A Childhood Memory...of Why People Suck

I just recalled an incident from when I was eight, which reminded me why I sometimes get really annoyed with people. It also reminded me that adults act like children, or children imitate adults, or people just maintain the same sort of irritating behavior throughout life and only seem more mature because they change their presentation. The memory:

I was in Mrs. Honig's Hebrew school class one evening in third grade. I was reading a passage (in English) and suddenly had the idea so pronounce the "c" in "scissors" when the word came up in the reading. To see if people were listening. To see how they'd react. Well, the decision was made in a split second, I pronounced the "c" and the reaction was incredible. The entire class JUMPED to correct me. Twenty-five eight-year-old Jewish kids, all trying to beat each other to be the first to tell me I was wrong. To look at each other with smug superiority.

I know I'm viewing this through the lens of the slightly socially awkward eight-year-old that I was, but I think that's a far fairer lens than seeing how an adult would have perceived the behavior of the children. They might have been glad the kids knew how to pronounce the word. They might have been glad the kids were listening. They might have been mildly perplexed that one of the better readers in the class had mispronounced a word everyone else knew, but they would have been glad that I had learned from my classmates. But adults seem not to observe the behaviors of kids as other kids do, and I think they therefore miss out on the subtleties of the exchange. Kids do have a pretty intricate social world, and they can be very cruel to each other. A child's comment that may seem innocent or just funny to adults may seem horribly demeaning to other kids. And I think those kids are the ones who get it. The adults don't. And the attitude I got from the other kids in third grade I've seen over and over again in every stage of life. People are incredibly eager to jump on each others mistakes, correct each other, win arguments for the sake of winning, not for learning or teaching or commonly arriving at truth.

If you don't find this story compelling, let me give you another:

I was seeing a high school show with my friend Monica in fourth grade. As we entered the high school she said to me, "Maggie, I think some of the more popular girls are here, so if I see them, can we pretend we didn't come together? I'm just becoming accepted by them, so, no offense but, you know..." And I said, "Oh sure, I understand." And I did.

Perhaps Monica didn't show great virtue, but her actions bothered me so much less than the attitude the third graders gave me in Hebrew School. Again, my perspective let me know where Monica was coming from and the attitude she directed at me. She didn't dislike me or disrespect me, life was just easier if the popular girls liked her, and being with me in front of them would make that a much more difficult goal to achieve. I thought I might do the same thing in her shoes. I actually give her points for saying that directly to me. I think that showed she respected me, that she was able to let me know exactly why she might not stand with me if they came over. She wasn't passive-aggressive. She was assertive. And I have to give it to her for that.

Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger, Shrug of the Shoulders

Congratulations to Stephen Colbert for getting referenced in a post title. Bravo, Stephen. You have achieved the highest maggie-centric honor in journalism.

Tip of the Hat
To Judge John E. Jones III for his glorious decision in the Dover "Monkey" Trial. I would sum it up for you, but why should I give you the goods here when I've already done it here. Check out the article. I will give you one teaser quote from the judge:

The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

You tell them, Judge Jones. Also see my article for a doozy of a quote from Richard Dawkins, who never fails to take the appearance of level-headedness right out of his own completely level-headed conclusions. And that's why we love him so.

Wag of the Finger
To President George W. Bush, not for spying, but for whom he's spying on. I have to say, when I first heard about the spying, I was nonplussed. If listening in on known Al-Qaeda operatives is going to help us prevent people from dying, I could see where "wartime exceptions" would be reasonable. I don't know if it's constitutional—I'm really poorly read—but it doesn't totally offend my sensibilities. However, this totally offends my sensibilities. Spying on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" protests? Really? Are those protests a "credible threat?" I vote no. They're generally angry but peaceful. I mean...a kiss-in is about as peaceful as you get.

I love when standards for these things sound like kids talking in a middle school English class...just throwing out creative ideas is good enough; the ideas don't have to be right. Which is really fine for middle school English...I'm all for rewarding free thinking. But it's not OK with logic like "well, clearly they don't like the military...and protests get people worked up, and sexuality gets people worked up, and they want to be allowed into the military, so maybe they're militant..and they'll kill us all!" Or whatever the logic there is.

Shrug of the Shoulders
To the Transit Workers Union, for being a huge pain in New York's ass for a cause that's probably totally reasonable. I haven't reviewed the specs much, and even if I did, I don't really know what's appropriate for them to be getting. So, fight the good fight, TWU; just don't fight the less-than-good fight. Because I was one of 4 people in the office until about 11:30 today, and I'd prefer if that didn't happen too much more. Thanks.

Oh, The Inner Turmoil!

There is much. There is a reasonable quantity of outer turmoil as well (see the rather productive back-and-forth I've been having with a blogger on the "Inexpensive Indulgence" post. also see the article I wrote and the two I interviewed for today, coming out later this week.) Currently, I don't want to argue any more, please anybody, or redefine myself. And right now I'm being provoked by a guy on AIM (friend of a friend who wants me to rant about a kid he knows), scoffed at by my mother because I want time alone, and forced to redefine myself. Of course redefinition is a lifelong process...although it would be lovely if it ended at some point with me not defining myself at all. But I have way too much time on my mind, if not on my hands, and I can't help but dwell and wallow and ponder and think myself into DOOM. Which is what I've been doing this week. Worst/best of all is that recent events are so me and my life...they're just not me and my life right now. Bah. Sulk. Collapse on the couch. Read Narnia.

Good People, Good Art

After Friday evening, the weekend progressed into uncomplicated goodness (nice move, weekend). Yesterday I drove up to Wesleyan—my longest solo drive to date...yes, I realize it's under 2 hours—to see Chayes in "The Faculty Room." The show was lots of fun...in that hard-to-take sort of way. I may have mentioned I love theater/movies/books where you're transported completely into another world...a world that looks a lot like ours and could coexist with ours, but the people there just have slightly different rules for life. This was one of those shows, although it got kicked up a notch by being aware of its weirdness, and then laying weirdness over the awareness. Good stuff. Afterwards, I had Thai food with 3 Jesses (Chayes, Cygler and Kahn), which was lots of fun, and I livened up with some food in me. Food makes such a difference. Go food. On a brief walk afterwards, I chatted with Chayes about the events in my life. Was good to chat.

Today was "Brokeback Mountain" with V, which was, of course, amazing. He drove us in, mostly because he knew he could get a good, free parking space on a Sunday afternoon, and that opportunity was too good to pass up. We listened to showtunes. Need I have even written that? No. Brunch was at a trendy-ish Chelsea place, and we ate and chatted and such. Then came the awesome, awesome movie. Now, V said he'd rather see a movie with great projection than with a good crowd, but I think I may have proven him wrong with this one. The Chelsea crowd was priceless, even if they did interrupt a couple of good moments. One guy whispered "Oh, shit!" right after the cowboys had sex for the first time, as if he were surprised. Everyone cracked up. Also, I loved seeing a line out the men's room door and no line for the women's room. On the ride back I rediscovered exactly how much V hates traffic. He's a total taxi driver...can't stand people who are less able to maneuver than he. He kept saying "I hate people," which eventually caused me to break out into my once-improvised song "I hate people," written in the Best Buy parking lot on Central Avenue.

After the movie, V said this movie showed a good example of why gay men shouldn't get married. I paused. "...to women." Him: "Right." He said that he's seen 3 gay friends of his get married...in two of the occasions, he was left to comfort one of the groomsmen whose sexual relationship with the groom ended at the wedding. Oh, joy. And by joy I mean emotional hell. Also: V always smells good. It's a little weird. Actually, it's really weird. What the hell? It's like the glee club director who never sweats. Sick, sick, none-too-ethnic people.

And You May Ask Yourself...

Tonight my life took a turn for not-like-my-life. I'll chat on an individual basis...maybe...

But everything else paused when a series of likely coincidences took me to the very front spot of the subway. I was almost all the way from union square to grand central, when I realized that my back was immediately to the window that overlooks the track. I turned around and held the bars to either side of the window and just looked forward, a la Kate Winslet in Titanic. Without the imminent doom. So I got a great train's-eye-view of the subway. It's kind of great looking. I recomment riding at the front if you hav the opportunity. Pulling into a station will never be the same again.

Also, I was happy to read this post on my latest (and most creative) addition to the Seed website.

The Downside of Vanity

These are the last three entries you get when you google my name:

anal-intercourse-story.notbad.net.ru - anal intercourse story

lesbian gone wild

GIRLS GONE WILD - THE GREATEST XXX SITE . FREE GAY TEENAGER XXX

Yet, I still think it's a good idea to spend as much of my life as possible writing stories about monkey porn and broken virginity pledges. And making atrocious puns (see an article to be posted tomorrow). Hey, if a Salon journalist can write, "He attempts to answer the question, 'Why should we care so much about boys when men still run everything?' Dowd-ing Thomases might put it thusly: If men aren't necessary, should we care?" (my bold), I can pun as badly as I want to!

I've Got A Little List

Through a brief-ish but productive AIM conversation with Vaughan, I've started compiling a list. The document consists of "things I know little to nothing about, but should know about if I don't want to be an embarrassment to my family, my country, and myself." The working list is included below this entry. Feel free to suggest things I may not know about that I should investigate.

I also realized that I never talked about the real indulgence relevant to my post yesterday. While it's nice not to criticize harshly, it's really luxurious to praise unabashedly. Try doing it sometime. It's amazing! It has all the creativity of a good lambasting with none of the guilt. You can be even more creative, because the field is less explored (this isn't really the same as love poems and religious praise). Try telling someone they're so un-fucking-believably fabulous. It's stunningly good! "You just blew me right out of the water, like, dropped to your knees and took me from the pit of the ocean to fucking heaven. I'm pissing ambrosia on Zeus, that was so awesome." You know. Just ride with it. It's so amazingly satisfying.

OK, here's the working list:

Things I should know

Genocides
Rwanda
Sudan
Khmer Rouge
Serbia-Bosnia
West Africa?

Conspicuous Absences
Stalin
Pol Pot
Argentina

How Things Work

US
How a bill becomes a law
Constitutional amendments
SCOTUS, how a case gets there, what happens
Lower courts: who are they? how do they work?
Candidates for president
How presidential election works

International
The UN
How the EU works
WTO and how it interacts with the G8
How currencies fluctuate
How Canada and the UK elect their leaders

How the regions got their structures
How the EU was formed
Why africa is structurally fucked
Yugoslavia
USSR
The Koreas
One Germany
Northern Ireland/Ireland
Palestine/Israel
Individual mideast countries
Apartheid

OK, some of those I know more about than others (how we elect the president). But some I know absurdly little about. Feel free to add things along these lines, and for other categories, including "things that will kill us all, or at least tens of thousands of us."

Inexpensive Indulgence

The greatest thing I learned from my crazy mania professor Eric Schwab (I'll say 'hello, eric schwab,' because I'd put him just barely in the self-googling half of the world) is that it is legitimate, nay, desirable, even, to read a text and not criticize it. Just take from it everything you can. You don't have to endorse it or support it or praise it...just use the text to see what you can get out of it. Go on. Whatever you want. Be selfish. Take from the text. Perhaps this wasn't how he phrased it, but he did come down hard on the frequent practice of reading with a mind toward ridicule.

Why do people so frequently read this way? I understand you get something valid out of criticism; you practice discerning valid arguments and therefore practice forming strong opinions and arguments of your own. Plus one for critique. Fair enough. But you lose so much. You, number one, get really tense and have that insecure satisfaction of gossip, especially when you critique poorly. You (and realize, of course, that 'you' always means 'I') feel like a dirty, dirty, bad person. And that's not a good feeling at all. "Sure, religious people: there's an invisible omnipresent being pulling all the strings and setting the world up so science can explain everything, but really science isn't the way to answer our questions because he's just testing our faith. Like he is when he kills tens of thousands of people in Asia. He's not cruel. Noooooo. He's just got a plan!" See. I feel dirty now. That's not good. Whereas if I legitimately consider the opinion (unlikely at this point; I've done a lot of that already), or just try to see how the impulse to believe in God reveals something about what it means to be human (very likely), I feel good. And satisfied. Try it! I think you'll like it.

So it feels bad to ridicule and good not to ridicule. You also get much better reactions when you don't ridicule. When you argue with an attitude, people get defensive and it sucks. You wind up in one of those arguments where there's no aim to prove or disprove the original point, you just find an objection to everything the other person says. Those arguments are frustrating. If you remain amicable and ask the person to explain his or her thoughts, you can present challenges and get the person to respond to them thoughtfully. People are much more likely to present their opinions fully and be receptive to constructive criticism this way. If you take the conversation in another direction, they'll be happy to go with you.

And you just get more out of it. You have the power to make the reading of the text or the listening of the speech as useful to yourself as possible. You can use it to explore the topic that means the most to you and resonates most with what was presented. It's a great, open opportunity. Go for it.

If the argument or information really just blows? Ignore it. Move on. Find something else. If there's absolutely no entertainment value, humor, decent points, food for thought, cute facts or anecdotes, consider the time you've spent reading a sunk cost and do something else.

Some people think it's weak not to criticize harshly if something's bad. Why? I don't think it's weak. It's being the bigger, more selfish man. It's doing exactly what you want. It's putting your remaining time to use that works for you. Excellent.

Unsurprisingly, this post is spurred because every negative comment written about my work hits me hard. This is the problem with going public, especially with a poor sense of what should be censored, a creative mind, and relatively little experience in the field. I'm fledgling. I'm learning. I'd appreciate if people criticized constructively...and I'm not convinced they get anything meaningful out of doing otherwise. I know I don't get anything out of that except a quick, guilt-ridden high. But, in my little utilitarian scheme, if it actually benefits them, I can't stop them. I can't stop them anyway.

We Could Be Wrong

So, let's say there is a God. A likely situation? In my opinion, no. In the opinion of others, very. But, as pretty much everyone will concede, a possible situation. Not one we can ever conclusively say is untrue. That's the frustrating beauty of all the theistic arguments. So, anyway.

Given: ∃ God

And therefore everything we know is wrong. Of course, maybe everything we know isn't wrong, and God is one of those Gods who sparked the big bang and evolution and pretty much left the world to function given physical principles and He did so with infinite lovingkindness. Possible. But I'm not talking about that situation. I'm talking about any situation where everything we know is wrong. God created the heavens and the earth. God created man pretty much as he is.

So, IF this is the case. What is science? Is it still taking all of these testables and, well, testing them? Would we still go about our merry way, finding out what we could via these methods, hoping that the consistency we've seen in this world holds up a little more? Or would we claim that the answers to these questions, even if we couldn't test them, are ultimately the scientific answers, because they are truth? Or would science just be dead/useless altogether?

Of course there's always the question of how we know there's a God. So we have to assume it was revealed to us in some awfully convincing but non-repeatable way. Like the whole booming voice from the heavens, mountains lifted, every person told what he or she is thinking, and then nothing. Heck, I'd be convinced. But it's non-repeatable. OK, now that we have that out of the way...

Is the first priority of science truth? I think it's pretty clearly not. It's just that we're very convinced we can find truth through a system that makes a lot of sense and has some pretty remarkable successes in the past.

On a less extreme note than the "science fails!" scenario, what about the several times scientists have gotten it wrong...such as with the ether. I mean, the ether wasn't a horrible hypothesis. It's not immediately intuitive that light should be the fulcrum of the universe. So, in their science classes they taught the ether. Should they not have? I think they should have. So we kind of tacitly consent to teach untruths as long as they're arrived at via this tried-and-usually-true methodology. Seems mildly messed up. I'll ride with it, but I do kind of feel we should be qualifying everything.

I guess that's what I'll concede to IDers. Not that evolution should be singled out as being flawed, hell no, it's one of the theories with the greatest ratio of explanatory power to problems that we've got. But aside from repeating the steps of the scientific method ad nauseum, I think kids should be given a clearer picture of science: What it's based on, how it operates, what it will not answer, all the incredible things it's done, and how there may be things that are wrong and always will be uncertainties. And that's part of the discipline. The good news, you can tell them, is good science is set up so that it will seek out and find what's wrong. And that's it's greatest virtue. So take the answers as truth with only a small grain of salt.

The World of the Post

I was riding home on metro north today, when I looked to my right and realized three men lining the aisle across from me were all reading the New York Post. I have a very serious love/hate relationship with the Post. The hate side is obvious: the paper is exploitative crap. It's filled with overblown, romanticized stories about killings, sex scandals and celebrities. It is always in the poorest of taste, and the news rarely has any relevance outside itself. It is a true tabloid, but it's reputation is better than that of, say, Star. It's, you know, not embarrassing to read on a train. Now for the love side: the paper is BRILLIANTLY HILARIOUS exploitative crap. I really feel I should be writing the tasteless puns that accompany every story as a headline. Seriously, Post folks, call me up. I'll do it in my spare time. It'll be awesome. They, apparently, don't deem a pun as making light of something (I remember seeing "Oh, God!" as the front page headline for a suicide bombing). Which is tasteless, sure...but I think you can kind of set your own rules that way. If they do it for everything, it's not so bad.

But anyway, what I've realized is that people read the Post. A lot of them. And they're all living in this bizarro world I know nothing about. Now, I'm not as much of a news junkie as some people are, but I, for example, know what case went in front of the Supreme Court today, and I don't know, for example, anything about the guy who killed a police officer this week. But lots of people know tons about this guy, just like lots of people knew tons more about Scott Peterson. I'm not saying these people are wrong for enjoying their Post...everyone who's anyone knows that personal stories are more compelling than tragedies and decisions that affect people on a mass scale. It's just strange that there's a population living in an entirely different world of news, even though they live within a two mile radius of me.

On a lighter (or darker) note, I'm not thrilled with the colors of my site. It's blatantly obvious that black is out and Mac white is in. However, I may just ride out the wave and wait for black to return when apple and google go under and, say, alienware rises to the top. Then I'll be SO in.

She Was Asking For It

This post might offend you. No, really. It might.

I've been thinking a bunch about this post on the amazing blog feministing.com. Jessica, the smart and saucy head of the site, discusses a British study whose main finding was "one in three people in the UK believe that women who 'behave flirtatiously' are responsible for being raped." OK, that's pretty scary. But then she goes on to quote more of the study. I'm interested in this part:

Similarly, more than a quarter of people (30%) said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk, and more than a third (37%) held the same view if the woman had failed to clearly say “no” to the man. (bold theirs)

They clearly find this abhorrent. I'm not so upset, and it's mostly that "partially responsible" category that's doing it. Let's take another example. Say a rathepetitete woman is driving alone in her cute Porsche convertible and wanders into the South Bronx. She realizes she needs gas and hops out in her fabulous Prada heals and Gucci mini-dress. She goes up to the attendant and pulls out a wad of Benjamins and flips through about five of them before she finds a Grant, which she uses to pay the attendant. She wanders around the corner to use the bathroom and is accosted by a man who easily pins her against the wall, holds a switchblade to her throat and demands her money. Would you really say this woman was not "partially responsible" for the mugging? Of course the mugging was wrong. Nobody should mug somebody else. But when you do stupid shit that makes you substantially more vulnerable, I think most people would say you're "partially responsible" when something like this happens to you.

So how, if at all, is this situation different from rape? I have a couple of ideas, but first I'll chat a bit about what's not different. People can be bad and do bad things. We know this from a very young age, where kids talking behind our back preceded the "don't go anywhere with strangers" lecture. It is your job, as an adult, to do your best to protect yourself against this. I do think someone who doesn't say "no" when they mean "no" is doing something wrong. It is your responsibility to say no to salesmen who would con you into buying. It's even your responsibility to say no to people who come up to your car and start washing your windshield in hopes of getting paid. There are ways of forcefully saying no, and everyone should learn them. If not, people will make you do all sorts of things you don't want to do. Rape may be the worst case scenario, but it's certainly not the only scenario. You should also not get fall-down drunk without friends around. Again, people will mug you, mock you, and, again in the worst case, rape or kidnap you. It is your responsibility to care for yourself and to make sure you have trusted backup. If the woman in the car were with a 6'5", 240 lb. man acting as her escort to the bathroom, she wouldn't have had such problems. She also might not have had problems if she had hid her money well or made sure she was in a safe location before getting out of the car. So, that's how they're the same. If you can take simple steps to prevent harm, and you don't, there's some partial responsibility on your part.

It is important to note, however, that you having more responsibility doesn't make the other person any less responsible. This isn't a 0 sum game. Somebody who rapes someone passed out on the kitchen counter is just as morally abhorrent as someone who rapes a fully conscious, fighting person. "It was stupid of them to do this, so I have a right to" is bullshit logic. I believe that if you're hurting someone, if you're generating negative utility, you're being bad. Eso es todo.

Now for my thoughts on how these are different. The first thing that comes to mind, which I don't really believe to ultimately be the answer, is general vulnerability. Taking advantage of someone naturally weaker than you are or in a compromised state is worse than winning a fair fight. It's even worse than holding a gun to the head of someone in what otherwise would have been a fair fight. While I think this argument has merit in general, it doesn't seem THAT bad for someone to mug a drunk person. And raping someone who's you're own size is still abominable.

The second thing that comes to mind (all right, I guess it's actually the first) is the nature of the crime. But it's clearly not just the severity that's the issue. We can think someone who gets killed by doing something stupid is partially responsible. Is it that it's demeaning? That it's a violation? I mean, I think murder is more of a violation than rape. Here's what I think it is...thought 2.5:

I think a lot of it boils down to that age-old double standard of men-should-screw-like-bunnies-but-women-should-be-pure-and-virginal. Especially, it comes down to how people have historically (and, sadly, currently) reacted to rape. If the families and friends of the victims always reacted to rape that might have been prevented by smarter choices the same way they reacted to these other things—"I'm angry at you for not thinking and suffering the worst consequences, but now that it's happened let me hug you and do everything I can to make sure you're OK"—we might view it in a similar light as we view the other crimes. But when men in the Sudan find out the women in their lives were raped and blame them (completely unjustly in these circumstances: This isn't rape by an irresponsible, thoughtless date; this is usually rape by soldiers at gunpoint) they disown their daughters. They break off their engagements. They shun their sisters. They view the woman as unclean. When men rape in these kind of situations, they're not just giving the women a single traumatic, life-changingly depressing experience, they're also ruining everything they have and toppling their support network.

While, thank God, this doesn't seem to be the case in America, I don't think that frame of mind is totally absent. When people give women partial or total responsibility for being raped, they're not saying "you were thoughtless and could have prevented this," I really think the message between the lines is "you secretly wanted this at the time, and now you're just complaininbecauseue you can." I think that's where the problem is. And it goes a step further...even between those lines lies the message "And you're a slut because you wanted it. You're disgusting." That's very rarely, if ever, said (I believe...I may be totally wrong...In fact, there's a very good chance I'm totally wrong). But I think it's there, and I think women know that it's there. And I think that's why it's so, so offensive to say a woman was partially responsible if she put herself in a very compromising situation. Not because she didn't really forsake her responsibility, which she make have, but because the implication is that she was a willing participant. She wasn't.

Am I just spewing the obvious? Am I spewing crap? Am I spewing legitimate thought? I can't tell anymore...

Best. Weekend. Ever.

And such a good change of pace. Well, the only bad non-change of pace was Yale losing the game (in triple overtime no less!). Five years in a row we've lost the game. How depressing. But everything else was just stellar. A review, more for my personal records than for public intrigue:

Friday: Got into New Haven around 7 after sneaking out of the office about 90 minutes early to catch my train. I dropped my stuff off at Caleb's room then met Caleb, Lori, Alexandria, Di Franco, Matt Lewis, Marty Rod and Lauren Burke at Neat lounge. I stayed for about 15 minutes and one glass of Pinot Noir and went to the glee club concert. I immediately ran into the '05 crowd, giving massive hugs to Meredith, Reiman and Haninah. The concert was great (I hate to admit it, but the harvard glee club sounded really, really good. Then again, they're all-male: a big bonus to my ears.), and we all went back to the reception for a little while before I was scheduled to meet Caleb at Yorkside. We met up at a very crowded Yorkside (Caleb and Di Franco arrived about 20 minutes late, damn them) and headed to "player Drew's" party in his apartment. BEAUTIFUL apartment. The kind of thing that would cost you 4 grand a month in New York but is probably a quarter of that in New Haven. Good time at the party. Caleb got massively drunk. I hate to say it...but sometimes I like people better when they're drunk. Sometimes I like me better with half a glass of wine slowly filtering through my liver. Here's a sample of drunken dialogue between Caleb and Marty on the way back...Marty's trying to get Caleb to remember some girl:

Marty: Oh, you know...the hot one.
Caleb: Can you be any more specific?
Marty: The one who smoked out of an apple. The hot one.
Caleb: Anything else? Anything about the way she looks?
Marty: Man, she's the one who smoked out of an apple!
Caleb: Right, because I saw her. Because I'm so fucking in touch with the world that anytime someone smokes out of an apple...I KNOW. Because I'm Johnny Fucking Appleseed.

That was about it. Still pretty funny, though.

Saturday: Game time. Woke up around 10:30 to a very unhappy Caleb. Gave him Tylenol. We went to Copper Kitchen, possibly the best place to get breakfast in New Haven. It was crowded as all hell, but the super-efficient waitress got us our eggs and hash relatively quickly. We went to the busses by the gym, and the line pretty much went to Hartford. So we walked the two and a half miles or so to the game. The day was actually pretty nice, and we got there much faster than we would have had we taken the bus. So, good choice, Maggie and Caleb. We found the Branford tailgate and met up with Alexandria, Roxy, Lori, Brad, Haninah and Andrew Korn. After much reuniting and being squashed into small spaces, we went into the game for the beginning of the second quarter. By a couple minutes into the third, Yale was up 21-3. It looked like smooth sailing.

A bunch of us cut out just as the fourth quarter began and Harvard brought the score to 21-16. We drove in Roxy's rented car to Atticus, where I stayed for a few minutes before heading to physics Yorkside. The only one to come reasonably on time was Meredith. Yorkside was packed, and we figured the others would still be at the game, so we just went to Koffee Too and hung out there, meeting everyone else at Yorkside around 5:15. A bunch of those people went to Harry Potter, so Reiman and I hung out a bit before I departed for India Palace. They took forever to seat us and longer to serve us, and our group of 12 had to split up (shocker), but oh did that Indian food hit the spot. And the company couldn't be beat. After Indian, sake bombing (or in my case, hot sake sipping) at Miya's. Good time was had by all. Eric Seymour also joined us at that point, and it was very good to see him. I heard all about the TFAers crazy experiences, and I, of course, asked all the guys whether their kids have crushes on them.
Brad - A couple seem to.
Matt Lewis - No, they're elementary school kids, and his life's goal is to never have a student with a crush on him.
Dave - Yeah, they do. (shocker)
Eric - No, but the captain of the basketball team sometimes touches him inappropriately. ("I was going to buzz the principal's office, because this was the third time he'd come in late without a note, and I go to reach for it and he hugs me. I was like 'WTF? buzz!'")

After Miya's some people went to Rudy's and I went back with a few other people to Caleb's room. They, too, left for Rudy's, so Caleb and I just hung out and chatted, which was great as always. I gave him a backrub I owed him and he desperately needed (what a self-sacrificing girl I am, giving a backrub to an obscenely sexy man...the pictures don't show his general awesomeness). When people came back from Rudy's, they played poker, and Haninah and I chatted on Caleb's bed, as he tried not to flirt with Matt Lewis's girlfriend's friend and instead redirect her onto Brad. It worked. After a while: sleep! And it was good.

Sunday: Woke up to Caleb's alarm, showered, dressed, woke up Alexandria, packed, and went with her and Caleb to Koffee Too for breakfast. Ate with them and the others. Brad drove us to the train station, and Alexandria and I got on the 11:57 to Grand Central, while Caleb waited for his Amtrak to Virginia (where he'll be spending the vacation with Leslie, his girlfriend). Departed from Alexandria at Stanford, where I took the local to Mamaroneck and waited for 35 minutes for a cab. Ah, well. And now I'm relaxing and cursing myself for not bringing the book I have to review for Seed home with me. I wasn't sure I was going to have to review it, and now the reviews are due on Wednesday. Which means I have a book to read tomorrow. Luckily it's shortish and fun. But it's still a book. I kind of miss that kind of pressured work, though. I'm a little excited.

CLARIFICATION (11/24): On the clause "as he tried not to flirt with Matt Lewis's girlfriend's friend and instead redirect her onto Brad. It worked." This is not to imply that this girl was going after Haninah all night and instead he pushed her onto Brad. I believe she was flirting with Brad earlier in the evening at Rudy's as well as before the card game got going. While Brad was playing, she was flirting with Haninah. She was looking for love (in all the...right places?)

seedmagazine.com is live (and well)

I'll be sending out an email blast tomorrow, but to reward any loyal blog readers, you get to be the first to know that seedmagazine.com is up and running! Yes, this is The Site. Go! Enjoy! And click on the following link to help my personal mission of getting our site to show up when you type "seed" into google: Seed.

Indulgence

Today I made the most indulgent purchase of my life. Here, I'm defining indulgence as (price x emotional kick)/(market value x personal necessity). The purchase was the most beautiful copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ever. Really, ever. The price? $13...over my $50 of gift certificates. YEAH. So that was probably stupid to blow about 7 books on one. But it's great. It's beautifully elegant...just a white cover with the title and author in black type. No dedication, no annotation, no about the author, and most importantly, no introduction from Harold Bloom or Samuel Beckett or Pompous Schmuck-Jerkoff. It's just the text. Black on white, take it as you will, your imagination sets the mood. $63 isn't bad...for love! (as I hear, the going rate's about $200)

And in further news, Phase 1 of Operation Stealth Infiltration of the Adult World (yes, OSIAW's a crappy acronym) is complete, woo! Yeah, that was cryptic, but, like so many parts of this blog, it's public to everybody save one or two people in the world. More thoughtful things some other time...

Will You People Stop Banning Gay Marriage?

That'd be nice. Texas, I'm talking to you. No, not you, Austin. You just keep doing your thing.

Anyway, having just bounced off a blog post where I got a song that sounds like a combination of everything Jason Farago's ever played for me, I thought I'd do a music post of my own. So tonight I give you the songs of a playlist I created last week:

2000-2008: A Bush Administration Playlist

NB: These songs don't all have a literal relation to the Bush administration. They mostly just channel a certain je ne sais quoi that's part of today's zeitgeist...or some other...foreign...words...Anyway, if you think any songs should be added, let me know. And sorry about the running times. I'm copying and pasting from itunes; try to view them as hyphens.

1999 3:37 Prince
All You Can Eat 3:23 Ben Folds
America, Fuck Yeah 2:06 Team America: World Police
Big Yellow Taxi 3:46 Counting Crows
Can't Always Get What You Want 7:28 Rolling Stones
Easy Street 3:17 Bernadette Peters., Carol Burnett, Tim Curry
End of the World as We Know It 4:05 R.E.M.
Enormous Penis 2:45 Da Vinci's Notebook
Fake Plastic Trees 4:50 Radiohead
Fat Bottomed Girls 4:18 Queen
Gay Messiah 3:46 Rufus Wainwright
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next 4:52 Manic Street Preachers
Instant Karma 3:23 John Lennon
Is That All There Is? 4:30 Sandra Bernhard
It's Oh So Quiet 3:38 Björk
Karma Police 4:21 Radiohead
Livin' On A Prayer 4:10 Bon Jovi
Making Love Alone 5:54 Bernadette Peters
Mama, Look Sharp 2:25 Redhot & Blue 20th Anniversary Jam
Molasses to Rum 4:42 1776
My Poor Generation 3:59 Moxy Früvous
Never Been To Spain 3:47 Three Dog Night
Novacaine For The Soul 3:09 Eels
Plastic Jesus 4:30 Jello Biafra, Mojo Nixon
Psycho Killer 4:20 Talking Heads
Right Through You 2:55 Alanis Morissette
Say It Ain't So 4:18 Weezer
Selling Out 2:25 Tom Lehrer
Springtime for Hitler 3:23 The Producers
Sympathy for the Devil 6:27 Rolling Stones
Take A Letter Miss Jones 3:29 Blood Brothers
The Drinking Song 5:09 Moxy Früvous
The General 4:06 Dispatch
The Greatest Man in America (live) 3:09 Moxy Früvous
The Lees of Old Virginia 3:50 1776
The Time Warp 3:16 Stanford Fleet Street Singers
Urinetown 1:40 Urinetown
We Are the Champions 3:03 Queen
We Shall Overcome 5:26 Denver Gay Men's Chorus
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego (Full Version) 2:50 Rockapella
Won't Get Fooled Again 8:33 The Who
You're So Vain 4:18 Carly Simon
Your Redneck Past 3:42 Ben Folds Five

And No One's Getting Fat Except Leon Kass

[WARNING: the post contains TMI. If you don't care (most of you), read ahead. I will let you know when it's starting and ending]

I had so much blogging I wanted to do over the course of the day, which is always a bad thing, because then I can't focus when I actually sit down to write.

So let's start with Leon R. Kass's The Death Of Courtship, as excerpted on the Focus on the Family website. I encourage you to read the full three parts, but since I don't expect you to suffer for pages upon pages, I'll just give you my reaction and some snippets.

Kass's piece clarified two already-pretty-clear things for me:
1) THAT I am naturally a pretty conservative person.
2) WHY I cannot tolerate people who identify as politically and socially conservative.

TMI STARTS HERE
We'll start with the first. As most people who read this blog know, I dig gay porn. I read and watch it a fair amount. I'm the first person in a group of friends to strike up a conversation on masturbation, and I encourage people to explore their desires, both latent and accessible. I have no moral objection to people using drugs to the point that it does not really hurt themselves or others.

But for me, the talk is the walk. I don't hook up with people who aren't my steady boyfriend. I appreciate romance. The only illegal drug I've tried is one shot of absinthe, and I'm not even sure that that's still illegal. I've never been properly drunk. In many ways, I'm doing much better on the conservatives' demands than most of their children are. And in the ways I'm not? (You know, the pornorgraphy, incessant self-abuse) I'm feeling the effects they talk about.

Just as people now have some trouble enjoying fruit properly because they've experienced freaks of nature such as Rolos and Spree, the standards of whom I'm off-handedly physically attracted to have gone up enormously due to a little too much Lane Fuller in my life. Coincidence? Who knows. And I probably should have read Dan Savage's advice on "varying technique" in masturbation when I was five, but it's a little late for that. I have become erotically desensitized in all respects. Point to the right.
TMI ENDS HERE

So for my first quote from Kass I go to this utterly obnoxious but not-entirely-without-merit blurb:

"The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it? Contrary to what the youth of the sixties believed, they were not the first to feel the power of sexual desire. Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply. Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one's partner than for one's mother."

Yeah, I'm wretching too, don't worry. But hidden in that drivel is a point: There probably is an unbalance between men who will want to marry if extramarital sex is easy to obtain and women who will want to marry if extramarital sex is easy to obtain. Note I said "unbalance," not "no men will ever want to get married and all women will." Just "unbalance." If the only way you can have an actual relationship that involves sex is by getting married, you will have an overwhelming proportion of both sexes who want to do just that. While extramarital sex is pretty completely accepted (as it is now), most women will want to have extramarital sex, and then at some point settle down with a husband. Most men will want to have extramarital sex, and then at some point settle down with a wife...but it's a smaller most! I think. And if you think I'm being heterosexist, I am. But I said "most." So I'm still right. I think. And it's not so much "heterosexist" as "totally self-centered."

So in the current situation, for whom does it suck? Meeeee. Ussssss. Well, not all of us. I can't predict whom it won't suck for and whom it will suck for. But this does mean there will be leftover women. Which is annoying and unfortunate for those women.

So we should change things! We should make laws! We should stop prescribing the pill, and make abortion illegal, and teach abstinence only education to prevent promiscuity and force people to have the families I want them to!

No we shouldn't.

And that's where I finally hit number 2: I hate social conservatives (except Steve Schwartz). OK, so some impulses I have are completely different from theirs. I don't think there's anything even remotely wrong with homosexuality...although that not being a choice sort of invalidates the comparison, in my eyes. But I wouldn't think there's anything wrong even if it weren't. I don't think there's anything wrong with having an abortion (see my semi-offensive post from a few days ago), but that's because I don't believe in the abstract notion of the soul. And of course I don't think there's anything wrong with random sex or drug use or everything else Kass criticizes, it just makes for the world that he correctly describes, and that's not the world that works best to my advantage.

And that's completely my problem.

Sure, I can advocate for a culture that more suits my needs if I believe it will more suit the needs of many others. But the presumption, the gumption it takes to want to LEGISLATE that culture? That's just offensive. The fact that Kass (did I mention he was Bush's bioethics advisor 2001-2005?) could write this is unfathomable:

"While some programs also encourage abstinence or non-coital sex, most are concerned with teaching techniques for "safe sex"; offspring (and disease) are thus treated as (equally) avoidable side effects of sexuality, whose true purpose is only individual pleasure. (This I myself did not learn until our younger daughter so enlightened me, after she learned it from her seventh-grade biology teacher.) The entire approach of sex education is technocratic and, at best, morally neutral; in many cases, it explicitly opposes traditional morals while moralistically insisting on the equal acceptability of any and all forms of sexual expression provided only that they are not coerced. No effort is made to teach the importance of marriage as the proper home for sexual intimacy."

That's because sexual education is supposed to teach you. It's supposed to teach you facts. Teachers teach facts (and strategies and ways of thinking about things but hush, teachers, I'm talking about sex ed, not calculus or philosophy). My other radical opinion in life is that teachers generally shouldn't teach morality beyond keeping order in their classrooms. Yes, telling a kid not to call another kid "faggot" qualifies as keeping order. Of course this is a balancing act, but I don't think teachers should even tell their students that giving to the poor is the right thing to do. And I think this mostly so it doesn't get us into binds like these problems with sex ed. If teachers can tell their kids to volunteer at a soup kitchen, they can tell them not to sleep with someone 45 minutes after they meet. Sure, I see the difference between these types of morality, but many people don't, and those many people are the ones we have to deal with.

And along those lines, I don't think the government should legislate ideals. I think the government should pass only enough restrictions to keep people from destroying each other. What does this make me sound like? A Republican. Yes it does. And to be frank, I think I have some conservative small-government impulses also. But, while welfare programs cost money, and taking money is a restriction in some sense, welfare programs aren't at all restrictions in the same sense as a prohibition on abortion would be. It's more of an allowance, even though it's "big government." And I think it's important we do good things when we can. And we can.

All right, it's late and I'm starting to eke into the land of gibberish (Gibber, I suppose). I'm not editing this, so be kind. Some things would have been edited. Buenas Noches!

How To Fuck Up Small Children

As my friends (and Augusten Burroughs) demonstrate, it can be much harder than you think to fuck up small children.

A small child's parents can get divorced when she's two, and refuse to be in the same room as each other for the next couple of decades of her life, and she can still be 25 and in a relationship with a good-hearted, secure-in-all-the-right-ways sort of guy for a solid 50 months and counting.

A small child can be raised in a culture with a violent opposition to education, with people who mock the smart kids and teachers who hate students who do well, and she can graduate from a top school and publish scientific papers in journals.

A small child can be born with doctors saying that if she survives at all she will unquestionably be severely mentally retarded, and she can still turn out on the smart side of the scale. You know. Passable and all.

HOWEVER

There is no question in my mind that AMC has truly fucked up these small children for life.

Just in Casey?

The site didn't launch, and during my moping period I had the opportunity to read Alito's dissent in PP v Casey. I do feel I learned a lot about the process of how decisions are arrived at and written up just from reading the opinion. It's no surprise that reading these things is a good part of law school. I also learned much more about the conditions that need to be met in a legal state abortion law than I knew before. I quote from the dissent:

"Under that test, as the majority explains, a law that imposes an “undue burden” must serve a “compelling” state interest. By contrast, a law that does not impose an “undue burden” must simply be “rationally” or “reasonably” related to a “legitimate” state interest."

I had heard of "undue burden" before, but I didn't know much about this "compelling" and "legitimate" state interest part. Great language guys...I guess passing the legal buck is all part of the process.

But onto determining whether Alito was, indeed, just in Casey. The first part of the decision I take issue with has nothing to do with Alito: it's the precedent O'Connor sets...or at least the precedent Alito interprets her as setting:

"Justice O’Connor has explained the meaning of the term “undue burden” in several abortion opinions. In Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 462 U.S. at 464, 103 S.Ct. at 2510 (O’Connor, J., dissenting), she wrote that “an ‘undue burden’ has been found for the most part in situations involving absolute obstacles or severe limitations on the abortion decision.” She noted that laws held unconstitutional in prior cases involved statutes that “criminalized all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother,” inhibited ” ‘the vast majority of abortions after the first 12 weeks,’ ” or gave the parents of a pregnant minor an absolute veto power over the abortion decision. Id. (emphasis in original; citations omitted). She suggested that an “undue burden” would not be created by “a state regulation [that] may ‘inhibit’ abortions to some degree.” Id. She also suggested that there is no undue burden unless a measure has the effect of “substantially limiting access.”"

I'm not sure what he means that she "suggested" undue burden would not be created by a regulation that just inhibits abortions and doesn't "substantially" limit them. I would guess from his quote that she was somewhat explicit about it, but if she didn't explicitly state these conditions must be met, I think a justice has some leeway with them. Clearly, Alito doesn't think he does (and wouldn't care if he did). "Substantially" is an interesting word. Does substantially mean "greatly, in some cases" or "at all, in many cases?" I would like to say that it's the former. If even one, even hypothetical, person is greatly inhibited, I believe the inhibiting was substantial. Alito seems to put more stake in numbers, which I think is kind of heinous. This is the part of the dissent I disagree with most:

"Second, the plaintiffs offered testimony that the exceptions in Section 3209 [the spousal notification part] would not cover a case in which a woman did not want to notify her husband for fear that he would retaliate in some way other than the infliction of bodily injury upon her, such as by subjecting her to psychological abuse or abusing their children (see 744 F.Supp. at 1360- 62). The plaintiffs, however, do not appear to have offered any evidence showing how many (or indeed that any actual women) would be affected by this asserted imperfection in the statute."

Admittedly the burden of proof is on the plaintiffs here—Alito makes that painfully clear—but I think that by simply pointing out this imperfection, they've proven a substantial limitation of access inherent in the regulation. Whether or not this substantial limitation would affect zero, one, or tens of thousands of abortions each year does not affect that the limitation is imposed.

Maybe he covered why this point-that few women would be affected-is relevant, but, at least from my first reading, all I see is his earlier comment on O'Connor's definitions of undue burden:

"Taken together, Justice O’Connor’s opinions reveal that an undue burden does not exist unless a law (a) prohibits abortion or gives another person the authority to veto an abortion or (b) has the practical effect of imposing “severe limitations,” rather than simply inhibiting abortions ” ‘to some degree’ ” or inhibiting “some women.”"

Is he taking these phrases a little out of context? Most restrictions will only inhibit abortions "to some degree" or inhibit "some women." They have the clause in this spousal notification regulation that a woman can get around it if she believes her husband will physically harm her. If it did no have this clause, would he still not strike it down because it only inhibits some women (those with abusive husbands) to some degree (a little slapping around here and there...no death...that would be a severe limitation, but a black eye never REALLY stopped anyone from doing anything). I exaggerate for effect, but the "some women" and "some degree" clauses seem pretty bizarre, in the way he takes them.

So who decides when "some women" becomes "all women?" And the restriction here is imposed on all women, even if many are not affected by it. If he's really right in saying that all women must be inhibited to a great degree, I suppose I'm defeated. But that seems like a ridiculous requirement. Perhaps that's what O'Connor meant. As Alito points out, she struck down the two-parent notification not on undue burden, but because it served to legitimate state interest. If he had the ability to determine that "severe limitation" did not necessarily mean all women inhibited to a great degree, as I believe he probably did, there I disagree with him.

Then there's the "rationally relates to a legitimate state purpose" part of the thing, which I'll touch on briefly. The interest at hand is the father's investment in the fetus. Apparently, "The Supreme Court has held that a man has a fundamental interest in preserving his ability to father a child." OK. Then, "The Court’s opinions also seem to establish that a husband who is willing to participate in raising a child has a fundamental interest in the child’s welfare...It follows that a husband has a “legitimate” interest in the welfare of a fetus he has conceived with his wife."

Why this is a state purpose is apparently too obvious to mention. I don't say this sarcastically...it doesn't seem intuitive to me, but for those familiar with law, perhaps it does. Alito quotes, "“[S]tatutory regulation of domestic relations [is] an area *726 that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States."...Accordingly, Pennsylvania has a legitimate interest in furthering the husband’s interest in the fate of the fetus, as the majority in this case acknowledges." Yeah, I don't really get it...why the state's ability to regulate it necessarily implies an interest in every aspect of it.

So that brings Alito to the "rationally related" part:

"The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands’ knowledge because of perceived problems–such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands’ previously expressed opposition– that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion. In addition, the legislature could have reasonably concluded that Section 3209 would lead to such discussion and thereby properly further a husband’s interests in the fetus in a sufficient percentage of the affected cases to justify enactment of this measure."

This was around the time I got tired reading the opinion and writing this entry. So I'm a little off. But I just don't like the assumption that encouraging women to talk to their husbands, husbands gaining an interest in their child (and then women having or not having abortions) serves a legitimate state interest. Alito (I believe) concedes that it's not a "compelling" state interest; therefore if it placed undue burden on women, it would not be constitutional. Even though I don't see where the legitimate state interest really comes in (anyone's welcome to tell me...although maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and it'll be clear as day), I don't think it's relevant, because I think the law does substantially inhibit women, even if it, in practice, may not inhibit many, and it therefore creates undue burden and does not serve a compelling state interest.

Well, that's my first analysis of a judicial opinion ever. I'm sure law school professors would fail me so hard and fast I wouldn't sit down for a week. But I'd love your lay and/or law-school-informed reactions.

(Also note: I'm not reading this over before I post, so there may be some serious flaws in sentence structure/logic.)

I Heat for Beat

I woke up this morning what I'd like to call "music horny." I desperately needed and was instantly satisfied by pretty much any music that hit my hear. It was a marvelous trainride, listening to "Big Spender," "Big Ten Inch Record," "Big Yellow Taxi," and "When I Kissed the Teacher" (guess when I went out of order). All were exceedingly satisfying. Even the mediocre oldies playing at Barnes and Noble got me excited. I was ready to rock, and rock I did. The emotion left for a while but now has returned. I just finished belting out Miller's Son (best Sondheim everrrrrrr) by the piano. The only problem is I have a wannabe migraine from trying to match the orientation of scans of near-symmetrical art with the originals. Ouch. At least it's fading.

So let's talk (Sc)Alito. Actually, let's dive right in and talk abortion. Lots of democrats are pissed as hell, because this guy's clearly pro-life (or at least very pro-states rights). But I'm not sure that I understand the rationale for the vast majority of pro-choicers. Pro-lifers are easy: life begins at conception; a human life is infinitely valuable; killing it is super-wrong. Great! Simple. Logical. In my opinion, utterly mistaken, but at least it's consistent. A lot of pro-choicers, on the other hand, aren't completely areligious. Many of them believe in the soul. When does the soul enter, then? Is that what defines a person? If so, who is the law to dictate when that happens? Shouldn't we just be safe and never abort anyone?

I, however, am completely radical in my thinking. I believe that a person is entirely defined by his or her nervous system. I believe a person without thoughts or feelings, who's never had any thoughts or feelings, is no person at all. Take it farther? Sure! People incapable of human emotions are less human than those who are. I've said it before, and it's exactly why I'll never be elected to any office...ever. Severely autistic people? People with other serious emotional incapabilities? Yup. Worth less than other people. I haven't been hit by a bolt of lightening yet. But if you were stranded and had to kill an cannibalize someone, and one member of your group didn't feel fear or dread or sadness...wouldn't you eat that person? I know I would. Why? Because it's not a full person.

So, yes, I believe that a fetus, until it develops a nervous system, is totally worthless. Until it has all of it's functions, it's worth less than any person, and for a while it's worth less than many animals. I know there's one major intellectual who argues for legalizing infanticide. I don't know enough about development to weigh in on this one, but I wouldn't say just from the physical form of a baby that he's wrong. But given how quickly young children pick up language and how responsive they are to others, he probably is.

So I'm a little out there...saying that all human lives are not of equal and infinite worth. Unless other pro-choicers are with me, I'm curious as to their justifications. When does a fetus become human? Is it instant or transitional? Where does the law get to come in and potentially kill people, potentially stop women from helping themselves while doing no harm to others?

EDIT [9:37 pm]: I just want to clarify that relationships with other people are an aspect of being human, and probably the only aspect where the "burden" doesn't fall on ther person in question. If someone loves someone as a person, that is a huge mark in favor of that being being human. The longer and more substantial these relationships are, the larger that mark is. This is a big reason, in my opinion, why severely disabled (and I do mean severely...I'm not talking about any folks with minor disability or autism...they have more than enough there to achieve maximum humanity) people are still much more valuable than animals or fetuses. Just by virtue of being viewed as human by others, they gain a lot of human value. OK...I'll have more foot for my mouth later and in response to any comments, I'm sure.

SCOTUS? You don't even...

But first a correction: It was subtly brought to my attention that I may have sounded just a little bit like a pompous ass in my last post. I just want to call out the bit, " I can space out and fantasize and think until the cows come home." There really should have been a very, very strong emphasis placed on "fantasize" there.

Need I say more?

Probably not, but I'll go on for just a little bit longer. I did have a period toward the end of high school where my question of the period was, "When you're not thinking about anything else, what do you think about?" I utterly disbelieved that everyone else in the world wasn't just thinking up sexual situations sitting on airplanes or walking between classes or brushing teeth. But I seemed to be wrong: very few people do that. And what amazed me more was that people didn't have another reasonable answer like: "I think about being rich and famous!" or "I dwell on gossip" or "I think of lovely non-sexual stories" or even "I ponder the mysteries of the universe." Nobody seemed to have an answer for what they thought about when they weren't doing work or watching TV or talking to friends. Weird. If anyone has any input as to your default mindset(s), please give it!

Now on to the court. I know all the indictment hogs were excited this week, because the indictments were the news. But let's not forget that Harriet Miers resignation will have FAR more impact and import than the (admittedly totally fun) indicting. Not that she would have necessarily been confirmed, anyway. But let's keep our eyes on the prize. Who will be the next justice? The buzz is on (Sc)Alito and Luttig (whom, I'll be honest, I had never heard of before this process). But for the past two nominations the buzz has been so completely wrong it's funny. ha. Is there a shot in the dark candidate coming through? Does the white house just want to get this over with (and pick another totally qualified, unquestionably conservative white male) or do they want to keep trying for a woman or minority? Is it to their benefit or detriment to keep this going on for a long time? Well, probably not their benefit...but it might not hurt them in the long run to just keep nominating until they get what they're looking for. Or Sandra Day O'Connor actually dies, or something. That would suck for all involved.

Dueling Virtues

God, I've been using that word a lot lately: virtue. I don't even LIKE the word virtue. It's just seemed appropriate in a few contexts as of late.

So here are the dueling virtues: 1) The inability to be bored. This is evidence of a lively imagination and a creative mind. If you're truly bored (when you're generally comfortable), you're not entertaining yourself. Why would you be incapable of entertaining yourself? It sounds like you're a dull, dull person. Boo, you. 2) The inability to be happy without DOING something. This is evidence of energy, motivation and a hunger for productivity. If you can be satisfied without being productive, you're a lazy, unambitious person. Boo, you.

Can these virtues coexist? I'm definitely in the former category. If I'm physically comfortable, I can space out and fantasize and think until the cows come home (Note: A Wisconsin-born waiter on the upper west side once informed me that the cows come home around 5 pm. I suppose I don't seem so impressive anymore). My mind is a limitless resource of fun! Unfortunately for me, this also means I can spend an entire summer (or longer) pretty much doing nothing and be totally cool with that. Sure, when I actually started accomplishing goals and producing articles I felt a certain goodness I hadn't felt since I wrote my chorale to "How Doth the Little Crocodile" for music 210. But I didn't feel the conspicuous absence of that joy when it wasn't there. A couple weeks ago, Chayes told me she could never spend a summer just hanging out, reading, chilling with friends. She'd jump out of her skin! I admire and envy her need to be productive, but I have that little smile in the back of my head (I should get a biopsy on that...) because I can entertain myself longer than others. I don't know if the virtues are precise opposites, but they may be close enough that each person can have only one.

On a completely different note: the 4^th floor is scary. The photography studio had an open call for models today, and every time I rode the elevator, the doors opened to reveal about 30 tall, gorgeous women anxiously milling about. When I rode up the elevator, the woman next to me (very-good-looking-but-not-too-sweet-faced 6-foot black woman) asked me "Four?" assuming that was where I was going. I probably should have taken the compliment instead of looking at her like she was crazy and saying "Uh, seven." Yeah, lady; maybe I'll write dialogue for people who look like you.

And on a sadder note (D?), my great aunt died last night. I spoke to my grandmother about a half hour ago, and she didn't sound too great. It's really hard for her. Bah. I don't like to see/hear Griz so sad.

Unusual Attempt: An Opinion

OK, folks, I don't do this often. And when I do, I usually change my mind within the course of about six months, so be prepared for that. I am going to come down on one side of a debate.

The debate is this: Society has a set of values, what it believes makes a person a good and worthwhile person. These values are largely established by the white, straight, protestant, American-born men who make up the ruling cultural class of the country. I don't mean to point them out as oppressors, just as the value-setters. All the minorities (or in the case of women, just others) are, in the ideal situation, judged on the basis of their merits. Merits, as the white, straight, protestant, American-born men define them. Many people say that all the minorities, etc, are just as good at everything as the WSPAMs are, they just haven't been given as much of an opportunity to succeed. Different people seem to generally say that the others could be just as good as the WSPAMs are, but shouldn't have to be because the WSPAM values are not inherently better than the others' values. I'd like to come down on that side of the debate but push it even further. The others very well may NOT be able to be as good at the things the WSPAMs value as the WSPAMs themselves are, AND that's fine, because they shouldn't have to be.

Heaven (aka my workplace) will smite me for this, but let's talk women in science. I see no reason why the idea that the general bell curve for men has a different shape, if the same origin, as the bell curve for women. OK, I don't actually know much about how accepted the bell curve is these days. I'm pretty sure some people contest it heavily, but just the idea that more men than women might be EXTREMELY brilliant and EXTREMELY dumb seems plausible enough. And I think it's somewhat well documented that men have slightly but significantly better spacial visualization skills than women do. Of course all of this doesn't mean that the greatest scientist of all time couldn't be a woman, it just means it's less likely to be. And if women aren't making as large a contribution to science? OK! Science is very valuable (no kidding), but is it benefited by having equal contribution from all groups? Let the talented people do their thing. That's all we can ask.

And Louise Story wrote that (admittedly god-awful) piece that ran on the cover of the New York Times about more highly educated women wanting to stay home and raise kids. Criticism was showered upon her, and while much of it was valid—the survey does sound pretty crappy—it's pretty clear it wouldn't be criticized like it was if people wanted to accept its conclusion. I'd like to propose that it would be FINE for more women to stay home and raise their kids. Why? Because the value that success in a field makes a person successful holds no more weight than the value that a rewarding family life and shaping members of the next generation makes a person successful. So many people seem ingrained with the particular value that strength and money-making and expertise etc, etc are the most important things, that they seem insulted when people suggest that a whole class is less likely to do that. Any woman who really wants to win in a field and make money will do so. But I think it's likely that there is something in women's nature that makes them (us, I suppose) more likely to want to put more effort into raising kids. I think that's fine. I think that's good. I think people should be looking at this story and not see misplaced funding from universities, but rather see people pursuing one of the most honorable careers in existence, and one that will most affect the future world.

I Have Nothing To Hide Except the Truth

Yeah, the timestamp is right. I'm starting this all of 45 seconds after I finished my last post.

So, just surfed and realized I'm on my boss's blogroll, which also features several other people from the office. I'll tell you what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to look over all of the posts that are still probably on this blog's homepage to see exactly what I've said about work before. I think I've said mostly good things...but certainly not delicately worded things. I'm not a woman of delicate words! I'm also not sure whether I should be embarrassed by how much of a diary this blog is as opposed to world commentary. I have a fair bit of philosophy scattered about, but most of that's before I started working anyway. So how about I at least throw a little bit of thought on this post, eh? Then I'll comment on the world at large. And the world at small.

Thought: I don't identify with one of the greatest theatrical character cliches, and I'm wondering if anyone does. This character is the one (more often than not, or at least a plurality of the time, a middle-aged woman) who needs everything to be perfect. Usually this hides some greater fear and then things end up not perfect and everything comes tumbling out because she's so damn DEEP her emotions can only be expressed in needing to make something perfect.

Does ANYONE identify with this woman? Please, tell me if you do! Also, tell me if you identify with the characters who express their emotions through other physical activities...not, like, rubbing the dishes really hard because their angry, but the ones who have to sew or cook or (in the greatest cliche) clean just to keep sane. These are theatrical cliches that are so tried and true that nobody looks down on them. Everyone praises them again and again. But I just fail to find these people real. Do you find them real? Or is this sort of thing just a very convenient and effective way to let emotions come through in a theatrical setting? Is this no longer a cliche but rather a trope?

I'm a big fan of tropes, and I always love to throw them in the face of cliche-criticizers. (Please note that I am not criticizing these characters because they're cliches, but rather because I don't find them effective or poignant and they make up such a huge body of theater. Plus everyone else likes them.) The low-born girl who wants to be a princess? Totally a trope. Someone slipping on a banana? Totally a trope. Extrapolate. When I saw The Beach with my mom, she thought it was a Lottery ripoff. I disagree. I think that story's gone from brilliant original to uncriticizable trope in 55 years flat. We now take these things not to have merit in themselves, but to be wonderful starting points that put us in a mindset that will direct the way we perceive th rest of the work. I love these things.

That was it for the observation. Really, please tell me how you react to these "can't stop cleaning, lest I face how I feel"-"must be perfect or my world will go to hell" characters.

World at Large: It precesses and nutates. What a crazy world! Oh, and Harrient Miers hasn't got a snowball's chance in the Amish country (too obscure?). They sent back her questionnaire with a big "Redo" on it. I haven't had that happen to me since 6th grade, and that was just because my handwriting was illegible. The Daily Show had a pretty funny spoof about that last night ("Maybe she shouldn't have answered question 6, in what states are you certified to practice law?, with 'Leahy is gea-hy!'") The conspiracy theorist in me says that this whole nomination was a Karl Rove plot to have one nominee get struck down so Bush would have a much easier time sneaking an arch-conservative in for round two. I mean, it would work! I think. And if I were Karl Rove, that's what I'd do. I'd do a lot of other things, too. And then I'd go to the innermost circle of hell. Yup.

World at Small: I've been redoing Paul Cameron's research. In case you didn't click the link, Paul Cameron is this hardcore anti-gay researcher who was kicked out of the American Psychological Association. If you've ever heard the statistic "gay parents are 11 times more likely than straight parents to abuse their children," that's his handiwork. So, anyway, I spoke to him for an hour last week, and I've spent a good portion of this week trying to figure out how I can analyze the data he analyzed for his most recent study. So I did a bunch of that today and found some interesting stuff. I would tell you more, but I want to keep your breath bated so you'll read the article when it comes out.

And for those of you who've been wondering (Chris A, George B and any others), the site hasn't launched yet. I'll keep you updated, I promise.

Quick Anecdote

I was on the 1 today, heading up to Columbia, and the woman sitting next to me was clearly studying to take her citizenship test. She was reading a small book that had different questions about US history and government in English, phonetic spelling of the English and then Spanish. I was looking over her shoulder, perhaps rudely reading the questions. After a few minutes she closed the book and revealed the title on the cover: Poetry For The Soul. OK, she had one book inside another, but the hilarity and profundity that washed over me in that moment. Well, you can only imagine.

From the Trenches

Work's been a bit slow today—I'm mostly just waiting to hear back from researchers—so I thought I'd take a moment to write to you, darlings of my readership. It's Yom Kippur, so I'm fasting, and bloody hell am I hungry. I don't know why I do this...really I don't. I'm so generally unobservant, it's absurd. I know, it's a fairly simple way for me to give a nod to my ancestry without formally disrupting my life. I do the same thing by eating crap for a week during passover. At least that doesn't make me feel half-dead (although it does leave me craving pasta). Ooh, did I say pasta? I could totally use some Pollo e Pasta Veneziana right about now. Or some Chinese food. Anything saucy and spicey.

Alexandria laughed at me a couple of years ago when she saw me fasting. I was doing exactly what I'm doing now: whining my hungry little head off. Apparently in Catholicism (gee, what a surprise) you're not supposed to kvetch when you fast. You just hold it in and don't let anyone see your suffering. Well, good for you, Catholics. I don't think you're SUPPOSED to bitch and moan in Judaism either, but apparently the motivation for fasting is so you can concentrate on your prayers and studies. What kind of silly method is that? If you want me to concentrate, you put a tube of Ritz or Pringles and a bottle of Coke in front of me. That way, my needs are constantly satisfied and I can move onto the next level of the pyramid. This way, I'm totally unproductive and grumpy. I feel like I'm about to fall asleep (woooo, seeing auras) and I've been totally incoherent on the phone with scientists and taken crappy notes. Well, less than two hours until break fast at the Roths. Then all will be well.

The study I started researching today is pretty cool, though. Researchers took a group of 18 straight men and 18 straight women. They sat each person alone in a room with a comfortable chair, and showed them 7 two-minute segments of porn. There was an oral and penetrative scene of heterosexual sex, gay male sex and lesbian sex. That makes six. The seventh scene was two minutes of bonobo sex. Hot, hetero, monkey-on-monkey action. The researchers measured physical arousal with the usual methods (penis circumfrence, vaginal pulses), and allowed the subjects to report subjective arousal as they watched the porn. So, the men behaved as men do: they said they only got off on women, and their bodies concurred. Men had no arousal in response to the monkeys, insignificant arousal in response to the gay male scenes and substantial arousal in response to the straight and lesbian scenes. The women reported the opposite: they said they were aroused only by the straight scenes. Their bodies told of a slightly different picture. In fact the women were equally aroused by all the human scenes and, most bizarrely, were aroused less so but still significantly by the bonobo scenes. Yup. They totally got off on the monkeys. I mean, it's also pretty interesting to note that straight women were equally aroused by both sexes engaging in sexual activity. In previous studies, the author noted, she found that lesbians were equally aroused by lesbian porn and gay male porn. So it's not just that straight women are too scared to verbalize their lesbian tendencies. The researcher thinks that women are just turned on by any activity they recognize as sex. You know, from my ever-valuable "field-observations," I'd have to agree.

No Show

Well, Friday has come and gone and still no soft launch. The website exists...there's a logo there to prove it, but the schmucks at godaddy or wherever have not yet loaded our content. Bitches, them all. Did I mention that this week I seriously improved my mad html skillz? Now I can do crazy things like G_μν=8πT_μν without buttons. Yup, that was done by hand. Strange that the underline doesn't align, though. Anyway...

I've realized that by working I'm now just generally thinking less deeply than I once was. Science is great, but so little of it is philosophy. I mean, there's plenty of philosophy of science—no denying that—but your day to day discoveries? Just hypothesize and grind. And even when something is conceptually and not just pragmatically interesting—like this article I'm writing for Tuesday on how strange quarks dipping in and out of existence may account for 5% of a proton's magnetism—does that really, really provide much food for thought? Some, sure, but it doesn't BEG for you to ponder it. Furthermore, I'm not getting paid to think about this stuff. (I mean, I'm not really getting paid at all, but my travel stipend isn't for this stuff.) My job is just to research, understand, and present.

Is there any place I can find a job to actually ponder? I mean, I could get my Ph.D. in philosophy, I suppose, but you have to be GREAT to make a dent there, and I'd have to study a lot of philosophy I'm either totally frustrated by (helloooo, ethics) or don't really care about (helloooo, politics). I know going to law school seems like a strange idea after I just said that political philosophy is the last thing in the world (of philosophy) I want to study. Still, there might be a lot to think about there. Perhaps there's an advantage to studying something that's totally man-made and is admittedly man-made. Perhaps attempting to be, in some way, a purest in that environment could be really productive. More likely, it will just lead to tons of contradictions, as it does in every other field.

I find myself in an ethics bind (not an ethical bind, a bind about the study of ethics). I think that ethics are man-made. I don't think there's any objective code of ethics sitting out there beyond us. Ethics is fully human, invented by people, for people. I know we have a natural instinct to be ethical, but I don't think that points to any greater ethic outside of us. So I think that ethics is fundamentally descriptive of this feeling; not prescriptive from above/within/whatever. Point one. Point two: I have a personal feeling of what's right and wrong. We'll let it be, for now, that this may or may not be a consistent system, and if it is consistent, it may not be based on a coherent set of first principles. We'll just say that I think I generally know what people should do and why they should do it. Under what right do I have to impose this on other people? I know I spent a post blabbering about this before. But still. I care. My theories are generally based on utilitarian principles...perhaps not completely, but I generally think increasing others' well-being is a good thing and decreasing it is a bad thing.

Is point two even consistent with point one? Can I admit that I think ethics is descriptive and still believe that it has something to it? I don't think this human impulse reveals some greater truth. I just want people to be happy. Does this desire carry any weight if I believe it's internal?

Side/end note: Some people think that nobody's really good because when people do things for others, they're doing it for selfish reasons. I call someone who gains self-satisfaction by doing good things for other people "a good person." People who don't get off doing good for others are less good people. People who get off doing things that hurt other people are sadists. I think sadists who engage in healthy sadistic sex are kinda weird. (No, no, more than that.) This "health" implies they have a masochist with them who enjoys the pain. If I were a sadist (deidle deedle deidle...), I think I'd only want to watch people who didn't like to be in pain. I mean, are the screams enough if the other person is on the verge of orgasm? I'd be like, "No, don't cum! Writhe in agony! You hate this!" Kudos to the imagination of the folks who engage in consensual sadism...but aren't they always left unsatisfied?

Oh, the associations never cease...

Flaccid Ejaculation?

It's coming on Friday...the soft launch!

My four articles are edited and ready to run. Today I gathered images for our photography section and found out about getting rights for them. Tomorrow we create a soft launch invitation list...will YOU be on the list? If you're reading this, you're almost certainly on the list of people I will try to give access to, although it's possible the list will be more limited than I'm expecting. I mean, I plan on trying to get about 40 of my closest friends and relatives into our beta testing group.

There are also a few sciencey events that I'll be going to for the group...I'll watch the Igs tomorrow (hopefully with Adam), in case anyone wants me to report on them, then I'll go to this Sloan science film festival this weekend, and Monday I'll go to Frans de Waals talk on primates and personality. And I think tomorrow I'm going to buy this book on bioethics...it, for one, chronicles the development of a fetus in terms of the different capabilities it has at every point from conception to birth. I totally need that. Also, I've decided I really want to write a focus piece on all of those studies that claim that there's higher abuse in households with same sex parents...and the studies that specifically say there's not. I mean, of course I'm wildly biased on this one, but I don't think that means I can't do objective reporting. Like, painful, "tell me the precise methods you used every step of the way...yes, both of you" reporting. I can be irritatingly objective when I want to be.

OK, Daily Show time...but I'll talk about Dan Savage's new book soon. I just finished it and I'm kind of blown away.

Good Times, Great Oldies

Work has drastically improved since the beginning of last week. I've written three articles of increasing quality, in my estimation. I'm starting to remember what I liked about this in the first place: getting crash courses on little bits of science here and there. This week I've learned so much about the biological bases of alcoholism and addiction (Wednesday, genetics of addiction), why some diseases are a bitch to cure (Thursday, the open genome of bacteria), why it's so awkward when I hang out with Cat and Vaughan at the same time (Friday, mimicry as a social psychological phenomenon) and how to build the best sandcastle possible (researching for Monday, a revised model in granular physics). I'd be happy to tell you about any of them that you're interested in, but you'll also soon be able to see them on the site; we soft launch on Monday! Social stuff has also gotten easier...it's not like I have friends there, but I don't feel like I'm the weird chick on the outside anymore. I'm also happy to be sitting next to the two designers now...they're good guys.

This weekend I went up to New Haven. Last night was really, really nice. I trained in and met Jen at Woolsey hall for a performance of the Mahler 2. It's a pretty frickin' awesome piece. Inventive, yet listenable. Beautiful, yet not saccharine. Passionate, yet not slutty. Then I chatted with some people, walked with Jen for a bit and met Caleb at Koffee Too? On my way to K2 I called Vaughan to arrange lunch for tomorrow, he said he was busy, so I said "OK, later." I realized a few minutes later I probably should have explicitly asked him to call me. The Pounder (that's Caleb: Caleb = K-lb = K-pound = Pounder) and I took a walk over to the basement of the Becton center to explore, where Vaughan miraculously called me back. Caleb and I played music on a sculpture for a while then caught the last ten minutes of the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Chinese subtitles in Davies Auditorium. We then met up with Caleb's friends, Nat and Kit, as well as Kit's roommates at Rudy's. This was, unforgivably, my first time at Rudy's, and I was very pleased with the place. The fries were awesome, as promised, and we found a quiet area to chill and play asshole. I'm not a card game fan, nor a drinking game fan, but the game was mindless enough and the attitude was chill enough that I had a really nice time. That, and I won the first two games. We left and played a bit of fusball in the Branford basement with Nat and Kit (me with Nat, Caleb and Kit...they kicked our asses). After the game Nat and Kit instantly fell into each others arms and started making out. Awkward sidelong glance between me and Caleb. I stopped keeping eye contact in those situations; I feel too guilty. Then we all parted and Caleb and I sat in our respective beds chatting for a while and then went to sleep at about 3 am.

Today was a little less magical...the computer crashed in the debate tournament, so Vaughan wouldn't talk to me at all, or even tell me he wouldn't be able to make our lunch. So Caleb and I killed a lot of time in less-comfortable-than-I-would-have-liked silence waiting to get in touch with him. I felt pretty bad for dragging Caleb around while he probably could have been making better use of his time (although he later said he probably would have just slept) and fairly pissed at Vaughan for not being considerate enough to step out for 30 seconds and give us a time frame. We got lunch at Ivy Noodle (I was famished, not having had a square meal in about 25 hours) and went back to Caleb's, where I read Dan Savage's new book and Caleb read for a bit then gleefully (he's got a very adorable glee) jumped into bed, cuddled up in the covers and napped. When he got up we crashed the debate venue and managed to catch Vaughan for a 30 minute chat. So the two of them met...a truly important step in the crashing of the worlds. Caleb afterwards commented that Vaughan was a lot like me. I mentioned that yeah, we had startingly similar interests, but he said it was more than that, we had a similar way of talking and everything. I had almost forgotten. I'll get V's reaction to Caleb soon. Afterwards, Caleb and I went back to his room, chatted for about 15 minutes and then parted ways. He went to the dining hall, and I went to grab a light dinner with Jen and Andrew Korn. Lovely conversation ensued and continued for my car ride home with Jen.

Now I am home, chilling, reading, enjoying a little bit of time to myself with my parents out for the weekend. It's been a while since I've had this kind of simple privacy. I miss it.

Thanks for reading if you made it to the end. Tomorrow: attempt to see the adult version of Spelling Bee with Greg.

A Little Bitching and More

Second day at work: more extremes than the first. On one hand, during the second half of the day I became slightly more talkative and social, so perhaps I'm beginning to break the "mute, personality-less girl" thing I had going for the first day and a half. On the other hand, I feel fairly incompetent. I was given an article topic today and spent so much time frittering away, doing background research, that I didn't email or call any of the researchers involved until around 3:30 in the afternoon...far too late to expect a response. My real reason for not calling earlier was that I was too afraid to cold call people, as I didn't know that was done, too afraid to leave messages, because I didn't know if that was a good idea, and too afraid to ask my boss what to do, because I'd rather not seem clueless. But of course I wound up asking later in the day, and yes, I cold call, yes, I leave messages and follow those up with emails. Makes tons of sense. Just asking makes even more sense. I'm slowly getting the sense that my boss is disappointed in me already. I don't have great ideas for how to slant articles...they ask me "so what would your take be?" as if I've ever figured out how to angle a topic. I haven't. Ever. The YDN articles were always assigned to me and I'm too chicken-shit to write op-eds. But apparently I'm going to start angling them now. And how.

On the first hand, again, my two article topics thus far are pretty cool. People who are frequent users of drugs tend to have physical responses when they enter the location where they usually use. This is why people overdose in foreign places...it takes more to get them high in their usual locale, so they use their habitual dosage elsewhere, and it's too much. A few researchers found a way to stop this environmental memory-making in cocaine-using rats. That's the first cool article. As for the second article....I CAN'T TELL YOU! Na na n'naa na! It's embargoed until next Monday, when it will appear on the brand-spanking-new Seed site in all of its embargo-lifted glory.

But right now I'm feeling really nervous. I didn't get enough done today, I haven't had much of a social life these past few weeks. I even interrupted vaughan's reading at slave to talk to him, which I very rarely do, because I've been so socially deprived and seeing a friend without the mind-numbing schlepp to the city or farther was about the most exciting thing that's happened in a long time. I'm not sure about this work, and I hate feeling like a disappointment. I don't feel really invested yet...hopefully when I'm producing, and that work is going up onto a website, I'll naturally take more pride in my work. But right now I'm feeling negative emotions that haven't cropped up in the past year or two.

Also, I've begun to realize one luxury I had this summer (aside from the general vast amounts of free time). I was able to take a step back and prioritize according to what I believe is important, not what the world believes is important. And since I had been in that state of prioritizing goodness, security in oneself and intellectual curiosity for so many months, I forgot that what the world prioritizes is quality of output. And not overall quality of output: quality of output in projects that specifically affect them. You are valued if you do what you do well. This is something I've never valued in people. I mean, I love excellent work. I laud awesome novels, movies, songs, performances, businesses, etc. I trash things, generally, because I hate them...not because they're of poor quality. And I always, in some way, admire things I hate. I'm more likely to be extremely dismissive of genres, not specific works. Hearing the other young editorial folk talk about how bad different articles are is a huge shock back into reality. Then there's the dorky editorial assistant who seems ever so slightly ostracized because his comments are sometimes out of place and overly exuberant. Thus far, props to him.

Immersion

I began work today. I'm an adult. Pause. Pause ... Pause. OK, now you can burst out laughing.

Today was "get acquainted with all the science that's happened in the past week" day. I think I doubled my knowledge of technology, learning how to get and browse RSS feeds and use an awesome bookmarking service called del.icio.us (oh, what an economical use of an extension!). It's actually pretty awesome...works much like the gmail tagging system, but as many people as would like to can view the server and anyone with the password can edit it. I'll link you all to our main site when it gets up and running, which will be next Monday. I'll be writing one article per day. That's crazy. I mean, I can probably research via the internet and write up that quickly, but any and all interviewing and fact checking will make this one hell of a process. I'm looking forward to the challenge, though.

More than anything, I'm looking forward to the immersion in a field. I'm going to spend the next two months eating, drinking and breathing science news. I will be a science news machine. I think that's pretty exciting...to really gain a solid background in a specific field in a two month period. Now, of course, as soon as I start slacking off, assuming I don't continue directly with science news after it ends, my knowledge base will become completely outdated. Maybe they'll hire me and I'll continue with the whole thing...who can tell what the future holds?

The atmosphere was all right...hopefully I'll warm up to the people and all. Two things have to change: 1. I need to be friendlier. I'm not a friendly person. I'm a nice person, and I'm a good friend, and I'm very dynamic when I'm around my friends, but I'm crap with strangers and people I only know moderately. I just need to loosen the fuck up. 2. I need to not feel greasy. Whenever I wake up to early, I feel greasy. Sure, not immediately after my shower, but somehow I grime up over the course of the day. This just doesn't happen when I sleep until 11, but it really makes me feel incompetent and groggy for the entire day. I never woke up today. If I felt awake, that would help the friendliness. Damn the grime!

I'm not in much of a mood for writing tonight. Tomorrow my hands will be bound to the keyboard and I will be Seed's article grinding bitch. That will probably either make me totally sick of writing come the evenings or make me ache to philosophize in my writing and use beautiful, florid, masturbatory language. I think we can all bet on the latter.