Got a little extra money?

Give it to Gary Farber of Amygdala. He's really smart and interesting and has a great blog and no health insurance. He might spend the money on hookers and single malt, but it's more likely he'll put it towards more frivolous things -- like food, rent, prescription drugs -- you know what it's like. Plus, if you like pledge drives, don't miss this special temporary offer courtesy of the mysterious Alameida at Unfogged. Ask for the Fafmix.

I'm bisexual, just so you know

I don't necessarily want this to be one of those "every thought I ever had" blogs -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- but I guess I can go ahead and say what's on my mind. I mean, I am in charge here & all. Plus, I think this post includes information that is more than merely personal.

You see, there are a few questions that I seem to have to answer over and over again, and I just get tired of it, you know what I mean? It's not that the questions are stupid or unfair, but there are only so many times I can cover the same material.

People have so many weird ideas about things (and no, I'm not immune to this; I have plenty of boneheaded ideas myself), and I find that if you don't talk with them, they never know that what they think is, well, in my opinion anyway, false. Sex is one of those areas where people get particularly attached to ideas that they are moderately comfortable with -- or obsessed by ideas that make them squirm. And when was the last time you saw a movie, or read a book, with a bisexual character who wasn't, like, crazy or at least dysfunctional and maybe even a murderer or a sociopath?

For whatever reasons, bisexuality makes a lot of people nervous. Hell, it makes me uncomfortable sometimes. So I'm going to take a few minutes to address some of the most popular among the wacky ideas and misconceptions I regularly encounter about bisexuality. And then the next time somebody asks me about it, or makes a particularly boneheaded comment, I can just refer them here. You can do the same, if you think it'll help.

Let me just state first off that my personal sex life is, on average, no more or less interesting than other people's, from what I can gather. Your mileage may vary depending on road conditions, etc. But, truly, I don't have twice as much sex as everyone else has (alas). Threesomes? Yeah, well, whatever. And from a historical standpoint, I don't have twice as many (past or present) partners as other single people my age. I don't even feel like I have twice as many potential partners to choose from.

I can sort of see where that last one is coming from, but it's only even remotely valid if you as a monosexual view every person of your preferred gender as a potential partner. But you don't, do you? I like to think that most people are a little more discerning than that, and I think you'll agree with me if you think about it. You've gotta draw the line somewhere, right?

I am not, for example, attracted at all to people who aren't smart, or funny, or who aren't at least moderately healthy in an overall sense (emotionally and physically). I'm more attracted to people who like to dance than those who don't like to dance. I have no patience whatsoever for people who are mean, or who don't like dogs or cats or spiders. Green- or hazel-eyed people are more compelling to me somehow than blue- or brown-eyed people, but I can go either way on that, especially with regard to non-caucasian types, obviously. I personally prefer, in general, people who are taller than I am, and stronger. OK, I'm only 5'2", so adults (and I very strongly prefer adults, just for the record) who are taller than I am are pretty numerous. But very few women are stronger than I am, and a surprising number of men are not.

The second big thing I'm tired of addressing is the 'why don't you make up your mind already?' question. I'm really tired of saying this: I have made up my mind. Some of the people I'm attracted to are male and others are female. Big deal. Why is that so difficult to understand?

I'm not speaking for all bisexuals here, of course, and this is not at all meant to imply in any way that I think bodies are not interesting, because they are. I mean, girls are really pretty & everything (not to mention they have tits!! and multiple orgasms!!), but boys have dicks, which I have to admit I think are really fucking cool.

Nor is any of this meant to imply that I think men and women are the same. They are not, and vive le difference & all that. Yeah, women are -- in general -- better at talking about their feelings than men are. But men don't have to talk about every goddamn feeling, and that's kind of cool too. And there are always exceptions, and exceptional people are interesting. And even androgyny can be pretty interesting sometimes too.

The third big question is one that I mostly hear from men: who gives better head, men or women?

The thinking here I guess is that girls already automatically sort of know what girls want, so they do it better. Some guys feel threatened by this, poor dears, and secretly fear that they'll never get it right. I am here to tell you what you should probably already know: good sex is good sex; good head is good head. You can do it, pal. A lover who is reasonably well informed about anatomy and who is paying attention to what you want (and not what he or she thinks you want) is a better lover than those who give you what they think you want (or --worse -- what they think you should want or what their last five lovers wanted). You know this, right?

Unless I'm tragically mistaken, sex is one area where you can't take the golden rule too literally. You want to do unto others what they really want you to do, not what you want them to do unto you. And yes, this does sometimes involve asking them exactly what they want, and also answering honestly when they ask you. Neither of which is particularly easy.

Another thing I'd like to mention here briefly is, well, monogamy. I'm not generally a huge fan of it (and not just because I'm bisexual; I have plenty of other issues, like, you know, 'commitment phobia' & other shit like that), but I do occasionally (and happily) participate in monogamous relationships on purpose. If you think about it, though, bisexuality is completely irrelevant in the context of a monogamous relationship. Who the hell cares what gender of person you are not sleeping with? What business is it of anyone else's? I mean, if you marry a redhead, is that because you're not attracted to brunettes? Does it mean you think all redheads are potential sex partners? Male and female; quiet and loud, skinny and fat, tall and short? Maybe, maybe not. But it doesn't automatically define you as a sexual pervert to the rest of the world.

Which sort of brings me to my final point: I'm really tired of straight women who think I'm just trying to be contrary and make them look uptight, or who think I'm always coming on to them. I'm really tired of lesbians who think I'm selling out and trying to 'pass,' or to cash in on 'heterosexual privilege.' I'm really tired of men who want to watch me fuck their girlfriends.

I'm just a nice, middle-aged queer girl; get over yourselves already, willya?

Call me crazy

In an earlier, rambling post I wrote about the Schiavo spectacle, I think I missed the most disturbing thing. As I said earlier, I hadn't been paying much attention to the whole thing, as it just seemed impolite to stare. Plus I just didn't really know what the issues were.

One thing that's been nagging at me is, well, how does this fit in with everything else going on nowadays? As usual, the numbers are all there, I just haven't been adding them up. And every time I do, I feel crazy. Paranoid. Completely nuts.

Tristero, in this post, goes ahead and calls it Fascism. David Neiwert over at Orcinus is also very much on to something in his post 'Balance' and the tipping point.

I mean, what the hell? You've got what some say amounts to a legislative coup d'etat going on this woman's behalf despite numerous rulings by the Florida judge (a Republican appointee and a Southern Baptist, Judge Greer) who is handling the case. A judge who's heard the evidence, reviewed the applicable laws, and --

Oh, wait a minute. Activist judges. They're bad, right? We need a precedent with which we can beat them over the head, or at least make them irrelevant, don't we? More civilized, at least, than killing them.

And speaking of killing people, isn't it kind of wacky that Randall Terry, currently of the Society for Truth and Justice, is the media spokesman for Terri Schiavo's parents? I mean, as founder of Operation Rescue, he's associated in one way or another with assassinations of health care providers who perform abortions, reproductive health clinic protests and violence. Plus, isn't he like the total poster child for abuse of bankruptcy laws?* What's up with that?

And then there's this post from Art Caplan on blog.bioethics.net, about Jon Eisenberg's article "The Terri Schiavo Case: Following the Money." While doing some work on the Schiavo case for free, Eisenberg wondered whether his colleagues working on behalf of Terri's parents were also donating their time. He found that they were not, and that their (extensive) funding came from an assortment of right-wing groups, many of whom also fund efforts to, for example, discredit evolutionary biology [oh, and fight to preserve the sanctity of marriage, and lobby against measures to prevent global warming, and all kinds of wacky shit that I'll get to in another post]. See archy's comments here for more on the Eisenberg article.

It makes my head hurt.

============

*"The New York Times reported on November 8, 1998, that Terry "filed for bankruptcy last week in an effort to avoid paying massive debts owed to women's groups and abortion clinics that have sued him." As the Los Angeles Times reported on February 28, Terry's use of bankruptcy law to avoid paying for the judgments against him helped prompt Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) to propose an amendment to the bankruptcy bill recently passed by Congress that "specifically would prevent abortion opponents from using the bankruptcy code to escape paying court fines," although it was not included in the final version of the bill. --from Media Matters "Who is Randall Terry"

Update: The Volokh Conspiracy has an interesting post: Schiavo and Conservative Judge Bashing. And Timothy Sandefur has interesting posts on Crime & Federalism and his own blog Freespace. (links via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Terri and the rest of us girls

If you can stand one more post about Terri Schiavo, Kameron at Brutal Women has a few things to say about women and eating disorders. See her post Martyr Yourself For Christian America!, which starts out with discussion of a commentary by Paul Campos about Terri Schiavo's eating disorder. Of particular note is his recognition that eating disorders often go undiagnosed because their often-devastating results so frequently look like 'success.'

"The fatality rate ... is hard to determine, in part because they so often go undiagnosed (indeed the civil judgment that has paid for Terri's medical care was based on the failure of her doctors to diagnose her bulimia, despite what should have been obvious symptoms).

"Such diagnostic failures are caused by the same factors that have led the media to largely ignore this tragic irony at the center of Terri's story. After all, Terri was merely being a "good girl." She was fat, and she made herself thin - a transformation for which she surely received endless praise."

Anyway, Kameron brings it around to her own experience eating a cheeseburger for lunch Friday sitting next to an apparently successful dieter:

"But oh, God, sitting there next to Barbie, I felt so guilty for eating my cheeseburger. What must everyone think of me, scarfing down my burger for lunch? Had I no shame? I could see everyone turning to look at me, thinking, 'Look at that fat girl scarfing down that cheeseburger! Grotesque! Look at that fat woman, eating! A woman, eating, in a restaurant! How revolting! Has she no respect for herself?!'

"I wanted to curl up and die.

"And that's what a lot of women feel like: we'd rather die than be fat. We'd die to be thin for a decade, just give me a decade of hotness! Please! Please! I'll starve! I don't care!

"Careful what you wish for."

Oh, honey, have I ever been there.

Random 10: The 'rip out my heart and stomp on it' edition

Sometimes I really have to wonder about the iPod's shuffle play algorithm. It can't possibly be random. On the other hand, I'm not generally one to think I'm important enough to be singled out for this kind of torment. But, I mean, I left my office for a while, came back and put on my headphones and -- well, just listen to these songs all in a row and tell me you're not weeping, with your head on the table, wondering how soon you can leave your office and drink a glass of red red wine:

1. "Go on Ahead" Liz Phair
2. "Give Me Your Hips" The Cash Brothers
3. "Those Three Days" Lucinda Williams
4. "Ghost of You Walks" Richard Thompson
5. "Make a Little Love" Alex Chilton
6. "I Don't Want to Grow Up" The Ramones
7. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" Johnny Cash
8. "I Think I Need A New Heart" the Magnetic Fields
9. "True Love Leaves No Traces" Leonard Cohen
10. "I Need You" Julie Miller
11. "Steal Your Love" Lucinda Williams
12. "Tear Stained Letter" Richard Thompson
13. "Hey Jealousy" The Gin Blossoms
14. "Coming Back to You" Jennifer Warnes
15. "Still I Long For Your Kiss" Lucinda Williams
16. "Love Hurts" Emmylou Harris
17. "Girlfriend" Matthew Sweet
18. "I've Been Loving You Too Long" Otis Redding
19. "Red, Red Wine" Neil Diamond

OK, that's more than ten, but I wanted to make a point. I'm just going to turn it off now.

Extreme Jesus: Apocalypse Edition

Well, as he does from time to time, Mark Morford says it better than I would have. In today's column Why Does God Hate Caribou?, he addresses the Master Plan to "destroy the Earth and smite our enemies and hasten the arrival of the Rapture." No, seriously:

"So then. The evangelicals are in power, having their bleak and apocalyptic moment in the white-hot sun. And Bush, by all accounts, is their leader, their spokesman, their crusader, smashing those damned gays and repressing them uppity women and attacking those gul-dang Muslims and -- here's the kicker -- doing his God-sanctioned duty to bring about a grand holy war that will hasten the arrival of, you guessed it, Armageddon.

"And baby, for any evangelical worth his secret homosexual fantasy, Armageddon is where it's at."

Therefore, he reasons, the environment doesn't matter, and we can just go the fuck ahead and trash it. It's ours until Jesus comes to get us. "Just like Santa. Only, you know, not."

He does link to the rather more cool and collected Bill Moyers -- who expresses no less alarm, really -- in his excellent essay running in Thursday's New York Review of Books (vol 52, no 5): Welcome to Doomsday: "...[T]he delusional is no longer marginal," he says, "but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power." It's a pretty scary thing:

"We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis. Theology asserts propositions that need not be proven true, while ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The combination can make it impossible for a democracy to fashion real-world solutions to otherwise intractable challenges."

I've read lots of this kind of stuff lately (see my previous post on premillenial dispensationalism for more links) and it all leaves me wondering something: Do the people who truly benefit from this wholesale disregard for the environment (you know who I mean - the ones who make the big money off of it) really give a shit about the Rapture or do they just exploit it because it's effective and they know they'll be dead by the time the planet starts to really suck? Or at least rich enough to compensate.

Am I being paranoid?

Who got paid, and who got screwed?

Susie Madrak posted a great piece Tuesday over at her highly excellent blog Suburban Guerrilla in which she responds to the Where Are All the Girls bullshit that's got everyone's knickers in such a twist lately. [Also see here and here and here, if you're interested.]

Rather than trying to figure out whether it's due to some kind of insidious gender discrimination, or because women are socialized to be less opinionated or competitive or whatever, Susie poses what I think is a better question:

"Everyone's asking why there aren't more women pundits. I say, why aren't there more working-class voices like mine, male or female? Will that voice die when Jimmy Breslin does?"

It's part of the media culture (and especially so on the left, she argues) to give more authority to those who have a credential from an authorized institution, while relegating everybody else to the wackjob fringe. And, I would emphasize, dismissing their concerns as trivial or self-serving. Without implying that such things are useless, she notes that academic credentials and prestigious connections don't automatically grant the ability to see what is going on and to describe it to an audience:

"You don't have to be an economist, an attorney or a political consultant to know what's going on in this country. I mean, that kind of background is always nice, but for a political knife fight, it's unnecessary. You don't need charts and graphs to know what the Republican party has done to America - and what they plan to do. All you have to do is look around.

"Who got paid, and who got screwed?

"You don't even need to know which specific policies got us into this mess. All you need to know is, who pushed them?"

I couldn't agree more, though I would add: "and who the hell paid them to do it?"

For the love of god make it stop

Just don't even go here. Even if you haven't been carsick since you were a little kid, and you don't have any, like, neurological problems.

I have to say that I'm all for exploring possibilities and exploiting potentially useful phenomena or characteristics. I love to organize information and present it in maximally efficient ways. I think that's great, really I do. I just don't like it when I have to look at very small things that are wiggling, especially when there are a lot of them very close to each other, and there's a lot of contrast between the bright colors involved. It's just icky. And it's even worse watching it on a computer monitor.

But someone named Simon Whitechapel at Amygdala: Engaging the Nexus of Ideophasis has decided to utilize, um, animation in a font. Not just by making the characters wiggle irritatingly, but by making them wiggle irritatingly in meaningful ways. As in, each little symbol means one thing when it tips itself one way, and another thing if it spins another way. Or something like that. It is kind of a cool idea; I just can't look at it.

If you like that sort of thing, though, you can go look at it here. Just don't download the font and send me any letters in it. I swear I'll throw up before I figure out what you're trying to say.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Necessarily. Via languagehat.com

Some links

The whole 'where are the women bloggers?' debate really is pretty tiresome. You boys just need to get out more is all. Flea, of One Good Thing (and occasionally Knife-Wielding Feminists), offers the best analysis & commentary I've seen. Or at least the funniest. (via Bitch, PhD).

And this one would be funny, if it were only funnier: Art Kaplan notes in this post on bioethics.net that one of the members of the President's Council on Bioethics, on Diana Schaub of Loyola College, arrived at her view that cloning and stem cell research are evil by watching Star Trek. You can read about it here.

This one isn't all that funny either. For more about what Horowitz is up to, check out his truly bizarre Discover the Network: A Guide to the Political Left project.

Oh, and PZ Myers, in response to a report that some IMAX theaters are refusing to show films about evolution or the big bang or geology (which might get protesters riled up), suggests in this post that establishments who do so should have the word 'science' stripped from their names:

"Make it a big ceremony—ranks of people in white lab coats standing at attention, the directors called out and publicly humiliated, burly guys with sledgehammers smashing the theater's marquee, and at the end, everyone formally turning their backs on the object of shame."

Meanwhile, over at Fafblog!, the mighty dictator Giblets is outraged (again!) that the IMAX documentary "Volcanoes" contained heresies against established Gibletsian doctrine. The film failed to acknowledge, for example, that lava flows are created by Oblos the Fire Monkey at the earth's core.

Well, duh.

Is there some kind of hierarchy of sanctity?

Help me out here, somebody. I'm just not well-versed in the intricacies and implications of sanctity. When we're talking about the sanctity-related properties of a sanctified thing, are some sanctified things, like, more sanctified than other sanctified things? I have some questions, I guess, about the sanctity of life versus the sanctity of marriage.

Here's a hypothetical case:

Let's say there's a sanctified husband and wife, ok? A church-authorized marriage between one man and one woman. Let's put them in the context of a marriage in which she has signed on to graciously submit to her husband's will on account of he's the biblically mandated head of their righteous christian household. And let's say they've performed their sanctified marital obligations (again) and now the gal is pregnant (yet again). For the purpose of this discussion, let's say she's in her forties, and they just got some test results, and the fetus she is carrying -- the pre-born individual, if you like -- is seriously and fatally flawed. Like, doesn't have lungs, or is missing its head or something. And also that at her age, and given that she has a few other chronic medical conditions that make pregnancy dangerous, and the wear and tear on her body from previous pregnancies and miscarriages, let's say that this pregnancy represents a very serious threat to her health and her life. With this in mind, as well as the -- let's say there are seven -- hypothetical little ones at home, let's say the husband decides that this pregnancy needs to be terminated.

Are you with me so far?

OK let's keep going. The husband, as biblically ordained and socially approved head of the household, makes a decision that he believes is in his wife's best interest, and in the best interest of his seven happy, healthy, living children, god's will or no. He tells his wife that he believes that this pregnancy should be terminated. That is to say, this fetus, this baby, this pre-born human, should be aborted -- in the interest of the whole family and in order to save her life. She says no way, every life is sacred, and even if the baby will not live very long after emerging from her body, it is her obligation to suffer the pregnancy, take all the risks, and allow the fetus to be born, suffer horribly, and die. She understands that the likelihood of death for her newborn baby is 100%, but she believes in the sanctity of life, and she accepts that whole thing about christians needing to suffer sometimes for their beliefs. But she also believes in the possibility of the occasional miracle. Her faith tells her it's possible that her baby will be just fine.

Yes, this is a difficult case. Yes, I can see that hard-liners will say that she is obliged to carry this pregnancy to term and that she has to defy her sanctified marital obligation to submit to her husband, even though she takes her obligations to her family seriously, and even though she fears the consequences of her decision.

I'm thinking that the hard-liners are wrong, and that if I were her I would want to think a little harder about things. But I'm a left-leaning libertarian heathen, and I always think that. I'm also pretty swayed by an argument that is both practical and compassionate. I say terminate the pregnancy. There is heartbreak either way, and yes indeed that is a bummer.

I try to avoid most of your large-scale media circuses, and so I haven't paid much attention to the very real case of Terri Schiavo; it's just too depressing. [And there's a lot out there -- I'm not going to link to every single thing, but I'm in general agreement with those expressed at Alas, A Blog and Pharyngula and the Rude Pundit.] I've been reading about the history and the details of the case this morning, though, and it's truly appalling. I mean, her brain has essentially dissolved, bless her. Her body is alive, without any cognitive function and possessing only the lowest-order reflexes. Since she lacks the ability to swallow food or water, she has -- for, what, some fifteen years now -- been given these vital substances via medical procedures and devices (feeding tubes, IV ports, etc.).

Some people argue that giving a patient food and water is not keeping her alive by artificial or extraordinary means, nor does it constitute "artificial life support," like dialysis or a heart-lung machine or whatever it is that we all fear being hooked up to in the end.

I'll certainly agree that withholding food and water from patients who are physically able to swallow it would be, well, murdering them in much the same way that putting a pillow over the face of a patient who is able to breathe would be murder. I mean, we don't go around depriving people of food, water, and air -- even when, say, they can't move to prevent us from suffocating them or they can't bring the food to their own mouths without assistance.

But when you have to employ medical devices and/or surgical procedures to get the air, food, or water into patients' bodies, then what you are doing is providing artificial life support. No matter how simple the procedure seems, no matter how much you say "it's just giving her food and water," it's still artificial life support in a way that holding food to someone's lips to allow them to eat it, or changing their diaper, or keeping them clean and free of bedsores and infections is not.

The legal issues behind the definition of artificial life support vary from state to state, of course, but it's my understanding that Florida law considers feeding tubes to be artificial life support. Abstract Appeal is the weblog of a Florida attorney (attorneys?) not connected with the case who has been following developments from the legal standpoint, and it's an excellent source of information.

Anyway, this particular case has obviously struck a deep loud chord for a lot of people. Is withdrawing her feeding tube merely allowing her to die, or is it the same as killing her? Who has the right to decide whether or when to discontinue such measures when the patient can't communicate? There are activists holding vigils and hunger strikes. The governor of Mrs. Schiavo's state (the brother of the president), has supported a bill that attempts to resolve the case in accordance with a hardline pro-life, and clearly rightwing worldview.

[update] Plus the US Congress has introduced a bill intended to force the case into federal court, though they deny having any political motives; they are just trying to save the woman's life: links here (free subscription req), and here and here.[/update]

It's a big hairy deal.

As I read through pages and pages and followed link after link to about a bazillion commentaries and news articles about the case, I was struck by a few things:

• One of the purported benefits of marriage is that your legal, sanctified spouse -- and not your parents or siblings or rich guys offering your spouse large sums of money or even Mel Gibson -- get to make medical decisions on your behalf in the event of your incapacitation. Nobody is talking about the sanctity of the Schiavos' marriage here. Why not? Isn't this the whole point? I mean, it doesn't take many clicks of the old mouse from the "Save Terri"-leaning websites to get to a "God Made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" type post on the same site. Or, as I asked above, do some kinds of sanctity trump others? On what grounds?
• The Florida courts have determined that removal of this particular woman's feeding tube is what she would have wanted -- whether or not her husband agrees. Why is it even an issue?
• Mr. and Mrs. Schiavo and her parents are devout catholics. Why are her parents trying to get them divorced? Which church teachings apply? Is divorce OK sometimes?
• It feels almost silly to mention it in the context of all these big issues, but this poor woman's condition is the result of her severely dysfunctional dieting/eating behavior. This is a whole separate issue, but one deserving of attention.

Anyway, it's a complicated issue, and I still want to avert my eyes when I see anything about it. It's just not a public issue. There is heartbreak either way, for everybody directly involved. The rest of us can only follow along.

More on chromosomes -- now with evolution & cars

Of course the good Professor Myers over at Pharyngula read the whole Nature article about the sequencing of the human X chromosome, and he provides a beautiful and really pretty accessible accounting of its evolutionary story. Way more interesting than the BBC article I comment on below. Please do check it out here if you're interested in that kind of thing. For one thing, it sorta sets me straight on the role of the X chromosome in the whole sex differences thing. He says, "All human beings are adjusted to having just one fully functional X chromosome, no matter whether you are male or female," and explains further:

"Another misconception that I often see is the idea that the X chromosome is the 'female' chromosome, while Y is 'male'. Avoid that bias. We males also have an X chromosome, and are as dependent on it as are females, and maybe more. The Y chromosome bears almost none of the genes that will be selectively activated in males as they develop. Most of those genes are scattered throughout the genome and are present in both sexes (yes, ladies, you have most of the ingredients to build testicles, just as we gentlemen also contain the complete secret recipe for ovaries in our cells). In fact, the X chromosome is a favored place to stash male-specific genes."

And for another thing, his post explains very lucidly the concept of recombination with a very efficient analogy:

"Recombination is a kind of repair mechanism; not a clever one, but one that can have long term effects. Imagine a very stupid mechanic who maintains two cars by constantly swapping pieces from one to another. If one has a broken carburetor, at least one car will function. If one has a broken carburetor and the other has a broken alternator, every once in a while in his manic swapping, one of the cars will end up with both functioning components, and the other both broken ones: that means there will be at least one car he can send off the lot. Note that this is not a viable business model for a human garage, but it works well enough in a ruthless sort of way for biology. While it produces junk cars as well as good ones, most of the junkers blow up as they're leaving the lot, so no one survives to complain, and all anyone sees actually traveling down the road are the lucky products of random exchanges, and it's only those lucky drivers who go on to make more cars."

This also explains why my father always had two of the same cars -- the two 1963 Ford Falcons (a black station wagon and a white sedan), the two late-sixties Chevy Novas (ditto, but green and blue, respectively), and the the two early seventies Cadillacs (a gold Coupe de Ville and a silver Fleetwood) -- and I seem to remember that if something went wrong with one, the other would suddenly be out of action for a while. He was recombinating them. Or whatever.

Friday Random Ten: Bonus Tom Waits lyrics edition

So this morning I got in the car and switched on the iPod, and the first thing I heard was was Tom Waits, singing "Cold Water" (from the highly excellent Mule Variations). I gotta say it felt so good that I kept playing it over and over until I got to work. When I sat down at my desk, I set it to play the damn song over and over. For several hours. Fortunately I wear the kind of headphones that you stick inside your ears, and they sort of inhibit the singing out loud impulse, so those on the other side of the cube walls were spared:

Well I woke up this morning with the cold water
With the cold water/With the cold water
Woke up this this morning with the cold water
With the cold water/With the cold

Well there's police at the station and they don't look friendly
They don't look friendly/Well they don't look friendly
Police at the station and they don't look friendly
They don't look friendly/Well they don't

Blind or crippled, sharp or dull
Well I'm reading the bible by a 40-watt bulb
What price freedom? dirt is my rug
Well I sleep like a baby with the snakes and bugs

Well the stores are open but I ain't got no money
Ain't got no money/Ain't got no money
Well the stores are open but I ain't got no money
Ain't got no money/Well I ain't

Found an old dog and he seems to like me
Seems to like me/Seems to like me
I found an old dog and he seems to like me
Seems to like me/Well he seems

Seen them fellows with the cardboard signs
Scraping up a little money to buy a bottle of wine
Pregnant women and Vietnam vets
I say beggin on the freeway bout as hard as it gets

Man I slept in the graveyard it was cool and still
Cool and still/It was cool and still
Slept in the graveyard it was cool and still
Cool and still/Man it was cool

Slept all night in a cedar grove
I was born to ramble born to rove
Some men are searching for the holy grail
But there ain't nothin sweeter than ridin the rails

I look forty-seven but I'm twenty-four,
Well they shooed me away from here the time before
Turn their backs and they lock their doors
I'm watchin tv in the window of a furniture store

Well I woke up this morning with the cold water
With the cold water/With the cold water
Woke up this this morning with the cold water
With the cold water/With the cold

So anyway I'm back from lunch now and went back to random play. I'd kind of rather keep listening to that song, but I'm not sure it's good for me. Here are the first ten songs:

1. "Humming to Myself" Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Voices)
2. "The Road" Patty Larkin (Perishable Fruit)
3. "Sins of My Father" Tom Waits (Real Gone)
4. "Mystery Dance" Elvis Costello (My Aim is True)
5. "Susie Clelland" June Tabor & The Oyster Band (Freedom & Rain)
6. "Ode to Billy Joe" Bobbie Gentry (not sure where this one came from - an Oxford American Southern Music Sampler disc, I'm guessing)
7. "Too Drunk to Remember" Carlene Carter (Musical Shapes)
8. "Coming Back to You" Leonard Cohen (Columbia Records Radio Hour)
9. "Green Green Rocky Road" Kate & Anna McGarrigle et al. (The McGarrigle Hour)
10. "Parties in the USA" Jonathan Richman (I, Jonathan)

Back to work for me, alas.

I like spider solitaire best

I confess I do sometimes play solitaire at work. Usually, but not always, when I'm off the clock, just before I go home. I don't have any games on my home computer - it's a Mac, and it doesn't come with the game module that Microsoft throws in for free. Oh, I think there's like chess or something, but really, it's not the same. Anyway, according to this article in the Christian Science Monitor, apparently some people find that on-the-job solitaire playing is a serious worker productivity issue. The story somehow reminds me of one of those junk e-mails that was circulating a few years ago [and I'm sorry I can't find a link or a copy] wherein the crew of the Enterprise (the STNG version) stops the invading Borg vessel by uploading the Microsoft 'fun pack' or whatever it's called into the Borg ship's main computer. This slows them down, but they eventually compensate. What does them in is a deluge of little space pods containing Microsoft lawyers in Armani suits trying to sue them for having an unlicensed copy of the upgrade. The Borg are wrapped in red tape and bled dry. The Enterprise crew all avert their eyes at the horror.

Cooties and calico cats explained, finally

Seems like there's a bunch of stuff on the internets the last couple of days about the difference between women and men. It's a perennial favorite, I guess -- or maybe I'm just paying more attention. But the whole "where are all the women bloggers" question has been coming up again for the last few days. And Deborah Tannen's article in the LA Times [subscription required] generated some discussions.

Then the BBC weighed in with this interesting article about how female mammals are genetically more varied than males. It has to do with the difference between the X chromosome and the Y chromosome. Females, of course, have two X chromosomes and males have an X and a Y. And the X, "is much larger than the relatively puny Y, containing 1,098 genes to the Y's 78." Which explains why men are such weenies. Or why boys have cooties. Well, actually, it just means that females have more genetic material to work with than males. To be fair, lots of the genes are 'switched off' in females, but not all of them. And it's sort of random which ones are switched off.

So what does it mean? Well, for one thing, it explains why certain genetic disorders are passed on from mother to son: "Diseases on the X chromosome are usually expressed in males because they don't have a compensating copy of the gene on the second chromosome," said Dr. Mark Ross, the project leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK -- but less frequently from mother to daughter.

It also provides another example of the female once again making up for the inadequacies of the male: "Although nobody quite knows why the Y chromosome shrank like it did, its decline was not catastrophic thanks to the X chromosome. In a sense, it does not matter too much that a male is missing genes on his Y chromosome, because he has equivalent copies on his X chromosome."

OK, they're just chromosomes. But I thought the article was interesting. Oh, and it also accounts for the phenomenon of calico cats.

Do we really want to go there?

I was going to write something about the pitfalls facing large-scale deployment of hydrogen fuel cell technology (see the post about the fuel cell-powered motorcycle below), but I got sidetracked. I have long been a fan of biodiesel as a more viable alternative to petroleum fuel (also see here and here, but I'm having some second thoughts. This article by George Monbiot gets at some of my concerns. "Those who have been promoting these fuels are well-intentioned, but wrong," he says. "They are wrong because the world is finite. If biofuels take off, they will cause a global humanitarian disaster."

This seems a little extreme to me, but he has a point. Widespread use of biofuels, particularly those made on a large (i.e., commercial scale directly from plants or seeds and -- not from, for example, waste cooking oil -- will certainly have an impact on the food supply. Given the current fuel (in)efficiency of vehicles, and the current utilization of internal combustion engines as a primary source of transport (yes, our precious cars, but also for transporting the food we eat, the products we buy, etc. etc.), the sheer quantity of fuel required (even to use biodiesel for a proportion of our transport needs) will certainly have, as Monbiot says, an "impact on global food supply [that is] catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit. If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people."

Well, duh. I mean, who has the resources to purchase agricultural products, whether they are food or fuel, for the "best" (yes, of course that means highest) price. Monbiot provides a clue, in case you are clueless here: "People who own cars have more money than people at risk of starvation. In a contest between their demand for fuel and poor people’s demand for food, the car-owners win every time."

And another sobering thought: "Those who worry about the scale and intensity of today’s agriculture should consider what farming will look like when it is run by the oil industry."

Well, shit. That's gonna keep me up all night all by itself.

So what to do? You know the drill: Drive less. Ride your bike. Walk. Don't commute so damn far. And yeah, if you have the time, money, and inclination, get an old diesel auto (or one of those sexy new European ones) and install a conversion kit (see here and here for starters) so that you can run it on waste cooking oil.

And I don't think hydrogen fuel cells are going to save us, either. Surely we'll think of something, right?

Some like it loud

A prototype hydrogen-powered motorcycle was unveiled today in London, and there is a serious problem: it's too quiet. So quiet that they're thinking about adding a noise-generating device to it. For, um, safety purposes. I couldn't make this up. And apparently some motorcycle enthusiasts felt that without the noise, the "exhilaration factor" was lacking on account of the smooth quiet ride.

The new unit, which might set you back eight grand or so, makes about as much noise as a desktop computer, and has a top speed of 80 k/50 m per hour (I'm thinking that there's your "exhiliration factor" problem right there), and it generates only water-vapor emissions (so clean it's drinkable, say designers). It can go about 100 miles or four hours before recharging. The fuel cell that powers it is detachable, and developers say that it could eventually be used to power other devices -- great for those who live "off the grid" for whatever reason.

I'm thinking if your concern is that a quiet motorcycle is too dangerous, there's no need for a fancy, expensive, high-tech noisemaker. All you need is a playing card and one of those nifty clothespins to attach it to the front fork. And a dingy bell.

Oh, and it needs electricity to recharge itself, at some point in the process. Guess where that comes from?

Note:

The previous post (below) was originally written several years ago and I posted it today -- new and improved -- because someone asked me for a copy. I also sent a link to Trish Wilson's Blog, hoping to be in time for her birthday as I thought it would be relevant to the 'women's issues' sort of theme she's got going. I might be too late for that, but there you go.

Chick stuff

I have been menstruating for 30-some years. Not always on schedule, of course, but let's just say that as of March 14, 2005, this hideous thing has happened to me at least 381 times.

Why is it such a big fucking surprise every time?

I'm sure that part of the problem is that I just don't pay attention to the whole cycle the way I would if I were accustomed to worrying about getting pregnant. I've almost always been either on the pill or dating girls, so it's just not a big deal, except when it's a big deal and you should know better you idiot what do you mean you have no idea whether or not your period is late? Like, um, last month.

So picture it: there I am, living my life in my pleasant enough little world. Things are going right or maybe a few things are going wrong, but I can handle it. It's fine. Good, even. I am strong and competent. My bills are usually paid; my numerous and interesting friends all care about me. Sometimes I have a lover; sometimes I don't. I eat sensible things that I cook myself. I exercise, I get things done on time, I walk the dog.

Then one day I just burst into tears while I'm driving, for example, or I accidentally uncover a plot among my so-called friends to humiliate me yet again, or I catch my lover noticing for the very first time that I am fat. Or I notice that I don't have a lover, and no wonder! I'm fat!

I let the phone ring, and check the message later. It's my mother. Maybe I'll call her in the morning.

I'm late for something, but I have to eat right now. I mean, this minute. I go to the drive-thru and get a Filet-O-Fish sandwich. Yes, goddammit, I want fries with that. And a diet fucking soda, yes, that's right. Diet.

My breasts are at least eight times their normal size – I know this means that I am dying of breast cancer. I've never heard of that either, but it's probably too late for any treatments. It's OK, though; my life is not worth living anyway. My clothes don't fit, and why are they all so fucking ugly? Even my shoes are ugly. Every goddamn shoe in North Carolina is ugly. I am desperately horny. I will probably never get laid again as long as I live. Maybe there is some chocolate in my pocketbook.

Somehow I can ignore every one of these clues, no matter how many times it happens. I cannot remember ever feeling like this before. I am exhausted. I can't possibly sleep. I drop everything I pick up. One more thing will just push me over the edge, I know it will. Hell, I'm gonna jump. Why wait around for the inevitable?

Just before I get there and hurl myself into the abyss, though, it all falls into place. I have cramps! I'm bleeding! This is normal! I'm so happy!

Then maybe I'll get mad (again) about the price of tampons. Complain that I have to pay sales tax on them. Complain about sales taxes generally. And the whole fucking goddamn regressive tax system, who the hell thought that up? And the federal government, I mean, what's up with the UFO cover-ups? Or those goddamn black helicopters? And poverty and racism. Global climate change, the melting Antarctic ice sheet, that asshole in the White House, whatever. Doesn't even matter which one.

Then I call my mother back and she reminds me that menopause is just around the corner.

Is she trying to be funny?

Friday Random Ten: The 'my first time' edition

So I first saw this little game I think on Rox Populi but I've seen it other places too, like Trish Wilson's Blog and Feministe. Obviously, all the cool girls are doing it, so I'm going to post a list too. The deal is, you turn on your iPod (or whatever mp3 player you happen to be listening to), set it on shuffle play, and list the first ten songs you hear. You're not supposed to cheat. I already had my iPod on, so I just started with the song that was playing:

1. "Spinning on this Rock" Ramsay Midwood (Shootout at the OK Chinese Restaurant)


2. "Powderfinger" Neil Young (Rust Never Sleeps)


3. "My Town" Kate & Anna McGarrigle (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)


4. "Mon Menage A Moi" Edith Piaf (Very Best of Edith Piaf)


5. "Wall of Death" Richard & Linda Thompson (Watching the Dark)


6. "Crazy" Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Willie Nelson (Red Hot + Country)


7. "Nobody's Girl" Bonnie Raitt (Nick of Time)


8. "Eastern Rain" Fairport Convention (What We Did on Our Holidays)


9. "Cold Kisses" Richard Thompson (You? Me? Us?)


10. "Democracy" Leonard Cohen (The Future)

There, isn't that fun? The total bummer is that you only get to list ten. Because now there's even better stuff playing...

Squid? Or Octopus?

It's not all that long ago (a few days? weeks?) that Pharyngula came to my attention, but I've become what I guess you could call an admirer of PZ Myers.  And since it's his birthday, and he likes cephalopods, I thought I'd post this story about a squid.  Well, it's not a squid, actually, but the squid plays a very important role.  Plus it does take place in Minnesota.  Well, my dad lives very close to Minnesota, anyway. Just across the river in Wisconsin.

Here's the story:

My dad called me one Saturday morning, quite a few years ago now, and said he wanted my opinion about something Very Serious.  I said OK, go ahead, and he said he was going to tell me about something that had happened at his house that morning, and I was not to interrupt, but at the end he was going to ask me a couple of questions. He said he would, if necessary, put his wife on the phone to confirm that he was not making anything up, just in case I thought he was.

Now, a bit of background about my dad: he's a big practical joker. And having grown up with a big practical joker, I am inclined to fact-check pretty much everything anyone tells me. I will never again, for example, go into a hardware store and ask for a left-handed tool of any kind. And I knew he was lying when he told me that the stop signs with white borders were optional.

But his story, roughly, was this: he was outside that morning after a heavy snow, using his spiffy new snowplow to carve an opening in the enormous plow mound that the snowplow had left across his driveway. His, um, high-spirited pale blonde cocker spaniel puppy was nearby. The snow was deep and there were lots of big chunks of ice in the plow mound. It was kind of rough going for the old guy, but he soldiered on until an odd frozen chunk of something shot out of the snowblower-chute. He leaned over to look at it and as he was thinking, "my god, that looks like half an octopus," the barely-visible-in-the-snow puppy ran off with it.  Into the street.  Directly into the path of an oncoming snowplow, which had returned to pile snow in the driveways across the street.  Dad took off after the dog and twisted his knee, but caught the dog before the snowplow did.

At this point I couldn't help it, I said, "Dad, are you sure it wasn't a squid?" He said to shut up until he was done telling the story, and that his knee was badly sprained in case I cared.

So he got the frozen sea-creature away from the dog and took it in the house to show his wife. "Hey look honey, I found half an octopus in the driveway!"  She looked at it and said (and I'm not making this up), "Are you sure it isn't a squid?" Some discussion followed about the difference between a squid and an octopus, and they ended up looking it up to confirm that it was indeed, as far as they could tell from the parts they had, an octopus.  I'm not sure why they bagged it up and put it in the freezer, but they did, and my dad and his badly sprained knee went out to finish clearing the driveway. [This is a man who a) lives for bad weather, and b) once finished a 26.2-mile in-line skating event with a fractured coccyx sustained in a fall just a few yards from the starting line. Operating a snowblower in adverse weather conditions with a sprained knee is very likely his idea of a great time.]

The dog, however, stayed in the house. Which was good, because it wasn't very long before most of the rest of the octopus appeared, and she had been pretty excited about the first part, and pretty mad when it got taken from her. The remaining octopus remains were taken inside and frozen along with the rest of it.  Why?  Again, I don't know.  Evidence?

Some neighbors came by, and dad told them the story.  First question: "Are you sure it wasn't a squid?"  They were shown the evidence, and the pictures in the "How to Tell the Difference Between an Octopus and a Squid" book and admitted that it was in fact an octopus.  And then dad's father-in-law called.  He got the story, and wanted to know just exactly how they knew it was an octopus and not a squid.

"So that's the story," my dad said. "Could I have possibly made that up?"

"Well, yeah," I said, "but what are your questions?"

His first question was what's with the squid? Would it somehow be less bizarre to find a frozen squid in the snow in your upper-midwestern driveway than to find a frozen octopus? If so, why?

His second question was what in the hell was an octopus doing in his driveway?

I couldn't answer either question, but I thought it was a pretty good story, and we laughed pretty hard. The only plausible thing we could come up with to explain the presence of the beast was that my dad coaches hockey, or used to from time to time, and there is apparently some kind of tradition among fans of I forget which hockey team that involves hurling an octopus onto the ice if you don't approve of something that happens.  But he didn't have a team that season.  And the only thing we came up with to explain why so many people asked was it a squid was that sometimes someone's trash gets too close to the curb and the snowplows knock it over and spread it around. I mean, you could sort of imagine that maybe someone had purchased a squid at the fancy grocery store and never got around to cooking it & finally just threw it out.  But not an octopus.

Anyway, later that day, I called up some friends -- a couple who love a good story and also happen to both be pretty intrepid reporters -- and told them the whole story.  Bizarrely, they both asked the Squid Question, interrupting at more or less the same point I had. They didn't have any useful ideas about how it had got there. But just the other day, my dad was here visiting and we told the story to some friends. Well after the story was over and we had moved on to other topics, my friend's brother, whom I don't know all that well and who hadn't appeared to be paying attention, said, "Atmospheric convection. That's what it was. Like when it rains frogs or something." He said it as though raining frogs or something was a pretty routine happening where he lived.

I suppose it's as good a theory as any.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Professor.

More about radio

Apparently Mark Morford got his copy of the March 2005 Wired magazine before I did; it's all about radio (see my post below). The magazine has an interesting article about Howard Stern, some information about HD radio, stuff about podcasting, and predictions about the resurrection of indie radio, bankrolled by Clear Channel, Inc.

Plus there's an interesting article with everything you ever wanted to know about Wikipedia.

Anyway, check it out.

And speaking of

Well, and speaking of columnists, I guess, my favorite science whore Annalee Newitz has a new column March 2nd about women and science. Specifically, about the recent speech by Harvard president Larry Summers in which he pooh-poohed the idea that there is any kind of bias or discrimination or cumulative cultural effects behind the relative dearth of women in top-ranked science faculties. He puts it down to how women prefer to have children and how their minds just don't work like men's minds -- if they did, there would be more women in the sciences. Duh. Plus, the guys on the hiring committees just happen to prefer to hire guys just like themselves. They can't help this; it's I guess got something to do with how they are wired. Think about that for a minute -- especially the part with those two words "Harvard" and "president," right together. Coincidence? Ms. Newitz offers some useful advice to women seeking science gigs:

"So the next time a white guy is hired instead of you, just remember it's not really about discrimination or stereotyping. It's because the white guy interviewing you has a perfectly understandable – and probably biologically determined – taste for other white guys."

Whatever.

Newitz's Feb 9 column Henry Darger's Internet is also worth pointing out, as is -- oh hell, read her whole archive if you haven't already done so.

Radio killed itself

Mark Morford posted a column today called All Hail the Death of Radio that I liked very much, in which he notes the death of commercial radio and wonders whether anyone cares. A quick taste:

"It has become background noise, something you leave on just to keep you from falling asleep as you drive to Sacramento, more ads than music and more generic than electrifying, a nearly dead form that lost its spark about 15 years ago and that is quickly giving way to Sirius and XM and your ability to burn your own custom-mix CDs for pennies apiece and listen to them for three days and throw them away and burn a new one.

"Then there is the wondrous joy that is the iPod and its new upstart spawn, podcasting, that cute grassroots do-it-yourself radio mini-phenomenon thing that is spreading like porn-flavored candy and has the potential to slap corporate radio upside the head, even more than it has been in the past decade, which is a lot."

Please don't get me wrong here; I love radio. Or I guess you could say I loved radio. It can be so intimate and so perfect and so surprising; alas, it almost never is any more. There are of course occasional exceptions, but I agree that it all fell apart quite a while back. It's been more than 15 years since I last listened to commercial radio on a regular basis, but I think that even independent stations are suffering and certainly NPR has become a pale shadow of its early promise and intentions, bless its cold, dying heart.

OK, I admit I still listen to NPR for a little bit most days -- for 15 sleepy minutes before I hit the snooze button, or I'll turn it on in the car if I'm not driving far enough to dig the iPod out of my pocketbook -- but I just get mad, more often than not, at their mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy attempts to ride some edgy edge while trying to prove that they are not -- god forbid -- the Liberal Establishment Media Network. Though my local NPR affiliate did just replace much of its stale lite-classical programming with more news & info stuff. The only real reason I listen at all any more is aesthetic; I'm used to the way the programs sound, the way the announcers talk. Plus they broadcast the BBC World News feed late at night, and I absolutely love to hear the sport segments while I'm driving. I have no idea what they are talking about, but cricket scores are hysterical.

There are a few remaining independent radio stations on the air, and many of them have live feeds online; Jake at Lying Media Bastards has a lot of good links (scroll down to Sonic Resistance on the right); two of my old favorites from Minnesota that didn't make his list are KAXE and KFAI. And of course there's Air America, which is a good idea, but I haven't heard very much of them as they went on the air just before I had to take the streaming-music clients off my work computer.

I don't know very much yet about this podcasting thing that Mr. Morford was talking about, but it's somewhere between making mix tapes (CDs nowadays, I guess) for your friends and having your own show on a community or college radio station. Great fun, or not, depending. I've listened to a few things at Coverville, including this installment featuring a hilarious (live, with audience sing-along) Richard Thompson performance of the Britney Spears, um, hit "Oops! I Did It Again" -- if you click on the link (at least on my mac) there's not a counter on the QuickTime display that you see, but the song is about 75% or so into the 31-minute show. The shows take a while to download even on a fast connection, but you can start listening right away. This particular podcast, Coverville, is presented in a particularly Mac-friendly format (iPodderX). It works fine on a PC too, I think.

[A digression regarding RT: he's been performing that Britney Spears classic as part of the occasional "1000 Years of Popular Music" set in his live shows for a while now. Here's what he says about the 1000 Years project:

"The idea for this project came from Playboy Magazine - I was asked to submit a list, in late 1999, of the ten greatest songs of the Millenium. Hah! I thought, hypocrites - they don't mean millennium, they mean twenty years - I'll call their bluff and do a real thousand-year selection. My list was similar to the choices here on this CD, starting in about 1068, and winding slowly up to 2001. That they failed to print my list among others submitted by rock's luminaries, is but a slight wound - it gave me the idea for this show, which has been performed occasionally, and will hopefully receive a few more airings."

The CD is available at his live shows and through his website.]

So yeah, radio is dead. Big deal. Will Podcasting take over? Or maybe satellite radio? Does anyone care any more?

I guess we'll just have to stay tuned.