David: you should post stuff like this on the blog, with pithy comments. if you are looking for shorter things to post.
Justin: Oh. I was going to write up how brilliant furniture design like this implies a greater need for engineering degrees in our country with a focus on art and aesthetics, and how the lack of more things like this is a failing of us as a society and a culture. The rough draft’s 3 pages.
David: that’s pretty sweet.
Justin: Damnit, I knew I should have put a sarcasm mark at the end of that. My story unfortunately checks out.
David: oh, haha. yes indeed it does.
Recently I had the pleasure of going to a fantastic event called Atlanta Science Tavern. The premise is simple: Pay a minimal entrance fee, eat some bar food, and listen to an expert talk about his or her research into some scientific field. The talker this time was a gentleman by the name of Dr. Todd M. Preuss who talked at length about the differences between other ape brains and the human mind. The first half of his lecture, however, was a discourse on why his field is under-studied and under-funded, and it reminded me of talks I’ve had with friends after the Climate-Gate ‘scandal’ concerning the role of science in greater society.
Not to give a completely inadequate summary of Dr. Preuss’ talk, but he opined about the resistance amongst modern biologists and anatomists to spelling out sapien-simian brain differences as opposed to their similarities. This goes back to Darwin’s efforts, when he spent the better part of his life focusing on the continuity of species, and thus the commonality was far more important to his thesis than the differences, which could be shot down by the religious community as ‘those things unique to God’s chosen creatures.’ The second problem was funding. Dr. Preuss does almost all of his research with higher apes, such as chimpanzees and humans specifically, which is rather expensive compared to ‘similarities’ research done with other mammals like rats and mice.
His brand of academic troubles are something people in my field aren’t really familiar with. In topology, the field of mathematics where my bets are cast, the practical merit is almost zero, but on the other hand lab costs and upkeep are confined to, in order of price, a steady supply of coffee and chalk. Mathematicians don’t have too much trouble getting funding for essentially nothing more than their living costs while they think. Comparative psychologists and neuroscientists, on the other hand, have to pay for expensive equipment, expensive animals, and expensive techniques. The hurdles they must jump to get their work done are much higher, both politically and financially.
Climate-Gate infuriated me to no end, the supposed controversy and its easily dispelled allegations whipping bloviating jerk-face Rush Limbaugh and others into a frenzy, utterly misconstruing scientifically innocuous emails into some sort of conspiracy by Marxist environmentalists. The lesson it taught me is that, though the results and methods and final papers must be subject to peer review, the public seems woefully unequipped to read intimate details of the process without devolving into red-faced polemics. I don’t think this is unique to science— basically any job one works at where one is required to correspond with others via email has all sorts of inside jokes and references non-humorous that others wouldn’t understand, willfully or not, that could indict both ones’ self and ones’ colleagues.
It appears that Dr. Preuss has to preface all of his work with some sort of due diligence on top of good peer-reviewed work with a disclaimer saying that, no, these differences are evolutionarily founded and not created by some god before anyone will take him seriously. The scientists around him are so fearful of a political reprisal that their science has to be modified to fit into a politically conscious world. Anyone who has any care for the sanctity of science should be feeling rightly disgusted at this point. I’m not really sure what an acceptable solution would look like, but science really needs to be allowed to be, as it were, in order to do its job fairly and as objectively as possible. Placing some sort of negligence charge on scientists who don’t do anything wrong but speak familiarly to their colleagues because of the risk of some hacker stealing their emails, or some fat pundit twisting their words and their meanings, could only be a burden that drives up the already high cost of research into these controversial fields, and further puts laypeople in the mindset of distrusting experts to be experts.
Money is the other problem, and it’s intensely tied to politics. It would be nice if we lived in a world where scientists always got unlimited funding for whatever they wanted to research, but that’s unreasonable. What’s also unreasonable is scientific funding fluctuating with political cycles, further miring research with politics, pundits, and polemics at a cost to everyone. Again, an exact solution is not in sight, but I would enjoy seeing something like a set funding pool that’s proportional to budget in a fixed way, overseen by science advocates who, on one hand, can’t lobby for an increase but, on the other hand, aren’t swayed by Congress to fund one field or another.
Dr. Preuss believes his research is fundamental to solving problems as diverse as AIDS vaccine research to handling the diversity of psychological problems that plague people. Other research in other fields similarly makes lofty claims that, sometimes, turn out to be true. Throwing science to the social machinations of political institutions will do nothing but ruin the effectiveness of research and cast doubt, far more doubt than should be due from people who aren’t experts, onto an already distrusted and disparaged scientific community.
My gut reaction to the Lane Kiffin debacle was, “Man, what a dirtbag.” The riots in Knoxville over Kiffin’s decision to leave UT after only one (mediocre) season seemed justified in the way that only righteous sports indignation can.
Unfortunately, this indignation is of the self-righteous variety. Vols fans talk about loyalty now, but what about Phil Fullmer? The guy brought you Peyton Manning and a national championship only 10 years before his forced resignation. But one losing season and you become the Delilah to his, admittedly portly, Samson (ok it’s a poor analogy). What about the 85-41 record he compiled in the years after the championship, including a 12th ranked season the year before his firing?
No, the humiliation of once missing a bowl game in a conference stacked with premier teams is enough to erase 16 years of dedication to the school, along with it the credibility and stability in recruiting the sports media now says Kiffin has robbed Tennessee of.
This is why coaches owe nothing to the programs they are hired to lead. Similar fates awaited Larry Coker and Lloyd Carr despite their dominance in the late 90s and early 2000s. Why would any coach wait around when the noose is dangling over his head?
So I don’t want to hear about loyalty from boosters and disgruntled fans. If you wanted loyalty above results, you wouldn’t have chosen a mercenary gunning for national media prestige. When you find your team near the bottom of the SEC East again this upcoming fall and you want to point the finger at your disloyal former coach, remember one thing: you deserved each other.
USAToday ran an article headlined, “Catching Up On Lost Sleep A Dangerous Illusion” today. My first reaction was that I already see right through the illusion. My solution is typically not to catch up, but to give up on lost sleep. Then I read this:
That’s dangerous for public health because many critical positions are held by people who have to stay up long hours, including doctors, paramedics, police officers and truckers.
Eve Van Cauter, a sleep researcher at the University of Chicago, calls the study “almost scary, because it really reveals that a large segment of the modern population may be at high risk of committing catastrophic errors, particularly in the middle of the night and the early morning hours.”
To put this in context, prior research has shown that staying awake for 24 hours in a row impairs performance on par with legal intoxication with alcohol (for driving), and six hours of sleep per night for two weeks causes a similar level of impairment as staying awake for 24 hours, Cohen says.
From USAToday
So since I get about four hours a day and am often drunk for the remainder, I’m guessing that disqualifies me (more) from operating heavy machinery?
Well, clearly it’s not ok to eschew sleep entirely. Healthy, wealthy, wise and all that jazz. But I wonder if there’s a loophole. See, doctors tell us to get 7-8 hours of sleep a night, but they don’t say that we can’t get that sleep in prepositional form.
So if I sleep 4 hours and spend the other half sleeping with, around, and in, do I get to have back that medical license I won as collateral in a Guadalupe cockfight? Daddy’s got an itch, and the only cure is illegitimate surgery.
Side note: I wonder how this jives with anecdotal evidence that the Clintons spent Bill’s presidency on roughly 4-5 hours of sleep a night? Does this confirm the Milhousian reverse vampire hypothesis way back in Season 6? Or does it confirm that sleeping prepositionally really is a perfect substitute?
Note to anyone important potentially reading this: my blog is satire and only maybe partially reflective of views and reality.
The Economist makes a great argument for trusting the judicial branch on wedge issues:
There aren’t that many social settings in which people are expected to set aside their fixed positions, listen to opposing arguments with an open mind, accept new evidence and testimony, and come to a fair, just conclusion, in the knowledge that they will be respected rather than disdained for changing their minds. One such setting is a courtroom.
From Democracy In America
Since this is such a controversial, though in my opinion not entirely unreasonable, viewpoint, I feel it necessary to shed light on my own views on the subject.
Justin may be right that what’s at play here is not entirely genetic, but I’m not prepared to believe that sexuality is 100% cultural. I’m not even sure it’s mostly cultural. Justin hasn’t addressed how tallness and fitness are almost universally found attractive across cultures. Nor that high-income and intelligence are similarly thought of as prime considerations in finding mates both in the East and West. Nor that animals, despite a lack of televisions and billboards, sometimes practice homosexuality in the wild. This common knowledge (and plenty of other studies on cross-cultural attraction) should lend credence to the idea that there are some evolutionary, and therefore, genetic pressures on attraction.
But I’m not sure how else to reconcile the meme that ’sexuality is a spectrum’ without taking a hard look at the spectrums within the spectrums as Justin has done. It’s highly doubtful that a gene like “Loves the Simpsons” or “Has Killer Tattoos” is hard-wired into our genetic code, the same way that I doubt a preference between the protagonists in Twilight or 17 Again is. I therefore share Justin’s skepticism that there exists a 100% controlling “gay gene,” especially given the existence of the androgynous David Bowie, who is hot no matter what you have between your legs.
Furthermore, holding up “sexuality is only genetic” as a canard for political correctness’ sake is dangerous. Genetic justifications for otherizing disadvantaged groups have done as much, if not more, harm than those based on beliefs and customs developed through experience. I hope I don’t need to offer evidence for this assertion.
I find it a much healthier idea, if we aren’t concerned about the science (which I’m also not versed in), for us all to to believe that any one of us could have been more or less attracted to the same sex if not for some random events each member of society could conceivably and inevitably experience. It is at this point that the firm distinctions between what a gay person is and what a straight person is break down, allowing us to view sexuality in a more mature and nuanced light.
Not to trivialize this obviously touchy subject, but this is also the reason that music and film snobs should get over themselves – these tastes are partially determined by a right-brain dominated personality, but also partially determined by exposure that individuals in no way caused to come about. But somehow I get the feeling that we are going to come together on LGBT rights and realities much, much sooner than we will get consensus on what it means to love The Fast and The Furious.
My controversial hypothesis is stated simply: I do not believe that human sexuality is genetic, i.e. existent from birth.
If this causes hairs to rise on the back of your neck and your finger to immediately reach for the F key, subsequently followed five characters later by the Y key, you might want to read the disclaimer* at the bottom first. Otherwise, come with me on a magical tour of armchair theorizing!
One thing to make clear, something that should be readily apparent, is that human sexuality, like a fingerprint, is unique from person to person. Though David and I, straight men, both prefer to have intimate relations with women, we have particular preferences. David prefers women who are opinionated and intellectual, as well as being assertive, while civil, with a moderate, but not-too-much, attention to their appearance and to the cultural aesthetics of the most contemporary zeitgeist. On the other hand, I have the much more specific and limiting higher standard that I prefer women who laugh at my jokes.
The same is true of those who are of alternative lifestyles, a buzz-phrase I hope is soon relegated to the same headspace as ‘coloured peoples’. Two gay men have their own particular irrevocable and unchangeable preferences in the men they prefer to get it on with. A person who likes excitable and flamboyant Latin men can no more change their preference than I can stand to be around a woman who does not (constantly) stoke the fires of my comedic ego.
With all of these near-immutable complexities of preferences in people with regards to their sexuality, I just find it absurd to surmise that this is all coded genetically. Sexuality is a very high-level process on the behavioral hierarchy (even if the knocking-of-boots itself is simple), and things that high up don’t usually come from genetic determinism alone. This sad addiction to horrible grungy 90’s alternative music I have wasn’t hard-wired at the GATTACA level. My sister likes gospel and thinks Eddie Vedder needs a haircut more than a Grammy.
My obsessive man-crush Chomsky has, in the course of his sexy studies of linguistics, helped advance the idea of the Language Acquisition Device, or its more recent and developed incarnation, the ‘Principles and Parameters’ vehicle for linguistic acquisitions. The idea here is that there is a genetic component to learning language. That is, our brains are wired in such a way as to influence both how language is created (leading to a certain inherent commonality to all human languages) and how we learn them (by accessing those common features on an instinctual level). They’re very general though, which is why to people of other countries, Americans sound like this.
Armed with this idea, a chair, and plenty of free time to postulate on ideas laughably far away from my field of expertise (enunciating on the difference between donuts and pretzels in a hair-raisingly formal way), I’ve come up with the theory that sexuality is culturally acquired at a very basic level throughout childhood and adolescence, with elements changing slightly well into adulthood, but without conscious control. It’s not really a matter of choice, no more than I chose to grow up speaking English as my first language and the words with which I understand any concept, including other languages. It’s remarkably subconscious. But at the same time, the fact that I speak English was not something that I received from birth but rather was trained to do, on a very deep cognitive level, because of my environment.
And the cues that train us aren’t so identifiable, either. Though I firmly believe that sexuality is acquired culturally, I don’t think it will ever be easy to know precisely what elements lead to specific expressions or classifications of sexuality. In other words, there’s no hope of creating some sort of ‘straight’ or ‘gay’ environment for a child that guarantees who they like to use pickup lines on later in life. And trying to exert that kind of control is as cruel as speaking to your child in Klingon throughout their developmental years to ‘see what happens’. You’re not going to prove a point, and you might get charged with child cruelty.
But a lot of interesting sexuality questions become much more explainable under this framework. Identical twins do not have a 100% correlation of sexual preference, a fact that’s been known for years. If it’s more-or-less culturally defined, we might expect a higher correlation than 50%, or random chance (as their outward appearance very well might influence who they hang around with, and indeed there’s a lot of correlation in their environment), but certainly not 100%. Further, have you ever met anyone who’s gone through gay-to-straight conversion therapy? I’m not trying to insult these people, but they appear stunted in a fashion, in regards to accessibility to their sexuality. This is what you would expect to see if sexuality were something akin to language. If you never learn a first language, or never get a chance to until too late into development, any further attempts will be hampered, and you will never be fluent. The same is true if you ‘unlearn’ your first language through brainwashing techniques that leave you, well, shell-ish.
The question could be asked, as it has been, “No one remembers when they become gay”, but at the same time, I couldn’t tell you when I first started understanding English, or reached different vague aptitude levels with the language. It’s a subtle, complex process that, at least in the case of language, is very definitely not genetic in any case. People can also change their sexuality later in life, but it’s more additive than subtractive. Straight or gay people can become bisexuals, or learn to like greater varieties of their preferred sex.
For the record, I have talked to people of different sexualities about this idea, and while understandably uncomfortable with associating sexuality with something more mutable than genetics, the idea wasn’t abhorrent to them and there wasn’t a unilateral denial. I even received some accolades for having the testicular fortitude to risk getting tarred, feathered and crucified for a controversial idea that wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
In any event, I look forward to the hot pots of boiling oil, chicken feathers, and pitchforks I will inevitably receive in the comments. Or maybe you just have something incredibly interesting to say. Or you liked my jokes. (Hey, sup?)
*The intention of this post is not to imply that sexuality is a consciously malleable behavior that can be changed at will and indeed the arguments presented ensure that that conclusion isn’t one that can be drawn from the idea. I’m absolutely for equal rights and not condemning the gay lifestyle, and anyone who thinks that this post gives a way to rationalize those disparities is utterly misreading it. Secondly, I could very well be utterly wrong in my conjecture, and would actually love to be enlightened to the fact that it is indeed genetic and there at birth, if someone provides the evidence for it. I don’t have huge access to the Human Genome Project nor the latest and greatest in genetics research.
Update 1: If you’re tuning in from Facebook or another permalinked source, you may not know that David wrote a nice concurrence in part to this piece, which you can read here.
I’ve decided to take a new direction with my acoustic music: Sci-Fi Folk. I’m already wearing the David Bowie influence on my sleeve, I figure I might as well tattoo it on my forehead.
And, without further ado, a song I recorded over the holidays that sounds absolutely nothing like David Bowie.
I’m Guessing This Mag Won’t Be On Offer From Any Enterprising Girl Scouts Anytime Soon
Act now, infidels, before subscription rates go up before the new year! Save 73% off the cover price!
Sada al-Malahim manages to get by without paid advertisements. The staff keeps costs down by having no central office. The editor sometimes communicates with his far-flung jihadi writers through the pages of the magazine itself. (In one issue, he apologized that he had too much content to run in a single issue, but he promised jilted contributors that their work would appear in the subsequent issue.) Most of the contributors are either members of al-Qaida or their relatives, and they’re probably not paid for their writing…
Articles are of varying quality, with more misspellings and grammatical errors than you might see in a commercial magazine.
from Slate
So basically, al-Zawahari is a big fan of ’zines? In more important news this is the first decentralized extremist organization to adopt the DIY aesthetic since Discord Records.
What do Henry Hill, Son of Sam, Rod Blagoyevich, and Balloon Boy’s parents (the Heenes) have in common?
Why, they are all constitutional freedom fighters of course! See, most of the media depicts the Heenes as exploitative, fame-seeking hoaxsters, but I believe they had a different angle. And their recent sentence (a relative slap on the wrist of 60 days for the husband and 20 days for the wife out of a maximum 6 years for the felony and 1 for the misdemeanor) gave them the perfect opportunity to take their cause all the way to the Supreme Court.
Most news outlets are focusing on the jail time, but what is significant to me is the Fort Collins judge’s decision to bar the Heenes from collecting or seeking any profits connected to the hoax while they are on probation. A probation lasting 48 months (something like 125 in meme years).
That means no book deal. No exclusive interviews on Oprah. Putting “I’m the Balloon Boy Dad” on a resume or application for a reality show (the couple appeared on Wife Swap, which is honestly punishment enough) might even land the couple in hot water.
Like the other aforementioned American Anti-Heroes, the Heenes clearly pulled this stunt to test the limits of freedom of expression. They want answers to the tough questions. Specifically, can criminals profit from misdeeds? Even more specifically, is it constitutional to prevent criminals from profiting off stories of legal deeds that people only care about because of their notoriety?
They wouldn’t be the first to pull one over on the courts. After working as a ‘wiseguy’ for decades in the Gotti family, Henry Hill (yes, the one from Goodfellas) finished his life’s work as an underground Constitutional scholar when he finally realized his dream of taking a 1st Amendment case to the Supreme Court in 1991.
In Simon & Schuster v. Crime Victims Board, the Court held unconstitutional the Son of Sam laws passed to prevent the titular serial killer from enriching himself with the proceeds from the stories of his murders. Justice O’Connor wrote that the law, which forced publishers to create escrow accounts out of the criminal’s share of the profits from which civil litigants could collect damages, unduly restricted free speech. Also, I think she had a schoolgirl crush on Ray Liotta. But who didn’t in 1991, am I right?
In response, those scrappy state legislatures decided to circumvent the Court’s ruling by passing laws not just restricting speech specifically, but any economic profit derived from crimes. But there has yet to be a case to test this new regime. Even in 1991, only a handful of high-profile criminals had been singled out for enforcement, likely to secure some district attorney’s re-election (the laws weren’t used on the Son of Sam killer, Berkowitz, because he gave profits to his victims’ families voluntarily – bless his heart).
What strikes me as odd here is the crime committed by the Heenes: Colorado Criminal Code 18-8-306 “attempting to influence a public servant,” where the influence was based on deceit.
While they certainly did attempt do so, I’m not so sure this influence is the part of the story people really want to read about. I’d like to hear about the construction of the balloon, the motivations behind the hoax, their plan for dealing with the media (not crimes, thank you Cuban government), and the absurd conversation that must have gone down with the son. I’m also not sure my life could truly be called complete without the Official Balloon Boy coffee mug I need to replace the knockoff versions I bought from a 4chan garage sale.
True, without calling the police and launching the search party, no one would have cared about the balloon boy story. I suppose it depends on how broadly you want to define the deceit – does it cover the act of lying, or the true facts that, since withheld, made the lie a lie?
As O’Connor wrote in her opinion, the Son of Sam laws would have discouraged the publishing of Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience and The Autobiography of Malcom X, among other classic works describing the criminal activity of the author.
Would it have been legitimate for a judge to have ordered Thoreau to spend 15 days in jail for his tax evasion, and then order him not to collect profits on his seminal work for the entirety of his probation? Using the above reasoning, we’d have to bar the philosophy Thoreau derived from his experience in addition to the description of his prison conditions (stop the presses on Paris Hilton’s “Metaphysics Under The Influence”).
The Colorado court isn’t just limiting the Heenes’ speech about the activities directly relating to their crime. It’s likely imposing the sentence as a deterrent against people using criminal activity to gain notoriety and self-promotion.
But if we really wanted to punish that, would we be willing to silence Johnny Cash? His outlaw image (backed up by several one-night stints in jail for badassery and not-giving-a-fuck, misdemeanors in most jurisdictions) not only made him one of the most successful country singers ever, it also informed much of the content of his music. If Johnny Cash burns down a federal forest and a court bans him from singing about it, is there still a Heaven? I think not. (To a lesser extent, see The Lone Rangers triple-platinum hit Live In Prison).
Blago and countless other scoundrels might be interested in resolving these questions. Perhaps the real answer is that the Heenes, if they really only cared about getting the truth out there, should be willing to give interviews for free. Thoreau probably wouldn’t have cared about profit – he lived on a pond by himself for chrissakes. Dude didn’t even have cable. Or Zhu Zhu pets.
Something tells me that without the promise of heaps of Zhu Zhu pets, or next-best, money, most of these true crime stories would simply never be told. Publishers already fear legislative reprisal and subjects could lose interest due to the massive amount of time proper interviews for these books can take.
I’m just proud that we live in a country where people are willing to lock their offspring up in a dusty attic for days in order to further their careers… as advocates for our civil liberties. God bless the Heenes, and Merry Christmas to all uncivil disobedients, everywhere!
