The Disenchanted Idealist

Professional humor

2006-08-28T14:38:00.000-04:00

Dilbert's Scott Adams showed earlier this week that humor is sometimes best left to the professionals. After mocking the ameteur Pluto humor that's been floating around lately, he wrote the following:

Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think Pluto should be the funniest planet – or even the funniest non-planet. That distinction belongs to another. Uranus, 8th celestial body from the sun, is part miracle of gravity and part bung hole. It has earned its status as the funny man of the cosmos.
Despite anything you have heard, Uranus is not a black hole and there are no Klingons circling it. Nor does it have Venus envy. It is simply the funniest of all planets, be they dwarf or regular. Some things should never change.
Unlike Pluto, I believe there is life on the one true funny planet. I believe there are primates and I believe they have evolved the power of flight. But you probably won’t believe that until winged monkeys fly out of Uranus.

While you're at it, check out his thought experiment for dealing with Iran and his follow-up post.

I don't have an internet connection in my apartment yet, but I should be able to start regular blogging again now (I hope).

Various issues

2006-08-15T14:20:00.000-04:00

I don't have time to write full posts at the moment, but here are some things that have been on my mind.

Jon Swift's defense of Joe Lieberman's refusal to cut and run from the senate race after losing the primary is nearly perfect. "Without Joe Lieberman for Republicans to support, all that will be left in Washington is partisan rancor."
People's faith in religious authority seems to be increasing: religious fraud is growing rapidly. "Often, perpetrators are so successful building an image as good Christians that churchgoers won't cooperate with law enforcement authorities even after the crime is revealed." Bizarrely, the article notes that "Money has a way of blinding objectivity, even for we who are believers" instead of noting that "belief has a way of blinding objectivity, even for those whose money is at stake."
In the wake of the Hamdan decision, it appears that many of the administration's interrogation techniques violate the War Crimes Act. Rather than change the techniques, the administration wants to change the act (which was entirely uncontroversial just ten years ago when it passed almost unanimously in the Republican Congress). Bush has successfully focused the debate on "Humiliating and Degrading Treatment," but that's just a smokescreen; the real issue is whether "cruel treatment" will be allowed.
Onegoodmove has a terrific Daily Show clip on the propaganda we've all been drinking in lately.
The world apparently lacks the resources to feed 800,000,000 people, but has the resources to
overfeed a billion people
. Something is wrong with that.
Good Math, Bad Math has a fascinating history of π and a few strange examples of where it shows up.
This award-winning video clip of famous images mutating is worth seeing. The effort that must have gone into it is hard to imagine.
Crooks and Liars has Keith Olbermann's list of suspiciously-timed terror warnings (quicktime or windows media). On the one hand, there's so much bad news for Bush these days that most days that they could have announced something would have coincided with some politically sensitive issue. On the other hand, most of the terror warnings weren't very credible. Make up your own mind.
The Anonymous Liberal has a very important post about partisanship under Bush and what sane people are forced to do these days. It's very sobering.
Also, if anyone knows anything about connecting Sprint phones to Apple computers, please let me know. As far as I can tell, none of the brands Sprint works with can connect via iSync, and DataPilot looks pretty crappy. Does anyone know of a workaround I can use and/or if it's worth a hundred bucks to upgrade to a phone with a memory card?

Tags: bush, christian, cia, corruption, dave, dems, disenchantedidealist, election, linkdump, military, movie, propaganda, satire, scam, terror, torture

Fundamentalism and bad math

2006-08-14T12:02:00.000-04:00

Mark CC of Good Math, Bad Math just posted this:

Recently on Yahoo, some bozo posted something claiming that the bible was all correct, and that genetics would show that bats were actually birds. But that's not the real prize. The real prize of the discussion was in the ensuing thread.
A doubter posted the following question:
please explain 1 kings 7.23 and how a circle can have a circumference of 30 of a unit and a radiius of 10 of a unit and i will become a christian
23 And he made the Sea of cast bronze, ten cubits from one brim to the other; it was completely round. Its height was five cubits, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference. (1 Kings 7:23, NKJV)
And the answer is one of the all-time greats of moronic innumeracy:
Very easy. You are talking about the value of Pi. That is actually 3 not 3.14....... The digits after the decimal forms a geometric series and it will converge to the value zero. So, 3.14.....=3.00=3. Nobody still calculated the precise value of Pi. In future they will and apply advenced Mathematics to prove the value of Pi=3.

Mark CC didn't add anything to that, and neither will I. Even if it's satire, it's too beautiful not to pass on. I'm not sure if it's dumber than this, but it's close.

Tags: christian, dave, disenchantedidealist, ideology, pseudoscience

Status update

2006-08-13T23:15:00.000-04:00

1) David Schraub (whom I mentioned in my previous post about Lebanon) left some thoughtful comments. I've partially written my response, but it's not quite ready.

2) I made a fairly large error in my post on Catholic Legal Theory; I attributed a couple of quotes to the wrong person. I saw Kobayishi Issa's name at the bottom of this post and assumed he had written it even though he had been dead for almost 170 years. The actual author is David Giacalone. Issa wrote the Haiku at the bottom of the post, but not the post itself.

3) I have a couple of half-written posts that I think will turn out quite well, but the next week or three will be very hectic. I just got home from my summer position and I move to a new apartment in about a week. I start school in less than three weeks (!), so blogging may be light.

4) My offer for guest posters is still open. Contact me if you're interested.

5) OneGoodMove had a clip from a show called 30 Days. The clip was okay, but I decided to take a chance and spend two bucks to buy the whole episode on iTunes. An atheist moved in with a hardcore Christian family for a month and we got to see some of their interactions and perspectives on it. It which was fascinating, and the clip there isn't really representative of the episode as a whole. I highly recommend it, if you have time, can spare the two bucks, and don't have any objections to Apple's digital rights management restrictions. If you don't want to spend two bucks, you can download another episode for free and learn about people's reaction to immigrants. I haven't seen it yet, but I expect it to be quite good.

Tags: dave, disenchantedidealist, movie, personal

Game over for the neocons in Lebanon

2006-08-11T19:13:00.000-04:00

Was just talking to a friend who was noting that there is intense anger toward Israel within the administration for botching the war. He thinks the attitude was, "What's the point of giving them more time when they do nothing with it?" He thinks it's the worst defeat for Israel since 1948. He also guesses that the reason that the French flipped against the first resolution wasn't so much the Lebanese reaction as the realization of how poorly Israel was faring militarily. His general rule when it comes to U.N. resolutions in the Middle East is that they either simply reflect the facts on the ground, or make the victor give away a little bit of his victory; they never let someone pull victory out of a hat from defeat. So Israel will utlimately (sic) get from this resoltuon (sic) what they won on the ground, which is to say not much.
--Rich Lowry (hat tip to Glenn Greenwald)

This has been bothering me for weeks. Though they continue to write about how moral Israel's position is, neocons, Israel's more dogmatic supporters, and their allies (including some members of my family) never seem to say what Israel is accomplishing (in spite of repeated inquiries in some cases). Perhaps because the answer is "not much," and they don't want to admit that they're defending Israel's right to bomb civilian and dual-use targets for no reason whatsoever. Israel is less secure than ever. This was in no way inevitable; it could have been avoided if Israel had taken a saner, slower, more reasoned approach. The world (including Israel opponents like Juan Cole) was ready to support some kind of Israeli action against Hezbollah (the U.N. had already said that the group should not exist), and the group's support in Lebanon was precarious.

The next time someone rushes to support Israel's right to continue its bombing campaign, ask them if they can name any successful missions thus far that have been worth the innocent lives lost. Ask them why they have more confidence in the value of the civilian targets the Israeli Air Force is attacking than the pilots flying those missions do. Ask them whether they have captured Hezbollah's leaders and permanently blocked Iranian assets or whether they have only inflamed tensions and made themselves less secure in the long run. At the rate Israel is going, what would be accomplished by continuing? Don't accept analogies to other conflicts unless they can point to a situation where a well-trained guerilla army was defeated by force from across the border without a full occupation. Don't accept the argument that the conflict will only end when Hezbollah is disarmed; Israel's current strategy won't lead to their disarmament. They've suffered little militarily but are now heroes throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. And their local opponents--the Lebanese government--is in shambles, so they'll be even harder to contain than before. Israel took a great opportunity and countless lives and threw them away in pursuit of an unimaginably risky strategy of turning foes into friends through force. Well, they changed the region all right, but not in the way they had hoped.

I'll conclude by quoting Glenn Greenwald, who just posted on the same subject: the war has been totally "bizarre" because the "ambitions were so grand and sweeping from the start-- the amount of brutality and slaughter required to accomplish them were far in excess of what could be tolerated -- that it was almost designed to fail from the start. One could say exactly that of the general neoconservative view on all matters." And one would be right.

Tags: dave, disenchantedidealist, ideology, incompetence, israel, military, nationalreview, terror, violence, war

More Catholic Legal Theory

2006-08-10T21:30:00.000-04:00

David Schraub responded to my previous post on Catholic Legal theory here, and I responded to part of his response in the comments.

Enjoy.

Update: Mirror of Justice, a Catholic legal blog specializing in CLT, has noticed the discussion. Hopefully they'll put together a "CLT--greatest hits" post and prove me wrong.

Tags: christian, dave, disenchantedidealist, ideology, legal

Pop quiz: what date is September 11?

2006-08-10T00:48:00.000-04:00

Uh....

95 percent of Americans questioned in the poll were able to remember the month and the day of the [September 11] attacks

I wonder how they even phrased that question so that 5% got it wrong. In other news, 30% of Americans surveyed didn't know what year 9/11 happened.

How to respond to AOL's creepy search records release

2006-08-09T17:31:00.000-04:00

If you haven't heard yet, AOL released three months of search data for 650,000 of their subscribers. They hid the names, but they used unique identifiers, so people can still be tracked down. Some of the searches are pretty disturbing, for a variety of reasons, and lives will be ruined because there's enough information to figure out that they had once attempted suicide, cheated on their spouses, or put their private information into the search box. It's such an egregious breach of privacy that AOL's official response was extremely clear: "We're absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize." That doesn't help the victims much, though.

I'm seriously thinking about typing things into Google periodically that will help throw people off if they try to identify me by my search terms (not that it'll help much; most people probably search for enough identifiable information that they could be located).

Any suggestions for who my alter ego should be? Should I be an old woman in Portland that loves to buy gifts for her grandchildren? A Muslim dude in Colorado? A New Jersey secretary worried about her boss's sexual advances? A hardcore Republican from Omaha that wants to see naked pictures of Ann Coulter? Suggestions are welcome in the comments.

Ideally, someone will write a simple program that puts together a list of search terms based on user-specified data and sends a couple of queries in to Google every day at random intervals. That way, I wouldn't have to remember to do it myself. I think everyone should seriously consider doing this. Hopefully someone will release a script or something; it seems like it should be very easy to program. A friend of mine thinks he can throw something together in his free time, but he said he didn't have much experience with that kind of scripting. I bet that someone at Reddit can put a great little search bot together.

Tags: dave, disenchantedidealist, personal, web

The arrogance of Catholic Legal Theory

2006-08-09T10:51:00.000-04:00

My first encounter with Catholic Legal Theory (CLT) last night wasn't particularly inspiring. Citing no evidence whatsoever, Robert Araujo asserts that "Most if not all of the valiant laboring for peace in this troubled region does not seem to acknowledge the fact that both contingents involved in the conflict fear each other." Furthermore, as he understands it,

Fear—particularly the fear of difference—is a compelling driving force that can lead one people, and their respective government, to consider another people as an object—“the other.”... [It is] the sense of difference that fuels the fears underlying the conflict. Rather, the diplomats (guided by the Catholic perspective on the international order) should emphasize what can easily bridge the differences—for example, a common hope in the future that the children of today can look forward to a tomorrow in which the present strife is replaced with cooperation where such things as agricultural and industrial trade, cultural exchange, and regional security become routine. This is possible if each side’s fears of the other are put aside. This course is also demonstrative of the common good, which reveals that the destinies of two peoples are inextricably related. Strife for one will inevitably mean strife for the other; but, peace and prosperity for one will ensure the same for the other.

In response, David Schraub pointed out that

the idea that a foreign conflict might represent a prisoners dilemma--and that thus the route out lies in a restoration of trust--is not exactly a shocking revelation. As for the idea that focusing on the positives of mutual cooperation rather than mutual hate, didn't Golda Meir already comment several decades ago that "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us"?

Furthermore, to assume that the Israelis/Jews act the way they do because they fear "difference" is to fundamentally miss the point.

Israel reacts the way it does because, from their perspective, losing does not mean that it loses a sliver of territory or more land than they'd like. Losing means getting rounded up and shot, gassed, or otherwise slaughtered. This is the trauma you're dealing with.

This should be clear to anyone that's spoken to Israelis or Jews that hew to the Israeli party line. It's something I've written about before, albeit not on this blog. One could make an argument that the fear of demographic death ("the Arabs are outreproducing us! In 50 years, we'll be a minority in our own state!") boils down to a fear of difference, but I don't think that it's a particularly useful framework for the conflict as a whole. I wrote this in response to David's post:

I think you're basically right that he didn't say anything novel, and I think you correctly identified the source of most Israelis'/Jews' fear. I just think that it's amusing that 1) there's such a thing as "Catholic Legal Theory" and 2) someone thinks it can explain a conflict between Jews and Muslims.

I also doubt that a legal theory based on lowercase-c catholic (i.e. universal) values can really understand difference all that well, since assuming that your values are universally aspired to is a good way to disguise, ignore, and generally misunderstand the other. Uppercase-c Catholicism in particular doesn't deal with diffrence very well (the technical term for differences with the Pope's beliefs is "heresy"). And now that I think about it, the last time the Catholics were heavily involved in that region, it didn't go so well, either. The Crusades arent' exactly anyone's favorite historical period.

Was I a little harsh? Perhaps. But I can't imagine many things that are more arrogant than asserting that International Relations theory, game theory, the entire diplomatic establishment, the political leadership of every country involved, and the citizens on both sides fundamentally misunderstand the conflict because they're analyzing it from the wrong religious perspective. Particularly when the alternative theory which turns out to be totally unoriginal and largely wrong. It would be hard to find a better example of my point that the best way to misunderstand difference is to start from the axiom that one's own beliefs should be universal. I submit that no belief system capable of supporting crusades, inquisitions, and torture as mechanisms for spreading itself can understand difference very well (if those methods are no longer seen as God's will, is it because the infallible Church was wrong before or because God changes his mind?). There's a reason that the best understanding of difference comes from postmodernists and their allies: even if there are universal values, people can't agree on them, so clinging to one's own capital-T Truth is a good way to misunderstand the other. David Schraub didn't address my comments directly, but he did say that "Catholic Legal Theory is actually very vigorous and very interesting." I took his word for it, and so I did a bit of reading and wrote up this response. He didn't point to any specific examples, so it's likely that CLT has said some incredibly brilliant things and I just didn't find them. Still, I think I have a good enough sense of it to write a post on the parts I've seen so far.

CLT definitely seems preferable to the legal theories of the radical evangelical right, but I'm not seeing any brilliant insights, either. Based on my (very limited) research, the key element of CLT seems to be "the dignity of the human person and respect for the common good." I'm all for that, as I've written before. I think it should be fairly uncontroversial that "community [i]s indispensable for human flourishing" and that "authentic freedom" is a good thing. " And I'm an atheist. Thus, I'm not sure what CLT has to add. Like Kobayashi Issa David Giacalone,

I wonder[] what the Church could teach American lawyers, when — due to its reading of Truth and morality — it has structured its own government as an absolute monarchy, with no right to free expression, no admission of women to its leadership positions, and (as with priest pedophilia) the use of coverups to preserve its image and authority, rather than transparency. We now can add to that list the creation of an underclass of Church members, prevented from serving as ministers (and therefore as leaders) due to their God-given “tendencies,” rather than their actions.

Basically, it seems like the good elements of CLT can be found elsewhere, and forcing a distinctively Catholic element onto the ideas I've seen so far has seemed confusing and unproductive at best. That's not to say that they won't have anything interesting or useful to say as a result of their Catholicism. With a few exceptions like the Talmudic tradition and perhaps law itself, there aren't many systems of thought that have struggled more intensely or for a longer period of time with the nature of the law than the Church. In fact, I'd be surprised if Catholicism didn't have something useful to say on the subject, just as I'd be surprised if Buddhism's introspective tradition didn't have anything useful to say about psychology. Still, I'm confident that there are issues on which Catholic teachings are worthless and even dangerous, and people are going to have an extremely difficult time convincing me to adopt a particular position simply because a Catholic theologian or scholar supports it. To quote Issa's Giacalone's response to the Vatican's prejudicial circular reasoning on gay priests,

With all due respect, I do not believe that this mixture of metaphor, mysticism and mystery can in any way help create better lawyers, or has anything to offer legal thinkers — except, perhaps as the sort of extra-legal personal beliefs that ought not to be brought into either legislation or adjudication. In response, Patrick Brennan would surely point out to me -- as he said at MOJ — that the question of who can become a priest is not a matter of law or legal theory, but is a matter of “theology,” and “sources of officia and munera.” That simply doesn’t wash. The Church surely has much to “teach” the American legal system and its lawyers by example, when it is deciding on the rights of its members, the selection of leaders, or the due process to be afforded in deciding the status of individuals. These subjects are surely “distinctively Catholic” applications of Truth and morality...

Unless they can convince other legal thinkers that the Church’s positions on topics such as gay priests do not taint whatever guidance it can give on other topics, CLT advocates are going to have a hard time being taken seriously for having a unique, coherent and useful legal philosophy.

If CLT ends up being (or being seen) as a group of legal professionals espousing nice social theories about how to help the poor and help individuals flourish, it would almost surely be more effective dropping the “Catholic” and working within broader social and academic groups with similar interests — infiltrating, cooperating, rather than preaching. It is a conceit to believe that others do not have an equal commitment to those causes.

And it's a conceit to believe that others--particularly experts and others that believe that they have access to a capital-T Truth that flatly contradicts Catholic teachings--don't understand their own affiars. Like I said earlier, it's quite likely that over the last 1500 years some Catholics have produced tremendously useful ideas that should be given more thought. I'm not going to reject an idea just because it's rooted in Catholic doctrine. But I don't think that people should accept them for that reason, either. And if the posts I looked through are any indication, there's a danger of that with CLT.

I'd be happy if someone can prove me wrong, though. I'm certainly not going to pretend to be an expert on something I hadn't heard of until several hours ago. Am I missing something?

Tags: christian, dave, disenchantedidealist, ideology, israel, legal, terror, violence, war

Joe Lieberman and Max Cleland

2006-08-08T20:50:00.000-04:00

Here's an... interesting perspective:

In a conference call with reporters this morning, Joe Lieberman's campaign announced that former Georgia Senator Max Cleland would be appearing with Lieberman today. This may well be too little too late for Lieberman, but Cleland was a big star during the 2004 campaign and is a hero to anti-war activists (even though he actually voted for the war himself). If nothing else, this is sure to cause some amusing cognitive dissonance for Lamont supporters; it's not exactly easy to write off Cleland as part of the Republican lite Washington Democratic establishment.

I'm no expert, but I don't think that Cleland is "a hero to anti-war activists;" his claim to fame among the netroots is that he was toppled by bogus rhetoric about his softness in the war on terror despite being a triple-amputee and a Vietnam war hero. From what I can tell, the netroots don't care one way or the other about anything Cleland ever did; if he supports them, then he's a war hero that supports them. If he doesn't, then he's just another dude. Nobody, as far as I can tell, sets their priorities according to What Cleland Would Do.

It's possible that Cleland's presence will swing a few votes, but I suspect that the netroots will be so turned off by the following statement from Lieberman about Cleland that his involvement in the campaign will be a wash at best:

Sadly, my opponent has done his best to distort my record, spending at least $4 million of his own money to mislead people into thinking that I am someone I am not. Not unlike what happened to Max Cleland four years ago.

This just reinforces everything the netroots hates about Lieberman. Remember, Cleland lost four years ago because his opponent made hawkish noises and claimed Cleland would let terrorists strike the homeland because only Bush-style hawkishness could work. That comment resulted in Lieberman being called "Wanker of the day" by Atrios, and C&L called it Lieberman's "new low." Commenters thought the whole thing was ridiculous (all typos, etc. original):

and yet joe kisses up to the same kind of people that claimed Cleland supported saddam.
Wow, Joe is missing limbs and has been attacked as a terrorsimp?
yeah, Cleland was destroyed by ReThugs over his opposition to the Department f Homeland SEcurity Bill - the Bill that was championed by JOE LIEBERMAN, who blithely said that he was sure Republicans wouldn't use it to play politics.
WTF? In what way does pointing out, accurately, Joe's enthusiastic and unwavering support for an unnecessary and disastrous war equate to calling someone who left three limbs on the battlefield in the last unnecessary and disastrous war a clone of Osama?
Wow. So tarring Lamot with the ROVE brush. Interesting strategy.
Did Lieberman speak out publicly against the sandbagging of Cleland then??? I think not.
One more reason to vote for Ned Lamont: disgracing the memory of what the Rovians did to Max Cleland.

Good job, Joe. So much for your move that's "sure to cause some amusing cognitive dissonance for Lamont supporters."

Tags: tnr, dems

Buddha rays and traffic jams

2006-08-04T19:05:00.000-04:00

I like it when religion doesn't sound like a get-rich-quick scheme. Here's what one top Buddhist monk said about people staring at an optical illusion:

"If you really want to see Buddha rays, learn the Dhamma (the teachings of the Buddha) and attain enlightenment. That is the only way. Now they are only causing traffic jams."

Perfect.

Tags: buddhism, silly

Quote of the day: "arabic is sooooo gay oh my gahhhhhhd"

2006-07-29T20:08:00.000-04:00

That's what one of my friends said when I showed her this gem from Jon Swift, "a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture."

the military has discharged 55 Arabic language specialists for being gay (who knew that Arabic was such a gay language?). Sure, it might make it a little more difficult for us to intercept enemy radio communications in Iraq and make interrogations of enemy soldiers a tad more time-consuming, but I think it would be a lot worse if we threw all of our American values out the door for the sake of expediency. What in fact are we fighting for if not our principles and values? Besides, I think our new interrogation methods render the language barrier a non-issue.

Wiser words were never spoken. It's a good thing we're so much more worried about gays in the military than we are about militant neonazi thugs that radicalize the troops and take their military training home with them after the war is over like Timothy McVeigh did.

Swift rivals Fafblog's Medium Lobster for the title of America's most reasonable conservative. His recommendation that we "Declare Supreme Court Justices Enemy Combatants" is a must-read.

Tags: courts, dave, disenchantedidealist, gay, guantanamo, ideology, iraq, military, satire

The supply-side solution

2006-07-29T16:14:00.000-04:00

Best idea ever:

"Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit," President Bush said in a brief appearance at the White House to highlight the new estimates. "Today's numbers show that that was a false choice. The economic growth fueled by tax relief has helped send our tax revenues soaring."

The Republican leadership in Washington decided this week that, as a last-ditch effort to stop the deficit from spiralling out of control, it would eliminate taxes entirely.

"We've seen that tax revenues increase whenever we cut taxes," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner. "It only recently occurred to us that if we got rid of them altogether, we'd end up with a surplus."...

Tax relief evangelist Grover Norquist was more sanguine, however. "I now understand that we'll hardly be able to drown government in the bathtub if we cut taxes. After the enormous flood of revenue that comes in, government will, sadly, be bigger than ever."

Makes sense to me.

Tags: bush, business, dave, disenchantedidealist, gop, ideology, propaganda, satire, scam, silly, tax, wealth

Flies and vinegar meet apples and oranges

2006-07-27T18:31:00.000-04:00

I just read this fascinating scientific piece on The Condimentary Preferences of Drosophila at an excellent blog that can only be described as A Somewhat Old, But Capacious Handbag. Apparently,

In a small-scale survey of the dietary preferences of kitchen Drosophila (species unknown), we find, contrary to received wisdom, that you catch significantly more flies with vinegar than with honey. However, no condiment tested was sufficiently attractive or lethal to comprise a promising direction for future pest control strategies. Further analysis of drosophilan gastronomic leanings suggests they may be middle class.

Popular sentiment overwhelmingly supports the concept that ethanoic acid is unalluring to dipterans (1). However, some academic opinion disagrees (2). We here present results indicating that flies prefer vinegar not only to honey (p<0.01), but to a range of sauces and dressings from various cultural traditions.

While at first glance, this may seem compelling, unfortunately, the study is not without problems. There is no indication that the flies were actually caught. Personal observations indicate that honey is much stickier and viscous than vinegar and that its physical properties could result in more trapped flies even if the dipterans approach it only rarely. Additional research may be necessary to determine if the conventional wisdom is correct (as with the relative viscosities of blood and water or the relative flatnesses of the state of Kansas and a pancake), or not. In the mean time, the question will remain in much the same situation as the ancient chicken/egg question. There is hope, however. Scientists, mathematicians, doctors, linguists and lawyers appear to have finally reached a conclusion about whether apples can be compared to oranges. A discussion of their path to a well-supported conclusion follows.

An implicit assumption in the common expression that someone is "comparing apples and oranges" is that such a comparison would be impossible, or at least highly impractical. There seems to be reason to believe that this is not the case, however. Even the most amateur botanist can tell that pears and apples are highly similar (both are in the subfamily Maloideae), yet the Dutch, Swedes, and Germans apparently consider it impossible to "compare apples with pears," since this is their preferred construction of the same idiom. Is it possible that English speakers are similarly mistaken? Are apples and oranges really comparable or even similar? Several lines of evidence indicate that they may be.

The claims of similarity between apples and oranges appear to be bolstered by their etymological relationships in Afro-Semitic, Uralic, and Indo-European languages. In many of these languages, oranges are described as apples, albeit from a different location or with a different color. For example, the Greek χρυσομηλιά (chrysomelia) and Latin pomum aurantium both literally describe oranges as "golden apples." The German, Finnish, and Russian the terms for the bitter orange (a related species) are derived from the Latin, and the Hebrew תפוז (tapuz) is a shortened form of תפוח זהב(tapuakh zahav), which also means "golden apple." The Dutch, Latvian, Icelandic, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, and North-German words for sweet oranges (often simply called "oranges" in English) are all derived from the phrase "Chinese apple" in their respective tongues. If an apple from China is like an orange, then a comparison between the two is necessary every time an orange is mentioned.

As has been known since at least 1893 when the United States Supreme Court overturned centuries of botanical classification by defining tomatoes as vegetables (see Nix v. Hedden), common names are often biologically meaningless. Still, the large number of comparisons in relatively independent linguistic samples suggests that even if the two fruits shouldnot be compared, they are compared with great frequency, and various scholars from a variety of fields have suggested that apples and oranges can be validly compared by providing logical and empirical counterexamples.

Law professor Eugene Volokh argues that "we compare apples and oranges all the time! We compare them by price, by how much we like the taste, by likely sweetness and ripeness, by how well they'll go in a tasty fruit cocktail, and so on. In fact, every time we go to the store and buy apples rather than oranges — or vice versa — we are necessarily (if implicitly) comparing apples and oranges." He suggested that a better idiom would involve "two items that really are radically dissimilar" like "apples and democracy" or "oranges and the multiplication table." He believes that such "comparisons really would be hard to conduct." Volokh's argument seems valid, but his conclusion is likely inaccurate: one of his readers noted that even such radically dissimilar nouns as apples and the multiplication table can be compared fairly easily, as when one compares the number of syllables in each word or the relative age at which children learn each concept. Volokh's brother Alexander "Sasha" Volokh argued that mathematically, only the properties of apples and oranges can be compared; the fruits themselves cannot be. Mathematically astute bloggers and readers forced him to partially retract his analysis, however, leaving the issue at least partially unresolved.

Perhaps more interestingly, at least two independent scientific studies have been conducted on the subject, each of which concluded that apples can be compared to oranges fairly easily and also the two fruits are quite similar. The first study, conducted by Scott A. Sandford of the NASA Ames Research Center, noted that

there are several problems with dismissing analogies with the comparing apples and oranges defense.
First, the statement that something is like comparing apples and oranges is a kind of analogy itself. That is, denigrating an analogy by accusing it of comparing apples and oranges is, in and of itself, comparing apples and oranges. More importantly, it is not difficult to demonstrate that apples and oranges can, in fact, be compared

Spectrometric analysis showed that apples and oranges could be compared quite easily and that they were actually very similar. He concluded that "the comparing apples and oranges defense should no longer be considered valid. This is a somewhat startling revelation. It can be anticipated to have a dramatic effect on the strategies used in arguments and discussions in the future." Google Trends data is unavailable, but in the field of medical research (the only field where such analysis has, to our knowledge, been done), his influence appears to have been ephemeral at best. While use of the phrase dropped from an all-time high in 1995 back down to 1994 levels in 1996 after the paper was published, it quickly crept back in to use and appeared more often in 1999 (the last year for which data are available) than in any other year save 1995.

The British Medical Journal noted in a study by Stamford Hospital's surgeon-in-chief James Barone that both apples and oranges were sweet (as measured by the Licker scale), similar in size (circumference and diameter), weight (in grams), and shape, that both are grown in orchards, and both may be eaten, juiced, and so on. The only significant differences found were in terms of seeds (the study used seedless oranges), the involvement of Johnny Appleseed (P<0.01), and color (oranges were far more likely to be orange, with P=0.03).

The authors of the first study rejoined that its "earlier investigation was done with more depth, more rigour, and, most importantly, more expensive equipment" than the British Medical Journal study; they appear to be correct. The issue should be settled by now. Still, while this question appears to have been laid to rest, further study may be necessary to determine whether the Serbian construction ( "Поредити бабе и жабе", or "comparing grandmothers and frogs") and the more English exaggerated comparisons such as those between "oranges to orangutans" "apples to dishwashers" and so on are invalid as Professor Volokh suggested.

Note: The above is a heavily modified version of the Wikipedia article on apples and oranges. (I can rewrite it for my blog because I wrote much of the original article and also because it's an Open Document, and Open Documents are awesome like that).

Tags: biology, dave, disenchantedidealist, research, satire, silly

Dehumanizing depictions, breast implants, sugar daddies, and violence against women

2006-07-24T17:48:00.000-04:00

I found the following three websites, and I asked some female friends of mine which one was the most horrible--they were all pretty bad.

With one vote, we have a pageant of "comely mugshots of selected [female] arrestees" from a local prison with instructions for the (male) readers to "review the cavalcade of incarcerated corn country cuties, and vote for the one that sets your heart a-twitter." (hat tip to Feministing). These men are literally gazing at these women through the eyes of the state and participating in their discipline and punishment. It probably says a lot about our society that men choose to gaze at, rank, classify, and mock powerless women kept under lock and key.

Tied for second place, also with one vote, we have "sugar daddie dot com," a dating service that hooks beautiful women up with rich men (and rich women with good-looking men, but they don't really announce that). The problem isn't so much that such a site exists but that we've reached the point where it's "necessary." There are definitely advantages to be found on both sides, and such a relationship can be (or at least seem) empowering for women that get pampered by their "sugar daddy," but it's still... creepy. The other striking aspect of this site is the class issue. Someone could probably write a really insightful research paper on class using this site as Exhibit A. There are dozens of lines like these:

Successful men wanting to be a Sugar Daddy are ultimately caring individuals. Sugar Daddy dating delivers to people who are aware of the finer things in life and understand that good living is not a luxury, but a necessity... Second best is not an option in online dating and we understand the needs of single people when delivering an unrivaled matchmaking service that is admired by many, but equaled by none.

Millionaire dating is exclusive and people nowadays see that, the more exclusive it is, the more of a must have it becomes.

I'm ashamed that members of my species are drawn in by this tripe. The whole site is like a bizarre parody of itself. The page design tries to be classy, extravagant, and elegant, but it tries too hard and ends up looking unprofessional and tacky. Especially when they start adding UPPERCASE FLASHING TEXT. And exclamation points! They scream exclusivity but look like a cheap knockoff. Furthermore,

Sugardaddie.com does not take responsibility in checking the truth or accuracy of any information posted to the website, nor do we undertake to screen the content of any information provided to it, or guarantee the proper use of such information by any party, including its members.

In other words, if you can rent a tuxedo, you can pose as a "millionaire" and hoodwink hot women. Classy. Weirdly, they also ban the terms "mistress," "goddess," and "money slave." I'm not sure how they picked those three, but they did. To top off the weirdness, almost every page is littered with weird word usages, suggesting that they're trying way too hard to sound classy but have no idea what they're talking about (evolvement? setting precedence?). I'm surprised more people's bullshit detectors haven't gone off. Even when there's nothing quite wrong with their diction, their prose often reminds me of Bush's obvious-speak ("Russia's a big country and you're a big country... Russia's big and so is China") or Tom Cruise's writing ("is there anything in a name—J.J.? Look at the Jays we have now—Jay Leno, J. Lo, Jay-Z—but he's got two Js."). Depressing.

But the third site I found really takes first place. And now, with a whopping six votes, I present to you "My Free Implants Dot Com."

Create The Perfect Girl at MyFreeImplants.com!

Your eyes haven't lied to you. That actually is an animated hand dropping coins into the back of a seductively-posed mostly-naked woman whose breasts grow with each coin added, and it really does recommend that you give them money to "create the PERFECT girl." The site really is a place where men pay for women to pay attention to them and the women are required to spend that money on cosmetic surgery so that more men will value their attention because of their appearance. It's like prostitution but without the freedom provided by the money the women earn. They don't get to use that money except to please their viewers even more. The site is pretty up-front about that: "the surgeries are paid for through the network of benefactor members in our community, and they ultimately decide on who gets the procedures they want first." Nice. According to The Houston Press,

Jason Grunstra, 28, launched the site last year. It's free for women, but men have to pay around $1.80 for each e-mail they send. The women make a buck off each e-mail; Grunstra and PayPal take the balance. So far, about 700 women and 2,000 men have joined. Grunstra, who lives in L.A., says he keeps each woman's money in a bank account until they reach their target, and he keeps the interest.

Not only that, but it turns out that once they get fake breasts, they can parlay them for even more money:

In 2003, a fellow calling himself Hugh Jass launched [pimping the poor dot com] as a way to kill two birds with one stone. Hugh and his friends claim to have an annoying boss named Kurt Smith. They also enjoy fake-boob-cyberbegging sites. So they contacted the cyberbeggars and offered them a few bucks if they would model skimpy garments on their own sites that read "Kurt Smith Sucks."

At least that way they get to keep the money.

Still, while these sites are all pretty horrible, they seem to be more symptoms than problems in and of themselves. If women want to earn a dollar every time a creepy guy sends them an email, I don't think anyone should try to stop them. But these things are symptoms of a broader problem, where women are constantly degraded and even attacked. At The Debate Link, I found a story showing how the courts treat battered women they don't like:

In California, a Mexican women [sic] went to court to get a restraining order against her husband, who was abusing her. Instead, the presiding judge asked if she was an illegal immigrant. When she said yes, the judge replied:

"I hate the immigration laws that we have, but I think the bailiff could take you to the immigration services and send you to Mexico.” Then the Judge had a creative idea: he would count to 20 and Gonzalez would disappear by the time he was finished. No trouble for her; no trouble for him. "One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. When I get to 20, she gets arrested and goes to Mexico," said the judge according to the court transcript. This week, in an interview with the LA Times, Judge Fink explains his intent to get Gonzalez from trouble with the INS. He also said he saw nothing more than screaming between the husband and wife, although reportedly Gonzalez had moved last month into a domestic violence shelter. The Superior Court is now reviewing the hearing.

There's also a fascinating and almost unbearably depressing comment thread over at Bitch, Ph.D. where women discuss their personal experiences with misogyny, how those experiences fit into the big picture, and how to fight back. Some of the things men do to women (and women do to one another) because of gender are unimaginably horrible, and reading these women's stories and the way they perceived and analyzed male dominance helped me understand sexual politics much better.

Some of the comments from men were enlightening as well. One guy used the analogy of living in a town with a gas chamber, knowing that you don't work there but that you're not all that different from the people that do, and that you're not really doing anything to stop them, and that basically summarizes my reaction as well. I think everyone should read it (despite its length) so more people understand women's continuing subjugation and what we're up against as we challenge male dominance. It's a tricky bastard of a system, it's linked with other systems like racism and statism, and it hurts us all, even those that sometimes benefit from it.

Tags: dave, disenchantedidealist, gender, hate, immigration, rape, sex, violence

Bush: dog feces edition

2006-07-23T17:19:00.000-04:00

I just found this. I can't independently verify any of it, but it's funny whether it's true or not.

Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking
miniature flag portraits of US President George W. Bush into piles of
dog poo in public parks. Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth,
said: "This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be
2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that
time."

The series of incidents was originally thought to be some sort of
protest against the US-led invasion ofIraq. And then when it continued
it was thought to be a protest against President George W. Bush's
campaign for re-election. But it is still going on and the police say
they are completely baffled as to who is to blame. "We have sent out
extra patrols to try to catch whoever is doing this in the act," said
police spokesman Reiner Kuechler. "But frankly, we don't know what we
would do if we caught them red handed." Legal experts say there is no
law against using feces as a flag stand and the federal legal experts
say there is no law against using feces as a flag stand and the federal
constitution is vague on the issue.

Wonderful. As long as you promise not to send money or pipe bombs, you can have flags mailed to your home by following the instructions here. Better yet, you can make your own flags using a PDF available from the same page and then send in pictures to add to the site's photo gallery. The artist that designed the project says the purpose is simply to provoke thought and emotion. I guess it's very postmodernly avant garde or whatever. I dunno.

Chinese excuses

2006-07-23T02:51:00.000-04:00

My friend Hillary's stay in China (and her trip to Mongolia in particular) is letting her write the best excuses:

"Hi Bess, Sorry for the late reply. I was in Inner Mongolia the past few days and didn't have internet access."
"Hey Reid, Sorry to get back to you so late. I was in the middle of the desert."
Sorry I wasn't in my room earlier, "I was in a riot in Tiananmen."
"Sorry [I missed your call]. I was at dead mao."
I "can't [go to lunch]. I'm on the great wall."

Hope you have a safe trip back, Hillary.

Tags: silly, china, personal, hillary, disenchantedidealist, Dave

Bush's illegal signing statements and the American Bar Association proposals

2006-07-22T17:06:00.000-04:00

One of the more interesting (and effective) weapons in bush's quasi-legal arsenal in his war on the other branches has been the aggressive signing statement (pioneered by now-Justice Samuel Alito). The biggest danger isn't that the president will convince the courts to accept his retroactive reinterpretation of the law, though with Alito on the court, that's more likely than it should be. Instead, the main problem is that executive agencies (i.e. the parts of the government that actually do things) will follow them. That's especially likely when we have quasi-judicial agencies like the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel interpreting the law to suit the president telling those agencies to follow the signing statements as law. At that point, we have the President rewriting the law, his stooges interpreting it, and his stooges' stooges carrying it out. Meanwhile, Congress and the courts are kept in the dark about the actual content of the law, despite their ostensible duty to write and interpret it.

The American Bar Association has a few creative proposals for remedying this. They're on the verge of concluding that Congress should pass a law so that legislators can sue Bush if they think his signing statements misinterpret their law, which is great, at least in theory. It gets all three branches in on the issue, and makes it so the president can't force the courts to discard it. It gives the courts the final say.

There are three problems, though.

Arlen Specter is the chair of the Judiciary Committee (where this would be worked out before being submitted for a floor vote). We can look forward to some inspiring theatrics from him where it really looks like he cares about the issue and will force Bush to uphold the law, but then once he has the upper hand, he'll "compromise" for no reason and rewrite the legislation to make it worse than the status quo.
Nobody knows exactly how Bush's signing statements are being interpreted and used, since they're always extremely broad and vague and Bush is usually smart enough to classify his quasi-legal activity. If the executive does a good job of obfuscating, it'll be hard for Congress to know that they're being hoodwinked and even harder to prove it before a court.
All of this assumes that Congress even wants to be a real live branch of government. There's some depressingly good evidence that they don't. It takes guts to go head-to-head with the president, especially when it might actually change something.

The ABA has three other resolutions relating to signing statements:

The first three ask the president not to use signing statements as a kind of shortcut veto. If the president thinks a bill or part of a bill is unconstitutional, one of these resolution declares, he should feel free to say so—but he should do that before he signs it, not after. The other resolution suggests Congress craft legislation to make signing statements more transparent and more accessible. Currently, signing statements are not sent directly to Congress, and they are often ambiguous in their intent. But a law could require the president to write a report explaining exactly how and why he plans not to enforce a law, if he plans not to enforce it, for every signing statement he issues.

Sounds excellent, especially the last one. In theory, it'll solve the second problem--executive obfuscation--I noted above. Hopefully all these resolutions pass and that they have some influence. Maybe the momentum from debating this could overcome the third issue--Congressional apathy--as well. But We'll be stuck with Arlen Specter no matter what, it seems.

Also, the ABA president has a pretty good speech criticizing Bush and the Specter bill on wiretapping. Crooks and Liars has the video.

Bush in free fall: the flash animation

2006-07-18T22:42:00.000-04:00

I was mesmerized by this. It's so fitting. It never stops. It was even better once I realized you could click and drag to shake him around even more and not just watch passively as he bounced and fell. I sort of with they'd made him a little less flexible and a little less passive, but try it for yourself. It'll feel so good.

Categories: bush, silly, web

Delighting in self-negation: the "culture of life"

2006-07-18T15:15:00.000-04:00

Updated below with criticism of the anti-pro-life article and my response.

Some of my readers may be aware that I find few things more delicious than a clever reversal where someone accidentally dismantles their own argument. One example is what debaters call a "double turn" ("nuh-uh! My idea won't make a bad thing more likely, it'll make a good thing less likely!"). Another example is what The Anonymous Liberal calls a "Noonan Award" nominee; the person sacrifices an important point to prove a minor one (this is one of my favorites). There are lots of other variants ranging from simple hypocrisy to accidentally poisoning one's own well, and they can all be loads of fun, depending on the circumstances.

For some reason, all of these are pretty frequent among National Review columnists (I don't read it often anymore, but in recent months, Rich Lowry deconstructed most of conservatism, Jonah Goldberg convincingly showed that his "principles" are actually mere tools, and David Frum accidentally ridiculed his own arguments). The phenomenon isn't limited to their pages, though. Rumsfeld, for instance, simultaneously believes that intelligence is the future of the military, controls 80% of the intelligence budget, and that it's not his job to do "intelligent [sic]" work. Scalia and Yoo do the same sort of thing to Originalism all the time, though I haven't blogged about it yet. "Intelligent design" proponents likewise ignore their "theory" when it suits them, such as when they're infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria or try to explain what designed the designer. The most extreme advocates of liberty can find themselves defending child prostitution, a right to drive drunk, and state-sponsored abortions. Some less fun examples are the "traditional values" folks can find themselves defending child molestation, state-sponsored kidnapping, and cancer and the "Patriots" that want to dismantle everything this country stands for. On a less serious note, the makers of the X-Men actually litigated against their characters' interests and won millions of dollars by undermining their own message.

One ideology that seems to get tied up in knots more than most others is "the culture of life." I think part of the reason is that advances in technology and knowledge have made their principles less and less applicable, so they need to broaden the scope of their ideology to cover marginal cases or lose it altogether. Here's a list of 20 great questions that put pro-lifers in uncomfortable positions (with a link to an article filled with real-life situations they create) and here's a spectacular satire from The Onion on the subject. I bring this up because I just found one of the most spectacularly delicious scientific arguments imaginable. Here's the abstract:

Some proponents of the pro-life movement argue against morning after pills, IUDs, and contraceptive pills on grounds of a concern for causing embryonic death. What has gone unnoticed, however, is that the pro-life line of argumentation can be extended to the rhythm method of contraception as well. Given certain plausible empirical assumptions, the rhythm method may well be responsible for a much higher number of embryonic deaths than some other contraceptive techniques.

Pure delight.

Randy Alcorn calculates that "even an infinitesimally low portion(say one hundredth of one per cent) of 780 million pill cyclesper year globally could represent tens of thousands of unbornchildren lost to this form of chemical abortion annually"...

[I]f one is willingto make a few relatively innocent assumptions, then the rhythmmethod may well be responsible for massive embryonic death andthe same logic that turned pro-lifers away from morning afterpills, IUDs and pill usage, should also make them nervous aboutthe rhythm method...

It seems reasonable to assume that anembryo that results from an "old" ovum (that is waiting at theend of the fertile period) or an "old" sperm (that is stilllingering on from before ovulation), and that is trying to implantin a uterine wall that is not at its peak of receptivity, isless viable than an embryo that comes about in the centre intervalof the fertile period... Sotheir success rate [with the rhythm method] is due not only to the fact that they manageto avoid conception, but also to the fact that conceived ovahave reduced survival chances...

[Our assumptions tell us that] on average, for every pregnancy that resultsfrom a conception outside the HF period, there are two to threeembryonic deaths... If all of Alcorn’s 780 millionpill users were to switch to the rhythm method, then these convertswould be causing, in his own words, the deaths not of tens ofthousands, but of millions of unborn children...

Making some reasonable assumptions, we can conclude that

a condom user... can count on one embryonic death foreach unintended pregnancy. A rhythm method user, however, shouldcount on two to three embryonic deaths for each unintended pregnancy.Assuming a success rate of 95% for condom usage, we can counton an expectation of .5 pregnancies in 10 years. Hence, theexpectation of embryonic death is .5 per ten years for a condomuser, which is substantially lower than the expectation of twoto three embryonic deaths per ten years on the rhythm method [estimated elsewhere in the piece].Even a policy of practising condom usage and having an abortionin case of failure would cause less embryonic deaths than therhythm method.

The last couple of paragraphs address some possible counterarguments. If people don't find this argument at least potentially compelling, though, it shows that the "cornerstone of the argumentof the pro-life movement, namely that deaths of early embryosare a matter of grave concern" is bunk. I love it!

Update: The article wasn't very well-recieved in the scientific community, and so I salvaged some of the argument. I'm not prepared to argue that the rhythm method or "natural family planning" (NFP) cause more embryonic deaths than IUDs or the pill, but I have what I think is a very good case for why they might cause more embryonic death than condoms. This was originally written as a response to another internet user here. I've added some modifications so that my readers here can understand my point without necessarily reading the other piece, though it's available in the above link.

Thank you for your thoughtful and well-articulated response.

Regardless of the individual facts of the article (many of which I'm not qualified to comment on), surely you can agree that given the extremely high number of natural embryonic deaths (and the fact that this number rises with age), there are many more fertilizations than births in women using any method. The question is simply how to minimize the number of "wasted" fertilizations to save as many embryos as posssible.

If I grant your contention that older gametes do not produce less viable embryos, then the ratio of fertilizations to deaths is the same for condom users as it is for couples with no contraception and rhythm method users. By happy coincidence, minimizing the number of fertilizations through any of these methods minimizes both embryonic deaths and unwanted pregnancies.

That means that one can simply look up the effectiveness rate for the rhythm method and for condoms; the method most effective at preventing pregnancy is also the method most effective at preventing doomed fertilizations and there is some simple ratio between these (1:1 if 50% of embryos fail to implant).

The numbers I've seen say the following:
Perfect NFP use fails between 1 and 9 percent per year, depending on which studies one looks at
Perfect condom use fails about 3% per year

Let's be slightly generous towards NFP and simplify the issue by saying that the perfect use stats are indistinguishable. One could argue, however, that what matters morally is actual results rather than the ideal results. In that case, various NFP methods fail 14-25% of the time. To keep things simple, let's call NFP failure 20% (the average of 14 and 25 is just under 20). Condoms fail about 14% of the time.

Assuming that my numbers are right so far, and that you're correct that embryos produced by the two methods are equally viable, it appears that typical NFP causes an additional 0.6 unwanted pregnancies per couple per year compared to typical condom use. Then we have to multiply that number times the number of doomed embryos per pregnancy (somewhere between 1 and 50 if between 50% and 98% of embryos are doomed) to find the total number of doomed embryos per couple per year that could have been saved if the couple had used condoms instead of NFP.

If only half of all embryos are doomed, then NFP kills 0.06 embryos per couple per year in a typical setting that would never have been fertilized by condom use.

If 98% of embryos are doomed (as is common in older couples), then NFP kills 3 embryos per couple per year in a typical setting relative to a typical condom user.

75% seems to be the most general figure, so that's 0.18 dead embryos per year, or one dead embryo per five years.

If embryos are human life, then this is the moral equivalent of murdering someone every five years to avoid some latex (up to three murders a year for older couples). That hardly seems ethical.

If reducing embryonic deaths is actually one's goal, he or she should recognize the possibility that NFP isn't the best way of doing it and recognize that these arguments are at least potentially damning. (If one's goal is to promote NFP, they won't matter one way or the other.)

Incidentally, there are several articles that support the aging gametes theory, which would restore much of the credibility of the initial argument.

How are my figures?

Categories: familyvalues, christain, incompetence, abortion, biology, sex, ideology, medical, personal, research

"Interesting" conversation on Bush and sexual harassment

2006-07-18T01:20:00.000-04:00

me: Bush sexually harassed a high-ranking foreign official [German Chancellor Angela Merkel]
her: :-)
her: you only wish you could harass a woman with that much power.
me: uh.
her: cummon
her: okay, fine.
her: she's not that hot, i guess.

When asked to elaborate, the conversation continued:

her i wouldn't do her. what do you want me to say?
me: [but] you're straight.
her this is a very true statement
me: interesting spelling of "come on," by the way.
her it wasn't meant as please ejaculate now, it was like...a slangy, smoother version of the very caucasian 'come on' i could have uttered
me: okay.
her thought i should explain myelf

...

me: any other insights on this international event?
her which international event?
her the G8 or me explaining myself?
me: uh, Bush sexually harassing a foreign leader.
her oh, no. he's just horny. it's not like fucking ~~Laura~~ [Angela Merkel] is any good.

Let's just call it an interesting perspective and leave it at that. I guess she thought it was funny.

Categories: bush, sex, gender, rape, personal,

Blog stuff

2006-07-17T17:27:00.000-04:00

Apparently, India is blocking all Blogger blogs. Fortunately, for now at least, Indian blog readers won't have much trouble circumventing it if they know what they're doing.

Sorry about the light blogging lately; I've been pretty busy with my research and I've also been pretty tired. I've also been making more changes to the categories system to make it more complete and easier to use.

I'm also interested in having co-bloggers join me here. I think it could make the blog much more interesting and easy to maintain. If anyone wants to pitch in (even occasionally), let me know. It should be a fun experience.

Categories: india, censorship, personal, web

Need a date? Just call 911

2006-07-16T14:06:00.001-04:00

I'm glad I'm not this desperate.

it all started with a noise complaint called in last month by neighbors of Lorna Jeanne Dudash. The deputy sent to check on the complaint knocked on her door, then left.
Thompson said Dudash then called 911, asking that the "cutie pie" deputy return.
"He's the cutest cop I've seen in a long time. I just want to know his name," Dudash told the dispatcher. "Heck, it doesn't come very often a good man comes to your doorstep... Honey, I'm just going to be honest with you, OK? I just thought he was cute. I'm 45 years old and I'd just like to meet him again, but I don't know how to go about doing that without calling 911... I know this is absolutely not in any way, shape or form an emergency, but if you would give the officer my phone number and ask him to come back, would you mind?"
The deputy returned, verified that there was no emergency and arrested her for misusing the 911 system, an offense punishable by a fine of up to several thousand dollars and a year in jail.

Awesome.

Categories: silly

Hyperreality, evolution, and faith

2006-07-14T22:09:00.000-04:00

So I was browsing Fundies Say the Darndest Things today and found this gem:

Here are my top three favorite questions to Evolutionists:
Explain evolution in light of a 6000 year universe - (Genesis 1).
Since God pronounced His Creation "very good" in Genesis 1:31 - why the need for Evolution?
Since Jesus didn't believe in Evolution - (Mark 10:6; 13:19) - why should we?

The weird part is that they apparently expect these to influence people that don't interpret Genesis and Mark literally. I've seen such people before. It's literally inconceivable to them that the Bible isn't universally considered an authority on everything. I think this is (related to) what's called "hyperreality." The story this guy grew up with is more real than the actual world, and he cannot imagine anything outside of it.

The author has a signature. Here it is:

If it disagrees with the King James Bible - it's wrong.

Aside from the obvious problems with biblical literalism, does anyone know of a serious argument that the King James Version (more than any other translation) is the Word of God?

People scare me.

Categories: christian, evolution, ideology, philosophy

The Creative Commons Lotus

2006-07-09T17:56:00.000-04:00

Unlike, say, my friend Hillary, I have no esthetic, artistic, or photographic skills whatsoever. Most of the time, I don't even notice or care about the things other people find beautiful (aside from attractive people, but that's different). When I was contemplating my site redesign a while back, I was searching for Creative Commons photographs on everystockphoto.com. While looking around, I stumbled across the picture at below (Creative Commons lisences are great; anyone that wants can use the photo in their own work so long as they credit and notify Greg Kazarian at gpk [at] gpkdesign [dot] com).

There was something about the way it stood alone, tall and unbent against the gloomy background really moved me, and it seemed like the perfect image for my blog. It seemed to me like the lotus was doing what I see as one of the purposes of this blog: maintaining idealistic courage in an awry world. The lotus is an especially appropriate symbol for this because it represents the growth of beauty from the muck and detachment from the contaminated waters of desire below. It's about perseverance and acceptance, improving oneself while recognizing that the world around is chaotic and painful. About hoping for the best but expecting nothing. About disenchantment with the world and about finding a new more subtle and fulfilling way of experiencing it. It would have been ideal for my blog.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to crop it appropriately. I needed something I could stick at the top of the page, and there was no way I could do the picture justice with those constraints. So I made my own logo, and I think it came out pretty well. I still wanted to publicize the photo because I thought other people might find it as meaningful as I did. I hope you'll also check out the photographer's photographer's other work. Some of it is pretty amazing.

Categories: biology, buddhism, personal, photo,