fine republic bear a certain responsibility to their voters to explain themselves, even in times of crisis? Hell, even an incomplete-but-convincing explanation would be better than what we’ve got now. It would at least pay lip service to the idea that yes, we lawmakers know that you taxpayers are going to be collectively bearing the cost of this plan, and we respect you (or your power when you’re united on an issue) enough to at least make a pretense of convincing you why we should take this action.

In a twisted sort of way, it feels like this debacle is an appropriate bookend for the Bush administration. A few months into its inception, a crisis hits, the administration and the legislators react by passing laws that are advantageous for the established government to the detriment of the citizenry, while using scare tactics to keep people from questioning them. And now that said citizenry are used to such treatment, they’re keeping the same attitude for this new crisis. I don’t know at this point if their plan will do more harm or good, but the complete lack of any sort of regard toward their electorate – and the lack of any organized (or failing that, simply loud) response from said electorate – worries me deeply.

About Nothing

There’s been a bit of consternation around the blogosphere about Microsoft’s most recent commercials featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. Detractors have been labeling them the “Ads About Nothing”, for reasons which should be fairly obvious. But if you’ve not seen them yet, give it a look. Go on. I’ll wait.

…

…Yeah, that’s what I said too. (And the folks at Penny Arcade, too, apparently.) Pretty much everyone’s reaction has been varying shades of “Huh?”, with a few folks even becoming angry about the lack of any sort of communication or even point to these ads.

This all got me to thinking a bit. I’m sure everyone reading this remembers the glorious 1990s, when the American economy was strong, the middle-class was relatively healthy and prosperous, we weren’t at war with anybody, housing prices were reasonable, our reputation with other countries was positive, and the most urgent thing on your average American’s mind was whether Britney Spears was, in fact, a virgin.

The uglier side of that, of course, was the way that sense of security and prosperity left so many people feeling at loose ends. For its 90s Pop Culture Edition, Trivial Pursuit used the tagline “A Game of Trivia for the Most Trivial of Decades”, which isn’t an inaccurate description. Sure, there was still the middle-class American life script to follow (go to college, get a job, start a family, save money, invest, get rich enough to retire comfortably), but that script is relatively hollow as a goal in and of itself. And the lack of any sort of cultural urgency, combined with the inherent American stunted emotional/relational development, left a lot of people feeling adrift – even those who were successful by all outward measurements. This is, I think, why American Beauty knocked everyone’s socks off when it came out in 1999: it was such a perfectly-presented and -encapsulated paean to the ambivalence of mainstream American culture of the time, simultaneously critical and weirdly nostalgic, the perfect swansong for the decade.

On the flip side of the entertainment coin, of course, was Seinfeld – the much-lauded “show about nothing”. Trivial Pursuit may well have coined their subtitle from this show alone – neurotic, egocentric sitcom characters living trivial lives filled with trivial activities. If American Beauty‘s cultural purpose was to get audiences to look closer at their lives, Seinfeld‘s was to reassure them that everything was perfectly okay – look at these characters! They coast through life, never actually changing or learning anything, certainly never examining themselves or their motivations, but things work out just fine for them. Chances are your life is at least marginally more important than theirs, so you’re doing just fine!

Fast-forward to the tail end of the next decade, when the American zeitgeist is significantly different. We’re mired in a war with no apparent reason or ending, our economy is in the toilet, Wall Street is melting down before our eyes, everyone’s worrying about layoffs or mergers or what have you, housing prices are still stratospheric (yet crashing enough to cause great hardship to those who’ve struggled to buy in the past few months), and the concept of the American middle-class in general is on life support. Most folk are worried about more concrete issues than a vague sense of emptiness in their lives.

So it comes as no surprise that transplanting the Seinfeld formula of brainless banter to a current-day setting has flopped so spectacularly. In the 90s, it was all good; today, it just comes off as smarmy. Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld may have time to hang around Shoe Circus and talk about leather and eat churros, but the rest of us are trying to get shit done – so why waste our time? If you’re trying to sell us something, get to the point. Just standing around trying to look cool isn’t impressing anyone. Even Apple, the epitome of “cool” in the geek world, actually communicates something with their funny ads.

In a way, I almost feel bad for them. Much like your parents, Microsoft has always been a couple of steps behind the curve when it comes to coolness (an image that Apple’s ads famously exploit). It makes sense, therefore, for them try and find a way to look more hip. Problem is, much like your parents, they’ve gone about it in a completely outdated and awkward way. So perhaps we can take it as a good sign on their part that the Seinfeld ads are getting the boot in favor of a new series taking direct aim at the now-ubiquitous “‘I’m a Mac,’ ‘And I’m a PC’” spots. At least it indicates they’re listening, which is most definitely a step forward.

Genes and male homosexuality

As someone who finds human sexuality (and the causes behind it) fascinating, I was very interested to read this article on a recent genetic theory of male homosexuality. (Don’t worry, it’s much more readable than my description makes it sound.) The question it tries to answer is this: Assuming a genetic basis for homosexuality, specifically male homosexuality, one would think that it would be self-limiting – two men are incapable of creating a child to pass on their genes, after all. But male homosexuality is seen at a low-but-constant rate in all kinds of societies. So, what gives?

For those who are too lazy to even read Slate’s rundown, here’s the Campbell’s Condensed Soup version: The technical term is “sexually antagonistic selection”, which basically means that while the trait is harmful for one sex, it’s advantageous for the other – enough to make up for the deficiency introduced in the first sex. We’ve already seen examples of this odd occurrence in other creatures, so it’s more than plausible for it to happen in humans, too.

But Rose, I hear you thinking. In order for this theory to work, the male homosexuality gene needs to give females an evolutionary boost. What possible procreative advantage could women gain from having gay male relatives?

Glad you asked!

Here’s a fascinatingly odd bit of data: Numerous studies have found that the female relatives of gay men produce children at a significantly higher rate than other women. Not only that, but among the female relatives of a gay man, those who are related to his mother have even higher birth rates than those related to his father. So it’s quite possible that whatever gene is responsible for male homosexuality also causes increased fertility in female carriers – more than enough to offset the lack of offspring from their gay male relatives.

Assuming this theory is correct, that brings up a couple of interesting potential conclusions:

First, and perhaps most obviously, all the family-values folks who are so concerned about gay people spreading their gayness like a disease can bugger off (so to speak) – the lack of evidence for the gay-disease model is now supported by a strong argument that only men who are genetically wired to be attracted to other men will be. (The flip side of that, of course, is that male homosexuality will always be around at that low-but-constant level, so y’all just need to get used to the idea that some guys are just going to prefer other guys to women and that’s that. Leave ‘em alone, already.)

Secondly, this and several other studies attribute female homosexuality/bisexuality to societal rather than genetic factors, which could explain the increasing amount of evidence finding female sexuality to be far more fluid than male sexuality – we’re not genetically hard-wired the way most guys are, so most of us aren’t limited to being attracted to one sex or the other except by societal factors. (I don’t buy the oft-pronounced theory that bisexual males don’t exist; I’ve known several. They do seem, however, far less common than bisexual females. This would also account for the fact that when I ask friends about their thoughts on the all-humans-are-inherently-bisexual theory, female friends often seem more receptive than male friends.)

Thirdly, one could make a pretty strong argument that it’s not a male-homosexuality gene per se that’s getting passed along; it’s an androphilia gene, one that increases attraction to men. The above-mentioned accounts aside, I have met women who just couldn’t imagine sleeping with someone of the same sex. Usually they didn’t react to the idea with disgust, the way men did; they just (if you’ll pardon the vulgarity) really, really loved the cock. I’d be very interested in seeing the rates of homosexual males among their relatives as opposed to in the general population…

The one thing I’ll admit I’m worried about is that, as with all homosexuality-is-genetic theories, folk will start going on about how it just proves that them queers are inferior and have got faulty wirin’ and should be fixed (or worse, exterminated).  I need to find a convenient link to the DSM-IV’s definition of a disorder – specifically, the part that says that in order for something to be a disorder, it has to cause mental or physical suffering to either the person exhibiting it or others interacting with them.

What do you want in a news service?

Just today, Slate ran an article about Michael Crichton’s fifteen-year-old prediction of mass-media extinction. The resulting story was interesting, but the reader-response question at the end caught my eye: What do you want in a news service? I was slightly surprised to realize that this question had been percolating for a while in the back of my head, and thanks to some recent reading material I even had a response mostly ready. This is what I sent in:

Excellent article on Crichton’s “mediasaurus” predictions. I hadn’t heard about the essay before (probably because, being only 10 at the time of its publication, I wasn’t really listening), but in retrospect his commentary about mainstream news media seems surprisingly bang-on.

I’ve lately been reading the excellent book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen, which examines the myriad problems plaguing high-school history textbooks. One of the recurring issues is the style in which they’re written; passive voice abounds, and almost all events happen more or less in a vacuum, which reduces history to a tedious list of dates and events. There was almost no effort in any of the textbooks Loewen studied to examine cause and effect, or present historical theories as to why things occurred. Often – especially in matters of foreign policy – this was due to the fact that doing so would paint the United States government in an unflattering light.

This struck a chord with me, not just from my own fuzzy high school memories, but because I’ve often noticed that about news stories, too. I remember being told in school that, when writing in a journalistic context, you should always answer the five Ws: who, what, when, where, and why. Modern news stories almost never answer that last to any satisfactory degree. You see pundits on TV proclaiming their opinions about one thing or another, but they almost never give much support for their arguments – and they never put things in any kind of historical context. Shortly after the September 11th attacks, Bush made an attempt to answer the “why” question with his now-famous “They hate our freedoms” speech, which even at age 18 I could tell was patent BS. Yet every major news outlet picked it up and trumpeted it as a national slogan. Bin Laden’s actual publicly declared reasons for attacking – resentment for the economic embargo against Hussein’s Iraq, our growing military presence in the Middle East, and most of all our economic and cultural might, as symbolized by the World Trade Center – received only minimal coverage, if any. None of the stories I saw out of mainstream media gave any indication as to the political pressures, racial/religious issues, and foreign-policy problems that provoked the attack in the first place. I remember being completely confused and annoyed that I couldn’t find a reasonable answer to the “why” question from any of the sources I was supposed to be trusting for information.

I would hazard a guess that many of the problems with mainstream news media stem from the same issues that high-school history textbooks have – they’re trying to sell a narrative, and when they come across information that doesn’t conform to that narrative, it gets more or less left by the wayside. As a result, there’s no coherent sense from any of the major news outlets as to why (for instance) North Korea might have given nuclear weapons/information to Syria, what might’ve happened in the past to encourage their hostile attitude, or even what the heck is going on with the disarmament talks. Simplicity sells – the mainstream population wants simple answers that reassure them that everything’s all right. (Or at least that’s what they’ve been consistently buying from the news for the past few decades.) The problem is, when bad things continue to happen, it leaves the populace either confused as to what’s gone wrong, or clinging to jingoist slogans such as “the towelheads hate our freedoms” to explain things to themselves. (I wish I could tell you that I made that last one up, or even that I’d only seen it used as an argument once or twice. I really do.)

What I’d like to see is non-simplified news reporting – articles that don’t just speak in the present tense, but also examine past events and their potential contributions to the current situation, and most of all give us some idea of what the people involved are thinking. Nothing occurs in a vacuum; when a person (especially a person representing a nation) takes an action, there are inevitably reasons. I, for one, would like to know why – and if, in the process of investigating, the reporters make public information that’s been largely ignored by the mainstream press, so much the better.

Of course, if all that is a bit long and involved, I’ll admit that I’d settle for Brian’s answer:

Rupert Murdoch set on fire.  On national television.

Picture time!

Brian and I spent some of last weekend out and about in the lovely Juneau weather (it was only mostly cloudy).  He took a bunch of pictures, some of which even had people in them!  Well, “person”, singular:

(Click picture to significantly embiggen.)

As serene and contemplative as I look, here, you’d probably never guess that there’s an incredibly uncomfortable spine of wood jabbing into my back, just above my tailbone and to the left of my spine.  Ah, well.  Scenic backgrounds always come at a price, especially when they’re actual physical ones.

On a side note, Brian’s camera is really an amazing piece of equipment – in the full-size version, you can see the grit on my pants knee from where I was kneeling in the dirt earlier.

And, in keeping with the “Rose looking thoughtfully out to sea” theme:

(Embiggen the picture, embiggen your world.)

More Rose-contemplates-the-ocean-that-you-can’t-actually-see goodness, although at least this time you can see the line of seaweed from the previous high tide in the background.  Brian said he spent a bunch of time in Photoshop with these photos editing out stray strands of hair that were going everywhere – he must’ve done a good job, because I certainly can’t see any signs.

And now, for a rare B-side acoustic track:  Brian gets the camera aimed at him for once.  He claims to hate having his picture taken, because he is (in his own words) “funny looking”.  I just don’t get that, because I think he’s incredibly handsome, but it’s certainly possible that I’m prejudiced.  So, anyone?  Funny looking or gorgeous?

(Embiggen this photo by up to five inches!)

VICTOR:  …I mean, how many times have you seen Dances with Wolves?  A hundred?  Two hundred times? …Oh, jeez, you have seen it that many times, haven’t you?  Man, do you think that shit is real?  God.  Don’t you even know to how to be a real Indian?

THOMAS:  I guess not.

VICTOR:  [...] First of all, quit grinning like an idiot.  Indians ain’t supposed to smile like that.  Get stoic.  You got to look mean or people won’t respect you.  White people will run all over you if you don’t look mean.  You got to look like a warrior.  You got to look like you just got back from killing a buffalo.

THOMAS:  But our tribe never hunted buffalo.  We were fishermen!

VICTOR:  What?  You want to look like you just came back from catching a fish?  It ain’t Dances with Salmon, you know!  Man, you think a fisherman is tough?  [...]  And second, you can t be talking as much as you do. You got to have some mystery.  You got to look like you have secrets, you know?  Like you’re in a secret conversation with the earth or something.  You don’t talk.  You just nod your head.

–Smoke Signals (1998), screenplay by Sherman Alexie

(Embiggened is always better!)

For the record, Brian is Japanese (not Native American), but trying to get him to smile for a photograph was a rather trying experience, as he seems to belong to the Thomas school of Being a Real Indian.  Fortunately, my talent for coming up with random snark did not fail me:  “Come on, dude.  Think of Christina Ricci naked!”  That got a pretty big smile, as I was hoping it would.

I feel I should also point out that the far-better framing in this second shot is after a good fifteen minutes’ worth of advice.  For all his camera-shyness, Brian’s getting to be quite an excellent photographer.

Let’s Say I Come Visit Your House

A response to Let’s Say I Break Into Your House.

Recently the issue of illegal immigration seems to be causing a lot of strife among Americans of different opinions. Some Americans are angry that the United States, one of the richest nations in the world, is trying to make it harder for people born in poorer countries to come here and make a better life for themselves. Some Americans are even more angry that the United States doesn’t work harder to keep these people from sneaking into the country, because the Americans were born here and the immigrants were not.

Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind this argument.

Let’s say I come visit your house.

I’ve come from a small house months away, and am feeling distinctly weary and travel-worn. I knock on the door of a giant mansion, hoping that the people who live there will be willing to spare some bread and water, as all of mine is gone.

When you answer the door, you see how hungry and tired I am, and like any good Christian, you bring me into your house. You offer me a place at your table where I eat delicious food, far better than what I have at home; you introduce me to your extended family, all of whom make me feel welcome. You show me the extent of this beautiful house you and your family have built, and the beautiful things you’ve made to go in it. Feeling cheered, I make the return trip to my much humbler and more crowded abode, and tell everyone I know about this beautiful house I’ve visited where there’s more than enough room for all of us.

Meanwhile, one of the fleas that I had picked up on the trip to your house has escaped inside, and carries a deadly disease that no one in your house has any immunity to. Of all the hundred members of your extended family, only five survive, leaving your giant mansion incredibly quiet and empty.

Some while later, I return to your house, this time with all the members of my large extended family with me. You make us welcome as you have before, but it soon becomes clear that this time I’ve decided I’m going to live in your house indefinitely, and eat your food and enjoy your wealth as if it were mine. And if you try to call the police and force me out, I will shoot you with my guns that I’ve brought with me. Besides, it’s only fair, because you have a much nicer house than I do and now there’s no one to enjoy it.

You acknowledge the truth of this and agree to try and live with me in your beautiful house, while I rob your family members’ graves and stay in their rooms and eat their food. But it’s okay, because really, I know how to use your house better than you do. You’re just a primitive savage, who doesn’t know how to govern yourself. It’s hardly your fault that the house was going to waste. And since you’re here, why don’t you do all the cleaning and cooking and planting and yard work because golly, aren’t you glad I came along to show you how to properly make use of your house? What a deal it was for me!

Oh yeah! I demand that you learn my language, so I can give you orders!!

Unfortunately, my descendants saw how ridiculous this was. And so they passed laws…to make sure it didn’t happen to them.

Only in America.

A cause for celebration

I come in to work this morning, and there’s a folder sitting on my desk with our company health care logo on it. Given that it’s plan renewal season, I pick it up, and, with the care and attention usually given to a live explosive, gingerly open to the “Highlights of your Health Care Coverage” page.

A quick scan reveals that my benefits haven’t changed significantly – and the deductibles are still the same.

I feel like cheering. Hooray! My health insurance isn’t screwing me any more than it did last year!

I guess I qualify as a Real American now…

On the latest gaming buzz

Gamer or no, I’ll admit that the Grand Theft Auto series has never held much appeal for me.  I’m not certain exactly why; I like sandbox gameplay, generally speaking, and I don’t really care about the violent content – I’ve known people who played it entirely for the purpose of listening to the hilarious parody radio stations.  Frankly, I think it’s the premise that didn’t interest me much.  Role-play a magic-using treasure-hunting part-elf?  Sign me up! Role-play a small-time crook stealing cars and trying to work his way up the criminal ladder?  Enh.

Premise, however, is always secondary to storytelling, and the latest iteration of the GTA franchise is rumoured to be the first one with a main storyline so compelling that it completely drowns out the siren song of sandbox gameplay.  I’ve seen the term “Oscar-caliber” bandied about on no fewer than three different major review websites in reference to the writing and voice acting, and while I sincerely doubt it’s a happy story (immigrant-drawn-into-criminal-underworld stories rarely are), I’m really very interested in experiencing it for myself.

Now to hurry up and get out of debt so I can justify buying yet another $60 game…

I am so damn out of shape.

I have been defeated by the spectre of twenty sit-ups in a row. This from the girl who could do fifty of them without breaking a sweat back in high school.

I’m also now a good twenty pounds over where I’d like to be weight-wise, and a good ten over what I’m really comfortable with.

I think I’m going to be hitting the treadmill (and perhaps doing sit-ups) on a daily basis for a while.

On the positive side, I managed to run three-quarters of a mile straight at 6 MPH. So I’m pretty close to my goal of making it for a whole mile.

So, goals: By the end of May, be able to (a) run a mile at 6 MPH comfortably and (b) do fifty sit-ups in a row. (Not necessarily without breaking a sweat. I’m trying to be set attainable goals.)

If I can manage all that, and be out of debt, I’ll be a very happy woman…