Happy, etc ... :-D

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

:-D

Carolyn Ann

New Year's Resolutions... Sorry about that. :-)

You know, I've never understood why January 1st is the "new year" marker. Considering the arbitrariness of the date, I guess it's as good as any - but why not one of the solstices? It's a bit like arguing that Sunday is a special day; it's just a period of time with a name. We have lots of names for periods of time. Have you ever noticed that? I have. (Clearly...) :-)

Anyway, it's the start of 2012 in a few hours. It's already 2012 in some over-achieving places. New year resolutions are made, to be forgotten by January 3rd. Mutterings are made, to be enthusiastically, if quietly, renewed at 9AM on the Monday following the holiday. And... Well, that's about it, really. So I guess I should think about my resolutions for the year? How about: continue (ahem...) losing weight? The rest of it is stuff I intend to do regardless of where we are in the year.

Hmm. Bit of a bummer, this post. Sorry about that. :-D

Oh, yeah. I forgot. Sorry. :-)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Carolyn Ann

Don't chase that - it'll hurt if you catch it!

You can tell it's a slow news cycle. Even Iowa is getting a bit of relief; comic relief as Rick Santorum tries to make a speech without saying anything meaningful or even just too offensive. Or getting in the way of the television, which is showing a football game. Michele Bachmann is as mad as all heck; her campaign manager ditched her and moved to pastures new. If I had to guess, I don't, but I'm going to anyway, he moved because they promised to pay him. Michele sort of promised the check was in the mail. So while I appreciate he has bills to pay, his career as a political operator sort of ended. His new pitch? "Of course I think you're The One, Mr or Mrs Candidate. Until someone comes up with a better offer, that is."

Interestingly, Ron Paul is doubling down on his brand of politics. Someone noted he was old, the other day. His fans didn't like that. Listen up folks: he's 77 years old. I don't about you, but I consider that OLD! Work it out: if he actually won the election, he'd be in his 79th year when he took office. That means he'd need to maintain the pressures that grays the hair of men 30 years younger. The one thing I could suggest is "get a younger Vice President". Because there's a strong chance a President Paul would keel over. The man isn't old; he's ancient! John McCain was 71 when he ran in 2008. And he was considered old back then!

Anyway, back to Ron Paul's policies, or what passes for them. He's welcoming support from white supremacists, which is a bit disturbing. In a recent Facebook discussion (last night, to be honest), a Ron Paul fan trotted out white supremacist arguments for "liberty". I was, quite frankly, astounded. I called them what they are: odious. Another interesting bit was how someone defined "liberty"; it was very complicated and required referencing a variety of unknown authors and one moronic triviality (Friedrich Hayek). When that man trips over his own arguments, he's like the chap who breaks into a jog, as if that's what he'd been planning to do all along. His fans just pretend along with him. (My advice? Read Schumpeter. Much more coherent.) Well, the need to read lots of supporting material reminded me of a debate I had with one BattyBattyBats a long time ago; she (?) also demanded that I ingest massive amounts of irrelevant and frankly silly literature to understand her point. So it's not just the whimsical who demand complexity; anyone who can't agree their own argument needs all that paraphernalia as well. Listen up, folks: if your argument is so complex you need to quote supporting actors, you don't understand your own argument. The bumph is a crutch.

Oh well. One thing I've noticed about Ron Paul fans - they do love complicated arguments. They also have a tendency to rewrite history; they need to, because their examples fall flat unless they change what happened. (What's really neat is how these same fans accuse you (me) of rewriting history when you provide the accurate version!) I also liked it one time when someone told me Ron Paul wasn't a right wing politician. Yeah, I was incredulous, too.

C'est la vie, etc. Ron Paul will never be president, so these debates are mostly about chasing tails. In fact, the arguments Ron Paul's supporters put forth have a very strong resemblance to a dog chasing its tail. With the same unfortunate consequences when the tail is caught.

Carolyn Ann

The year in review

As much as I'd like to forget the beginning of this year, I can't. Parlous times they were indeed. We're through that bit; now we're part of that vast middle class that finds itself stuck. Educated, skilled and stuck. With the Republicans and Tea Partiers desperate to fuck each and every family, person, in that group, it's not a pleasant place to be!

How do you move forward in such an economic climate? By taking a job stocking shelves? By being one of the seventy odd applying for that shelf-stocking job, paying $7 an hour - and that's only because it's the state minimum. The supermarket owner would love to pay you $5, and those supercilious, oft- pensioned, bastards that comprise the Tea Party thinks that's a good idea.

I completely accept the idea that a series of decisions we made started this ignoble bandwagon rolling. We are responsible for those decisions. We have to live by the consequences. What we never signed up for was the economic wasteland caused by the banks and politicians. The "deregulation" of financial services led to an economic implosion that did the banks almost no harm and the ordinary person, struggling through a recession, a major economic injury. They got bailed out - we didn't. And those selfish Tea Party pricks argue that the whole thing should have been made worse! With their blasé, naive "Austrian" economic models and their complete lack of empathy, they argue that Wall St [and auto companies] should have been made to fail. The lesser of two evils is not their mandate, only the worst one is.

As I listen to the Republican presidential candidates prattle on, with their "social" concerns that disregard women, ignore the middle class and placidly extol the virtues we collectively hold dear, I am insulted. Not a single one has stepped up to the plate to argue coherently, never mind cogently, for economic policies that will help people. I hear railings against mystical issues that might inflict the nation in ten or twenty years - nothing that will help now. The GOP's Senate leader has made ousting Barack Obama his priority - screw the millions still without health insurance, without decent well-paying jobs or living on a economic knife edge.

Speaking of health insurance, we still can't afford it. We're one major illness from bankruptcy. According to Ron Paul we're responsible for that. Let me see: neither of us can find a job that comes with benefits; we can't move, can't afford to move, can't buy health insurance because so many insurers don't cover the counties we're in - and it's our fault? He's fine, his Congressional Health Insurance is free and clear, and he'll get it for life! Yet he and Paul Ryan both want to ensure that people like us have absolutely no chance getting coverage.

All in all, it's a been a hell of a year. We were lucky; we managed to climb a short distance upwards. We're nowhere near the safety and security of the days when Bill was president; but at least we're not on that rapid downward spiral of the Bush years. When you think about how the middle class hasn't really seen a decent pay increase in almost a decade, thanks to George Bush and his laissez-faire fiscal policies, policies the Tea Party and paleo-Republicans want to embrace and extend, it's quite appalling, really. We're the middle class. We need some help, not insults and blithe vilification from simple-minded bombasts, for being lazy, or "liberal" or "greedy", or any other meaningless insult. We don't need the condescension of Ron Paul or Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum. We don't need the arrogance of Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. We're not looking to scrounge from the state, or create a communist paradise. What we, and the middle class, needs is a bit of a leg up. We'll do the rest. We'll start the businesses, generate the economic growth. We'll create and get the jobs and do well with them. Some like to talk of American Exceptionalism, while they go about ensuring its downfall is comparable to Rome's. These people fear the present and the future, looking with rose-colored glasses at their past. Me? I prefer to think that America is the land it is - a place of optimism, risk, eager to do better, to take on big challenges and succeed. America is not some frightened people, insecurely telling themselves they are exceptional. The America I know has no need to tell anyone how grand it is, because people and nations can see that for themselves. Because this is not a fearful nation. It is a great nation, with a great people and a great future.

Tea Party? Get out of the damn way, America has a greatness to reclaim!

Carolyn Ann

Edits: Some minor edits and spelling corrections.

Yad Vesham should honor this man

There's a heartfelt story of a man who saved a Jewish family in the midst of WW2. I can't help but agree that because the man was Muslim, Yad Vesham won't honor him.

Shame on them.

Carolyn Ann

Never mind coming out of the closet - I've got to find the exit first!

In her efforts at reorganizing my closet, among the delights the Mrs has uncovered are a really cute skirt that will fit me when I lose a few more pounds, a jacket I didn't know I had, a top or two that go with some pants I bought awhile back and a pair of her shoes that somehow got into my closet. (I didn't borrow them; we wear different sizes.)

She's arranging the closet by color; I had it arranged by type and gender. Skirts with skirts, dresses with dresses, pants with pants and so on. It was a bit of a mishmash, to be honest, and I could never find things to wear. Especially as the "categorization" system was very haphazard - all of my Mexican clothes were together, for instance. Which meant I couldn't find those really cute tops or that fun dress when I wanted to. Jeez, I didn't know I'd bought that much cute stuff I'd got in Mexico! :-D

So my closet is going from the mess it is to an orderly system that will let me find what I've got. I'll be able to not just come out of the closet (so to speak :-) ), but I'll be able to find the exit to it! :-D

All in all, the Mrs is doing what I should have done, years ago. Thanks, Luv! :-)

Carolyn Ann

The idiocy of personhood

I was thinking about how this whole "personhood" idiocy works. And it's rather alarming... Basically, until you know she knows she's pregnant, she has all the rights and privileges she'd enjoyed up to now. Between the sex and knowing she's pregnant, those rights and privileges are in doubt. Once she knows she's pregnant, she loses the most essential right of all, the one without which none of the others make sense: she loses the right to her own fate. She becomes a slave.

Now comes the wrinkle. :-)

The right wing Evangelicals pushing this noxious nonsense don't want guaranteed health care; so the woman is on her own; unless she has a husband who can provide the requisite insurance coverage. If she has a decent job, and her own health insurance, that bit is covered. But every time she walks into the doctor's office, the state is overseeing her every conversation.

Because the zygote, embryo and fetus are unable to fend for themselves, the state can regulate what the woman can do. Indeed, it will. She won't be able to have a drink or cigarette (she shouldn't, but that's different to the state stipulating how you must behave). If she's an addict, she'll likely be locked up, to protect her and the baby. What if she enjoys playing soccer, or climbing mountains? She'll have to stop those activities because there's potential for harm to the "child".

If she's a lass who enjoys having a full life, complete with a sexual life, she'll need to curtail herself. Like all women, she would need to keep her life under control, logging each and every sexual encounter, being a tidy little maiden lest some say she's trying to get pregnant - and therefore be tasked with upholding the restrictions on what she can do.

Why stop there? The woman who drinks to excess before she's pregnant is likely to continue; you'd have to monitor the lives of all young women. Otherwise they might do something that could harm their future child - and it has to be assumed they'll have at least one. Otherwise the state is arbitrarily applying restrictions to some and not others (not that so many Evangelical Christians have much, any, concern about that!); if she's pledged not to become pregnant, in order to, oh, have a life, and she becomes pregnant, does she get punished for her past transgressions? Does every woman need to be tested for her ability to become pregnant? Will the state have to mandate by an "expired" date on a woman if she doesn't become pregnant by 29? What about women in their late 30's? As women get older, the risks associated with pregnancy increase; will those women be locked into some ward, in order to protect them and their offspring?

And what of the miscarriage? Under this pledge, each and every miscarriage would have to be investigated as a potential murder. You'd need a distinct police force for that; unless you forced doctors and nurses to be your police - in which case due process restrictions would have to applied every time a woman went to her gynecologist! And the medical profession would become a mere arm of the government.

Any way you structure this, the result is the government dictating the lives of women. No woman would be free of government oversight. All in all, the end result would be what I suspect the originators and supporters of this odious pledge want: all women back in the kitchen and not much above being considered the property of some man. It's not solely an anti-abortion effort; it's an effort to curtail the often erratic freedoms women have and simultaneously reduce women to chattel. Next thing you know, the ponderous thinkers of this nonsense will be arguing that women are frail and incapable of independent lives. ... Oh wait - they're already doing that.

Carolyn Ann

Same as it ever was?

Quiet days, indeed! The most ambitious task attempted, and completed, today was putting up some bookshelves in the Wife's office. We did go to the movies this morning; I saw Mission Impossible and the Mrs went to see J. Edgar. I enjoyed watching Simon Pegg riff off of Tom Cruise; the movie was, like the other MI efforts, quite good fun. The scene with that hotel in Dubai was quite the thing! <- Vague, to not spoil it if you're going. :-) And we spent the evening in front of the telly, watching the Kennedy Center Awards; all very jolly and some superb music.

I'm increasingly getting to the conclusion that Ron Paul is a closet Fascist. I've also decided that Newt's campaign isn't going anywhere - the man couldn't organize a "piss up in a brewery". Heck, he can't even hire people who could manage that! In Britain, David Cameron is looking lost at the moment; I think he's hoping "Iron Lady" opens soon so he can get some pointers on how to be overbearing, officious, pompous, petty, manipulative and downright nasty. You know, like Maggie Thatcher was. Meanwhile, Angie and Nic are busy saving Europe and Euro; David could have played a leading role, but he wanted the spotlights on him - and Angie said "Non!" I see Vlad is trying to figure out to prevent a Russian Spring; it's where the protestors spring his power from him. Perhaps he could retire to a dacha outside of Moscow? Like the Kremlin bosses of old. (Stalin appears in a dream of Putin's; "What should I do?" asks Putin. "Shoot the bastards and paint the inside of the Kremlin blue!" Stalin's ghost tells him. "Why blue?" Putin asks...) :-)

There's an interesting article in the NY Times about the various tea parties out there; I was more right than I thought - they're mostly older white guys who think the world has gone, or is going, to the dogs. In other words - they're impotent old pricks who can't accept that the world is changing and they wish it wasn't. Same as it ever was, I guess.

Night, night
Carolyn Ann

The GOP is now the PX.

Not for the first time, it occurs to me that right wing politics, these days, is more about signing pledges that dictate your views than it is about actually thinking. Grover Norquist becomes your sole constituent for fiscal matters and some Christian right wing "family" group becomes your constituent for moral matters. (Are there any other areas for politicians?)

I can't help but think that's why the Republican nomination battle has been so brutal - there's so little difference between the candidates, the only way to move ahead is to tear down the other person and highlight small differences, inconsistencies (apparently changing your mind on issues is a verboten; but it usually is in American politics) and how bigoted you are compared to the other guy or gal.

"Grand Old Party"? How about "Pathetic xenophobes?"

Carolyn Ann

(Edit: What the heck are "xenophobics"? Sorry.  :-) )

Ron Paul proves he's a hypocrite

An interesting chat going on Facebook; it's about Ron Paul signing that "personhood" pledge. The usual banter about the rights of the unborn is tossed around, and no one (except me) thinks to mention the woman. One person argued that there's no argument - the rights of the "unborn" trumps all. As you might expect, I disagree. Strongly. :-)

Here's what I said:

Is there a balance? Do the rights of a fetus trump the rights of the woman? If that's the case, then why stop there? Does the embryo's rights supersede the woman's? How about the zygote?  

And there's absolutely no reason to stop at that! Why not insist that the state has a definite interest in when, and how, a woman becomes pregnant? And in her life, in order to ensure she can procreate in the prescribed manner? There's no, absolutely no, semantic difference between dictating how a woman lives her life to enforcing this "personhood" dictate.  

All of a sudden libertarianism looks like a theocracy.

Why doesn't anyone look at why abortion became legal? All those backstreet coat-hanger abortions were dangerous. And if history is any guide, some women just do need access to safe abortions. The anti-abortion crowd likes their emotional arguments, their facetious medical idea and simplistic notions of life. It leads to some very strange debates, I have to say.

Oh well. Ron Paul won't be president and even if he were, the population as a whole rejects absolute abortion legislation. That personhood idiocy failed to pass in Mississippi! Which should tell others it's a step too far. But reasonableness isn't a factor in right wing politics, these days.

Carolyn Ann

Christmas (eve) In The City

It's been awhile since I was last in NYC. So it was fun to see the place on Christmas Eve, again. :-)

I took a look at the Apple Store in Grand Central while the Mrs perused the crafts market (I did that afterwards). Then we wandered up to Bergdorf's and Saks. I can never figure out how Saks Fifth Avenue gets so close to wonderful windows; they just don't seem to be able to take them further. Berdorf-Goodman's, however, were incredible! Astonishing and amazing, too! :-)

And then we went to see Dyker Heights... Oy vey. Some emergency cropped up; I strongly suspect some pedestrian sightseer was run over by a motorized one. What a zoo that turned the whole place into! Eventually we found a parking place and walked around the displays. We got to see them better than in the car, and it was quicker, too.

Going home, much, much later than expected, was easy. Traffic was "New York sedate" through to New Jersey, and once we'd cleared the NYC metropolitan area, there were hardly any cars on the road. We saw plenty of cops, usually having stopped someone. One guy warranted three cop cars!

It was all a bit spur-of-the-moment, so we didn't organize ourselves very well. No museums or anything. Still, a jolly good day was had by all. (And yesterday we did nothing. Well, we did some of the jigsaw; that's actually moving along quite well.)

Carolyn Ann

Jackson Who?.. Oh, yeah. Him.

Remember when I mentioned that Jackson Pollock jigsaw puzzle? I said it looked really difficult? ...

Well... We bought it. :-D

That should keep us occupied for a decade or two. We know where it's going to go - above the barrister bookcase in the hall. All we have to do is complete it. :-)

There's nothing like a challenge.

Carolyn Ann

That about sums those two twits up

(Image from Huffington Post)

Yup. That about sums it up.

Idiots. They allowed themselves to be boxed in - and then tried to whine when they noticed what they'd done.

Carolyn Ann

Another Tea Party poster

A suggestion for a Tea Party Election Poster:

America,

We told you government was the problem

And we're doing our 

best to make sure it is!

Why are you complaining?

Paid for by no one. Approved by Me. :-)

What's wrong with you?

A suggestion for a Tea Party Election Poster:

America,

We, the Tea Party, promised to screw you

and you elected us

We're screwing you every way we can

And you're complaining?

What's wrong with you?

Paid for by no one. Approved by Me. :-)

Carolyn Ann

(Please feel free to republish or broadcast this "poster". :-D )

Incompetent Clowns

House Republicans are either deluding themselves, or just don't give a damn. It's probably both. The problem is not that they lost the battle over the payroll tax, it's that they laded it with so much pork it had no chance of passing even their own "high" principles.

And, just like they did in the budget battle, they've managed to maintain their pride and get themselves blamed for the problem. "Compromise" might be a dirty word to these folk, but when you drag your party down and do everything you can to look like an incompetent clown, you don't get to complain when people call you that!

Oy. Just think - these people are doing exactly what they promised they'd do.

Carolyn Ann

Herding Squirrels

Ana Marie Cox, in today's Guardian nails it with her description of the Congressional Tea Party:

A friend covering the Hill impasse over the payroll tax cuts insists that Speaker John Boehner's job has become a task of "herding squirrels." Not cats, the more typical go-to cliché for trying to organize the unorganizable, but squirrels: "Squirrels are panicky and prone to irrational running into traffic."

Carolyn Ann

Not Expecting the Sordid

When you rely on every member of a small group following unwritten rules of conduct, is it reasonable to be surprised when someone doesn't? And then provide the means for someone to break that covenant?

Okay, so the second question is a throw-away. :-)

Fetlife, a forum for sexual fetishists, has a problem. They cater to folk who like BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism and masochism) and (apparently) provide a Flickr-like service for their members. You can upload photographs of your latest sexual adventure to their servers, presumably for the delectation of other fetishists. I'm sure you can guess where this is going. ... Yup. It turns out that someone took photos of their playtime - and is sharing those photographs without the allegedly required permissions. It would seem that no one knew he (I assume?) was taking the pictures. This rather odious fellow is now threatening to release them to a wider audience, which I assume includes the entire internet. This would "out" the woman in the images. The world would learn something about this lass she would rather be more restricted knowledge. 

It's an interesting set of intersecting moral questions. :-)

Really, it is.

Obviously trust has been violated; was there a reasonable expectation of privacy? I'd argue yes, with some qualifications. One person trusted another to maintain their mutual privacy; I don't know, but if I had to guess, I'd say that these pictures probably show only one person. The trust that would be essential for such a sexual rendezvous to happen was clearly broken. And then there's the right to not have your image spread all over the internet. That's a bit of a sticky one...

Oh, and not be "outed".

(I'll take a moment to note that the article misspells "outing" as "outting"; it's not terribly important, but it is a trifle jarring.)

Against all of that, I'll also point out that taking illicit photographs of sexual encounters, of the plain vanilla and more exotic varieties, has been a staple of photography ever since it was invented. And there's  nothing to stop someone taking pictures of their sexual encounters - the permission of the other participants be damned! There's no possible law that precludes others from taking your picture, just social convention. And if you're in a sexual encounter with someone you can't completely trust, then there's a very good reason to suspect that they might take pictures of you having a jolly old time. In fact, I think it's safe to assume that if your fun includes carnal knowledge of folk who don't really know each other, you will get photographed at some point - while you're either entering or leaving the premises where the festivities occurred and while you're indulging in the frivolities. You can but hope that the photographer is a decent person and follows the rules (in which case they've asked for permission and have told you what they're going to do with the images). Even if the person purports to be an upstanding individual who (says they) would never stoop to sordidry, you can never be too sure. And titillation is one of the constants in human history.

All in all, a sorry tale. While she shouldn't have to fear illicit photographs, in the nether world of such sexual encounters it's unreasonable to not expect contemptible, exploitive folk. Fetlife, it seems, merely provides them with a more efficient way of preying on their victims.

Carolyn Ann

PS I should note that I'm vaguely interested in Fetlife because I irritated the membership at some point. I forget, and can't be bothered to look up, why. 

Hmm. That's a bit awkward.

Someone hit a telephone pole on what I assume is the main internet trunk for this bit of New Jersey. I know this because the internet, all of it, failed. Went dark. Stopped working. Called a strike. I'd apologize for any inconvenience the loss of the entire internet caused, but I wasn't responsible. I drove by the site of the supposed accident, noticed a pole was askance and that a lot of utility trucks and blokes were working on a cable that was hanging quite low to the ground.

So, if you noticed that the entire internet was down, it was because someone ran into a large telephone pole in southern New Jersey.

That's awkward. Someone should redesign it. :-D

Carolyn Ann

Mmm. That's good!

Mmm. :-)

I'm slurping a cup, well a largish mug, of hazelnut-coconut coffee. It's accompanied by a small piece of lemon-coconut biscotti.

Delicious. :-D

Carolyn Ann

This just in: The Tea Party hates the middle class

The Tea Party must really hate Middle Class America. They've just shot down the payroll tax cut. For a bunch of tax-hating partizans, they do seem to enjoy ensuring that the middle class pays more and more in taxes.

You watch - before the hour is out, some Tea Party Congressman will iterate how they're against taxes of any sort and that by ensuring that workers' take-home pay goes down, they are adhering to that principle.

Idiots.

Carolyn Ann

Aww. Poor Chris Christie.

Aww. Poor Chris Christie. He says his job is way harder than President Obama's.

It must so tough for the Poor Diddums, having to get up, each and every morning, to deny easily afforded funding to create jobs, remove any hope of economic expansion, ease the trip into the economic engine of the region (NYC), go on fund raising trips, call in his management of New Jersey's snow removal and basically be a dick.

Fucking idiot. Nope, let me rephrase that. :-) Fucking whining idiot.

Carolyn Ann

Newt's (newish) Lament?

Mittens had a rough cover on Time magazine: it was a picture of him and the headline "Why don't they like me?" Inside was an article, by Joe Klein, that detailed why no one particularly likes the former governor of Massachusetts. It was a long list of things. :-) Everything from "flip-flopping", "opportunism", Bain Capital, being boring, being a Mormon, and being "inauthentic" (whatever that means).

Well, it seems that was nothing compared to Newt. The former Speaker of the House is reviled by basically anyone who actually knows him. And it's not just The Atlantic that has noticed this - the Sunday talk shows were full of it, too.

Perhaps Newt needs a Time cover story? It'll be a picture of him and the words "To Know Me Is To Despise Me".

Carolyn Ann

TS bigotry to rear its ugly noggin' again?

While there's nothing I want to point to, I have a suspicion that the whole "transsexual separatists hate the transgendered" thing will soon resurface. One of the things I've noticed is a certain "trying out" of arguments by some bloggers; I'm not 100% convinced, of course, but when my little "warning bell" (so to speak) starts ringing, I tend to pay attention. And it's started clanging.

My best guess is that nothing much will happen over the holiday weeks, but that we'll start to see something "before February". (Yeah, that's a qualified statement... :-) ) Over the next couple or so weeks, I expect that some of the more vitriolic transsexual separatists will, independently, start echoing each other. As each gets inspired by a post, the rhetoric will become shrill and stupid.

There's nothing at stake, not really. Those "battles" tend to be the worst; with so little to lose, and a perception of so much to gain, the vitriol can be turned up with seeming impunity.

The big question is: will those people be preaching to their choir and will anyone actually notice or pay attention to their fuming hate? We'll see. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Rap moving to "not homophobic"?

Rap goes anti-homophobic? Who'dathunk it?

I'm not a fan of rap music and don't follow its ins and outs at all. I like the names some of the rappers give themselves, but that's about it. The article mentions that rappers have noticed that the gay community has a lot of spending power - and that being rabidly homophobic is not a good way of tapping into that; also, it's a reaction to something called "down lo". (I'm not going to pretend I understand a cultural reference I've only just heard of!)

The other thing, I think, is that popular culture has moved on, and the rappers themselves face the same problem that some Country & Western stars have: singing to an ever-descreasing, increasingly radical, highly politicized audience. Which might be good in terms of consistency, but is not a winning strategy for getting Emmy's or large bank accounts. I can't help think that when you're singing the same song as aging White Christians from the south, you're not rebelling - you're reinforcing! Somehow I don't see big name rappers sticking up for Rick Santorum's bigotry or doing voice-overs for Rick Perry's increasingly vitriolic campaign.

While bigotry will always be present, it's interesting to see how it's increasingly being sidelined.

Carolyn Ann

Bleh. Stuffed up, creaky and cranky :-)

My head cold decided to let me know it hasn't gone away. As if I needed reminding. The bank manager felt a need to remind me he hasn't gone away, either. That, I could easily forget.

Ah well. Can't do a damn thing about either of 'em. I'd love to pair them up, but that would require identifying a specific individual in a huge conglomerate, and that's just not how it's done these days. The bankers pretend to be George Bailey, all the while idolizing, and emulating, Henry Potter. Figuring out who's whom in that reprobatic bunch to give one a head cold just isn't worth it. ;-)

Speaking of Henry Potter, I see Mittens still earns a pretty penny from laying folk off. Just as an aside, I don't see that doing him much good in any election. That's a story you could take to the bank. And no doubt Mr Obama's team, and a few others, are busy making numerous deposits on that one.

Carolyn Ann

Andrew Sullivan jumps the shark?

Andrew Sullivan has written a love letter to Ron Paul and his supporters. Mostly to Dr Paul's supporters. In that piece of political pornography, Mr Sullivan proves that he's given up thinking and is merely interested in the sound of his own keyboard. And trying to prove he's a young, hip kinda guy. With a level of analysis (that is: none) similar to Dr Paul's, Andrew Sullivan takes aim at liberals, elderly and not so elderly conservatives and basically anyone who hasn't drank the Ron Paul Kool-aid. (Apparently it's pretty potent stuff; it removes all capacity to think through a claim and instills a belief that the Constitution is a political Playboy.)

Carolyn Ann

That?!? Meh.

I've been a quiet these last few days because... We've not been home much! :-)

It was a busy weekend, all things considered. Lots of miles traveled for various reasons, all taking time and so on. Last night's fun and festivities rounded it all out and now I'm working on a small project that I think is quite exciting. :-D

I'm not going to tell about it, not just yet, but it'll change, er, not a lot. But I'm excited about it. It sure doesn't take much to keep me amused. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Ding dong the Jong is dead

Kim Jong Il is, finally, dead. Which, probably, isn't good news for the stability of the region. His son is the likely successor; indeed, he's already been labeled the "Dear Successor". He has almost no military experience, and an uncertain level of support. I don't think it's beyond imagination that the powerful will stick to being human - and start a major internal battle. It probably started as the Damned Dictator was lying on his deathbed. (His doctors have probably already been executed or exiled for the simple failing of not proving the bastard immortal.)

It's reported South Korea is on military alert, presumably along with the US troops who help police that border. I imagine China is a tad concerned as well.

There's nothing normal about North Korea. So anyone who says they know what will happen is spouting nonsense. One can only hope that North Korea will start to move toward international norms, although I suspect that's a faint hope, indeed.

Carolyn Ann

I'm no longer 21 And A Bit... :-)

So I've got this age thing figured out. :-) What prompted it all was last night, and this morning. I watched "The Outlaw Josie Wales", that Clint Eastwood wonder where he actually has more than a few words to mutter. It ended at 2AM, and as I'd just opened a bottle of beer (a very nice Santa Fe Pale Ale), I stayed up for a moment or two. Therein lay the problem this morning.

When I was 20 I could stay up into the wee hours of the morning, and still go to work. Admittedly after a couple or three nights of this I was a little out of it. Some of my coworkers often noted, quite unfairly I thought, that I was out of it most of the time, anyway. Regardless, I could be found propping up a bar, ogling the girls, dancing the night away or wondering around Sheffield and other regional towns searching for the opportunities to do any or all of those healthy-lifestyle activities. :-)

Anyway, these days I'm 21 And A Bit and I don't seem to be able to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning and function with any sort of functionality in the morning. Ogling the girls is out (of course) and a gammy leg put paid to my Travolta-esque moves a long time ago. It's not that I'm antiquated, although some younger whippersnappers might differ in their opinion of that, but that the whole "And A Bit" thing has been stretched quite far. If I simply drop that from my age, I'll be 21 (again) and, reassuringly, capable of staying up into the wee hours and so on.

I ran the idea past the Mrs and she agreed. Although her agreement was relayed with a slightly skeptical tone, and the phrase she used ("Sounds good, dear") didn't imply a wholehearted endorsement of the idea.

Right, I think I'll take a short break and have an idle mid-Sunday afternoon nap. Not because I'm feeling the affects of staying up all night watching a movie, but because... Zzzz.....

Carolyn Ann

WTF?!? Did someone over at T-Central go off the rails?

I see T-Central has a new blog in its "Trans [sic] Related News" section. It's called "Sex Change Info" and its author about as hateful of transgendered folk as you can get. If the listing is a stupid attempt to "show all sides of the debate", then it failed.

Christ on a frickin' candlestick - it's easy enough to find the fuckin' haters and bigots. Hell, T-Central provides a megaphone for at least four of those idle-minded whiners. Do the admins of T-Central have to provide a frickin' megaphone for someone so clearly full of hate for "the transgenders"?

What are they thinking? Are they thinking?

Carolyn Ann

Sherlock

We went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie, yesterday. What an adventure! If I have to live vicariously, it might as well be by outrageous adventure and implausible plot lines. :-)

In other words, the critics I've read all missed the point - the movie isn't great theater. It's thrilling theater. It's a ripping good yarn, a moment of fun and a jolly good time. :-D

Carolyn Ann

Bradley Manning does not deserve a medal

Glenn Greenwald argues, in an op-ed in today's Guardian, that Bradley Manning deserves a medal. Somehow, I don't think he's going to get one.

The basic thing about Private Manning's case is that he's alleged to given state secrets to someone not authorized to have them. Never mind that they were, presumably, largely benign.

Mr Greenwald notes that, when asked why he'd given the diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, "Manning replied that he wanted the information to be publicly known in order to trigger "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms". In short: Pvt Manning decided he was in a better position to determine whether something should be secret than the entire US diplomatic apparatus.

Mr Greenwald's argument is facetious; he supposes a conclusion that can't exist and then judges the US to be lacking according to this fictitious standard. He also implies that the president, Barack Obama, is responsible for Pvt Manning's harsh treatment:

The sadistic conditions to which he was subjected for 10 months – intense solitary confinement, at one point having his clothing seized and being forced to stand nude for inspection – became an international scandal for a US president who flamboyantly vowed to end detainee abuse. Amnesty International condemned these conditions as "inhumane"; PJ Crowley, a US state department spokesman, was forced to resign after denouncing Manning's treatment. 

I think it shows the weakness of Mr Greenwald's argument that he has to continually invoke straw man arguments into his piece. Who cares if Amnesty International doesn't like how the man is treated in jail? And what, exactly, does Mr Obama have to do with all of that? It's not as if the man can issue an order, "Treat Pvt Manning with all consideration and fetch him fresh flowers every day"!

The simple fact is Bradley Manning was charged with keeping state secrets and he, allegedly, violated the trust his government and unit placed in him. Mr Manning is not the decision maker on what is kept secret or not. You can argue, as Mr Greenwald does, that far too much is classified; indeed, considering the evidence, it's almost impossible to argue otherwise! But you can't argue that someone should be hailed as a hero because they broke the trust they were given. I know the anti-America crowd loves to point out that America is a despicable nation, a dictatorship in all but name and so on - Mr Greenwald firmly joins their ranks with this poorly thought out piece of nonsense. There is a debate to be had about state secrecy and the ridiculous application of that mechanism; that debate needs to be held and resolved in favor of openness. But no one can argue that because Pvt Manning's motives were virtuous he should be absolved of any responsibility for breaking the trust his nation placed in him. Pvt Manning wasn't a whistleblower, deserving of protection. He is simply an arrogant young man who decided he knew better than anyone else what deserved to be revealed - and he made a lot of decisions without knowing anything about the context of what he was placing in the public domain. If he's found guilty, he deserves to be imprisoned for a very, very long time.

Carolyn Ann

What a dolt! With a silly conclusion, to boot!

That was a silly conclusion! (See my last post, which is the next post... :-) )

I said that I didn't like the Higgs Field because it struck me as magical, which is the same as religious. My basic objection is that the Higgs Field seems too much like the aether of old - you know, the stuff that pervades everything and was disproved by Michelson & Morley?

The reason I don't like the idea of a Higgs Field is that it strikes me as far too convenient. Here's a world of probabilities, with uncertainty being a major quality of it all, and along comes this highly convenient backdrop? That happens to be very elusive? It's a bit like "dark energy"; sure, it may [does 20-12-11] exist, but I can't get rid of the notion that if the explanation is pat, then you've examined the wrong problem. It all comes down to "What is the view if you hitch a ride on a photon?"

If the Higgs Field exists, then we should be able to see it via inference, a quantum version of Michelson-Morley, if you will. It's a bit like the speed of light - we're told nothing can travel faster. I get why, but I'm not sure absolute limits like that exist; I tend to think of the speed of light as being an upper limit for "that" class of particle. In other words, there might exist a particle that can travel faster than a photon, or a set of conditions that change the speed of light. Making the photon special just seemed "wrong" to me. (I think part of the problem is that just about everything is measured in units that relate to time. ... Okay, everything is measured in units that can be related to time.)

Mind you, even the experts are concerned. Someone like me, who gets his information from science blogs and pop-sci books just isn't going to understand the intricacies of it all! Hell, I'd think I was doing well if I could understand a smidgen of the basics! Still, the idea of an all-pervasive, but very elusive, pea soup just doesn't ring the "plausible" bell. We'll see. If it is discovered, it'll be reported everywhere. And I'll try to wrap my head around it. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Higgs as an aether?

I've never paid much attention to the Higgs Field, figuring it for some strange concept that would probably be dumped. On the other hand, I've also learned to never discount the oddness of quantum physics; anything that has to be explained with probability is definitely going to exhibit peculiar behavior. But the Higgs Field just seemed too far fetched - and a bit too much like that aether of old.

However, it does seem that this odd critter might actually exist!

A summary: we know that things like protons, electrons, photons and the like have mass. The question is "Why?" It's not quite enough to say E=mc², you also have to explain what mass is! You can't simply say "oh, mass is a quality of a fundamental particle" and be done with it. So, to help explain mass, along comes the Higgs mechanism: a particle and a field. Neither has been proven to exist. (That's a nutshell explanation, and like all such things (from me) is prone to being absolutely and completely wrong... Sorry about that... :-) )

The Higgs field basically says that the gap between fundamental particles isn't really empty, but has some sort of potential energy. Which is the same as saying "something fills the space between the fundamental particles". Which is a bit odd when you think about it. (I try not to, which explains my sketchy understanding of the whole thing.) Mass is explained as the "drag" placed on fundamental particles as they interact, move, through this quantum pea soup.

The other bit is that the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle, hasn't been found and is said to be very short-lived, transforming itself into something else very quickly. I don't know about you, but that sounds a bit too much like "and something magical happens" to me.

A lot of very clever folk have spent decades figuring this stuff out. They're obviously cleverer than me (that's not exactly difficult, is it?) and have spent lots of time figuring out the mathematics for it all. So they have the bulk of the evidence on their side. However, I keep thinking about the Michelson-Morley experiment; if this aether is all-pervasive, the quantum version of such an experiment would show it to be true or not.

At the moment, I remain unconvinced (I'm sure all of CERN is concerned about that...), and I really don't like the idea of an all-pervasive field that has no real explanation for why it exists. A pea soup just comes across as too definite; if it does exist, I'd be wondering how come. After all, nothing else at that minute level definitively exists - it's all probabilities. Why would that probability exist within a definitive structure? (On the other hand, if the universe is made up of many dimensions, perhaps that quantum pea soup is merely the manifestation of one, or more, of those dimensions? So maybe it's not impossible, but inevitable?)

To be sure, I don't have to like what is revealed. And I know I've displayed the full scope of my ignorance about it all. :-) My ignorance of the subject is much, much greater than my knowledge of it. (Some might argue that my ignorance is quite astonishing all by itself...) Science is agnostic when it comes to our preferences; it's not even a case of "either it works or doesn't"! Sometimes those clever folk who figure all this stuff out get within a hair's breadth of the explanation, only to miss something important. But still, the idea of an all-pervasive aether just rankles; I don't like things that require "and something magical happens here". It smacks of religion. [No it doesn't - it smacks of magic, which is the same as religion.]

[Added] That's a silly conclusion. Sorry.

Carolyn Ann

Mittens endorses... Obama?

Did Mittens really intend to endorse Barack? In an interview with the Times, he said “A leader needs to be someone of sobriety and stability and patience and temperance”. I think that defines Barack Obama quite well. :-)


Carolyn Ann

Very peaceful... :-)

It's really peaceful & quiet, here. Outside, it's a grey day. The fire is going, the cats are sleeping on the couch. Cousin is sleeping on the mantel (don't ask; she just likes it up there!), Ol is sitting on a cushion, looking out of the window, steadily dozing off. Unless a bird catches his attention. He wakes up for that, and then his head starts to droop a little... Cousin was snoring, but I think it's Copper doing that now.

Excuse me, I feel like a little nap, myself. Zzz... :-)

Carolyn Ann

Well, that was a bad decision on his part...

Talk about bad decisions!

I knew that Apple had 3 founders, Steve's Jobs and Wozniak, and some other guy. Well, it turns out his name is Ron Wayne and he sold his 10% share of Apple for $800. If he'd kept it, it would be $3.9 Billion.

And what's worse? He didn't even get the $1.6M the original contract fetched at auction the other day! Nope, he'd sold that to a manuscripts dealer. Presumably for thrupence ha'penny.

Can't win 'em all, I guess.

Carolyn Ann

A bad day for Hezbollah...

It seems that even terrorist organizations have bad days. Apparently it's been discovered that they are major drug dealers and they support President Bashar al-Assad in his efforts to bludgeon the Syrian people into submission.

On the wrong side of everything, it seems! It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of war-mongering hypocrites.

Carolyn Ann

"Donald ducks"

An inevitable cliché, perhaps. But that doesn't stop the enjoyment of it! :-)

From The Guardian's front page. :-)

Carolyn Ann

You're only just figuring that out?

From Slate, an interesting look at how conservatives are re-examining their attitudes to the 14th Amendment. The nutshell is, when coupled, as it has to be, with the 19th, and stripped of the obvious contemporary prejudices, the 14th basically says "the United States is not into making second-class citizens or a citizenry that is layered by the rights they have".

Which is how I've been reading them all along. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Why does this not sound appealing?

Newt, it seems, has found a Magic Pill - the use of Lincoln/Douglas debate formats. He's walking around trying to trash-talk President Obama into doing seven of the things!

Are you ready - for 3 really long speeches? Here's how those debates worked: either Abe Lincoln or Stephen Douglas would stand there for an hour, yakking away about some topic or other. Then the other guy would stand up and give an hour and a half of rebuttal. Then the first guy would stand up for the remaining half hour and rebut that.

Can you imagine the audience staying awake for that? (Reading the book isn't exactly "easy reading!) None of the Republicans have the oratory powers of either Lincoln or Douglas. Can you imagine Newt staying both on-topic for that long? I wouldn't ask you to think that Newt could actually maintain his temper for that long!

(On the other hand, can you imagine a debate like that between Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann? Or Barack Obama and either of those two?) I'm sure Mr Obama could hold his own - he was a lecturer - but I'm not sure Newt should be wishing for something he might get. While he was also a lecturer (of history), I'd have to say that Barack Obama has the intellectual gumption, the discipline and the political experience needed.

Personally, I think the debates should be held around a pub table. In the typical style of a pub discussion. :-)

Carolyn Ann

He "defined" a lot of things, but liberty wasn't one of them

I recently read much of Ron Paul's diatribe book against sanity for his libertarianism, "Liberty Defined". I couldn't read it all - that was far too difficult a task and I suspected it wouldn't do my mental wellbeing much good, either. But I did read about two-thirds of it. The best I can say is "that's an hour I'll never get back". The worst isn't really a book review, or an analysis of political ideas. Not that anyone could actually analyze Dr Paul's ideas. Or, to be honest, call them "ideas". They're mostly knee-jerk reactions.

While reading the introduction I got the distinct idea that if Dr Paul had been around at various junctures in history, he'd be on the side of preserving the status quo. For instance, his pseudo-"non-intervension" ideas hold a distinctly isolationist core; the sort of core that turned a shipload of Jewish refugees away from American shores and allowed Fascism to rise, pretty much unchecked until 1939, in Europe. If he'd been around in 1856 to 1859, he'd be arguing that slavery is a State's Rights issue. To be fair, he does try to address that concern; that I couldn't find any actual refutation speaks volumes. I did, on the other hand, find much to support the idea that while he is opposed to slavery, he does support just about all of the ideas put forth by pro-slavery folk of that time.

The basic premise of liberty isn't that "my liberty ends at the tip of your nose"; that loose and convenient facetiousness simply says "I'm going to do whatever the hell I like, your sense of safety be damned!" Nor is "liberty" the facile censoring of speech to prevent offense; denying ourselves the ability to offend others is, unarguably, the quickest way to serfdom you could find! Liberty is, quite frankly, a complex subject. Dr Paul thinks that liberty is the absence of government - a clear case of confusing a potential (and simplistic) solution with the concept being questioned.

Considering this was a tome of rushed essays, the proper place for a concise definition of liberty would be in the introduction. Alas, none could be found. While reading that part, it also occurred to me that Dr Paul couldn't define liberty. He could define it in simplistic terms, perhaps, limited to ensuring his liberty but not yours - surely the threatened person is not able to enjoy their liberty? - but his ability to, perhaps, delve through the eggshell of his liberty to its yolk, was hampered by his transparent unwillingness to explore his own ideas in anything except the most superficial form.

The topics, 50 of them, that he explores are far too many; if you need more than 5 or 6 topics when it comes to liberty, you probably should suspect your own understanding of the topic! Indeed, Dr Paul quickly puts on display his carefully crafted misunderstanding of political history, going so far as to assert that the battle for individual liberty, against the State, has been waged since the Middle Ages! Thinking about history, English history in particular, I can't say that the State was a concern; what was a concern was the overreach of the King - who is not the State. Only a willfully ignorant, tailored and superficial reading of history would cast the Magna Carta as a blow for libertarians. Libertarianism is a modern invention, for one thing; and those freemen were not at all interested in extending their newly defined rights to the lower orders. Equal rights were not a consideration, in other words - the King still ruled supreme, but now he couldn't be quite as capricious and arbitrary as he wanted to be. As far as I know, only dictators define themselves as the state; monarchs do not, because they are not - they are the rulers of the state. Which is a different thing altogether!

I have 5 pages of notes and quotes from his essays. I could go through them, and perhaps I will at some other time. But to do so right now would be to allow Dr Paul to define what liberty is, with any critic responding within the limitations he provides. All in all, it was a typical essay from Dr Paul - sloppy and silly, with ideological ranting replacing considered thought and reasoning. Dr Paul isn't seeking a debate about liberty, to impose his version of it upon us. In doing so, he ably demonstrates that we should not only fear those who seek to improve our lot, but also those who tell us what that improvement should look like.

Carolyn Ann

I'm missing that lad something awful

I miss that lad. :-(

This morning, he wasn't shouting for breakfast, or demanding his bowl of milk. He can't protest when I give him a hug, but have a good long purr when he's getting that hug.

I built him a nice coffin, yesterday morning. It wasn't elaborate or anything, just a box, with some trim. It didn't seem right to not put some trim on it. My wife liked it. We buried him out back, in a sunny spot just by the tree line. It's a little away from the unfortunately needed cat graveyard "proper"; the spot we chose just seemed to fit Jeremy more the other area. When I picked the original spot, I didn't anticipate us needing it quite so often! Cars do work their lethality on cats, however.

The work of burying the lad was distracting, and it did provide a sense of closure. We had some daffodil bulbs that we were planning on putting in the front, so they went around his grave instead. (Everything around here has to be daff's; the squirrels and deer eat any tulips!) We also put some in the "main" graveyard, mostly around Horatio's grave (he was killed by a car a few years ago). We can see Jeremy's spot from the back windows of the house. In the spring, we'll put some grass seed out there and some wildflowers.

Damn, I miss him. He's been such a fixture in our lives for these last 13, almost 14 years. He loved living, and was really fond of eating. His last weeks were full of treats. I'm at a bit of a loss at the moment; it's about now that I would take him out for half an hour or so. It was only a few weeks, but it became our routine, one I looked forward to, and one he definitely enjoyed. We couldn't let him out on his own once he became seriously ill; we were afraid he'd go hide, as they do, or get picked on by some raccoon. As he got worse, he couldn't walk that far, anyway. The other day, Friday, it was nice out, so we spent a long time outside, in the sun. He really enjoyed it - I let him dictate when we went in. On Saturday, he walked out of the house when my wife fed the outdoor guys; he was intent on eating their food, too! She fetched him straight back in! A few hours later, I took him out for a wee while; he got tired so quickly and I felt he needed to be warmed up. He was clearly deteriorating, and quickly!

I'm glad he's no longer suffering; his illness was getting painful for him. But I miss him so much. :-(

To paraphrase Bill, I wish him somewhere where the wind is always brisk and the sun forever warm.

Life, however, continues on as it always does.

Carolyn Ann

Jeremy isn't doing too well.

We're staying up with Jeremy, our poorly cat, tonight. The poor lad isn't doing too well at all. Still a handsome fellow, but he's painfully thin. He can't stand, having absolutely no strength in his legs at all. He's not drinking, and eating only a few pieces of cheese. He's very tired, the poor fellow.

We went out this afternoon; I took him around the back. He likes it out there, feeling the wind. He couldn't be out too long - it was too cold for him. Right now, he's laying on a quilt, with a couple of towels for warmth.

It's important to us for him to know he's loved. His girlfriend, Maxine, is lying near him; she's been doing that for the last few nights.

He just washed his paw. I'm really hoping he makes it through the night. On the other hand, we told him we understood. Damn it! I love him.


===

He died, in his sleep, just before 3AM this morning.

I'm going to miss that man. We were with him when he died.

Carolyn Ann

Herman threatens ... What on Earth is he thinking?

What's he going to do? Accuse them of having affairs with him? 

He's allegedly mulling suing the women who accused him of sexual harassment and a 13-year affair. Right... That's gonna do the trick. 

The message? "I want to be President, but I'm too much a baby to get over myself!"

Nice going, Herman. You lost. You played in the big leagues and you lost. Get over yourself.

Carolyn Ann

That now makes sense... Oh dear.

I was just reading about how Gingrich & Romney have moved to the right as their party has moved to the right. And yet one of the main talking points of the lower candidates is how authentic their conservatism is. The extremists in the party will be consistent, and the GOP has moved in their direction; even Ron Paul. So now the GOP is in the position of finding someone who is malleable - i.e. electable - *and* consistently socially conservative in a society that is rapidly leaving that sort of stuff behind.

How authentic is something when it's so plastic? And does authenticity really matter?

The lower candidates tend to the hard right, openly advocating prejudicial and contrary ideas, (all are equal, except Muslims and queers...) for instance. But the front runners don't have that "authenticity" the primary pickers desperately seek. Mind you, conservatism is rife with ideas that have trouble with consistency. Even William F. Buckley had to acknowledge that - and currently there isn't a single right wing thinker with the power of his intellect to be found (the closest are probably David Brooks and George Will).

The GOP has a basic problem: Ayn Rand's atheist, libertarian, capitalism, or Pat Robertson's acquisitive cherry-picking Christianity.

All of sudden The Donald moderating a debate makes some sort of silly sense...

Carolyn Ann

Deja vu in Lincoln. Sort of, anyway!

I might have mentioned this before... :-)

I'm sitting here watching Top Gear; it's the episode where James May and Jeremy Clarkson drive a couple of electric cars to Cleethorpes, a British seaside town. They're in Lincoln, in a tea room on Steep Hill. The weird thing - I know exactly where they are. They're sitting at the same table the Mrs and I used when we were there last!

Deju vu. Sort of. :-)

Carolyn Ann

You really can't make this up...

Even if you tried, you couldn't make this up...

From George Takei's Facebook page.

Carolyn Ann

Open sourcing government?

The Obama Administration has just released the Open Government Platform - the source code behind data.gov. It's based on Drupal 6.22, which is a little behind the times, but not so much you'd think it was antique. (Actually, I do think Drupal 6 is antique!) 

I'm not so sure that I'd agree with Ray Walters in his ExtremeTech article about the release; he seems to think it's the first step in reducing the tyranny of the government - you know, "the people shouldn't be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of the people" and all that jazz. I think it's a useful step toward government transparency; coupled with those websites that track lobbyists and the like, people might be able to start figuring out who's bought whom. And how much they paid. ("Sale of the Century! Get your Congressman here! Limited Time Reduced Prices!")  

(There's an interesting video out there about how whitehouse.gov was built. And while the White House had released some of the code early last year, they hadn't, apparently, released the full thing until yesterday.)

The implication here is that governments nationally and globally will start to use an out-dated version of Drupal. That's gonna put a spanner into any Drupal 6 obsolescence plans... 

All in all, it's a good step. I've downloaded the code; when I get a free moment, I'm going to play with it and see what it does. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Google's dictionary

Have you seen Google's new dictionary feature? :-)

Type in "what is transgender" and "what is transsexual" and it comes up with a definition. (They make sense, too!) But if you simply type in "transgender" or "transsexual", you don't get a definition.

Carolyn Ann

I don't know about you, but apparently I'm fit only for the scrapheap

In chats about jobs with the Mrs, I've often commented that the "end" is when you're about 37. That is, once you hit your mid-to-late thirties, you're considered washed up - even by your peers! (In some cases, especially by your peers!) And I think I've mentioned before that Google is a bit of a hive: all like-minded folk. The people who work for Google seem to be bright, but wisdom is in very short supply. (With the notable exception of Sheryl Sandburg, Facebook seems to hire the people who are bright but are, like their founder, allergic to wisdom.)

We-e-llll... It seems I'm not the only one to have noticed all of this.

In that post, Matt Heuser recounts how he, as a 60-odd year old chap, felt out of place in a building full of folk who're just starting out in life. He notes that once you hit 35, especially if you've got kids, spouse, etc, your life just isn't as flexible as a recent graduate's. And your skills are tied to older technologies; never mind that it also demonstrates and ability to see past the wondrous technology du jour and into basic principles that somehow don't change too often. Or that you're productive because you're not learning new things all the time - because they really were new when you learned them. (One thing I've noticed is that many "new" technologies aren't. They're more "iterations" of existing ideas.)

I once noticed an article from an entrepreneurial magazine that said a lot of guys my age start their own business; I guessed that was partly because of the difficulties in a youth-oriented culture for middle-aged folk to be taken seriously. (Obviously, the travails of the last few years has upended many "rules of thumb", so don't look for obvious clues about that sort of thing right now!) I know for myself it's been impossible to get looked at for jobs; I don't know if it's that my skills are out of date (they're not), that my last full time job was 10 years ago or the fact that I've been self-employed for some time. It's probably all of those! I do know that I get ignored because I don't have a degree; at my age, any degree would be useless now! I graduated, early, from my apprenticeship a little over, er, 28 years ago. Sure it came with some book-learning, but most of it was practical training and lessons in "how to think" about problems (those lessons never took...). That sort of stuff doesn't go out of style or usefulness, but it might as well do. I certainly don't begrudge young folk their chances; hell, if I was younger, I'd be shoving folk my age right out of the way. As I did when I was that age! You change and adapt; I tried woodworking for awhile; I was sort of successful, but I couldn't shake my love of computers and technology. So now I'm seeing if I can make a go of an idea or two. You can't change what happens to you, but you can control how you react. As a very wise someone once said, when life throws me lemons, I'm charging the mound!

I know one thing: when I get to the point where I'm hiring, I'm not going to go "standard". :-)

Carolyn Ann

Stating the obvious (again)

Following on from the previous post (which you'll probably read next...), here's what logic tells me about gender. :-)

Gender isn't entirely physical; that has a lot to do with it, but not everything. If it was the be-all-end-all of it, then transsexuality wouldn't exist. But it does. That tells me there's a single region of the brain that has a lot to do with gender identity. Why only a single region? Because more than that is complicated, and we'd see more instances of transsexuality. Evolution doesn't do complicated. Evolution does "simple". (Sometimes the results can be complicated or baffling, or both, but, to use the creationists favorite canard(s): a watch is a series of simple systems; the eye is, too.) Think about fish, for example - there's not a lot of room in their brains for anything complicated. Therefore, piscean gender has to be simple. Once evolution has provided a solution, it tends not to develop too much further unless there's a need. And there's little need for gender to develop!

I'd hate to guess which comes first, physical gender or gender identity; indeed, I'd be more inclined to argue that they develop in parallel, albeit at different rates. Physical gender influences a lot of your own development; but I'd say logic demands that while it might be linked to gender identity, it's not the actual controller, manager, what-have-you of that. In most, the vast majority, of people, there is no difference between physical gender and gender identity; but in some, there is a difference. Considering the fact that transgender folk also exist, I have to also assert that gender identity is not a switch. (As before, I'm going to totally ignore crossdressing and sexuality; that topic involves so much more than identity that it can't be considered in this context.)

The obvious conclusion is that there's a region of the brain that has a lot to do with identity. I think it's reasonable to wonder if different "breakdowns" affect transsexuality in different ways. For instance, if the same process, or lack or difference in, that causes male to female (MtF) transsexuality was responsible female to male transsexuality, then we could reasonably expect to see similar proportions of female to male (FtM) transsexuals. But, as I understand it, FtM transsexuality is a lot rarer than MtF. I don't think it unreasonable to factor in that we all start off as females; we become male somewhere along the way, albeit quite early in the process. Also, the vast majority of people have no issue with their gender identity. Therefore, it seems perfectly reasonable to say that something goes awry with the transsexual or transgender fetus. (To be more precise, with the fetus that eventually becomes a transsexual or transgendered person.) What that "something" is can't even be guessed at; and for the purposes of this discussion, it's actually irrelevant - that it (clearly) happens is the important bit.

We can also dispense, easily, with the "gender is a social construct" argument. The manifestation of gender is influenced by social mores and so on, but that is not the same as saying that gender is entirely social. The obvious idiocy of that claim hides an anthropic political idea that is, frankly, unsustainable because it is far too complex for evolution.

I don't see any particular reason why there wouldn't be two places for gender to develop. Obviously, our physical development is important. (Why gender developed along the lines it does is more for philosophers and anthropologists.) But the fact that transsexual and transgender folk exist also provides strong, if circumstantial, evidence that something else is in play - and the logical conclusion is that it's in the brain, and it's closely linked to our personal identity.

All in all, quite interesting, even if it's obvious. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Would you ... if?

On their blog, someone recently posed the question "would you go through with SRS (sex reassignment surgery) if you didn't have to?" The "didn't have to" being something along the lines of "the gender binary no longer existed". Which is a whole ball of wax in itself, and not likely to happen in the lifetime of the universe. Of course, I can no longer find who asked the question! (Sorry.) Not to mind, it's a perennial one. :-)

I'd say the answer is "Duh. Of course!" Because the reason people go through the whole sex change thing isn't because they love the symbolism of femininity. It's because their physical gender doesn't match their gender identity. That has nothing to do with social constructions, even biologically enforced social constructions. You could stick a pre-op transsexual woman on an island in the middle of the Pacific - and she would still want or need to change her physical gender. (Please don't try that experiment.)

We can assume that gender develops in at least two ways, and probably three. The first is obviously the physical stuff; it's highly likely to support the development of some gender stuff in the brain. But the fact that there's sometimes a discrepancy, we can probably assume that there's some other bit or bits of the brain that have something to do with gender identity. If it were entirely controlled by the genitalia, it would be reasonable to assume that discrepancies wouldn't exist, or would be highly unlikely. That transsexualism isn't widespread does seem to indicate that the genitalia has a lot to do with gender identity.  But we also have transgendered folk. People who aren't dramatically unhappy with their physical gender, but, in varying degrees, aren't entirely happy about it, either. It's often managed rather than "controlled", but the fact that such folk exist would indicate that there is some sort of gender continuum. Perhaps there's a part of the brain that has some quality if you're all-male, or all-female and while it's generally in-sync with physical gender, it's not always - and the degree to which it's not determines much of someone's gender identity? Whatever manages our gender identities (as opposed to our physical gender) is likely to be very simple, but elusive.

There's a still-controversial discovery homosexuality is either controlled or managed by some part of the brain; in women and many gay men, it's one size, in other guys, it's larger or something - I forget the details. There's no particular reason to assume that gender identity isn't similarly constructed; mind you, there's no particular reason to assume that it is! And of course it's debatable if we need to consider the motivations of particular people; does the fact that some guy likes to wear a frock for sexual satisfaction mean anything? (Probably for the chap, but for ideas about gender? Probably not. Sexuality is different to gender, although it stands to reason that they might be related in some way.)

We can absolutely dictate that gender is not a social construct; we can assume that the expression of gender is as much a social construction as a biological one. But the core of gender has to be biological in nature. (Yeah, I know - I'm repeating myself.) Here's why: transsexual (and transgendered) people exist. If gender is entirely social, then the deep-seated need of many transsexual men and women to change their sex could be easily addressed by feminization surgery and the like. In other words, address the social barrier to being seen as female, or male, and voila - problem solved. But as most transsexual women will tell you - the need to change sex goes beyond way that. And I think the expense and problems of SRS proves, in a sideways manner, that gender is not a social construction. At the risk of, yet again, repeating myself: no one would go through all that if gender was a social construct. It's deeper than that.

Whatever does manage gender in the brain has an ultimate say in the matter. In all likelihood, the interaction between the brain and genitalia is all wine and roses; but in some, it's a competition, and in yet others - the brain won the battle around the time the individual was born, or perhaps before. (Considering that the brain is still developing when you're born, it's impossible (for me) to assert exactly when gender develops in the brain - also, it's impossible to assert that a person is a "woman born transsexual", not just because that doesn't hold water logically or grammatically, but because if you don't know what gender in the brain is, how can you assert when gender becomes important to the brain!) Anyway, I say that the brain has the ultimate say in the matter because you can't get a conflict when the brain asserts you're a male and you've got the genitalia to prove it. :-)

So, in answer to the question "would you have a sex change if insert-desired-condition-here* existed/wasn't a problem/etc?" the answer has to be "Yes".  (*Obviously I'm excluding "if you were born a girl"... Because that poses an impossible what-if and is basically a ridiculous assertion, anyway.)

Wow. That was a long answer! :-)

Carolyn Ann

The GOP debates, explained

Earlier today, astronomers announced that they had found massive black holes in unexpected locations. In an email, Nicholas J. McConnell, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, said "We found one in Orlando, another in Des Moines and even spotted one in New York City!" He continued, "They were spotted at about the same time the Republicans were debating in those places, so we're wondering if there is a connection. We'd need to go back and check the records for the other debates, but so far no one is willing to do that. We're all afraid of what we'd find, frankly."

I asked him to explain what a black hole is: "It's a big hole in space; things go in, but nothing ever comes out of them. Steven Hawking discovered that information can leak from a black hole, which explains why the TV cameras were at those debates, but in general, black holes just suck the life out of anything and everything!"

How else can you explain the Republican debates?

Carolyn Ann

Mike Huckabee, you're a twit

Mike Huckabee has a stupid ad on. He says "Obamacare was passed in the dead of night, behind locked doors" - and then he shows a picture of what looks like a very raucous cabinet meeting.

Idiot.

Carolyn Ann

Mindless and not very entertaining

I fancied watching something mindless, last night. So I watched that Angelina Jolie vehicle "Salt". You know, I think I blocked out how bad that movie is. Talk about mindless! While it was a distraction, and I'll never get those minutes back, if I never see that stupid thing again it'll be too soon! It's so derivative it's stupid. I'm sure Ms Jolie's paycheck was hefty, and it's not as if she can actually act, but jeez, if you thought that other piece of crap - Wanted - was bad, then you need to see (no, you don't) Salt. I didn't know it was possible to actually be worse than Wanted, but it is.

Oy vey. Ah well, we all make mistakes. ;-)

Carolyn Ann

Mr Putin opines on the value of democracy

Newly-minted President Vladimir Putin shared his thoughts about democracy this weekend. Appearing with his sidekick lackey Prime Minister, Wotsiname Medvedev, they both looked a bit shaken by the drumming their party took in the Russian elections. Mr Medvedev said “Democracy is in action. The party performed worthily; it essentially represents 50 percent of our population — the final number will be determined — and the result is real democracy.” To which Mr Putin added “Fucking democracy. We were supposed to get 80% of the vote! I want to know what went wrong! Gott in himmel, what the fuck went wrong?!? My democracy isn't supposed to work - it's supposed to keep me in power! Absolute fucking power! Fucking democracy!"

At that Mr Putin's handlers did their best to usher the man off stage.

Carolyn Ann

The Gun, CJ Chivers

The AK-47 has, just about inarguably, done more to change the world than Ray Crocker or Henry Ford. Invented by Mikhail Kalashnikov, ostensibly in 1947, it is present in every conflict anywhere in the world. As C.J. Chivers makes clear in his seminal history of the weapon, The Gun (non-affiliate link), its history is as fascinating as it is ultimately obfuscated.

The product of the Cold War, the Soviets weren't interested in commercial success for the gun; they wanted something that was easily made and easily fired. Accurate enough for the type of fighting modern warfare promotes, the gun is ubiquitous. It can be buried for years, recovered, cleaned and fired. Its history wouldn't be complete without a detailed look at the response of the US military to the gun; "pathetic"and "dangerous" would be accurate assessments, as Mr Chivers makes perfectly clear.

Not content with simply describing the history of one particular weapon, Mr Chivers also describes how the weapon came into being - the forces acting for and against automatic guns, the lessons learned and discarded (most often simultaneously by the US and British armies). He goes from Richard Gatlings' arcane and late efforts all the way to the M16 and its deplorable history.

All in all, an admirable history of a weapon that has shaped conflicts and been shaped by them. Considering that this gun will be a factor in conflicts for the next hundred years, at least, it is important to know the history of the weapon. Mr Chivers provides us with a far more recounting of its history and development than anyone might have reasonably expected considering how its development and early production history is so shrouded in secrecy, obfuscation and outright lying. Definitely worth a read. :-)

Carolyn Ann

No one likes Newt. Who knew? (Not him, apparently.)

Watching the talking heads, on CNN, this morning I realized they've started to figure out what a lot of other folk already know: no one likes Newt. That's why he's last in the "anyone but Mitt" stakes. (Rick S? Ron Paul? ... Who?)

With his arrogant pontificating, he's turned off so many folk it's a wonder they've not run to Mittens in desperation. While they might yet, many of the far right voters can't stand him more than they don't like Newt.

It's going to be interesting to see who holds their nose as they vote and who stands outside the voting station.

Carolyn Ann

An apology to SA-ET

SA-ET, my apologies. I sometimes forget that it is absolutely inappropriate for me to comment when someone describes a situation that comes across as a "very familiar". While I have no concern for your life, I made the rather silly mistake of trying to convey some interest in it. Your life is your life; it is for you to whine about or celebrate as you see fit.

While I will continue to decide if any criticism of others you issue is worth my attention, you can be assured that I have neither a care nor a concern for you or your life. You're not a friend, and frankly, I would be hesitant to have such a thin-skinned, whiny and arrogant person such as you as one of my friends! 

So, sorry. Even as I spotted similarities between your current situation and a few I've been in, I should have been abstract in my commentary, limiting it to my experiences only. You are, of course, always welcome to comment on my blog; I do not limit commentary to only those I like or the only the commentary that is flattering or that I like.

Carolyn Ann

Narrow minded? Why, yes she is.

Sometimes you have to wonder. I left a few words of encouragement to SA-ET (yes, encouragement!) But she'll never read them - because she has me set up for some sort of auto-delete.

She's whining about the job she's on. But she's impressed by its $70M price tag. And her boss is a S.O.B. On a project like that - is it actually reasonable to expect a boss to be anything but that? She's thinking of quitting - which would be about right if her words are anything to go by. She wants that car? She's gonna have to either suck it up or fight back. If the boss fires her - tough tiddlywinks. That's what you get for poking your head above the parapet. I've done it enough times, and on bigger projects [it turns out that wasn't a true statement. I thought it was, but it wasn't. Sorry about that!]. I've walked into work thinking I'll be fired so many times it became a joke. I've been within minutes of being fired so many times I've lost count. Some can take it. Some can't. Go for the big prize - the risk is you'll get the Big Heave-Ho. It comes with the territory.

Talk about narrow-minded. Sometimes I'm amazed at how small some folk strive to be. Oh well. :-)

Carolyn Ann

A bombshell that almost woke the cat

Herman Cain's presidential campaign was so important to me, to America and the World, that no one actually noticed when he said he was suspending his campaign. Which basically means - he's out.

Who's next?

Carolyn Ann

PS I wonder when we'll hear that Mrs Cain has filed for a divorce?

Freedom's just another word for "idiots prove they're idiots"

An interesting morning for news. :-)

Alabama hates foreigners. That we know, but did you know that they arrest car company executives? Alabama cops have arrested a Mercedes exec and a Honda one. Collectively, both companies employ almost 7,000 people in the state. If the cops keep this up, they'll move - no amount of investment is worth it if your executives keep getting arrested for not having the right drivers' license on them.

In Saudi Arabia, the all-male Shura Council had a fit of the vapors when it was revealed that allowing women to drive might lead to them having a life. And potentially having pre-marital sex. It's not certain, because the author of the report, a leading bigoted idiot academic couldn't find any proof beyond the fact that some women in the west use their cars to drive themselves around.

And finally, Scott Walker, the Governor of Wisconsin, has proclaimed his love of the 1st Amendment. He's going to prove it by charging you policing and cleanup costs if you exercise your 1st Amendment rights and actually have the temerity to protest. He must really hate that 1st Amendment. More on that later. :-)

Alarmingly, it makes you glad your governor is Chris Christie.

Carolyn Ann