Beware of the catch-up problem - 25 August 2008

Professional self finds 10 First Aid Dos and Don'ts to be really helpful. And not just because I burnt a finger on the oven this weekend, but because I may be contending with people here and there who have some of thes ailments mentioned.

Before the news, Happy firckin' 88th Brithday, Ray Bradbury! Good to know that we’ve still got at least one of the masters here with us.

International news - Olympic Games over, spectacle finished, several names even more household than before, several new names become household. Quite possibly, China will have a heavy revenge on those who wanted to protest during the Games.

Pakistani ruling coalition collapses, Taliban element banned from country. This could make for an interesting season in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. thinks the next few moths/years have potential for good. Russia recognizes the autonomy of the breakaway Georgian regions, which means it will be a very fun season in Asia in general.

And from there, Sweden introduces legislation to remove religious elements from public schools, excepting for religion classes. Which is a rather bold step, and one that I hope that our education system can mimic, following the Christian proclamation to “render under to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s” - religion in religion classes or in religious houses or worship, the secular world in the secular school in courses that do not have religious components. Which means we could talk, theoretically, about the leanings of the Founders and how those leanings shaped the Constitution and the assertion that America is a Christian nation in social science, but we can make those who work on the front lines in science classes breathe a bit easier by allowing them to dismiss nonscience as nonscience and get the students to learn the skills of scientific thought and the evolutionary theory.

In domestic news, first the weird - modern day vigiliante ninjas nabbed, proving that being stealthy is a lot harder these days than it was. Of course, announcing your presence is not really doing a whole lot to maintain the stealthiness, either.

A police officer held a couple for twenty minutes, writing an infraction for speeding, while the dog in the vehicle with them was dying. No pleas to let one go, or to let them show up and be cited later, were effective. Nor was the officer moving at top speed and efficiency. Furthermore, the officer’s attitude toward the situation with the dog was apparently, “It’s just a dog. You can always get another”, which, for most of the pet lovers I know of, means the officer was lucky he didn’t get his throat torn out after he said that.

Then the more standard fare - Hallmark has rolled out greeting cards that congratulate same-sex unions, citing consumer demand and not political inclination. Which sparks the immediate knee-jerk reaction that Hallmark is promoting gay marriage from groups like the AFA. Business as usual, as it were. Economics may very well be the best pressure on getting companies and governments here to legalize same-sex partnerships/unions/marriages, since the brilliant legal arguments seem to be falling flat. Of course vehicles for spreading hate may also be subverted to send more benevolent messages.

Similarly stupid, did you know, according to Cosmo, men cheat because one woman just can't service him enough, keep his attention, and be novel? Oh, and additionally, because men can’t control themselves and are just hardwired to screw everything that moves. Rachel Nabors incisively cuts up the statements made in the article, leaving them sobbing on the floor wondering why nobody listens to them. Don’t blame the people being cheated on for why their partners cheat. Blame the cheater. Of course, in a perfect world, nobody would cheat on anyone else because we’ld all know our preferences, so the monogamists can get together with the monogamists, the poly people can find each other, the pople who want to swing or just have lots of sex with lots of people can all hang out at the same parties, and nobody would look askance at whatever group anyone joined, or whether someone changed groups over time (many do).

And then the candidate matters - with the Democratic Party’s convention happening this week, there will probably be a lot of Obama-mania. Earlier, Senator Obama revealed Joe Biden as his vice-presidential pick, prompting some to criticize the pick as the Senator showing no confidence in himself or his campaign.

So, to kick off the festivites, there was an Interfaith Gathering. Of which while the non-faithful are apparently invite, they had no speaker at the table, which for those who aren’t of traditional faiths, the gathering's lack of faith in those without a faith is disturbing. After a short account of what went on, I think the non-religious are feeling a bit like there’s a bus moving over them.

Some complaints about the DNS credential design - a flag flying upside down, they say. The credential designers say it’s a stylized image, and aren’t flying an actual flag. If it were so, it would make an interesting statement - country’s in dire danger, elect Obama. But something like that tactic seems more suited to the Republican handbook.

The results of imprecatory prayer against the Democratic National Convention - the booth belonging to Fox News suffers a sprinkler malfunction that floods the box .

In candidate opinions, Austin Cline remarks about the significance of Senator McCain's attitude toward his wealth and the fortunes of others, noting the disconnect he and several other Republicans have toward recognizing their wealth dervies from both good work and luck (or in some cases, just luck), and that other people who are les wealthy are not always that way because they did poor work. In the kind of realm where a house loses value and has negative equity and people can be bankrupted by a single medical procedure, one would think the wealthiest would be more inclined to use their wealth you give others the chance to be wealthy. (If they want to complain about the tax burden, making other people wealthy is the easiest way of spreading the burden out.) In a detailed analysis, David Leonheardt captures all various pieces of the Obama economic plan, something that's part liberal, part Reagan, part markets, and part something new. The Biden pick means Obama has selected someone whose net worth is pretty minimal, according to OpenSecrets, and contrasts mightily with Senator Obama's opponents in the primaries and the general election.

The Wall Street Journal things Lieberman could be a decent VP pick for Senator McCain,

BillO thinks that Senator Obama will lose the election if he's perceived to be far-left, where the “far-left” that BillO assumes the Senator is at is someone who says “Well, the U.S. isn’t in much of a position to tell Russia not to invade another country on a cheap pretext.” Lorie Byrd pounces on Senator Obama's misspeakings, proclaiming that what he says and what he does build a nice case against him when compared to the other candidate (while neglecting to mention the gaffes of the other candidate, some of which are rather more important than Seantor Obama’s). Kathleen Parker feels confident the Senator's "ambivalence" on issues like abortion will be his downfall, and R. Glenn Hubbard says that Obama needs to think economically like McCain if he wants to control entitlement spending and balance the budget.

Elsewhere in opinions, John Hawkins provides more "reasons" (more like "beliefs") that one is a liberal, often of the “Says X, does Y, the hypocrites” variety. The WSJ lambasts the current Congres by encouraging them to do even less than they already have.

Naomi Schaefer Riley points out that despite his own "new breed evangalical" appeal, Rick Warren is still as conservative as they come. The Saddleback forum questions should have made that obvious. Daniel Henninger thinks the Saddleback Forum was an excellent way of showcasing hoe many of "the rules" people of the past took for granted have changed, and how much the American populace apparently wants to go back to those simpler times, preferring the candidate who gives definitive answers to the softballs he was thrown.

Gregory Conko thinks new experimental drugs should be available to help the terminally ill once they've gotten past the first three phases of testing and have some claim of their effectiveness, essentially permitting the terminally ill to volunteer themselves as guinea pigs for any treatment that may help them. How many could it help, but them how many could it end up killing if all of the effects are unknown?

The science and technology department has a go with how multitouch screens are making touch a really popular way of doing things, networked appliances that talk to each other and you, flat-panel tiny ion thrusters, attempting to ease recovery of kidnap victims by paying to have a chip implanted in them, learning to visualize in four dimensions, and how easy it is for the government to track your every move, not that it necessarily does them any good. Although they will be lowering restrictions on the laptop searches starting Saturday.

Last for tonight, a technique for peeling hard-boiled eggs without peeling them. And... The Possum.

"Twilight" as the Feminism killer? You're joking, right?

Warning - Twilight series spoilers to follow. If you don’t want to peek because you’re still racing through Breaking Dawn, I’ll wait until you’re finished. Then come back.

Leonard Sax talks about the popularity of the "Twilight" series by Stephanie Meyer. To him, Twilight is a wildly popular book that espouses and embraces traditional gender roles, with Bella as the damsel in distress needed to be protected and rescued by Edward Cullen, the freakishly handsome vampire, or Jacob, the also kind of handsome werewolf. She’s in love, of course, and will also end up pregnant with a vampire baby. Oh, Bella, you’re so old-fashioned, and yet, so popular. It must be the old-fashioned-ness that makes you this way.

...As If. It becomes apparent from the beginning that Bella is not the kind of girl you want to be championing as the Anti-Feminist. She’s a teenager, and so some things can be forgiven, but I’ll be damned if she isn’t a narcissist and them some. She gets to then become Mary-Sue in Breaking Dawn, apparently. The plot is driven by what Bella wants. She wants the impossibly handsome Edward Cullen, despite his repeated warnings that she should stay well away from him. But Edward loves her, so every time he says “Go away”, we find that Bella interprets it as “Pursue me more.” And then, in the second book, when Ed really does go away, she apparently wants not to be alone and lonely over her boyfriend, so she toys with the other boy that has feelings for her, and then dumps him when Edward comes back, generating a feud between the two over her. And Bella wants to be a vampire so she can be with Edward. And she gets that, too, but only because she also wanted to have sex with Edward, she got pregnant, and the baby will kill her if she doesn’t. so then she’s a bautiful vampire Sue who can control her feeding and is a very powerful vampire and...

...gag me with a spoon. (There. Two previous-decades references in two paragraphs.) Bella’s a spoiled, narcissistic, teenage girl. The paragon of traditional values she ain’t. And the story that’s supposedly about her love is really about her wants. She gets everything she desires. Why wouldn’t that appeal to a teen audience?

However, this does not deter Sax. His research, we find out, has proven definitively that young girls and boys want, nay, crave, material that reinforces the idea of a gendered world and the stereotypical gendered roles.

Three decades of adults pretending that gender doesn’t matter haven’t created a generation of feminists who don’t need men; they have instead created a horde of girls who adore the traditional male and female roles and relationships in the “Twilight” saga. Likewise, ignoring gender differences hasn’t created a generation of boys who muse about their feelings while they work on their scrapbooks. Instead, a growing number of boys in this country spend much of their free time absorbed in the masculine mayhem of video games such as Grand Theft Auto and Halo or surfing the Internet for pornography.

Someone was not paying attention in their feminism class, and I’m fairly certain the Unabashed Feminism department would be more than willing to give a remedial coursework. Possibly with cricket bats.

As I recall, feminism isn’t about creating women who don’t need men, nor about stripping men of all their masculinity to turn them into “sissies”. Feminism is about opening up options and showing that men and women are not confined to their stereotypical roles, and that it’s okay for women to do “male” things and okay for men to do “female” things in addition to the things that are stereotypically associated with their gender. In that context, the stereotypically hypermasculine and hyperfeminine things Sax mentions as his definitive proof that teenagers are lashing out at society’s attempts to create AFGNCAAPs...sound pretty normal to me. Women have been reading novels with “traditional” male and female roles for some time now... and they may put down Twlight and pick up a Wiimote and go thrash some boys in Super Smash Brothers. The guys have been looking at pornography for a very, very long time. (And so have the women. In fact, some of those women are probably better judges of what’s good porn and what isn’t than the guys are.) And have been playing rough and tumble violent games for a while. And then some of them end up as children’s librarians or nurses or teachers, all traditionally “female” jobs, and will pick up a book like Twilight to read. If they use it as a dartboard target because of the writing, well, that’s their decision (although, not the library copy, please.) Those men may find a touch for cooking, or needlework, and like it.

Feminism doesn’t ignore gender differences. Instead of locking someone into a set sequence of roles, games, careers, and actions that are “acceptable” for that gender, feminism unlocks the other half and permits everyone to unite both halves into a more complete person. Taunts like “sissy” and “tomboy” lose their sting on someone who knows both halves.

Looping back to the jumping-off point - Twilight is not the Anti-Feminism novel Sax wants it to be. Its popularity has very little to do with whether or not it reinforces and displays traditional gender roles - it’s an escapist fantasy romance with a narcissist heroine who ends up getting everything that she wants and turning into a Frakking Mary-Sue by the end. Even if it were reinforcing stereotypical gender roles, feminism is inclusive, and says, “Y’know, everyone should be comfortable being the person they are, and that includes being okay with the things that are on ‘your gender’ as well as the things you like that aren’t.” They’re not diametrically opposed at all.

There are two things that are good about Twilight - the supporting cast are far more interesting people than the main characters, and second, it doesn’t have the advertisements-to-pages ratio that The Clique has. It’s not saying much, but by virtue of that by itself, it’s not the Worst Book Ever.