Good stuff? - 30 June 2010

Greetings, people who have to speak in public. Enjoy the jitters, and then the well-received speech, of a William Steig, author, upon his requirement to speak at the Caldecott Medal award ceremony.

In the ongoing saga of Neli, the young man accused of having a gun in a school zone, Neli describes what he experienced at the hands of the local police, a story of racism, baiting, beating, and further abuse in attempting to get him to confess to something he didn't do. What does it say about the image of law enforcement when I’m predisposed to believe a horrific tale of a black man being beaten, called a nigger, and arrested, jailed, and further beaten over the official account of the police, whatever it may be?

And a couple points of professional interest. Remember that libraries do fight for your rights to privacy, even when state officials attempt to misuse federal laws to get your computer sign-up records. Secondly, when aggregated, sure it looks like you spend a lot of money in library taxes, but unlike the unresearched idiot who wrote that article, libraries will help you in more ways than just providing print material. Free Internet access, on provided resources? At the library. Help with trying to find work or start your business? Library. Entertainment DVDs at much less cost than Netflix? Library. Services to diverse communities and multiple languages? Libraries. And your total tax bill? Maybe the cost of a Starbucks Latte every month. The library multiplier is huge - what you get access to for your $5/month is the best deal in town.

The comment squad to this hack job, however, is vicious and unrelenting about said hack job. Huzzah for library defenders.

Out in the world today, A rugby club was fined 40,000 GBP for anti-gay remarks shouted by their fans against an openly-gay player on the other side. Football’s been at something like this for years now, yeh? I like the idea of the fine for the remarks, I’m not entirely convinced it should be the club that gets fined or the venue, but fines are in order.

Fashion handbag designer was bugged by the presence of locusts in a Japanese art museum made from counterfeit bags, and so wanted them removed, citing the exhibit promoted the trade in counterfeit goods. Rather than risk the lawsuit, the museum removed the locusts. We note that Japanese laws are different, but one would think if there is a free expression guarantee in Japan, this art would surely fall under it, considering the point has more to do with imitation and authenticity rather than encouraging some sort of counterfeiting.

Doing their part to explore all options (and probably irritating conservatives who want Victory), Joints Chiefs head Admiral Mullen answered questions about teh possibility of peace in Afghanistan that involved the Taliban coming to the table, possibly even being part of a government. Such desires come with their own caveats, of course, including measuring how far they want to trust Pakistan as a mediator in the conflict, in case Pakistan turns out to be more interested in installing sympathetic puppets than in brokering actual peace. According to at least one pundit here, Pakistan's ISI has to be dealt with and stopped from providing support before progress in Afghanistan can be made. And, of course, as the deadline for withdrawal looms ever larger, everyone's going to be spinning it in a way that favors their particular point of view.

Inside the United States, the Republican objection to helping the homeless and the unemployed is once again extended to veterans as well. For the party that supposedly rallies behind supporting the troops, one would think they’d have no trouble with helping veterans. Score another Hypocrisy. And lay the blame at the feet of the Republicans who block and the Democrats whose financial reform bill may not have enough spine to stop this from happening again.

Veterans gettign dental work at a hospital in Missouri may have been exposed to hepatitis B, C, and HIV-1 viruses after some staff handwashed tools that had coem into contact with the pathogens before sterilizing them.

Now that hurricane season has hit the Gulf, expect to see much more of this. Skimming operations in the Gulf were suspended due to wave action generated by Tropical Storm Alex, although relief well drilling continues. Remember, this verse is the same as the last, and in the intervening time, absolutely nothing has been done to make spills clean up faster and in a less damaging way.

Fox News chose to dedicate web space to noting Senator Franken's drawing skills and apparent need for a nap during the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan. We’re all supposed to be shocked, of course, that his attention wandered, but we think that says something, much like the nominee did earlier, about the vapidness of the proceedings to that point.

Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, when speaking to a group of Christian homeschoolers, declined to say what the age of the Earth is, apparently not siding with the young-earthers, but also choosing not to say that he believes in science.

And last, truth stranger than fiction - an accusation that the Russian Federation had as much as 50 couples inside the United States tasked with gathering sensitive information, as 10 persons were arrested and charged with deep-cover spying for the Russian Federation. One would think this is a Cold-War story, but no, we’re clearly beyond that point now.

Into technology, where we find neuroscientists discovering they have the brain scans of psychopathy, but pointing out that brain scans aren’t everything, a server that will continue doing functions for PCs that go into sleep mode, and then wake them up and transfer things when more complex tasks are needed for the PC, and research indicating daydreaming has its uses and is more common than people think.

In opinions, Mr. Sowell leads tonight claiming an increase of guns in the population results in a decrease of crime, and that if liberals want to change the rules that say we all can own however many guns we want to, they should do so by amending the Constitution instead of getting courts to do it, and that the media should stop pushing their pro-gun control agenda on everyone. Once again, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” To ignore the first in favor of the last is to make bad arguments that are always out of context.

Because it might do things that stop banks from unfettered speculation and gives regulators some teeth, Mr. Carroll gives a thumbs-down to the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Because we were clearly doing just fine beforehand.

Mr. Pruden believes that President Obama should be listening to the austerity hawks at the G-20 meeting instead of continuing to pursue the path of spending now to reduce defecits later. Mr. Pruden, you are noticing that those countries with austerity measures in place are struggling, right? Or will you ignore that in favor of promoting your own agenda that spending on social programs is the only thing that's bankrupting the country, so the cuts that will save us all have to be directed at social programs and government assistance. Because war spending and corporate assistance are sacred and necessary and must never be touched.

Mr. Mauro is so afraid of free speech and the power of Islam that he wants to quash a conference by a group espousing radical Islamic ideas. In a word, Mr. Mauro, the terrorists have won, at least in your head, that you donthink such an agenda will succeed in the United States, where if a politician trips on the Capitol steps, the opposition party is blamed for tying his laces together.

The death of Senator Byrd has ranging effects, more than just decisions for his funerary arrangements, but also decisions on whether to press for votes on certain legislation pieces in the face of the perpetual filibuster. Because the engine of politics ever stops, and because it is still too much to expect Republicans to be reasonable about things instead of continuing to hijack democracy.

Last for tonight, another retro-future, as imagined in 1936 by Shonen Club magazine, and the psychedelic hot springs. Gender-changing curses in here? Maaaaaybe.

Special Comment: The End of Men

Big article, special comment.

The End of Men, the article carries as its headline. Mostly, we suspect, for shock value, as until parthenogenesis is achieved, men will still have some role to play in the propagation of the species. The article, however, is looking more at the choices parents make about having kids and the shifting society in the world around us, one that might be ordering itself such that women, with higher rates of graduation from university and skills in communication, patience, and awareness of others, are naturally better-suited to it. Big strong men who hunt and kill things and fight each other for scarce resources are finding their mammoth-hunting abilities and their normally bigger strength not being used quite as much these days. Blue collar jobs are vanishing at an alarming rate, making college the entryway to work and success, and women currently dominate college enrollment. Flex time and other adaptations of work allow for mothers to retain their work and adapt their schedules to work with child rearing, instead of having to abandon their career in favor of the kids. And for companies and organizations that want to maintain stability and growth and encourage cooperation and innovation among the whole workplace, rather than having one person with power and the rest be drones, women in management and the workforce help to keep an even keel.

And that creates problems. Men who have been brought up on the idea that they are the person who goes to work and provide for the family have been kicked in the nuts by the economy and then thrown out on their ass from their work while they’re still processing the pain. They’re now adrift and have to rely on their spouse, who may have work. Even men who are still employed may find that they’re not making the majority of the money in their household any more. They have become dispensable, in some ways, and vulnerable to being replaced. And rather than adapt, as feminism gave women the tools to adapt to the previous world, many men have closed ranks, trying to find refuge in ever-disappearing places where their masculinity is secure, where men are men. Feminism is the most prominent women’s advancement and equality philosophy, which lets it be easily malformed into an enemy, the thing responsible for the perceived de-masculization of these men, and then further strung out into the conspiracy to feminize boys and the idiots on the very end who think Objectify Chicks is a positive mantra instead of a relic.

Young men have it rough in these new times as well. The shift in female employment and the “traditional” (well, traditional now) place of women as teachers and librarians, the shifting family dynamic of women working, and the increased ability of women to hack it as single mothers means that young men may go through a significant part of their formative years without a major male role model that’s not on the television screen, presented to them in a way that’s not intended sell them something, or invested to some degree in a criminal element. Real Men use this product. Real Men treat their women like bitches and hoes. Real Men are superficial and lazy, yet violent at the drop of a hat or when their pride is injured. Real Men play football, and not that sissy soccer crap. Real Men shoot guns, smoke tobacco, and swive women wherever and whenever they can, because there are no such things as gay men or men that aren’t perpetually interested in sex in the Real Men community.

So, in this post-male society, wheat can be done to ensure both men and women come through this okay? Well, male adaptability is definitely needed. The machismo that says men don’t do X profession needs to get lost. The economic recession might be helping with that to some degree, but in the professional realms, well, the efforts underway to recruit men into professions they would normally not be in should continue, and possibly expand. Men as educators, librarians, and counselors, the three most likely spots where kids need to encounter men they can relate to, talk to, and trust. About everything, including the possibility that young men may be gay, or misgendered, or interested in kinky stuff, or furries, nerds, video game players, book readers, budding broadcasters or contemplating military service, just to name a few. To build a network like that, adult men have to be willing to admit to themselves and others what they’re interested in, find out each other’s skills, and be willing to pass the torch on to someone else if they’ve got the expertise.

Second, it’s time for us to give up the idea that Real Men are the heads of their hosueholds and any man whose wife or girlfriend makes more than she does is a sissy or somehow lesser. It’s time to embrace the end of men, at least in the sense that we are past the point where we have to hunt mammoth or starve, have twelve kids so two will survive to adulthood, and maintain absolute control over our households because G-d said so. It does mean a little more work, when the person(s) who are with you have the ability to leave you and re-establish themselves independently, instead of relying on you totally for income and the like once they’ve hitched their wagon to yours, or accepting that you might be the person who must rely on them. It can mean being a stay-at-home dad, with all the wonders (and hilarity) that ensues from this (and storytimes, too!).

I’m not panicked about the End of Men, and I think, that so long as we can work to help bring men who were used to the old paradigm into the new, and teach the young men about the virtues of the new, instead of clinging to the old because we think the new is too scary, then we should be fine.

Of course, if I’m missing the obvious, or there’s a big privilege show going on here that I’m not aware of, let me know.