All posts by Mike

'Culture'

Yet Another Porn Post

Ah, yes, the latest moral panic: internet porn addiction. The latest emission is this piece of shit about how porn is destroying men’s ability to have normal sex.

Notice how solipsistic the reporting is. The writer does not talk to anyone outside his own age group and frankly anyone far outside his own social group. His “research” consists of quotes from Google University. No studies are cited, just anecdotes. No historical or sociological perspective is applied. Frankly, this would barely pass muster in a college sociology course.

And that approach is the reason the story is just a steaming turd. He says nothing about whether fantasy has always played a role in men’s sexual response (hint: it has). Nothing about how, for many men, the “other woman” used to be another woman instead of porn. He never finds out if previous generations of men would lose interest in their girlfriends or wives (hint: they did). Never asks if the explosion of porn is related to the dramatic decline in rape and sexual assault. He never looks at whether porn has liberated women from the ridiculous notion that they should only be interested in vanilla sex — and that only sparingly. No. It’s yet another in the long and shameful line of “Eeek! Technology!” scare stories illustrated with a few awkward bedroom anecdotes. Because we all know that no one had awkward bedroom anecdotes before, say, 1997. We know that previous generations never had unrealistic expectations about their partners.

Hell, one thing I could take from the story is that he thinks porn’s role in breaking down the “Madonna-Whore Complex” is a bad thing.

PS: Dear Writer: The phrase “to invesigate a theory” actually means objective research. On a sample greater than one. It doesn’t mean giving up porn and proclaiming a revelation. That’s called religion.

Update: Robert Heinlein used to say that every generation thinks they invented sex. I would add that every generation thinks it’s suddenly gone wrong.

Update: And another thing. If the internet is creating such unrealistic expectation about women and sex, why is amateur pornography, which frequently breaks from the professional model, so popular? Why are the some of the most popular porn stars the ones who haven’t had plastic surgery?

This subject needs thought and debate, not hysterics and self-absorption.

'Culture', Humor, Politics, War on Terror

Thursday Long-Form Linkorama

Honestly, I sometimes think a least a third of the people in his country need to be kept away from policy, blogs and heavy equipment.

Non-political links:

  • Megan McArdle has a great post up about the AOL-HuffPo thing. What struck me was when I clicked through to see AOL’s internal business plans and documents. It was so opaque and filled with such jargon, I felt an awful confusion that harked back to my days in quantum mechanics class. It’s no wonder American business in general and AOL in specific are struggling. Further reading here about just how dumb corporate culture can be.
  • Dear Failblog/Funny or Die: while I found Aguilera’s mess-up of the national anthem amusing, you posted the wrong clip, including the wrong subtitles. Epic fail, assholes.
  • A nice graphical fisking of the latest hysteria. This one targets Fox News, but really it could be anyone. No one does any reporting anymore before they hit the panic button. If it bleeds, or could bleed, or may have bled, or was near something that bled — it leads.

    • Political links:

  • Another reason to like the UK’s new government.
  • The latest craze in Washington: try to figure just WTF Sarah Palin is on about.
  • I find this breathless post about how the Muslim Brotherhood wants to take over America hilarious. These guys can’t even take over Egypt and I’m supposed to be worried about them taking over America? I find that as realistic as revolutionary Marxists on college campi planning to trash the system, man.
  • And yet more breathless panting about third-hand smoke. I love how they say, “we’ve found nicotine in the urine of children” and make no mention of what level they’ve found it at. Trace amounts of chemicals are no necessarily dangerous.
    • Politics, Science and Edumacation, Sports

    Friday Night Linkorama

    Non-political links:

  • Really, don’t click this link and go through the photo essay. Really, don’t. It’s one of the most heart-breaking things you’ll ever read. So don’t.
  • Caught crimson-fisted!
  • It turns out that Dan Snyder is really a dick. You can’t own a sports team and not expect to be vilified — especially when you run it the way Snyder does.

    • Political Links:

  • Harry Reid is a fucking coward. If Social Security is not on the table, we might as well go ahead and have our debt crisis right now.
  • This is why I sometimes want to throw up my hands and retreat into the mountains with rations and ammo. First, Newt defends ethanol. now Obama mandates a 15% blend of the environment-tarring, car-destroying, pump-rotting, money-burning, poor-people starving biofuel. Everyone knows that corn ethanol is a fucking disaster — everyone that is, except the politicians.
  • Radley Balko captures the hypocrisy of the Left when it comes to rich shitpokes.Here is what I had to say on that.
  • I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if Reagan were still around, he’d be denounced as a RINO.
    • Healthcare, Politics

    Vaccines and Insurance

    Phil Plait trumpets the idea of raising insurance premiums for those who do not vaccinate their kids. While it’s a good idea — and justifiable — it simply will not work and a principle reason it won’t work is Obamacare.

    For one, most people get their insurance through their employer, a link Obamacare strengthens rather than severs. This has the advantage of diffusing risk and keeping insurance rates constant even for those with serious medical issues. But it means you can’t tweak the rates like this.

    For another, I’m sure someone will argue that being unvaccinated is a pre-existing condition. So you’d not only have to allow insurance rates to be varied like this, but to have Congress micro-manage the insurance industry by declaring that being unvaccinated is not a pre-existing condition.

    For a third, Obamacare, by mandating insurance coverage for children, essentially removed child-only policies from the market. In most states, it’s now impossible to buy health insurance that only covers your children. It’s simply not economically feasible when people can wait until their children are sick to buy insurance.

    That leaves federal plans like Medicaid and S-CHIP as the only option. And if you think a political class that can’t even dispute the vaccine-autism link for fear of offending someone will pass this into law … well, I’ve got some Central Pennsylvania beachfront property you’d just love.

    Such are the fruits of getting the government ever more involved in our lives.

    Politics

    The Valley of Creative Destruction

    I was tooling around on the White House website and came across this video from Austin Goolsbee:

    To summarize for those of who don’t want to watch (although Golsbee is a decent speaker), he talks about how many start-ups end up failing (falling into the “Valley of Death”) and how the government can make them more successful. The four steps he outlines to do this are capital, regulatory reform, mentoring and tax relief.

    While the second and fourth of those are useful, I think the entire idea is bullshit. There’s a concept behind the “valley of death” that Goolsbee knows well – creative destruction. In order for one startup business to succeed, many have to fail. We have to find out what doesn’t work before we can find out what does. And having the government hold people’s hands and make businesses “too small to fail” interferes with that process.

    We need the Valley of Death. Government should not be tipping people into it with regulations that favor big business (CPSIA comes to mind) or ridiculous taxes. But business that succeed overcome the valley by crawling over the broken bodies of those that came before. Failure to fail is not an option.

    'Culture', Healthcare, Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Monday Morning Linkorama

    Non-Political Links:

  • The 12 worst colleges for free speech. Colleges should be more free than the rest of the country, not less. Especially when they’re wasting so damn much money.
  • Even TSA isn’t this stupid.
  • You know, it says something about our culture when Cracked online does better reporting and news analysis than fucking CNN.
  • Via the Agitator, via Reddit: what kind of world do we live in when a wikipedia article on toilet paper orientation is so long and well-documented?

    • Political Links:

  • I must confess that I don’t understand the complaints about me too drugs. Since when is competition a bad thing?
  • I love this idea for getting the Fed out of the mortgage game.
  • Why, Newt, why?
  • Why the wealth gap is overstated.
    • Politics, The Nanny State

    Thursday Linkorama

    Non-political Links:

  • Commie Monopoly. I love it! Americans may have forgotten the evils of communism. But the Poles have not.
  • On the one hand, this story, about child opium addicts in Afghanistan, is horrifying. On the other hand, 19th century western societies routinely dosed their kids with laudanum so that they’d sleep better. And sometimes they slept for good. So we’re in a bit of glass house here, saying, “We don’t drug our kids! Anymore! Well, not with opium, anyway!”

    • Political Links:

  • The continuing attention to Donald Trump is mystifying. He’s Paris Hilton without the looks.
  • Yes, the CBO was manipulated.
  • Sometimes it’s fun to be a libertarian. It drives the more ignorant parts of both Left and Right completely mental.
  • This is what happens when you let the government direct energy policy.
  • And this is what happens when they direct development.
    • Politics, War on Terror

    Saturday Long Form Linkorama

    Non-political links:

  • The abandoned Project Buran. The photos of the cockpit are particularly striking.
  • I was going to respond to the absurd charge that the information age has not improved our economy. Fortunately, Sully’s readers got there first. From my perspective, the information age has created an explosion of astronomy, multiplying our productivity by orders of magnitude. The mission on which I work would not have been remotely possible 20 years ago.
  • Meh. I’m not surprised that many gain little from college. College has become very hit or miss. It’s possible, if you work hard, to get a great education in just about any college or university. It’s also possible to spend four years drinking and partying and learn nothing.

    • Political Links:

  • Just a friendly reminder of why the GOP should not be put back in charge of the War on Terror. And another of why Obama is little better. This too.
  • Stuff like this is why I’m really warming to Chris Christie.
  • Greenwald tears into Joe Lieberman. I would agree with most of it and add, from my conservative-libertarian perspective, that Lieberman is also an uber Nanny-Stater who despises personal freedom and see few limits to the power and scope of goverment. I never understood his popularity with the Right.
  • Read how Ohio’s green energy initiative could have lead to deforesting the state. This is why the government should not run energy policy.
  • Another perspective on the “agreement” between the Obamas and Walmart on healthy foods. Always follow the money.
    • 'Culture', Movies, Politics

    The Year Of Smarm

    We’re already 20 days into 2011, so it seems pointless to look back over 2010. I thought, however, I’d take a second to look back at what I said last year, throw out some parting thoughts about 2010 and look ahead to 2011.

    I was right about the economy improving without jobs. I was a little off on the election — the GOP took the House. Sarah Palin did not begin to fade, although I see her star waning now. My sports predictions weren’t too bad — at least the Colts and Rangers made the final. My foreign policy predictions were way off: Iran seems stronger than ever and Afghanistan is still a mess. But I was right that it would be a so-so year in TV and film. And I was right about science. We saw a fantastic year in science, including several knock-out blows delivered to the anti-vaccine nonsense.

    When I look back at 2010, what really crosses me is the sense of smugness so many seemed to radiate. There were so many people making smug smarmy remarks from false confidence. It was a year when people who were wrong about everything loudly and arrogantly talked about how right they were. No one exemplifies this more than the aforementioned Palin, whose every speech drips with condescending sarcasm and arrogant ignorance. But she wasn’t the only one. Bad climate skeptics proclaimed Global Warming to be dead based on incorrect analyses of Climategate and an inability to read declarative English sentences such as “this study on ocean level rise has been withdrawn in favor of studies favoring more ocean level rise”. Tea Party critics dismissed legitimate concerns about the direction of the country, branding the Tea Partiers as racists and extremists. Pro-torture advocates ignored the established record of civil trials and proclaimed civilian justice was a failure in the wake of Ghailani trial. And, in the sports, the Sports Media Twerps were as arrogant, condescending and wrong as ever — ranging from OSU arrogantly asserting that their eight home games proved their toughness to the HOF voters covering up their complicity in the steroid scandal by refusing to vote for suspected users.

    It was a frustrating year, but one we could see coming. I said 2009 was the Year of Fantasyland. No one is more smug than the person who is being proven wrong day after day.

    2011 is shaping up to be a year of reality. It will be a year when the Tea Party is going to have to actually govern instead of complain. It will be a year when the free markets, free trade and regulatory sanity will be absolutely critical. It will be a year when we have to shrug and grimly put our shoulders to the boulder. I think this will happen. Because I am, at heart, an optimist.

    Specific predictions:

  • Sarah Palin’s influence will continue to decline. By the end of the year, there will be serious questions about her Presidential bid. We’ve already seen the facade crack in the conservative commentariat turning on her. It’s going to be interesting to see who wins control of the GOP. Will it be the religious nuts or those beholden to them (Palin, Huckabee, Pawlenty)? Will it be the sane conservatives who actually want to govern (Christie, Daniels)? Or will it be the talk radio idiots? My optimism the sensible guys win this one. And as they do, more of the dunderheads will come back to sanity.
  • Obama will have to take the lead on the budget battle. There’s simply no other way. Expect tax reform to be a big part. As far as 2012 goes, Obama will not be challenged from within the Democratic Party, no matter how much they bitch about him. This is especially true if his poll numbers rise because…
  • The economy will show more and more signs of life, with unemployment slowly coming down. Any predictions go out the window, of course, if Congress crashes the debt ceiling. And I’ll go ahead and make a 2012 prediction: if the economy improves and the debt comes down, Obama will be re-elected easily.
  • In sports, I already said Patriots over Bears, a prediction now halfway wrong. But I’ll also say Red Sox over Phillies, a big-time playoff flop by the Miami Heat and another year of parity in college football. Maybe this is the year that TCU makes the championship game.
  • Movies? Ugh. When your most anticipated movies include Green Lantern, a pointless remake of Red Dawn, X-Men 75, Captain America, Cowboys and Aliens and host of pointless sequels (Scream 4?, Transformers 3?, MI4? Why, God, why?) … well, I think I’ll spend a lot of time catching up on my netflix queue. Source Code might be interesting. And I think Thor may surprise us (Joe Straczynski is involved). And yes, I’ll have my 2009 year-in-film up soon.
  • TV will continue to stink.
  • Science will continue to rock.

    • Oh well.

    Politics

    The Lady or The Tiger

    This was published about a week ago and I’ve been pondering it since. After careful consideration, I’ve decided it’s mostly rubbish.

    A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

    • attend a sleepover

    • have a playdate

    • be in a school play

    • complain about not being in a school play

    • watch TV or play computer games

    • choose their own extracurricular activities

    • get any grade less than an A

    • not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

    • play any instrument other than the piano or violin

    • not play the piano or violin.

    A bit of background here. Amy Chua, the author of the piece, is a Professor of Law at Yale. Her daughters are highly successful, being musical prodigies and excelling academically. The article claims that this is a result of parenting that was obsessive, almost abusive, doing such things as calling her daughters “garbage” and threatening to burn her daughter’s stuffed animals if she didn’t learn a difficult piano piece. The article contrasts these methods against “western methods” that are more laid-back.

    Chua is now backing away from her comments, claiming the WSJ only published the most extreme excerpts of her book, that she had a great relationship with her daughters, that much of the quoted article was tongue-in-cheek, etc., etc. I’m assuming that the WSJ article would not have run without her approval. If it was taken out of context, it was done so on purpose to provoke book sales.

    Still, the general point about parenting is being discussed everywhere. Did her strict parenting make her children successful?

    Continue reading The Lady or The Tiger →

    'Culture', Politics, The Nanny State

    Tuesday Linkorama

    Non-political links:

  • Happy Birthday, wikipedia, our generation’s version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
  • A nice story about good deeds in the face of unthinkable tragedy (also; WTH was wrong with the airport personnel?)

    • Political Links:

  • The best response to the “MLK would have supported the WOT” nonsense? TNC, of course.
  • The War on For-Profit Colleges continues.
  • Jeez, who could have predicted this.
  • PZ Myers is an idiot. What is with some people and their bizarre straw-man definitions of libertarian? Neither of his descriptions is remotely accurate. What’s the matter, PZ? Bored with stomping on communion wafers?
  • It doesn’t surprise me that he biggest slow in cyber-warfare so far was struck by us.
    • Politics

    Evolution of a Meme

    This is why I’ve gotten so sick of the Right Wing Echosphere lately. Some blogger mistakes a closed-captioning system for a prompter. The entire RWE repeats his “discovery” then later has to admit he was wrong.

    No one bothered to do any fact-checking. No one bothered to call the University of Arizona or the White House. No one even bothered to pause and think, “wait, does this make sense?” They instantly judged and vented.

    This a distressing pattern I’ve seen on innumerable “nontroversies” (especially on the subject of global warming). It’s why I’ve become skeptical of just about any claim I hear.