Sober Addendum

In comments, Mikey discusses the eminent Alan Fox, professor of comparative religion at U. Delaware, whose winter session class on intro to world religions once blew my effing mind. Fox makes a good point, which makes good sense to me, which is that another aspect of modern society which is missing is a rite of passage, or coming of age, ceremony. One of the weirder aspects of our culture is how we have extended adolescence well past when it used to be considered appropriate. Until the last 50 or 100 years, very rarely did you make it into your 20's without being married, whereas now that expectation has been pushed back 10 years, or even more.

With people going off to college, then doing grad school, or unpaid (or nearly unpaid) internships, or joining the Peace Corps, it seems like adolescence just goes on and on and on. Somewhere along the way you become a grownup, but nobody ever really tells you where that point is. That's the purpose of the tribal coming of age ceremony; it tells you when you are officially a grownup, and when it's time to stop screwing around and get on with the job of continuing the tribe, by hunting, gathering, growing, marrying, reproducing, etc.

Mikey then says (whole paragraph is [sic], Mikey's a great guy, but a terrible speller.)

He believed that this was why gangs flurished as they did. They offered both. The gang exists both for and by the members. People belong, the suffer, they overcome, and the gang becomes stronger.

Ever since then I've had a dream to become a Cryp. That's the real reason I moved out west.

This is, of course, said mostly tongue-in-cheek. But it brings up an important point to the idea of tribal identity. Tribes are funny things. They're not like the Kiwanis Club, or your club Ultimate team. You don't just sign up and voila! You're in the tribe. Historically, you only joined a tribe if you were born into it, married into it, or captured by one of its members. Modern tribes (such as gangs, cults, and even the circus) aren't quite so difficult to join, but it's still a whole lot more intensive than simply saying you want to be a part of one.

Being in a tribe is a very time-consuming thing. Again, it's not a job. Your job is probably part of your being in the tribe (for instance, a street-runner for the Crips), but when the job is done, you're still part of the tribe. The modern fascination with independence, living on one's own, joining a wide variety of activities; these are the antithesis of the tribal lifestyle, and one of the modern ideas that is going to have to be either deconstructed or modified so that they can coexist.

Late Friday Drunkblogging

Okay, it's not really that late (11:30), and I'm not really that drunk (barely tipsy, at best), but what the hell? I'm not big into the whole drunk dialing thing, and I don't have anyone I would call right now anyway, so instead I will leave a message for you, Faithful Reader. I hope I don't embarrass myself too badly with it.

I am also going to be splitting with tradition. Normally, I try to discuss some current event, and use it as a springboard for explicating my views on a subject. But after perusing the typical places I would find info about such events, I am uninspired. So I am going to try to improvise here, in the style of the great John Coltrane, albeit with words instead of notes, and regarding human happiness rather than, well, whatever the hell it was Coltrane played about.

So I've mentioned before in this space my idea that 'there is no one right way for people to live.' As with so many of my ideas, I blatantly stole this one from Daniel Quinn, whose work I acknowledge here (and, again, encourage you to check out Ishmael if you haven't by now.) But what, exactly does this mean?

Like any halfway-decent life philosophy, this one applies, more or less strongly, to a hundred, or a hundred hundred, different questions. Tonight's topic is: happiness.

Yes, I know, I'm thinking very small, just writing about happiness. Why not try something interesting, or important?

I will try to keep this brief-ish, although I'll almost undoubtedly fail. But hey; nobody's forcing you to read this, so feel free to give up anytime.

So yes, happiness. What is it, exactly, that makes us happy? Well, of course, there is a lot of psychological research into this sort of question. Which is a good thing, for the most part. Although I think that it is definitely possible to overthink this sort of issue, it's also a good thing to have some research that actually backs up the story you are telling.

And what is that story? Well, unsurprisingly to those who know me well, it starts with evolution and natural selection. Honestly, if you have doubts about whether or not human beings evolved, via the process of natural selection, to their current state, then you are hopeless and I have absolutely nothing to say to you on this front. Please return tomorrow for more thoughts about current movies, or something more in your intellectual wheelhouse.

So, human beings evolved. And, being as they were subject to evolutionary pressures, those that evolved to succeed in the environment they lived in did better. They reproduced more successfully, had more children, and those children, who shared many traits with their parents, eventually grew to take over, or rather to become, the community. Now what were those traits? In the case of cheetahs, we are not surprised to learn that they might have selection pressure to become faster, quicker, more stealthy. In the case of people, bigger and stronger is certainly good. But people are quite unique, apparently, in the vast selection pressure that intelligence was under. So, under the influence of this pressure, we got smarter.

Getting smarter allowed us all sorts of advantages. We learned how to hunt in packs. But not just by wandering around the woods and waiting to find prey. We learned how to track. We learned how to predict that when the rains came, the buffalo would be here. And when the grass bloomed, they would be over there. And, most importantly, we learned how to outsmart each other. None of this is particularly controversial in biological circles.

An idea which is almost certainly considered less conventional wisdom is the idea that natural selection also shaped us to be happy. I can't prove this, but it certainly seems to me that if you take two people, who are in all ways identical, only you change one such that the life he is living makes him happy, and satisfied, and you leave the other such that he feels no particular attachment to his life at all, that the first will be more successful in his life than the other. It just stands to make sense, to me. But, that said, I don't have the wherewithal to prove this piece of the theory, if it even is proveable.

However, if you'll accept that bit, I think the rest follows pretty well. So, given that we've been human beings (Homo Sapiens, that is) for roughly 200,000 years, and post-agricultural revolution for only 10,000, and post-industrial revolution for only 200, it kind of goes without saying that we spent much more time evolving to be happy in the pre-agricultural revolution lifestyle than we did to be happy the way we live now.

But what does this mean? I don't think that there's necessarily anything automatically better about the hunting+gathering lifestyle, although I will posit that it's not for no reason that most of us are just happy when we're on a walk in the woods. But one feature of the tribal lifestyle which I think is important is the feeling of community. Tribes exist on a very different plane from our modern society. One feature, the one which is most lacking in our modern-day society, is the feeling of belonging. The way that the tribe exists only for its members; the tribe, fundamentally, is the members.

This is very different from a modern corporation, say, which of course has employees, but is not of them. The corporation exists independent of the employees, and only partakes of them as much as it needs to to get its function done, which is generally the production of some service or good. The tribe, on the other hand, exists solely the help its members succeed and survive. It produces goods and services, but only as much as are needed by the tribe's members.

More than anything else, I think that we humans miss that feeling of connection. In a large way, it defines us. Makes us who we are, allows us to be more than we are. More than big TV's, or fast cars, or exotic vacations, I think that feeling connected to people, like you are part of a community that is larger than yourself, is what allows us to be really and truly happy. Unlike the TV, or the vacation, or an expensive meal, that connection is a gift that continues with time, grows deeper and better and richer, rather than depreciating with age.

And how do we get there, Faithful Reader? Well, unfortunately, not tonight. I see that I, as predicted, shattered through my goal of being brief-ish. Hopefully you can forgive this slight. For now, call your best friend. Say hi. Reconnect. Notice that, after just 30 minutes of talking, you feel better about yourself and your life than you did previously. Imagine what it would be like if every day were like that?

Aqua Teen Hunger Badassedness

Okay, I tried to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Really, I did. I got a DVD from Netflix and everything. I just couldn't do it. It stinks. It's not funny. Apparently, I did not do enough drugs in high school. Why, Mother, oh why couldn't I have just dropped a *little* bit of acid? Would that have been so awful? Then, I am sure, I would appreciate all the things that Cartoon Network keeps telling me I should like, but I just continue not liking.

However, that said, I saw the intro to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie and, god damn, that's some pretty funny shit. Warning, those Faithful Readers who happen to be my parents probably ought to not bother clicking over the link. It will just confuse you and make you sad.

But everyone else, click away!

(Hat tip: Ezra)

You Can Put Mascara On A Pig, But You Still Can't Make A Purse Out Of Her

This post by Daniel Larison is right on.

Let me interject here that this post is hosted by the all-new The American Scene blog. It was a very entertaining blog to read, back when it was just Reihan and Ross posting about, well, whatever. Now Ross moved on to The Atlantic, and Reihan has recruited about a phalanx of great conservative writers to post on all manner of topics. If you don't read any other conservative blogs, this one is a very good place to start, and probably stop. You won't find much that's being said on the wingnut end of the spectrum, but if you really want to know what they're saying, stop reading my blog and go listen to Limbaugh or something. But, reading TAS, you will have your mind opened to some new, intellectually honest conservative ideas.

Anyhow, back to Larison's post. I've felt for a long time that it is still absolutely true that America is the best country on earth to live in. The variety of opportunities, the general open-ness of the society, the beauty of the landscape, and the youthful vigor of the culture give it the adaptability and strength such that more things are possible here than anyplace else on the planet. Although, I should add, I wish our women were taller, like the Netherlands. And the Swiss still own our ass in chocolate and clocks. But hey, no one is perfect, right?

But loving your country, and thinking so highly of it, doesn't preclude the opportunity to criticize it and point out its flaws. Indeed, I believe that a requisite of true patriotism is open acknowledgement of your country's character, both in its best and worst lights. And, right now, one of our country's worst points is our government, specifically our foreign policy. That's not going to get fixed unless it is acknowledged, and McCain pointing out that America is still a great place to live doesn't alter the fact that our foreign policy seems to be designed to make that a less likely possibility in the future.

Mexicana Redux

I should add, however, that, pace Ezra, I am all in favor of more immigration if this increases the likelihood that I can get a decent damn burrito somewhere in the Boulder area.

Also, on a slightly more serious note, I fervently believe that the solution to illegal immigration is not less immigration, but more. The point of America is that we allow people who want to come here to come here, we just ought to make sure that we know who they are. It's a good part of the recently deceased bill that they put more stress on allowing immigration to occur easily for high-skill workers (I agree with Tom Friedman that every Ph.D. that a U.S. school hands out to a foreigner should come along with a completed green card application.)

But still, for the love of a really good fish taco, I'll happily sign off on a few more million illegals...

Pictures Up!

Okay, I've uploaded a bunch of my favorite pictures from the Yellowstone/Grand Tetons trip to my Flickr account, which, again, can be found here.

I think this one (right) is my favorite.

Although, I have to admit, I think I like Daisy's (left) quite a bit as well.

Of course, neither are as good as this one, which LJ referred to in comments last week.

Pax Mexicana

Looks like the 'comprehensive immigration' bill is dead. Only this time, it's dead-like-Count-Dooku dead, not dead-like-Jason-Voorhees dead. In other words, no sequels, at least not in the near term.

I really never understood why we absolutely had to have a comprehensive immigration bill right now. What's wrong with, you know, passing the parts of the bill which have popular support in the legislature? President Bush says that we can't do it, because, well, you have to deal with all the problems. Which I agree with. You have to protect the border, and you have to enforce the laws of the country, but you also have to come to grips with the reality of 12 million-plus illegals here now, and they're not all going to go home. But the fact that you have to deal with it eventually doesn't actually explain why it has to be done all at once.

I hate to say it, but I'm with Mickey Kaus on this issue; first you enforce the border. Build a fence if you want. Make it harder for illegals to be here - not by making their lives miserable and breaking down doors, just enforce the laws making it illegal to employ them. I understand at least the concept of supply-side economics, but supply-side public policy is completely ridiculous. Let's reduce drug supply by attacking drug dealers, rather than by reducing demand. Let's reduce illegal immigration by attacking immigrants, rather than reducing demand by cracking down on the employers who make it economically feasible for them to be here.

Once you've done that, and made it a little bit less enticing for people to try to cross the border, whether it's because it's less likely that they'll succeed, or less likely that they can find a job once they get here, then you get to work legalizing everyone who is here now. Otherwise, it just seems like you are telling people all around the world 'come to America! Work for a while, then we'll legalize you!'

But, of course, I don't think the President *really* wants to stop illegal immigration. I believe this for two main reasons. One is his personal and political dedication to Hispanics. This is, to some extent, a laudable trait, although of course it is simply a continuation of his tendency to think that what is good for his friends and the people he likes is good for the country. The second is that, as a good corporate lackey, Bush is kind of in favor of increasing the number of people in the country that his contributors can employ that increase downward pressure on the lower end of the wage scale.

Between the bad faith and the bad thoughts about consequences, I think the status quo is better than what would have happened if this bill had passed.

Sex, Drugs, And, Ummm, More Drugs

I think Kevin raises a very interesting point here.

I think it's very important, even while railing against the ridiculous nature of 'me-too' patents and billions spent by big pharma to convince us that we have exotic diseases (Oh no! I have Restless Leg Syndrome! I might die tomorrow!), to remember that drug research is an expensive, high-risk effort, and that pharmaceutical companies who try to tackle harder problems have to be able to make more money back in return to justify the risk.

It's telling that most of the patents filed in medical fields (at one time, the rate was 90%, not sure what it is these days) originate with American research, even when it is pursued by European companies operating in the US. It's important that any new health insurance plan that is pursued keeps the system open to the possibility of drug companies making enough money to stay in business.

It's key that, in the US, drug companies have been left pretty free to set their own prices for drugs, whereas in social insurance countries, the price they can charge is set by the government. Essentially, the social insurance countries are getting a free ride on the backs of the American taxpayer; Glaxo can sell their drug for lower profit in France, if they know they can make it up by overcharging the Americans. Kevin argues, and I think he's right, that if the Americans refuse to pay as much, in the form of government-bargained or -mandated prices, Glaxo won't stop trying to develop new drugs. Instead, they will just bargain harder with the other countries, and make up for the lost money there.

This is more 'fair', in a universalist sense of the word, although one can certainly argue that Americans, as the richest nation on Earth, should simply pay more. On a more cynical note, it also will make the US healthcare system look better, with reference to the rest of the world, because as we start paying less for our medicines, they will start paying more.

Ratatouille

Wait, there's a movie about a what that can cook?

It's about a rat that can what?

And what is it's ridiculously stupid, pun-ny name?

Oh, wait, it's a Pixar film? Just tell me how much I owe for the damn ticket...

In The Course Of Human Events

It didn't take long for the glow of my vacation to wear off, as within the first 20 minutes of getting into work this morning I found out that

1) there's a huge deadline at 9 AM Wednesday morning which nobody bothered to tell me about until just now, which means that I will probably be pulling a very long day at work today and

2) the HROM project, my nominal home for the last year, was not re-funded by our sponsor. This came as a big surprise, and it's as of yet entirely unclear what it means.

#2 has more effect on me in the long term, as it means that I'll have to find another home inside the company. But I'm not overly concerned about my ability to do so. Fortunately, thanks to #1, I know that I'll have a job for at least the rest of the day, and more accurately, through the end of July I know exactly what I'll be doing. What's next is entirely up in the air.

So, the short version is you all will have to go another day without many posts from me. But I am home, safe and sound. The trip was fantastic, I have lots of photos (a few of which don't entirely suck, although I have a *lot* of work to do to figure out my camera better), and there will be much more posted about it by the end of the week. For now, it's good to be home.

Hit Me Baby, One More Time

Sorry for the extremely light posting of the last few days. After my last somewhat...energetic post, some very nice gentlemen in black suits came and took me away to a wonderful camp, where I learned all about the goodness and wonderfulality that is our inevitable victory in the War on Terror, and also the joy 40,000 volts can render on your scrotum.

So, please, let it be known that I officially Support The Troops.

Okay, slightly more seriously, I was just very busy all weekend and all day today, planning and preparing for vacation, which is 7 days in Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks. We leave tomorrow, first thing, and will be getting back on Monday, 6/26. Have a great week, y'all, and I'll be sure to have lots of stories and photos when we get back. Stay classy, San Diego...

Support The Troops; Kill A Kitten!

There's a big kerfluffle going on in the blogosphere about comments alleged to Harry Reid yesterday in The Politico. TNR's The Plank tries to make the allegation that Politico is trying to gin up interest by essentially falsifying quotes. Turns out the quotes appear to have been confirmed, and TNR basically admitted as much today, retracting most, although not all, of their allegations.

But that shit is all inside baseball, as they say, and completely uninteresting. The bigger point, to me, is the fact that Politico's allegations really aren't that big of a deal, as far as I am concerned. Let's get to the meat of it.

Reid is quoted as calling General Peter Pace, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as being 'incompetent.' He also implied that General Petraeus is 'out of touch.' This, of course, led to the usual fulminations from the right-wing rage machine, such as Tony Snow's exclamation that

At a time of war, for a leader of a party that says it supports the military, it seems outrageous to be issuing slanders toward the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and also the man who's responsible for the bulk of military operations in Iraq

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, ridiculous, and I'm sick and tired of this characterization of 'supporting the troops'. Fuck the troops. I support America. The fact is, we send the troops to kill, and sometimes to die, when it's in our national interest to do so. The question of whether or not they want to do it is, basically, irrelevant.

Spencer Ackerman wrote an article in last week's Washington Monthly which claimed that, on balance, the troops are in favor of our mission there, and would be disappointed if we left. In his diavlog with Eli Lake on bloggingheads.tv, I was particularly struck by the fact that he claimed the biggest complaint that the troops have is that they don't get in enough honest firefights. But this shouldn't be surprising. There's an old saw that says "when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." What do you think the view looks like when you are the hammer?

The troops are our hammer. The civilian leadership in the government is the carpenter. The beauty of being a carpenter (at least, if you are a halfway decent one) is that you have a whole belt full of tools and techniques to attack a problem with. It should come as no surprise that the troops want to be in Iraq. They've been told that it's their job to do that, and as they are loyal, faithful, and, frankly, trained not to think too much about it, that's what they believe.

The whole reason that the Constitution puts civilians in charge of the military is that we don't want the hammer telling us what it can effectively pound on. The civvies in charge have to be the ones to make the decisions of what is, and what is not, worth doing. The hammer's job is to pound what it is told to.

So fuck Tony Snow. Fuck 'supporting the troops.' Let's worry about supporting America, and do what's right for us, and the world. In this case, that will result in less troops dying, less young Muslim men growing up learning to hate America, and less outright hypocrisy. When noting that the general in charge of an occupation that took a reasonably functional, albeit dictatorial, country and turned it into a seething mass of hatred and murder, just might not have been doing his job exactly right is equated with 'not supporting the troops', then 'supporting the troops' is the wrong thing to do. Good for Harry Reid for showing testicular fortitude and starting to point that out.

Grumpy Old Men

If I had never watched an episode of bloggingheads.tv, and all I knew about Mickey Kaus I learned from reading his blog over the last month or so, I would think that he was some crotchety old man, with more of his teeth missing than still remaining, sitting in the front entryway in a rocking chair, lovingly nestling his shotgun, and murmuring about them 'durn immigrants.'

Man, that guy has got a seriously one-track mind. It's almost impressive, but also incredibly depressing, since he is very smart, and can be funny, but universally deploys his talents in the direction of bashing Democrats (nominally 'his' party), anti-Clinton scandalmongering, and hating on immigrants and immigration.

Big Shot Brob

FYI, last NBA post for a while, so LJ, you can start reading again after this.

Well, another year, another title for Robert Horry, a.k.a. Big Shot Brob.

Let it be known that, since the 1993-94 season, either Robert Horry or Steve Kerr have won 12 of the 14 NBA titles that have been awarded. 7 by Horry. You can have your Tim Duncan, your Lebron James, your Shaq. If I want to win a title, I am starting off by taking Big Shot Brob.

As for the Finals themselves? The less said, the better.

Monday, Bloody Monday

So on Monday I had my once-every-three-years annual physical. Apparently, according to my doc, strong-like-bull specimens like myself don't actually need one every year, at least not at this point, until the dreaded prostate exam kicks in in a few years. So hurray for me.

I knew they were going to do a cholesterol test, along with the standard array of STD blood tests that occasionally sexually active kids like me get (hey, who knows where my hand has been?) I decided to just fast until the checkup, rather than go back another morning for it. Holy crap; I sort of remember how much I disliked not eating for Yom Kippur when I was younger. This was horrible. The appointment was at 1:30, and by about noon my body was sending out S.O.S. messages in the form of stomach grumbles that were undoubtedly being picked up by the seismologists down in Boulder.

The physical itself was fine. I am the picture of good health. The doc told me that they wouldn't be calling me with my blood test results unless anything bad came up. So, when I got a message the next day telling me to call back, my blood test results were back, that put me in a tailspin of fear and doubt the likes of which I rarely experience. I won't go into the details, but given that I have a family history of diabetes, some heart disease, and a fetish for 9-year-old Panamanian boys (joke! that's a joke! I don't really!), who knew what the worst could be?

So when I finally got on the phone with someone, my heart was racing as I found out that...

My cholesterol is 10 points lower than it was 3 years ago.

Now, I understand that it's still 194, which isn't great for someone my age. But I eat well, and I exercise plenty, and I don't have any of the other risk factors for heart disease (blood pressure is 110/70, rest pulse is 52, etc.), and I am kind of assuming that it's a genetic thing and eventually they'll just put me on the statins and I'll be fine. Was it really worth an hour of terror, which undoubtedly took a few months off my life, for that?

Holy Crap!

Well, it's been fun blogging for all of you, Faithful Readers, but I'm afraid that I simply won't have the time from my chateau in the Swiss Alps...

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Photos Up!

Okay, finally got some photos posted from my new toy, including a bunch from Nate and Jess' wedding in Estes Park over Memorial Day Weekend. You can see my entire Flickr collection here.

What I'm Watching

Scrubs, Season 5 on DVD.

Damn, that show took a serious turn to the better last year (the season that just ended was Season 6.) Much like M.A.S.H., which started out as a pure laugher show, and later developed into an award-winning drama, while keeping some of the elements of the humor but adding a serious amount of darkness and depth, it appears that in Season 5 Scrubs is trying to pull off the same jujitsu.

I always enjoyed the early seasons, but they were kind of light and fluffy. Occasionally, the show inspired to Make You Think, but it was always in the ABC Afterschool Special kind of way. Just on the first disc of Season 5, we have an entire show inspired by The Wizard of Oz, two episodes showing Cox trying to break free of the shackles placed on him by his horrible family history (money line: "when my dad wanted to show affection, he would just purposely miss when he threw the bottles at my head.") and several other serious looks at the inspiration behind some of the characters' actions.

Sadly, I think I am going to have to go out and buy Season 5 (these are the first ones I've ever felt the desire to really re-watch) and hurry up and watch Season 6 on NBC.com before the episodes disappear from their 'watch for free' viewer.

Where's Your Precious Darwin Now?

Via Faithful Reader E.S., the skeletal remains of Pac-Man. I'd like to see some froufrou evolutionary biologist explain that!

And, forget the shark in Jaws, Pac-Man is clearly the perfectly designed killing machine. All that dude does is eat dots, eat fruit, and eat ghosts. And get it on with Ms. Pac-Man. Damn, that bow is sexy!

And, who can forget the greatest video game-inspired chart ever in the history of mankind?

Epidemics And Myths

Ezra posts about the rise of obesity in America, and the fact that there has been a decided uptick in obesity rates across the country over the last 15 years, in pretty much every county of every state. He uses this information as an argument against the set point theory, which is the idea that everyone has an ideal weight set point, and it's very hard to change that point.

Now, I'm fairly agnostic about the set point idea. I am also fairly uneducated about it, because, for reasons I'll get to in a bit, I don't think it's very important whether it's true or not. But I am assuming that it's a simplified caricature to say that it states that people have a specific weight which basically never changes. Because, both anecdotally and statistically, that is pretty clearly wrong. Most people get heavier throughout life. So I am assuming that the set point functions as a baseline which is very hard to get and maintain below, but that you can raise it if your weight gets and stays high for a period of time.

I know that, anecdotally for me, I have been pretty much stuck between 200 and 205 for quite a while now, 5 years or so. It seems almost independent of how I eat, how much I exercise, etc. I am certainly more muscular now than I was at the beginning of that 5-year period, and I *definitely* eat more healthily, but the weight seems to magically remain nearly constant.

Now, I've posted previously about my secrety identity as a fat lesbian in a fairly thin man's body, so I might be a bit biased on this subject. But I find very convincing the field of thought that says that obesity is actually not a significant risk factor for health. My authority in this field, although I haven't done enough reading to really know if he is considered an authority, is Paul Campos, who is a law prof at CU who has a weekly column in The Rocky Mountain News out of Denver. His book on the topic is titled The Obesity Myth, and is a very interesting read.

The main points of the book, and the anti-anti-obesity movement more generally, are that obesity itself is not a particular health risk and, in fact, being mildly obese is much healthier than being mildly underweight. His contention, which the statistics appear to bear out under serious regression analysis, is that the main risk is the modern American sedentary lifestyle. Now, under most circumstances, there is a good (negative) correlation between activity level and weight. But it's far from 100%; everyone knows that guy who never does a situp or goes for a run, but naturally has 6% body fat, and likewise there are plenty of people who exercise constantly, but still are defined as overweight or obese by modern medical standards.

The statistics appear to say that being slightly overweight (BMI around 25-28), but leading an active lifestyle, is in fact the best thing you can do for your life expectancy. I don't remember the details, but I remember the stats as being fairly convincing. The simplest fact is that, even as we have gotten fatter over the last 25 years, our life expectancy has continued to climb.

The problem, of course, is severalfold. For one, you cannot easily measure someone's activity level, whereas to measure their height and weight and calculate a BMI is trivially easy. So extracting this info from the statistics requires a much more intricate study. For another, it doesn't sell a lot of diet books or weight-loss drugs to say 'hey, ride your bike to work and walk a little more.' For a third, we have the cultural belief that 'thin is beautiful' and 'overweight is ugly', which complicates any story on the issue.

It remains to be seen what the long-term solution might be, but I strongly believe that, even if scientists discover a wonder pill that helps people shed pounds, it's going to be discovered that those who don't eat like shit and don't live a car-centered lifestyle are healthier, regardless of their weight.

Presented Without Comment

Perhaps, the funniest map of. all. time.

(Hat Tip: The Plank at The New Republic)

A Moment Of Silence

A brief moment of silence, please, for Don Herbert, better known as Mr. Wizard. He died yesterday, at the ripe age of 89 (hat tip to Faithful Reader E.S., who e-mailed me about this.)

I have no particularly strong memories of the 80's show, 'Mr. Wizard's World', which I often watched on Nickelodeon when I was a kid. But I remember the show dearly for it's low production value (contrary to, say, Bill Nye the science guy, Mr. Wizard almost always did his experiments with products you could buy at the hardware store) and fascinating ways he came up with explaining the natural world.

The one I most remember is when he demonstrated the concept of a chain reaction. He was discussing how nuclear reactions occur, and talked about the concept of critical mass. As a demo, he used a big plastic box, with mousetraps with ping-pong balls on top of them. With only a few mousetraps, setting one off would launch its ping-pong ball into the air, but it would come to a halt without setting off any others. A few more, and still the same. But only a few more, and suddenly there was a 'critical mass', where every ping-pong ball launched set off at least one more, and now one ball dropped in the box set off every single mousetrap before the bouncing was done. Very cool, and surprisingly similar to what happens in the core of a nuclear bomb, with nuclei taking the place of mousetraps, and neutrons as the ping-pong balls.

Today, the world is a slightly less interesting place for his passing.

Smiles And Grins

A very interesting test, to see if you can tell a fake smile from a real one. I got 16 out of 20 right, which isn't terrible.

Of course, this has nothing on Alllooksame.com's 'Japanese, Chinese, or Korean' test (click on Exam #1: Faces). I am downright terrible on this. I got 2 right once.

A 17 Year Old Lectures Us About Marriage

Slate did a very nice issue on marriage on Monday and Tuesday. In particular, I recommend Emily Yoffe's (also known as Dear Prudence and the author of What The Dog Did) column about the manic nature of the modern bride, and also Meghan O'Rourke's article decrying the engagement ring, especially of the diamond-bearing variety.

Matt Zeitlin takes on O'Rourke's writings, and especially the more aggressively feminist side of the argument, which is (essentially) that the engagement ring is a relic of a time when there was much less gender equity, and the ring was a symbol both of 'ownership', and a material indication of the fact that the groom was purchasing the bride's virginity.

He makes some strong points about the rather patronizing attitude that modern liberals have towards the institution of marriage, and how those attitudes are affecting the class divide, with divorce rates rising for the poor, even as they go down in society overall.

It's a tough situation, and a tough opinion, and he rightly is taken somewhat to task by his commenters. But, at the same time, it is wildly naive to think that there is no link whatsoever between the freedoms promoted by the sexual revolution and the increase of children being raised in one-parent homes. And I hope that we can all, rationally, agree that, all other things being equal, it's best if a child can be raised by two loving parents who have stayed together.

To that end, marriage is a good thing. Life can be hard sometimes, and dealing with other people can be hard. Dealing with another person every single day, for the rest of your life, has to be exhausting and frustrating, I would imagine. I am sure that dealing with me every day would be enough to drive anyone short of a beatified saint absolutely batshit insane.

Being married is taking a vow, a commitment, that you are going to do your best to get through those tough times with grace, dignity, and a spirit of cooperation. Of course it doesn't always work out, being that this is, you know, the real world and all that. But it's a good ideal to aspire to.

Which doesn't mean that you can't point out the silly anachronisms such as engagement rings and napkins that match the floral arrangements. But it does mean that, when you rail against The Patriarchy, it would be nice to also make at least an aside about the fact that marriage, or if you cannot get past its historical issues, some sort of serious lifelong commitment, is a Good Thing.

Entirely Uninformed Sopranos Opinions

Okay, so thus far I have only gotten most of the way through Season 3 of The Sopranos on DVD. I enjoy it, although it's not the show I have enjoyed the most of anything I've watched through Netflix. I don't have HBO, so of course have not seen the final episode yet (or anything beyond mid-season 3.) But, if the goal of a show is to have people talking about it, you have to give David Chase credit; the entire blogosphere has been atwitter for 2+ days now, talking about it. Hell, I listed to many of ESPN Radio's podcasts, and most of them spent a significant portion of Monday's shows talking about it as well.

When you can have a bunch of sports talk shows talking about your highbrow, HBO television show...well, that's some kind of impressive.

My favorite column about the finale thus far is undoubtedly Ross's. For that matter, it's one of the best columns of his that I've ever read, which is saying something, as I really enjoy his writing. Favorite quote:

Which is what the show comes down to, in the end - a wicked man in a wicked profession, who has intimations that something else, something better, might be out there waiting to be claimed ... but in the end prefers living the only life he knows.

This is a very deep and insightful point to make about the show, and about people. Human beings are fundamentally both very conservative and very adaptable. It's a strange, almost paradoxical combination, but it also makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. If you grow up with life being a certain way, you'll be more successful at living that way if you can adapt your expectations and behaviors to fit best within that mold. However, once you have grown up in that style, it goes almost without saying that your behavior and skillset are best-suited for that life, and hence you will resist any significant changes in that life.

I think this is probably why I don't enjoy The Sopranos as much as many other people do. I already kind of know that this is how people are. When I watch TV, or a movie, I don't want to see people acting pretty much the same way people always act. I want them to be more noble, or more evil, or more able to swing around New York City on webs and make out with Kirsten Dunst.

However, for all that, cheers to Chase for sticking by his artistic vision, especially by ending his series with a big 'Fuck You' to everyone who came in with preconceptions as to how the show 'ought to end.' Life is full of loose ends, in fact it's nothing but a series of them. A show that aims to be 'real' ought to end just the way it did.

The Brilliance Of Readers

This comments thread to a very small, and entirely cryptic post by Ezra is an absolute must-read. Money quote (from the Simpsons, as is all useful received wisdom):

Since the dawn of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun

Colin Powell's Unintended Genius

General Colin Powell was on Meet The Press this weekend. It was a generally uninformative interview, although it was interesting that he is actually willing to admit that he could not have gone before the UN to make the case for war if he had known then what he knows now. I like to think that it seems fairly rationally obvious that, given our original reasons for going to war (WMD stockpiles, active programs to reconstitute his nuclear program) turned out to be invalid, that we would not have gone to war if we knew then what we now know. But I understand that inside-the-Administration types are unable to make that sort of logistical leap.

Anyhow, Powell had a line which I think shows unintentional brilliance. He said (paraphrasing): "The surge is nothing more than putting a heavier lid on a pot of boiling water." Now, I know what he was trying to say, which is that a heavier lid is useful, in that it keeps the water from boiling over the edge of the pot. But it doesn't stop the boiling, which is the sectarian rage between the Sunnis and Shia.

But his metaphor says more than he knows. Any good chemist can tell you that, if you use a heavy enough lid, you actually raise the boiling point of the water. Which means that it can then get to a 'superheated' state, where you have liquid water above the boiling point at atmospheric pressure. This is how a pressure cooker works, of course. The problem is, you've now increased the pressure and the temperature of the boiling water, which means that when the boiling-over happens, which will happen eventually if you can't turn the stove off, it's much more dangerous.

This is pretty much what the surge is doing in Iraq. As I sketched out a few weeks ago in this space, the only thing that is really going to achieve a peaceful settlement of the grudges in this conflict is the passage of time, along with sufficient spatial separation to allow the hatreds to drop from a full boil to a slow simmer, to continue the metaphor. Nobody serious (unless you count Joe Biden, who I love to death but can't quite bring myself to take seriously) is suggesting establishing three separate countries/provinces/what have you, with real ethnic separation of the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds. Things are going to just keep boiling along until we turn down the heat (i.e. separate the various peoples enough to allow them to have some form of meaningful discussions) or until we run out of water (i.e. everyone there is dead).

This reminds me that I have been meaning to sketch out the ways in which President Bush's foreign policy reminds me of the negotiation strategies of a 6-year-old. I'll plan on developing the idea a bit over time, but here's the #1 way:

When this administration tries a plan, and it doesn't work, their only solution is to try the same thing, only moreso. This reminds me of nothing so much as watching a 6-year-old head into a temper tantrum. At first, they are sniffling and tearing up a bit. They don't get their way, so they start some full-on crying. They are making people mad at this point, but still aren't getting that damn ice cream cone, and pretty soon they are laying on the floor, limbs thrashing, wailing inarticulately. But somehow, no matter how many brown people they kill...er...no matter how much they complain, the world simply refuses to conform to their wishes.

Republican Tomfoolery

Wonderful article by Andrew Sullivan over the weekend about the latest standings in the race for President. Best line: calling Rudy Giuliani the 9/12 candidate. This is a wonderful rejoinder to the moronic tactic of referring to anyone who objects to electrifying the genitals of potentially innocent young men in Abu Ghraib as being stuck in a 'September 10th mentality.'

His entire analysis of the war on terror can be reduced to the notion that we stay “on offense”. Offense means anything aggressive, it appears. He wouldn’t rule out a nuclear strike on Iran, for example. He endorses “any methods necessary” to extract information from anyone who might seem like a terrorist.

This is a big point, and it remains to be seen whether or not a Democrat is going to be able to elucidate it coherently. The concepts 'being offensive' and 'remaining on offense' are not synonymous. Or, if you want to be a bit more tactful, 'being aggressive' and 'remaining on offense' are different ideas.

Part of being tough is knowing which fights are worth fighting, and which ones are red herrings. A smart enemy, knowing that they are massively overmatched militarily, will try and draw you into conflicts where their actual exposure is quite low. Maybe they can get you to raise your exposure and inflict actual damage and casualties, but even if they can't, if they can just get you chasing them all over the globe, it's going to sap morale at home and make you look weak and pathetic abroad.

The last thing to do, in this situation, is actually run all over the world doing your enemy's bidding. And yet, there we are, with a depressingly-large portion of the conservative mainstream wanting to do it all over again en route to Tehran.

In The Garden Of Eden, Baby...

Via Andrew, a guided visit of the new "Answers in Genesis Creation Museum" in Ohio.

For once, I'm speechless. You have to love the multiple bouts of incest that the human species has gone through, according to the story...

The Record Company's Gonna Give Me Lots Of Money

Okay, I doubt that this will be the single item that drives traffic over the top, but Barack Obama's campaign is having a 'dinner with Barack' contest, where everyone who donates money by Wednesday is entered into a contest, with a chance to win dinner with Barack and 4 other supporters.

I figured now was as good a time as any to enter into such a contest, not that I expect to win or anything. I'm not even sure I would want to go; as cool as it would be, I don't think of myself as the kind of person who could really do something useful in this format. I'd much rather give my spot to someone with better ideas than me, who might not normally have this kind of access. Bob Wright, the blogfather of bloggingheads.tv, springs to mind.

Although, if Obama wins, our support in Albania may suffer for it...

Peanuts

Ingredient list on the pack of honey-roasted peanuts I bought today:

Peanuts, Sugar, Vegetable Oil, Honey, Modified Food Starch, Salt, and
Xanthan Gum. CONTAINS PEANUT INGREDIENTS.

Okay, I know that some people have really horrible food allergies, and that peanuts are among the most common and deadly of these allergies.

But really, if you are deadly allergic to peanuts, and end up buying a product called 'Honey Roasted Peanuts', and the #1 item on the ingredient list is 'Peanuts', does anyone believe that the warning 'CONTAINS PEANUT INGREDIENTS' is going to be what saves a life?

Sometimes, the best thing you can do for someone is just let them go.

Sunday Basketblogging

Okay, I know, I know, two NBA Finals posts in rapid (relatively) succession...

What can I say? I am an addict, this is how I get my jones on.

I think that David Stern has clearly been murdered, and replaced by the Stern-o-tron 6000, which is manufactured by Haddon Industries, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the NFL. That's the only rational explanation for the sheer idiocy of the way the finals have been scheduled.

They set the schedule soon after the San Antonio series was over, but before the Cavs/Pistons was done. As a result, there was a five-day break between the end of the Eastern Conference Finals and Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Any momentum that was created by the reasonably exciting end of the Cavs series (Lebron scores 48! Daniel Gibson goes for 19 in the 4th!) has had sufficient time to grind completely to a halt by the time Game 1 started. Any casual fan who read about Lebron, got excited, watched game 6, had to try and remember for 5 days that the next game was on?

And then, after scheduling Game 1 on Thursday, Game 2 is tonight, Sunday. Again, the momentum thing. You've given me an entire weekend to think about things that are not the NBA Finals. This is just really. fucking. stupid.

But man, that Stern-o-tron 6000 is quite realistic looking. Good job, NFL.

Apologies

Humblest apologies for the light posting the last two days. Kids, I have one piece of advice; grow up to be independently wealthy. Having to actually work sucks.

Also, don't do too many drugs, but also not too few.

Several ideas are floating around my brain, but the language centers have been short-circuited by the busy-ness of the end of the week. I'll post more over the weekend....

Finals Roundup

Okay, I know I said that I would be completely passing on the NBA playoffs if the Suns lost in six. What can I say? Some people are addicted to heroin, some to adrenaline. Me? NBA playoffs. It's a disease, I admit it.

I am, of course, pretty much on board with the CW, which is that this is absolutely San Antonio's series to lose. Cleveland's energy and the rotten NBA refs should be good enough for game 3 in Cleveland, but otherwise I see Spurs in 5.

LeBron is going to dominate Bowen, of this I have no doubt. Likewise, Duncan will easily get his over either Gooden or Ilgauskis. The difference makers are going to be Parker, who will pretty much waltz into the lane past Hughes or Gibson, and the San Antonio bench, which is roughly 3x the quality, experience, etc. of the Cavs.

Also, don't underestimate the importance of the fact that San Antonio has a coach who understands the basic fundamental concepts of coaching basketball, unlike basically every coach in the Eastern Conference.

More reading for you other dirty, dirty addicts:

Bill Simmons' paean to the Spurs. It's amazing that he can type so clearly with Duncan's 'nads tickling his tonsils like that.

A roundup of the greatest NBA floppers of all time. Priceless stuff.

Conservatives Can Be Stupid About Sex, Too

Just to make sure it doesn't seem like I am only critical of feminist statements about the current sexual environment, this article (on FoxNews.com nonetheless!) describes the irremable idiocy of so-called sodomy rules, where sodomy is typically defined as any sexual act that a non-heterosexual couple might be able to perform. In other words, anything other than vaginal intercourse (missionary position only, I presume.)

So in order to prevent gays from possibly being able to have sex with each other, it's required that we put a 17-year-old in prison for 4 years (and ongoing!) for having completely consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old?

Umm, yeah, that makes sense.

The Tragedy Of The Modern Cubicle-Monkey

News came down yesterday that I am being temporarily, massively, retasked at my job. Most of you know that we had a big demonstration last week for our customer. On the basis of that demo, they will be deciding whether or not to continue funding this project for another year. Company X's Board of Directors meeting will be occurring in a couple of weeks, and it could take up to a month or more after that for the final details of the next stage of the project to be finalized and the money to start flowing again, assuming they agree to re-up the funding.

So, in the meantime, most of the Optical Engineers on my project are being 'lent' out to the archive drive project, which is the chief project of InPhase since its inception. For comparison, ROM Stage 1 employed about 12 people, vs. about 105 for archive. I am one of those being lent (or 'whored', if you prefer) until the end of July or so.

On the up side, the project sounds interesting and challenging. The archive drive is moving into production phase. They have broken the process down into 12 stations. Each station will be manned by a single engineer, whose job is to understand the process, build several (8-15) versions, iron out the wrinkles, then write sufficiently detailed instructions that it can be handed off to a non-engineer for assembly-line production. Several people hunted me down today to stress both the difficulty and the importance of my stage, which is implementation and alignment of the final stage of the laser.

On the down side, I am naturally a lazy walrus of a human being. It has served me well and gotten me this far in life, and I don't see any particular reason to change. The idea of being tasked with something which is both difficult and important is, well, not the kind of thing lazy walruses take on by choice. But, nobody asked me my blubbery opinion.

I Don't Want A Pickle, I Just Wanna Ride My Motorcycle

Well, the Samuels Family Motorcycle Extravagansa of 2007 has been planned.

In early July, my 'rental units will be coming to Longmont, with Dad's Crrrazy Harley (which is worth twice the value of my car, and has an engine almost as big besides) in tow. All three of us; Dad on the bike, Mom in the Navigator, and me on the half-crotch rocket, will take off on a 5-day tour of Northern Colorado.

Here is the map of the planned trip. The trip is inspired by the Rule the Rockies tour, which is sponsored by the American Motorcyclist's Association. I think we hit most of the major points, and so long as nobody kills themselves and my ass doesn't develop bedsores and fall off, it should be a lot of fun.

What I'm Listening To

Devotchka!

You should listen to them, too. They rock. If you enjoyed 'Little Miss Sunshine', then you have already heard them, as they did the soundtrack. Here is their website, where you can listen to a few snippets.

The saddest news of the summer thus far is that I will not be able to attend their concert at Red Rocks on August 3rd, as that is the night before the Colorado Cup, the Ultimate Tournament I run. However, my Colorado-based Faithful Readers should definitely give it a good ponder. You won't regret going.

Sports Commentary, Or Deep Cultural Criticism?

Bill Simmons writes a very good article for ESPN The Magazine (published on Earth, the planet, as Tuesday Morning Quarterback would point out.) He is discussing the fleeting nature of sports fandom, as the next generation of superstars is lauded as being the Greatest! Ever! regardless of their relative quality vs. those who came before.

So why do we pump up the present at the expense of the past? Goldman believed that every era is "so arrogant (and) so dismissive," and again he was right, although that arrogance/dismissiveness isn't entirely intentional.

With all due credit to Daniel Quinn, whose arguments I am undoubtedly about to mangle, as I have done so often, it basically is true that people, at least as we tend to define them, are arrogant and dismissive of the past.

This is not universally true, and it has been less true in the past than it is now.

In the book Ishmael (once again, and in this case I mean this as seriously as I can possibly say it: if you haven't read this book, you should. And then you should read it again.) Quinn develops the argument that there was a major cultural break in human history about 10,000 years ago, when three memes came to reside in a particular culture simultaneously.

1) You should grow all your own food using agriculture.

2) Growing your own food is the Right Way To Live.

3) Everyone else in the world should live this way as well.

Quinn uses these three ideas to define a Culture which he calls The Takers. Now, this is a pretty controversial way of defining 'culture', since it means that Americans, Japanese, Swedes, and Brazilians are all part of the same culture. If you want to know more, please, read the book.

For the purposes of this conversation, though, please accept this definition and move on. Quinn's point, and it's a strong one, is that the peoples who don't live as Takers (who he calls Leavers) continue to live, on those few places on planet Earth where they still exist, much as they have been living for thousands, or tens of thousands, or, in parts of Africa, hundreds of thousands of years. Living in much the same way for this long gives your cultural identity a kind of permanence, a feeling that the culture long predates you, by so far that it may as well have been around forever, and that it will postdate you, again for so long it may as well be forever.

Our Culture, however, is a technological one. Which is not to say that it uses technology; all cultures do this. I would go so far as to offer up 'uses technology' as one of the three or four things that defines human beings as human beings. What I mean to say is that our Culture, the Takers, are defined by our technology. It inspires us, drives us, forces us to further and further accomplishments. And it's not a bad thing, not at all. In a mere 10,000 years, we have gone from scattering some grass seeds to peering into the cores of atoms.

But one of the downsides of this technology is that every generation feels like it has to come up with a new way of living, because those old rules don't apply anymore. And so we go 'round and 'round, each generation thinking that it is the first one, ever, to have to deal with these problems, and constantly refighting battles of the past.

This is not to say that I have a solution to this problem. I have some ideas, but they're a bit...complicated. Stick around for a year or two, maybe we'll get there.

And while Simmons is just trying to make a point about sports, he ends up making a point about Culture. The never-ending drive for growth, improvement, advancement, while it has been responsible for some remarkable accomplishments, also prevents us from being able to appreciate the accomplishments of the ones who came before. Which is a shame, purely for moral reasons, but also leads to much of the strife we have in our political and religious strifes historically.

Boobs Nipples Teens Horny

Well, if that title doesn't get me more search engine hits, I don't know what will.

Ezra, discussing a so-called 'amateur porn revolution', comes up with a nice reductio ad absurdum debunking of the thesis that 'porn makes men uninterested in real, normal women.'

Making the rare look achievable may do more to change behavior than the outlandish. All that said, though, I highly doubt porn is a serious culprit here. If it's unrealizable beauty standards in romance, it's romantic comedies you want to yell at.

This is a fine point, although not quite the one that I think he's making. Maybe it's just because Ezra is much smarter than me, which is undoubtedly true, but for my own sake I have to say it.

If porn really did raise men's standards so high that they were unable to become interested in normal, non-porn star women, then rom-coms starring George Clooney would do exactly the same things for women's expectations of men. I can smile demurely, and try to deepen my voice, and even act a little roguish. But at the end of the day, it's just my ugly mug and that damn cowboy hat, and I just don't compare.

But, and here's the point, nobody is arguing this. Nobody with an IQ higher than, say, Shaq's shoe size is writing op-eds for the New York Times arguing that Hollywood needs to be more responsible and realistic with its depictions of courtships in rom-coms. Because it's a silly thing to say. Likewise, while men are more easily visually stimulated than women, the idea of watching attractive women having sex doesn't quite stack up to, you know, actually having sex. Or so I've been told (don't worry Mom, still waitin'!)

It's fair that feminists don't like porn. I definitely think I understand why. But be honest about your motivations, rather than cooking up wild, fairly unbelievable theories.

Israel, The Ugly

And finally, the extremely ugly.

As Israel discredits one Palestinian governing body after another, they find that the groups that replace them are...worse than the ones before. We don't like Arafat, so we press him to put Abu Mazen in power. Abu Mazen is too weak to control the terrorist elements of Fatah, so we press for popular elections. The people elect Hamas, who the Americans promptly freeze out of any discussions whatsoever.

So now, brilliantly, we have driven the Palestinians into the arms of...Al Qaeda. This is fantastic. It seems like the Bush administration policy, ever since achieving moderate success in Afghanistan, has been to make the entire rest of the world a safer, more friendly place for the one group of people who really wants to harm Americans, and has shown the ability to do it in the past.

It's quite amazing how, if you tell people to make a choice, then tell them 'oh wait, no, you didn't choose who we wanted you to, so we're going to take all your money away', they develop a 'fuck you and the horse you rode in on' attitude towards you. Call it the 'No Shit, Sherlock' corollary. And, in place after place around the world, we are demonstrating it.

For better or worse, the Middle East is going to be problematic for a long time. A necessary first step to ending this state of affairs is going to be reducing the general level of pissed-offedness towards the US and Israel there. And, for the last 6 years at least, we've been pointing firmly in the wrong direction.

Israel, The Bad

For years, I used to maintain that Israel was 'the good guys' in the fight with the Palestinians, because when they would conduct operations against Palestinian terror groups, Hamas, etc., they would take precautions to attempt to protect the lives of civilians. They wouldn't always be successful, in large part because the terrorists would conduct their operations from bases located in residential areas, often located inside civilian residential buildings.

This is still mostly the case, I believe, although the Israeli Defense Forces were quite hamhanded in Lebanon last summer, and quite unsuccessful in keeping their hands clean. However, by comparison with, say, Hamas, who specifically targets civilians, the IDF are absolute saints.

Unfortunately, I don't think it really matters anymore. It used to be the case that it was acceptable and unavoidable for there to be some 'collateral damage' in such military operations. Never a good thing, but acceptable. The trick was to keep the populace from getting so angry that true civil conflicts could be ignited. Unfortunately, with Al Jazeera, video cell phones, and the internet, this kind of anger, which might have been kept in check historically, has a way of percolating, gathering, and building its own momentum.

Add into this the fact that, whereas it might have once taken tens of thousands of people to cause serious damage, it now might take hundreds, or even dozens. And, someday soon, you can envision a few biogeneticists locked in a room unleashing something much, much worse. These conditions combine to make a world where it's no longer a functional strategy to bomb a house with 3 terrorists and 9 civilians. If the PR fallout ends up pissing off 5 people enough that they want to become suicide bombers, you've lost.

The good news is there are strategies and smart ideas floating around as to how Israel might defend herself in more productive fashions than they have been. The bad news is, she hasn't seemed too interested in finding out about them just yet.

Israel, The Good

Okay, so my 'All Israel, All The Time' day turned into 'Israel Once, Work The Rest Of The Time.' So, quickly, my thoughts on the good, the bad, and the ugly about Israel, vis-a-vis the Palestinian question.

First off, the good. Israel remains the only real ally that the U.S. has in the region, the only country where both the government and the populace is pro-American. Many of the governments in the Middle East are at least nominally pro-American, but we are finding out in Iraq that, if the populace is given a say, the government they put in power tends to not be so conducive to the ideals that we like to think are necessary for a free, modernized, democracy.

Israel, on the other hand, in the face of repeated, and as mentioned earlier, truly existential threats, has remained a free and open democracy for nearly 60 years now.

It is certainly worth mentioning that those Arabs who are Israeli citizens have full rights, more rights than Arabs in any other country in the Middle East possess.

Strategically, for the US, Israel has also been a helpful ally at times. In hockey, when the opponent's goon is out making trouble, you don't send out your best player to pick a fight. You send out your goon, the idea being that you keep your most talented players in the game. For a long time, Israel has been our goon in the Middle East, bombing the Osirak facilities in Iraq and conducting other operations on our behalf (if not openly so). This may or may not be a moral good, but it has certainly been to the strategic advantage of the US not to have to get so directly involved.

Zionists And Warplanes And Nukes, Oh My!

In honor of today's 40th anniversary of the start of the 6-Days War, today is going to be all-Israel, all the time. Just consider me part of the vast Zionist conspiracy.

First up, the must-watch (or must-listen) event is Bob Wright's interview with Gershom Gorenberg on bloggingheads.tv. Another fine piece of telejournalism by Bob, who has done a wonderful job of bringing some extremely fine minds into bh.tv for some interesting and insightful pieces.

Gershom does a wonderful job of outlining the early history of Israel, and the military buildup that led to the 6-Days War. It's worth remembering that, when we were attacked on 9/11, 3000 people died, about 0.0001% of the country's population. From that, we have been sold into the fact that we are facing an existential threat, which is to say that there is a reason to believe that Muslim radicals could possibly manage to kill 1,000,000% more people than they did on 9/11.

Israel, on the other hand, was surrounded on 3 sides by hostile armies, and the only reason it wasn't 4 is because the Arabs didn't have an army of water-walking messiahs with which to attack from the south. It wasn't just the proverbial rock and the hard place, it was more like being stuck between a rock, a hard place, Donald Trump's hair and Roseanne Barr singing 'The Star Spangled Banner.'

The point is, Israel's mere survival of this period is pretty amazing. This is not to excuse all the things that Israel has done wrong since then, or that they continue to do, of which there are legion. But it is to say that America may have overreacted an eensy-weensy bit after one very bad day, so surely we can have a little sympathy to the plight of a small country, living in a pretty hostile land, surrounded on all sides by people sworn to their destruction, and understand why the Israelis can seem a bit cantankerous at times.

It's a small world after all...

Reader LT, who I've known for all of, oh, 8 days now, writes in comments about a marriage she recently attended between a Contractor and a Bonfanti. That, of course, would be Nikki Contractor and Paul Bonfanti, who were my captains the second season I played PADA Summer League in Philadelphia.

Some might be surprised that someone I just met at a wedding 8 days ago would be very close friends with two people I've known for about 10 years. But, since I know that I am actually the only person who exists, and the rest of you are just very fancy simulations in the computer program that is running my brain, I'm not even a little bit surprised.

Motorcycle Helmets Make Baby Jesus Cry

I took a very informative advanced motorcycling skills class on Saturday. Good stuff. But during the introductory talk, the instructor told us about ABATE of Colorado, the group who put on the class. Most of it sounded good; protecting the rights of motorcycle riders to health insurance, things like that. Sounded like the kind of group I could contribute to. Then he mentioned that they managed to submarine a law in Colorado which was seeking to mandate that motorcycle riders under the age of 18 wear a helmet. If he had me at 'health insurance', he lost me at 'undermining helmet laws.'

At heart, I certainly have a bit of a libertarian streak, and I don't like governmental overregulation. But actively working to allow people to do stupid things which have bad consequences for the rest of the population, well, that's just bad policy.

The problem here is that, by not wearing your helmet or your seat belt, you are increasing your risk for injury. When you are injured, your health insurance, or your car insurance, pays for the hospital bills. That money doesn't magically appear; it is collected from you, and everyone else who carries insurance with this company, in the form of insurance premiums. So, when you collect massive medical bills as a result of not wearing a seat belt, everyone pays the costs for your poor decision-making.

My proposal is this: allow people to not wear helmets when they ride a motorcycle. Allow them not to wear a seat belt when they're driving a car. But if they are injured in a crash in any way which could have been prevented or ameliorated by the safety equipment they chose to forgo, then their health insurance is not required to pay for it. If you go entirely bankrupt paying for your medical bills, at that point the insurance company, maybe with some governmental assistance, will step in and foot the bill, but not until that point.

It's a solution conservatives should love; more freedom, more responsibility, less governmental oversight. And it's something liberals should love, since they don't own motorcycles, and always wear seat belts in their Priuses.

James Dobson Hates Women

As Kevin Drum points out over at The Washington Monthly, this nugget from James Dobson spokesman Tom Minnery is exposing and disgusting:

Doctors adopted the late-term procedure "out of convenience," Minnery added. "The old procedure, which is still legal, involves using forceps to pull the baby apart in utero, which means there is greater legal liability and danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus. So we firmly believe there will be fewer later-term abortions as a result of this ruling."

So, basically, Dobson supports forcing doctors who feel that a late-term abortion is medically appropriate into using a procedure which is more dangerous for the woman involved. If some more of them are injured or killed in the process, well, they were probably Democrats anyway, so no big loss.

Look, I am pretty middle-of-the-road on abortion. I don't like the idea of killing fetuses, and make no mistake about it, that is what an abortion does. But life is full of decisions, and we do things we'd rather not do all the time. I believe the rights of a fully-grown person have to override those of an unformed fetus contained inside her body. I think we can all agree that we'd like to have less abortions, if only because they are surgical procedures, which means they have risks, and we'd like to reduce those for everyone.

But this just makes me ill. Dobson is admitting to being a proponent of exposing women to higher risk of injury; that is, physically hurting women, in order to reduce the already miniscule numbers of people undergoing a grotesque, but sometimes necessary, medical procedure? It's bad enough (well past bad enough) for Anthony Kennedy to claim that this ban is necessary to prevent women from suffering guilt later for the decisions they made, but this is insulting, patronizing and, well, evil.

Worst. Punctuation. Ever.

Watching a bit of the French Open yesterday. Apparently, there is this kid from Switzerland named Roger Federer, who is a pretty good tennis player. Kids these days, just coming out of nowhere. Who knew? Although it's very cute how he gives his opponent a little chocolate bar after each match, then blows him kisses.

Anyhow, I noticed that The Artist Formerly Known As Justine Henin-Hardenne was now being referred to as Justine Henin. A little searching revealed that earlier this year she announced that she was going to be seeking a divorce from her husband, Pierre-Yves Hardenne, and competing with her maiden name, Henin. Which is fine.

But this whole convention of hyphenating, I have to say, strikes me as possibly the worst single consequence of the overly politically correct reaction-against-the-patriarchy movement in the last 30 years.

For the record, I am completely in favor of husbands and wives taking on the same name when they get married. In my opinion, it is an important signal of their intention of being their own unit, independent and yet forever linked together. I agree wholeheartedly that the historical precedent that the wife takes the man's name, "just because that's always how it's been done," is unnecessary. And yes, it has historical referents to the fact that the wife was once considered the man's property, and that's why she took his name, which gives it extra negative logic.

But hyphenating names is just no solution at all. For one thing, you can end up with completely ridiculous concatenations that sound funny, don't fit on the signature line of a check, and reduce the productivity of the average American worker by 4 seconds per day for each time they have to say your full name. For another, what happens when your kid, John Singletary-Rosenfels, meets the love of his life, the amazing and wonderful Sally Reinhardt-Mcgonagal, on www.loveforpeoplewithtoomanylastnames.com? I swear to god, if they name their first child Amberleigh Singletary-Reinhardt-Rosenfels-Mcgonagal, they should be put to death, and the child sent to the salt mines.

So eventually, someone is going to have to make the decision to throw away one or more last names. Hyphenating is just a total copout failure to do so for yourself when you get married.

For the record, my opinion is that the happy couple should adopt whichever of their original last names sounds the most mellifluous with their respective first names. And if this means that certain truly horrible last names, like Kucinich (sorry, Dennis!), simply fade into oblivion after time, well, that's just another bonus of the system.

If they can't come to an agreement on which name sounds better, then make up a new one. I'm sure that my wife, the future Mrs. Superman, will agree: sometimes, just starting over is the right thing to do!

What I'm Reading

I just finished The End of Oil, which is a slightly-depressing, if extremely well-written, book examining the possibility of the end of the hydrocarbon era, and what the future may hold. It's a good book if you're interested in energy economy types of questions, including some very optimistic suggestions as to how the power grid may develop to enable functional usage of renewable energy sources (especially the concept of microgrids, using efficient generation of hydrogen via electrolysis as a very efficient battery, to be released during periods of low sun, wind, etc.)

Now I am clunking my way through Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos, which is a physics-for-interested-laymen walkthrough of 20th century particle physics and cosmology, written by one of the pre-eminent minds in the field. Here is a good, critical review of it in Slate.

I have long had lots of problems with modern cosmological physics. In particular, the fact that the edifice on which the biggest thoughts rest, the M Theory variant of String Theory, is entirely unscientific. What I mean by this is that, given our current technological level of development, it is not possible to experimentally verify any of string theory's predictions (for much more on this idea, see Gregg Easterbrook's excellent review of another book here)

Then, I see today's article about a potential discovery of the Higgs boson at the Tevatron today in Slate. One would think that the field of particle physicists would be thrilled about the potential discovery of the particle whose existence would fill out the Standard Model of Cosmology, and even fit the properties predicted by the theory. But no:

That's why particle physicists, and the EU member states that have spent Nepal's annual GDP to build this accelerator, are hoping that no one, in Chicago or Switzerland, finds the Higgs. The future of high-energy physics lies with the small chance that the standard model is wrong, and something exotic happens at LHC energies.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, insane. It makes no sense to design an experiment to prove your predictions wrong. The essence of the scientific method is to

-Predict a result
-Design an experiment to test it
-Build and execute the experiment
-Measure and analyze the data
-Adjust your theory
-Come up with a new prediction
-Repeat

It is literally not science if you are trying to disprove something, not to prove something. You have to know what you are looking for before you go looking.

To say nothing of the fact that we are spending billions upon billions of dollars (okay, Euros) in order to hopefully find-what? Something, but not actually what we're looking for?

You know I am a science geek. And a big one. I'm completely in favor of way out-there studies, and looking for answers to questions that we're not even totally equipped to ask yet. But it does seem to me to be, just maybe, possible that we could find slightly more useful ways of spending out money, in ways that would be a bit more helpful to people, than this.

USA! USA! USA!

Well, the Japanese may make better cars than us. They may dominate the video-game market. And don't even get me started on their ability to sell a halfway-decent piece of fish at the grocery store. But, god bless us, we've finally gotten our hot-dog eating championship back!

Just Say No To Potentially Fatal Erectile Dysfunction Treatments

This sounds wonderful...inject yourself with the venom of a particular black widow species! You will either die, or suffer painful, prolonged, involuntary erections, after which you will have superhuman virility!

Where do I sign up?

But Matthew Is Still My Hero

Horrible vocal displays aside, Matt went on a damn fine run of blogging this week. I kept setting aside posts of his to link to, but I have officially become overwhelmed. Instead, you should just go to his blog and read the week's entries. Mostly top-notch stuff.

Plus he's a good New York Jewish boy. My mom would be proud.

Friends Don't Let Friends Karaoke

This is enough to ruin an otherwise fantastic Friday afternoon. How am I supposed to respect two of my favorite bloggers after such a display? Dear lord, anytime it takes a good 40 seconds to figure out what song they're supposed to be singing, it's bad times. Bad times.

Nerd For President

Faithful Reader LT points me towards an editorial in the Washington Post calling on the election of more nerds to the highest office in the land.

I'm not entirely convinced. I suspect that it goes without saying that the current administration has been a fair bit too far to the anti-intellectual side for my taste. Probably from watching too many 'aliens invade' movies from the 50's, where the pointy-headed Poindexters in their lab coats were too busy explaining how advanced civilizations would of course be peaceful in their intentions!

So yes, I certainly want a president who is familiar with the basic concepts of the scientific method, maintains a healthy skeptical attitude and wants to hear evidence from every side of an argument before making his decisions. And yes, it would sure be nice to have an administration whose understanding of international relations had progressed slightly beyond the schoolyard system of 'act tough, talk tough, and if things aren't working out, just keep punching harder.' Heck, I wouldn't mind someone who even knew what 'game theory' was, even if he or she couldn't write a grad-level thesis on it.

But there's a lot more to being President than knowing things. One of the major jobs of the office is to provide leadership, and that means understanding people, being able to talk to them, and project both empathy and strength, in equal measure. If the people don't have faith in their leader, that affects the national 'morale', which can have real-world consequences.

This was Bill Clinton's most brilliant feature; although he was nearly as much of a wonk as Jimmy Carter, you never would have caught him telling people the solution to high heating oil prices was to 'put on a sweater.'

Additionally, it is simply not possible for the President to know the most about everything. You need someone smart enough to understand the basic facts of all that various and sundry issues the President has to deal with, but you don't really want a Captain Janeway, always rushing off to singlehandedly solve the most vexing issues, and who seems to know more about everything on the ship than even the crew members who specialize in that subject. Since such a person doesn't exist, you need someone who is aware of their own limits, and knows how to listen to their advisors.

So while you won't find me arguing against the idea that the next (and, for that matter, every) President ought to be significantly more intellectually curious and generally involved than the nap-taking, brush-clearing dolt we have now, I think their are traits that are more important than pure brains in our leaders. If I didn't think that way, I'd be voting for Kucinich, almost certainly the smartest, and absolutely the most honest, Dem in the bunch. But the world just isn't quite ready to follow a 5-foot-7-inch tall vegan pacifist hobbit into the 21st century. It may be a flaw in humanity that we aren't, but it is the case, so we had better get used to it.

You Know What They Say About A Guy With A Big Cornea

Commenter pepperedjane suggests LASIK as a potential salve for my upset soul regarding the general shittiness of my eyesight. Unfortunately, while I have nearly average-thickness corneas, to fix eyes of my prescription (about -8.5 diopters in each eye, for those keeping count) I need somewhat thicker-than-average.

I might look into getting the Phakic intraocular lenses at some point in the future, after they've been around for a few years. But, for the moment, it's glasses and contacts (although not at the same time) for me!

An Open Letter To My Mother

Dearest Mom,

I love you, and thank you for all that you have given me in life. I am fortunate to have had your eclectic personality, and your passion for helping people, instilled in me.

But come on. Couldn't you have kept the weak-ass, no good, bats-make-fun-of-my-vision eyes to yourself?

Love,
David