« April 2005 | Main | June 2005 »
May 31, 2005
What It's Really All About
All this blathering and bluster from the crazies who see progress and see only the death of their own stasis. All this sinister intent tacked on to human rights advocacy in favor of their own Special Rights as Heterosexual Christian Men and Women. All this fear-peddling just to return to the good old days that never really were.
Time to end that. Or at least try to: I'm here to offer to all the Regressives out there the Sinister Plot of the Gay Agenda. It's time to come clean and just show it all.
Only I'm not going to be the one to do it, because it's already been done. And in the New York Times! And by a high school senior called Frank Paiva.
An excerpt from the New York Times article (free registration required to read it):
[...] I've got prom dreams of my own.
They involve buying expensive ingredients at the gourmet food store and spending the entire day making dinner with my date. We would enjoy the food even more knowing we put all the effort into making it ourselves.
When we walked into the dance, the two of us would initially stun people, not because we were two guys but just because we looked great. I wouldn't care if I had to learn to make clothes myself if it meant avoiding that awkward “I rented this, and it doesn't quite fit” look. I would be able to hold his hand all night without feeling weird or attracting attention. By the time it was over, we would be so tired we wouldn't even care.
So there it is: I would be able to hold his hand all night without feeling weird or attracting attention. Sixteen small words; one giant sentence.
That's really all it's about.
This young man is already a gifted writer and obviously beyond his years in observational skills and apparent wisdom. Gifted and open and honest human beings like this make me proud on every level. Proud to know there are others who remain accessible and vulnerable to life's rich pageant; proud to know that the world moves in generally the right direction even though there are so many who wish to stop it spinning absolutely; proud that I'm open and honest about who I am; proud that there are so many people who are proud of themselves.
Darth Dubya
Sam and I went to see Revenge of the Sith tonight. It was the first movie we'd been out to in a very long time. Probably we could have picked a better re-introduction than to spend $23.00 on something like this.
I've seen postings where they claim that George Lucas was making social commentary, political current-events commentary, or even playing out a morality tale. I'd also heard that the Sith represented the godless fucks (read: people like me) out there.
Now that I've seen it, I can only ask: are you fucking kidding me with this???
<warning, it's about to get super-geeky in here. put on your propeller beanies...I've got mine on!>
The willful suspension of disbelief is always a requirement when you're about to have a sit-down and watch a scifi movie, but one also expects that the parts of said movie which are not fantastical or science-fictiony to be plausible. Take lava, for instance. Still hot enough to melt rock. Hot enough to cause woods & fabrics to burst into flame. One would think also hot enough that standing a foot away from it might make things a little toasty.
Anyway, to his credit, George Lucas does a far, far better job of meshing the “past” up with an already-known present than the Rick Berman of the Star Trek franchise ever managed. Precursors to imperial cruisers looked “the part”. The build-up to the Absolutely Sinister Vader was reasonable, if bumpy and stilted in places.
As I said, there are contingents on both sides that want to parlay this admittedly powerful cultural phenomenon into a propaganda film for their own ideologies and will stoop to new lows to retrofit their backward-ass mentalities into the film's larger statement. For instance, there's a small fraction of a human being, who goes by 'hoody', who haunts here with his comments while simultaneously banning me from commenting on his pages, who contends:
...In fact, for Sidious, there IS NO EVIL, only power to be used as the power owner sees fit, to use to accomplish his own vision of goodness.
The Jedi focus only on following the good, the truth. For them, the ends never justify the use of evil means. Sidious instead says, in short, that there either is no evil, or evil in the pursuit of what one feels is good is an OK thing. Evil means in pursuit of even a nominal good is fine. Skywalker then gets seduced (as do so many of us) by this simple yet sinister philosophy.
Darth Sidious is an MRT. For him, there are no absolute truths. Relativism is all.
For those of you not tuned in to right wing talk radio, an “MRT” is a “Moral Relativist Tyrant”, so far as I can tell. Our absolutist friend, Hoody, claims the Jedi for Jesus and Pope Panzer, while handing us liberals, us weaklings, us Sithy-boys, the Sith and the Dark Side Entire.
Really, there's better material for making the point he's clearly trying to make, but as far as I recall, there was only one line of dialog dedicated to absolutism/relativism. It was when Vader says, “If you're not my friend, you're my enemy.” To which Kenobi replies: “Only the Sith deal in absolutes.”
Really, what kind of muscle-pulls and whiplash does one get when they bend and twist as much as one must in order to make such ideological claims?
And c'mon folks. It's a crap movie, as movies go.
If you're going to claim motherhood, baseball and apple pie down from their semiotical space, honestly, pick a better movie. This one serves only itself, and does so with appropriate aplomb.
Which is to say, not very much.
May 30, 2005
I Want My MTV [Back]
Being 41 years old presents a bounteous set of advantages, if you choose to look at them that way.
For instance, I am old enough to remember when MTV went on the air, even though our shitty cable company didn't carry it then. I'm also old enough to remember when NIN started up.
Both had a certain mystique to them, both raising a counter-cultural middle-finger to Middle America. MTV had bumpers featuring Cyndi Lauper and her multivariate hair, Billy Idol bumpers and quick-cuts and special effects and the little moon man logo. Nothing quite like the feel of something new!
Trent Reznor and NIN kicked America in the nuts with its album, Pretty Hate Machine, and his version of a love song, “The Only Time”, which contained the !@#$!@# awesome lyrics: “Lay my hands on heaven and the sun and the moon and the stars, while the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car.” Nothing quite like the feel of something new.
Today? What's left of videos on MTV? What's left of MTV itself? Apparently not much: over the weekend, NIN withdrew from the MTV Movie Awards Show because MTV wouldn't allow an image of George W. Bush (which was unaltered and “straightforward”), so NIN withdrew.
MTV says: “[We were] uncomfortable with their performance being built around a partisan political statement”
Trent says: “Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me.”
I suppose these days, MTV's lack of interest in free speech is a better match for the American public than Trent's.
And sometimes, I suppose, having to remember when youth railed against authority instead of embracing the braces on their brains instead of just seeing it everywhere today is one of the disadvantages to being 41.
Who watches the watchdogs, if the youth won't do it?
May 29, 2005
Walt's Jeff's Book Meme
This is one of those question-and-answer memes, the kind that I used to do, occasionally, but stopped somewhere along the way. Maybe it was when the Q & A moved into those silly “What type of git Hello Kitty Character X-Man Faerie Mary quite contrary are you?” quizzes.
Or maybe fads come and go.
But books aren't fads. Books mostly come into the house and never leave. Love of reading never fades, even though the practice of reading often must give way to more pressing things, like earning a paycheck, or turning your brain off to go blow up some Zerg.
But it's Walt, and who can say no to a sexy Cuban pressing [into] you? So, here goes...
1. Estimate the total number of books you've owned in your life.
Like Walt, has to be over 2000.
2. What's the last book you bought?
“A Devil's Chaplain : Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love” (Richard Dawkins)
3. What's the last book you read?
“Blackbird House” (ALICE HOFFMAN)
4. List 5 books that mean a lot to you.
“Trickster Makes This World : Mischief, Myth, & Art” (Lewis Hyde)
“The Fifth Sacred Thing” (Starhawk)
“The Selfish Gene” (Richard Dawkins)
“A Prayer for Owen Meany” (JOHN IRVING)
“Tales of the City (Tales of the City Series, V. 1)” (Armistead Maupin)
5. Tag 5 people
[All graphics from Amazon.com, thanks to the awesome Amazon tool in ecto, the best blogging client/editor in the world]
May 26, 2005
Suit of Lights
While Nat King Cole sings 'Welcome to My World',
You request some song you hate, you sentimental fool.
But it's the force of habit: if it moves, then you fuck it
If it doesn't move, you stab it.
Sometimes—oftentimes—it seems like Born Agains only do it so they have license to behave like children again for a little while: when sexual scandal rocks them and threatens to end their righteous reigns of insipid indignation, it's as if the new-child has hit a new-puberty.
Acting responsibly, speaking responsibly, offering up good will and respect to others are all the domain of adulthood; we can't have that, can we?
So rather than weather the storm, instead of choosing to proceed on to adulthood, they go for—you guessed it—being Born Again!
Another go-'round of childishness, churlishness, name-calling. Another go-'round of living a pre-lingual existence where the only notion of truth comes in the incessant and annoying repetition of the same set of clicks and grunts: the more the same pattern of gutterals repeats, the truer it must be. Or standing in judgment with <sarcasm>apposite</sarcasm> display of righteous indignation about someone else's lack of humility.
And they pulled him out of the cold, cold ground
And they pulled him out of the cold, cold ground
And they pulled him out of the cold, cold ground
And they put him in a Suit of Lights
There is no creative act, only creationism; there's nothing new under the sun and that bristles: where is Father God? Why can't He just come down here “again” and show these moral relativists [whatever those are] that He Exists, He Is, and He Is Who Is and settle this, ferchrissakes?
The same old same-old will have to do, the same failure of the imagination produces only still-births, the same overweening, over-preening dogmatism prays for normalcy and for the nothing-special.
There is no sense of the New, only the Rehashed, Reborn, Retreaded. There is no Art or Inspiration; only Ritual and Fervor.
Outside they're painting tar on somebody
It's the closest to a work of art
That they will ever be.
- Words & Music by D.P.A. MacManus
May 25, 2005
Darth Meme!
Thanks to Richard for this meme.
Basically, it's this...amusing other Darths from StarWars. Some of my favorites posted there:
- Darth Jeff
- Darth Jemima
- Darth Studious (“Love to join the boarding party, fellas, but it's a school night.”)
- Darth Betty
Some of mine:
- Darth Brooks
- Darth Tanyan
- Darthfield
- Darth Buffy
- Darth Osbourne
- Darth Gates
- Darth Mall-hair
May 23, 2005
May 22, 1970
When I was not working, when I was working as a contractor, I paid more attention to the calendar date each day. Maybe I had the time on my hands, maybe it was that weekdays and weekends were scarcely different to one another and I needed some way of marking each tick of the calendar.
Now that life is far more regimented, professionally, I take weekends very seriously as time where I'm not working. I have work to mark the passage of a week, Monday-starts and Friday-stops, so I suppose the numbers on the calendar that slides down from underneath the Mac OS X menu bar are no longer on any critical path in my mind.
It was this morning, looking at the grid of day-numbers in the calendar that I realized that yesterday, Sunday, was the date on which my Grandmother, Mary, died.
I have written before about my mother, Marie. I have also written of her mother, Mary and even Mary's mother, Tekla: the Three Graces, I call them somewhat tongue-in-cheek but more ethereally, I'm quite genuine about the name. Three women very different to one another, even in appearance, especially in demeanor. All loving, caring, giving women. All strong women. All three adding to the world rather than subtracting from it any apportioned notion of their fair share.
Mary died on May 22, 1970. Thirty-five years ago. It was still cold outside, that much I remember. I was six years old and there had just been an ice storm.
Where is my mom?
It was odd that my mother was not around. Standing on the front porch of my grandmother's and great-grandmother's house (they occupied both sides of a side by side duplex), the neighbor girl, Cynthia, told me, “Mary is dead.”
Where is my mom?
“I don't believe you!” I told her. Or maybe it was, “You're lying!” That was probably it, because I knew Cynthia was given to lying, and I wasn't about to believe something like that without my own mother having said it. At least that's what I told myself. There was that nagging feeling that the world was a little off its usual path, that the world around me was wobbling in some strange way.
It was only a few minutes later that my Aunt Toots—Julia was her name, but everyone called her “Toots”—came driving up in her outsized 1965 Pontiac Bonneville covertible which had been layered with ice from the recent storm. It was difficult to see much, but I did see my mother in the passenger seat, her nose red from obvious crying.
Where is Ma? (“Ma” is what we all called my grandmother)
I knew it was true. I didn't really know, of course, not yet, but I knew.
I was frozen as the ground, as if motion might smash the bubble around what was left of a world where my grandmother was still alive, still here.
“I told you Mary was dead!” Cynthia said again.
Thirty-five years later, all I can think is, “God, what a bitch Cynthia was.
Thirty-five years!
It's a profundity not without merits. Then again, thirty-fives years is a blip and nothing more. Then again, thirty-five years is 90% of my lifetime. Then and again, thirty-five years ago was a different world.
I thought about what parts of my job as a Software Architect at Apple Computer would make any amount of sense on any level to her. How would I even find a reference to make her make sense of that kind of job? Would she recognize the Catholics of her day in the political faces of today's Papists? Would she still cook with lard and bake all day every Saturday?
Would it take her very long to accept Sam as family? Would she be proud of what I've done and what I've become?
Thirty-five years is a long time in terms of objective progress. And thirty-five years is nothing next to being proud of and earning pride from Family.
May 22, 2005
Best Gay Blogs
Sam nominated my blog for “Best Political Gay Blog” over at Best Gay Blogs. My entry appears here.
I'm honored.
Finally, a Great Tomato!
The Pup and I went and did some very much needed grocery shopping today. It's funny—in a not at all funny kind of funny way—that one can fill a grocery cart and spend over $300 doing so.
We saved the produce section for last this time, because we always end up grabbing too much stuff there first, then get it home and a good portion of it rots before we have a chance to eat it.
One of the last thing I spied with my blue eyes was a pile of beautifully orangey-red, clearly naturally ripened tomatoes. I nearly wept. Haven't seen them for so long out here. I blame our ghetto-ass Safeway (today we went to the Big Gay Safeway on Market St for a change).
I'm sitting here eating a tomato sandwich: white bread, Hellman's (well, Best Foods here in the West) mayonnaise, thick slices of tomato, and lots of salt and pepper.
Mmmmm...perfect. Ghetto-ass meatless sammich, but hey, I'm just a big Polack from Pennsylvania and I loves me my carbs.
Tomato sammich, gorgeous day in San Francisco, good times with my Fred (the plumber and my Donovan and the boy last night, and more good times later today with them and with others. Amazing weekend. Blame the tomatoes.
May 21, 2005
Soul of a New Stem Cell
The surface where philosophy meets science has always been amicable turf. Both Science and Philosophy tend to approach their respective subject matters with investment not in the outcome but rather the process; rigor over results; the soft, expansive space of better questions rather than a cold, hard slab where concrete answers are laid out like so many corpses.
Both Disciplines start with unknowing and the Unknown, with Zen's Beginner's Mind, and begin by populating the void with what is known, or what can be provisionally known. Both continue with drawing apparent connections, clear relationships between and among the sparse population of objects and ideas and notions, thus creating new objects and ideas and notions: something arises from nothing!
Built on the partially provisional, the Something New holds provisionally as well: a theory is born.
Philosophers may speak of the birth of new meaning; scientists may test the predictive power and the external consistency of the theorem. But both come from the same place: professional humility and an eye on the relative value of the new truth statement. Both groups have learned that with new knowledge comes change; with new thought comes new review; with new evidence may come the need to alter the truth statement to suit: mutability is an honest admission.
Honest admission? More like a necessity: life is change, existence is change. The nature of Truth changes daily. Creationism/Intelligent Design is a theory which works if you start with the axiom: the world is flat and at the center of the universe. Scientists are flipfloppers on the whip-tail knowledge, discovery and the need to make sense of disruptive technology and even more disruptive information.
Philosophers must swim in thought-liquid, afloat on strange tides and even stranger seas compassing drift as part of truth.
Both Science and Philosophy count on process, experimentation, constructive critique and the avoidance of absolutes to go where they must, do what they do, build what they must build and above all, discover what is there to be discovered.
Beginning with the void isn't just necessary, it simply is (and that's a strange thing to say of a void!). Science isn't science with presumption and Absolutes. Philosophy isn't philosophy without free rein of moral, ethical and cosmological territory.
Science with an investment in the outcome is merely Politics.
Philosophy with an investment in its own conclusions has devolved into Religion.
Setting aside Politics and Religion—as I've provisionally defined them—and limiting discussion to Science and Philosophy, the discussion of the origins of life—and the origins of a life—today takes the form of Stem Cell Research.
From a strictly and exclusively genetics standpoint, a new individual emerges when a sexual recombination of chromosomes comes together: fertilization. In humans this means a full single-set of chromosomes from the sperm matches up to a full single-set of chromosomes in the ovum, resulting in a genetically unique new individual.
From a strictly and exclusively developmental biology standpoint, a new organism is instantiated at the same time the genetics folks would state, but fertilization is just a trigger that leads to the construction of an organism eventually capable of doing the only thing it biologically can do: participate in sex. A single individual—in humans and in all species which sexually reproduce—is not driven to reproduce so much as to participate in the mechanics that lead to reproduction This is a fine point that gets lost when answers are all that is sought.
From a philosophical point of view, often the individual is of less interest than the greater picture of collections of individuals: families, groups, towns, societies, nations.
The South Koreans have successfully performed what is known as a “somatic cell nuclear transplantation”. A somatic cell is an cell that is not a sex-related cell. Meaning that sperm, ova and their progenitors are sex-related cells, but muscle, skin, brain, etc. are somatic. What the Koreans have successfully accomplished is to extract just the nucleus (present only in eukaryotic cells, a structure that contains the organismal DNA and has its own lipid bilayer that separates it from the rest of the cell) from a somatic cell and insert it into an embryonic cell, while destroying the embryonic cell's native nucleus.
If we are to take the geneticist as the sole authority on the beginnings of a new life, then the destruction of the native nucleus was the genetic 'death' of that cell. But the Koreans' success means that the cell remained alive.
Since the embryonic cell is now providing replication, protein synthesis and developmental mechanics to a totally different set of DNA, the developmental-biologist, taken at her exclusive word, would state that the organism continued to live, continued to be directed towards adulthood.
The resulting tissues that formed as a result of continued development would be genetically compatible, obviously, with the donor of that implanted nucleus. The not-yet-differentiated tissues could then be implanted into the donor's body, into a specific chemical and physical environment (say, the brain), and that chemical and physical environment would then direct the differentiation of those tissues towards the appropriate end.
Philosophers might argue or discuss the personhood of the donor, but neither the embryo nor the donated nucleus, since those would ever reach cognitive or autonomous personhood.
“Life begins at conception,” say some religious. But they count on the genetic uniqueness of the DNA of the nucleus as the basis for that statement. If the DNA—but not the organismal embryo itself—is destroyed and the religious still have a problem with it, are we to assume that Life Exists in the Nucleus? Now they're starting to sound like strict geneticists, when the world knows they're anything but.
And the so-called Soul? Did it exit and go to its reward when the native nucleus was disrupted and destroyed? Did the Soul transfer to what would genetically and essentially be the donor's twin, born decades after? Or is the modified organism without a Soul? And if so, does that make it the purview of Satan? Or just Soulless? And if Soulless, then how can a religious type call it human? And if it's not human, then why do they treat it as anything more than a cheek-scraping of cells from the inside of someone's mouth or a wasted bolus of sperm from a masturbating man?
The crime, the sin, in their minds is, of course, the destruction of that native nucleus.
The philosophers will consider individual uniqueness and the respect thereof as it applies to the greater human condition; the geneticist has it easy and delineates cleanly and without hesitation; the developmental biologist might applaud the superior technique that resulted in a successful nuclear transplantation.
Will the religious retreat once again from its current, relative stake in the ground of the Sacred Embryo and move ever more precisely into the Numinous Nucleus as the Momentous Miraculousness of Life?
For my part, part geneticist, part developmental biologist, part philosopher, part thaumaturge, I will enjoy watching the experts react to change, watch the religious pull up stakes and leave Absolutetown only to settle into Absoluteville just down the road apiece. I will enjoy the calm grace of philosophers as they note the beautiful shifts of reality as we stake claim to more knowledge, and I will watch the true scientists continue to revel in their work, settling one question and moving onto the new questions that they themselves created.
May 19, 2005
Girls vs. the Mostly Old White Men
So, the U.S. House of Representatives wants to bar females from direct ground combat. Why, you ask? Well, why not is the only reply you're going to get. Never mind that some women are physically more qualified than men. Never mind that men get tortured, too, and sometimes at the hands of women. Sometimes men get raped too, when captured. Apparently, it really comes down to a vagina and a few bazillion extra X-chromosomes. In other words, no dicky no fighty.
And then there's the paragon of modernity (not), the good old Roman Catholics. This time, in Alabama (who let the Catholics in in Alabama?). Specifically, an RC high school banned a student from attending her own graduation ceremony. Why? Because she's pregnant. Guess what? Girlfriend attended anyway, and at the end of the ceremony, walked across the stage by herself, announcing her own name. She was cheered by other students; her aunt and mother, also in attendance, were escorted out by police.
My favorite part of the whole shebang:
Cosby was told in March that she could no longer attend school because of safety concerns, and her name was not listed in the graduation program.
The father of Cosby's child, also a senior at the school, was allowed to participate in graduation.
Roman Catholics? Roamin' Consciences, more like it.
My Multifarious Melange of Mind
Too many brain things going on. A bigger picture unifying theory awaits, as it always does, and for now remains within my reach but not my grasp. So, I resort to random quotes which land their barbs particularly deep in me, or shine their light particularly warmingly on me.
- There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself. -- Henry David Thoreau
- I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. -- Umberto Eco
- Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. -- Erica Jong
- Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery. -- Pope John Paul II
- Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ablility to learn. The judgemental precedents of law function that way, littering your path with dead ends. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary. -- Frank Herbert
- Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent natural regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it. -- Frank Herbert
- The worst of times in San Francisco is still better than the best of times anywhere else. -- Armistead Maupin
- We find the most terrible form of atheism, not in the militant and passionate struggle against the idea of God himself, but in the practical atheism of everyday living, in indifference and torpor. We often encounter these forms of atheism among those who are formally Christians. -- Nicolai A. Berdyaev
- Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, “Where is it?” -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- A delusion that encourages belief where there is no evidence is asking for trouble. Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle. Instead, disagreements are settled by other means which, in extreme cases, inevitably become violent. Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics [...] But you don't do that if you just know your holy book is the God-written truth and the other guy knows that his incompatible scripture is too. -- Richard Dawkins
- The best is yet to be. -- Robert Browning
May 18, 2005
I Smell Gay!
In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is demonstrated that the nose knows.
The studies found that gay men's and straight women's brains react similarly to any one (or more) of a number of candidate compounds known as pheromones.
- Score one for science and genetics.
- Score one against the silly notions of Intelligent Design.
- Especially score any number of points against all those religious types who call homosexuality a sin, a choice or Against God's Plan.
Now, maybe President Bush's appointee to the FDA's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs can find a pheromone to blame for the abuses (including anal rape!) he perpetrated on his wife and the mother of this children, so that he can have a clear conscience the next time he writes a book about Stress and the Woman's Body or his care of women As Jesus Cared for Women. Will the hypocrisy ever end?
That wasn't rhetorical. You know it's not going to end. You know that the Christians will start searching for their own excuses for extraordinary behavior because this whole god-thing can't last forever.
Speaking of...maybe there are pheromones or other biological triggers that lead us biological individuals to obsess on Invisibles, Unattainables and Absolutes?
Maybe the Supreme Designer will come down and become visible, make himself accessible, and hang the universe off his Giant Ego?
Naah, that has a certain bad stink to it.
May 16, 2005
Science != Science
Stupid.
Stupid.
Fundie Bastards.
In what should have been clear all along, there was never any real push for Intelligent Design to be considered a supportable alternative to Darwinian evolutionary theory. No, what the Crazy Christian Right wanted all along was to muddy the waters of rationality and sanity just enough so that their murky voodoo would be seen as “at least as clear” as true science.
Now that they've almost managed to do that in Kansas, now they're trying to redefine what Science actually is.
No longer will Science be “limited to natural explanations” of the world around us, but will instead call it “a systematic method of continuing investigation”, but won't/can't provide what kinds of answers they're looking for.
None of these people have any real idea of how painstaking it is to perform experimental science. None of these people realize that their definition completely and utterly guts the notions of objective evidence, mutable theory, control factors or even peer review. Without those things, what do you get?
Well, you get a bunch of irrational nonsense that ends up being on par with work that actually sticks to scientific method and all its rigor.You get Kansas.
You get stupidity, and clearly those people who are so irresponsible as to blather without evidence and righteously proclaim Proof without Truth will have the leg up because the rest of us responsible ones, the rest of us critical ones, the rest of us thinkers will be relegated to attempting to debunk the vomitus spewed by the Fundies.
Oh, wait. Sounds familiar...
May 13, 2005
Splendor in the Ass
It's comforting (and dis-comforting ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo) to wake up and walk through the living room and be reminded where you abandoned your clothing and your self-control the night before to get busy and get there with your boyfriend.
That was apropos of nothing, but it had to be said. No, actually, I'm kidding...thoughts of sex lead to thoughts of, well, more sex, and porn. And listening to Radio Alice this morning just brought in lots of the funny.
Naturally, Comedy + Sex = Funny Porn Titles!
I'm sure you all have your own, gay or straight, seen or thought of. It's not often that I actively solicit feedback, but I'm asking you humbly right now. I'd love to hear your favorites. Email or comment, and I'll post a full listing of them.
Two more to get you started:
- Raiders of the Lost Arse
- Edward Penishands
May 12, 2005
Oddball Rodents and Intelligent Design
Yeah, I'm still on this kick. Only the oddball rodents aren't the ID-ers themselves but rather a new species entirely of mammal that was just discovered.
The good people of Laos call them kha-nyou (pronounced “ga-nyou”) and were discovered at market by scientists visiting Laos. After much deliberation and experimentation—all evidence gathering, something the IDer's refuse to do—they concluded:
Scientists found that differences in the skull and bone structure and in the animal's DNA revealed it to be a member of a distinct family that diverged from others of the rodent order millions of years ago. “To find something so distinct in this day and age is just extraordinary,” said Dr. Robert J. Timmins of the Wildlife Conservation Society, one of the discoverers. “For all we know, this could be the last remaining mammal family left to be discovered.”
I wouldn't personally go that far, but I'm also never been that kind of scientist. Still, it's totally fascinating that something so new was discovered in such a common place. A marketplace! One of man's most ancient cultural creations. There's something about this discovery that situates humanity in very satisfying ways.
I wonder if this means that the IDers will shrug at such wonderment, denying wonderment, and blame just credit god the Supreme Designer with a well-placed lie.
The Simple Joys of Maidenhood
Even at 5pm, the sun still flags high in the sky and I fear that the top of my big round head will be burnt even in the few minutes I have before my ride home shows up. The fountain splashes behind me, the comforting (yes, comforting) faint chlorine smell barks out Summer! in a way no sound or spectacle ever could. A Cupertino afternoon is different than a City afternoon.: when it's warm in the City during the day, by now the fog winds have decimated the temperature as the fog itself begins to finger-climb its way over Twin Peaks.
Maybe I'll ask Frank to put the top down for the drive home.
Sam got a job today and I'm so very happy for him. The whole situation smacks of the legend and lore that San Francisco is so good at: well-peopled with odd circumstances, oddly-peopled with glorious circumstances. In short, the kinds of whacky wonderful things that the square-states never get to see, the kind that perhaps the literalist-absolutists of the world can't possibly appreciate. He's nervous about it all, because that's just him, but I know he'll do well.
Have I mentioned how happy I am that he showed up, interviewed and was offered the job in 90 minutes' time? Not surprised, of course, but damn happy.
Sometimes I do have use for the sunshine.
May 08, 2005
Intelligent Design: The Fathom Menace
I tried. Really I did. I spent a good portion of yesterday digging through the non-science of so-called Intelligent Design, which, for all intents and purposes is simply a politically-correct rebranding of Creationism. Darwin is the Devil, and Evolutionists are just souls in need of saving. Blah blah blah.
Scratch an “Intelligent Design” cultist and you'll find a fundamentalist Christian (or Catholic) just under the surface. Press one of them on it, and this idea of a External Designer is always about their god. But is that any surprise? How could it not be about their god and not also be blasphemous (according to their own idea of what a sin is, of course)? I found any number of references about ID (no, there's no subliminal messaging there), but you know what? I was disappointed: for something that has so much momentum out there, I went in expecting to learn a thing or two—or at least learn of new examples of wonderment out there in the world that these crazies might have accidentally tripped into.
Alas, it's the tired old saw: failure of the imagination.
You know the baser christian types out there don't have any imagination. I know it. Even they know it—though they'll only admit it indirectly, under the aegis of not needing to imagine anything when god is there to instruct them.
I'll borrow one of their political commandments—and I'll take a shower later—to illustrate the point: keep it simple; nuance just muddies and complexity is from the devil.
So here goes: Intelligent Design is about Negative Evidence. In other words, “if I can't fathom how a thing came to be, it must have been Jesus God a Supreme Designer who made it happen.
That's it, folks! They try to mask their utterly misunderstood notions of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in information theory, or they trot out the old Watchmaker argument (someone get these people a Yahtzee game), or the more candidly honest ones admit that God Must Have a Place in Any Valid Argument. In any case, it's sad that human beings are so gullible as to consider that ID belongs anywhere near Science Education.
It's up to the churches these people tithe to teach them about that Big Intelligent Designer in the sky, not science teachers.
I know it must be upsetting to the god-ridden to see the rest of us possessing of senses of wonderment, of embracing the unembraceable unknown with smiles and warmth, of having a sense of self, of worth, of value even as we admit that we are but bits of flotsam in the larger flood of reality.
How do we do all of that without the need for an Intelligent Provider? Well, we do it the way that material reality has always done it: we evolve, using thirst for knowledge as our first, best Fitness Function.
Happy Mother's Day!
I love my mom very much. That's easy, though, not because I'm her offspring, not because it's what's your supposed to do, not because god tells you to honor your parents. It's easy because Marie is simply the best mom there ever was.
Now, I know there will be people out there disagreeing, claiming the title for their own moms, but I must respectfully disagree. It's your right to be wrong, and I don't respect you any less, but wrong you are nonetheless.
So, a very Happy Mother's Day to Marie, and a big thanks to all she's done for me my entire life. She and my dad raised three of us boys and, I must say, went 3 for 3 in producing terrific people.
I gave my mom a Mother's Day card when I was in the first grade. Our teacher told us what to write:
My aim in life will always be
to make my mother proud of me
Still holds true today.
May 07, 2005
Microsoft® Equality® 3.0
I have to give Microsoft credit for finally—assuming this is the final stance—getting it right with the 3.0 version of their policyware: Steve Ballmer, the original Monkey Boy, wrote a far-reaching and quite concrete memo to his employees stating pretty much unequivocally that the wonderful diversity in its workforce is specifically related to its business and that Microsoft as a company would always support legislation that worked to include sexual orientation in laws that provided protections for all citizens.
You go, boy!
I can't wait to see what the crazy preacher from Redmond has to say in response. And for my own part, there seems to be a lot of god-ridden craziness coming from the Pacific Northwest. Maybe some St. John's Wart will help?
May 05, 2005
O, NYC!
Wishing that we could be in New York City this weekend with the Muppets on Crack big gay bloggers. Sam and I had such a good time in New York in August, and there will be a ton of people there this time that we've been wanting to meet. Alas, the Mothership beckons for me, higher-education beckons for Sam, and there's just not enough time in all of time to do all the stuff we want to do.
I don't remember who said it, but in times like these, I think to myself: “Is life to short to put up with the stupid shit, or is life too short to care about it?”
May 03, 2005
Today in iChat...
My good friend Josh was back on the air today (meaning, in my Buddy List in iChat) after a too-long absence. Our initial dialog:
ME: ahhhh, good thing i'm alone in the office. there's your face and so I must touch myself.
JOSH: LOL
ME: I call it “touching appropriately”
JOSH: Yes, but [there are] security forces [that] record your biorhythms and can detect inappropriate thoughts...
ME: True, but I have it on good authority that they tune the detectors to “Republican”
ME: so...if I stay away from thoughts of BDSM and privatizing Social Security, I'll be fine.
JOSH: LOL. That couldn't be a more accurate statement, either :P
ME: No kidding. It's not just funny, it's true. And that's sad.