politics

18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth.

23% of voters approve of the way Bush is running the country.

where does that extra 5% come from??

Gay Marriage

As of 5:01pm yesterday, gay people in California can get married. Today in the news I'm seeing mostly cute articles about different couples tying the knot, but in the days leading up to this event, people were re-hashing the arguments for and against gay marriage ad nauseam.

When people argue about the issue, inevitably someone liberal but not very invested in the cause comes up with what he's sure is the most novel idea anyone's ever heard. If only everyone would listen to this brilliant piece of insight, we could all stop fighting and put the issue to rest. the argument is: "Abolish government marriage. Let the government perform civil unions for gays AND straights, but leave marriage to the churches. After all, this gives gay people the legal rights of married people without the separate but equal problem, and since we're not using the word marriage, conservatives can't claim we're going against their religious beliefs!"

this argument is bullcrap.

history lesson:
In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court found that having separate schools for black and white children, even if they were of equal quality, was unconstitutional. In response, at least one rural school system in southern Virginia literally shut down their schools. "Fine, if we have to give black kids the same thing we're giving to whites, we just won't give anything to anyone. problem solved."

If you think this was an unjust action, how can you support taking away marriage rather than give it to gays? Even if you don't find the situations perfectly analogous, you've got to admit there's a resemblance, and that means making the government grant "civil union licenses" instead of marriage licenses is not going to satisfy gay people.

beyond that, right now marriage means more than just "civil union plus religious ceremony." the meaning's kind of amorphous and changing, but don't mistake "hard to define" with "without definition."

for example: My mother is an atheist. But she's married to my dad. They didn't go to a synagogue or church to have some religious ceremony, but she still rather likes being married to him. Despite the fact their union is not consecrated by any religious power, I'm pretty damn sure she'd think calling their relationship a civil union instead of a marriage would be a downgrade.

This solution would please no one who thinks civil marriage is more than hospital visitation rights and the ability to file a joint tax return.

And you know what? Even if some Evangelicals think civil marriage means exactly that, they would not be okay with calling it anything but marriage.
it's not like they're exactly huge separation of church and state proponents. Have you not paid attention to the idiotic crusades against liberals and the evil ACLU who are wiping out G-d from public life. These people boycott big box stores who say "Happy Holidays" in their December ads. They talk endlessly about displaying the 10 commandments in courtrooms and encouraging prayer in public schools. They very firmly believe that "America is a Christian nation," and to them, instituting Civil Unions is going to be taking the God out of marriage.

Basically, this "solution" would satisfy no one at all. Come up with some new ideas.

it's been a while

Once upon a time there was a prince named Hamlet who lived in Denmark.
And every day he moped around the castle because his father was dead and his mother (Gertrude) had married his uncle (Claudius).
Until one day the ghost of his dead father appeared to him and told him that the Claudius had murdered him.
And because of that, Hamlet vowed to avenge his father, and started acting like a lunatic while he worried over a plan.
And because of that, Polonius started spying on him to prove Hamlet was crazy over Ophelia, but he ended up getting himself stabbed.
Until finally, Laertes returned from France to avenge Polonius's death, and he killed Hamlet with a poison-tipped sword, but not before Gertrude had drunk poison, and Hamlet had killed Laertes with the same sword and both stabbed Claudius and made him drink that same poison. (woohoo run-on sentences!)
And ever since then, Fortinbras (a totally ancillary character from Norway who has been mentioned maybe twice in the past 3 hours) became the new king of Denmark.

I saw the free Hamlet in the park a few weeks ago. It was good. Long (my butt fell asleep) but good. That's my goal for this summer: at least 1 free thing a week. That week I did Hamlet plus a Regina Spektor performance on the mall. Yesterday, I went to the Phillips Collection because they were having free admission. Three guesses what the main show up there was... That's right: Jacob Lawrence. Pretty much every time I go to the Phillips Collection, there is a Jacob Lawrence show up. In fact, this time, they had the exact same Jacob Lawrence show I'd gone to in 1993. Admittedly, my average attendance rate at the Phillips is about once every five years. look, in a city full of great free museums, is it a surprise that I never feel like paying the $12? but still. they REALLY like the guy.

next weekend, I'm thinking...Capital Pride? I want to at least make the parade, I think.

Oh, in other news, here's how the rest of my life is going to go:
Friday: give my notice at my job
A month from Friday: stop working
About a week after that: go on an "adventure tour" to costa rica.
10 Days after that: try to find a place to live next year.
Sept 2: start Smith post-bacc program in math
Sometime in January: do a free birthright trip to israel
May, 2009: graduate from the post-bacc program
June, 2009: who the fuck knows?

WHY WON'T IT STOP RAINING?

In improv yesterday, I got to be a zombie and superman and I got to throw up on stage and pretend to lick someone. Improv is fun.

This is maybe just superstitious, but I think before I can be good on stage I have to fail first. I secretly suspect most people are like this. You need to freeze up and have a completely wooden, boring scene, just so next time you get up, you can be like, "fuck it, it can't get any worse than that disaster," and just play without overthinking things.

Hopefully, flights don't get delayed too badly and I make it to class next Sunday. Three hours of getting the fuck ups out of our systems immediately prior to the showcase will help a lot.

finals

As my buddies still in school suffer through finals week, I'm feeling oddly reminiscent about my own stressful final exam/paper experiences.

My senior year, the last night of reading period, I moved my entire life into the computer science lounge. I had a 20 page philosophy paper to write, and I had not even started the research. After I skimmed through about 10 library books, I came up with a sort of thesis, but it was based on a computer science class I'd taken the previous semester, and only one of the books I'd skimmed was actually helpful.

So I went to the previous class's website, pulled up all the online journal articles we'd read, and tried pulling some quotes from that.

Still, I needed more. I thought I could find something useful in the Computer Science class's textbook, but a friend and I had shared one book, since it's not like anyone actually ever did the reading in computer science classes, and I had no idea where it was. At that point, it was around midnight, so I couldn't go knocking on her door to see if it was in her room, but I had vague memories of us leaving it on the grand piano in the living room many months before, so I made the walk back to my house to see if it was still there. It wasn't.

I freaked out for a while, and then pulled myself together and found the paper I'd written for that class. Sure enough, there were quotes from the textbook. I plugged them into google, and figured out that with a little ingenuity, I could use the "look inside" feature on Amazon to get what I needed.

And then, I put on some music (NPR All Songs Considered. Perfect for getting into a trance-like state.), and stared to type. I have no attention span, so every paragraph or so, I'd award myself with a nytimes.com article.

When I was about 3/4 of the way done, my all-nighter compatriot in the lab informed me sunrise was coming (apparently he procrastinated by reading weather.com? it's not like there were windows in the lab), so I went outside to watch it rise. I picked up the newspaper delivered to the science building door and scanned the headlines. I'd already read them all.

I walked to higher ground (near the campus center) to get a better view of the sun. Then, the sprinklers went on and I decided to run through them. Finally, I went back to the lab and pounded out the rest of the paper. What a piece of shit. But I finished the damn thing and somehow managed an A in the class. Possibly because my professor cared even less than I did.

ah, school. why am I seriously considering going back next year?

Ryan Sorba

The republican club at my alma mater brought this dude to campus yesterday to deliver a speech called "the born gay hoax." Apparently his thesis is that people choose to be gay, it isn't natural, and gay people are out recruiting our impressionable youth. Totall bullshit.

So last night when he came, a ton of students showed up (more than could fit in the room he was scheduled to speak in) and started chanting really loudly and banging on pots and pans. He left halfway through his speech and didn't come back. Now there's some controversy over whether protesting him was appropriate.

A couple thoughts:

I'm not sure if it was appropriate, but I'm kind of proud it happened. It probably was immature, but you're supposed to be immature in college. Never again in your life will you be free to act out as much. Take advantage!

Also, the "this isn't how mature adults behave" argument reminds me a lot of the "this isn't how nice girls should act" line that women have been fed forever. Yeah, it's not how mature people act in polite society, but maybe they should! In general, women don't speak up enough because they're too worried about appearing nice. Good for the protestors for stepping outside the constraints of normal social mores for an evening.

Finally, liberalism does not equal absolute moral relativism. It's true that we make a lot of relativistic arguments. Think of: "just because your church says abortion is wrong, doesn't mean the rest of us think so." or "just because you think homosexuality is a sin doesn't mean the rest of us do!" However, that relativism is not complete, and no matter how fervently asshole republicans want to do so, you can't take it to its logical extreme. I think in general, we should err on the side of being more open-minded, not less, but when someone's opinion is basically lies (whether the lie is "gay people choose to be gay" or "intelligent design is a real scientific theory") we don't have to take it seriously. Not all opinions are worthy of respect. Some are just illogical and stupid.

magic beans

once upon a time, there was a cow named bob.
and every day bob ate piles of purple hay.
until one day, a vagabond set the hay on fire.
and because of that, bob started to go hungry and couldn't produce any milk.
and because of that, the farmer decided to sell her for some magic beans.
until finally, the farmer started growing the (magic) soybeans and stopped raising beef.
and ever since then, vasily the newly vegan farmer made enough money to buy bob back and make her a family pet.

I actually had a good weekend--passover, swimming outdoors, reading a good book. Nothing that made a good story, though.

4 ways to tell I am more tired than I feel

1. When I got home last night, I tried to open the front door with my work key. (My work "key" is actually an rfid device.)

2. I then proceeded to pack my bag and go to the pool. For once, I even remembered to pack my bath pouf. What I didn't remember was my swimsuit.

3. This morning, I filled up the kettle to make some tea, put it on the stove, and then tried to turn on the flame by pressing buttons on the microwave.

4. I decided to eat cereal for lunch today. (shut up) I reached in to the fridge to get my carton of soy milk, and ended up taking out the brita pitcher instead.

the show

once upon a time, I started taking classes at WIT.
and every day, I thought, "I should really go see a show put on by the people who are teaching me."
until one day (this Saturday) I finally bought a ticket.
and because of that, I took the metro down to gallery place for the 9:30 show.
and because of that, I got there a little early and ran into a guy from my class.
until finally, the show started and we got to see the final round of FIST, which was awesome, and the troupe Jackie, which was also very good.
and ever since then, I've decided to drag my ass to shows more readily.

seriously, it costs no more than a movie ticket and is incredibly entertaining. hell, if you go to the right show, they will improvise a movie in front of you. too bad the spring run of shows just ended.

the grease fire.

Once upon a time, there was me.
And every day (well, every weekend anyway) I thought, "I should really go visit my friends in Baltimore who just had a baby," but I was too lazy to actually make the trip.
Until one day, I heard from the friends that they were moving to California.
And because of that, their friends hosted a going away brunch for them yesterday in NE DC.
And because of that, I *finally* got to meet the baby. Also, I helped make pancakes.
Until finally, I started a grease fire on the electric stove. Luckily I was not holding the baby at the time.
And ever since then, the baby's parents have wisely decided to take him out of the room whenever I am near dangerous kitchen appliances.

sit com

I just realized the word sitcom is short for situational comedy.
my entire world just shifted.

7 line story

Once upon a time there was an office worker who hated her job.
And every day she drove the 10 miles to work, usually speeding because she couldn't bring herself to leave home on time.
Until one day while she was speeding along, she ran into a trash can someone had left too far from the edge of the road.
And because of that her rearview mirror smacked against her passenger side window, cracking the glass in the mirror.
And because of that she took the car to the dealer who said it would cost $400 to replace the mirror.
Until finally her father thought the dealer was trying to cheat her, so he called his friend at Joe's Auto-Body, who said he'd do the job for $100.
And ever since then the office worker decided never to go to the dealership for car repairs. She still speeds to work, though.

Explanation: We did this in my improv class one day. The idea is you can summarize any story in 7 lines if you stick to the outline above. It's pretty easy to make up a story in that format, but it's surprisingly difficult to shoehorn events from your real life into it. I think it's good practice, though.

"Until one day" is the easiest line. It's where the break in the pattern--the event in your life that was out of the ordinary--occurs. People who can't tell stories well (I include myself) usually jump right to this line and often forget about the other 6. The first 2 give context: Most stories have a few different people in them. "Once upon a time" forces you to figure out who the main character is. "And every day" forces you to define what normal is, so people will know when something abnormal occurs. Lines 4-6 are all about heightening. A story's no good if it's just, "This one weird thing happened this one time." You need a plot twist: how did the one weird thing cause something else? One plot twist isn't enough, though. It's too predictable, so: how did that something else cause a third thing to occur? Having that chain of events gives you forward motion, which you then cap in a climax on line 6. Then, line 7 is the moral or punchline. It's your chance to explain why the story was worth telling in the first place.

So, I think I'm going to try some blog posts in the 7 line story format. It's not like I'm using this thing for anything else, so maybe I can refine my storytelling skills.

Laurie Anderson

On Saturday, I went to see Laurie Anderson, an apparently pretty famous performance artist (I know nothing about art!), give a lecture about Andy Warhol's Electric Chair at the National Portrait Gallery.

It was... I don't really know what it was. I ended up talking about it afterwards with a bunch of different people who ended up at a series of gallery openings on 14th st afterwards. (Including this opening, at which I felt completely awkward and out of place, because Washington is not a fashionable place, but I'm pretty sure every single person in the tiny minority of Washingtonians who *do* pay attention to fashion was in that room. With me and my frayed jeans and t-shirt.)

She'd obviously prepared ahead of time. She had a whole outline worked out, an interesting powerpoint presentation, and even a working audio element (a really cool excerpt from a talk by William S Burroughs). But it seemed like nerves just took her over. As an ex- occasional debater, I sympathized completely. It was like being a novice debater getting up with just a vague outline of a speech to give a rebuttal to the team with the biggest reputation on the circuit. You just blank. On one level, you know you have interesting things to say, but on another, why are you even pretending to be on par with [former Nats finalists OR PhD Art Historians]. So you stumble through, trying to just hit all the points on the outline, and hoping it isn't going as badly as you think it is. But as you look down at that outline, you think "Why did I even write that? What does that word even say?" Your outline was supposed to be a series of guideposts to jog your memory of the larger speeech you had planned in your head, but all of a sudden, the larger speech is gone, and you're trying to madly reconstruct it from scribbled shorthand.

The result was flashes of what could have been a really great speech by a clearly smart, interesting woman. But the tangents never led anywhere, and they'd just sort of fizzle out instead of getting back to the main point. There were a ton of nervous verbal tics (like, um, so...). The whole thing took an incredibly long time--she ended up throwing out the second half of her speech because 45 minutes through her 1 hour time slot, it was clear she wouldn't have time for it. The kiss of death was when, at one point, she apologized for how badly the speech was going. You never do that. I didn't get a lot out of my limited debate experience, but that's one thing I picked up right away. Never do anything to draw attention away from the points you're trying to make. Yeah, your poor speaking skills might be the elephant in the middle of the room, but if you want to have any chance at all of people remembering anything except that elephant, you. cannot. acknowledge. it.

I'm glad I went, and she definitely got me thinking, but I can't say it was good. Not bad, necessarily, just... screw it. I still have no idea.

improv

Last night was my improv class's showcase. I forgot how much of a rush it is to be in front of an audience. In class I often got nervous participating because I felt like I was nowhere near as funny as my classmates (even though they were always super supportive), but when we were all up on stage together, I finally internalized that I wasn't performing *for* them, I was performing *with* them for the big mass of faceless people in the audience. And when you have a group of people up on stage who you're looking out for, and who are looking out for you, it's energizing, not scary.

Anyway, now I need to go see the professional troupes perform. And I think I need to sign up for the next level. I was sort of wavering and thinking maybe I'd just do the 1A class again, or maybe I wouldn't take any class at all, but I like improv, and I want to get better. I think I need to keep getting pushed beyond my comfort level in order to improve, so level 1B makes the most sense.

Other random things from the showcase:

• I ran into a girl I went to high school with. She's apparently in one of the professional troupes. Random.
  


• My class was all going to meet up in a bar afterwards for a celebratory drink. When I lost track of my classmates after the show, I just headed over there, but the bar was closed. (Not really surprising at 10pm on a Sunday night, I guess?) That was a little disappointing.


• On my way back to my car afterwards, I got followed by a homeless guy.


• I *really* don't know my way around DC, and I got pretty lost driving home. Eventually I figured out that I could just drive from Gallery Place (where the showcase was) back to U Street (where the class was), because at least I knew how to get home from U Street. It was a bit of a circuitous route, but it worked.

Students Turn Anger at Faculty Cuts to Action

This is a headline from The Sophian, my college's newspaper. I had to read it at least 5 times before I could parse it into a grammatical sentence. At first I read: "Students turn [anger at faculty cuts to action]". But "Students turn [noun]" didn't make sense, so I decided they must mean "angry" instead of "anger". Like "Students turn angry at [faculty cuts to action]". But then I thought, what the hell is a "cut to action"?

As you read a sentence, you subconsciously predict what its structure will be. You start fitting the words into that structure as you go along, revising your guess if you come across words that don't fit, and usually by the time you reach the end of the sentence, you've figured out its grammar and you know what it means. Except, every once in a while, you haven't and you don't.

In part, this sentence fooled me because The Sophian is really crappy. I expect errors in that paper, so when my sentence structure didn't work, I didn't automatically assume I was wrong; I assumed they'd just made one of their frequent grammar screw ups.

That's not the whole story, though. I think also, the phrase "call to action" is so common that when I saw "cut to action" I tried to fit it into the same pattern.

Also, when you're using the verb "turn" to mean "transform," I think "turn X into Y" is much more common than "turn X to Y." The latter sounds like it's out of a fairy tale or a fable. I'm a dork and love Google book search, so from Hans Christian Andersen:

"Mortals, on the other hand, have a soul, which lives forever after the body has turned to dust."

"I was looking at the deep river and saw how it plunged down from the cliff, turned to spray..."
"The old Phoenix turned to ashes..."

"...nor could he know whose eyes had been closed and whose red lips had turned to dust."

"...all about the murdered young man, whose head had now turned to dust..."

In a Sophian article, which is decidedly different from your average fairy tale, doesn't "Students Turn Anger at Faculty Cuts into Action" make a whole lot more sense?

I think so.

women are stupid?

Really, Charlotte Allen, what were you thinking? hilzoy put it nicely:

Note to Charlotte Allen: if you find yourself having to argue that you are an idiot in order to make your case, you might consider the possibility that an idiot like yourself is unlikely to get much right about women, or for that matter about anything.

Two things really bug me about the fact that this piece of shit got published:

1. You know the Post booked her because they wanted controversy for controversy's sake. When an article can be summed up as, "Women are dumb. No really, they are, myself included!" it pretty much has no redeeming qualities. There will be a huge number of letters to the editor over this piece, and then the Post will congratulate itself on addressing such a hot-button issue. Look at the huge volume of reader response! It's sleazy.
   
   I get that papers make all sorts of questionable decisions to increase circulation. (The creation, a few years ago, of an entire section of the newspaper where no news is allowed to appear jumps to mind.) Generally, I don't care that much. (Hey, I like doing the Kakuro puzzle on Sunday mornings.) But, I think the line should probably be drawn at completely illegitimate, factually unsupported, offensive opinions expressed solely to marginalize an entire section of society. Because the thing is, as illegitimate and ridiculous as what she said was, she said it in the Washington Post. And that lends a veneer of credibility to it.
   


2. Which relates to the other reason I'm so pissed off about this. People will believe the most ridiculous, outlandish, obviously false things if you repeat them enough. Politicians do it all the time (Bush is a master at it); If you say the same lie enough times, it starts to sound familiar, and if something sounds familiar, then surely there's at least a *little bit* of truth to it. This is why, for example, some ridiculous percentage of the US population thinks Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11. It's why a lot of South Carolina voters in 2000 thought that John McCain had an illegitimate black daughter, and a lot of voters in 2008 think that maybe Barack Obama might be Muslim. Even though almost everyone who comments on this article will denounce it as nonsense, it still adds to the background noise, and it makes it incrementally more acceptable the next time someone decides to recycle 19th century notions of how women are the stupider sex.
   
   And what's worse is, there's nothing anyone can do to stop her ideas from seeping into the culture. If you address her idiotic arguments point by point, you legitimize them. You concede that what she had to say is worthy of debate. But if you refuse to address her arguments because they're beneath your contempt, then they just stand there, unchallenged.
   

Way to go, Washington Post!

weekend

So this weekend, I:

• Met up with some extremely lovely people from new york for sushi and a movie.


• Went to an extremely surreal "no pants party" where the host was wearing an adult diaper, and one purportedly straight attendee was wearing a fake plush penis, a bikini, and a blond wig. Which in and of itself would not have led me to question his sexuality. It was more that he kept trying to thrust the fake penis into the ass of every guy he saw. Like I said: surreal. Also? kind of majorly disturbing.


• Went to a 60th birthday party for my mother. (I ended up baking a chocolate cake. It said "Happy Birthday" in pink and purple day glo letters.)


• Went to my Improv class, wherein I:
  
  
  
  • Learned about a pretty funny blog called Stuff White People Like. People were quoting this thing all night long.
  
  
  • Had to scratch my balls at someone as part of "sound and motion circle."
  
  
  • Got assigned the "homework" of going through my daily life, but pretending to redo everything in mime form right afterwards. This got me some weird looks while I made tea in the kitchenette at work this morning.
    
  
  
  
  

butter

I have this habit of baking whenever I'm bored. Especially with something like bread, the whole process from start to finish can take over 4 hours. It's a great way to kill time when you have no plans, the weekend is stretching out in front of you, and there's lots of quality programming to listen to on your local NPR station. Or if it takes you kind of a while to get going on weekends and you don't actually start mixing the ingredients until 5pm at which point the quality programming is mostly over and the ever-boring Prarie Home Companion is about to start, bread rising time is a great opportunity to catch up on DVD box sets of awesome old TV shown.

Wow, my life's sort of pathetic.

anyway, moving on...

The thing about baking is that after you've done it for a while, especially if you're using really good recipes, like the ones in the awesome book that Meghan bought me, you start to understand what makes good baked goods taste so good. And it's gross. Pie Crust? Is basically butter with a tiny bit of flour mixed in. Those amazing blueberry muffins? Called for an entire tub of sour cream. That cinnamon bread? Used a carton of heavy cream.

Put another way, can you imagine eating a quarter stick of butter, just plain? It's repuslive. But if you cut yourself a slice of pie, you could easily be eating that, plus all the sugar and carbs and other crap that's in the filling.

I was thinking about this today because my mother's birthday is this weekend and I've been tasked with baking her a cake. Normally, I make what a cousin affectionately refers to as the chocolate thing (only modification: I use cointreau instead of rum, because I have a bottle of cointreau.) and it tastes fantastic. The only thing is, it doesn't *look* very impressive. Even when it's the tastiest thing on the table, which it often is, it is not the first dessert people go for. And I've been reading all about frosting techniques (I really do read the cookbook for fun in the evenings) and I want to try a cake with frosting. Preferably one with lots of chocolate, and maybe lemon? I dunno, I've felt like making lemon curd lately. But oh my god is there a lot of butter and cream involved. I'm going to make this cake and then be so grossed out by what's actually in it that I won't be able to eat it.

blue screen of death

oh my, I haven't seen one of these in ages.
I think I just destroyed a work computer.
excitement!

exercise

Man, I never know what to write about in this stupid blog.

Today I'm just going to brag:
I swim with a master's swimming class 3 times a week, and last night we had a really tough workout. I kicked ass. Normally, as long as we get in at least 3,000 yards in the 1.5 hours, we call it a good workout. Last night: 4,100. Google calculator informs me this is 2.32954545 miles.
kick. ass.

Also, 400 of that was a 400 IM. As in a 100 fly. I suck at fly. I can't make it more than a length and a half without my breathing getting all fucked up. But I survived, and then went on to swim a 100 of each of the other strokes too! I didn't die!

So pretty much, I'm the queen of the universe.

p.s. In other news, I'm apparently allergic to running. I ran on the treadmill on Tuesday, and it literally gave me hives. I wonder how that works?

What I think about abortion.

It's the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and abortion is probably the first issue I really got politically engaged in. It's also an issue I've gotten more conservative about over the past few years (though, don't tell my first year roommate because this is one of our greatest sources for long arguments, and I refuse to cede any ground to her) so I kind of want to lay out what I think now and why I think it.

the short version: I'm not really sure what to think because I can't come up with an internally consistent position about its morality. I doubt anyone else can either, so I don't think it should be legislated.

the even shorter version: I'm still pro-choice, but sometimes I'm uncomfortable about it.

one reason I think abortion is wrong:

It's wrong to kill babies. There is not much difference between a baby right after it's been born and a baby a month before it will be born.

obvious rebuttal:

This is really only an argument against third trimester abortions. You should still be okay with earlier ones.

obvious rebuttal to rebuttal:

Why is it okay to kill something that will be a baby really soon, when it's not okay to kill a baby?

rebuttal to rebuttal to rebuttal:

It's not a baby right now. that's all that's relevant. If it's not conscious and can't live on its own it doesn't have human rights yet. If you believe otherwise, you reach some deeply unintuitive conclusions. After all, if its not okay to kill something that will be a baby really soon, then it shouldn't be okay to kill something that will become something that will be a baby really soon. Is preventing an embryo from ever implanting on the wall of a uterus wrong? Does that embryo have rights? What about the egg and the sperm before they become an embryo?

rebuttal to rebuttal to rebuttal to rebuttal:

We consider other people who are not conscious and can't survive on their own to be human. What about terminally ill people in comas? They're basically only alive because a machine is feeding them or breathing for them, but we're not just allowed to pull the plug. We need prior consent. And these are people who will *never recover* from their conditions. Fetuses generally will recover by, you know, being born. If you believe that consciousness and viability are necessary to being human, why is there debate about end of life issues?

I could go on.

I also think it's important to remember that even if a fetus has rights, the mother does too. It seems like a lot of people forget about the mother when they're talking about abortion. This is why I really like the violinist thought experiment. To quote Judith Jarvis Thomson:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

In other words, even if you think that fetus is a whole human being with all sorts of rights, those rights don't necessarily supersede your own right to autonomy over your own body. Why should you have to act as a life support machine to something that would die on its own?

This argument is most effective in cases of rape or if pregnancy puts your life at risk. Otherwise, you willingly took on the risk when you decided to have sex, so it's not like you'll die by doing it, so you can't back out now.

But that doesn't sit well with me. What if you used a condom or were on birth control? At a certain point, if you took reasonable precautions, I think you have a right to expect that you won't have to be pregnant. Besides, in the real world, do you want women to have to prove that they were raped or that they were using a condom that one time in order to have access to an abortion? that seems like a huge invasion of privacy.

It's complicated, so I end up judging each situation as it comes up and relying a lot on my own moral intuition. I think this is basically the correct way to go about things, so I want to reserve the right for pregnant women to do the same. This makes me pro-choice.

it's snowing

Shamelessly stolen from the Washington Post: a lion at the zoo enjoying today's weather.

I spent far too much time today reloading this page in hopes the federal government would give us a partial snow day. (my company follows the federal government's lead.) Despite the fact that this region really cannot handle winter weather at all, we did not get so much as liberal leave. bah.

My coworkers and I did amuse ourselves by watching a porsche struggle mightily to exit the parking lot this afternoon. he eventually succeeded, but we're pretty sure he'll get in an accident at some point today. yay for schadenfreude? p.s. the words schadenfreude and porsche are fun to say for precisely the same reason. maybe this is a sign I should take German.

Man, you can tell you're really living life to the fullest when the most exciting event of the day is watching a guy spin his wheels in the parking lot at work.

magic words

My favorite music group does political satire. My favorite NPR show is a news quiz. I have a favorite NPR show. Suffice it to say, I am a news junkie.

Today, I'm tired of news.

Here's the story that did it.

The first I heard about this story was an NPR news reporter saying something like, "Obama's campaign rejects charges from the Clinton campaign that he misinterpreted her remarks on Martin Luther King Jr."
I kid you not.
She made a comment. He commented on the comment. She commented on his comment on the comment. He commented on her comment on his comment on the comment.
And all this made it onto the evening news.

So what were the words of the offending comment? From the Washington Post:

The primary source of the debate is a comment Monday from the New York Democrat: "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," she said, adding that "it took a president to get it done."

This apparently underplays Dr. King's role in the civil rights movement. also, Johnson was white. so she kinda, sorta, if you squint your eyes and give yourself a lobotomy said that it takes a white person to advance the cause for black people. see, she's racist?!

What I can't get over is how utterly inconsequential and stupid this is. She said like 20 words. They weren't, at least in my estimation, even offensive words. Who the fuck cares?

hillary clinton/gloria steinem

So this is a little stale now that Clinton's won the NH primary, but I wanted to talk about Gloria Steinem's op ed endorsing her.

I alternate between liking it a lot and being incredibly frustrated with it.

First she talked about how women need a lot more experience to be considered qualified than men do. She invented "Achola Obama," someone with Barack Obama's experience who was female, to prove her point. I agree that often women do need more experience to be considered qualified than men do, but I don't think either candidate actually has a ton of experience, so I'm not sure it's a relevant point for this race. The example did imply that being a mother with young children would hurt a candidate (why isn't she at home raising them?) while being a father with young children helps him. (aww, isn't his family adorable?) This is completely true. Still not relevant to this particular race, but interesting to consider.

Next she talked about how this election is following the same old pattern. For a while, blacks and women are allies, but then black people break barriers before women do. In a very qualified, wishy-washy way, I agree with her. It's a lot more complicated than that, but it's unquestionably historically true that, for example, black men and women, and white women all worked for suffrage together, but black men got the vote before any women did. But the reason black people achieved those legislative victories first is because they were demonstrably worse off to begin with. Women were not, for example, getting lynched. Discrimination against black people was violent and overt, whereas discrimination against white women was much more subtle and muted, and therefore easier to ignore.

Next she said "sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was." I agree SO MUCH with this. People in the mainstream LOVE to talk about inherent differences between the sexes. Major American newspapers feature stories claiming that women talk more than men, that they have a worse sense of direction than men, that they're worse at science than men, or any other number of poorly supported worn out cliches. Outside of the James Watsons of the world, you do not find people talking about inherent differences between the races because it's offensive and stupid.

She started to lose me when she essentially talked about the ways that sexism is supposed to be worse than racism, though. She said anything that affects males is seen as more serious than things that affect females. I think there's a grain of truth to this, but she's seriously overstating her case. She went on to say powerful women make men regress to childhood, whereas black men are stereotyped as "masculine" so to other men they are masculinity-affirming. When I was writing down my initial thougts on her piece, next to this I wrote, "omg, shut up with the pop psychology, gloria steinem!" It's such a bullshit thing to say. It's a deeply weird argument. The ways that black men have historically been stereotyped as "masculine" are very dehumanizing. They also don't apply to Barack Obama who's a major intellectual (hello, editor of the Harvard Law review). Intellectuals are pansies. we all know that. It's kind of why George W. Bush got elected.

Next, she started to sound like she worked for the Clinton Campaign.

She talked about how abolition and suffrage worked well togetherm so Clinton and Obama have to keep working together. (how DARE he challenge her. he should wait his turn!)

She said Clinton had more experience: look at all that "on the job" training. This is totally overvalued. no doubt, she's been thinking seriously about political issues for a long time and she has the years in the white house to prove that, but you don't need to live in the east wing to think seriously about the issues. the things she actually *did* in the White House after the republicans steamrolled her health care reform are insubstantial.

She said, "What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations."
Okay, maybe. except obama is *very careful* about how much he brings up civil rights. Clinton's trying to be fairly careful too. The "old boy's club" comment, I think was at Wellesley, which means she carefully chose her audience, but I think she's alluded more to how the patriarchy (to use a Smith Scrabble(tm) word) has hurt her in other contexts too. and it has hurt her. but racism's hurt Obama. he's just been savvier about not mentioning it.

Then we get to the weird, unfortunate conclusion:
"What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system."
What a poorly constructed sentence. I had an email conversation with my mother about this line yesterday and we decided what she meant by "deny[ing] or escap[ing] the sexual caste system", to quote my mother is, "the attitude that “This doesn’t apply to me. I will be able to escape this prejudice because of my education, competence, intelligence, good looks, savvy, whatever.” Most young women have not faced overt sexual discrimination and don’t realize how insidious it can be." I get that. I think there is a tendency to either overlook sexism or think of it as an inherent fact of life, not something that can be fought against. but come on. the whole *point* of feminism is ultimately to "escape the sexual caste system."

As is obvious, I'm still not really sure what I think. But it did get me thinking. I recommend it as interesting reading.

obama

he won! so freaking excited.

on the way to work this morning, I decided:

I like Kucinich for supporting gay marriage. I also remember when I heard him speak during the 2004 election, I thought he was batshit crazy for supporting things like universal healthcare and a "department of peace." I still think he's batshit crazy, but he also seems to be prescient and ahead of the curve on a lot of issues. This gives me hope that gay marriage won't be so damn controvertial in the future.

I liked Dodd for supporting a carbon tax. Even though he called it a "corporate carbon tax" which even with my lousy 4 semesters of economics I can tell is a lot of bullshit spin. If you tax corporations, they're going to try their hardest to pass on the extra cost to consumers. And if you want a tax to actually alter behavior, the whole point of it is to affect average Americans. Still, as far as I'm aware, he's the only one supporting a tax instead of a cap & trade system, and I think the tax is so much more elegant. Too bad he dropped out.

I really do not like Edwards. I think probably he'd be fine, but all his rhetoric about corporate greed really grates on me. It's utterly facile to pretend that all the large evil faceless corporations are out to crush the little guy and make your life more difficult. Large faceless corporations don't care enough about you to actively try to hurt you. They just want to make profits, and most of the time, the things they do to maximize profits tend to make most people better off. Trade is good.

The 2 other issues I think the most about are Iraq and Health Care. The thing is, I don't know what the correct policy decisions are on either of those issues. I think we shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place, but now that we're there, when and how quickly we should withdraw seems an open question. I think health care in the country right now is completely fucked up, but I don't know that universal coverage is the answer. I don't know what the answer is. So on those two issues, I'm sort of indifferent between Hillary and Obama. They seem to be the most moderate, and while they don't have identical plans, their plans are enough alike that whatever legislation they actually managed to get passed would be quite similar.

But in the end, I'm an Obama supporter. I do give him credit for opposing the war before Clinton did, but that actually doesn't figure into my decision too strongly. I just like the vitality and energy he's bringing to the race. He's a new face. He's not entrenched in the party establishment. He's not still stuck back in the Vietnam war. He's the closest thing to youthful we've seen in a while. I'm ready to stop having baby boomers dominate every aspect of this country's culture. It's my generation's turn. If only we actually vote. (but we did, in Iowa last night!!!)

New Year

Happy 2008!

My resolutions can be divided into 3 categories:

Maintenance

Keep in touch with school friends. I saw about 12 of them this weekend, it was wonderful, and I am still coming down off that high. I've got to remain friends with these people because they're amazing.

Keep Swimming. I'm pretty freaking proud of consistently dragging myself to master's swimming 3 times a week for the past year. Excercise is good. Even when there's excessive chlorine involved.

Short Term

Sign up for a class. I'm missing intellectual stimulation, and I'm pretty sure my brain is atrophying. Ideally, some local school is offering an evening or weekend course in AI. If not, I'll settle for just about any lit/philosophy/history class I can get into. I miss thinking.

Commit to volunteering. Despite having my hat and coat stolen, one of the most fun things I've done in a while was volunteer through the JCC's day of service. I used to volunteer all the time in high school, but somehow I stopped in college and then never picked it up again. I miss it. Plus, it gets me out of the house. I don't know quite what to do, but there has to be some habitat for humanity or literacy tutor type thing I could sign up for.

Up the Exercise. Swimming 3 times a week is awesome. Taking advantage of my gym membership by using any facilities at all besides the pool would be more awesome. I'm gonna make it to the Y at least 1 other time each week.

Doctors' Appointments. I haven't seen a doctor since I graduated from college. That's bad. Also, I got authorization from my health insurance to see a therapist. Even if I'm not diagnosably depressed (though honestly, I almost certainly am), it's gotta be a good thing to see someone.

Long(er) Term

New Job. A while ago (maybe November of my Senior year), I confided in a friend that I was scared of taking some boring job for the money and then stagnating there for years because I was too lazy/complacent to find anything better. Well, guess what I did?

Move. See above about lazy, complacent stagnating. I'm living with my parents. I'm 23. This is a problem.

Apply to Grad School. I belong in school. I know this about myself. Everyone who knows me knows this about me. Why am I not there yet?

Happy 2008!

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