Overheard at the Nerd Ranch:
“Please tell me the headline ‘GOP Maverick Bucks McCain’ was just part of a bad dream and Palin is still on the ticket.”
Is it over yet? I’ve had about enough fun this go round, thank you.
My mother-in-law cooked a (slightly belated) birthday dinner for me yesterday evening. Fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, and a delicious Mexican chocolate cake with hints of chile and cinnamon. The only part of the meal she didn’t make with her own hands was the fried green tomatoes, which were an impulse pickup at a restaurant they’d stopped at during a day of cruising.
Which means I can’t get the recipe out of her, which is a real shame as I woke up craving those damn tomatoes again. I’d never had fried green tomatoes, and these are NOT at all what I was expecting- far sweeter than I would have thought, with a hint of tart and wrapped up in a crunchy cornmeal coating much like the best kind of hushpuppy is made from. Delicious.
What’s the secret with these? How do I know I’m looking at a good recipe? What’s necessary with the tomatoes- are we talking any green tomato that isn’t still hard as a rock, or tomatoes that are within a few days of starting to blush pink, or what?
Stingray wasn’t nearly as thrilled with them as I was, but still… give a girl a hand, here.
So, in amid the widespread high-fiving and general cheering on the right over McCain’s sassy new pick for VP, we have the expected scramble on the other side to find out what sucks about her. As a matter of full disclosure, I rather like Palin and did since before the pick (but not before I first saw bloggers mulling over the idea), and Stingray’s relaying to me of the announcement actually caused me to stop and sputter “But-but-but they couldn’t have! That would have been a SMART thing to do!”
In the spirit of realism, which in an election year can be very tough to distinguish from pessimism, I expect to like her a whole lot less the more I know about her. I’m not quite as excited as some over the pick, though it did make me raise eyebrows at the McCain camp for a very gutsy and calculated move, compared to the campaign they’ve been running so far.
In any case, one of the memes the other side seems to have come up with is that she’s a creationist, or that she thinks it would be a good idea if its cheap-Halloween-costume cousin, Intelligent Design, should be taught in schools. Specifically, because she said in this Anchorage Daily News interview that, as Wired quotes, “”I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class.”- although it inexplicably omitted the next sentence within the quote marks ADN provided, which was “It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.”- in the larger context of clarifying that she only meant the discussion shouldn’t be prohibited, not that it should be state education policy to include ID- which was part of the official Republican platform in the year she ran for (and achieved) the office of governor…. and that she stated specifically she would make no effort to make a reality, as governor.
Meh. Once you finish filtering through what she actually said- and very few sane evolution-in-education backers would actually advocate shouting “NEIN! VEE VILL NOT HAF ANY DISCUSSION OF ZEE GOD!” is a good strategy if a student brings it up in class- it sounds like boilerplate weasel words from a politician who does really not intend to enforce a plank of her party’s platform, either because she disagrees with it or because she thinks it’s a political liability. Likewise, she might have seen aligning herself firmly with Darwin as politically problematic- or she might really not believe in evolution.
And you know what? I honestly don’t care that much if she doesn’t. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I don’t have any technical problem with people who, as a matter of pure faith, believe in the literal creation. I have a problem when they try to tell me the SCIENCE supports that, and I have a problem with people who try to use politics to force the issue in the classroom, to students still too uneducated in science to understand the debate on a level meaningful enough to really comprehend it. But it appears she doesn’t intend to and never did, so I pretty much stop caring there, absent evidence of actual efforts to legislate the matter- or to help others to, as she certainly had the opportunity to do, given how heavily Republican Alaska is. (This also makes her much more palatable to me than Bobby Jindal, who was rumored another likely McCain pick.) I don’t expect Palin to be a scientist- merely to leave them alone.
As for the other things she’s been attacked for- pro-life? Given that every time I contemplate abortion, I wind up with a passionate pro-choice position and a passionate pro-life one WITHIN MYSELF, this is not a dealbreaker for me- in fact, I appreciate that her position is so internally consistent, as it suggests to me that it’s a position she’s truly thought out rather than the bizarre politically-constructed contortionist act oh, 99% of Democrats OR Republicans have. I’ve seen several people point to her opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest as an “extremely radical one”, but I’ve also pointed out in the past that, if you truly believe that personhood begins at conception, there is no moral or logical way to make special exceptions for fetuses conceived under any sort of circumstances at all. In fact, I used that logic when arguing from the pro-choice side- in order to demonstrate that a great many of the pro-lifers themselves did not grant a fetus full personhood, or else they could never support that position.
Embroiled in a political scandal at home? Well, the scandal is supposedly that Palin leaned on an appointee of hers to fire her brother-in-law, a state trooper, and that when the guy remained on the rolls, Palin went after the appointee. The poor, innocent, abused, in-law? Well, according to the state troopers’ own investigations, he tasered his ten-year-old stepson, was caught drinking on the job, and threatened to kill Palin’s father-in-law if he helped his daughter (Palin’s sister) get away from the guy. (And this is only the records the troopers AGREED to release- the rest, the department considers confidential.) For this? Under pressure from the union, five days of suspension. Palin is dealing with the investigative heat by.. releasing such a flood of records and documents that the legislature that ordered the probe didn’t have to subpoena anything or even ask twice. This sounds less like a scandal than a political “stands up to corrupt Alaskan politics” political ad for Palin.
Supports drilling in ANWR? Legitimate issue. Given the TransCanada pipeline arrangement she doesn’t exactly seem to be in the pocket of American oil companies, but that doesn’t mean that energy interests don’t still dominate Alaska politics- and I’m not exactly thrilled by her environmental credentials. Unfortunately, ANWR in general is an issue where I’ve seen very damned little honest discussion of the environmental issues that wasn’t very clearly partisan*. I’ve seen it discussed by pro-drilling advocates… that seem to think that since it’s a “barren wasteland”, it’s of no environmental import. Sorry, I need a hell of a lot better than that. Likewise, most of the arguments I’ve seen against seem to rest in the “drilling anywhere anytime is a terrible idea” mindset, with precious little discussion of the actual logistics of the caribou calving grounds and whether or not it could be possible to arrange any sort of compromise. However, if people think this is a serious weakness for Palin or for McCain in having picked her… they haven’t been watching the polls. The people for whom this would be a genuine dealbreaker are, for the most part, already voting for Obama- and the issue may yet peel a few of the most wavery on the Obama side. Energy is HIS weak flank, not McCain’s.
Inexperienced? Ah, this is where it gets INTERESTING. It is true that the McCain campaign has been hammering Obama for his lack of experience- but if Democrats truly believe that his selection of Palin takes this issue off the table, they haven’t thought it through. Palin represents for McCain for Biden does for Obama- a nice, big shot of shoring up for his weaknesses. Among his weaknesses? Age and the perception that he may be a Washington insider, more of the same in a time that change is necessary. Palin is certainly a change, and she is young, and she’s definitely not a Washington insider- and the arrangement on the ticket puts the experience at the TOP of the ticket, not the bottom as Biden’s nomination does. And while Obama technically has more experience in government, he has zero executive experience, whereas even a small-town mayor has to make more decisions and be surer of them than someone who can vote “present” and take off for lunch. And while his Senatorial career is slightly longer than her gubernatorial career… he’s also spent two years of his three in the Senate doing a lot more campaigning for President than truly working on the national level. It undermines McCain’s main wedge against Obama, but it also undermines Obama’s campaign theme that judgment matters more than experience in those who would lead, every single time they try to attack Palin for it. I believe McCain isn’t defusing the charge or the tactic- either one- he’s deliberately making it the issue of the day… which must mean he believes he can win this battlefield. Golf applause from over here. He is by no means necessarily correct, but it’s very far from the blunder Democrats seem to think it is.
Palin will need to prove her judgment- and pass the “unknown” hurdle, as Obama had to (and which has caught him amidships several times, as the contrast between his rhetoric and his actual political past becomes starker)- over the next few months. I don’t think I’ll come out of it liking her as much as I do now, but I am damn interested to watch. Pass the popcorn.
*Yes, this is a request.
Through one of Steve Bodio’s excellent link roundups, I found this article through Never Yet Melted.
The upshot of the article is that after the Indonesian nature park on Komodo island invited the Nature Conservancy to help them manage their park, the Nature Conservancy deemed that the villagers put an end to a number of the traditional practices that had allowed them to co-exist with the Komodo dragons of the island for the last several centuries. (The dragons have gone extinct on the few other human-populated islands it was native to.) End result? The dragons have turned maneater, killing livestock and occasionally children.
Here’s the money quote from the Nature Conservancy’s Indonesian policy wonk, who may well have been behind the original policy changes:
“We don’t want the Komodo dragon to be domesticated. It’s against natural balance,” says Widodo Ramono, policy director of the Nature Conservancy’s Indonesian branch and a former director of the country’s national park service. “We have to keep this conservation area for the purpose of wildlife. It is not for human beings.”
What is very interesting about this statement is that it displays an astonishing lack of thought and reflection this puts first into what is natural for Komodo dragons, and second what is natural for the island.
For background, the major pillars of the policy change that has resulted in such disaster: first of all, the villagers are no longer allowed to hunt deer in the forest. The reason given was that on other islands, poaching decimated small and fragile populations of deer and hastened the exit of their dragons. The practice had actually been prohibited by the Indonesians before the Nature Conservancy ever got there, but they were responsible for making sure it was actually enforced. However, the deer populations are and presumably had been stable. (If they had not been, the Nature Conservancy would no doubt have said so rather than citing what happened on another island.) Note that it had been traditional for the natives participating in the hunt to leave a substantial chunk of any deer taken for the dragons- which very well might not have been traditional on the other, less fortunate island.
The second major policy change was that the locals were no longer allowed another traditional practice, that of feeding the dragons in ritual livestock sacrifices- which had become popular with tourists looking for photo ops. The third major change was that dogs were declared an alien species and therefore banned- when previously, village dogs did most of the work in keeping the dragons away from the villages.
Now, the dragons aren’t staying in the preserve and eating deer, they’re coming into the villages and eating the easier-to-catch livestock- and, opportunistically as large generalized predators will, children. The villagers have requested dragon-proof fencing, but as it would cost roughly five thousand per village to do so, the park has dragged its feet on actually fulfilling the request, though they are outwardly sympathetic.
This much is completely natural behavior for a Komodo dragon, or for that matter a saltwater crocodile, another large reptilian top predator: to expend as little of its energy as possible (and they don’t have as much as a hyper-metabolism-fueled mammalian predator) hunting, and to grab whatever’s in reach whenever they’re hungry. For centuries, the easiest way to hunt was to accept goats and deer from the villagers and do some hunting for themselves, and avoid the loud, fast, and pesky dogs that would make coming in and taking livestock too much of a hassle*. Even hunting themselves was a relatively low-effort enterprise, compared to the athletic efforts of a wolf pack or big cat: they have an extraordinary bacterial stew in their mouths that makes any bite suffered by the prey nearly certain to become lethally infected, so that after the first bite, all the dragon had to do was track the scent and take the victim at their leisure. Or grab someone else’s sick and dying victim- living on a small island with a bunch of other predators is nice that way.
Now, the easiest thing to do is to go into the dog-free villages and take livestock (or unfortunate children) themselves. The cultural mechanism of symbiosis with the dragons the native Komodo villagers had developed would almost certainly never work in a place that wasn’t a small island, or where the native top predator was not a reptile with a need for food much smaller than a mammalian predator like a grizzly bear or tiger (which is why sane park policy almost everywhere else is completely right to forbid feeding the predators); however, it is a small island, the dragons are reptiles, and it appears to have worked- until now.
It’s easy to see why the Nature Conservancy made policy the way it did; ordinarily, feeding top predators CREATES this situation, leading the animals to associate humans with food and actively seek them out- taking food when it’s not offered, one way or another. Ordinarily, dogs are a very destructive element on an island, being (like humans ourselves, and like rats and pigs, two other island-killing alien species) omnivorous, efficient generalized predators. Ordinarily, poaching will be the swift death of an island population, which tend to be quite fragile and unable to withstand the large oscillations that are normal ecology for mainland populations of predator and prey.
However, it appears that very little about this island, these dragons, and these villagers was ordinary. The villagers were not new immigrants, they had been there, sharing the island with a top predator perfectly prepared to see humans as food, for centuries if not longer- as had, quite possibly, their dogs, as the Indonesian islands are part of the general pattern of southward dispersal of humans and dogs together out from Asia and down all the way to Australia- thousands of years ago. (Where the end result was Aborigines and dingos.) I can’t find any specific information on how long the dogs have been there, but there’s no reason to assume they are recent aliens- and how long does a population have to be somewhere before they are integrated into the local ecology, and considered natives?
The original Nature Conservancy policy wonk’s quote, however, does inspire some deeper questions. In the discussion over at Querencia response to “We don’t want the Komodo dragon to be domesticated. It’s against natural balance… We have to keep this conservation area for the purpose of wildlife. It is not for human beings.”, Matt Mullenix- one of the blog’s authors- mused:
“Yet so many today would make a place where the separation is complete—where all the people somehow live in cities and all the wilderness surrounds them. Where no animal is tame and no people are wild.”
It’s one of Matt’s favorite themes, and it’s one that I thoroughly agree with: it’s a dichotomy as poisonously false as could be. It’s wrong when it’s scared urban dwellers who assume that all wildlife is toting a flamethrower and a machete and craving human blood (or the opposite misconception, that wild land is like a nature-themed Disney park and wildlife is as portrayed in “Bambi”), it’s wrong when a certain strain of environmentalists assume the only way for humans to live in the world is to interact with it as little as possible, with the presumable ideal end goal being humans living in Jetsons- like bubble worlds with no impact whatsoever on the rest of the world around us- preferably on some other planet with no native life of its own, one gets the hint. It’s wrong when people assume they are the Godly-ordained masters of the planet, to take what we can as we please and the other slimy and furry and toothy critters can go hang, the ideal life is in an air-conditioned house eating factory-farm-raised beef.
It’s a fantasy. Humans are animals, and thus we are part of nature. We may be a particularly self-aware, intelligent, creative, and sometimes destructive one, but we use nothing that we did not derive in some way from natural materials and natural law, we do nothing that some part of our natural inheritance of intelligence and emotion does not allow us to, and nothing we produce is truly outside of nature. Even New York City has a thriving ecosystem of urbanized animals of its own; from the pigeons (or Rock Dove, as the wild species that found cities so inviting and abandoned the wilderness for them was once known) to the rats to, now, the hawks and falcons that have followed their smaller prey and figured out how to nest in steel and concrete. San Francisco- and many other cities- have urbanized parrots, where previously they had become extinct in North America. Countless others have fully urbanized coyotes, foxes, and raccoons. You may consider them “alien” in some way, but they have moved in, found a living, and would not be there if it were truly unnatural- adapting to new food sources and advantageous new environments is what made them successful species in the first place, the same way it did for us.
People scream about “genetically modified organisms”- and especially GMOs meant to be food- but we have been genetically modifying organisms since the Neolithic, as soon as we became anatomically modern. We began with dogs, moved on to cereals, pigs, chickens, and cows, and eventually to fruit and vegetables. Since more and more evidence points to show that Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, which domesticated nothing, suffered no gap in intelligence or technology with the contemporary Homo sapiens sapiens (anatomically modern humans), and there seems to be little to no evidence of direct conflict or interbreeding, some anthropologists even theorize that it was this ability to relate to and change other species that gave our subspecies the competitive advantage. If true- and it has some truth even so- this would make domestication (or, if you will, simply changing other species and adapting them to us- as we also adapt to them) not only natural to us, but what may have CREATED us as our capabilities are today.
If we somehow remove ourselves from nature by building cities, what does that make a termite, whose mounds are such enduring and elaborate marvels of natural engineering that they can be a bigger and more permanent feature of the African landscape than trees? Because we domesticate plants and animals? Insects have found farming fungus for food so lucrative it seems to have independently evolved in several different lineages, across ants and termites and beetles. Some ants will “dairy”, keeping aphids for regular “milking”. Because we can cause massive ecological change? Elephants are why Africa is famous for its plains rather than its dense forest and jungle. Bison (and a number of other large herbivores we drove extinct when humans first wandered across the Bering Land Bridge) are why North America has its own Great Plains.
Because we’re better at all these things? Because we know we’re special, and can conceive of being so special that we left it all behind? When thousands of us are still regularly killed off by hurricanes, tsunamis, and insect-borne diseases, how can we truly believe that?
The Garden of Eden that we left to become humans-as-we-know them is not a metaphor that describes our departure from nature, it is a metaphor that describes our departure from innocence- and our gain of knowledge of ourselves and of the world that we are very much a part of, as much of a piece as the dogs or the dragons- or the apples.
*The dragons, like crocodilians, are perfectly happy to take dogs as prey when the opportunity lands in their lap, but again, we’re talking about the easiest option. One reason dogs are the oldest domesticated animal is that, like humans, they band together for safety as well as offensive ability…
Normally I eschew putting up political signs or bumper stickers. After the election, you’ve got a big pain in the rear to scrape off your car, or now-useless thing taking up a bunch of space in the trash, and before the election they just make your yard look crappy. Well, I bent my rule a bit and got some of Tam’s Keep the Change stickers taped to the rear windows on the ol’ horseless carriages (so they can come of easily after November). Now I’ve finally found a yard sign I’d be willing to sport as well. Even better, it’s reusable for any election.
“Ok, who brought the cheetos?”
“Yo.”
“Sweet, we’re all set. Everybody got their characters rolled?”
“Yeah, what’s this run again? Will there be decent gold? I need more gold.”
“Shaddup. You know you’ll find out when you’re in there. All right. It’s morning and your party is preparing to adventure.”
“My sysadmin orders a barrel of coffee.”
“My programmer lights a cigarette.”
“The first challenge approaches. A digital anachrotroll draws near, brandishing the smoking ruins of the laptop you prepared for last week’s adventure.”
“Jesus, already? That’s a new record for hosing my work by a long-ass ways. This is gonna be ‘fun,’ I can tell already. Ok, my sysadmin casts email tech support and tries to walk him through the low-level stuff without getting too close.”
“The laptop remains broken.”
“All right. My sysadmin casts information request.”
“Rolling… you receive gibberish.”
“Damnit. My sysadmin arranges a pickup on the machine.”
“The troll misses the pickup and grows irritated.”
“Screw it. Your turn.”
“My programmer arranges a pickup.”
“The troll arrives with the laptop and deposits the smoking yet still slimy remains on your best pack.”
“Delightful. Will you have your damn sysadmin fix this thing already and get rid of the troll?”
“Yeah yeah. I’m rolling. Crap, the dice are not friendly today. At least it’s fixable, technically. Ok, my sysadmin returns the laptop in working order.”
“With a shimmering ripple, the image you see shifts before your eyes. No longer are you facing a digital anachrotroll. Before you now stands a Pretentious Flaming Douchebag. He opens his filthy nozzle and sprays you with a boiling spray that sounds like:
I have tried to be patient through out this all! So let ME tell you what
what I have been experiencing. I do NOT WORK for you. I have been on
computers longer then you have been alive. GET IT! DO NOT leave my
computer on “Administrator” as I am not the administrator. YOU ARE NOT ME!
Put MY computer to me understand! How many passwords do you think I have
to remember let alone sign on IDs. I am on 3 different computers, at lest
12 different systems, which each have passwords and sign-on names.
Ok, saving rolls?”
“Shit, no good.”
“Me either.”
“You are both now affected by WTFery for your next turn.”
“My sysadmin begins casting Detailed Rant.”
“My programer casts silence on the sysadmin.”
“The fuck?!”
“What, are you trying to cook us all? You know your rants carry +40 fire damage, and we’ve got all this boiling douchery all over. It’ll all go up like the Hindenburg if you’d gotten that spell off.”
“You see the sysadmin’s lips moving rapidly – ”
“Yeah, yeah. I also put some points in lip reading, remember? …wow, Darwin-defiant children and Cuckoo birds? That would’ve been a good one.”
“As I was saying, you see your sysadmin’s lips moving furiously, but the only sound to come out is ‘Let’s work synergistically for a positive integrated digital outcome.’”
“I thought you cast silence, not manager-speak.”
“We’re not on fire, are we?”
“Fine.”
“Ok, I cast Summon VP. This Douchebag shouldn’t even be in this cave.”
“The strange 1s and 0s glow around you, and with a cheerful call of “Hey, how’s Monday treatin’ you so far?” the… hang on, rolling. The Soft Fluffy VP appears.”
“That one is usually pretty good. My sysadmin casts buff resume, just in case.”
“Better than nothing, that’s for sure. Ok, I give the SFVP copies of the battle-log.”
“The SFVP reads the background. Rolling… She agrees with the sysadmin. SFVP says she’s ready for battle and that the Pretentious Flaming Douchebag should take it up with offshore manufacturer tech support from now on.”
“Ok, I send in the SFVP.”
“Rolling… damn, the dice just do not like you guys today. The SFVP comes back with a glazed expression and tells you that an apology will be forthcoming, but that the sysadmin must enter the inner lair of the Pretentious Flaming Douchebag and harmonize the ambient waves as originally described.”
“What the fuck? My programmer casts detect bullshit.”
“Your programmer catches the faintest whiff of Hippy VP, but with a curiously burned note. The Pretentious Flaming Douchebag had summoned Hippy VP to battle SFVP, but did not have the power to control her. The HVP blocked your SFVP’s firing attack and thought we should all just get along, hence the lair quest. The good news is that the Pretentious Flaming Douchebag looks severely weakened, and cannot cast summon VP again without rolling a 20. The Douchebag opens his nozzle again, since the SFVP was able to cast Force Apology on him.
‘Just to let you know I come from a background of 16 years of emergency
response and it is not uncommon for firefighters, OSCs, Coast Guard,
Police, and hazmat personnel to speak very roughly with each other. This
is a bad habit on my part and I am trying to moderate it.’”
“Did you rig the fucking dice or something? ‘I’m sorry you’re a pussy’ is the best we get?”
“Like I said, they do not love you today. What’re you gonna do?”
“Flip you for who goes in. I can cast Schedule Conflict if anybody bitches about it being me instead of you.”
“No, I want to see how fucked up his stuff is. I know I put enough points in on my end that it has to be his crap that’s doing this.”
“My programmer begins summoning a barrel of margaritas and casts a masking spell of project staff meeting on it. Should be ready at the end of the day.”
“Thanks.”
“All right, my sysadmin enters the Pretentious Flaming Douchebag’s lair.”
“The Pretentious Flaming Douchebag is attempting to charm Less Gullible VP, who has been sent to make sure no blood is spilled. He’s describing setting up a crosstalk network in San Fransisco in the 70s.”
“San Fransisco in the 70s? That explains so much. My sysadmin puts on the Cloak of Indifference. The one with the 17 charges of You Don’t Matter and examines the laptop.”
“Hey, a break. The dice say the Pretentious Flaming Douchebag stops trying to sound technically literate and focuses on red tape with the LGVP. Nice move.”
“No whammy no whammy….yes! My sysadmin discovers the network configuration issue is in the router and casts Unsupported Hardware!”
“The Douchebag still has questions.”
“Damnit. Fine.”
“The Douchebag wishes advice on how to properly configure things, or should he buy a new router?”
“*snerk* Yeah, find the most expensive one on the market too. Either that or try digging through the documentation.”
“Did you just tell a Pretentious Flaming Douchebag to RTFM?”
“Yup.”
“Nice.”
“Thanks.”
“The LGVP casts release. You are free to go. The Douchebag shrinks in size and becomes a Petulant Drama Prick. He’s harmless for now, but the slightest whiff of Drama and he’ll grow back to twice his original Douchebag size.”
“Great. Now can we get our freakin’ reward and get out of this damn cave?”
“Sorry, no rewards. At least you got some good XP though.”
“You’re never DMing again. Gimme those cheetos and somebody whip up some real margaritas.”
,
,
,
!
Courtesy of Jeff Foxworthy and rednecks everywhere, the word of the day is “usetacould.”
I usetacould get up a truly incandescent rage when appropriate and carry it along like a nice well stoked boiler for as long as necessary. These days, situations which generate the nigh-tangible aura of “get out of the way” start to burn out after a good 72 hours (though when the temperatures finally go down at night, the 0th law of thermodynamics means I radiate more efficiently and can work up a good surge).
I usetacould carry that nice white-hot pit of hate and hook it up to just about anything and blow productivity levels straight through the roof. Guess I’m gettin’ older. As such, running out the tail end of some epic level fuckery at work, one which I give you my word that all cops, paramedics, and other first responders reading this should be deeply offended by (but sadly can’t elaborate on here), the tank is currently more than a tad low. Hell, the little dashboard light came on about fifty miles ago, to stretch the metaphor.
Long story short, content tomorrow. At least I’ve got an idea for once.
I’ve seen this term used several times this year- if it was already in common media parlance before this election cycle, I didn’t notice- and it seems to be a nice way to say “candidate X just took a machine gun to his own feet”.
I am increasingly coming to believe that it matters less how well a candidate campaigns himself- Americans are very jaded by political promises and have mixed reactions to negative advertising- than how many of these his opponent makes and how many he does.
As the spotlight is on the Denver convention and America is waiting for Barack Obama to become something they can be more sure about- as the polls are a dead heat in a year when it should have been impossible for a Democrat to lose unless, as the saying goes, he was caught with a dead hooker or a live boy- he seems to be making a number of them. This does not give one a warm and fuzzy feeling, if unsureness about Obama is mostly due to concerns about his thin resume and potential judgment or lack thereof. (Obviously this is not the case for me- I’m very sure I disagree with most of his policy positions and am finding him increasingly difficult to respect- my only unknown is whether I’ll be able to suppress my gag reflex well enough to vote against him.)
First and foremost is his treatment of his rival from the primaries, which were unusually close- and bitter. No matter how one feels about Hillary Clinton and the Clintons in general, she DID get 18 million votes, the Clintons ARE still major Democratic power brokers, and a great many of her supporters ARE incredibly pissed off both about her loss and the way they feel she was treated by the Obama campaign (and the media). If Obama were running against George W. Bush, that wouldn’t be a problem, but he’s not- he’s running against a Republican whose distaste for Bush (and independent streak) is such that there was a brief flirtation with the Kerry campaign in 2004 over the idea of him joining the Kerry ticket. McCain is one of the very few Republicans out there who would be remotely capable of peeling off any Democrats at all- if they were pissed off enough.
You would think that Obama would find it important just as a matter of political pragmatism (something he has proven to excel at in other areas, given the rapidity with which he broke inconvenient promises from the primary) to make at least a superficial peace with the Clintons and their supporters- and Hillary’s pledged delegates- but he and his campaign don’t seem to. In fact, they’ve gone out of their way to snub her, not even bothering to give her a courtesy vetting during the VP selection process. Hillary has returned the goodwill, by not even bothering to tell her delegates to vote for Obama, leaving it as a “personal decision” for them- and a nontrivial proportion of them don’t want to. It’s obviously not enough to unseat Obama as the nominee, but it does send up a giant red flag as to how successful Obama has been at “healing” the divide in the party- and raises the question in the minds of voters that if he can’t even unite Democrats, how does he propose to get anything done in the country when he has to work with Republicans, even a minority of them? Still not particularly in the mood for a group hug, Bill Clinton has already helpfully raised that question.
Meanwhile, as for the candidate Obama DID choose to be his running mate… the way he revealed the decision- at three a.m. by cell text message on a Friday, actively ticking off a number of his own supporters- has led to some of the major media outlets that adored him three months ago actively speculating that he intended to bury his own announcement, knowing how weak a running mate Biden is. (They also speculated that he was turned down by a stronger candidate that would have made more sense as his actual first choice.) And he is weak, make no mistake- he doesn’t actually HURT the ticket so far, but he doesn’t remotely help it, either. Worse than that, he had to drop out of the 1988 Democratic primary race because he couldn’t stop eating his own feet, taking multiple media black eyes for his temper, tendency to wildly exaggerate his own accomplishments, and plagiarism of another politician’s speech materials. Obama is good enough at gaffes all by himself without adding another gaffemaster to the ticket. The GOP is ecstatic, and speaking of the bitter Clintonistas, there are rumbles that they have deemed him a “death wish” for the campaign. (I normally try not to link to partisan blogs rather than some at least remotely nonpartisan media source, but the link there doesn’t seem to lead to the original article anymore. Take with as many grains of salt as you wish.)
Meanwhile, in the land of “far less consequential for now”, a few bored conservative bloggers have noticed the new design for Obama’s campaign website- specifically, the background image, reachable by looking at the page properties from the main site. Pretty background, no? It looks oddly familiar to the pseudo-presidential seal that got one of Obama’s earliest true media backlashes. He was heavily mocked for his presumption even by those normally quite friendly to him, and the seal was rapidly retired and buried. But now it seems to be back in a less obvious place, and with the amusing detail that while the traditional seal- and the earlier one- had an eagle with olive branches in one claw and arrows in the other, this new Obama seal is all olive branches. (Except for the one on his Fight the Smears, site, which is all arrows.) There’s no possible mileage the GOP could get out of that, with a candidate who is percieved by the unsure as weak on foreign policy and a bit arrogant… right? Right? Does Obama need his very own “O”-centric seal so badly that he neither learned from the earlier media reaction nor understands this kind of thing is not healthy for his campaign?
In John McCain’s wildest dreams, he could not be any better at damaging Barack Obama than Barack Obama is.
Since I don’t speak Japanese other than the eigth-assed bit I picked up for one semester in college, I have no idea what the narrator is saying. The translation in my head is roughly “Hey, look at this really cool and underappreciated shark. Not much is known about this elusive deep-water shark, compared to other species but they do have several unique HOLY SHIT I DIDN’T KNOW IT COULD DO THAT! Hey, come check this out!”
Of course, my translation skills are a tad rusty.
I knew “normal” species of sharks can do some fairly nifty gymnastics with their jaw structures, but this just puts them all flat out to shame.
I had something even me in a lazy mood could put together all ready. I even still have the nine-tabbed browser window open behind this one for all the sourcing in my more-snark-than-content plan.
Kang gets up with the bunnies. For some reason, after my usual stagger to the back door to let her out for Wabbit Season, I could not get back to sleep. Do you know what ungodly hour bunnies get up? My brain feels like it was dropped from a great height, then scraped off the sidewalk and poured back into my skull, grit and used wads of chewing gum included. And thanks to it being work-related, we can’t even blog the Hilarious Drama of the Day properly.
So, you homebrewers that have been so helpful to us so far, tell us what to brew next! Already on hand we have ingredients for a second, better Irish red ale, a boxed kit for a Pilsner, and another batch of the Good Eats ale we liked so well the first time. But hey, we’ve made a tradition out of stopping by the homebrew store on our way home from a tattoo session, and we’d hate to disappoint the guy by putting off his new luxury yacht another month. We don’t have the temperature-control ability to make a proper lager, all-grain is still a little out of our league, but we’ve got access to lots of recipes. Current candidates to try I’ve been mulling over are:
- a coffee stout
- a chocolate stout
- something in the California Common family
- an English-style ale
- a cream ale
What out of this list should we try- or do you have a better idea?
If you work with computers, but are not actually in the IT department or otherwise specialize in said computers as your field of expertise, do not taunt happy fun sysadmin.
Really. Don’t. It’s just not professionally healthy.
We’re all familiar with these jackasses. The Obstructionist Brigade is that group of specially trained people with the lightning quick reflexes to deploy at a moment’s notice to where ever it is you happen to be going with the intent of accomplishing something quickly, and thwarting your efforts. Two of them will strike up a conversation in the grocery store, conveniently blocking the entire aisle, while they regale each other with every significant event in their lives, including individual sneezes, since conception. Often they will work in larger teams, positioning these reunions in front of no fewer than half a dozen things you need. Another favorite trick is the baby battalion, who have children specially bred for exceptional lung capacity. These children will scream as they meander slowly about, in your way of course, swerving to and fro as you try vainly to go around, often sustaining their wails for minutes on end without so much as a hitch for breath. I suspect when they grow up, these noise-boxes will be promoted to the conversationalist corps described above, as attempting to insert a polite “Excuse me” into their narrative of All That Has Ever Been is akin to trying to shove Barack Obama’s ego through the eye of a needle.
Another favorite specialty of the brigade is the Detail Oriented. Have you EVER seen anything as fascinating as the ingredient list on that package of cornmeal? Clearly, these people haven’t. Often spending up to fifteen minutes while deciding if a difference of .5% of your RDA of riboflavin per serving should sway this purported consumer between brand A or B, they have been known to establish base camps spreading the length of a full quarter aisle. Foolishly, you think to yourself that you can simply go collect other items and eventually our blocker will complete the grand unified theory of price vs. maltodextrin content and move along. No, it matters not if your shopping list consists of more individual items than the inventory for an expedition through Siberia in January or simply a quick detour for toothpaste, this skilled blocker has found the one place in the world where he or she feels safe, and will not move. At this point, I can already hear the thoughts of a couple readers. “Well just politely ask if they could move a foot or so over!” Fool! You really think that the Obstructionist Brigade would let an agent into the field with so little training for that gambit to succeed? The bare minimum before an operative is allowed into the field includes extensive work in areas such as pretending not to have heard you, inability to parse any language known to man (including that African click-and-whistle thing), and in more advanced cases, the ability to feign death. I once politely asked a bearded gentleman appearing to be in his mid-40s if I could get past him to reach the can of black beans I needed, and was promptly treated to a display of stunningly high level training, as he actually turned to stone as though he had seen Medusa, before my very eyes. The next day, I saw his granite body sitting in the dumpster. Being so well trained, he of course kept his arm across the entire shelf of black beans. I normally do not admit defeat lightly, but in the presence of such a dedicated master, it was an amazing demonstration of his skill, training, and dedication.
For clarity’s sake, I’ve been using the grocery store only as an example. I have frequently encountered agents of this Brigade in every public venue imaginable. Department stores are favorite training grounds for younger agents, as the randomly decoratively arranged merchandise will frequently allow a rookie to block vast tracts of store with no more than a few carefully chosen steps.
Of course, it would do these highly trained specialists a disservice if I neglected to mention their motor pool. Judged among their peers for points on style and speed, this cadre of elite motor-minimalists trains to behave as if under the sincere impression that every molecule in their vehicle will simultaneously explode at the speed of light if their speed exceeds 75% of the posted limit. The only safe place in which to really drop the hammer and actually hit the limit are passing zones. In areas with two lanes or more per direction, they call in reinforcements, skilled drivers unafraid of total protonic reversal who will form often mile-long trains of cars pinning you behind the vehicular glacier as they go around, happily meeting or exceeding the speed limit. These blocking trains serve as score multipliers for the original wheeled sloth, giving serious boosts to the point total, which is a complex equation involving total miles traveled before you successfully get around, the difference between actual velocity and the posted speed limit, and a weighting factor of your particular urgency, determined via the intimate surveillance system which allow speedy deployment to keep you behind schedule.
Since Los Alamos is apparently a major advanced training facility and proving ground for the Obstructionist Brigade, I have of course spent as much time developing and testing strategies to deal with this sinister cabal as I have being impeded by them. Below, I present a brief summary of some of the tactics I have considered, or better, successfully employed, along with a few pros and cons.
*Nuke the site from orbit – it’s the only way to be sure. While this trick will in fact remove all obstructionists, any time savings reaped by navigating an unobstructed sea of glass will be mitigated by time spent in the cancer ward next week. Also, angry clucking noises from the U.N. can be irritating.
*Join the conversation. Since this is a carefully prepared script, specially designed to minimize opportunities for interjections, this can be tricky, but once you get in, the results are wonderful. Lacking any improvisational skills, the blockers will quickly stammer to a halt. Better trained operatives may stammer bland uselessneses such as “Who are you?” or “I’m sorry, this was a private conversation!” Do not relent! Throw their tactics back in their face, and just keep talking! This has a decent success rate, but if you employ it too often in one go, the store manager may become involved.
*Simply reach around the statue-like bean-examiner. If any concerns about personal space are voiced, simply respond that the person looked like they needed a hug. Warning: The person may decide a hug is a good idea. If it comes to this, try to minimize any motions that may be interpreted as grinding while flailing about trying to reach the beans.
*In shopping malls, use the rabbit approach. Take a high-speed course filled with random jinks and jives. Since malls are training grounds for rookies, they usually don’t have the skills to anticipate or keep up. Unfortunately, success is visible from afar, and other frustrated shoppers may try to duck into your wake to take advantage of the path you’re forging. If this continues unchecked, it can lead to a stampede, with you running point. In case of a stampede, do not give in to your first instinct and head for an exit. The momentum of the crowd behind you will crush you before the doors can open. Your best bet to guide the herd closer to the walls and store entrances, and try to peel off unnoticed. Do not attempt to peel off in a store you actually wish to shop in, because if the move fails, the herd will trample anything of value in the makeshift eddy current you just created. While the sight of hundreds of similarly fed-up shoppers can be inspiring, the end results just aren’t worth the extra delay.
*On the road, your options are limited by your horsepower and torque. When the obstructer reaches the passing zone and finally hits the gas, your only option is to have the oomph under the hood to make it around the accelerating idiot and complete the pass before the oncoming car arrives. Be careful though, if you do have the engine power, be advised that the police have been infiltrated by the Obstructionist Brigade, and the officer your specific blocker called ahead to position will not take kindly to your explanation about the Brigade. They treat it like Fight Club, and do not appreciate having the word spread. I have yet to find a successful strategy for the train-blocking style that does not involve cutting someone off, a risky proposition to be sure, since a fender bender is an excellent way to slow you down.
*Move. That’s right, pick up your stuff and find someplace else to live. When we moved from Los Alamos to White Rock, it took the obstructionists about five months to figure out the best ways to block us again. I had the advantage, having grown up in the area, so your mileage may vary. But for a few glorious months, I was able to get things done at exactly the speed and schedule I prefer.
Finally, just as a parting warning, I am aware that this organization is large and powerful. As such, any commenters suggesting that I could simply do with a larger measure of patience will be summarily judged as conspirators, and treated with suspicion henceforth.
Good day, and good luck evading them.
A German researcher has managed to prove that magpies at least are capable of recognizing themselves in a mirror.
In case you’re wondering why that’s a big deal, it’s sort of become a standard test in animal behavior circles to see if an animal is bright enough to recognize that an image it sees is actually itself. This first requires the quick leap in reasoning in realizing that an image is a reflection at all, and second implies some limited capacity of the critter to distinguish a “self” in the first place- the most basic level of self-awareness. Until the magpie study, only bottlenose dolphins and great apes had been demonstrated to pass the mirror test.
Outside the realm of pure speculation and philosophical maundering, this proves what we already had hints of- that corvids (the bird family of which magpies are a member- also crows, jays, ravens, rooks, and jackdaws) are among the most intelligent of birds, perhaps as intelligent if not moreso than parrots, the group from which the most advanced research on animal cognition and language use not done on great apes has been done. Crows have been known to ornithologists and people who have to cope with them as pests as uncannily intelligent for a long time now, but more and more research is coming in to show that it’s not just a perception, they really are smart little buggers, more than capable of outwitting humans on a regular basis.
Personally, however, I’ve always had an issue with the test, because it depends rather heavily on something humans take for granted- vision as the dominant source of sensory information. The fact that dogs never pass the mirror test is something that is frequently mentioned in dog behavior literature as proof that dogs have no self-awareness, no conception of “I” and “you”, that they just learn from stimulus and response. It’s extremely important for humans to bear in mind that dogs don’t think or feel or remember the way humans do, but I really wonder first if a total absence of self-awareness is a logical assumption to make of a complex social animal, and second if the test is a fair measurement of an animal like a dog. (Or, for that matter, a horse or any other complex social animal that has failed the test but doesn’t put much reliance on its eyes compared to other senses.)
For a dog, smell is the ruling sense, the chief and most reliable source of information. Not only is the sense of smell of the average dog (let alone a hound) at least a hundred times more powerful than it is for humans, it’s gives them even more information than vision does for us, because scent is the only three-dimensional sense- it doesn’t just tell them what’s going on now, it also tells them what happened then. We can approximate it by taking clues from our vision and reasoning through them, but we can’t tell that someone was standing someplace an intermediate period of time ago (but is gone now) without going through that reasoning process and doing CSI tricks. For a dog, this is standard information, part of the way they hunt naturally.
Likewise, a dog’s hearing is far more sensitive and covers a greater range than ours does. Humans who have disciplined themselves very well can hear well enough to be better hunters, but only a dog can know that his owner is coming home at an unpredicted time because the characteristic sound of their car’s engine has entered their awareness from a mile away. Dog vision, by contrast, is terrible- they have a great eye for motion and are good at identifying individuals by the way they move, but their visual acuity is very poor, about as bad as mine is without my glasses. (Which is atrocious.) In one of the ironies of life, it was discovered that some dogs are nearsighted, and that certain breeds- such as German Shepherds- are particularly afflicted. In a bit of apocrypha I can’t source here but distinctly remembered, it first occurred to anyone to investigate this because a number of GSDs were washing out of certain guide dog tests for no apparent reason, the reason being that the dogs were, functionally speaking, nearly blind themselves.
The question of the mirror test and dogs then becomes, secondary to whether or not the dogs could recognize themselves, but that even if they did have some capacity to recognize “self”, why should they particularly notice or care about their mirror image? Anybody who’s raised a puppy knows that often, they’ll bluster or try to play with the strange “other puppy” they see in a mirror, but that they usually quickly realize it’s just a reflection and lose interest completely. Do they recognize themselves and conclude that it’s an irrelevant local phenomenon, do they completely fail to, and would or should they even care about something with no scent that doesn’t make a sound?
If a human were to notice a strange, sourceless smell- not a BAD smell, just a smell, and a subtle one at that- that they can’t attach to a source, would they first recognize the scent as their own if that’s what it was, and how much time, effort, and thought would they spend on it? I know that if I had no reason to suspect something was up otherwise, I’d never think it was my own scent, and I probably wouldn’t care enough to be very persistent about checking it out. As a tertiary sense, things I smell just aren’t very important to me unless I have cause to attach meaning to them- and since it’s one of my poorest senses, I’m aware my nose often plays tricks on me that I should pay no heed. (One of the quirks of my hormonal cycles is that at the right times of the month, I will often smell things that aren’t there, or smell innocuous things as though they stink, or noxious things as though they smelled a bit appetizing.) Dogs frequently see things that are unusual or alarming or just odd- partly because they live in a human world with all sorts of things they have no capacity to understand (like a human with an artificial limb, or a statue), and partly because their visual acuity is so poor compared to ours.
The second aspect of the conclusion “dogs have no self-awareness at all” that bothers me is that it doesn’t make sense to me. Not because I think the Yard Wolves are brilliant and deep souls who could philosophize like Socrates or even a stoned college student if they could but speak, but because there’s a logical breakdown for me. Dogs are transparently capable of recognizing individuals; they have their people, friends, strangers, and they treat individuals differently based on past interactions with them. They fear individuals that cause them pain, form bonds with members of their families, and remember family friends that tend to have biscuits or just plain know how to scratch in that ecstasy-producing way. Likewise, they recognize other dogs the same way- as, indeed, all complex social animals that do complicated things like hunting together or cooperating to raise young do. It’s a necessary feature, in order to keep track of the others’ behavior and shun or cooperate as appropriate; sociobiologists are seeing this cheater/cooperator distinction- the ability to track multiple relationships with multiple individuals- as more and more important to the very essence of BEING a functional social animal with each study.
And that’s my question: how can any creature have a detailed conception of a “you” with strong individual identification, and the ability to also keep track of “him” and “that other guy” and how it’s appropriate to treat them, without an “I”? How would it even be possible to have detailed external referents without the internal referent to relate it all to?
As I said, I’m not suggesting that dogs- or horses, or prairie dogs, or scrub jays- are self-aware in the same way that humans are, in the sense of being able to make detailed self-evaluations and introspections, or to think about either “I” or “you” in so advanced a fashion in order to make a conclusion like “Fucker went on vacation, I’ll piss in his shoe, that’ll teach him.”
However, in evolution, advanced features do not appear without simple predecessors, and things that are useful are often innovated several times independently. Eyes are a good example- they seem to have appeared independently in several different lineages rather than having been derived from a single early possessor of vision, so great are the advantages of advanced visual capabilities. (The independence of innovation of this feature is also why cephalopod eyes are a so much better design than the vertebrate eye.) It’s convergent evolution, and it’s ridiculously common.
Why, then, should we conclude that self-awareness- not the detailed internal world humans are accustomed to, but the basic concept of “I” versus “you” versus “someone else”- is so unique to only the very most intelligent of animals, and leave this as our automatic default assumption until a heavy body of firm proof otherwise? Because we are really so afraid of the potential for anthropomorphism… or because we are still afraid of finding out that we’re not quite as super-special as we have always loved to believe we are?
Probably some of both.
Stingray: “Did you want to go to Santa Fe with us?”
LabRat: “Sure, I’ll get you those bottles you wanted at the homebrew store.”
Stingray: “We’ll be stopping at Lowe’s too.”
LabRat: “Um, ok. I’ll bring a book.”
Stingray: “With my mother, who needs garden stuff.”
LabRat: “Have fun.”
Preachers are not wildly known for their wild evenings of paint-peeling antics, but Peter the Bayou Renaissance Man took it upon himself to break the stereotype. He’s OK and the damage isn’t too bad (especially considering how it could’ve gone), but some well wishes and support would probably not go amiss at the moment.
Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.
-George Orwell
One of the ideas that’s been pinging around my skull lately is the suspicion that a substantial portion of modern ills can be boiled down to the assumption that, as Orwell said, happiness is the goal of life. Don’t get me wrong; I certainly hope to spend as much of my life generally happier than not, and being happy with my life is my own end goal. Note, however, the major distinction between these goals and the goal to be as happy as possible all the time.
The idea that a person should be happy, and that one should direct one’s life towards that end, is a fairly new one, mostly because it’s only recently that there are times and places where this is even possible. There are still patches of apparently intractable human misery all over the planet, and modern well-fed Westerners occasionally look in on them and try to wrap their heads around the contrast between their own existence, in which it is possible to do nearly anything you please so long as you make an effort (and the idea that you even SHOULD have to make an effort to achieve this comfortable state is under increasing assault), with those of these others, in which it seems that any life or moment not spent at the whim of indifferent and cruel forces is miraculous. The sheer fortune of circumstance (as well as how far effort and initiative can take you in one of these lucky societies) is even starkly apparent in this contrast of brothers.
It’s no coincidence that this ideal of ultimate happiness is not found within any traditional religion. In the major Western religions, the goal of life is to live according to the will of God. This may lead you to great success, or this may lead you to a Job-like existence of suffering, but that’s the plan, and your goal is to try and comprehend it and find peace within it. Likewise, the goal of the major Eastern religions is harmony with the world around you; whether it’s Buddha’s extinction of desire, Confucious’s harmony of social life, or Hindu’s goal of ultimate understanding, the emphasis is solidly on comfortably inhabiting the world as it is. Whether it’s God’s plan or nature-and-the-world-as-is, all of traditional religion seems to agree- you should better yourself as you can, but your lot in the universe is largely beyond your control, and happiness can be found in acceptance rather than in actively working to make yourself happy. You might see the Western conception of heaven as a reward of ultimate happiness, but when I’ve read the Bible, it sounds a lot more like heaven is eternity spent in the company of God- which one might assume is neverending happiness as a natural consequence, but sounds to me much more like the natural conclusion of the “end goal of life is to live in accordance with God” theme.
As an atheist with a generally friendly view toward religion, my view of them tends to take the slant that the success of particular religions over others- and the evolutionary and social utility of religion- is due to religions being, effectively, guidebooks to human nature and user manuals for living in a way that can reconcile our reason, emotion, and more animalistic tendencies as best as possible. Essentially, an abstract cornerstone of civilization. It’s not strictly necessary that such things be explicitly religions as we understand them- as I’ve observed before, there have been a nontrivial number of civilizations that had their moral codes removed from their belief in gods, which in those cases tended to act much like humans would WITHOUT any restriction of morality- but it seems to be one of the more common versions. If all of them can agree on a point- for an easy example, we can note that all of them take a dim view of wanton theft and murder- then that probably means they’re all describing an immutable aspect of human nature and the truly necessary elements for a functional civilization.
For most of human history, one reason this view of life, without respect to the religion or philosophy it was framed in, persisted easily, because for most of history, life was as it is now in places we think of as epitomes of human misery: mostly arbitrary and often awful. Plagues were a fact of life, as were being killed for arbitrary reasons by enemy soldiers or simply your own society. Famine? It’s one of the Horsemen, and for a long time it was a fully concrete concept for all cultures, not something they had to imagine. It was obvious living as though it was your birthright to be happy all the time was folly because it was essentially impossible, except for the very few members of the ruling class, and even they were brought low often enough to be periodically reminded that they were kings of men, not of the world, and hardly immune to disaster.
Both these religious precepts- accept your fate without struggle, and you will be more at peace- and the unquestioned truth that might pretty much does make right- were used to justify a great deal of non-arbitrary abuses of power. By the eighteenth century, literacy was widespread enough and philosophy, science, and theology thriving enough that it was possible for serious reforms based on this new body of thought and moral reasoning to occur… and, as a side effect of this enlightened period, a new experiment in government to be tried by a group of men that were as well-read as they were hotheaded and revolutionary. When they were deciding what sorts of things this new form of government should be based on, one of the included precepts was the pursuit of happiness- meaning, in that context, that government should not interfere in citizen activities to build their lives as they chose and instead that they should be left to succeed if they could. (In contrast to societies like China, where the government can simply say “you’re a gymnast, this is your life”, and this is viewed as one of its prerogatives rather than massively unjust a theft of a life as it would be here.)
“Happiness” is a slippery word. The euphoric state itself that we are usually referring to when thinking of our happiest moments is fleeting and of simple realistic necessity cannot be experienced indefinitely, or even in greater proportion than other emotional states; happiness is in itself an inherently special reaction, and the same thing that made you smile and laugh last week may be boring this week, having become unexceptional and thus not worth getting excited about. There is contentment, but it says something that mere contentment is usually attacked by those advocating for something in the name of greater happiness for an individual or a group- its having too great a resemblance to the old, complacent religious ideal of satisfaction with the world.
It is therefore not possible to successfully pursue feeling happy if that is your sole goal. It’s as slippery a state as it is an emotion, and what actually makes us happy is so frequently not what we predicted would that there are several fables and morality tales with that specific lesson in cultures all over the world. If you ask yourself each moment, and at each end result of a decision, if you are as happy as you possibly could be right now, the answer will almost certainly be “no”. Our imaginations being what they are, it is always possible to imagine greater happiness given enough time to think, or even perpetual happiness, the euphoria going on and on.
These truths- that the good feelings of happiness are fleeting, that humans are always able to make an unfavorable comparison to what they have when the alternative is something they imagine they might, and that happiness often lies in unexpected places- are part of what can seem like a paradox: happiness is often obtained through pursuits that place us temporarily in a completely different and decidedly non-euphoric emotional state, such as boredom or frustration. You can even see this principle acknowledged in devices and pursuits that are acknowledged as purely diversionary; to win a traditional game, such as bridge or chess or go, you must be playing against another person, which implies an automatic chance of spending your time and mental effort endeavoring to follow a completely abstract system of rules in order to defeat an opponent and win nothing of consequence except satisfaction- and there’s a good chance you’ll lose and fail and therefore have spent all that time and effort on nothing except the disappointment of failure. Even in modern video games, you don’t just push a button and get a you-win screen, when presumably it’s winning that makes you happy- you must pass a series of challenges, and a growing genre of games are open-ended systems of hidden systems (meant for the player to discover) and endless challenges with no way to win at all, all satisfaction coming purely from the effort invested in figuring out the game and seeing what it can do.
The satisfactions of a game are fleeting, however, which is why they’re games. Most of life’s big happinesses- a successful relationship, success in career or in some other area of personal achievement, a successful family- are all the end result of long periods of great effort expended and unpleasantness endured in order to reach an end result. Happy marriages and families are hardly one long parade of joy after having found your soulmate and raised your children to be wonderful little people, rather than brats; humans being what they are, there are inevitably periods, even long ones, where you look at your family members and don’t even like them. They will do things to hurt you, sometimes badly, disappoint you, or frustrate you. However, if you conclude during such periods that the marriage/family is not making you happy and therefore abandon it, you miss out on the strengthened relationships and, yes, happiness of having been patient, worked to solve problems, and keeping the relationship- which, if sound, will have wonderful periods to match the awful ones with the same near-inevitability.
Likewise, a true and deep feeling of achievement in any other area can come only after a great deal of effort expended- endurance through the tedium of study, endurance through the tedium of trial and error, endurance through the vagaries of fortune, and a general suffering through a great many unpleasant emotional states to reach ultimate- or even just modest, but real- success. I love to read, but I don’t enjoy every second of my eyeballs crawling over the page, I enjoy the sensation of having learned something new, or thought or imagined something I wouldn’t have before. (This applies equally as much to fiction as nonfiction, since the basic purpose of fiction is examination of human nature from different angles.) While I do sometimes stop reading a book either because the author has used so much obfuscatory language the experience of reading has become excrutiating, because I suspect the story will have no interesting payoff, or because I suspect the author’s point is actually nonsense, this is very different from doing so purely because it’s not making me happy right that second.
The increasing number of people that ARE using that metric on some level becomes increasingly apparent in our culture, and is epitomized in the spread of psychotropic medications that are advertised and sometimes prescribed as though unhappiness itself were a pathological condition, rather than being as normal and necessary a part of the human experience as happiness. We propose to legislate poverty out of existence, or to to provide unlimited medical care for free to all, or to eliminate work as a necessary precondition to achievement- or, worse, we attempt to eliminate all concept of achievement from our schools, increasingly choosing instead to concentrate on telling students they are special and make sure they feel good about themselves.
Insidiously, in this version of pursuit of happiness- total concentration on one’s internal state and current estimation of one’s worth- we completely eliminate almost all possibility of happiness as a condition as it was understood for thousands of years. If everyone is special, no one is. If all that matters is how you feel, there is always a better theoretical emotional state we must mourn, and always a reason to quit an activity, job, relationship, or even existence that is not immediately satisfying. If there’s no such thing as achievement or failure, there’s never any reason to feel good about ourselves outside of fundamentally fleeting affection- and as soon as failure is experienced, because that’s how life still is no matter how much padding we try and put on the sharp corners, it disappears altogether.
This pursuit of happiness is as surefire a guarantor of misery as has ever been invented. And humans are very creative in that respect.
Since it’s slow as hell today at the nerd ranch, LabRat and I were both scratching our heads like bonobos with relocated genitals for something to post. Using standard blogger filler procedure, we hit sitemeter to find weird search terms that led people here. The number one slot, as always, is of course “boobies” and variants on the term. Second most popular, however, is just the site name, Atomic Nerds.
This is where I grow confused. These folks obviously have the name in mind, but I would’ve thought that would be enough. “Hey, where’s that Atomic Nerds site? Oh yeah. Atomic Nerds.”
Can anyone shed some light on this one for me? I’m genuinely curious how this works that a good number of folks can know the name, but not know the identical URL.
For reference the oddball search terms were “earplugs for sticky nerds”, “what’s the cost of an atomic shotgun”, and “nerds getting fucked”. In order: wash and use the earplugs for clean nerds, high but the ammo prices are a bitch, and you can’t afford that video.
We like our tattoo artist. Aside from being a good artist, he’s got a warped sense of humor that matches a lot of the bend sinisters in ours, so tattoo sessions are about as much fun as it’s possible to have while having a hot needle stitching over your skin for a few hours. Among other things, we trade movie/cartoon/book recommendations.
A few sessions ago, Mark touted the virtues of a little B flick called Santa’s Slay. Premise? Santa Claus has only been bringing presents to the good little boys and girls of the world because a thousand years ago, he lost a bet to an angel and had to make a thousand-year promise to stop doing what he normally did on Christmas- which was wanton slaughter- and be nice instead. Guess when the thousand-year bet expires?
This sounded good to us, so it went immediately to the top of the Blockbuster queue. Once it got here, however, we acquired a case of sudden reluctance. Things have a way of seeming like a great idea when you’ve got a bloodstream full of pain-induced endorphins and have been talking with a madman for the past hour, that turn out not to be such a good idea in the cold and sober light of day. (This is why you should always think through the tattoo thing WELL BEFORE you walk into the shop- the physical effects for some people can be a lot like drunkenness.) What sounded awesome within the walls of Custom Tattoo suddenly sounded pretty lame, just another of the zillion and one B movies that take a decent idea and do absolutely nothing interesting with it. Anybody who likes them knows that it takes a lot more than a reasonably fun premise to make the movie a good time instead of hours of your life that you’ll never get back.
The time rolled around when we had nothing BUT movies we knew were more likely to be mockably bad than genuinely good in our little stack, and we wanted to get the queue moving again, so in went… Shutter, because I was more in the mood for bad J-horror than bad splatter. Shutter turned out to be just on the right edge of laughably bad without being soul-suckingly awful, and we had a great time snarking our way through it. After that, Santa’s Slay seemed like a better idea, so it got its turn on deck the next night.
As it turned out, we should never doubt Mark’s B-movie tastes again, because it was great. THIS is what a B splatter film SHOULD be- good premise played to the hilt, great choice of actors (there were several minor celebrities) with Bill Goldberg of wrestling fame working perfectly as Santa, and an iron determination on the part of everyone involved to have fun with it. It’s full of bad taste- but the kind that’s universal enough and playful enough that you know there’s absolutely nothing personal about it, whether it’s Jews, gun nuts, smokers, Christians, or anyone else being mocked. (Usually with some evident affection.) If it’s in range, it’s mockable.
The plot is simple enough not to trip over itself and with a few minor twists just to keep you paying attention, and contains lots of wonderful shout-outs, my favorite being the one to the old Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. The flying bison was a particularly fun touch, too. It also made me happy in a nerdy way to present the Bad Santa as Nordic in origin- if you get geeky about the history of Christmas celebration and iconology, you’ll know just how much the Vikings contributed to the trappings of the holiday, up to and including Santa. The name of the protagonist’s family is Yuleson, to boot.
Even the deleted scenes were all hilarious, and I can only conclude that they were deleted purely because they made the movie too long- and longer than an hour and a half is, as a rule, too long for a B-movie, period.
This one will be enshrined in our annual “Cracked-Out Christmas” movie/TV marathon when December rolls around. Highly recommended, if you like this sort of thing.
So, apparently McCain and Obama had an evening of softball with the Reverend Rick Warren’s Saddleback megachurch. This was the first time both candidates appeared together at anything that could possibly be construed as a debate, they didn’t even share the stage during the interviews, and Warren is personally friendly to them both. It was a pretty transparent ploy by both candidates to shore up support among evangelicals, with whom they are both weak for assorted reasons. There is no possible way Obama could have had a gentler toe-dip into the “debating McCain” experience; Warren even said he wasn’t planning to ask any “gotcha” questions, because he considered them both friends.
Well, apparently he didn’t do so well next to McCain. And apparently his campaign is “saying privately” (to a journalist, which is the same as saying publicly but not designing a Youtube ad over it) that McCain must have cheated. Since the linked article is a lengthy Meet the Press transcript with all of that format’s usual lack of brevity or clarity, I’ll quote:
MR. GREGORY: Andrea Mitchell, that’s a pretty clear contrast.
MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, there was the crisp, immediate, forceful response by John McCain, clearly in a comfort zone because he was with his base. And Barack Obama, taking a risk in going there but seeing an opportunity. And a much more nuanced approach. The Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that–what they’re putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MS. MITCHELL: He seemed so well prepared.
OF COURSE HE WAS WELL PREPARED, YOU SILLY BINT. McCain’s been in politics for twenty-six years, and he’s spent big chunks of it fighting with the other party and his own party alike. More than that, as Mitchell half-acknowledges, McCain knows damned good and well what his strengths and weaknesses are, especially in contrast to Obama- again, he’s been doing this for twenty-six years, and he knows he has to run against his opponent, not just on a nebulous platform of “I’m a swell guy, so vote for me”, and he also knows that one of his few public-image advantages over Obama is that he’s perceived as much tougher and more experienced on foreign policy issues. The only way he would have NOT been well-prepared would be if he, I don’t know, decided that since the venue was “friendly”, he didn’t need to put any thought into it beyond letting the nice Reverend make him look good. I mean, an evangelical, asking questions about evil and morality and how it relates to how a candidate might govern? That would just be a gotcha, right?
The really stupid thing about this is that EVERYBODY knows that Obama beats McCain flat in his ability to deliver a good speech, but that McCain is stronger than Obama on an extemporaneous stage. Ever since Hillary trounced Obama in the Pennsylvania debate before going on to trounce him in the following primary, Obama went to some lengths to avoid another shellacking, and the McCain campaign has been pushing for more exactly because they know their boy is much stronger in that format. Got that? The McCain campaign knows it. The Obama campaign clearly knows it, because otherwise there’s no reason to open themselves up to questioning of why they’re avoiding it.
So if this rumor-mongering of possible cheating by McCain in the fluffiest venue that either candidate will have before the election is really from the Obama campaign and not just the fevered imagination of Andrea Mitchell, then this is just… incredibly fucking stupid. The BEST they can do with Obama’s weakness in unscripted formats is ignore it, and play up his strengths instead; there’s only so far they can spin it, but this should be campaigning 101 stuff. Instead, the image presented is not just that Obama is weak, but that he’s a whiner- in other words, a pussy.
A “pussy” image is political doom. Americans will put up with a lot from their political class; pork, shady back-scratching, financial peccadillos, sexual misadventures… but not whining.
