I finished the job up here in Woodruff yesterday afternoon and will be heading home shortly. I hope to be able to kick my feet up by noon. Well, I do have paperwork to do and perhaps some data copying but I'll be able to do it all from the comfort of my own home.
For some reason, I've been able to get Internet access here at the hotel only during the wee hours of the morning. I would have posted a bit more had it been working as it should but so it goes. I'll try to play catch-up later. Right now, I need to find some motivation as this bed is just too comfy.
08 December, 2005
07 December, 2005
Finally!
Hey! I finally got the Internet working in my hotel room!
I woke up this morning and turned on CNN. There was a story about the bitter cold in Chicago (wind chills of -10) and how it was forcing the city to open warming centers for the homeless earlier than usual. Considering that I'm about 350 miles north of ChiTown, this just doesn't bode well. I am not looking forward to scraping my car's windows and getting it started .
While we should be done today, I have to participate in a conference call at 2. It's part of the process of getting me back to DHFS and I'll be speaking with a saleswoman from my contracting company and my former co-worker, Harry, from the DOA. Considering that Harry and I know one another and that he offered to write a letter of recommendation for me when I was cast out from DHFS in September, I am thinking that the call is a mere formality. We'll see. Anyway, I do have 1 PC scheduled for reimaging this afternoon so I may be forced to finish it tomorrow morning. Regardless, I will be staying here tonight and heading back tomorrow.
I woke up this morning and turned on CNN. There was a story about the bitter cold in Chicago (wind chills of -10) and how it was forcing the city to open warming centers for the homeless earlier than usual. Considering that I'm about 350 miles north of ChiTown, this just doesn't bode well. I am not looking forward to scraping my car's windows and getting it started .
While we should be done today, I have to participate in a conference call at 2. It's part of the process of getting me back to DHFS and I'll be speaking with a saleswoman from my contracting company and my former co-worker, Harry, from the DOA. Considering that Harry and I know one another and that he offered to write a letter of recommendation for me when I was cast out from DHFS in September, I am thinking that the call is a mere formality. We'll see. Anyway, I do have 1 PC scheduled for reimaging this afternoon so I may be forced to finish it tomorrow morning. Regardless, I will be staying here tonight and heading back tomorrow.
Word of the Week
Because it's that time of the year and I'm still not ready for it:
nival (NY-vuhl) adj. Of, growing in, or relating to, snow.
nival (NY-vuhl) adj. Of, growing in, or relating to, snow.
06 December, 2005
On the Gramophone
This week I present a ditty by local faves, Cork'n'Bottle String Band. It's their version of "What Made Milwaukee Famous", a song that Jerry Lee Lewis did originally back in 1968. CBSB's version is closer to Del McCoury's, though. So pop open a cold one, relax, and crank it up.
The Internet - Woodruff Style
I am at a tavern here in Woodruff called The Stingray. They have this hoolie called the surftable which allows one to quaff some Spotted Cow and surf the Net simultaneously within the friendly confines of a typical northern Wisconsin tavern. Pretty neat, if you ask me.
Today went pretty well and we may be able to bail tomorrow instead of Thursday. I got some pictures of the area where I'm working. The ranger station is just inside the American Legion State Forest so it's quite pretty. But, it's colder than a witch's tit in a brass brassiere. At least there's good beer on tap. Well, dinner awaits...
EDIT: The Stingray is, in fact, located in Arbor Vitae.
Today went pretty well and we may be able to bail tomorrow instead of Thursday. I got some pictures of the area where I'm working. The ranger station is just inside the American Legion State Forest so it's quite pretty. But, it's colder than a witch's tit in a brass brassiere. At least there's good beer on tap. Well, dinner awaits...
EDIT: The Stingray is, in fact, located in Arbor Vitae.
03 December, 2005
D&D For All
(Found via Slashdot)
If you've ever wanted to learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons and join the wonderful world of role-playing games, now is as good a time as any. The folks at Barnes & Noble are willing to help ease your transition into the world of Geekdom with an online course.
As a beginning player, this course will guide you in understanding how D&D works, explaining the various worlds and characters types that it is based on, creating a D&D role for yourself, and understanding how your player role interacts in the world and with other characters. You will learn the extent of your abilities and the possibilities that lie ahead for your player, including magical spells, mythic quests, and epic battles with incredible monsters.
And the course is FREE!
Alternatively, you can just find a local group of players accepting newbies and get hands-on instruction.
If you've ever wanted to learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons and join the wonderful world of role-playing games, now is as good a time as any. The folks at Barnes & Noble are willing to help ease your transition into the world of Geekdom with an online course.
As a beginning player, this course will guide you in understanding how D&D works, explaining the various worlds and characters types that it is based on, creating a D&D role for yourself, and understanding how your player role interacts in the world and with other characters. You will learn the extent of your abilities and the possibilities that lie ahead for your player, including magical spells, mythic quests, and epic battles with incredible monsters.
And the course is FREE!
Alternatively, you can just find a local group of players accepting newbies and get hands-on instruction.
Firefox 1.5 Final Out Now
The latest version of Firefox - version 1.5 - is now available. I am enjoying the improved popup blocking right now. Save yourself some security and spyware grief and get it now!
01 December, 2005
In the Rapids
I arrived in Wisconsin Rapids on Tuesday around 7:45AM along with my cohort, Dan. The DNR office didn't open until 8:15 and no one would let the poor computer guys standing outside in the cold inside to enjoy the warmth. The drive up had been uneventful. We left Madison in the antelucan hours and in snow. The flurries lasted until we got a little north of Endeavor. Further down the road, we passed The Pioneer and I was reminded that it's now trivia season. The Zupans, my trivia team, often stop at The Pioneer to break our fasts on the way north to trivia contests and I can say that the biscuits & gravy there is mighty fine. Since we had time to blow, we went to our hotel to see if we could check in early. Our lodgings were just a short drive down Highway 13 and, compared to the suites we had in Eau Claire, we found the joint to be just a tad on the ratty side. It's not bad, really, as I've stayed in much worse joints. (There are a few such places near Joplin, MO.) Since our company had made the reservations (only after I asked the personal in charge of travel on Monday to get me a smoking room and was told that she had no idea we were going anywhere), everything should have gone smoothly as it did in Eau Claire. I was informed by the rather snarky manager that all the rooms were in my name and that she needed a credit card. So I gave her mine thinking that I'd just call my company later and have someone change the billing situation. She began to make the appropriate adjustments and proceeded to announce that my credit card number didn't match the one associated with our reservations. Now, why such a situation would throw a hotel manager for such a loop is beyond me. A company name, a credit card number, and two individuals – how she didn't manage to connect the number to our company is quite a feat. Still, I got things sorted out and put on my company's tab. Dan and I dropped off our bags and then headed back to the DNR service center.
We pulled into the parking lot only to find Ivan walking up to us. He had called Dan earlier to say that he was going to drive up himself instead of going up with us and Dan reported that he sounded a bit ornery. Never having met Ivan, I wasn't sure what to expect. He seemed to be in good spirits and quite amiable as well. I'd been warned that he wasn't the most technically gifted person, though, and would need some assistance. This did not turn out to be an issue; for me, at least. Unlike my first day in Eau Claire, Tuesday went quite smoothly. Our contact, Ryan, was OK although he seemed to be a bit stressed and was busy. We were expecting to have 17 boxes to upgrade but it turned out to be 11. Leaving the office that evening, we fully expected to be leaving for home on Wednesday night. And I must tell you that I got home this afternoon.
Retreating to my room, I tried getting on the Internet but to no avail. I had the bridge plugged in and Winders saw a network connection but there was no DHCP server to be found. I tried a different outlet but still nothing. (The hotel uses a system whereby the network signal goes out over the electrical wiring.) I was getting frustrated when there was a knock on my door. It was Dan wondering if I was going to accompany him & Ivan to dinner and a couple cocktails. I agreed saying that I'd be up for some chow but didn't want to stay out all night. With that, we hit the road.
Our first mistake was the turn that took us away from the joint that Dan was told about – The Chalet or The Goal Line. We turned around and found that the joint was a mere stones throw from the hotel. Walking in, we found it to be your typical Wisconsin tavern. The walls were wood and adjacent rooms held a pool table & a dining area. It was exactly the kind of place you'd expect an older crowd to come for a Friday night fish fry. Indeed, it was populated by a few middle-aged folks and a cute blonde bartender who looked to be in her late 20s. We found a trio of spots at the bar eager to order hop juice. The taps didn't offer much hope, unfortunately. There was Bud Light, Miller Lite, Miller High Life, and 3 taps of Inglenook wine including the Rhine variety. I must admit that it had been a while since I'd been in a bar that had wine on tap. I ordered a Miller as I prefer tap beer over bottled and canned. Not that Miller is particularly good, mind you, but it's palatable. It wasn't long before I discovered the bottled beer list, though. It mirrored the taps with only a couple varieties of Leines being at all interesting. Oddly enough, there was not a drop of Point to be had. Considering that Stevens Point is basically next door, one would think the local suds could be had. The Badger basketball game started and we quaffed to drown our sorrows as we watched them lose, never having had the lead once. With the game over, most of the regulars left and we continued drinking and chatting with the bartender who, in trying to rid herself of a hangover, had been making these massive Old Fashioneds in a mega-mug from a convenience store. A guy who looked to be around 30 came in and sat by us. We found out that he had just gotten into town from Columbus, Ohio. He was here on business and was a systems engineer who had been hired to do some testing on the equipment of one of the local paper mills. We revealed that we too were techies, of a sort, and he told us some interesting tales of toiling to keep the massive machines that make paper up and running. A tear in one of those gigantic sheets requires an hour at minimum to fix. The stuff flies by extremely quickly and there's a special kind of blow gun used to re-feed the sheet into the rollers. He also relayed a story about how he encountered one company whose server was running on Windows ME and all the problems it had. After he left, it was just the three of us, the bartender who introduced herself as Stephanie, and the lone waitress, Jamie. We chatted about our respective jobs, they bitched about their kids and what to buy them for Christmas – just the usual bar chat. Ivan was getting pretty drunk and he took off at some time that I cannot recall. We had ordered food earlier but he got his to go so he grabbed his cartons and left. But before getting out the door, he dropped his Styrofoam cup of chicken noodle soup. Stephanie said not to worry about it as she hated the gal who worked today, Lorraine. "Leave the mess for her," she quipped. Dan and I stuck it out until 11 when Stephanie kicked us out proclaiming that she had to get to another tavern so she could get her parlay cards in order and see some friends. With that, Dan and I headed into the night determined to find at least one of the two strip clubs that were to be had and, in general, paint the town chicken soup.
We pulled into the parking lot only to find Ivan walking up to us. He had called Dan earlier to say that he was going to drive up himself instead of going up with us and Dan reported that he sounded a bit ornery. Never having met Ivan, I wasn't sure what to expect. He seemed to be in good spirits and quite amiable as well. I'd been warned that he wasn't the most technically gifted person, though, and would need some assistance. This did not turn out to be an issue; for me, at least. Unlike my first day in Eau Claire, Tuesday went quite smoothly. Our contact, Ryan, was OK although he seemed to be a bit stressed and was busy. We were expecting to have 17 boxes to upgrade but it turned out to be 11. Leaving the office that evening, we fully expected to be leaving for home on Wednesday night. And I must tell you that I got home this afternoon.
Retreating to my room, I tried getting on the Internet but to no avail. I had the bridge plugged in and Winders saw a network connection but there was no DHCP server to be found. I tried a different outlet but still nothing. (The hotel uses a system whereby the network signal goes out over the electrical wiring.) I was getting frustrated when there was a knock on my door. It was Dan wondering if I was going to accompany him & Ivan to dinner and a couple cocktails. I agreed saying that I'd be up for some chow but didn't want to stay out all night. With that, we hit the road.
Our first mistake was the turn that took us away from the joint that Dan was told about – The Chalet or The Goal Line. We turned around and found that the joint was a mere stones throw from the hotel. Walking in, we found it to be your typical Wisconsin tavern. The walls were wood and adjacent rooms held a pool table & a dining area. It was exactly the kind of place you'd expect an older crowd to come for a Friday night fish fry. Indeed, it was populated by a few middle-aged folks and a cute blonde bartender who looked to be in her late 20s. We found a trio of spots at the bar eager to order hop juice. The taps didn't offer much hope, unfortunately. There was Bud Light, Miller Lite, Miller High Life, and 3 taps of Inglenook wine including the Rhine variety. I must admit that it had been a while since I'd been in a bar that had wine on tap. I ordered a Miller as I prefer tap beer over bottled and canned. Not that Miller is particularly good, mind you, but it's palatable. It wasn't long before I discovered the bottled beer list, though. It mirrored the taps with only a couple varieties of Leines being at all interesting. Oddly enough, there was not a drop of Point to be had. Considering that Stevens Point is basically next door, one would think the local suds could be had. The Badger basketball game started and we quaffed to drown our sorrows as we watched them lose, never having had the lead once. With the game over, most of the regulars left and we continued drinking and chatting with the bartender who, in trying to rid herself of a hangover, had been making these massive Old Fashioneds in a mega-mug from a convenience store. A guy who looked to be around 30 came in and sat by us. We found out that he had just gotten into town from Columbus, Ohio. He was here on business and was a systems engineer who had been hired to do some testing on the equipment of one of the local paper mills. We revealed that we too were techies, of a sort, and he told us some interesting tales of toiling to keep the massive machines that make paper up and running. A tear in one of those gigantic sheets requires an hour at minimum to fix. The stuff flies by extremely quickly and there's a special kind of blow gun used to re-feed the sheet into the rollers. He also relayed a story about how he encountered one company whose server was running on Windows ME and all the problems it had. After he left, it was just the three of us, the bartender who introduced herself as Stephanie, and the lone waitress, Jamie. We chatted about our respective jobs, they bitched about their kids and what to buy them for Christmas – just the usual bar chat. Ivan was getting pretty drunk and he took off at some time that I cannot recall. We had ordered food earlier but he got his to go so he grabbed his cartons and left. But before getting out the door, he dropped his Styrofoam cup of chicken noodle soup. Stephanie said not to worry about it as she hated the gal who worked today, Lorraine. "Leave the mess for her," she quipped. Dan and I stuck it out until 11 when Stephanie kicked us out proclaiming that she had to get to another tavern so she could get her parlay cards in order and see some friends. With that, Dan and I headed into the night determined to find at least one of the two strip clubs that were to be had and, in general, paint the town chicken soup.
Belew, Jefferson, and Pragmatism
I haven't been going on my usual book and CD buying sprees much lately. However, I have bought a couple ditties that I'm enjoying a lot.
The first is Adrian Belew's latest effort, Side Two. I picked it up at a recent stop at B-Side Records. The Dulcinea and I had gone in there because I was in pursuit of another CD by The Goose Island Ramblers but, alas, there were none to be had. The clerk said that he'd heard of them but, otherwise, had no idea who they were. And so I grabbed Belew's latest. The title refers to a planned trilogy of albums. I bought Side One a month or so ago and loved it. That album features a few songs with a power-trio while the rest is Belew alone. Regardless, the album is heavy. Lots of his trademark angular guitar bursts and late-period Beatles-inspired weirdness. Side Two is a whole different beast. I'd read previously that it was to be less heavy rock and more electronica. While not a completely bad generalization, it's a bit misleading. While there are electronic beats, a survey of the album's credits immediately clued me in that there was something not quite right about the tag of "electronica". To start, there's some violin & cello plus acoustic guitar and the "roland handsonic theremin".
I'm still getting used to Side Two and didn't have it with me up north so my appreciation of it is still very much a work in progress. But I like it so far. Belew did "Dead Dog on Asphalt" when I saw him earlier this year so it was nice to have a recording of the song. There's swashes of acoustic guitar that go in and out on a few of the songs which contrasts very nicely with the drum beats and the weirdness Adrian culls from his electric guitar. It's a really good mix of everything including the kitchen sink. The lyrics are haiku-like so the whole vocal aspect is quite minimalist. The songs are more like impressions rather than complete statements. I'll definitely be spinning this CD repeatedly in the coming days.
The other purchase I made recently was R.B. Bernstein's Thomas Jefferson.
The tome has a reputation for being probably the best short bio of Jefferson and I found such a comment as I was looking over Christopher Hitchens' latest book on the same topic while on a jaunt to the bookseller with The Dulcinea. I read the introduction and the first chapter this afternoon on the ride home from Wisconsin Rapids and it's quite good so far. I'm no Jefferson scholar but Bernstein promised an even-handed account of his topic. In the small bit of reading I've done so far, Bernstein has kept to his promise.
I know that it's verboten here in Madison to be a great fan of a dead white male who owned slaves and appear on our currency, but I can't help myself. I've admired Jefferson for quite some time and this is probably due to the fact that he was a Renaissance man and bibliophile. He was a deist and not a Christian. He loved learning so much, he made his own university. On top of it all, he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Bernstein readily admits that Jefferson was a man of many contradictions concerning slavery, race, politics, et al and I also find this aspect of his character to be quite intriguing. Whatever the contradictions of his character & actions and those of the Founding Fathers generally, the fact remains that their achievements remain remarkable today – they built a country from scratch. They created a secular government sans monarch. The Declaration of Independence is the boilerplate for people today justifying their bids for freedom.
The Founding Fathers fascinate me but it is Jefferson that really captures my attention.
Along intellectual lines, I am trying to find some time to devote to a recently-downloaded podcast. It's an episode from the BBC radio programme "In Our Time". The show concerns Pragmatism. Pragmatism is an intellectual movement that was born and bred here in the U.S.. What is it about? Let me give you a quote from William James, one of the founders of the movement:
Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?"
Another leading figure in Pragmatism is this guy, Charles Peirce.
Peirce's ideas and writing had a great impact on this guy:
That's Charles W. Anderson. He was a professor here at the UW and I took one of his political science classes my senior year. Although I had a few professors that I liked, it is Anderson that really sticks out in my mind. Whenever I hear someone complain about academics and their supposed dislocation from everyday life, I immediately encounter with my experiences with him. Although his discipline was not my major, his class was one of my favorites and I consider him to be the best professor overall that I had in college. The class was about modern liberalism. By "liberalism" here, I don't mean having lefty politics, I mean classical liberalism – John Locke and his ilk. The class was extremely interesting and it gave me a good understanding of the intellectual ideas behind neo-conservatism. (Is it permissible for a lefty like myself to say I admire some of Friedrich Hayek's ideas?) Anderson was in his mid-60s, I think, when I took his class and had been teaching for many years. Despite enduring countless business majors whining "Is this going to be on the final?", he taught with great enthusiasm. Nearly everyday I would walk into class and he'd have a big grin on his face as he just couldn't wait to present the day's lesson. He loved the material he was presenting and, perhaps most importantly, he loved teaching and discussing it. One of the books we read was of his own hand, Pragmatic Liberalism. He explained how Peirce influenced his own thinking and gave a brief intro to the movement before launching into lectures about "communities of inquiry", "enterprises", and "best practices". One thing that appealed to me about his take on Pragmatism was that is wasn't just theoretical, it was all about practice. He also touched briefly on the notion of his political philosophy as being something that can also be transposed to the level of the individual. I was pleased a couple years ago to see that he developed this notion more fully in A Deeper Freedom. I swear I wrote about this book after having read it and perhaps I'll look through the archives to find it later. It was very refreshing to read something by a political scientist which addressed how individuals can structure their lives to make them fuller and more meaningful. I highly recommend it.
And so you can see why a podcast on a relatively unknown philosophical movement is of great interest to me.
The first is Adrian Belew's latest effort, Side Two. I picked it up at a recent stop at B-Side Records. The Dulcinea and I had gone in there because I was in pursuit of another CD by The Goose Island Ramblers but, alas, there were none to be had. The clerk said that he'd heard of them but, otherwise, had no idea who they were. And so I grabbed Belew's latest. The title refers to a planned trilogy of albums. I bought Side One a month or so ago and loved it. That album features a few songs with a power-trio while the rest is Belew alone. Regardless, the album is heavy. Lots of his trademark angular guitar bursts and late-period Beatles-inspired weirdness. Side Two is a whole different beast. I'd read previously that it was to be less heavy rock and more electronica. While not a completely bad generalization, it's a bit misleading. While there are electronic beats, a survey of the album's credits immediately clued me in that there was something not quite right about the tag of "electronica". To start, there's some violin & cello plus acoustic guitar and the "roland handsonic theremin".
I'm still getting used to Side Two and didn't have it with me up north so my appreciation of it is still very much a work in progress. But I like it so far. Belew did "Dead Dog on Asphalt" when I saw him earlier this year so it was nice to have a recording of the song. There's swashes of acoustic guitar that go in and out on a few of the songs which contrasts very nicely with the drum beats and the weirdness Adrian culls from his electric guitar. It's a really good mix of everything including the kitchen sink. The lyrics are haiku-like so the whole vocal aspect is quite minimalist. The songs are more like impressions rather than complete statements. I'll definitely be spinning this CD repeatedly in the coming days.
The other purchase I made recently was R.B. Bernstein's Thomas Jefferson.
The tome has a reputation for being probably the best short bio of Jefferson and I found such a comment as I was looking over Christopher Hitchens' latest book on the same topic while on a jaunt to the bookseller with The Dulcinea. I read the introduction and the first chapter this afternoon on the ride home from Wisconsin Rapids and it's quite good so far. I'm no Jefferson scholar but Bernstein promised an even-handed account of his topic. In the small bit of reading I've done so far, Bernstein has kept to his promise.
I know that it's verboten here in Madison to be a great fan of a dead white male who owned slaves and appear on our currency, but I can't help myself. I've admired Jefferson for quite some time and this is probably due to the fact that he was a Renaissance man and bibliophile. He was a deist and not a Christian. He loved learning so much, he made his own university. On top of it all, he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Bernstein readily admits that Jefferson was a man of many contradictions concerning slavery, race, politics, et al and I also find this aspect of his character to be quite intriguing. Whatever the contradictions of his character & actions and those of the Founding Fathers generally, the fact remains that their achievements remain remarkable today – they built a country from scratch. They created a secular government sans monarch. The Declaration of Independence is the boilerplate for people today justifying their bids for freedom.
The Founding Fathers fascinate me but it is Jefferson that really captures my attention.
Along intellectual lines, I am trying to find some time to devote to a recently-downloaded podcast. It's an episode from the BBC radio programme "In Our Time". The show concerns Pragmatism. Pragmatism is an intellectual movement that was born and bred here in the U.S.. What is it about? Let me give you a quote from William James, one of the founders of the movement:
Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?"
Another leading figure in Pragmatism is this guy, Charles Peirce.
Peirce's ideas and writing had a great impact on this guy:
That's Charles W. Anderson. He was a professor here at the UW and I took one of his political science classes my senior year. Although I had a few professors that I liked, it is Anderson that really sticks out in my mind. Whenever I hear someone complain about academics and their supposed dislocation from everyday life, I immediately encounter with my experiences with him. Although his discipline was not my major, his class was one of my favorites and I consider him to be the best professor overall that I had in college. The class was about modern liberalism. By "liberalism" here, I don't mean having lefty politics, I mean classical liberalism – John Locke and his ilk. The class was extremely interesting and it gave me a good understanding of the intellectual ideas behind neo-conservatism. (Is it permissible for a lefty like myself to say I admire some of Friedrich Hayek's ideas?) Anderson was in his mid-60s, I think, when I took his class and had been teaching for many years. Despite enduring countless business majors whining "Is this going to be on the final?", he taught with great enthusiasm. Nearly everyday I would walk into class and he'd have a big grin on his face as he just couldn't wait to present the day's lesson. He loved the material he was presenting and, perhaps most importantly, he loved teaching and discussing it. One of the books we read was of his own hand, Pragmatic Liberalism. He explained how Peirce influenced his own thinking and gave a brief intro to the movement before launching into lectures about "communities of inquiry", "enterprises", and "best practices". One thing that appealed to me about his take on Pragmatism was that is wasn't just theoretical, it was all about practice. He also touched briefly on the notion of his political philosophy as being something that can also be transposed to the level of the individual. I was pleased a couple years ago to see that he developed this notion more fully in A Deeper Freedom. I swear I wrote about this book after having read it and perhaps I'll look through the archives to find it later. It was very refreshing to read something by a political scientist which addressed how individuals can structure their lives to make them fuller and more meaningful. I highly recommend it.
And so you can see why a podcast on a relatively unknown philosophical movement is of great interest to me.
From the Land of Cheese
Having been out of town for the past few days, I took some time this morning to check out the news from Madison. Snow seemed to be the lead story everywhere. Why this gets so much play is beyond me. It snows here every year around this time so you'd think that people would be used to it by now.
I also found that one of our U.S. Senators, Russ Feingold, will probably run for President:
On one of the Sunday morning talk shows Feingold was asked if the chances of him running for president were better than one in 100.
He countered saying, "They're better than that."
"I think it's something you have to evaluate at the time," said Feingold. "But I do think one thing we can all agree upon is that this country is overdue for a cheese head president. We've never had one."
Can you imagine if Russ got elected? You can bet your sweet ass that Fort McCoy wouldn't be closed. Would the cheese lobby suddenly become a leviathan meddling with our political system? Cheesegate. Cheese for hostages. The Cheddar Scandal.
Russ For President.
In the past week, there have been two robberies/sexual assaults on a bike path here in Madison. The police have a suspect - a 13 year-old boy. What happened with this kid? If guilty, his victims ought to be given ample opportunity to throw brickbats at his newly-activated nutsack.
I also found that one of our U.S. Senators, Russ Feingold, will probably run for President:
On one of the Sunday morning talk shows Feingold was asked if the chances of him running for president were better than one in 100.
He countered saying, "They're better than that."
"I think it's something you have to evaluate at the time," said Feingold. "But I do think one thing we can all agree upon is that this country is overdue for a cheese head president. We've never had one."
Can you imagine if Russ got elected? You can bet your sweet ass that Fort McCoy wouldn't be closed. Would the cheese lobby suddenly become a leviathan meddling with our political system? Cheesegate. Cheese for hostages. The Cheddar Scandal.
Russ For President.
In the past week, there have been two robberies/sexual assaults on a bike path here in Madison. The police have a suspect - a 13 year-old boy. What happened with this kid? If guilty, his victims ought to be given ample opportunity to throw brickbats at his newly-activated nutsack.
30 November, 2005
Word of the Week
Just because I love music.
lulliloo (lull'-i-loo) v.t. and v.i. to welcome with a joyful song; to sing a joyful welcome
lulliloo (lull'-i-loo) v.t. and v.i. to welcome with a joyful song; to sing a joyful welcome
On the Gramophone
This week we've got a bit of music from the Middle East. Mohammed El-Bakkar was born in Beirut, Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1952. He appeared on Broadway in Fanny and then formed Oriental Ensemble, becoming famous for his belly dancing music. So get ready to shake that thang! Check out "Zenat El Haflat (Girlish Laughter)".
28 November, 2005
First It Was Mother Theresa
While I'm on the topic of religion, it has been announced that Christopher Hitchens' next book is to be on this very topic.
God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion by Christopher Hitchens: Will explain why religion does more harm than good in the world, and how society would benefit if faith remained personal rather than public.
Should be an interesting read.
God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion by Christopher Hitchens: Will explain why religion does more harm than good in the world, and how society would benefit if faith remained personal rather than public.
Should be an interesting read.
Statue Cries - Reason Flees
A statue of the Virgin Mary out in California is leaking a red liquid from one of its eyes.
"I think that it's incredible. It’s a miracle. Why is she doing it? Is it something bothering her?" asked Maria Vasquez, 35, who drove with her parents and three children from Stockton, about 50 miles south of Sacramento.
Ms. Vasquez - it's a statue! It's not alive, it is not a woman thusly nothing can bother it. Living things get bothered, not statuary. Ky Truong is all depressed because there's a liquid on a statue but at least he's become a prognosticator:
"There’s a big event in the future — earthquake, flood, a disease," Truong said. "We’re very sad."
How far into the future, Ky? These things happen all the time.
Is there a staute of Athena somewhere with a liquid running down its face as well that portends a bad olive crop? Why isn't the whole world laughing at people who think that certain statues are "alive"? We all know how meaningful Mary's stain was. I expect such ridiculous things from religious people and apparently the author of the article partakes of such things as well. To wit:
Thousands of such incidents are reported around the world each year, though many turn out to be hoaxes or natural phenomena.
So, many are hoaxes and natural phenomena which leaves the rest as genuine miracles. Nice bit of science there AP. Got any proof that any of them are miracles and not hoaxes/natural phenomena? Even one?
"I think that it's incredible. It’s a miracle. Why is she doing it? Is it something bothering her?" asked Maria Vasquez, 35, who drove with her parents and three children from Stockton, about 50 miles south of Sacramento.
Ms. Vasquez - it's a statue! It's not alive, it is not a woman thusly nothing can bother it. Living things get bothered, not statuary. Ky Truong is all depressed because there's a liquid on a statue but at least he's become a prognosticator:
"There’s a big event in the future — earthquake, flood, a disease," Truong said. "We’re very sad."
How far into the future, Ky? These things happen all the time.
Is there a staute of Athena somewhere with a liquid running down its face as well that portends a bad olive crop? Why isn't the whole world laughing at people who think that certain statues are "alive"? We all know how meaningful Mary's stain was. I expect such ridiculous things from religious people and apparently the author of the article partakes of such things as well. To wit:
Thousands of such incidents are reported around the world each year, though many turn out to be hoaxes or natural phenomena.
So, many are hoaxes and natural phenomena which leaves the rest as genuine miracles. Nice bit of science there AP. Got any proof that any of them are miracles and not hoaxes/natural phenomena? Even one?
No Extermination Needed, No Doctor Necessary
The BBC is highly unamused over the soft-core pr0n flick, Abducted by Daleks.
BEEB bosses have gone ballistic after discovering the Daleks are starring in a PORN FLICK.
Dr Who's foes capture three naked "disco babes" in the 18-rated DVD.
They chase the girls around their spaceship and grope them with their plungers.
A trailer can be found here.
BEEB bosses have gone ballistic after discovering the Daleks are starring in a PORN FLICK.
Dr Who's foes capture three naked "disco babes" in the 18-rated DVD.
They chase the girls around their spaceship and grope them with their plungers.
A trailer can be found here.
2006 APT Season
American Players Theater has announced its 2006 season:
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder
Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
Now, Caesar sounds good - all that stuff about crying havoc and faults in the stars'n'stuff.
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder
Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
Now, Caesar sounds good - all that stuff about crying havoc and faults in the stars'n'stuff.
Genocidal Regimes Need Lobbyists Too
The genocide in Darfur continues as does the near-total indifference of the United States – it's government, its media, and its people. The estimated death toll moved into the six-figure range last month:
More than 100,000 people are now believed to have died in the Darfur region of Sudan since the United Nations Security Council set a 30-day deadline last year for the Khartoum regime to begin to resolve the crisis in the area.
Humanitarian agencies and the African Union are warning that the situation in Darfur is again deteriorating, with five AU peacekeepers killed in the past week and parts of the region inaccessible after an aid convoy was ambushed and the staff stripped and beaten.
And what about those African Union troops?
The AU yesterday [22 October 2005] missed a new deadline to increase troop numbers in the region to more than 7,000, mainly because it remains dollars 173 million short of the money it needs to finance the operation. It is also short of fuel and is being hindered by the Sudanese government, which has refused to allow a consignment of Canadian-supplied armoured personnel carriers to enter the country.
So what is my government doing? According to Nat Hentoff:
But Reuters, reporting from Washington on Nov. 2, disclosed that "U.S. lawmakers stripped out $59 million in funding for African Union troops struggling to keep the peace in Darfur. The money was taken out of a foreign funding appropriations bill."
I have heard no protest about this cut from George W. Bush, who, following former Secretary of State Colin Powell, unequivocally declared that genocide is taking place in Darfur. And where is the Congressional Republican leadership?
Even the right-wing think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, via a task force co-chaired by Newt Gingrich concludes:
Our task force addressed Darfur directly, recommending a series of immediate initiatives for the United States, the UN and others, including establishment of a no-flight zone. Although the outcome document did not address this issue, it is clear that international action is still urgently needed. African Union troops in Darfur are unable to protect themselves, let alone those they were sent to protect.
The AU cannot quell the conflict alone and we can't even give them a paltry $59 million – chump change for our nation. What's worse, as Hentoff notes, is that, despite being a genocidal regime, the leaders of Sudan deserve what all power-hungry folks do: a lobbyist.
"There are indications that the U.S. State Department is shifting its policy toward Sudan. Instead of putting more pressure on this Khartoum government, (Condoleezza Rice) granted them a waiver to hire a U.S. lobbyist (Robert Cabelly). For $530,000 a year, this lobbyist will represent a regime we have accused of genocide." (This letter was co-signed by 105 members of Congress.)
Mr. Cabelly – have you no shame? Ms. Rice – have you no shame? Our government won't even give the Pentagon's table scraps to the AU to stop genocide! What needs to be done? Do forged documents alleging the Sudanese government is seeking WMDs and has ties to Al-Qaeda need to surface?
We really don't care, do we? We didn't care much about Yugoslavia nor about Rwanda. You'd think that a film like Hotel Rwanda could stir up some conversation about something other than how great Don Cheadle's performance in it was. I've never seen Hotel Rwanda but I have seen a lecture given by Roméo Dallaire, the head of U.N. peacekeeping forces in Rwanda. He and his soldiers had the misfortune of being able to do virtually nothing to stop the slaughter of 800,000 people over the course of 100 days. (For my fellow Wisconsonians - that's half the population of the Milwaukee metro area in less than a football season.) His tales were just grotesque. Such as pregnant women having their bellies cut open with machetes and having their fetuses butchered. Yet we collectively stood by and did nothing. Where were we? What sports star was on trial? What actress' nipple slipped?
Congress is willing to put down martinis and drop golf clubs to rush back to Washington in a bid to "save" the corpse of a woman animated only by feeding tubes and respirators but can't be bothered with genocide. Families are being riven apart at gunpoint, women are being raped, and people are being murdered yet all our government is willing to do is to hire a lobbyist to state its position on the situation in Darfur. For over half a million dollars a year, Robert Cabelly will sit at the table and say "What you're doing is wrong".
According to this article from the Washington Post, Cabelly's hiring infuriated at least one member of Congress:
This did not sit well with Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who has been spearheading the drive in Congress to stop the slaughter in the Darfur region. Wolf took to the House floor last week to condemn the agreement -- "Where will the lobbying wheel of fortune stop next?" he asked -- and to blast the State Department for waiving sanctions on doing business with Sudan so Cabelly could get the contract.
At least someone is outraged.
Read this story by Dallaire:
The sergeant is there with a couple of hundred people congregating. He calls back to the headquarters to get transport to pull them out of there into safe sites -- not safe zones, as my military colleagues prevented me from implementing. They wanted me to implement a safe zone during the genocide -- take southern Rwanda, put a wall across, and the Tutsis can be safe inside there. The Tutsis couldn’t make it there because there was a roadblock every 100 meters.
Suddenly, from one side of the village comes a group of young boys, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and they’re shooting at him and the people he is defending. And from the other side there is a group of girls coming, and behind them are boys shooting at the sergeant, at his troops, but, most importantly, at the people they’re supposed to be protecting.
What does the sergeant do? Do you kill children? This is one example of the moral and ethical dilemmas in which we find ourselves in many of these conflicts. They’re not high-tech, but they require a depth of intellectual rigueur, they require values and people who know to go beyond themselves and potentially sacrifice themselves -- not because the order or mandate is there, but because morally and ethically that’s the right thing to do.
It will be December soon so remember: the Christmas spirit is not what you drink. Regardless of which holiday you celebrate next month, think and act upon the right thing to do. If you cannot donate money, at least contact your representatives in government. Don't know who they are? Go here and find out. For my fellow Madisonians, here's the relevant contact info:
Senator Russ Feingold
Washington Office:
SH-506
Washington, D.C. 20510-4904
Phone: (202) 224-5323
Fax: (202) 224-2725
Main District Office:
1600 Aspen Commons, Rm. 100
Middleton, WI 53562
Phone: (608) 828-1200
Fax: (608) 828-1203
Webpage
Senator Herb Kohl
Washington Office:
SH-330
Washington, D.C. 20510-4903
Phone: (202) 224-5653
Fax: (202) 224-9787
Main District Office:
310 West Wisconsin Ave., #950
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Phone: (414) 297-4451
Fax: (414) 297-4455
Webpage
Representative Tammy Baldwin
Washington Office:
1022 LHOB
Washington, D.C. 20515-4902
Phone: (202) 225-2906
Fax: (202) 225-6942
Main District Office:
10 East Doty St., Ste. 405
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: (608) 258-9800
Fax: (608) 258-9808
Webpage
And don't forget that the conflict in Rwanda spilled into Congo.
More than 100,000 people are now believed to have died in the Darfur region of Sudan since the United Nations Security Council set a 30-day deadline last year for the Khartoum regime to begin to resolve the crisis in the area.
Humanitarian agencies and the African Union are warning that the situation in Darfur is again deteriorating, with five AU peacekeepers killed in the past week and parts of the region inaccessible after an aid convoy was ambushed and the staff stripped and beaten.
And what about those African Union troops?
The AU yesterday [22 October 2005] missed a new deadline to increase troop numbers in the region to more than 7,000, mainly because it remains dollars 173 million short of the money it needs to finance the operation. It is also short of fuel and is being hindered by the Sudanese government, which has refused to allow a consignment of Canadian-supplied armoured personnel carriers to enter the country.
So what is my government doing? According to Nat Hentoff:
But Reuters, reporting from Washington on Nov. 2, disclosed that "U.S. lawmakers stripped out $59 million in funding for African Union troops struggling to keep the peace in Darfur. The money was taken out of a foreign funding appropriations bill."
I have heard no protest about this cut from George W. Bush, who, following former Secretary of State Colin Powell, unequivocally declared that genocide is taking place in Darfur. And where is the Congressional Republican leadership?
Even the right-wing think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, via a task force co-chaired by Newt Gingrich concludes:
Our task force addressed Darfur directly, recommending a series of immediate initiatives for the United States, the UN and others, including establishment of a no-flight zone. Although the outcome document did not address this issue, it is clear that international action is still urgently needed. African Union troops in Darfur are unable to protect themselves, let alone those they were sent to protect.
The AU cannot quell the conflict alone and we can't even give them a paltry $59 million – chump change for our nation. What's worse, as Hentoff notes, is that, despite being a genocidal regime, the leaders of Sudan deserve what all power-hungry folks do: a lobbyist.
"There are indications that the U.S. State Department is shifting its policy toward Sudan. Instead of putting more pressure on this Khartoum government, (Condoleezza Rice) granted them a waiver to hire a U.S. lobbyist (Robert Cabelly). For $530,000 a year, this lobbyist will represent a regime we have accused of genocide." (This letter was co-signed by 105 members of Congress.)
Mr. Cabelly – have you no shame? Ms. Rice – have you no shame? Our government won't even give the Pentagon's table scraps to the AU to stop genocide! What needs to be done? Do forged documents alleging the Sudanese government is seeking WMDs and has ties to Al-Qaeda need to surface?
We really don't care, do we? We didn't care much about Yugoslavia nor about Rwanda. You'd think that a film like Hotel Rwanda could stir up some conversation about something other than how great Don Cheadle's performance in it was. I've never seen Hotel Rwanda but I have seen a lecture given by Roméo Dallaire, the head of U.N. peacekeeping forces in Rwanda. He and his soldiers had the misfortune of being able to do virtually nothing to stop the slaughter of 800,000 people over the course of 100 days. (For my fellow Wisconsonians - that's half the population of the Milwaukee metro area in less than a football season.) His tales were just grotesque. Such as pregnant women having their bellies cut open with machetes and having their fetuses butchered. Yet we collectively stood by and did nothing. Where were we? What sports star was on trial? What actress' nipple slipped?
Congress is willing to put down martinis and drop golf clubs to rush back to Washington in a bid to "save" the corpse of a woman animated only by feeding tubes and respirators but can't be bothered with genocide. Families are being riven apart at gunpoint, women are being raped, and people are being murdered yet all our government is willing to do is to hire a lobbyist to state its position on the situation in Darfur. For over half a million dollars a year, Robert Cabelly will sit at the table and say "What you're doing is wrong".
According to this article from the Washington Post, Cabelly's hiring infuriated at least one member of Congress:
This did not sit well with Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who has been spearheading the drive in Congress to stop the slaughter in the Darfur region. Wolf took to the House floor last week to condemn the agreement -- "Where will the lobbying wheel of fortune stop next?" he asked -- and to blast the State Department for waiving sanctions on doing business with Sudan so Cabelly could get the contract.
At least someone is outraged.
Read this story by Dallaire:
The sergeant is there with a couple of hundred people congregating. He calls back to the headquarters to get transport to pull them out of there into safe sites -- not safe zones, as my military colleagues prevented me from implementing. They wanted me to implement a safe zone during the genocide -- take southern Rwanda, put a wall across, and the Tutsis can be safe inside there. The Tutsis couldn’t make it there because there was a roadblock every 100 meters.
Suddenly, from one side of the village comes a group of young boys, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and they’re shooting at him and the people he is defending. And from the other side there is a group of girls coming, and behind them are boys shooting at the sergeant, at his troops, but, most importantly, at the people they’re supposed to be protecting.
What does the sergeant do? Do you kill children? This is one example of the moral and ethical dilemmas in which we find ourselves in many of these conflicts. They’re not high-tech, but they require a depth of intellectual rigueur, they require values and people who know to go beyond themselves and potentially sacrifice themselves -- not because the order or mandate is there, but because morally and ethically that’s the right thing to do.
It will be December soon so remember: the Christmas spirit is not what you drink. Regardless of which holiday you celebrate next month, think and act upon the right thing to do. If you cannot donate money, at least contact your representatives in government. Don't know who they are? Go here and find out. For my fellow Madisonians, here's the relevant contact info:
Senator Russ Feingold
Washington Office:
SH-506
Washington, D.C. 20510-4904
Phone: (202) 224-5323
Fax: (202) 224-2725
Main District Office:
1600 Aspen Commons, Rm. 100
Middleton, WI 53562
Phone: (608) 828-1200
Fax: (608) 828-1203
Webpage
Senator Herb Kohl
Washington Office:
SH-330
Washington, D.C. 20510-4903
Phone: (202) 224-5653
Fax: (202) 224-9787
Main District Office:
310 West Wisconsin Ave., #950
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Phone: (414) 297-4451
Fax: (414) 297-4455
Webpage
Representative Tammy Baldwin
Washington Office:
1022 LHOB
Washington, D.C. 20515-4902
Phone: (202) 225-2906
Fax: (202) 225-6942
Main District Office:
10 East Doty St., Ste. 405
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: (608) 258-9800
Fax: (608) 258-9808
Webpage
And don't forget that the conflict in Rwanda spilled into Congo.
26 November, 2005
Dworkin Rolls in Grave
Andrea Dworkin is no doubt rolling in her grave.
Australian researchers are about to publish a study which says that "mainstream pornography in Australia doesn't represent women as sex objects". Indeed, it "shows them as active sexual agents". In addition to looking at the pr0n itself, the study showed some surprising results about the consumer:
Interim results released in 2003 on the content of pornographic movies found super-size breasts scare some men, conservative voters love dirty magazines and adult videos have realistic plots.
Dr Alan McKee said those initial results had shattered the "dirty old man in a trenchcoat" stereotype of pornographic consumers.
Of the 320 respondents who said they used mainstream porn, 20 per cent were younger women, 33 per cent were married, 93 per cent believed in gender equality and 63 per cent considered themselves to be religious.
This is just a brief article, of course, and I haven't read the entire study so I'm not sure what else it reveals. (Nor have I read the report of the Meese Commission on Pornography.) Plus the study looks at mainstream pr0n and not some of the more hard-core stuff which portrays, amongst other things, rape. For any locals, one anti-pr0n argument comes in the form of the film Not a Love Story which features scenes shot right here in Madison. A bit out-dated, perhaps, but it still embodies many of the arguments made against pornography.
Personally, I like pictures of nekkid fraus and I haven't seen any definitive proof that consumption of pr0n makes individuals rape, undergirds our "rape culture", et al. Then again, I haven't read all the literature on the subject.
There was a recent poll done in the UK which has some surprising (for me, anyway) and disturbing results. For instance, 22% felt that, if a woman had "many" sexual partners, then this placed some of the responsibility for being raped on the woman. Just prior to the outcry about such attitudes on various feminist blogs, a very interesting dialogue appeared on Alas! (A Blog) in an entry called "On victim-blaming and control". Especially revealing for me were the comments of "Q Grrl". Q Grrl holds the standard view of rape as having absolutely nothing to do with sex. Some choice quotes:
"Rape is a social control — whether it is stranger or aquaintance [sic] rape."
It is a socially condoned use of force that works to control women’s sexuality and women’s role in the social fabric."
Again, rape is not so much an individual act, but a socially condoned act."
If you are not actively working to deconstruct a male sexuality founded on rape (virgin/whore dichotomy for women), then you are indeed benefiting from the fact that many men do rape."
"…do men have better employment opportunities, access to resources, access to recreation, access to politics, access to legislative opportunities because women are threatened with rape if they use public space in the same way men do?"
This last one humored and disgusted me greatly. She maintains that women don't run for political office for fear of being raped. Are there any women readers here who can personally vouch that, while they want to run for office, they don't because they fear rape? Have any female politicians gone on record as saying that they recognized the threat of rape in running for office but ran anyway? And how does one go about "deconstructing male sexuality"?
Does anyone else find it odd that the she claims rape has nothing to do with sex and is all about social control, yet its male sexuality that is the problem? I can't help but think of Steven Pinker's comment:
But the fact that rape has something to do with violence does not mean it has nothing to do with sex, any more than the fact that armed robbery has something to do with violence means it has nothing to do with greed.
How can one keep a straight face and say that an act of sex has nothing to do with sex yet is rooted in sexuality? Is rape really like quantum physics where all of our notions of common sense and causality are thrown aside? This webpage features some statistics about rape compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice. Take this statistic:
The income level of the "average victim" is very low with most victims coming from homes with incomes under $10,000 a year. Women from low income households are 4 times as likely to experience violence of any sort than women in the income bracket above $50,000 (Craven, 1996).
If rape is only a form of social control imposed on women by men, then why are "average" victims poor? In other words, if rape is about protecting patriarchy, as Q Grrl seems to assert, then why are wealthier women, who would be more of a threat to patriarchy, raped less frequently? Maybe this is a subterfuge by us men. We let those uppity women who slip through the cracks go so as to give the illusion that there's equality, that there's no "rape culture". You know how cabals work – just watch The X-Files. And why do men rape girls? Are these rapes preventative? Do men seek to rape young girls so they know from the outset who is in control and that they learn their place early? Or perhaps such sexual abuse involves (gasp!) sex – perhaps just like when men rape adult women.
The following statistic comes from a West Virginia University webpage:
75-90% of all sexual assaults on campus are alcohol or drug-related (Warshaw, 1988; Califano)
Somebody explain to me the patriarchy's mechanism which brainwashes college men into raping college women when the either they or the women are drunk or both. Perhaps the Lockean contract negotiations by which a man is to gain consent for sex with a woman breaks down after a couple dozen beers and a few shots of tequila which transform our "rational agents" into puddles. Other animals on this planet rape as well – it is not a uniquely human endeavor – including birds, insects, and some of our fellow simians. Are these creatures mere actors in a patriarchal tragedy as we men are supposed to be? Many on the Left, including feminists, like to chide the Bush administration for its "American exceptionalism", i.e. – that America is a totally unique instance in the history of mankind. Yet many of these same people turn around and invoke exceptionalism for our species. I get the impression that many of these folks think that, because we are really good tool-makers and have morality, that we have nothing in common with those creatures who sit more towards to roots of the evolutionary tree than we do. Despite the many great accomplishments of mankind such as McDonalds, reality TV, and the Brazilian wax, we are still apes. Unique in many ways, to be sure, but still apes. Our shit stinks too. Jane Goodall was on Democracy Now! yesterday and gave a few examples of how various animals are like us humans. (Her justification of the statement that pigs are intelligent involved a porcine computer user. It forced me to wonder about certain human computer users I know…) I think it would behoove us to occasionally stop anthropomorphizing animals and instead look at how we are like them. I have read nothing that gives credence to the idea that our slates were wiped clean when we became homo sapiens. Indeed, the situation only became more complicated. Just because sex is natural does not mean that every instance of it is good and healthy. Arsenic occurs naturally too. It is quite a feat of the intellect of our species that some of us can take an act of sex borne out of sexuality and remove the sex from it.
Pinker also refers to feminist Wendy McElroy:
As the equity feminist Wendy McElroy points out, the theory holds that "even the most loving and gentle husband, father, and son is a beneficiary of the rape of the women they love. No ideology that makes such vicious accusations against men as a class can heal any wounds. It can only provoke hostility in return."
If you're going to go around labeling all men rapists and/or beneficiaries thereof, how can you reasonably expect to go about "deconstructing male sexuality" other than by the Ludovico Treatment? I don't have the answer to stopping rape but one thing we can do is stop telling 18 year-old men entering college that they are rapist scumbag tools of the patriarchy. Another thing we can do is roundup all those people who think that having had many sexual partners makes a woman partially to blame for her rape and give them a collective punch in the nose. How stupid are you? What does this have to do with rape? I think the best way to teach men not to rape isn't to just teach that message but to instill healthy attitudes about the motivations that lie underneath – both about sex and power because I think rape is about both.
Since rape is overwhelmingly committed by men, we need to address their sexuality, not as a tool of the patriarchy, but as part of our humanity. We can start by getting rid of this attitude that sex is nothing but a way to get an infection and an unwanted pregnancy instead of teaching that a good, healthy sex life is a near-imperative. Saying that sex should wait until marriage is another way of saying that sex is awful and that you need reinforcements to handle the fallout. We have poll after poll which indicate that 90%+ of men (99%+ for teenaged boys, no doubt) are masturbationaholics yet talking about onanism is virtually taboo. Just ask Jocelyn Elders. We need more people like her. There should be compulsory masturbation laws for boys. Women have lactation rooms where they can go pump breast milk – give men rooms where they can go jack off. (And women too.) They don't need to be fancy or particularly comfortable. A plain, small room with a couch, some magazines, and a tissue dispenser will do fine. Let's legalize and regulate (and tax) prostitution too. It should be an honored and respected vocation. Nobody puts down restaurant owners for fulfilling a basic human need for money so we shouldn't be doing that to prostitutes. Imagine a school system that doesn't hide sexuality and actually educates kids on it. Boys get spontaneous erections. Johnny Second-Grader will be sitting in class and then pitch a tent for no reason at all. He'll be embarrassed and ashamed, seeking to hide it. And I'll bet you a dollar to a doughnut that he has absolutely no idea why he feels that way. Imagine all the teenage boys going into a classroom with a male teacher who, instead of preaching abstinence or giving a clinical description of the mechanics of sex, welcomes the young men in adulthood and to the Masturbation Club. Why does our society generally shame kids when they become sexually mature or just ignore the event and let them figure things out on their own? All joking and exercises of the imagination aside, I think it is absolutely absurd to separate sex from sexuality with all the precision of a surgeon. Sexuality is more than sex but without it, it's not sexuality.
We must also remember that men rape other men and boys as well. I find it dubious to say the least that a Catholic priest having his way with an altar boy is somehow an expression of power over women. What about male prisoners who rape fellow inmates? Are they all gay? Or do they rape only in a bid for power? I'm inclined to think that power is often involved but also that sex is also a motivating factor since there are no women available. When ostensibly heterosexual men rape other males, we include sexual desire in our explanations. (Not that the sexual desire of a man for a boy is considered good or healthy.) But when heterosexual men rape women, the glaringly obvious desire of these men to have sex with women is whisked away by Q Grrl & her ilk and left out of any explanation for the behavior of those men.
Why do some men not rape? Never having raped a woman, I can vouch that I never stood to the side and thought, "Well, I just let those other guys rape and I'll reap the benefits of their actions". I am part of the same patriarchal culture as the rapists so why do I not rape women? I watched the same television programs and the same movies produced by this "rape culture" so what happened? I tend to think of this "rape culture" idea as being like "Intelligent Design". That women are not considered equals, indeed – they are treated like chattel, etc. is so anathema to everything they believe in that it is surely evidence that of a intelligence behind it all. And so it's a conspiracy behind which is men. Andrea Dworkin said that "forced sex is not incidental to male sexuality but is in practice paradigmatic." Male sexuality is inherently and thoroughly evil, in other words. "Rape culture" advocates remove sex from male sexuality and add a nebulous puppet master. Sexuality, whether male or female, is a vast spectrum of attitudes, desires, and, consequently, actions. I would argue that the desire to have sex with someone is amoral as is the act of coitus when devoid of context. (Consensual sex is good while coerced sex is bad.) People are neither entirely good nor bad. Rape is an act of violence and about power. But it's also about sex and the breakdown of moral restraint. Everyday millions of people who would never think of walking into a store and stealing a CD commit theft by downloading music. Regardless of the actions of the recording industry, it is theft. No one is physically hurt in the process and the consequences are much less dire than are those of, say, rape. Yet the moral concept of "stealing is wrong" breaks down and greed prevails. I'm not trying to trivialize rape but rather I'm saying that a similar breakdown happens with regards to rape and that one component of rape is fulfilling the desire for sex. Just as no one has the right to steal music, no one has the right to have non-consensual sex. Men who rape are deplorable. In addition, it is also deplorable when individuals and the media place the onus of rape on a woman instead of a man. No woman wants to be raped thusly her clothing, level of intoxication, and sexual history are not relevant.
There are over 6 billion people on this planet and this isn't the case because sex is a choice on par with chocolate or vanilla. It's because our desire to express our sexuality is primal, deep-rooted, and pervasive. While I'm not saying that men are nothing but a bunch of brutes who can only be trusted to put their penises in a bodily orifice, I find this bit of hyperbole closer to the truth than the image of a celibate priest. The challenge of preventing rape involves a number of things. Perhaps the easiest changes we could make are in our legal system. Make it mandatory that DAs bring rape cases to trial, for instance, and ensure that the bullshit like a woman's sexual history are excluded from the proceedings. And while teaching men to be respectful and not to rape is a necessity, you can do that until you're blue in the face but it still won't be enough. Jesus was pretty clear about being nice to one another yet this doesn't stop many Christians from treating their fellow human beings like crap. We huddle around our televisions and watch a National Geographic show featuring two lions clawing at each other over a lioness and think "we're not like that". We humans are just like that. It is the height of arrogance to think that sexual competition just disappeared in an evolutionary poof of feminist logic. Today we deny men are by their natures more aggressive and more competitive than women (generally) and are off on some fool's errand to wipe an imaginary slate clean only to write "I WILL NOT RAPE" on it. Instead we ought to think about ways to set up a system of checks & balances to deal with male aggression and competitive drives. No woman, excepting if she were a true pacifist (a truly untenable position) would have a problem with one man being aggressive in her defense. The trick is to divert, restrict, and harness male impulses towards such desirable ends because we can't get rid of the impulses themselves.
Whew! Got waaay off track.
23 November, 2005
The Cinema Shows
In addition to tasting some fine beers as of late, I've also been to the cinema to see the latest Harry Potter flick and Mirror Mask. While both films are fantasies with teenage protagonists, that's about all they have in common. First, let me begin with Potter.
Goblet of Fire was a really fun movie and I enjoyed it immensely. This time around, we are not shown the horrors Harry experiences living with his aunt & uncle and there's no Quidditch match. In their steads the audience gets the Tri-Wizard Tournament and boys & girls "discovering" each other. The TWT provides plenty of scary moments and great action while the flowering sexuality of the kids makes for some humorous moments such as when Harry dribbles water out of his mouth while making eye contact with a hottie across the room.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione are all around 15 in the film and there's plenty of teenage awkwardness to be found - giggling and gawking at the opposite sex, finding a date, etc. I felt so glad sitting there in my chair that I wasn't in high school anymore. The lurch towards adulthood in Prisoner of Azkaban is now a run. This was punctuated at the end of the film with the death of one of the kids. It was an emotionally wrenching scene with the boy's father hovering over the motionless body crying from the depth of his soul. It brought tears to my eyes. Just as the students begin noticing each other in new ways, the role of adults in the story changed too. Hagrid has gone from mentor to light comic relief in a much-reduced role. The kids are becoming more self-reliant and look to each other more often and less to the adults. While the books can go on forever, the film has a limited amount of time to get everything across so the paucity of screentime devoted to certain characters is understandable. Even though I wish Hagrid and Prof. Snape got more time onscreen, the story was still immensely enjoyable.
I appreciate stories aimed at kids that know that people don't just suddenly become adults when they turn 18 and somehow are magically endowed with adult powers and understanding. While 15 year-olds see and understand the world differently and more naively than adults, they don't need to be coddled. Kids are naturally curious and want to know about the world and stories should be a part of this process. Such stories should give glimpes of all aspects of life, both positive and negative. While I'm not suggesting that all stories are equally appropriate for adults and kids, stories aimed at young folk shouldn't pure give the illusion that life is a bowl of cherries. Innocence is lost at birth and every stumble towards adulthood should rightly be filled with knowledge of what's to come.
I was initially drawn to Mirror Mask because Neil Gaiman co-wrote the screenplay. While I'm not a big fan of his work, he's no hack so at the least I'd be seeing a fantasy film that goes beyond the run-of-the-mill. And the movie did not disappoint.
The story concerns Helena Campbell, a 15 year-old girl and aspiring artist whose parents own and run a small circus. We are introduced to Helena as she is lying in bed shirking her work responsibilities for the circus. She is confronted by her mother and wishes she were dead. Shortly after this common parent-child confrontation, Joanne – the mother, falls unconscious during the show and is hospitalized. Struggling with guilt, Helena wakes up in a dreamworld which was lovingly rendered in CGI. Truth be told, its gorgeous. There is a mix of normal buildings with fantastic ones. Helena meets a juggler named Valentine who becomes her partner and comic foil. Everyone wears masks and there are several strange creatures including sphinxes that seem to wear masks that are human faces. And so, with Valentine in tow, Helena goes through a voyage of self-discovery with teenaged tenacity. She is mistaken for a princess and arrested. After she's found to be the wrong person, Helena learns that dark powers are encroaching on those of light and she undertakes the task of finding the charm which will awaken the Light Queen who was put under a spell and fell into a magical slumber.
It was an enchanting story and was beautiful. I give the production crew credit for making a wonderful other world whose visual appeal didn't overshadow the story which interspersed the adventure with some good humor. And to top it off, books play a prominent role and there's a really cool library. If that wasn't enough, Stephen Fry plays the librarian.
Mirror Mask is no longer playing in Madison. Hopefully it will return to the cheap theater as it most definitely deserves a longer run than it enjoyed.
Goblet of Fire was a really fun movie and I enjoyed it immensely. This time around, we are not shown the horrors Harry experiences living with his aunt & uncle and there's no Quidditch match. In their steads the audience gets the Tri-Wizard Tournament and boys & girls "discovering" each other. The TWT provides plenty of scary moments and great action while the flowering sexuality of the kids makes for some humorous moments such as when Harry dribbles water out of his mouth while making eye contact with a hottie across the room.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione are all around 15 in the film and there's plenty of teenage awkwardness to be found - giggling and gawking at the opposite sex, finding a date, etc. I felt so glad sitting there in my chair that I wasn't in high school anymore. The lurch towards adulthood in Prisoner of Azkaban is now a run. This was punctuated at the end of the film with the death of one of the kids. It was an emotionally wrenching scene with the boy's father hovering over the motionless body crying from the depth of his soul. It brought tears to my eyes. Just as the students begin noticing each other in new ways, the role of adults in the story changed too. Hagrid has gone from mentor to light comic relief in a much-reduced role. The kids are becoming more self-reliant and look to each other more often and less to the adults. While the books can go on forever, the film has a limited amount of time to get everything across so the paucity of screentime devoted to certain characters is understandable. Even though I wish Hagrid and Prof. Snape got more time onscreen, the story was still immensely enjoyable.
I appreciate stories aimed at kids that know that people don't just suddenly become adults when they turn 18 and somehow are magically endowed with adult powers and understanding. While 15 year-olds see and understand the world differently and more naively than adults, they don't need to be coddled. Kids are naturally curious and want to know about the world and stories should be a part of this process. Such stories should give glimpes of all aspects of life, both positive and negative. While I'm not suggesting that all stories are equally appropriate for adults and kids, stories aimed at young folk shouldn't pure give the illusion that life is a bowl of cherries. Innocence is lost at birth and every stumble towards adulthood should rightly be filled with knowledge of what's to come.
I was initially drawn to Mirror Mask because Neil Gaiman co-wrote the screenplay. While I'm not a big fan of his work, he's no hack so at the least I'd be seeing a fantasy film that goes beyond the run-of-the-mill. And the movie did not disappoint.
The story concerns Helena Campbell, a 15 year-old girl and aspiring artist whose parents own and run a small circus. We are introduced to Helena as she is lying in bed shirking her work responsibilities for the circus. She is confronted by her mother and wishes she were dead. Shortly after this common parent-child confrontation, Joanne – the mother, falls unconscious during the show and is hospitalized. Struggling with guilt, Helena wakes up in a dreamworld which was lovingly rendered in CGI. Truth be told, its gorgeous. There is a mix of normal buildings with fantastic ones. Helena meets a juggler named Valentine who becomes her partner and comic foil. Everyone wears masks and there are several strange creatures including sphinxes that seem to wear masks that are human faces. And so, with Valentine in tow, Helena goes through a voyage of self-discovery with teenaged tenacity. She is mistaken for a princess and arrested. After she's found to be the wrong person, Helena learns that dark powers are encroaching on those of light and she undertakes the task of finding the charm which will awaken the Light Queen who was put under a spell and fell into a magical slumber.
It was an enchanting story and was beautiful. I give the production crew credit for making a wonderful other world whose visual appeal didn't overshadow the story which interspersed the adventure with some good humor. And to top it off, books play a prominent role and there's a really cool library. If that wasn't enough, Stephen Fry plays the librarian.
Mirror Mask is no longer playing in Madison. Hopefully it will return to the cheap theater as it most definitely deserves a longer run than it enjoyed.
Quaffing
On Monday night I went out to Cafe Montmartre with some friends. They were all excited about the discounted wine prices but I stuck to beer. (Does this make me a prole?) It's certainly not that I dislike wine but I just can't drink a lot of it, especially the red, drier varieties that my compadres indulged in. One glass of the stuff and I've had my fill. Besides, there was the Nectar From New Glarus to be had. But then I discovered that Capital's new Island Wheat was available on tap and I just had to try it. (It won't be available in bottles until the spring.)
While I'm a lover of beer, I am no expert. Giving me the specific gravity of a brew to 100 decimal places would do little for my appreciation of it. I just know what I like, for the most part. The Island Wheat was pretty tasty but not tasty enough. Maybe the stuff I quaffed was from a bad batch, I dunno. I just know that it had a nice crisp and subtle flavor to it but it was too subtle. To be sure, I expect I'll be drinking some of it next July when I'm outside in 100 degree sun having a cigarette thanks to the tyrrany of the Left and it will prove to be remarkable refreshing. But, after one pint, that's about all I can say about it. No doubt I'll drink more to refine my opinion during the harsh winter months, though. I'm of Northern and Eastern European extraction. My ancestors didn't mess around with crisp, clean beers when they were freezing their asses off at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains or in the Black Forest. No, they drank heartier brews that pushed back the cold and Capital has plenty of those such as their Oktoberfest and Autumnal Fire.
A couple hours in, a woman named Maggie someone-or-other (I think) started playing music which seemed to capture the attention of everyone in the joint except us. While I don't want to be harsh considering we heard only a song or two, I found the music to be exceptionally boring. Heck, maybe it was also the mood of my group that made us anxious to escape from her rather joyless tunes. Charles having recently broken up with his girlfriend, was looking for escape as was the Chili Princess who was seeking our help in finding ways to dump her current beau. And Maggie X's music didn't help. I did my best to avoid listening but I couldn't totally escape it. The songs seemed to be of the I-am-woman-hear-me-mope variety. Think these lyrics to the tune of "The Roof Is Leaking":
I got knocked up and
had an abortion
My new man wants me in bed
doing contortions
Oh, men are assholes and
I'm sittin' here cryin'
Blah blah blah. Maggie, if you're reading this, please send me a link to some of your stuff so I can give it a better listen. Anyway, we left and went to The Caribou where we had some Capital Amber and let the Packers get my hopes up that they might actually win. Aaron was bartending and was his usual grumpy self. (I suspect he's even grumpier now that he cannot smoke on the job.) The Amber was mighty fine. And so, while I was disappointed with my first run-in with their Wheat Ale, I shall definitely try it again.
While I'm on the topic of beer, this looks humorous and tasty:
But others are unamused:
But Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, isn't laughing.
"I guess some people are going to get a chuckle out of it. I don't see anything funny about it," Buttars said. "Anytime someone (tries to) sarcastically exploit issues of morality in those kinds of ways is very unappealing. But it doesn't bother me, whatever they put on there."
I'm glad the label doesn't bother him. Obviously the bullshit that is "Intelligent Design" doesn't either.
Wasatch also makes this brew:
My sentiments exactly.
While I'm a lover of beer, I am no expert. Giving me the specific gravity of a brew to 100 decimal places would do little for my appreciation of it. I just know what I like, for the most part. The Island Wheat was pretty tasty but not tasty enough. Maybe the stuff I quaffed was from a bad batch, I dunno. I just know that it had a nice crisp and subtle flavor to it but it was too subtle. To be sure, I expect I'll be drinking some of it next July when I'm outside in 100 degree sun having a cigarette thanks to the tyrrany of the Left and it will prove to be remarkable refreshing. But, after one pint, that's about all I can say about it. No doubt I'll drink more to refine my opinion during the harsh winter months, though. I'm of Northern and Eastern European extraction. My ancestors didn't mess around with crisp, clean beers when they were freezing their asses off at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains or in the Black Forest. No, they drank heartier brews that pushed back the cold and Capital has plenty of those such as their Oktoberfest and Autumnal Fire.
A couple hours in, a woman named Maggie someone-or-other (I think) started playing music which seemed to capture the attention of everyone in the joint except us. While I don't want to be harsh considering we heard only a song or two, I found the music to be exceptionally boring. Heck, maybe it was also the mood of my group that made us anxious to escape from her rather joyless tunes. Charles having recently broken up with his girlfriend, was looking for escape as was the Chili Princess who was seeking our help in finding ways to dump her current beau. And Maggie X's music didn't help. I did my best to avoid listening but I couldn't totally escape it. The songs seemed to be of the I-am-woman-hear-me-mope variety. Think these lyrics to the tune of "The Roof Is Leaking":
I got knocked up and
had an abortion
My new man wants me in bed
doing contortions
Oh, men are assholes and
I'm sittin' here cryin'
Blah blah blah. Maggie, if you're reading this, please send me a link to some of your stuff so I can give it a better listen. Anyway, we left and went to The Caribou where we had some Capital Amber and let the Packers get my hopes up that they might actually win. Aaron was bartending and was his usual grumpy self. (I suspect he's even grumpier now that he cannot smoke on the job.) The Amber was mighty fine. And so, while I was disappointed with my first run-in with their Wheat Ale, I shall definitely try it again.
While I'm on the topic of beer, this looks humorous and tasty:
But others are unamused:
But Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, isn't laughing.
"I guess some people are going to get a chuckle out of it. I don't see anything funny about it," Buttars said. "Anytime someone (tries to) sarcastically exploit issues of morality in those kinds of ways is very unappealing. But it doesn't bother me, whatever they put on there."
I'm glad the label doesn't bother him. Obviously the bullshit that is "Intelligent Design" doesn't either.
Wasatch also makes this brew:
My sentiments exactly.
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