Brainsplitter

Marrying Other Species?

2009-07-14T17:17:00.002-04:00

I know my internal filter can go offline sometimes, but not nearly to this extent. Fox News host Brian Kilmeade critiques a study reinforcing the idea that couples involved in long-term marriage receive positive health benefits, specifically in this case an increased protection against Alzheimer's disease.

Kilmeade specified,

The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes; that's the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish.

Okay, let's try to regain our bearings. Gary Crester, chair of behavioral sciences at CSU Pomona, counters with the following abstract in a 1999 article called "Cross National Marriage in Sweden: Immigration and Assimilation 1971-1993." He writes,

Sweden is often thought of as a country with relatively little diversity in terms of ethnicity, religion and even social class. In Sweden today, however, with over 12% of the population foreign born or the children of immigrants, the emphasis is on multiculturalism. The official policy is to allow and even encourage immigrant groups to sustain important elements of their culture, including their language, and to realize a multicultural society (Runblom, 1996).

Now let's look at assimilation a little closer. Assimilation refers to the attempts of an incoming immigrant group to adopt the cultural distinctions, manners, values, and philosophies of a local group. Assimilation, of course, is one step down from amalgamation: that is, the efforts to promote a blended racial and ethnic society through intermarriage and having children. However, these social tendencies need not be mutually exclusive of one another. They simply depict broad trends exhibited when two or more ethnically, culturally, or racially distinct groups encounter one another and share living and occupational space on a wide scale. It makes anecdotal sense, at the very least, to consider that in the process of attaining a new citizenship, that an immigrant would marry someone of the domestic culture and have children in order to establish "new roots." It is pleasing to know that Sweden finds an encouragement of incoming immigration, an increase in ethnic diversity, and a retention of old roots and customs all compatible with one another.

America has not been so fortunate. If Kilmeade were intellectually serious about his dispute, he would not forget so easily the fact that those who settled and colonized the New World had to do so by forcing the original Native Americans off of their soils and crowding them out by any means necessary. I think we all heard the Pocahontas fairytale in which a white settler, John Smith, entrusts her to navigating the new terrain and to settle down with her eventually. That is where such blending stops, I imagine.

In this country, we do not have the luxury of arguing from a "pure race" standpoint because it has been built up over 200 years through cycles of immigration. Anglo-Saxons and those escaping persecution for Anglican faith first, the forced removal and reintroduction of the slave trade, and the European immigrants who wanted a better life and to bask in the glow of prosperity. Pre-existing world powers wanted to stake claims on new soil and brought their people in to do just that.

To be ignorant of immigration facts is one thing, but Kilmeade uses the word "species." Last I checked, color, creed, or ethnic identity does not factor into taxonomy. We're all Homo sapiens sapiens.

Darwin resolved the issue back in 1859 with the publication of The Origin of Species, in which he concluded after analytic study that race was but one rather arbitrary difference in a given set of members sharing the same species. To be fair, scientists at the turn on the nineteenth century argued for a polygenic approach -- that, literally, there were enough phenotypical differences to distinguish races as separate species. Berel Lang notes wisely in Race and Racism in Theory and Practice that scientific taxonomies in the eighteenth century "were evaluative hierarchies as well as descriptive categorizations, that is, they were also ranking systems." Polygenics became intimately wrapped up within a legitimacy scheme for racism for the next one hundred years. Some members of the scientific community demanded -- nay, created -- proof to legitimize the second-class status of blacks. From the infamous Tuskegee experiments to sideshow circus attractions at World's Fair expositions, let's just say that this wasn't the first time people likened African-Americans to monkeys. Probably not the last either.

I struggle to understand where such mentalities come from, and I can only chalk it up to irrational fear. Over one million individuals immigrated into the United States last year, setting a new record. While some racial groups have stalled as a percentage of population, others are growing significantly. The Census predicts that people of white, non-Hispanic descent will eventually become an ethnic minority before 2050, and that taps into a real sense of visceral threat for some members of the population. You heard such antagonism in the prior presidential election, again this sort of artificial designation of the "real" American from the "Commie Pinko." Pardon my brashness here, but we cannot continue to laud these visions of patriotism and freedom and equality without having some recognition that our values have not been so pristine in their execution. To embrace one's legacy is to understand it at even its most deprave moments, to acknowledge those shadows, and to resolve to do differently in the future.

Until then, Kilmeade will probably keep shooting off his mouth.

Contextual

2009-07-09T18:42:00.001-04:00

UPDATE:
Just in case my directions turn out clear as mud, I uploaded some HTML code and directions to Google Docs.

Hey, I found an interesting widget while updating the list of blog directories on the right sidebar. Sphere features a Javascript widget that enables users to figure out who else on the Internet is talking about that same topic. The site provides simple instructions on how to add the Javascript code to your blogging platform.

I changed up the appearance of Sphere's widget a little bit. How? It took some time, but it involves an HTML tag called post-footer. Click on Edit Layout to get your blog's layout, then click Edit HTML. Check the box to expand widget templates. Do a CTRL-F search for post-footer and click "next" until you get to a long tag called post-footer-line. Each numbered line hereafter represents a line taken up in your footer. The code here basically puts "posted by [you]" in the first line, tags and comments in the second line, and so forth.

I followed Sphere's directions for the Javascript into the [head] section. Now, before typing in this next part, do that post-footer search again. Your first hit in the expanded template should say post-footer, then some CSS code beneath, the first of which is a 3-digit HTML color code. This #XXX is the background color of your footer. Now that I know the code, I added an empty line below comments and tags by simply manually entering a string called post-footer-line post-footer-line-3 with a [p] tag. Right after that post-footer tag, I put [font color] such-and-such, some characters, closed the font tag, and then closed the [p class] tag. Whew! Now you've got a neat blank space.

Finally, create your fourth footer line (just like you did the third) and add the second part of the Sphere code. The default says, "Sphere: Related Content," but I changed it to "Who else is talking about this?"

I tested Sphere earlier. It works relatively well on popular topics featuring a rather generalized keyword, like my post the other day asking for stories about healthcare. The only downside is that if your entry includes embedded video, Sphere will get stuck behind it.

Either way, enjoy your new plaything, readers!
Love it or loathe it? Just let me know.

Compendium

2009-07-06T01:58:00.003-04:00

I stumbled across a list of sites in which you can submit your blog to a directory in order to build traffic. I didn't like how they looked in the sidebar, so I decided to create a blog post listing them all. Many of these sites have been around for a long time, but as of now, the following sites still operate for free and, at best, only ask for reciprocal linking. (Even better if you warn them ahead of time of the stunt I've just pulled, right?)

Here you go.
A1 Web Links
Blogged
Blog Listings
Blog Scholar
Blogoriffic
Blogville
Boing Boing
Directory Best
Feedmap
Flookie
Globe of Blogs
Sphere

Whose Side Are You On?

2009-07-04T01:47:00.003-04:00

MoveOn.org begins releasing television ads targeting Senators receiving significant backing from the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries while standing adamant against the public option in health care reform.

Check out the one targeting Senator Landrieu of Louisiana.

Less Than One Term

2009-07-03T16:25:00.002-04:00

Jonathan Martin at Politico follows up on CNN's breaking story about Sarah Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska. She is set to resign at the end of the month and not to run for governor in a second term. She announced the surprise news from her house over this Independence Day weekend, but left considerable ambiguity about her future political plans. In the meantime, political commentators and media outlets continue to speculate the rationale and the plan for the young governor.

Since setting foot on the national stage last year during the 2008 presidential election, Palin has had a history of fending off several ethics investigations and weathered the accusation of a blissfully ignorant vetting procedure. Martin reports that the legal defense fund set to recompense the investigations must reach nearly $300,000 in order to settle the account. In addition, Palin has served a considerable amount of time as governor in absentia, and while being gone, chooses to take late night talk show hosts toe-to-toe rather than focus more attention to state business. I have a simple word for it: "starstruck."

Let's look at how this might unfold. The folksy Fargo accent is bad enough, but even her most staunch conservative supporters have had to face that uphill defensive posture when stating her qualifications for office. Reporters have done double duty in asking her direct questions about experience and her preparation for the stage and also for throwing her a few hints here and there about policies to which she is ignorant. Credited for energizing the base, CNN released a poll showing that 80% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Palin, dwindling 47% for Independents, and 23% of Democrats. To be fair, "favorable" could mean everything from "ready to serve office" to "you make me laugh, you silly, silly moose-eating pitbull-lipstick hockey Mom, you!" If David Letterman could get her that unhinged after one ill-placed joke, then imagine how well she would stand up against real threats to American security or the complex intricacies in navigating public policy and procedure? Appropriately, Republican strategists asked to comment on the news at this time are not in a big hurry to rush a swift defense or offer reassurance. Even her stronger supporters are confused by this sudden move. And needless to say, she would have to construct a reasonable explanation for increasingly unexplainable behavior.

To be fair, I don't think she's being crazy or off-kilter. Pawning herself as a faith-loving, family mom, I'm actually surprised it has taken her this long to return roost. Maybe she just needed to drop out, and it seemed only appropriate to let the press know.

A brilliant move?
No, I doubt it. Mary Matalin commented on air that her swan song seems appropriate because her rebellious image makes the resignation acceptable, and that now she is freed up to build political capital for 2012. Perhaps. I just don't think that the behavior will hold up to the substantive criticism. Competent politicians, especially those with presidential aspirations, have to juggle the day-to-day responsibilities and the speculation and the study and the campaigning. You have to interview, study, read, read, and read more, and communicate with staff, and show up to Congress. You can't quit the country midway through, and pledge loyalty and love for the home as a substitute. It's not like Obama flies back to Chicago to check up on the local machinery. Palin waxing romantically about it now cannot soothe the sting of a premature reaction.

In the meantime, can you seriously imagine how well she would fare juggling a massive economic crisis, rising unemployment, health care, and energy reforms? For that matter, can you imagine the fervent rush of her staff to defend a whimsical anecdote or an injection of prayer into political discussion? Last I checked, you can only pray to win the Powerball. God can't fix a country, no matter how much tongue-speech takes place.

What do you think of all this?

Spread Out

2009-06-30T17:21:00.004-04:00

Wanted to send a quick shout out to Amanda at Blogger Buster for helping me convert my super crowded sidebar into a neater three-column display.

What do you think?

UPDATE:
Very happy with Amanda's template. Only one small catch. I didn't want the AddThis bookmark to appear under each post. Here's how to get rid of it.

Sign into Blogger.
Click on Layout, then Edit HTML.
Check Expand Widget Templates.
Press CTRL-F and type in AddThis. This will take you to the marker signifying where the AddThis bookmark begins. It looks like [!!--AddThis BEGINS]. Remove this code. However, the rest of the code is separated.
Search for AddThis again (or click "next" in search box). Scroll down. You'll see a tag reading [p class = post-footer-line-3] where the AddThis bookmark HTML continues. Starting from the p class, highlight all the HTML from this point to the terminating /p tag.
You should delete about six lines of code total. The deleted section will include the p class opening tag, the div align for the bookmarker, and the image source and link for the bookmarker. The last thing deleted should be the [!!--AddThis ENDS].
Preview your template. If it looks okay, save it.

I don't knock the AddThis service, so I just went back to their website to get button code that I could put elsewhere on my blog. I placed the button in the Subscribe area on the right. Should you do the same, when it asks what kind of service you use, don't select Blogger. Select "Website," your button, then "No analytics" (since I use StatCounter for that), and you'll get one simple line of code to put wherever you like.

CODE REMOVED:
STEP 4:
[!-- AddThis Bookmark Post Button BEGIN --]

STEP 5:
[p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'][br/]
[div align='left'][a expr:href='"http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?pub=4QVQQ2TM5XDPAYVN&url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank' title='Bookmark using any bookmark manager!'][img alt='AddThis Social Bookmark Button' height='16' src='http://s5.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif' style='border: 0px; padding: 0px' width='125'/][/a][/div]
[!-- AddThis Bookmark Post Button END --][/p]

UPDATE 2:
Simplified and clarified directions, heh. Thanks, Roxanne!

Stories on Health Care

2009-06-30T03:05:00.008-04:00

UPDATE: Do you have a health care story you would like to share? Let me know. Feel free to leave a comment in this entry, send a Tweet, or shoot me an e-mail.

A story from a new blogging friend T. over at Wood Not Wood regarding some of her sentiments on her current HMO. To be fair, the story came out serendipitously. She left a comment on my last entry and I asked for some follow-up.

All I want is one great Doc who doesn't abandon us when they find that the insurance won't pay as much as they'd like for a procedure -- or try to fit treatment into what the insurance company will cover. It's as if the HMO is telling the doctors what they can and cannot do. And it has nothing to do with what's best for the patient, but rather, what's good for the HMO.

I was in the Army and health care was never a concern. We went to the doctor whenever we needed to and, not surprisingly, we didn't need to go often. I think we'd save a lot of money if people were getting regular and preventative healthcare instead of waiting until illnesses become dire and then paying ER costs or worse, needing hospitalization at the taxpayers expense.

I lived for 5 years in Germany and their healthcare system was incredible to me. Nobody there was freaking out about having to pay for the healthcare of the homeless or the jobless because everyone received the same health care. It didn't matter whether you were a millionaire or a street sweeper, you were entitled to good healthcare.

I wonder sometimes if American resistance towards this type of across-the-board care is related to our derision of Communism? The whole idea that everyone pays in equally and receives equally? But this is about life and death. Surely that should be an inalienable right to all of us as human beings.

If it is just about money then common sense and past experience dictate that preventative care is far less expensive than emergency care. As the taxpayers who are footing the bill we should demand the least expensive solution over the long haul. I'd love to think of my kids growing up in a world where no 'company' has the right to decide who is worthy of good health or how physicians can treat their patients.

There's a lot of good stuff in her narrative that speaks for itself, so I'll just stick with a general comment that has been on my mind lately. Obama stuck it to the conservative dissidence by questioning openly how competition between the government and the private sector would yield a subsequent meltdown of capitalism.

Here's a second one. If front-end investment yields bigger long-term savings, then when it is not a good idea to back that up? The rhetorical kneejerking might sound (to some extent) wonderfully reminiscent of a young child's temptation to blow a sum of money to satisfy some immediate gratification -- a cool outfit, maybe a new video game -- rather than stash it for the long haul. (Never mind savings interest.) If the public option makes it easier for people to access health care and motivates them to seek checkups ahead of time, we get the ease in burden on the back end. Healthier people now equals less of the heart attacks, cardiovascular disease, and chronic conditions that weigh down the system. Healthy people yield greater work productivity, decreased chronic stress, and increased success at balancing life tasks. Rather than learning how to just "deal" with illness, we can actually treat it and get over it and get on successfully.

If I hear Tom Tancredo wail some nonsense like "biting the Socialist apple" one more time, I'm going to lose it. Just like he lost that former job representing Colorado. (Zing!)

To wrap up, my friend Caroline added a few good quips about her experiences. Originally calculating how even a few extra dollars in income would disqualify her from public assistance, she has since changed job tactics. Wherever she works will pay off health care expenses for her son -- that's it. Needless to say, unless she lucks out securing (typically) full time work with health benefits, it would be difficult to build any meaningful net income.

But it was when she mentioned the sharp contrast in treatment and consideration from medical staff after her pregnancy that I caught notice. "White trash," the idea that presenting Medicare evokes an indifferent smirk and waiting in line. Somehow, laying cash on the table for a co-pay somehow verifies the right to receive care. Are credit cards given that same level of scrutiny? Does your right of treatment relate in any way to the amount of liquid income on hand?

I hope you're trying to consolidate that high balance. And if you can't get care or try to tough it out in the meantime, I wish you luck. It's probably easier to cough up some incessant phlegm than to persuade, trick, and lie your way into getting your health insurance company to cooperate on a claim.

Where is the Audacity?

2009-06-27T19:14:00.004-04:00

Yesterday evening, members from the group Tucson Community for Change organized a peaceful demonstration for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The group is asking the representative to support a public option in health care reform. A representative for Ms. Giffords collected the flowers, upon which the organizers tied letters and personal stories in fighting for adequate care.

I have not had much in the way of health insurance throughout much of my life. I was fortunate to have military coverage in early childhood. When my parents divorced, however, my mom's employer did not offer health care coverage and I remember needing to tough through many illnesses with bed rest, chicken soup, and hot tea. The last time I received any kind of significant health care was in high school when I had suffered a seizure in algebra class. I underweat CAT scans and saw a neurologist at our nearby hospital. Several hours of "treatment" and a number of puzzled looks later, I was handed a bill and sent along my merry way. After my mom had been threatened by a collection agency to repay the balance right away, what little I had saved up for school books for the following semester went immediately toward the debt. Only in health care can you get no treatment or meaningful service and are expected to pay for a job well done.

Health care was a very popular issue during last year's presidential campaign with the debate over whether a free-market tax cut or a more thoroughgoing government effort would be necessary in establishing health care reform. Haunted by the dispatch of Clinton's efforts for reform, Democrats today are, if anything, fearful and hesitant. Politicians are strongly divided whereas the American public could not be more clear: the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that a combined 83% of those sampled somewhat or strongly favor a government-run public option in health care.

I cheered when Obama issued the following statement (thanks, Lean Left), point blank:

Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

Obama just proved in one fell swoop that, despite his assumption of the office of President, he has a rather common-sense way of looking at the issue.

"Change!" "Choice!" Despite the path to get there, everyone seemed in agreement last year about how important it is for Americans to be able to shop and get coverage suitable to their needs. McCain deluded himself into thinking that, like car insurance or that spiffy new album available on iTunes, health care providers would provide all the details, information, and pricing on the front end and that we could make our picks accordingly. The real irony in the words "free market" is that those driven by profit would do well to constrain information and accessibility, thus compromising the quality of choices we do have.

This is the same free market that doles out hundreds and thousands of pages of fine print they hope the populace won't read. This is the same free market that executes economic leverage, absorbs competition, and skirts around monopolistic practice. So, why should I put any less trust in a government-run operation when the private sector already left disproportionate numbers of the lower income, poor, minority designation a long time ago?

In all seriousness, I don't know the answer to that question. Bureaucracy in any set of stripes is problematic at times.

I am thoroughly frustrated that the same doctors and nurses and medical staff who uphold Hippocratic principles to do no harm petition the lobbying agencies who bed the politicians and court them into resistance with the promise of campaign financing. The people get them elected, but the money continues to do all the talking. Every now and then, people like Obama get fed up with the nice talk and say, what gives? A Senator gets an incomparable level of health care in return for years of service and a rather cushy job, whereas everyday blokes like myself have to scrounge up co-payments when we get tired of soup and tea. Conservatives place hands over breasts before the altar of the free market, yet are unwilling to offer a true test. And we're not innocent either. We are duped into believing the horror stories about Canadian and European services which are certainly not perfect, yet we are the only first-world industrial country that continues to lag behind Costa Rica and Haiti.

Seriously. Just an inch above Slovenia.

Recommended reading:
Pew Research poll on health care (courtesy of Daily Kos)

Twitter

2009-06-26T16:39:00.002-04:00

I finally jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. By the way, let me know if you're on Twitter so I can check you out. Wish me luck!

Ten or Fifteen Hours

2009-06-19T21:30:00.003-04:00

Leaving a small footprint about a topic I may want to explore further. I wonder if any of you have insight or information for me regarding the nature of part-time work what with the economic downturn of the past year.

I ask because I talked to someone online today who just moved out here from the East Coast and craved an overall change of life and pace. He mentioned not having much work, and explained that, as of now, he works only a few shifts at a local restaurant while facing rejections of being overqualified for government jobs. I know very little about hiring at the Davis-Monthan Air Base, and I imagine that companies are trying to minimize their labor. Tucson is that much the worse for it since so much of the population leaves during the summer months. Thinking of my own stress in hunting down gainful employment, I imagine that people across the board have had to compromise and seek out whatever they could find, which often requires taking fewer shifts, being less successful in negotiating pay per experience, and being deprived of health and medical benefits often reserved for full-time workers.

Then again, you are talking to someone who has worked multiple jobs for years. Perhaps the food service and retail industries are more prone to underemployment than in other sectors. With that in mind, I can hardly remember a time that my employers were not consumed with profit margins -- always mentioning how sales in a particular week were "down," or that our per-person check averages were too "low." It was as if we were always on the brink of some adverse circumstance, that we were a few dollars above having to let someone go on the staff. This was as recent as the past year when, despite the acknowledgment of fewer people shopping for clothes or treating themselves out for a good meal, no one saw the depression coming.

The easy answer is that businesses are hardly ever on the side of the employee when pitted against profit. The employee is, ultimately, expendable. It is often unclear the extent to which assistant management and higher management are asked to make sacrifices and to take pay cuts in the face of decreasing profit.

Unfortunately, that leaves little recourse for people struggling to generate income, pay bills, relieve debts, or build savings. In a personal finance class, the instructor recommends that people meet financial goals by either reducing expenditures or increasing income. To that end, the first option is limited. We can reduce luxuries, go out to dinner less, cook more meals at home, stay in, and skimp on the premium changes. It is that much more difficult, however, to ask for a pay raise or to manage working multiple jobs. To do multiple jobs would require cutbacks in benefits that, in and of themselves, build security and wealth.

What are your thoughts? Can we expect more of the same until the "economy turns around?"

Depression

2009-06-19T17:04:00.002-04:00

I finished an entry for my new blogging friend, Dea, whose blog, Journey to a New Found Me, features practical advice for managing stress, depression, and psychological troubles. She conducted an interview with me about depression. Be sure to send feedback and suggestions her way. She would greatly appreciate it as would I.

Oh my!

2009-06-15T04:35:00.004-04:00

I was getting ready to turn in for the night. Before I logged off BlogExplosion, this screen appeared.

Users have a chance to earn increased traffic just by visiting different blogs in random rotation and clicking the correct number to earn credits. Now, I found it odd that I won 10 bonus credits twice this evening, but this is the first time I have won this high a mystery credit amount. Fifty! Holy crap!

Splash pages like the one above pop up every so often, and the credits earned result page views for your own blog. Since I have spent a bit more time this summer on my blog, BE has helped drive up my web traffic and serendipitiously enough putting me in touch with blogs that I might not otherwise visit. Thanks to web traffic services, my feed subscriptions have doubled in a month and I am getting more comments and helpful feedback.

(You'll have to excuse A Gust of Wind for suggesting that eating butter prior to drinking will aid in alleviating premature drunkenness, though.)

In the meantime, if you want to boost your traffic, try BlogExplosion. I enjoy the service and highly recommend it.

More Monkey Business?

2009-06-15T03:17:00.002-04:00

The last time anyone made public reference to Obama being related to a monkey, it was in a vindictive political cartoon depicting the stimulus bill clutched by a chimpanzee shot thrice by police. The cartoon, created by Sean Delonas and rife with racially insensitive overtones, appeared originally in the New York Post with defense, and later retractions and apologies from staff.

So, a certain GOP activist in South Carolina decided to up the ante. Transitioning from printed negligence to a posting on Facebook (that has since been removed) and, for the meantime memorialized with television coverage, Rusty DePass compares First Lady Michelle Obama to a gorilla that had escaped a Columbia zoo the other day. CNN offers up details in the footage below.

"I'm sure it's" -- the gorilla that got away -- "just one of Michelle's ancestors -- probably harmless."

DePass apologized if the joke offended anyone at first, but then later justified the joke as something that Mrs. Obama had stated in a speech. Forgive yourself the need to overstretch your limbs on this one. He says that the First Lady made a remark about how humans are descended from monkeys, yet the particular escapee has its name written in the Presidential family tree on the maternal side. Got it.

Conservative critics are batting, by my count, at least five to nothing on the taken-too-far jokes. While Palin's busying herself with an insistence that Letterman apologizes to young women all over the country in alphabetical order yet failing to think twice about the length of her own skirts, they're equally hushed about all this monkey business. Obama food stamps are mistaken as food. Watermelon on the White House lawn is a poor laugh. Oops, I forgot to forward the e-mail to my closest friends, not the entire listservice.

I strain to wonder why the politicos keep the roughshod humor to themselves as opposed to the entertainers who actually have latitude to crack the jokes.

Be that as it may, African-Americans have weathered a long history of unfavorable comparisons to primates and sub-human species. I just ran a Google search on "black people are monkeys" and the first hit leads to ChristWire.org. Check out the headlines appearing right around President Obama's inauguration.

Black peoples [sic] DNA is closer to monkeys DNA.

Appreciably so? As I recall, humans and chimpanzees share roughly 98% of their genetic material in common, and for any statistically significant racial differences to show up would require strong testing. A strong test does not include a side-by-side screen capture of a chimpanzee face and a given African-American face with similarities elucidated regarding nasal structure, the distance between the eyes, lip fullness, and so forth. No source links are included.

Would you advise black women giving up on black men and start going exclusively with white men?

I imagine the trend wouldn't catch on too well the deeper in the South we go. The statement begs the question of any discernible quality white men have by virtue of their racial identity (and that other ethnic groups cannot have) that black women would desire. Beyond statistically significant patterns of higher economic standing, money alone cannot make, create, or change personality characteristics that are more relevant to success in dating and marriage.

Is rap music nothing but monkeys trying to make themselves feel important?

Okay, I suppose that black man/monkey comparison has been successfully proven. I would ask Eminem's opinion first, maybe include Asher Roth. Let me know how that goes for you.

In all seriousness, Terence Mbulaheni pens a prolific account of the history of stereotypes linking African-Americans, jungle barbarism, and likeness to primates, detailing the pernicious and scathing continuation of the stereotype even today. Whether hung up on appearances or overplaying interpretations of sexual prowess and animalistic instinct, black people answer to this cultural indignation and no such white counterpart exists. While Curious George sits aloft sarcastic slogans in Obama's (successful!) presidential run, white persons have no such corresponding charge.

Perhaps a unicorn is appropriate? After all, they are depicted as purely white, holy, sacred, mystical, and worthy of adoration. Monkeys are busy scarfing down bananas, grooming each other for lice, and flinging feces. The real trouble with racial stereotypes is that even if the insulted minority group chooses to stoop to that same level of insensitivity, the stereotype loses its sticking ability. Even from charged commentators like Katt Williams or Cedric the Entertainer, white people are given generic names like "Paul" or "Peter" topped with a nasal accent and overly enforced enunciation. They like golf, Parcheesi, cannot control liquor. But, ultimately, they're still human and the jokes have largely remained isolated with given comedy clubs, and Barnes and Noble has to apologize for creating an Obama display with a monkey book in the middle.

Maybe it would do us all some good if the insensitive would quit doing stupid things and offering half-hearted apologies. Seriously. Take some notes already. If Rusty DePass can't do it, you can't either. When in doubt, assume that it will piss someone off. Assume that guys like me who care about race are going to blog you to death. Imagine how that would look if a big, mean ~~monkey~~ African-American walked by. Don't be surprised if you get nailed with a pair of interlaced knuckles pounding downward from overhead.

Considering the economic crisis, I suppose professionals who offer diversity workshops and sensitivity training are still in high demand.

Two Incidents, Eleven Days

2009-06-11T19:08:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, the Huffington Post reported 88-year-old James W. von Brunn approaching the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum armed with a rifle and opening fire within moments of entering the building. A security guard and six-year veteran, 39-year-old Stephen Tyrone Johns, intercepted von Brunn right away. Both men sustained injuries. Johns died later that evening, and von Brunn stunningly survived a blow to the head. At last report, he was in critial condition and is now charged with murder. Von Brunn had been known to the federal justice system. In 1981, he sought to detain executives at the Federal Reserve under "citizen's arrest" and served six years for the activity.

This second incident, following the murder of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion practitioner and obstetrician in Kansas City, took place a week and a half later.

Sources indicate that the Kansas City women's center in which Tiller worked will close permanently. The real gall, however, is in Operation Rescue's president stating a willingness to make an offer on the clinic. "We need a bigger office," he said. Meanwhile, reporters, commentators, and citizens with half a shred of decency at the Institute of the Maddeningly Insensitive and Inappropriate requested that the bronze statuettes dedicated to heroes of vigilantism and twisted logic not be erected... at least not right away.

Here is some footage of Rachel Maddow's interview with Jennifer Boulanger, an executive director for the Allentown Women's Center, a Pennsylvania medical group for abortion and women's reproductive health. She reports an increase in malicious telephone calling, threats, and protests, and believes that the numbers were already higher with President Obama's election, and a decisive emboldening following Tiller's murder.

Boulanger makes an incredibly intelligent point about the failure of federal and local law enforcement. She states at the end of her interview that more direct measures should be taken to protect patients, clients, and employees of the women's clinics, such as the creation and enforcement of buffer zones and improved training at the local level. During a memorial event for Dr. Tiller hosted by her agency, federal marshals advised her to cancel the ceremony and to stay at home. Her response was unequivocally clear. Rather than ask her to hide and to not do her job as an executive director, the marshals should spend more time following leads and prosecuting. Start with the malicious phone calls. Trace them to their originating phones, get the telephone numbers, and charge for criminal mischief. Capture license plates of vehicles and protesters that are obstructing legal treatment and counsel and cite those individuals for trespass.

The troublesome question remains: Is the brazenness of these activities a sign of more domestic terrorist activity to come? Criminology and sociology professor, Jack Levin of Northeastern University offers his commentary on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown."

Levin understands that the problem of extremist behavior is part situation and part cognitive distortion. In a time of economic uncertainty, jobs lost, real incomes falling, and immigration activity, some segments are already destabilized even on a good day. Couple with this damning, unspecialized ideologies -- anti-Jew, anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-gay, etc., etc. -- and the backdrop of "threat" has passed the violence threshold. Extreme behavior necessitates a belief system that any means necessary, including violence and murder, is no longer the choice of last resort but rather a desperate cry to regain some footing and security in current times.

Moreover, the same political groups that chastised the original right-wing extremism report from the Department of Homeland Security, and demanded that Napolitano apologize for it (for which she did), are now having to answer to a current call for expediency. Meanwhile, supporters and lambasters are now busy stuffing themselves with crow. Conservative commentators like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck are cited here for pushing the narrative that von Brunn was a "lone gunman nutjob," and are decrying von Brunn's far-right political stance even though the man claimed it readily in his Internet history. Media Matters reports that Fox News trails significantly behind its competition in mentioning the Holocaust Museum incident.

Even more appalling, Beck recently interviewed a representative from the Ayn Rand Institute. This gentleman agrees with Rush Limbaugh that von Brunn really was a leftist extremist because any type of hate speech that comes from a collective group must be leftist because right-wing people only believe in individualism. Even though Beck called this guy a "lone" nutjob, which describes an individual taking extreme action on his own, which is what... right-wing nutjobs do? When your brain unties itself out of that knot, let me know.

So, we go back to that original question. Two incidents in eleven days. Whatever is circulating out there on the Internet, two lives have been taken in vain, all to push some sick ideology to illogical extremes. The population that encourages, valorizes, and nearly bastardizes freedom to score political points with a base are the same ones remaining silent about the atrocities of these crimes. We are free to be of a particular religious persuasion, to practice our sets of beliefs, to speak freely and openly, to resist inappropriate censure, and to resist inappropriate intrusion into our daily lives.

While it's okay to knock on the doors of otherwise happy, healthy, protected, legal, and free gay citizens to ridicule their orientations and to deny them the same rights and privileges of marriage as their straight counterparts, no one is too worried about knocking on the doors of whackos with a known history of supremacist behavior. We have technologies to map where the sex offenders live and they are required by law to make their whereabouts known at all times, but we are less willing to put a spotlight on individuals who hang Obama effigies for laughs. We can track and trap predators on the Internet. Brian Williams confronts these guys and gets the serious television ratings. But law enforcement is too squeamish and uncomfortable about visiting supremacist websites and hate groups, and follow tips and leads for a set of individuals already on the edge. Paul Jennings Hill and Carrie Prejean, certainly not comparable for their deeds, of course, become equally martyrized by a deluded public. Never mind what they said; it's the courage to say it that counts. Yet, no one can really cogently explain the courage involved in shooting up people and no one is willing to ask the question.

I'll end this with a joke. How many instances of domestic terrorism does it take to frighten an American public?

Calibrate

2009-06-07T19:00:00.003-04:00

In the midst of seeking summer employment, I have been hanging out around here more often during my down time. I have minimized some ads, cut down on some fluff, and added some details where appropriate.

I expanded the welcome statement and, shock, included a photo. (In all fairness, photos of me turn out rather goofy and silly, and I found one that actually looked pretty decent. So, there you are. You get my grinning face greeting you on every page load.) I have expanded the Sharing section since getting active again on the StumbleUpon service. Finally, I have reorganized my blog links and my tags into categorical arrangements for easier viewing.

About FACE and Reciprocation

2009-06-03T23:38:00.010-04:00

Continuing to cover the aftermath of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, Rachel Maddow airs a fourteen-minute segment on Roeder's connections to Operation Rescue, a troublesome history with clinic vandalism in Kansas City, and an explanation of the FACE Act. FACE stands for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, established in 1993 which declared intentional damage and destruction to an abortion facility as a federal crime. This statute recognizes that unlike other petty forms of vandalism, that damage and destruction done to an abortion facility is rooted in intentions to "shut down" otherwise legal, medical services and to terrorize the community at large over a hot moral issue.

Again, I find it very difficult to understand the cognitive acrobatics necessary to permit damage and destruction of a legal business, believed to be in consult when and only when the women who sought Dr. Tiller's (and other abortion practitioners) service did the requisite soul-searching. Abortion cannot be likened to some sort of quick convenience service. "Keys made with every dirty coat hanger!" It is insufficient to simply raise one's hand or issue forth a mocking gasp of horror. "We don't support vigilantism," they say, and yet the reality that a certain segment of the public receptive to panic and terror does not slow the flow of anti-abortion propaganda.

A few months ago, I covered a demonstration on the university campus featuring a grotesque moment of graphic photos, inappropriate analogies, and highly dated scientific claims about the risks of abortion. It was hard to stomach at the time, and I imagine that that sentiment has not since changed. But what donned on me earlier is that the debate of the values, morals, and ethics behind abortion has been long reduced to the shock-and-awe. Anything pertaining to context, to real life situations, to personal choice, and beyond this to the implications for women's reproductive health and choice is gone. These elements are unnecessary. These elements are troublesome. These elements inject too much reality into what would otherwise be farcical and ridiculous.

Believe me. I am all for political debate, for issues debate -- even moral debate. (Morality is not a contest of right and wrong, but rather a conceptualization of what gets someone to the moral decision on the record.)

Because if equally hardened left-leaners committed extremist behavior -- bombing of megachurches, vandalizing religious institutions, even threatening harm (and exacting it) to pro-life protestors -- the police would be all over it. The news would be all over it. The right wing would be all over it. Fox News would host Given Kitchen Stuff Relevant to Lefty Terrorism Three Point Oh. And not to play down the philosophies of some of my anarchist readers out there, but I believe the biggest threat they would offer is requisite window-busting. Maybe with Guy La Roche masks. Certainly with bandannas covering everything below the eyes.

When people want to do something about a bothersome social condition, that is when the fundraising, the networking, and the mobilization come into play. Protests take place (which is perfectly okay even outside of an abortion clinic), people write letters and urge citizens and elected officials to act. Even in our most cynical moments, we recognize the real beauty that a mobilized, educated, and aware public -- whether they side with us or not. Even the Proposition 8 supporters did what they did through the legal and appropriate channels to effect change, just as gay marriage supporters will reconvene in the near future or when other states open up legalization on their own avenues.

But what makes a bomb, a knife, or a threat so dangerous is that that kind of opposition ultimately silences people, whether it is done through terror or the sheer brutality of taking an innocent's life.

I am convinced that our country has not experienced in recent history a threat so great -- even Islamic terrorism, I dare say! -- that it would require resolution through bloodbath. Not even September 11. That day is a painful marker in our generation's history, of course, but it is the horror that comes with understanding, sympathizing, and pining away for the innocents being killed. The idea that if we only had a terrorist in our sights, a baseball bat, and five minutes unsupervised would slake some deep guttural, primal instinct to exact revenge as retribution.

To what end? That's the problem with vigilantism. Vigilantism assumes that justice (or some other given lofty ideal) can only be satisfied through the execution of suitable drastic behavior, but it begs the question of sufficience. When do you stop? How many lives? What needs to be done, what more can be done to achieve the desired end? Is the immigration "crisis" extinguished when militiamen successfully detain or slaughter every person who illegally crosses the border? If a loved one of yours was killed on Flight 175, how much revenge would set things right again?

The immediate answer is that there is no answer. One highly improbably to calculate (though best efforts to derive it would be appreciated scholarly as such).

The pertinent answer is that there should be no answer, and that any justifications made should recognize the futility in promulgating an answer for an entire populace. The popular citation from Exodus 21, "an eye for an eye," became fodder for criticism from the respectable Mahatma Ghandi. Retributive justice, taken to a gross extent, "makes the whole world blind." To think that if abortion and anti-abortion activists were so minded, that those killed on one side would be slain for the other. And for what purpose this feud?

The message becomes lost. Life is sanctified no longer.

Another Day of Domestic Terrorism

2009-06-01T23:44:00.006-04:00

Yesterday afternoon, the Huffington Post released a story about Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, a physician who was one of only three who performed late-term abortions, who had been killed while attending church services at Reformation Lutheran church. According to his Wikipedia entry, Tiller studied medicine at the University of Kansas and finished his degree in 1967 and had intended to go into dermatology, only to take over his father's practice. Tiller resumed the practice after learning how a woman had died while procuring, at that time, an illegal abortion.

Anti-abortion activists have long held prayer vigils and condemned Tiller for his occupational choices, culminating in clinic vandalism, exposure to death threats, and being shot twice by Shelley Shannon in August 1993. Tiller has also spent time answering to legal charges about professionalism and the Kansas law requirement to seek secondary opinion when assessing the appropriateness of a woman seeking an abortion of a viable fetus. No charges had ever been filed against Tiller, unlike Shannon who served an eleven-year sentence for the attack plus an additional 20 years for her connection to arson attempts as part of ongoing attacks against abortion clinics. Kansas City police detained the suspect in the shooting, Scott Roeder, and now have him in custody.

Frank Schaffer represents the guilty side of the culpability divide, writing in his conclusion, "The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as 'murderers.' And today once again the 'pro-life' leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility." Various news outlets including Salon.com and Media Matters have compiled clips of Bill O'Reilly's ongoing campaign against Tiller dating back to 2005 and occupying segments in up to 29 episodes -- referring to him as "Tiller the Baby Killer," citing a figure of 60,000 fetuses aborted through his tenure, and denouncing the conditions under which women had consulted with him in the first place.

Keith Olbermann issued the following response.

To his credit, O'Reilly denounces vigilantism at the onset of his most recent Talking Point segments, only to predict with Cassandran omnipotence, "Pro-abortion zealots and Fox News-haters would attempt to blame us for the crime" and to condemn liberals for "exploiting" this murder.

Indeed, another day of domestic terrorism -- the idea that beliefs can be so strong and fortified that it would merit and excuse doing the very same crime under complaint unto another. That the cause of pro-life, of anti-abortion can only go further when the persons who perform abortions are, themselves, aborted, by any means necessary. Protesters engage in vigils, petition for investigations, present legal cases that merit court appearances, and nothing worked. The solution came at the end of a barrel shot at point-blank range. The real irony is the permission and the acceptance of the murder of a medical professional in the name of stopping the very same "murder" of the unborn in the guise of protecting the innocent. Using murder to stop murder for the sanctity of life, of course.

In his, yes, "rant," he referenced Daily Kos editor, Markos Moulitsas, asks who will be the next person to be killed, thus fortified by the "ire" of commentators like O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity, and so forth. (O'Reilly simply remarks that Moulitsas' rant appears next to a scheduled interview with Bill Ayers, capitalized by a smug "Perfect.")

Too much.

A screenshot of a Google search for too much Fox News.

Too much grapefruit might have killed a woman. Too much caffeine might have killed Anna Nicole Smith. Too much sex might make someone a nymphomaniac. The real question is, what are the effects of too much suggestive media exposure? What is the extent to which someone of a given psychological profile can digest talk radio and nightly news programming before opinions begin to take shape or change? How much "paranoid, anti-government rhetoric" can one tolerate before succumbing to its effects?

I'm not entirely sure, but I am willing to bet that under continued duress of disappearing economic opportunities, increased chances of home foreclosure and mounting debt collections, ambiguous evidence of the termination of our current recession, and uncertain futures, that threshold certainly begins to fall. Continuing with the aforementioned irony, how might Michelle Malkin respond now to her original complaint that Homeland Security is willing to target conservative commentators and their role in promoting extremist behavior? If anything, there is a genuinely compelling tapestry: visions of the lone blogger, the lone commentator on television and that megalomaniacal icon of his or her hands wrapped around the entire world of broadcast outreach, only to slink back into nothingness when tied to some potentially dangerous and disturbed people.

I can see Beck guffawing this very second. "I didn't do anything," indeed. No, you didn't pull a trigger. You just released the whereabouts of some bullets and an impressionable rationale, that's all.

As it stands, a doctor is dead, and a news network is in denial. What we don't know is the extent to which the anti-abortion movement becomes bolstered by this injustice and continues to call out some murderers while excusing others. What we don't know are the creative interpretations of biblical scripture that would allow such acts to take place. What we can't know is the depth of psychological disrepair evident that would allow the notorious Paul Jennings Hill, executed for murdering an abortion doctor, to claim in a statement:

In a statement before his execution, Hill said that he felt no remorse for his actions, and that he expected "a great reward in Heaven". During his trial, the judge did not allow Hill to use an affirmative defense of justification. Hill said he viewed the acts as defensive rather than retributive. Hill left behind a manuscript manifesto which his backers promised him they would publish. That manifesto and his address to the jury that convicted him echoed the words of John Brown, who had attempted to incite a violent insurrection to end slavery in the United States. Hill was not apologetic for the killings, and in his last words he encouraged others who believe abortion is an illegitimate use of lethal force to "do what you have to do to stop it".

Yet, when Islamic male suicide bombers make that same case, we can condemn them as terrorists.

What cognitive and spiritual acrobatics that take place to filter the reality that even we Americans, we pillars of morality and justice, use to excuse and to deny the same brutal injustice we put forth. No job, no profession, no spiritual system is so great, so grand that it would demand taking someone's life. None. And the person that could argue the opposite, I would applaud you in the first place, but I would kill you in the second. Because I could. Because, in America, we can survive contradictions and practice what we fail to preach without even batting an eyelash.

Recommended reading:
Cultivation Theory

Getting Waterboarded

2009-05-23T04:15:00.003-04:00

Libertarian radio show host "Mancow" Muller who decried that waterboarding was not a torture technique puts himself to the test. The footage speaks for itself.

Too Black

2009-05-22T18:56:00.007-04:00

André Leon Edwards wrote the book Too Black: When Your Color Gets in the Way and offered this ditty in an online summary:

It is not intended to offend and/or abolish any particular group or race of people; on the contrary, it is written to ask and answer questions that people, regardless of color, have had. Too Black examines what is essentially lost when Blacks lose the art of being flexible and adaptable to various other people and cultures. It opens serious discussions to what is possible when Blacks concentrate on the areas of their lives that they can control, rather than those that they can not.

I called up a good friend this afternoon -- a white woman who grew up near Atlanta -- with whom we have been assigned guilt for acting "too black" when we hang out together. For the life of us, we could hardly figure out what it means when people refer to one another as acting "too black." Feel free to substitute your own racial or ethnic group of interest.

I think the term simply represents some ill-thought code to describe a fundamental reality that people continue to keep dancing about in our American culture: that, even now, even in the 21st century, people still carry this unspoken core of discomfort when it comes to talking and thinking about race relations. Substitute the ethnic or racial term for the term "unsafe." Like politics or religion, people feel uncomfortable having to talk these issues out and to explore what they mean for individuals on a daily basis. We talk about race and race relations in ways that make us feel comfortable and secure. For example, equality is a concept deeply embedded into the American ethos. Because equality is a value that we uphold and it is a concept indoctrinated (at least superficially) in all of us from a very young age, we look at race relations and say that the key to remedying any problems is to, at least cognitively, level the whole field. Race relations get better, some say, when people stop focusing so hard on skin color or identity and start focusing instead on the common ground.

An admirable strategy -- only if race worked that way. Melanin is a marker. There is no denying it. Even on Edward's book cover, smart suit and all, he cannot hide his black skin.

Some critical race scholars refer to the effort of futile hiding as "race colorblindness." According to the book Whitewashing Race, colorblindness is a strategy often implemented by people in power in our society. The trick, though, is that colorblindness is more often used as a counterthrust to racial, ethnic, and subcultural groups who derive positive status characteristics from their identity markers and organize in ways to help build power from within their in-groups. Therefore, everyone is equal and everything is right in the land of the brave until some group comes forward and starts talking about this, demanding that right, exercising that political mobilization because they're such-and-such and think they're better than everyone else, they want special rights, and so on. The unifying feature among cultural clashes in our society is the sustaining of silence under the guise of neutrality until a group systematically denied the goods and rights to capital comes forward to demand an actual fair shot.

But let's make this more of a micro-level discussion, shall we?

Everyone possesses some form of a cultural dictionary. I would disagree that it is as well-organized and assembled as Baskin and Runes would have us believe. However, I imagine that if we were all asked to sit down with a pen and pad of paper and write out the foods we eat, how we celebrate holidays, values that we uphold and would hope to pass on to future generations, how we interact with people, what language and colloquialisms and idioms we use -- in short, what we think gives us membership in our specific culture -- we could do it. Socialization is powerful. We grow up in particular environments and learn from those around us how to talk, act, and what we think; and that baseline sort of knowledge bends and flexes and shifts as we socialize with people who are not like us. We socialize in our homes, through educational systems, among friends and family, among people "down" for us.

Sometimes we are simply doomed to misunderstand each other, and the first defense is a recognition of not having grown up or having been exposed to whatever it is at a young age. If I said the suffix -ish to you, I could be referring to several things:

something appearing like or resembling _______
a censored substitution of the word "shit"
or a code word a friend and I use frequently around each other.

Safety is a desirable coping mechanism for what would otherwise be controversial conversations. Safety also precludes a reluctance to simply talk about differences. A friend of mine who possibly couldn't have known I used -ish in the #3 style later confessed, "I wanted to ask what I meant, but I thought against it."

Why not? We're friends. It's a word of familiarity, but the world wouldn't end if I clued you in on the secret. What was more telling, though, was that a friend felt palpably uncomfortable about the situation because he did not want to be thought of as stupid or uncool or unknowledgeable.

Therefore, three problems. We are afraid to bring up the raw truth about race in this country because (one) it has the potential to upset people, (two) because it would regressively prove just how silly we are being when we think that the solution to racial strife is simply to pretend as if it doesn't exist, and (three) that we are more embarrassed at being thought of as ignorant than recognizing opportunities to learn and to overcome that ignorance anyway.

Edwards later includes in his dust jacket cover a quip about a generalized not knowing of what is proper or politically correct with regard to talking about race. I am not entirely sure as Edwards published this book in 2005. I distinctly remember mass media outlets like MTV talking specifically about race, ethnicity, and cultural differences at least ten years prior to it. That's why the show "The Real World" took off; it forced people of different backgrounds, lifestyles, orientations, and so on to live (as) peacefully (as possible) for several months and to tackle ignorance and uncertainty head on. In the meantime, there are fifty-plus students in my program, and five (off the top of my head) are of ethnic minority, and there is only one other half-black, half-white guy. And if we took Edwards a little too seriously, we might think it's our fault for not trying hard to make things easier for the people who either misunderstand us, or pretending to get us when they don't, or want us to forget that statistical analyses prove time and time again that minorities stay on the short end.

Edwards also makes mention of staying more focused on changing things that we can control versus dismissing things that we cannot. I would simply offer at this point that ignorance is something that people either feel compelled to react toward or something that requires spirituality or something more meaningful to counteract. If I can't change minds, then I can go ahead and start reading for comprehensive exams. Fair enough.

But in the meantime, if someone remarks that I'm acting too black, then I'm going to remind myself of my sociological roots.

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Could you operationalize that for me? And what variables do you use to measure it?"

Recommended listening:
Erykah Badu, "Honey"

The Discipline

2009-05-21T03:49:00.003-04:00

Upton Sinclair once remarked, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." He also wrote in his 1906 book, The Jungle, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Strange enough that the latter quote corresponds to this ongoing shift in sociology whether to embark on research toward pursuing the public good or for some other benign, non-intentional stance.

Henry asks in a blog entry, "What do social scientists want?" He, in turn, cites two professionals in a dialogue about the relationship among politics, journalism, and consulting work, and then summarizes a couple of statements about their respective disciplines' mission statements, as it were. Henry claims that political scientists are interested in broad patterns of political outcomes, and that journalists ask questions about the most recent indicators of voting behavior. Social science, on the other hand, draws a large blank -- not for a lack of intentions, but rather a wide swath at possible motivations.

This dates me about ten years now, but my first impression of sociology was that it was a study of people in society, whatever that means. It slowly evolved into a sense that we have two things going on here: one, the vantage point of the everyday social actor, the Ground Zero of agency, making choices and decisions and taking opportunities in this, the second, big nebulous everything-but called "society." That became rather sloppy, too, as "society" could represent everything that isn't that individual, but includes everybody else, and their relationships and connections with one another, and their jobs, and their institutions, and their governments, and their social orders, and these guiding principles that make people agree and disagree and such.

So, pick your level of intervention. Pick your allegiances, I say. Stand on the ground with the people, or take one or more segments of nesting factors.

I am not entirely sure about this, but I'll take a shot nonetheless. It is difficult to say what social scientists want because, in the wide swath of potential academic ground to mine and to generate research with which to create job opportunities, we can easily get lost in our projects. If we can create a reasonable regression model for it, then we are on the right track. Let's just leave it at that.

As I gathered my thoughts, my professor Lane Kenworthy sent me a response. He agreed that the diversity of sociological interests and studies spans hundreds, if not thousands, of potential research questions. He concluded,

The questions I want to answer have to do with the causes and consequences of living standards, well-being, poverty, inequality, mobility, and so on. My normative views and concerns lead me to these questions. But I try to answer them as a scientist. [emphasis added]

He hoped the response would be of use to me. It is.

Having a career in sociology means just what Upton might have warned us about. We are paid to perpetually try to figure things out, even if statistics can only give us so much certainty about what goes on. We agree with our political and journalistic brothers when we, too, ask about causal mechanisms and test our theories. Then, what little we do know has this sort of polite agreement that no one wants to bother questioning. What a lot we don't know becomes the site of turf, professional, and journal wars in which we, then, become paid to fight it out with each other. Lane also mentioned that the easiest thing to do is to blast an article for some methodological error, and that you can tell who's new in the field depending on how vociferously they attack the exclusion of a particular independent variable or if they frown upon a non-linear regression approach.

Doing so may or may not be helpful to the discipline at large, but at least it keeps a given topic alive and circulating. Nitpicking aside, sociologists seem highly concerned with legitimizing their research pursuits and publications as methodical and as rigorous as our hard-science brethren.

More than that, though, I learned how easily fledgling academicians become uncomfortable with the mention of Burawoy's notion of public sociology. Herbert Gans coined the term, and it refers to the encouragement of pursuing sociological research and methodology toward engaging in public policy debates, political movements, and activism. Some professionals feel comfortable taking their work into the public sphere; others, clearly, do not, and the debate goes on.

I chuckle a bit because a student expressed concern last fall at my invitation for people to attend a talk by Katherine Adams, who wrote a book about feminist values and how feminism encourages political participation. He later clarified his intention to warn me about not coming off too political because he had been shouted down himself. I simply replied that if students felt threatened about having a choice on which talk to attend on some Friday afternoon, that that was not a problem for which I would take responsibility. I suppose I'm old-school. I just skim e-mails and ignore or delete the stuff that does not interest me.

Seriously. One talk on one given Friday became fodder for being "too public."

For me, the public question is incredibly easy. I don't mind it. I don't mind it one bit. I am growing older, and I worry about the state of intellectualism in this country. I continued to be surprised at the visceral, gut-wrenching response it inspires in certain sectors. People are threatened by intelligence because it threatens the safety and comfort of a rather idyllic and easygoing sense of reality.

Let me take it one step further though (before I'm shouted down as an elitist). You know, it's the ability to keep things simple and in perspective that allows people to cope with challenges and struggles of daily life. We may better understand voter apathy if we get a good sense of what really does preoccupy the mind of a certain voting-age bracket. We might even care about bank bailouts or the difficulties in getting by on a single part-time income, but neither care nor worry keeps debtors at bay. Resisting apathy and bearing an interest in how people work with society does entail, at a fundamental level, being privileged enough to wonder in the first place. Education is a gatekeeper. With just the right knack of socioeconomic placements and intelligence quotients and access to opportunities, we become privileged and powerful enough to not get mired in our everyday lives and to start theorizing about other people.

I just think that, as someone who grew up on the bottom, that I can repay that debt to community by doing sensitive research, by letting people lead in sharing their own experiences, and to not be afraid to stand up for people who are too weary from working substandard jobs and having little to no reprieve from the struggles of life. I want to stand for those who can't stand on their own. I also want to do something about those dreadful bootstraps. Who wears them anyway?

I have a hard time understanding this sort of spectre of tension between sociology as science and sociology as opportunity for public work. On the one hand, we have inescapable bias. We cannot remove our interest from our political projects, nor can we avoid taking some sort of perspective on the social order. We cannot "blank" ourselves. On the other hand, with solid methodological training, I believe that social scientists invest more effort in disconfirming evidence and statistical calculations so that we better serve the cause. Be that as it may, if I inflate findings about mortgage redlining behavior or project higher levels of racial insensitivity unto white subjects under study, then I hurt my professional reputation and my legitimacy to study it further.

Recommended reading:
To that end, I would point people toward the impressive compendium of work from the University of Notre Dame's Rory McVeigh. Peppered among his structural research on race and stratification are professional articles written on gay marriage, hate crime, segregation and voting behavior, and religious belief systems. His first book, The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan, describes the social movement activity and attempted entree into politics of the organization. It is available in paperback at the University of Minnesota Press.

Facebook for Minimalists

2009-05-20T20:26:00.001-04:00

I am incredibly thankful that my attention deficit issues are probably mild at best. Why? If they weren't, I imagine how easy it is to pull up Facebook on any given day, only to note POW! this game BAM! that set of party photos WOOSH! oh, that was a wickedly awesome ride on a mechanical bull! KA-SHANK! are you a fan of not being on fire?

I'm serious. There's a group for that.

Major thanks to a tech-savvy whiz kid named Jason Barnabe who has created a Firefox extension called Stylish. Stylish is a user-styles manager that enables users to implement scripts to control how we want to view Internet material. Scripts work similarly to pop-up blockers, Javascript disablers, and Active-X disablers in that they use code to screen, hide, or augment web pages to make them safer and more accessible to people who surf the Web. Many web browsers have a variety of scripts built into their systems by default. Stylish is but one way to tweak what's already running under the engine.

The bonus about Stylish is that you don't need to know how to write code for scripts. For this article, I found the code I needed through the Google search hide highlights Facebook Stylish.

To their credit, open-source programmers have offered several renditions of Facebook formats that manage the inane amounts of ridiculous clutter -- one of which I will show today.

For those of you who use Firefox to browse the web, follow the instructions below:

Open Firefox. And if you're a little slow on the uptake, try downloading and using a much more secure, accessible, and customizable web browser for Pete's sake!
Install the Stylish add-on. Click the "Add to Firefox" button and it will install in a few seconds. Restart your browser when prompted.
DownloadSquad.com blogger Jay Hathaway linked three different scripts used to tailor Facebook's appearance. I highly recommend reading his entry to determine which type best suits you.
I chose the remove highlights and left sidebar. Click this link. Scroll down to Install Options and click the button next to "Load into Stylish," then click Install when Firefox prompts you.
Restart your browser (again) and you're done!
Enjoy Facebook again.

Here are two screenshots. Pardons for them being rather small, but I wanted to show as much of the page width as I could.

The first one is your Facebook "home page." This is what you see whenever you surf through Facebook and click "Home" at the top, and it is the full list of news feeds from your friends' status updates, photos uploaded, links, and so on.

The second screenshot is your Facebook profile page.

See! No pesky ads or highlights! The Stylish-rendered pages still retain your friend's suggestions, your events on Facebook, and the friend links below. For those of you who are a bit application-happy, visit your respective applications by mousing over Settings at the top, then Application Settings to create short-cuts which appear on the bottom of your browser window.

And if you don't care for not being on fire that much, just click the "x" next to the suggestion.

Now that the tutorial is done, the real reason why I wanted to share it is in the event that maybe you, like me, are really tired of nonsensical ads and prefer a cleaner web layout to look at while killing some free time. I have embraced being built like a broomstick. The last thing I want Facebook to recommend is the same scam websites promising six-pack abs for only $19.95. Or text messages from the Scottsdale Police even though I live nowhere near there. (My IP address often gets confused for Mesa, Sahaurita, and Phoenix.)

Curiously enough, Facebook allows users to give thumbs-up or thumbs-down for their advertising, but I imagine that so long as these companies are willing to pay, then Zuckerman and his crew feel justified in keeping them in rotation regardless of what users say.

Believe it or not, I had originally intended this as a polite note, maybe a link, on Facebook, but then I have not brushed up on any changes made to the site's Terms of Service. I don't want to blink and then get canned without much notice either.

But perhaps that's the troubling trend with the Internet -- the idea that the advertising dollar dictates more of the decision-making feedback than the site or product users themselves? It's worth considering. Consumer markets work the same way, at least in a naive way. If people who purchase your products only to discover that they don't work or perform poorly, then tell their friends and family and peers not to waste their time, then that ultimately hurts ABC Corporation's bottom line. Lest we not delude ourselves here, that hurt could be little more than the redness of a playful slap on the wrist, and far from the hemorrhaging of a roughly cut stump. Maybe a paper cut on a good day. The underlying problem is that there is this false dichotomy between demands for advertising dollars and delivering an Internet product that users enjoy and find productive, whether it's meant to simplify your work life or give you something fun to occupy the time. All things considered in 2009, does the current economic crisis promote that much more worship of the Almightly (though inflated and devalued) dollar?

In any event, major thanks to Jason, Jay, and all the other folks who helped out in this endeavour.

Arizona State University

2009-05-15T15:48:00.004-04:00

Voted number three on Playboy's top public par-tay universities and boasting a 92% acceptance rate into its doors, Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones asks students how they feel about the decision not to bestow upon Obama an honorary degree.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Arizona State Snubs Obama

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

Political Humor

Almost Finished

2009-05-10T03:07:00.002-04:00

I know. I've been out. I'm really sorry. You know, sometimes you just get so caught up in work. I'm like Iowa. Total flood. I went away to enjoy a short vacation slash professional conference in San Diego. By the way, if your travels take you out that way, please hop on the Pacific Coast Highway. Great seafood and terrific views. Anyhow, since I've been back, it's been paper after homework after test after paper. I'm running a little low, but I'm on the last leg of work. One more paper, some grading, and then it's official...

I will be a second-year student in the program.

In any event, please enjoy some footage from the White House Correspondence Dinner. I linked Obama's speech, but feel free to check out Wanda Sykes' stand-up. You'll enjoy it.

See you soon.

-- Dee

Sticking Up

2009-04-24T03:25:00.002-04:00

I sat down with my friend Roy on the patio near the Three Cheese and a Noodle restaurant on campus. Adiv and I caught a late lunch, and after we rapped a bit over some Mexican, my new friend took off to class and I sat a spell with my old one. We moved over to the shade.

Roy is someone bound and determined to turn me into a Christian, I think. One of the things that made our friendship rather novel and enjoyable, at first, was the very idea that he wouldn't be out to convince me or to sway my beliefs. It made for a rather neat repartee. He would unapologetically and humorously call me a "rebel." Today he said "firebrand." I would chuckle, of course.

Roy is one of several individuals who live here in town and come to the Heritage Hill public speaking grounds to preach the Gospel. Unlike his predecessor Brother Jed (video below) who never fails to attract a rough crowd, Roy usually grabs a few lingers-on and engages in more of a dialoguing style.

I laugh back at him, if for anything, his undying optimism. "There was a good crowd," he says, and by "good," he means maybe five to ten individuals. "Good" as in students were more focused on their school books and their laptops than his message. That's my guess.

I am pleased to have made some new Facebook friends from all this tomfoolery. Most of my friends are colleagues from school, and a few from back home, but most recently I have maybe ten undergraduate students on the list -- all of whom I met at the evangelical events. For the most part, they are secular freethinkers ranging from the unapologetically atheistic to the surprising naturalist. I suppose I lean more toward the unapologetic, though I am quick to say that I can't have proof of God's existence even though I wouldn't entirely rule out a supernaturalist presence. I'm fine with saying I don't know.

But when Roy and I sit down, we talk about "our gay friends." I think maybe three or four of the new add-ons. We run through the list, and Roy (likely inappropriately) asks me to help him keep straight (pun) who's straight, who's gay. I probably do a better job defending who's straight.

He asked me about one student in particular, and I had to argue the man's heterosexuality. Really. I'm good with nonverbals, and I don't feel like he slipped up and gave me a clue otherwise. Roy's rationale was his passion for arguing on behalf of the gays, and then I made it more personal. "I got in your face about the gays, too." I asked him if that made me queer. He said no, despite my metrosexual v-neck shirt, my Lucky jeans, and my black fingernail polish.

I have been sticking up for the gays lately.

A student is organizing a mock-protest in a couple weeks concerning the systematic denial of men participating in MSM [men having sex with men] behavior regarding blood donation, despite ongoing shortages and word-of-mouth campaigns to boost the blood and plasma supply. The organizer asks gay men to bring a straight friend to give blood on their behalf. Regardless of the many technological advantages in blood and plasma screening, the Food and Drug Administration has resisted efforts from the Red Cross and other supportive agencies to remove the restriction. Since before the first AIDS scare in 1977, the ban has been set in place.

That stupidity, plus the gay marriage nonsense, has my feathers ruffled.

The arguments, to me, seem highly absurd on their faces. The only demand on the Red Cross and other collection agencies (most of which who have no problem with it) would be increased consistencies in screening. Even if they retained the questionnaire items on sexual orientation and sexual practices, they could simply test the at-risk products in the same manner as their arbitrary screenings. Regarding gay marriage, as I recall, being gay is neither contagious nor depreciative. If you're already married and assuming that your sexual orientation hasn't changed from when you got hitched, breathe easy. Allowing another couple to take full advantage of the tax, inheritance, economic, and social advantages of your own hardly sanctified union is not that serious. Fear not. If you are so inclined to disfavor homosexuality in any of its stripes, by all means, continue to pass on those messages to your children. But being someone awfully sensitive to the slipshod justifications to deny equal rights to any number of the minority status, gay marriage opponents simply need to own up to the perverted logic of their interracially fearful brethren before them. It took Supreme Court legislation to not only shift the tide, but to reinstate the very legal and moral fabric that we conveniently choose to place ourselves upon pedestals with respect to the rest of the world.

I suppose I am at my angriest when people are willing to settle for ignorant posturing or blatant misinformation. Honestly, I find it really hard to believe that people are sitting there at their kitchen tables with adding calculators, figuring up how much a 401K will plummet if gays are allowed to marry. Of course, you know, if that happens, then we have to start thinking about insurance when the world goes amok in response: rivers of blood in the streets, Nazis on dinosaurs, sodomy with the tailpipe of your car, and so forth.

Am I wrong in wondering how a consistently individualist ethic in our country becomes so bogged down and gripeful of the "activism" of judges? Considering that Americans have fewer friends and confidants in the past few decades, and just how common it is to not even know the names of our neighbors, much less being on speaking terms -- somehow, that gay marriage in another state keeps us awake at night.

I have stated half-seriously on two occasions:

You can have my marriage card. I don't want it.
Or, if my buddy Joe is a fellow professor, and neither of us have prospects in life, let's just walk down to city hall. Seriously. Two men, no kids, no sex, great incomes. No wage discrepancies there. Just take off your ring when you go out and leave a tie on the doorknob.

I quit being afraid a long time ago. I personally think it really takes an act of courage to be able to stand up for people who live dangerously in trying to stand up for themselves. Far lost in those misty visions of flying cars and progressive societies, in 2009, being gay still demands a ridiculously high tolerance for ridicule and prejudgment. If you're gay, learn how to stand up for yourself. If you stand with them, whether you're gay or straight, get prepared to put up your verbal and emotional dukes too.

The real question concerns the tools you need to win out on that struggle. I used "dukes" earlier, but I don't think violence covers it. But courage does. It means being unafraid of taking unpopular positions or getting angry when people come at you with the same nonsensical crap being doled out or whispered over the echoes of talk radio or right-wing news. It means being unafraid to challenge conventions of what seems appropriate. Humping the evangelical doesn't work, but grabbing a friend of the same sex around the waist and chest from behind and hugging him hard, giving a direct visual shot to the eye challenge to an onlooker does. What? He's my friend. I care for him. I love him. And none of those things requires penile to anus contact, idiot.

If academic doesn't work, maybe politics would. I can already tell you that I'm not cutting my hair, and I'll plead a case not to wear a suit and tie to work. I would look up, maybe a bit rushed under a deadline, to speak with a politician, and to say, "You need to recognize when rhetoric stops and statistics start." Shut up! I would bark. And listen! We can get off this merry-go-round anytime now. Just stick to the facts and keep the people informed. That's all. Now, get out of here.

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
-- Bertrand Russell

Colbert Shocks the Shocker

2009-04-24T02:48:00.005-04:00

Absolutely hilarious, especially Colbert hitting him with a solid one-two. A three, four, five, and six. I think the kid didn't know what hit him about half the time.

Enjoy.

I can't just pick one funny moment of this. Six-pack abs. Stimulus bill. Pro-stimulus for Illinois. Should fetuses have the right to bear arms? What a rip!