All Anal Nerds, Look Here

Here's an interesting link if you ever wanted to know if the Enterprise could beat a Star Destroyer. The answer is probably no, and if you're talking Super Star Destroyer, well, that's just rediculous!

Another Short Post

Hey there, my good friend and Moot Court pahtnah Maureen sent me this link to some very amusing telephone conversations. Click on through!

A Post For Its Own Sake

I just wanted to post something, so here's a somewhat funny video. It's no Banana Phone, but it's decent.

Flash: NYT puts actual feminist on Op-Ed page

Maureen Dowd's substitute turns out to actually be kinda coherent and kinda a feminist.

Here's the deal: this isn't a 'women's' problem; it's a human problem. Yet for 30 years women have tried to crack this largely on their own, and one thing is clear: if the fight isn't joined by men (like me) who want a life, too, any solutions become 'women's' solutions. A broader drive to redesign work will take a union-style consciousness that makes it safe for men who secretly want balance to say so.

This is a vast improvement over Dowd's tendency to ramble (albeit from a left-of-center POV) as incoherently as Brooks or Tierney. But was the only way they could do this tapping another white, male pundit? I think it's great to see an upper-middle-class white male whose wife probably handles most of the domestic chores calling on other upper-middle-class white males whose wives probably handle most of the domestic chores to do away with this system. But, while he's doing that, the Times will have no women writing for the Op-Ed page, which is precisely the sort of thing this Matt Miller is arguing against.

Something similar (well, kind of) here

Let's play a game

Maybe MosBen will award his Ra points or whatever for the best entry. I just think we have enough Joss Whedon fans that read this semi-regularly to pull it off.

The game is: Ask Joss Whedon a Question

I'll go first. Here's my question: How do you feel about the Buffy movie? I've heard that your script was changed, and it obviously had a completely different style from the teevee series. Do you think the poor reception of the movie played any part in the 'cult' status of the teevee show?

Another abortion post! Yay!

Amanda Panda has a post on Parental Notification laws that just has so much good stuff you really should just go read it. I'm going to talk about one little thing she says, and reference our earlier discussions on abortion.

The other important thing to note about Casey v. Planned Parenthood is that the court found that most women already consult their husbands over abortion decisions and when they didn't, they had a very good reason, such as the fear that they would get beat down for daring to make their own decisions. The relationship between teenage girls and their parents is pretty much parallel in this sense--most teenage girls who are pregnant already consult their parents on the decision and those who don't have a good reason, like fear of abuse.

Yeah, it's the issue of trusting women again. As best I can recall, I've only ever seen two arguments limiting abortion: (a) It's a person, and its life is sacrosanct, from conception; and (b) If women are allowed abortions of type X, they might make the wrong decision. I'm going to talk about (b) here, which I think covers both opposition to specific abortion procedures (DX) and the decision to abort or not being made by certain women (teenagers).

Implicit in the (b) argument is the assumption that a significant number (whatever this means) of women will actually make the wrong decision. Most of us don't worry about people driving giant hunks of steel around at ridiculous speeds six times faster than anyone can run, because relatively few people are harmed in accidents involving those fast-moving hunks of steel; but we do worry about people driving those hunks around while intoxicated, because there are a lot of accidents in those sorts of situations. In other words, we trust most people to be safe drivers, but we don't trust people who drive too fast or drive drunk to not harm other people.

Now, I'll grant in this post that some women might make the 'wrong' decision about an abortion (though I honestly don't know what that means). In setting limits on abortion rights, you're claiming that 'too many' women will make the wrong decision: that women cannot be trusted to make good moral decisions when they have reproductive autonomy. You can make such a claim, of course -- but I do not see how this could be justified unless by sexist assumptions or theological arguments like (a).

Inerrant, literalist, fundamentalist, evangelical, conservative

These are words I've been trying to sort out for quite some time now: what is a fundamentalist Christian? Evangelical Christian? Are fundamentalists always conservative? How about evangelicals -- it's not too hard these days to find 'progressive evangelicals', but to this liberal atheist, that almost feels like it could be an oxymoron. And of course Christians talk about the Bible a lot, and a lot of heterosexism, misogyny, and opposition to evolution has been justified by appeals to the Bible, so it would be nice to have that relationship worked out. Well, thanks to Hug Schwyzer, a feminist, evangelical Episcopalian, I think I've got a rough idea.

Okay, first, let's get the Bible terminology straight. Hugo links here, which (except for some slight bashing of the UCC) gives some pretty neutral definitions of 'inerrant', 'infallible', 'literalist', and along the way, 'fundamentalist'. The difference between infallible and inerrant is a little too subtle for me at this point, but the idea seems to be that the Bible is absolutely correct on spiritual matters, 'revealing God, God's vision, God's purposes, and God's good news to us'. An inerrantist/infallibilist thinks that the Bible is the one and only spiritual handbook, though this does not mean it should not be read critically, as a complicated piece of literature. The contrast is with 'liberal' Christian denominations, like the UCC, who take the Bible to be at best a rough spiritual guide, divinely inspired but corrupted to an unknown extent by human interference.

Literalism takes inerrantism and infallibilism to an extreme: the Bible is right about everything, including all the bits that disagree with modern science and archaeology. So you can be an inerrantist/infallibilist without being a literalist, and still think the first two chapters of Genesis are to be read metaphorically, not literally, or disregard the misogyny and heterosexism of the Bible as irrelevant to its spiritual message. Fundamentalism is synonymous with literalism, where that has a conservative or even reactionary and theocratic interpretation. A fundamentalist Christian is politically conservative, reactionary, or theocratic, and cannot affirm evolution in good faith. Being evangelical means one has more 'flexibility', so an evangelical can be a creationist or believe in some kind of 'divinely-guided evolution', and be politically conservative (which is why a lot of fundamentalists are evangelicals, and vice versa) or politically liberal (which is why the terms are still distinct). From religioustolerance.org

In Christianity, the term fundamentalism is normally used to refer to the conservative part of evangelical Christianity, which is itself the most conservative wing of Protestant Christianity. Fundamentalist Christians typically believe that the Bible is inspired by God and is inerrant. They reject modern analysis of the Bible as a historical document written by authors who were attempting to promote their own evolving spiritual beliefs. Rather, they view the bible as the Word of God, internally consistent, and free of error.

Now, what is evangelism in itself? The term has ties to another name for the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, the account of the life and works of Christ. The word gospel means 'good news', and the bulk of these books is Christ's evangelizing: preaching and missionary work. Let's check religioustolerance.org's glossary of religious terms:

Evangelize: To gently explain ones beliefs to another in the hope that they might wish to adopt them. The word is sometimes used as a synonym for "Proselytize" -- to actively attempt to convert another person to your beliefs.

There's also this line in the definition of evangelicalism:

The name "evangelical" was originally used to refer to those faith groups which followed traditional Christian beliefs, in contrast with two other movements: philosophical rationalism and legalistic Christianity.

They also have a whole page of definitions. The three central components of all of these seem to be the following:

1. Personalism -- This is a belief of intense personal faith and devotion to God, much like Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith, and in contrast to Kant's Enlightenment faith and Hegel's legalism.
   
2. Activism -- As part of their devotion to God, the believer is compelled to share their faith with others, to literally evangelize.
   
3. Biblicism -- The evangelical is an inerrantist/infallibilist about the Bible, whether this is in the narrow, literalist sense, or the broader sense discussed above.
   

So evangelicalism is entirely compatible with feminism, and liberal politics in general. Indeed, liberal evangelicals make the argument that Jesus talks a lot more about caring for the less fortunate than condemning homosexuality, and treated all of his followers, male and female, far more equally than sexist conservatives do.

In which I write a sports-related post

Don't worry, I haven't been replaced by alien replicants from beyond the moon. Yet.

An
eleven-year-old little leaguer pitched a perfect game on Saturday in New York. I don't know shit about baseball, but I know this is impressive:

Her pitching on Saturday mowed down the opposing Yankees in an 11-0 shutout before a stunned crowd of about 100 parents and friends in the bleachers of the Oakfield Town Park.[...]

Her perfect game was even more perfect than the common definition of the term, which refers to a pitching performance in which every batter is turned back, either by striking out or hitting a ball that results in an out.

So, cool. Now read it again. This was a girl, pitching in little league, not softball. She plays with the boys. In fact, she's the only girl in her league. So what are people saying about this impressive young athlete?
The president of her league:

"I can't imagine being a boy that has to face her at the plate," said Eric Klotzbach, an engineer and the president of Katie's seven-team league in Genesee County. "It has got be a shot to the ego."

And the manager of her team:

He said players on other teams in the league might find it unnerving to be overpowered by a girl on the pitcher's mound, but that Katie's teammates "think it is great that she's on our side."

The original NYT article is here.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Star Wars is a peculiar series and I think that while it benefits the series monetarily, it also creates some rather unique problems. I would suggest that no other science fiction series in any medium has had the effect on modern popular culture than the original Star Wars trilogy has and that, as such, the original series has been deified to a certain degree. Adding to this holy trinity is like coming up with a new set of chapters for the Bible. Now, I'm not going to suggest that the prequels are perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel like people expected so much that when the prequels were decidedly unperfect people began to focus far more intensely on the flaws present in those movies than if it were another movie.

Drew and I were talking about this on the way down to the theater, but I think with a lot of science fiction action movies get taken far more seriously than they should be. Independence Day is a pretty good example, and it's what we talked about. I first saw that movie on its opening day. The crowd was excited, people hooted, clapped, and cheered, and it was a lot of fun. I walked out of the movie with a very simple feeling of having had a fun time. Sure, there was some bad dialog and there were some logical inconsistencies and flat out impossibilities (a Mac can interface with alien technology? That's handy!). As I got a little older and started getting what I'd call snobby about art generally, I started picking movies apart. I'd triumphantly congratulate myself when I found all the less than stellar bits of dialog or some aspect of the plot that didn't make sense. Now, while I still get this from time to time, in the last couple years I started to realize that there was something I was missing, and that was the feeling I had walking out of the theater after ID4. I'm not going to say ID4 is a good movie, but I had lost that exhuberance for film (and art in general) in favor some arbitarary set of rules about what made "good art". Though cliched, I wasn't seeing the forrest for the trees.

That's a pretty long preamble, but basically the point is, I felt that way walking out of Episode 3 and it felt pretty good. Drew talked about an NPR review he had heard where, though each individual thing mentioned in the review was negative, the overall tenor was positive and I think there's something to that. Yeah, if you want to you can point to any number of things in this movie that I would have changed; there's some droid humor aimed pretty directly at children and didn't do anything for me, there's some sappy dialog that I wish they could have tweaked a bit, and there as a few things they could have done a bit earlier and done a bit more to explain. But I had fun. The acting is somewhat uneven. But I had fun. Yoda didn't get out more than one gramatically correct sentence in the whole damn movie. But I had fun.

For the first time since the original trilogy I cared about what was happening. Anakin wasn't just a whiny padawan, he was a poor kid trapped in a crappy political situation where everyone was using him and no one trusted him and everything seemed to be spiralling out of control. It was the second full movie where a lot of the choices were, to a degree, morally ambiguous. Other than towards the end of Empire, Jedi is the only other movie where the major choices being made didn't have a clearly "good and right" series of solutions for the characters to run down. Furthermore, this movie is packed to the gills with cool things that I've always wanted to see in a Star Wars film. And the lightsaber fighting is badass.

Long story short; don't go expecting Citizen Kane. Star Wars has never been something any you should take too seriously, especially if you can't enjoy the fun of the film in doing so. There's certainly something to fandom and the fun of obsessing over details, but there's a fun movie here and if you can't see if you're missing something. Maybe you're being too serious, maybe you're too attached to the "purity" of the original trilogy, or maybe you just don't like sci-fi, I don't know. I'd suggest you take this movie on its face; recognize its flaws, but don't lose that fun feeling.

Pandagon: Class and marriage

Amanda Panda talks about cross-class marriage, and the way our interactions are tempered in subtle ways by class identifications. It's an interesting post, and links to the interesting NYT series on class.

I was trying to think of what class I identify with, and I realized it's really a non-trivial question. See, my parents split up when I was in about sixth grade, and divorced a couple years later. As is often the case in these scenarios, my dad moved out, we only saw him every other weekend, and my mom rapidly became destitute. We lived off child support payments and AFDC for a year or two, while she finished school (AA in architecture), then started working as a drafter in a local architecture firm. She was laid off around my senior year, but has built up a decent reputation in her community has a talented house designer. Meanwhile, my dad's income continued in the low six figures, and he bought a house the fall of my junior year, along with new cars every couple years. I got to report just her income on my FAFSA, while he actually paid the gap between financial aid and tuition.

On the one hand, I grew up and continue to be lower middle class, living from paycheque to paycheque, worrying about what happens if I get sick, trying to figure out how I'm going to afford the car I'll need to buy this fall. But I live in a neighborhood of Chicago that's predominantly upper middle class (and white), and I really don't know what to do with myself without cable, broadband internet, espresso bars, and box stores.

I'm a cross-class relationship all by myself.

Six months

It's been six months since the Great Republican Vindication of 2004, when (according to Republican party) America defied liberals and lefty types in favour of doing whatever the GOP and Christian conservatives felt like. One would expect the GOP to use all that 'political capital' to pursue great projects and wrestle with the most important issues of the day.

Which, apparently, are the following: judges who don't agree with the wingnuts 100% of the time, and the continued existence of the middle class. To address the first, the GOP has decided to pursue the 'giant hissy fit with revolutionary procedural implications' strategy, effectively trying to destroy the Senate. To address the second, they have decided to go after the social security system -- the closest we have to a national retirement plan for the middle class -- and have already illegalized bankruptcy -- an important safety net for the middle class when, for example, unexpected medical expenses appear -- for private citizens. Oh, and also doing jack shit about the skyrocketting costs of health insurance and gasoline, which also hit the middle class harder than the poor and wealthy. Not to mention our shit-tastic public education system, the environment, racism, and sexism.

And, of course, the elephant in the room, the question no-one except us "radical lefties" wants to ask, is: WTF is wrong with the American middle class? None of this shit from the GOP is a surprise! I could understand if the vast majority of people really did care more about gay people getting married and abortions than about their own economic security; everyone's entitled to prioritize in their own way, after all. But it's simply false: according to poll after poll, the overwhelming majority of people in this country are a little squeamish about gay marriage and abortion, but would still rather have them at least somewhat legal than not, and really do want better schools and cheaper gas and the possibility of getting by after they retire. And, at the same time, they happen to catch a report on the evening news or in the newspaper about the latest assault on their interests by their duly elected representatives, and they shrug, yell a swear at the bastards in DC, and go back to making dinner.

It's enough to get one very annoyed at one's fellow citizens. And write meandering, facile rants on one's blog.

Another rant in this vein over at dKos.

Alas, a blog - Rape Culture and the Myth of “Female Sexual Advantage”

Alas, a blog - Rape Culture and the Myth of “Female Sexual Advantage"

No matter what I said, this guy “translated” it to fit his preconceived notions. “No” meant “yes.” “Not interested” became “interested but won’t admit it.” “You’re not my type” becaome “she’s just shy.” Many feminists argue that pornography “silences women.” This is what they mean. The woman is only allowed to say what the man wants to hear - even if what she actually says is completely different. Pornography that plays with the rape myth tells the story of a woman who says no, but ultimately means yes. That is what this guy was doing to me. He was insisting that whatever I said meant what he wanted it to mean.

Another real life example of how a woman’s sexual power silences her. I was not one of the “popular kids,” partly because I had little interest in being one, but one of my good friends was exactly what you describe when you are discussing a woman with a lot of sexual power. She was a cute, feminine blonde, popular, intelligent, cheerleader, upper middle class, dressed conservatively but was perceived as sexy. The guys I hung out with - who, like me, were NOT socially powerful - said she was the most beautiful girl in the school. What did all this sexual power get her?

Well, in 10th grade it got her raped by most of the guys on the football team. She was dating one of them, he slipped her something stronger than she was used to, then passed her around to his buddies. When she told people about it, most of her friends basically said she got what she deserved - if you’re going to be beautiful, them’s the hazards. Mind you, she did not disagree - she accepted that this is just the way the world is. When I pointed out that being pretty is no excuse for rape, she said I was probably right, but what can you do about it? [...]

Arguing that a woman’s sexual power in any way “evens things out” between the sexes is to miss the point entirely. A woman’s sexual power is used to justify rape; a woman’s sexual power is used to silence her; a woman’s sexual power is used to dehumanize her. The fact that some women manage to use their sexual power in some instances to their benefit doesn’t change any of this.

I desperately want to write more. But words can't capture the way I feel right now.

Wingnuts: German, not English!

According to Echidne, wingnuts on the Kansas school board are considering redefining science:

Instead, they want to define it as "a systematic method of continuing investigation," without specifying what kind of answer is being sought. The definition would appear in the introduction to the state's science standards.

There is a language in which this definition of science works: German. The German word Wissenschaft is used to refer to any systematic body of investigation or research, including physics and psychology. Of course, in English, science is used much more narrowly: a systematic investigation of the natural world, in search of naturalistic answers. Germans make a distinction like ours, between Naturwissenschaft, or natural sciences, and Geisteswissenschaft, or social sciences and humanities (the line between anthropology, psychology, and philosophy is kind of fuzzy for Anglophones, too). That's why Creationism and ID, by definition, go beyond science, or Naturwissenschaft. And why changing these definitions will do nothing but make Kansas high school science classes worthless outside the state.

Hey, here's an idea

Let's actually teach kids about sexuality in sex ed:

"... One year later, girls in the skills-based program were less likely than their peers to have an STD; about 10 percent tested positive, versus 18 percent in the general-health program and 15 percent in the STD-information program.

They also reported fewer instances of unprotected sex than girls in either of the other groups, and were less likely to say they'd had multiple sexual partners in the past 3 months."

Via guest blogger at Eschaton

Scrutiny Hooligans: Fear and Loathing in the Great Parenthesis

Via a guest poster at Eschaton, Scrutiny Hooligans: Fear and Loathing in the Great Parenthesis: Why the Religious Right is Wrong:

So what does this mean for those oh-so-inconvenient admonitions of Jesus to love one's neighbor, make peace, turn the proverbial cheek, help the poor, don't judge, blah-blah-blah? Those aren't for the Church Age, silly pagan. You're a hopeless sinner, bless your heart, don't go stressing out about it. Jesus will be right back, just believe; salvation is by grace alone, not effort.

Bush and the right-wing wingnuts like Tom Delay with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other are just enjoying the good life in the Church Age. According to Dispensationalism, that Kingdom of Heaven Jesus was always blathering on about has been placed on hold until the Second Coming (if you think I'm kidding about this insidious and diabolical theology, look it up for yourself).

Potayto, Potahto

Brooks:

According to the Pew study, 76 percent of poor Republicans believe most people can get ahead with hard work. Only 14 percent of poor Democrats believe that. Poor Republicans haven't made it yet, but they embrace what they take to be the Republican economic vision - that it is in their power to do so. Poor Democrats are more likely to believe they are in the grip of forces beyond their control.

The G.O.P. succeeds because it is seen as the party of optimistic individualism.

Or, you know, the party of cognitive dissonance and misdirected class envy.

Clone wars

If you get geeky about things like Star Wars more than I do (which, given the readership of this blog, is probably the case), I'd like to recommend Cartoon Network's Clone Wars. Done in the same style as Genndy Tartakovsky's Samurai Jack (who directed and co-wrote Clone Wars), this is a truly excellent action film, even with being animated. If you're lucky, Cartoon Network might show the whole thing in a three-hour block again, the way they're doing tonight, or the first half is available on DVD now, with the second soon to follow (or, I believe, you can watch it on Cartoon Network's website).

Should we compromise on 'civil religion'?

Digby thinks compromise on 'trivial' issues of 'civil religion', like Ten Commandments displays, is not okay.

So, on what will we hang our hat on once we've decided that religion --- or more specifically the 'judeo-christian umbrella' --- is sanctioned by the state in regards to prayer in schools, the 10 commandments on public buildings and public displays of religion on community ground. These things are all trivial in themselves (although for some people, putting little kids in the position of having to pray or abstain is unconcionable.) But regardless of whether each little instance of religious tradition in the public square is in itself pernicious, taken together, if sanctified by the courts, it erodes one of the basic tenets of our system, which is the prohibition against the establishment of state religion. And that adds up to a greenlight to teach creationism or promote any other Christian dogma --- with my tax dollars.

Are these sorts of things really trivial, though? Official recognition of one religious tradition, even one as broad and common as Western monotheism, as 'the' civil religious tradition still excludes other traditions, and reduces their members to a second-class status, permitted residents of a monotheist society rather than citizens with full equality in the eyes of the law. The rights of social minorities are then no longer guaranteed by the foundational principles of the state, but by the pleasure of the majority to permit the minority to continue to exist. Recognizing the Ten Commandments as the foundation of our legal system, even just ceremonially, serves to undermine the notion that a Buddhist automatically has the same legal rights as a Christian. Which is, of course, precisely the opposite of the intention of the Establishment Clause, and the goal of the wingnuts: theocracy.

Condemned to freedom

An amusing quiz, via Dr. B and Profgrrrl.

You scored as Existentialist. Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Man is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. Existentialist 94% Cultural Creative 88% Postmodernist 75% Modernist 63% Materialist 50% Idealist 44% Romanticist 38% Fundamentalist 25% What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

It sounds about right, though I think my Modernist/Enlightenment and Postmodernist inclinations are much more equally balanced these days. Also, I understand they're quoting Sartre when they say man is condemned to be free, but why didn't they use 'humanity' instead?

I wasn't sure what 'Cultural Creative' was, but Profgrrrl happened to get it:

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Sounds an awful lot like what attracts me to Kant and Heidegger, actually. Nifty.

yay!

Dr David Hager, rapist and on an advisory panel of the FDA, will be stepping down. Via The panda which has left

A controversial evangelical doctor will leave an important Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel following allegations that he had inordinate influence over the FDA's decision on nonprescription status for emergency contraception (EC). Dr. W. David Hager, appointed to the FDAs’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee after ardent opposition from women’s reproductive health and rights groups, including the Feminist Majority, told the Lexington Herald-Leader that he “will no longer be on the advisory committee after June 30.”

This isn't the castration with a golf club he, like all rapists, deserves, but it's better than nothing.