That, is brilliant

Unlike the people who flee from cities in search of a life free from disagreement and dark skin, we are for contentiousness, discourse, and the heightened understanding of life that grows from having to accommodate opposing viewpoints. We're for opposition. And just to be clear: The non-urban argument, the red state position, isn't oppositional, it's negational--they are in active denial of the existence of other places, other people, other ideas.

That, right there.

I thought I'd post that because, well, because I'm taking the GRE tomorrow and I'm trying to think about other things.

Also, I want to make known that I really liked the passion, verve and [mostly] clear-headedness with which Savage and company present their case. Yes, it's unequivocal. Yes, it's illiberal of the intolerant [and intolerant of the illiberal]. Yes, it's inflammatory. It's a call to arms--something to unite behind--and it's exactly what we need.

Story time: The kids that organized prayer vigils outside Planned Parenthood used to corner we evolution advocates on the issue of human cognition. It essentially went like this: The human brain is a triadic mechanism. Cause to effect [problem to decision] then reflection. In the modern-scientific empiricist model, there are only dyadic mechanisms, cause and effect. Where, then, does the third thing come from? Reflection?

I always replied that advancements in organic computing systems (Stanford's parallel computer was my example) showed the beginning of what would become a computer's ability to think truly reflexively. Whatever. Then I'd say their argument was an oversimplification of Newton, who, time has shown, was pretty damned simplistic himself, and that I was sure [without having any proof, See also: bluffing] that modern scientific theory allows for such mechanisms. There were no scientists in the room, no one had heard of Stanford's computer project, the bluff at least ended debate. Nonetheless, it came back up several times after that.

It often took other forms. Another issue with [evolution specifically] on the question of self-reflexivity, is that the theory of evolution can't self-reflexively examine itself. My professor's illustration of this dilemma was people who claim to be tolerant. In being tolerant you ostensibly oppose intolerance. By opposing those who are intolerant, you in fact negate your own tolerance by being intolerant of those who are intolerant of others. That is, essentially, a fallacy. The entire politically correct movement is guilty of this.

I always hated this reasoning, but I never had an answer for it. I personally believe logic is not some perfect language of truth, it is a tool to be manipulated and this argument is sophistry of the worst kind. That said, I never had a rebuttal, until now. Thanks Dan. It goes something like this [in declaratory prose]:

We oppose with fervor the restriction and degradation of human worth and dignity by states and individuals. Our imperative is to eradicate ignorance and the hate it breeds. Our fallacy, the stumbling block of our ideology, is that we cherish and tolerate all people except the intolerant. This makes us hypocritical. Hypocrisy also disturbs us and we also strive to end it. So, we will redouble our efforts to end intolerance--oppose it with more rigor--for, in doing so, we also end our own hypocrisy. Once there is no intolerance, there will no longer be an ideology we oppose. Problem solved.

Then I'd turn to the kid who orchestrated the prayer vigils and flip his short ass off.

What Would Jesus Not Do? Cast stones.

Read the full thing here.

It's the self-interest, stupid.

Goddamn, finally people [liberals, though not necessarily those with power] are embracing a doctrine of self-interest. The Stranger has an interesting feature this week, The Urban Archipelago. It's an impassioned, revolutionary, though ultimately myopic, argument for screwing the heartland and looking out for our own overpopulated selves. I'm speaking of course as the former city-dweller I was and still identify myself as.

First, some housekeeping: the article purports to have been written by "The Editors of The Stranger" but I found this article, by Dan Savage at the Portland Mercury (The Stranger's sister paper). That is to say, I found the first page of the article in a Google cache, which appears to be identical to the one written by the editors of the stranger. The thing has been stricken from the Mercury site itself. Not sure why. Thought I'd point it out because I really like Dan Savage. Credit where credit is due and what not. I'll leave it at that.

In any event, thanks to In My Room for pointing the article out. Thanks to him/them also for recognizing it as a "bile-[spewing] . . . screed." It is that exactly (which further makes me think Dan Savage wrote it). There's a lot about the article that's dreamy and under-cooked. Most notably, I have a suspicion that it pretends a more homogenous liberality in and around major cities than actually exists. In those places, we have a majority. Often, it's an overwhelming majority, [Washington DC], but often it's a fairly narrow majority. In at least one case, it's not even enough of a majority to win the larger county for Kerry.

The Stranger boasts that Democrats won every city whose population is above 500,000. According to this, there are 27 such cities. I'm sure that's true, but the article ignores a few things. For example, Houston, population 1,953,631, is one such city. I couldn't find records for Houston itself, but we'll assume, as the Stranger said, that Kerry won it. However, whatever Pro-Kerry majority existed within city limits, it wasn't even enough to win Harris county for the Democrat, where Bush won 55% to 45%. Now, if you have 2 million people in your town, a town which leans Democrat, but you can't even pull your county Kerry's way, there are a number of possibilities, and all of them suggest that it's not really blue city.

First, we're going to speculate that Houston proper is the largest set of votes for the county. Houston goes Kerry, the county goes Bush by 10%. Either: Kerry slimly won in Houston or there's a huge percentage of suburban voters who don't qualify as Houstonians but live in the same county. That makes them, for all intents and purposes, Houstonians that didn't get examined when Dan Savage/Stranger editors were writing this up and makes Houston at large more purplish than either red or blue.

For the record, I didn't spend hours finding a 500,000+ city to fit my argument, Houston was the first I looked at. Admittedly, I looked at it because it's balls deep in Texas.

The point remains, merely having a majority in a city isn't enough to claim it as part of the archipelago.

From the Stranger: "According to the 2000 Census, 226 million people reside inside metropolitan areas--a number that positively dwarfs the 55 million people who live outside metro areas. The 85 million people who live in strictly defined central city limits also outnumber those rural relics."

This pretty much makes my point for me. 85 million. 226 million. 55 million. Assume for a minute that Savage/editors are correct, and that those 85 million uninhibited, metrosexual, compassionate downtown dwellers are liberal enough and get out the vote enough to beat the 55 million countrified, closet segregationist, fag-hating, mean-Christ loving farmhands (to use the Savage/Stranger oversimplification). Fine, but what about the other 226 million? The people that live in Redmond, Bellevue, Renton, the little pocket communities and suburbs that aren't even really towns, they're just flattened expanses of land.

Here's the problem I see. While a city proper may be overwhelmingly liberal, their outlying areas are often not. These areas have lots of single family housing, lots of big back yards, lots of privacy. The Sammamish Plateau, near Seattle, where lots of Tech industry middle-managers and big-wigs make their home, is very conservative. It doesn't match up with Seattle's numbers, but they're significant.

In Harris county, this kind of voter in this kind of enclave was enough to swing the overall metro vote away from Kerry.

I'm saying this: Before we go off half-cocked about our islands in the assylum, we need to look at the demographics of the surrounding reef. From our mountain peak fortresses of sanity, we need to keep keen eyes focused on those camping at the foot.

Overall, I think the Savage/Stranger article has some very prescient points, especially about embracing states rights. It's just practical from the viewpoint of the narrow-minority party to divide and conquer. If a majority of Americans don't trust us to fix the whole goddamned she-bang, then lets focus on fixing Seattle, Portland, LA, SF, NY, DC and all those other congestion-riddled abbreviations. There we'll find less resistance.

It's a shame that counties aren't afforded the same autonomy as states are, or I have the feeling King, Multnomah, and all the other counties who take on the names of their large, liberal cities, would already be much better places.

But more than that, it's nice to see my cynicism [realism] rubbing off on people. Not that I can claim credit for the rubbing . . . so I'll say it's nice to see people like me being vocal on a [semi-]national stage.

Eat that Sheffler.

Read the full thing here.

More of the same

I'm quilling this from Boston. Didn't expect that, did you?

On the plane I burned through the last 200-odd pages of Diary, which was good, but a little half-baked. It's kind of a mystery--that is, it's intended as a mystery. It falls short at the end because, as you notice yourself running out of pages, characters just basically begin spilling their guts.. It's Palahniuk, so the language is gorgeous and trashy simultaneously. High-minded topics are treated with juvenile vulgarity. That's what he does, it's what makes him stand out.

As much as he stands apart from other writers, however, he never really stands apart from himself. He's kind of a gimmicky writer. Often, the gimmicks and repetition work to amazing effect. Here, they don't as much.

Similarly, I'm starting to have a hard time distinguishing one Palahniuk hero from another. Misty Walmott here is more or less Victor Mancini from Choke but more naive. She's the narrator from Fight Club, but instead of achieving something in order to gain control of her life, the act of achievement ultimately controls her.

Variations on a theme.

His narration here is goddamned brilliant, flawlessly interweaving the 2nd and 3rd person. Anytime you can address the reader directly, make him or her part of the story, it's never wasted. Palahniuk here makes us a comatose attempted suicide. Our muscles have contracted until our head almost reaches around to our ass. Our teeth are bared. The chance of awakening is nil.

This is our wife's diary. Good stuff.

His lyricism too is fantastic. Perfectly crafted. Dense and lush descriptions go ripping by. Palahniuk has a genius for bombarding you with sensory information--pummelling you with it--but in a way that just reads like casual conversation. This isn't Moby Dick, he writes with purpose and drive, and thus reads really fast.

Fast, yes, but this time, the snap wasn't there, the shock value wasn't there. He's not as incisive nor as condemnatory. He's not as quick to pass judgment. Ultimately, redemption for Misty comes too easily.

It is a much more ruminative book than I've seen from him, which is good, in a way. Palahniuk discusses Plato and Jung at length, and ties it together in a way that almost makes this a philosophical whodunit to rival Robert Pirsig, call it Platonism and the Art of Watercolor Paintenance.

Except everything is far more cursory. And, as I mentioned, it just doesn't pop.

You can say something important and say it with verve. Palahniuk knows that better than anyone..

Palahniuk is never a dumb read, I always walk away feeling enriched. I usually, though, have more fun in the process.

Read the full thing here.

Vote or Tie

I don't think there's more to be said about the importance of getting off your ass. To ameliorate confusion though, I'll make what's implicit in these numbers explicit: people who don't vote because they feel statistically and existentially insignificant against the 120 million others are goddamned morons. A 19 vote differential as of yesterday, 6,000 more to count today.

If you abstained from voting for some ideological reason, I'm still mad at you, but I understand principled people sometimes have objections. For those who think your vote doesn't count, those who have self-esteem issues, who feel dwarfed by the sea of humanity at the polls--your own lack of personal power--you have my everlasting spite.

My vote counts. If the final margin is less than 2,000, my vote will be re-counted as well. Less than 150, and some nice septuagenarian with debilitating glaucoma is going to re-count my vote by hand.

Eat that you apathetics. You get to 120-odd-million one vote at a time. Bitch about the system, about oppression, complain about this and that, lament the lack of equality in jobs, education, and rights in this country. Here it is, equality. One each.

This is how you fix things.

Assholes. This shouldn't have been nearly so close a race.

Read the full thing here.

Moral drift

Mike, annoyed at my cynicism, this is for you. I've been trying to write this for a while [Nov 3rd or thereabout], but--uh--it's hard. Had to get distance from my rage. After November 2nd, I have a lot of rage.

The things most on voters' minds this election, according to those magic exit polls, were "moral issues." Given the direction of moral discourse in the months leading up to the election, that ambiguous catchall really just boils down to one issue: gay marriage.

There were other concerns raised as well of course. Some Carolinians worry that cancer-causing demons are spoiling profits from their smooth, flavorful cash crop. Further north and west, there is a growing debate over just how many so-called thunder lizard remains Satan has artificially tucked into the Black Hills strata.

For most though, in the words of John Stewart, "[n]othing trumped dudes kissing."

That 20+ percent of Americans--those more afraid of having gay neighbors than Arab neighbors, unemployed neighbors, or undereducated neighbors--overwhelmingly voted for Bush. 80%-18%.

It wasn't the only factor that lead to Bush's victory (see also, perceived liberal arrogance, party platform ignorance), of course, but 80% of 20% of 120 million approaches significance.

That's social conservatism. They came out, these conservatives, and rallied the troops. They went a long way toward re-electing the president and making this next half-decade a faggotless haven of heterosexual tax breaks. Nice work.

They had a good plan: exploit a centuries-old misinformation campaign, then just play on prejudices. You see, the sodomites choose their perversion. God said so. Look, it's right there, in the bible--the Christian handbook--everywhere except in Christ's actual teachings.

If homophobia was good enough for Christ's disciples 2000 years ago, then it's all right by them. Also often overheard, "Worst thing they ever did was take prayer out of schools." Social conservatism.

Sodomites. Perversion. Choice.

A vote for Kerry became, for many, a vote for legitimizing perversion. Well played. 80% of 20% and a majority in 11 states.

Fortunately (here's where the optimism comes in Mike), I think the war is already pretty much over. We've won, they've lost. Beg to differ? Let's think long term.

Regardless the mandate, be it divine, economic, whatever, social conservatives are in the business of maintaining the status quo. Slavers were social conservatives. Once the abolitionists really mobilized, how long did it take before slavery ostensibly ended? 40 years or so. How long had slavery been around in the Americas prior to that? 400ish years.

Same with the suffragettes and the civil rights movement. Once their numbers were great enough to be seen as a nation-wide movement, the hardest part--the grassroots work--was pretty much over. From there, recognition and unity brought further momentum toward change.

My point: Acceptance is only a matter of time.

They're here, they're queer, and people are getting used to it.

I've wracked my brain and this trend seems uniform. So I ask, in all honesty, can you think of any issue in which our country has become more socially conservative over the years? I really can't.

It seems that, in general, and though it may take 2000 years, the conservative, exclusionist ideology fails without . . . fail. The gradual move, in the Judeo-Christian West at large and our country specifically, has been one of gradual inclusion of humans and their lifestyles into the fully-bonded brotherhood of equals.

We're definitely not there yet, but the path seems clear. How quickly it happens is up us.

This is based, of course, upon my vague recollection of 8th grade Social Studies. I should say that my report card that year was a little light on academic achievement. So I'll leave details and fact checking to others.

***

Really, it would have been better for conservatives, in the long run, if gay marriage were legitimized at a federal level. That way tons of men-seeking-men and women-seeking-women who would normally mind their own business--live their lives, participate in their communities--might decide to go down to the courthouse and expose themselves for what they are. Sodomites.

Then we wouldn't have this tricky and covert queerfiltration into our neighborhoods and school boards.

That's the problem with them. You usually can't even tell they're gay until it's too late. They seem just like us.

Then, once we get to know a gay person or two, we begin to empathize with the sinner. We begin to see them not as a moral blight, but as a person.

And when we really know people as friends, neighbors and fellow humans, it's harder to hate them. Not impossible, but harder. It's even harder when you recognize that those friends, neighbors, fellow humans are being systematically oppressed because of some homophobic apostles.

So: 40% of Americans, 1 state, 1 openly gay, elected Episcopalian bishop and counting.

Read the full thing here.

In defense of H. Erectus

I believe I've been hoodwinked. At a blog I rarely attend to because of its blatant commercialism [being personally above that sort of thing], I happened upon an intriguing Google adword.

That one on the left. Let it be known that I never, as a rule, ever, click on these sorts of things under normal circumstances. Yet today I did. Creationists, it can be said, have a strange and mystical power over me. Anyone who interprets a book with talking serpents and giants literally because it also has genealogy charts fascinates me.

It fascinates me the way I imagine killdeer fascinate badgers. There they are, cute little things, flapping on the ground, utterly helpless with their poor arguments. You creep up and are about to pounce with all your intellectual force and ooops, they flitter away, not earthbound by the principles of logic other beings are. "I say sir, you can't do that," you offer in protest, but they don't care, they have faith Satan put those big, intellectually-challenging bones in the ground.

To be fair, it is probably true that their "daddy weren't no gat-damned monkey."

More to the point, the ad was just so perfectly contextual. See, I was reading about this little disclaimer being put in science text books these days--the books America's children are reading in school. To wit:

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.

Thank you creationists for that. This statement could, of course, be made about everything from the heliocentric model to big 'G' gravity. Science by definition must be falsifiable, and therefore everything science-related must always be carefully and critically considered. Evolution is not the exception.

So it's a stupid nonvictory anywhere real science is being done. It may, however, be a real victory where it really matters, that gigantic litmus test called the idiot arena of public opinion.

But that's far beside the point, we've got more self-congratulatory fish to fry. This advertisement, its wording resonated my brain pan, piercing and siren-like.

Creation verses (sic) Evolution

At first I thought, "Battle royale . . ."

50,000 in cash will be awarded.

Then I thought, "Ooh, blood money--and in cash--this is going down Tijuana cock-fight style." The next line torched that possibility, but from it's flaming wreckage was born a possibility too delectable to even consider.

Enter with your verse.

Could it be? Could this be asking for bible verses contradicting evolution? Perchance to dream. Click.

Of course not. 'Twas a goddamned web poetry contest. So I did what any person in my emotional state would do, I wrote a goddamned poem. Bitter, I wrote it about evolution.

Clever, I know. I thought the nod to E.E. Cummings' bizarre and subversive indenting proclivities would give me an edge in winning this amateur . . . internet . . . poetry . . . contest. I got it all out without vomitting, that says something about my resolve.

I'm sure they got the final laugh however, as I offered up all of my vital Lukeformation without even thinking about it.

So I'll be getting adverts for Jesus' Own penis enlargement supplements any second.

I'm also now being watched by our nation's faith-based intelligence community. I can feel their holy eyes on me. Folks who know call it spiritual warfare.

Read the full thing here.

An Instance of the aforementioned

Case study: Yesterday morning, in a response, Don coined a term.

This is what I meant when I said the comments have been cornucopious.

Advertidity, his word, is the best thing I've heard since I started learning the words our ancestors made up but no one uses because they suck. That is, since I began studying for the GRE.

Example: "Volubility"

Do we really need another word that means basically the same as Prolixity, Loquacity and Garrulity? Shouldn't just one of those syllabous and redundant words be enough for our meandering and bloated language?

Short answers: no and yes.

We need to trim the fat. There's no need for so many unused words. I People use too many adjectives as it is. We can start the unholy purge right at the wellspring. The fact that these words are so far out of use that they are used as a litmus test for admission to graduate school proves their worthlessness.

This act needn't be Orwellian, they needn't be stricken from dictionaries, a simple "archaic" in italics before the definition will do. Then future generations can look back and see how silly we were to have so many words that really meant nothing.

Follow up: This will leave plenty of room for words like Advertidity. Words with chops and tactile appeal. Words that speak to contemporary crises and phenomena. Words that say, "I'm new," and mean it.

Don't come with that it's ta bolster your vocabulary nonsense. You want to make a comment and you want to make sure everyone you're talking/writing to understands what you mean, you call something wordy. Maybe verbose. Maybe.

See, Verbose sounds good. There's something viscerally pleasing about it, something lush and brief. It flows but doesn't waste your time. Volubility sounds like science jargon, like I should be mixing two unstable chemicals while saying it. Or calibrating a triple-beam-balance.

Any word that requires vocabulary bolstering isn't worth knowing.

If the point of language is communication, and communication requires understanding, then these words are not really language because no one understands them. Had they a real purpose once? Maybe, but now these poor mish-mashings of alphabetic symbols exist only as ornaments of intellectual preening and tools for academic culling.

Put that in your Computer Adaptive Test and smoke it choose the answer that best fits.

Wreak havoc / Beep beep it's mad traffic / Sleek and lavish /People speak and leak it to the maverick

Read the full thing here.

Now you're cooking

The blog is now virtually self-contained, subsisting and, really, thriving almost exclusively on its own collective mind-juices. These are mind-juices that are first cooked to perfection in a sultry cauldron of debate.

It's what the GRE folks would call a positive-feedback loop. I write something. Someone responds. It spurs me to write something else, connected but independent of the original post. Someone responds. You see where this is headed, and it's been headed there for about a week now.

The reason I hadn't updated in a week was because I didn't feel I could take the time to comb headlines and whatnot to dredge up interesting minutiae. I've got graduate programs to not get into. Now, though, the comments are doing the dredging for me. This is good.

Since my little break, the most interesting and insightful [and factual, data-supported] arguments and observations have been in the comments. This is necessary and I'm glad it's happening. Despite my suffocating narcissism, I bore myself. The things I blog about are swimming around in my head all the time already, writing them down doesn't mystically invest them with some new gravity.

What it does seem to do is spur conversation, objection and agreement. That's the best and most vital part of this blogging thing [refusing to refer to it as the blogosphere], it's the decentralized exchange of ideas.

That kind of exchange, more than slogging through readings, more than listening to professors chirp and coo, was the thing that made college mean something. It was in discussions that I found novelty and real expression. I'm glad it's starting up again here.

This is beginning to become the thing I had hoped it would be back in July.

I still hate the goddamned title.

Read the full thing here.