All posts by Mike

'Culture', Science and Edumacation

Perspective

Via Sully some thoughts:

Watching Planet Earth, I was stuck by the sheer difficulty of life. You can’t help but feel for these animals, as they are forced to scrounge out a miserable existence in their ecological niche. I’m thinking of the desert kangaroos, who have to lick their paws to keep from overheating in 140 degree surface temperatures. Or the male polar bears, who are forced to swim for sixty miles in icy ocean in search of food. Or the penguins, huddled with their eggs in Antarctica. Life is short , nasty and brute. Nature is red in tooth and claw.

And then I looked at myself, lazing on a couch and complaining about the lack of air-conditioning as I sipped my cold beer. I have absolutely no understanding of the struggle for existence, or just how cruel the selection of the fittest really is. Most Americans live similar lives of luxury. As a result, we don’t realize that staying alive (let alone reproducing) is damn hard work. And this leads us to dramatically underestimate the creative powers of natural selection. Most of us think it’s absurd that a simple algorithmic process could create an orchid, or a human brain, or hundreds of thousands of beetle species, in “just” a few hundred million years. Thus, we invoke God. But perhaps the ingenuity of evolution appears less absurd from the perspective of the male emperor penguin, who is shivering in a -90 degree blizzard right now.

It’s not just the creationists. Our lack of understanding of the brutality of the natural world underplay all our attitudes. It’s Neal Boortz complaining that Planet Earth is too violet; it’s people claiming anything is too violent; it’s an anti-abortion movement that doesn’t understand how nature murders 50-80% of fetuses; it’s feminists who don’t remember that motherhood used to be the only thing a woman had time for; it’s socialized medicine morons who think we’ve cured all disease and can cripple innovation.

The natural order of nature is brutality. We are fools if we forget this. Because nature will happily remind us of it on a moment’s notice.

Politics, Science and Edumacation

Political Science

The politicization of science has been in the news quite a bit lately.

The thing is, this cuts both ways. It’s not just Republicans, no matter what the Bad Astronomer says. Al Gore is running around saying the seas are going to rise ten times more than even the most ambitious models predict; the greens are very eager to blame every disaster on global warming while anything that supports the Nanny State is trumpted as though proven fact.

In fact, as Radley Balko pointed out, the exiting surgeon general, who is complaining about the politicization of science happily trumpeted an obesity death figure he knew to be garbage while telling us a whiff of second hand smoke would give us lung cancer.

But then again, that’s in a good cause. And as we’ve found out, lies, distortions and evasions are only bad when they support conservative positions.

Politics, War on Terror

Balko on Terror

He rocks.

By definition, the aim of “terrorism” is not to topple the U.S. government, or even to rack up a massive body count. The aim of terrorism is to cause terror. It’s to scare us. Frighten us. Alter our way of life.

In this sense, the very people who are supposed to be protecting us from terrorists are playing right into the terrorists’ hands. Despite the absence of any specific information, and despite the fact that his saying as much would do little if anything to actually thwart a pending attack, Chertoff still feels he has to go public with his “gut feeling” that something awful might happen this summer. And so the newspapers and Drudge and the blogs run with it. And now we get to go about our summer business with the foreboding cloud of a possible terror attack looming on the horizon.

I’ve been thinking this for quite some time. Every time I hear Neal Boortz, especially, rant about how terrorist are going to kill us, I think he’s just surrendered in the War on Terror.

Except that, with most of these guys, I’m through the looking glass. I know they don’t really think a massive terrorist attack is any more likely today than it will be six months from now. They just want the American people to panic so that they will surrender more of their freedom.

Sorry, I’m not French.

'Culture'

Rah Rah RAH!

At the risk of revealing myself a hopeless — what’s the phrase? — white male atheist virgin working in IT living in his mother’s basement libertarian troll (although I’m married, living my own home, Jewish, working in astronomy, slightly more conservative than libertarian and always thought of myself as more of an ogre than a troll), I have to like to Reason’s tribute to Robert A. Heinlein.

My favorite Heinlein quote for today? I mentioned it earlier. It’s from Jubal Harshaw:

I don’t like to be called ‘Doctor.’. . . Oh, I’m not offended. But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stinkin’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered down whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees . . . it is time they called it something else, so as not to have it mixed up with playground supervisors.

It’s even worse than when Heinlein wrote this. Christ, the people they give Ph.D.’s to these days. They even gave me one. But I’ll paraphrase the good Mr. Harshaw:

“I don’t like to be called ‘conservative.’. . . Oh, I’m not offended. But when they began calling “conservative” torture of detainees and advanced moral hypocrisy, I became too stinkin’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered down whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down political philosophy . . . it is time they called it something else, so as not to have it mixed up with neo-fascist twinks.

Law and Order

Repressed Rage

Let’s see if the Right Wing gets as fumed over this as they did over the Lacross players.

A 48-year-old Narragansett man has been charged with raping someone 32 years ago when both he and the alleged victim were 16 years old, the attorney general’s office said this week.

Harold Allen, of 30 Riverview Rd., was indicted last month on a charge of first-degree sexual assault, and he pleaded not guilty, court records show. Allen is accused of raping the girl in North Kingstown between April 1 and Oct. 31, 1975, the records show.

“The traumatized victim decided back then not to tell anybody what happened and repressed the memory of it until recently,” said Michael J. Healey, a spokesman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch’s office. “The victim came forward and made a complaint to the North Kingstown Police Department on June 15, 2006.”

Ah good old repressed memory. The thing is, having repressed a memory myself, I know how it works. The memory was always there, I just ignored it. I didn’t need anyone to hypnotize, drug or “visualize” with me to bring it up — all of which amount to brain-washing. I just needed to be asked. And unlike this case, the memory was not vague. It was specific. (No, I’m not putting the details on the internets.)

Two predictions: the charges will eventually be dropped. And certain quarters will go nuts when it does.

'Culture'

Steinem, Unhinged

Why am I glad to be out of college? Because I don’t have to deal with nitwit feminists anymore.

So what exactly is a “chick flick?” I think you and I could probably agree that it has more dialogue than special effects, more relationships than violence, and relies for its suspense on how people live instead of how they die.

Also, the men are emasculated twerps. But I would argue that non chick-flicks would also include films like Twelve Angry Men, Citizen Kane, It’s A Wonderful Life, Amelie and To Kill a Mockingbird, which involve little violence, no special effects and only off-screen death.

It might also include movies like Pan’s Labyrinth, Mockingbird, Silence of the Lambs, Spirited Away and Leon in which the heroine is, in fact, female.

Indeed, the books you read probably only survived because they were written by famous guys.

Think about it: If Anna Karenina had been written by Leah Tolstoy, or The Scarlet Letter by Nancy Hawthorne, or Madame Bovary by Greta Flaubert, or A Doll’s House by Henrietta Ibsen, or The Glass Menagerie by (a female) Tennessee Williams, would they have been hailed as universal?

Ah, the feminist ignorance of history — of the times when, if a woman wanted to have three kids live to adulthood, she needed to get pregnant a dozen times and deliver 5-10 kids. A time when there was no birth control and people lived to be 45. When there weren’t diaper genies and vacuum cleaners that made raising a family anything less than a full-time job and then some. And when working to have enough to eat occupied the entire lifetime of men. When literacy was something only the rich had time for. The reason we remember male writers is because, for a long time, male writers were almost all we had.

But Ms. Steinem is right. Certainly no one has ever heard of Jane Austen. Or Emily Dickinson. Or Mary Shelley (hardly “chick lit”). Or Charlotte and Emily Bronte. Or Agatha Christie. Or Margery Kempe (OK, that one’s obscure). Or Harper Lee. Or Margaret Mitchell. Or Ayn Rand (Steinem would probably not consider her a woman). Or Virginia Woolf. Or George Eliot.

Indeed, as long men are taken seriously when they write about the female half of the world — and women aren’t taken seriously when writing about themselves much less about men or male affairs — the list of Great Authors will be more about power than about talent.

Yes, powerful people. Like Harriet Beecher Stowe.

She goes into a long diatribe about how “male” movies glorify war and conflict — which is true. Of course, war and conflict defined the human race up until relatively recently. And violence still defines the non-human world. And there is ample evidence that civilization has arisen not because we have eliminted our violent tendencies, but brought them under better control.

I strongly believe that movie violence, TV violence, video game violence, even “boys running around playing guns” violence is a way of satisfying our violent animal urges without actually doing any harm. That’s a good thing. Or at least, it beats the hell out of the way men used to satisfy their violent urges — wars, public executions, animal torture and lynchings.

All the movies that portray violence against women, preferably beautiful, sexy, half-naked women. These feature chainsaws and house parties for teenage guys, serial killers and sadistic rapists for ordinary male adults, plus cleverly plotted humiliations and deaths of powerful women for the well-educated misogynist.

You know, I looked through IMDB’s top movies. Are there are lot of top-rated movies involving the carefully planned humiliation and death of powerful women? There are serial killers, yes. None that are glorified. And one of the top-rated serial killer movies has the beat taken out by a woman.

But carefully planned humilation and death? Someone point out a movie I’ve missed.

And on what continent is “Boxing Helena” the ultimate guy movie? An obscure 1993 art film written and directed by a woman that is rated as one of the worst movies ever (3.8 on IMDB) and is rated higher by women than men (link).

When you have to stretch so far to find a misogynistic movie, I think you’ve made my point for me.

The thing is, critics hammer stupid horror and action movies too. And a lot of women like stupid horror movies and serial killer flicks. Hell, one of my best women friends hates chick flicks and loves Indiana Jones. And the top-rated movies at IMDB are almost identical for men and women. I guess this tells the radical feminists that we’ve got a lot of deluded women out there.

But you have to follow the Leftist logic. Any movie that doesn’t involve teary-eyed women hugging must be violent and misogynist.

And this is the thing that drives me crazy about the Academic Left. That they impute objective truth to their subjective opinions. So if you don’t like the same movies Gloria Steinem does, it’s not because you have different tastes. It’s because you’re a violent misogynist who hates women, even if you are a woman. Actually, especially if you are a woman.

Of course, the real misogynist societies in our world — places like Iran and Taliban Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia — don’t like movies with “beautiful, sexy, half-naked women” either. But that’s facts for you.

Law and Order, Politics

Mr. Death

2 Comments

Sully links to this analysis of Bush’s record on executions. Incidentally, this exposes another lie of the Right Wing Echosphere. Bush did have the power to grant clemency.

In general, while I have my doubts about the death penalty, I’m not terribly sympathetic to a lot of the arguments in the article. It’s basically a religious screed about how Karla Fay Tucker repented of murdering two people and how awful it was that Bush didn’t grant her clemency. The line about Tucker’s “beautiful face” is particularly nauseating.

I think the biggest problem with the anti-death-peantly crowd is their tendency to bark up the wrong tree. They tell us about murderers who suffered from abuse and drug addiction — as if humans were behaviorist automatons with no free will. If their argument is valid, it’s an argument in favor of execution — because they are saying that these people can’t help killing. (Incidentally, it’s amazing how often these horrible pasts surface after conviction.)

I’m also not terribly sold on death row conversions. It’s easy to have Jesus in your heart when you’re about to die. It’s a little more difficult when you’re poised over two people about to kill them. It’s also a catch-22. You can’t execute someone who hasn’t repented because they might. You can’t execute someone who has repented because they’re not a murderer anymore.

Besides, if someone truly repented and is right with the Lord, wouldn’t they want justice done to them? Wouldn’t they want the chance to go the heaven before the urges they can’t control because of childhood abuse make them kill again?

Perhaps if Karla Fay Tucker’s victims could have forgiven her, I’d be more sympathetic. But if your argument is that she’s gotten right with the Lord, then he’ll forgive her no matter what is done to her on Earth.

This is also, incidentally, an illustration of the Religious Left in this country. Jailhouse conversions have ceased to be about saving the souls of the condemned and become advocacy.

The best argument against the death penalty, IMHO, is the danger of executing the innocent. There was never any doubt that Tucker was guilty.

However, I will agree that the portrait this paints of President Bush is disturbing. To quote from a document that’s been on my mind recently, it is behaviour totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation. Returning to the religious theme, Bush claims to be a Christian. So what is he going to do if he goes to heaven and God asks him why he executed an innocent man? National Review might buy the “it was Al’s briefing” defense, but God won’t.

I often think about the difficult clemency decisions that face the governors of our nation. To have a human life in your hands is an awesome responsibility. I couldn’t sign a death warrant easily. I would, at the least, want a personal meeting with the defense lawyers to hear their side.

But to regard this, as Bush appears to have, as an inconvenience (and we have plenty of evidence of this, aside from Prejean’s martyrology) is mind-boggling. This is the great moral and spiritual leader of the nation? Pshaaw.

Culture War, Law and Order, Politics, Science and Edumacation

Weekend Linkorama

  • Obama wants to bring back merit pay for teachers. The thing is, this has been tried. And you end up giving merit pay raises to everyone to avoid nasty lawsuits and union actions.
  • Half the public wants Bush impeached. The numbers sound a little bit fishy to me. But as I said during the Clinton business, impeaching a President would be a lot of fun, would serve to keep future Presidents on their toes and wouldn’t do much harm. Of course, if Clinton hadn’t been impeached, we might have gotten Social Security reform.
  • Balko is on fire lately. He has a little note on some bizarre arrests and a brutal takedown of Michael Gerson’s bizarre assertion that Second Life represents Libertarianism.
  • Continuing with Balko, he links to this article on politically incorrect truths about human nature. Some of this is pseudo-science, however. Scientists have been speculating for decades why men are attracted to big breasts, and their theories have no more predictive power now than they ever have (or explanation as to why many men are attracted to small breasts). Oh well, at least they’re not longer trying to say that women’s breasts look like their backsides.

    Additionally, the allegation that polygyny creates Muslim terrorism out of poor woman-less men flies in the face of the well-off physicians who were attacking Britain last week.

  • Brink Lindsey takes out Ramesh Ponnuru. Mr. Party-of-Death is admitting the conservatives can’t win the culture war. So what was the fucking point of the culture war and the incredibly divisive books, statements and party platforms associated with it? I must conclude that it was a cynical ploy to whip the culturally conservative American people into a Bush-electing frenzy by taking advantage of their beliefs and prejudices. And if a few gays and women got trampled in the puritanical stampede . . . well, that’s just politics.
  • Fail the bar exam? It must be the fault of them evil homersexuals!
  • A proper way to celebrate independence day — put flag-flying Americans in jail.
  • NYC now has thousands of police officers enforcing a noise ordinance while Mississippi saves their women from the perils of orgasm. Guess they’ve got nothing better to do.
    • Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Big Macs Kill Polar Bears

    Climate resistance rips apart a study claiming obesity is a big cause of global warming.

    The original article is behind a firewall. But, man, is this what passes for science these days? I couldn’t get the NSF to fund my proposals, but some twerp is getting paid to make a bunch of unsubstantiated hyoptheses. And the guy can’t even bring himself to blame the obese. It’s not their fault they’re fat — it’s a corporate conspiracy!

    You know, maybe leaving academia wouldn’t be so bad after all.

    'Culture'

    Talkies

    Remember how studies showed women talk three times as much as men? Um, never mind.

    Actually, it will be interesting to see — and the authors note this — whether the trend holds up with age. I suspect it won’t. College-age guys talk a lot because, well, college students talk a lot of crap. And, college men are trying to get laid by college women and think talking a lot will help (it doesn’t).

    As I get older, I find an increasing amount of my male-to-male communication consists of watching the same football game or buying someone else a beer.

    Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Calling out China

    Wait a minute. Are the environmentalist getting some perspective?

    China, by some reports the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, is a “crucial target” of the Live Earth concerts’ anti-global warning message, the United Nations representative in Beijing said Thursday.
    China’s business center of Shanghai is one of seven cities staging the 24-hour concerts on Saturday aimed at raising awareness of climate change.
    The location is poignant since the city is the linchpin of the booming Chinese economy – blamed for spewing ever-growing levels of green house gasses into the atmosphere.

    But . . . but . . it’s America that’s evil! We can’t blame the Chinese worker’s paradise!

    One thing that’s gone unnoticed is that the Bushies have been working to reduce industrial methane — methane being 23 times as much of a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide and not a necessary byproduct of industry.

    Maybe they can get China to go along.