Better Than Tek War

The Random Ten reminded me that I should mention Willam Shatner's (somewhat) new album Has Been, made in cooperation with Ben Folds among others. To put it shortly, this is the most surprisingly good album of the year. Now, I didn't say it was the *best* album of the year (which is still going to Sage Francis' A Healthy Distrust for me thus far), but given what you'd expect from a William Shatner album the fact that this is actually not just listenable but honestly good is extremely shocking. It captures the perfect blend of serious, touching, and thought provoking songs with a healthy dose of self depricating humor. Sure, there were a couple moments where I rolled my eyes a little, and I do mean a little, when it seemed like a song was a little too angsty for a celeb to be doing, but I think it's fair for most of the songs to separate the narator from Shatner and combine them in others which fixes that one little problem.

For those that don't know, most of this album consists of Shatner's spoken words on top of Ben Fold's instrumentals and as odd a concept as it might seem, it works. From the reflective in songs like "That's Me Trying" (Featuring Aimee Mann) to the farcical in "I Can't Get Behind That" (Featuring Henry Rollins), Shatner's voice is just perfectly tailored to the words coming out of his mouth.

I completely understand why the thought of this album might hit you as a really really bad idea, but trust me, it's great. At least there aren't any Beatles covers...

The Random Ten

Finals are done and I've got to get my lazy ass back in the habit of posting. The easiest way I can think of to do that is the good old Random Ten, which also gives me the opportunity to deride my readers for not posting their Random Tens in the comments. Here's this weeks, embarassing as some of the songs might be... (Song Title - Artist)

1)Picard Flute solo (remember from that episode where he got scanned and lived a whole life on another planet, but it was all in his head? Yeah, big dork here.)

2)Obstacle 1 - Interpol

3)Nothing To Say - Platypus

4)Entre Dos Aguas - Paco De Lucía

5)Together (Feat. Lemon Jelly) - William Shatner

6)2084 - Ayreon

7)Endtroducing - DJ Shadow

8)Fuzzy Dice - Optimus Rhyme

9)Status Seeker - Dream Theater

10)Strike Up The Band - George Gershwin

Remember, this is a *Random* Ten, so no changing songs you're embarassed about. As you can see I have no shame, and I expect none from you all. Also, don't forget that I'm giving out Ra Points these days...

Virginity or Death!

Katha Pollitt, in an upcoming edition of the Nation, on EC, the newly-developed HPV vaccine, and opposition to them:

What is it with these right-wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time. No sex ed or contraception for teens, no sex for the unwed, no condoms for gays, no abortion for anyone--even for that poor 13-year-old pregnant girl in a group home in Florida. [...]

As they flex their political muscle, right-wing Christians increasingly reveal their condescending view of women as moral children who need to be kept in line sexually by fear. That's why antichoicers will never answer the call of prochoicers to join them in reducing abortions by making birth control more widely available: They want it to be less available. Their real interest goes way beyond protecting fetuses--it's in keeping sex tied to reproduction to keep women in their place. If preventing abortion was what they cared about, they'd be giving birth control and emergency contraception away on street corners instead of supporting pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions and hospitals that don't tell rape victims about the existence of EC. [...] Antichoicers may pooh-pooh the effectiveness of condoms, but they aren't calling to restrict their sale in order to keep boys chaste. [my emphasis; see my last post]

Why are some people so fucking creepy?

I think I'm going to be ill.

Daddy's Girl: Courtship and a Father's Rights:

I don't feel qualified to discuss the role of sons, but it seems clear that there is a peculiar relationship between the father and the daughter. Since a daughter is, by the grace of God, always under authority--there being a transfer at marriage from a father's to a husband's--daughters are 'Daddy's' uniquely. While he must raise his sons to be loving husbands and fathers who make houses possible, he raises his daughters to be submissive, godly wives and wise mothers, to make houses homes. He raises a son to be a provider; he raises a daughter to be provided for.

Proud independence is no noble goal for a woman, and the spirit which pursues it is no part of a godly girl's trousseau. Of course, those who exalt independence, denying headship to a husband, will certainly deny it to a father. Thus, they find the idea of courtship offensive. But those who acknowledge that God's way is right (Luke 7:29, 35) find the idea of 'authoritative stewardship' quite pleasant!

What's the argument for the first paragraph? That a father, as a 'creator', has a right of sovereignty over his daughter. Because, you know, the mother didn't contribute anything. Because a woman is a lot like pot (yes, this is an actual example the author uses): she's there for you to put stuff in and to make the room look prettier.

Things get even worse further down.

Numbers 30 provides help in understanding God's view of the father/daughter relationship. "If a woman makes a vow to the Lord, and binds herself by an obligation, in her father's house, in her youth, and her father hears her vow and her obligation by which she has bound herself, and says nothing to her, then all her vows shall stand, and every obligation by which she has bound herself shall stand. But if her father should forbid her on the day he hears of it, none of her vows or her obligations by which she has bound herself shall stand, and the Lord will forgive her because her father had forbidden her."

In that scenario, a daughter has solemnly promised something to the Most High God, who has no superior. The father then hears of this vow, and on the day he hears of it, forbids her, saying, "No, Miriam, you may not do temple service on the 15th of Adar; we have to visit our relatives in Be'er Sheva that weekend." And the LORD will forgive her because her father had forbidden her. So much, then, for "God told me to disobey you, Daddy." Throughout Scripture, daughters are given in marriage; they do not give themselves and they may not be taken. [...]

The order of God, as indicated in his word, is that God himself defers to the will of the father when it comes to his daughter. God says, "You heard your father. The answer is no." Thus, the will of the father regarding his daughter IS the will of God.

Not only are good Christian women subordinate to their husbands and fathers, but they're subordinate because God considers women so subhuman that he doesn't even want to bother himself with them. This directly contradicts the Prostestant belief that no one needs an intermediary to come to God.

There's more not-so-subtle misogyny.

God has given fathers a lot of insight into the character, impulses and designs of young men. Flowers and sweet words might win the daughter; but Daddy's a man, and it's a lot harder to pass Daddy's tests. Further, a godly father is aware of his daughter's capabilities and needs, and can often see more clearly than she whether a young man is a complement to her and whether she can aid him in his calling. (my emphasis)

Father knows best, because a young woman is just dumb and horny, willing to open her legs to anyone who comes along with some pretty flowers and spoil that precious, precious virginity that's the only reason a godly man would be interested in her.

Some people wonder what my problem is with Christianity. Well, a lot of it is this misogynist shit. Never mind all that equality before God stuff;

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nore free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28)

No, the real problem is these harlots who think they can walk around as though they were PEOPLE, with the RIGHT and ABILITY to think for themselves.

(NB It is commonly believed that the misogynist Paul was the author of Galatians, which is why I was surprised to find this quote there. But apparently this is contested.)

Good Christian sex?

Bitch. Ph.D.: David Hager: ob-gyn, advisor to the FDA, Christian, and . . . rapist?

Bitch. Ph.D.: Clarification

Yes, my blogging vacation is extending indefinitely. I'm enjoying my vacation (and trying to find a job) and, in theory, the glorious Chicago springtime (it was 60 and overcast today ... could've sworn I was back in Tacoma). Until I get off my ass and ... well, sit my ass down and write ... read those two posts of Dr. B's. This Hager guy is virtually a textbook example of the relationship between patriarchy and opposition to contraception. She makes an excellent point about conscience clauses:

And I think that's the whole problem with this whole argument over pharmacist's rights. The argument hinges on their "right" to hold private opinions--a right which we all surely agree they have--and to make those private opinions have public weight, even to the point of usurping the private opinions of other people. People who, not coincidentally, happen to be women. And the flip side is that our private opinions, unlike theirs, are supposed to remain private, not to have public weight. We can think, but we cannot act: the exercise of our private opinions (about sex, about birth control, about abortion) is a matter of public concern, and therefore our own private consciences must succumb to the private consciences of pharmacists, of politicians, of powerful men.

I also wanted to comment on a story quoted on feministe. The health insurance I will have at Notre Dame is crappy, clearly designed to cost the university as little as possible, with a huge premium, huge deductible, and crappy coverage. The quality of care for women is, unsurprisingly, particularly atrocious. For example, a yearly physical is covered, or a yearly gynaecological exam, but not both. Viagara is covered (to the extent any drugs are covered by this insurance), but not birth control. Oh, and all non-emergency medical care must be done through the university's hospital, which is obviously Catholic-owned. The doctors aren't even ALLOWED to talk about birth control methods other than the 'rhythm method', much less abortion or emergency contraception.

And thanks to the National Labor Relations Board's ruling last year, the ND grad students aren't even guaranteed the right to unionize and get better health coverage. You see, the NLRB doesn't consider us actual employees of the university: we're students first, which means students only.

Ughhhh ...

creepy

via feministblogs

It's a pretty depressing list

A guest blogger at Eschaton links to a list of things that "if someone had been saying five years ago that electing George Bush would result in any of the following, they would have been branded as a paranoid conspiracy nut". It got me thinking about the election five years ago. I voted for Nader, and while it seems people who voted for Nader then tend to either lie or admit they made a mistake, I have never felt my vote was wasted or wrongly cast, even though I wouldn't vote for the man today if you paid me.

Four and a half years ago, in the presidential debates, the only perceptible difference between Gore and Bush was in the delivery of the same bland policy talking points. This was even a joke at one point -- a moderator asked the candidates to name a difference they had on matters of policy, and they failed to come up with a single one! Bush's six or seven months in office -- much of which I spent in Europe, watching BBC news -- confirmed the theory that a moderate with a slightly rightward tilt had squeaked his way into office thanks to a partisan Supreme Court. It was bad for democracy, of course, but the worst Bush was going to do was make some pointless bluster about withdrawing from anti-proliferation treaties that probably wouldn't have gone anywhere and shift the tax burden onto the working class a little bit more. No big deal.

Then the right-wing wingnuts got an early Christmas present from some like-minded Saudis, and the Republican party forgot all about compassion. September 11th did two things for movement conservatism. First, it galvanized the conservatives themselves, unified the free marketers and Judeo-Christian fundamentalists against a common foe of medievalist Islam, staving off the infighting and cognitive dissonance which continuously threatens to cleave conservatism in two. Second, it scared most Americans shitless. Like the Cuban Missile Crisis, September 11 was a graphic indication that there are people who hate us, and would be quite happy to see us wiped off the planet. In this state, the people were easy to herd behind a strong father-figure: Daddy was going to Make Us Safe Again. Deferring to the Presidency extended to deferring to his party and the party's ideology, while the media -- just as scared and uncertain as the rest of the people, and willing to do anything for a buck in any case -- were happy to collaborate in the name of Security. The Republican orgy began.

Question

How curious about what our readers think of this. How about this?

Alas, the wage gap

Ampersand has been writing a series on the wage gap, the difference in earnings between women and men. There are currently ten parts, of varying length; the link above should display the entire series, whenever you happen to have a couple hours free to take a look.

Something I find rather interesting is the form of sexist discrimination revealed by the data. It's not so much the case that women are discriminated against as individuals (though this does play a role; see part 3, 'Men get more credit for their work'); rather, there are numerous small, systematic biases that work against women, such as the second shift (men are much less likely to do work around the house than women, regardless of out-of-the-house employment) and the structure of a career (women who try to work part-time the first few years of the lives of their children are often pushed out of employment entirely, and then find it much more difficult to return later).

Discrimination in the workforce is usually is a matter of “cumulative causation.” Among other things, this means that the effects of discrimination add up over a lifetime. So, for example, losing a single job offer or promotion usually won’t make a big difference; but dozens of such small losses over the course of women’s careers eventually add up to a big wage gap.

This is important, because it means we should expect the pay gap between men and women at the start of their careers to be small. The effects of discrimination build up gradually over time, and only becomes sizable once women have been in the job market long enough for the impacts of dozens of individual instances of discrimination to add up.

Via feministblogs

Alas, the wage gap

Ampersand has been writing a series on the wage gap, the difference in earnings between women and men. There are currently ten parts, of varying length; the link above should display the entire series, whenever you happen to have a couple hours free to take a look.

Something I find rather interesting is the form of sexist discrimination revealed by the data. It's not so much the case that women are discriminated against as individuals (though this does play a role; see part 3, 'Men get more credit for their work'); rather, there are numerous small, systematic biases that work against women, such as the second shift (men are much less likely to do work around the house than women, regardless of out-of-the-house employment) and the structure of a career (women who try to work part-time the first few years of the lives of their children are often pushed out of employment entirely, and then find it much more difficult to return later).

Discrimination in the workforce is usually is a matter of “cumulative causation.” Among other things, this means that the effects of discrimination add up over a lifetime. So, for example, losing a single job offer or promotion usually won’t make a big difference; but dozens of such small losses over the course of women’s careers eventually add up to a big wage gap.

This is important, because it means we should expect the pay gap between men and women at the start of their careers to be small. The effects of discrimination build up gradually over time, and only becomes sizable once women have been in the job market long enough for the impacts of dozens of individual instances of discrimination to add up.

Via feministblogs

Evolution 'debates'

Le sigh to le max. Here we go again.

Starting this week in Kansas, the State Board of Education is holding hearings to help deciding how science should be taught.

Both sides of this week's evolution hearings are represented by lawyers.

Some of you might remember that I wrote something about Intelligent Design a few years ago. You would be remembering right. My point there is exactly the same Amanda is saying (along with Katha Pollitt) here: intelligent design is, at best, terrible terrible science. Essentially, when considering some biological structure whose evolutionary development is not immediately obvious, ID scientists just assume some mysterious supernatural intervention. But this assumption cuts off any further scientific investigation: if your theory is that God fashioned eyes out of whole cloth, then you don't develop the models of eye evolution that actually tell us interesting things about the way our eyes work. The supernatural black-box creator of intelligent design is simply antithetical to the way modern science works. While it is a proposal which could be discussed reasonably in, say, the philosophy of science classes I took my senior year of college, it does not belong in already overtaxed high school biology.

We might suppose, however, a milder form of intelligent design: God didn't spontaneously design certain organisms and biological constructs, but guided the course evolution took to get some desired outcomes. Call this 'evolutionary design'. Or, equivalently, 'guided evolution'. It doesn't really matter, because this form of creationism is so mild as to be methodologically indistinguishable from standard evolutionary theory. The only difference, really, is that instead of truly random mutations, God has loaded the dice in favour of certain beneficial features. Indeed, such a hypothesis essentially goes beyond science: natural selection doesn't presume to dictate that eyes will always evolve in any population of animals, it merely gives an explanation of how such an evolution occurred, given that the population does, in fact, have eyes.

Which makes me wonder why so many conservative Christians get all upset about evolution. Yes, it runs against a literal reading of the first two chapters of Genesis or so, but a basic understanding of climatology and geology makes the Flood of Noah story laughable, and you don't see Christians up in arms about the vile secular influence of general science courses for high school freshmen. Likewise with all the other sketchy science in the Bible. What makes contra-biblical biology so appalling?

David Brooks is fucking dumb. But you already knew that

He starts off his latest idiotic piece of crap with this, actually sound, advice for Democrats:

Don't take people at their word. Don't listen to them when they tell you how to be virtuous.

They're faking it. They don't care about virtue, or you or the common good. They're just taking opportunistic potshots under the guise of sermonizing. They're just a bunch of hypocrites.

I, of course, immediately thought of all the shit-tastic free 'advice' Brooks and other conservative and moderate talking heads have given Democrats recently. But now, what does Brooks do in this column? He tells the Democratic party what they need to do in order to be virtuous! (In case you were actually wondering, he thinks Democrats should support 'progressive indexing' in Social Security 'reform' -- because, I guess, a progressive benefits cut that fails to address a non-existent problem has that appealing word 'progressive' in there.)

I wonder if Brooks could even comprehend the staggering self-contradictory nature of this column if it was patiently explained to him with the help of several four-colour diagrams.

So close, and yet so bored

The exams are graded, but not totalled, or recorded, or course grades worked out. All I want to do is sleep and read the new pop culture and philosophy books I picked up the other day (More Matrix, and Superheroes).

I will make pizza for anyone who comes over and does my grades for me. Any kind* you want.

* Since meat is not food, and toppings must be food, meat is not acceptable.

Voices and faces

The Voices and Faces Project:

What is The Voices and Faces Project?

The Voices and Faces Project is a non-profit initiative created to give voice and face to survivors of sexual violence, offering a sense of solidarity and possibility to those who have lived through abuse, while raising awareness of how sexual violence impacts victims, families and communities.

I called this depressing, but as my friend Annie pointed out, what I find depressing is rape itself. This project itself is, in her words, cool, uplifting, and happy.

Bionic Octopus: Why Should Abortion Be Rare?

Bionic Octopus: Why Should Abortion Be Rare?:

The only reason they say abortion should be 'rare' is because there are those who want to make it never, and to say 'rare' is therefore to acknowledge that and to half-capitulate to it.
We have to make a choice: either we consider abortion to be a medical procedure like 'any medical procedure', in which case no special pleading for its rarity absent pleas for all medical procedures to be rare, OR we allow the opposition to define abortion as a special case, in which case we've lost the argument already.

[...] But the real mindset behind 'rare' is the tacit acceptance of abortion as a special case, replete with trauma and anguish beyond those of 'any medical procedure'. And as long as we have that mindset, we are perpetuating the actual experience of trauma for women who choose to have abortions.

Via feministblogs

When is politics not politics?

When it's cultural criticism. I've gotten kind of bored of the election cycle coverage and legislative sparring over at kos and eschaton. Why? Because that's not where the politics I'm interested in happens.

If CNN basically covers this story all Saturday, it's news. It's not a debate. It is news, and malaria isn't. Instead of wishing it wasn't news, we need to subvert it. We need to discuss it in wider terms, class, race, sex. We need to bring depth to the debate. I mean this story gets weirder by the day. But if you don't engage it, bring different perspectives to it, the media gets away clean again. When people say 'you don't cover this story' people think 'liberal whiner'. If they want to talk about runaway brides, let's talk about runaway brides, but intelligently, questioning the sex roles of men and women and the economic cost and pressure in a large wedding. There is fertile ground for smart people, but they have to seize the target and change the debate.

There's a second wave feminist slogan, 'the personal is political'. Winning elections and negotiating partial victories is important, but it can start to feel very disconnected from the daily lives of most people. The point of the feminist slogan is that our daily lives aren't disconnected from the political realities of our society, and looking at the one can lead us to question the other. I don't care about Michael Jackson or the woman who skipped out on her ridiculously expensive wedding. But talking about those gives us a way to talk about more important stuff, race and gender and sex and class. That's why I find Pandagon so much more interesting than Kos, and Amanda more interesting than Jesse.

Bitch. Ph.D.: Freedom of the press, dude

Bitch. Ph.D.: Freedom of the press, dude

Academics believe in the truth, too--the lies of the right wing about postmodernity notwithstanding. That's why we do research and cite our sources. Even if the truth is that 'the truth is unknowable' or, perhaps, 'there is no one truth,' that is a kind of truth; just as, ironically, even the most cynical person who argues that there is no such thing as media fairness or an informed public, argues this as a negative. What is so horrifying about the extreme elements of the right wing nowadays is that, when we see Attorneys General argue that torture is only a question of definitions, rather than a word that points to a material reality grounded in people's bodies; when we see liberals talk about compromising abortion rights as though those rights were only political theory, with no grounding in the bodies of women; when we see the president and vice-president deny, on the record, that they ever said things that we have seen and heard them say; what we are seeing is a denial that there is such a thing as truth or a public, in a sense that is not conceptual, but is actually material and real, and is supposed to be material and real. The point of deconstruction was that language, by its nature, escapes pure referentiality; it was never that the things language tries (imperfectly) to refer to do not exist.


And that's why some of us, even unreconstructed liberal idealists, are starting to occasionally raise the f-word, 'fascism.' Because when those in power use their power to start talking about materal realities as if they were only abstractions, and therefore unimportant or malleable; use language as if it has no referentiality in order to cover up, or distract attention from, the material realities of their actions; then we really, truly are approaching fascism--not in the rhetorical, sloppy way that Godwin's law is meant to poke fun of, but in a very real and true sense.

So my dad got married on Saturday

Being the best man in your dad's wedding is kind of weird. For starters, it was the first time I've been a best man, the first time I've even been in the wedding party. Secondly, my DAD got MARRIED.

The ceremony was performed at the United Church of Christ in Danville, CA, and the reception was on the large patio next to the Fellowship Hall of the church. Picasa has a nifty little webpage generator I used to throw together a picture page; within half an hour of plugging my camera into my computer, I had pictures online. My dad is the groom (obviously), and Pamela is his new wife. The young girl in a few of the pictures is my new step-sister, Liana, who was one of the bridesmaids; her sister, Rachel, is good at hiding from the camera, but was also a bridesmaid. My brother, Tim, is the guy in the tux in a few of the shots.

It's finals week here, which is not as busy for me as it has been in previous years, but expect light blogigng to continue until next Tuesday or so.

I'm So Meta

So it couldn't go without mention; April was far and away the biggest month of traffic we've ever had. Since we started using Site Meter to keep track of our traffic the most unique visitors we've ever received in a month was last September with somewhere around 650 people. This last month we crushed that with an amazing, for us, 928 visitors. Oooh, we were so close to that super cool thousand person barrier, but let's get it for this month. Also, we're currently averaging 31 unique ip addresses per day, though given that I read the site from a couple different computers a day I count for two or three of those. Still, that's an awful lot of people not commenting. I know, I know, you have to register with Blogger, but it takes no time at all and then you get to be part of the old Staff of Ra Community.

Hey, maybe this is an opportunity to steal another idea from another blogger (who just cracked 3k people per month!). I am now introducing Ra Points! I will dole out these points to people that participate in the site in any way (except our contributors, which wouldn't really be fair). If you find a way for me to add a blogroll to the sidebar of the site, which I've wanted for a long time but don't know how to do? Ra points. Post a comment? Ra points. Tell me about a really cool story that I should post but have somehow missed? Answer some kind of trivia question that I may post from time to time? You get the idea. The Ra points have no exchangeable value at this time, though I may at my discretion decide later to add some kind prize, but don't you just want to win?! Comments need not be super inciteful, nor do you need to be any kind of expert in the subject matter, just give us your thoughts.

Here are a few questions to get us started:

In honor of the release this week of the Spaceball's Collector's Edition on DVD, what merchandise did Yogurt show off? 1 Ra point per item.

In honor of the DVD release of The Sandlot 2, what was the name of the dog that got their Babe Ruth ball in the first movie? 3 Ra points.

Which Admiral was responsible for bringing the fleet in too close to the Hoth Base, causing them to raise their shields, in The Empire Strikes Back? (Look through the last several posts and you should be able to find it) 5 Ra points

Martin Freeman plays Arthur Dent in the newest adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Name the two most well known films he has appeared in in the last three years. You should, as with all these questions, not use the internet to find the answer. 2 Ra points per movie.

That should be a good start. I'll try to keep these questions coming regularly so if you miss out you'll have plenty of opportunity to catch up later, and I reserve the right to remove points if I feel it is deserved or dole out extra points as well. Tell all your friends to visit the site and comment! Remember that trivia is not the only way to earn Ra points...

File under D for Duh

I am: 0% Republican.

"You're a complete liberal, utterly without a trace of Republicanism. Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure. (You hope.)"

Are You A Republican?

Via Pandagon and Feministe. No links because I was best man in a wedding today and I'm exhausted.