"Because of our ancestors’ polygynous and polyamorous sexual behavior, where a small group of powerful men, mostly traveling military warriors and merchants, had children with numerous women of diverse ethnicities, backgrounds and nationalities, more diversity was passed along to us along our ancestors’ X chromosomes than their Y chromosomes. Both men and women inherit diverse genes from their mothers and pass along these diverse sex genes on the X chromosome to their children."
What, then, did you expect from Tiger Woods?
And, speaking of genes:
I made a mess in my genes....
Get friendly with randy, normal genes.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Our favorite atheist, Christopher Hitchens, takes up arms in the War on Christmas.
"[T]he placement of a creche surrounded by a motley crew of humans and animals has no more Scriptural warrant than does 'The Life of Brian.'"
But the lack of "Scriptural warrant" for the modern American form of the Christmas celebration isn't where Hitchens is going with this piece. In fact, it's because Christmas is religious that he's opposed to the Christmas decorations in the public part of the White House. Why isn't it enough, he asks, that there are Christmas decorations on all sorts of private property?
But quite aside from that — assume some other President taking Hitchens's teachings to heart — what is the good of taking away the evergreens and lights that make the darkest part of winter feel especially warm and happy? Does the Constitution require sanitizing religion out of public spaces? It was quite recently — in the case about the stone 10 Commandments monument — that the sensible, practical Justice Breyer wrote:
But the lack of "Scriptural warrant" for the modern American form of the Christmas celebration isn't where Hitchens is going with this piece. In fact, it's because Christmas is religious that he's opposed to the Christmas decorations in the public part of the White House. Why isn't it enough, he asks, that there are Christmas decorations on all sorts of private property?
It is not the business of the Chief Executive to take any part in this business, and he has already sworn an oath to put the Constitution first, last and above all. This oath is not general but specific, which means that any detail however trivial is important. May his daughters' stockings be well-stuffed, may a mythical Saint Nick from ancient mythology delight them, may visions of sugar-plums dance in their heads, and may they be little drummer girls for baby Jesus but please, not in the parts of the White House that belong to the world's first secular Republic.Can you imagine what a fool Barack Obama would be if he took on the project of banishing Christmas decorations from the White House? He of all Presidents — because his Christianity has been questioned — needs to put on the usual display. Oh, we could credit him with bravery if he made this his issue, but his political power is at stake, and I don't want a Commander in Chief who throws away power to gesture at an ideal. And, ironically, it would be the sort of gesture that would stir up political opposition and tend to lead to bold gestures in the other direction if Obama is ousted in 2012. Better to stand on the middle ground and adopt an easygoing maintenance of American Christmas traditions in the White House.
But quite aside from that — assume some other President taking Hitchens's teachings to heart — what is the good of taking away the evergreens and lights that make the darkest part of winter feel especially warm and happy? Does the Constitution require sanitizing religion out of public spaces? It was quite recently — in the case about the stone 10 Commandments monument — that the sensible, practical Justice Breyer wrote:
Where the Establishment Clause is at issue, tests designed to measure “neutrality” alone are insufficient, both because it is sometimes difficult to determine when a legal rule is “neutral,” and becausePeace, Christmastopher.“untutored devotion to the concept of neutrality can lead to invocation or approval of results which partake not simply of that noninterference and noninvolvement with the religious which the Constitution commands, but of a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious.” [School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp.]
... [T[he relation between government and religion is one of separation, but not of mutual hostility and suspicion...
Justices Goldberg and Harlan concluded in Schempp that“[t]he First Amendment does not prohibit practices which by any realistic measure create none of the dangers which it is designed to prevent and which do not so directly or substantially involve the state in religious exercise or in the favoring of religion as to have meaningful and practical impact.”
"On page 12, where Scrooge takes Marley’s ghost to be evidence not of the supernatural, but of his own indigestion, ('more of gravy than of grave,')..."
"... he converts the offending bit of food from being a 'spot of mustard' to a less digestible 'blot of mustard.'"
That's an example of an interesting edit, found in the manuscript of "A Christmas Carol." The NYT has made the entire manuscript available in high resolution, and there's an invitation to compete to find the other interesting edits. You're supposed to put your contest entries in the comments section over there, and I waded through a lot of reader scribblings without finding any legitimate attempts at finding an interesting edit. There are innumerable musings on the character of Scrooge, and I'm seeing a few people quoting inserted passages they like. I guess actually poring over the manuscript and finding another "blot" for "spot" is just too taxing.
That's an example of an interesting edit, found in the manuscript of "A Christmas Carol." The NYT has made the entire manuscript available in high resolution, and there's an invitation to compete to find the other interesting edits. You're supposed to put your contest entries in the comments section over there, and I waded through a lot of reader scribblings without finding any legitimate attempts at finding an interesting edit. There are innumerable musings on the character of Scrooge, and I'm seeing a few people quoting inserted passages they like. I guess actually poring over the manuscript and finding another "blot" for "spot" is just too taxing.
Friday, December 11, 2009
"Women like men in pink."
Pink! It's for men too!
Don't think it's too girly. It's the ultimate power color.
ADDED: The 1959 hit from Dodie Stevens, "Pink Shoelaces":
Don't think it's too girly. It's the ultimate power color.
ADDED: The 1959 hit from Dodie Stevens, "Pink Shoelaces":
Want to take advantage of the proposed buy-in to the federal health care plan? Got $9,900?
But you think you're getting a government subsidy? Oh, but you are. The buy-in will cost $20,000 — according to a CBO estimate — and — assuming you make only $54,000, on which you are attempting to raise a family of 4 — you will get a government subsidy of $10,100.
Or are you over 55 and thinking you'll get to buy into Medicare? That's estimated to cost $7,600 a year per person — $15,200 for a couple. No subsidies until 2014.
Do people who support what the Democrats are trying to do really understand how much money they will be required to come up with to comply?
PLUS: Here comes the VAT!
Or are you over 55 and thinking you'll get to buy into Medicare? That's estimated to cost $7,600 a year per person — $15,200 for a couple. No subsidies until 2014.
Do people who support what the Democrats are trying to do really understand how much money they will be required to come up with to comply?
PLUS: Here comes the VAT!
"The idea of playing a saddle-type cowboy was repulsive to me."
"Then he told me about the derby hat and cane, and I went by the costume department and saw the outfit that Masterson would wear, and I couldn’t resist."
RIP Gene Barry AKA Bat Masterson.
RIP Gene Barry AKA Bat Masterson.
"The lesbian sex was between a Spanish teacher and a French teacher..."
"... which begs the question: Where was the field hockey coach?"
The late-night talk-show comics scrambled to concoct jokes about the 2 high school teachers who were discovered by the janitor. I've highlighted the Conan O'Brien effort. How awful it must be to get caught naked at work! That's bad enough. But then to be vaulted — naked! — into the national spotlight and to becomee the biggest joke target in the country — even with Tiger Woods begging for more.... What a nightmare!
The late-night talk-show comics scrambled to concoct jokes about the 2 high school teachers who were discovered by the janitor. I've highlighted the Conan O'Brien effort. How awful it must be to get caught naked at work! That's bad enough. But then to be vaulted — naked! — into the national spotlight and to becomee the biggest joke target in the country — even with Tiger Woods begging for more.... What a nightmare!
Thursday, December 10, 2009
"And for Christmas, buy her a drum."
That's a line from one of the great old Bob Dylan songs. Right now, we've got another kind of Bob Dylan Christmas drum... in video:
Why is Ta-Nehisi Coates shouting an obscenity at me?
He writes:
As if to cover up his brutishness, he combed through my comments section and found something offensive that one person said. He quotes someone named "grapp" — with no available profile— who said "I might respect Ta-Nehisi Coates more if he has less of a jackass ghetto name and was more of a serious thinker." Grapp — who claims to be a black woman — wrote at the end of a long thread, and 2 of the 4 comments left on the thread take Grapp to task. Nevertheless, Coates goes on to say "She'd respect me more if I "has less of a jackass ghetto name." He says he finds the comment hilarious — presumably because of the typo/grammar error. Because of the way he began his post by weirdly accusing me of some sort of disrespect related to his name, he's cued his commenters to trash me, which they basically do.
I guess to be like him I should select the nastiest comment to make him look even worse than he made himself look. But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to quote a sensible commenter there:
ADDED: Now, I see that the problem was that I had a tag for his name and I misspelled it. That brought an obscenity... and a connection to a commenter who took a racial point of view. What a jerk.
IN THE COMMENTS: AC245 said:
And grapp came back and said:
AND: My own first name is also hard to spell, even as it is easy to spell.
IN THE COMMENTS, PART 2: Susan said:
Ta-Nahesi Coates. Fuckin' Althouse. My name's at the top of the blog and I still can't get Ann's respect.The link on "Fuckin' Althouse" goes to this post of mine:
Hey! That's sexism against Sarah Palin!My post links to Coates calling out Glenn Beck for sounding like a sexist. It's phrased to imply that Coates probably wouldn't call out a liberal for sexism, but now that there's an opportunity to slam Beck, he's up for defending Palin. Now, explain what set Coates off in this new post where he curses me. Maybe he didn't understand my post and thinks I didn't realize I was reading his blog (since I didn't use his name in my post — I just linked). I'm not really sure. Perhaps he's so ready to hate me that he didn't pick up my bloggerly comic concision. But — wow! — there he is on The Atlantic website spewing an obscenity at me for... nothing.
When Glenn Beck says it.
As if to cover up his brutishness, he combed through my comments section and found something offensive that one person said. He quotes someone named "grapp" — with no available profile— who said "I might respect Ta-Nehisi Coates more if he has less of a jackass ghetto name and was more of a serious thinker." Grapp — who claims to be a black woman — wrote at the end of a long thread, and 2 of the 4 comments left on the thread take Grapp to task. Nevertheless, Coates goes on to say "She'd respect me more if I "has less of a jackass ghetto name." He says he finds the comment hilarious — presumably because of the typo/grammar error. Because of the way he began his post by weirdly accusing me of some sort of disrespect related to his name, he's cued his commenters to trash me, which they basically do.
I guess to be like him I should select the nastiest comment to make him look even worse than he made himself look. But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to quote a sensible commenter there:
Come on, TNC, just a couple of days ago you rightfully chided people for talking at strawmen, and here you're writing as if Althouse herself, and not a commenter, made the crack about the name. It looks as if a number of the commenters here have not realized it wasn't Althouse herself who wrote it. The commenter is not the blogger.
There's no rule that says a blogger has to police her comment section and delete offensive posts; some like an open comments policy and some like a moderated comments policy. Althouse has an open comments policy and as a direct result attracts some odious commenters as well as some very good ones.Come on, Ta-Nehisi Coates. A very serious apology is in order.
ADDED: Now, I see that the problem was that I had a tag for his name and I misspelled it. That brought an obscenity... and a connection to a commenter who took a racial point of view. What a jerk.
IN THE COMMENTS: AC245 said:
I was curious to see how many other places on the net misspelled his name in the same way (as "Nahesi") that Althouse did.The New Yorker, eh? Ha ha. Apparently, the topic of sexism is like the topic of having your name misspelled for Coates. (AC245 provides links for his 6 items. Go inside if you want that.)
1. Salon's Glenn Greenwald has it spelled that way on his blogroll.
2. Here's a post by "Bitch Ph.D." praising him as wise.
3. Mark Hemmingway has a post on The Corner mentioning Coates, Obama, and hip-hop.
4. This post on Pandagon "corrects" Coates that one cannot be both a feminist and a PUMA.
5. It's also spelled "Nahesi" on the blogroll of The New Yorker.
6. There's a post by Enchanting Juno who says "Ta-Nahesi Coates - who may just be my favorite blogger of all time..."
And that's when I got bored, after browsing through just the first 3 pages of the over 20,000 Bing results for "Nahesi".
I didn't go through any of the 256 instances of "fuckin'" on ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com that Bing found, so it's possible that he's also hurled the vulgarity he graced Althouse with at every other person on the internet who's dared to dis him by unintentionally misspelling his name when linking to his blog. But for some reason, I rather doubt it.
And grapp came back and said:
Althouse, I apologize for leaving a comment that caused Ta-Nehisi Coates to cuss you out.And:
Yes, I am a black woman. Really. Moreover, I'm heartily sick of names that no one can pronounce, and fed up of people in the community who get angry cuz they seem to think that ALL blacks automatically know how to pronounce the crazy names.
Coates has demonstrated to you why I have no respect for him as a thinker. Ah, there I go, marching out of lockstep again!
I had a typo with 'has' which should've been 'had', I think. Coates, that great mental giant, seems to think that a typo is worth crowing over. Lame.I assume he found it funny because it gave you the appearance of speaking like a stereotypical black person while you were making fun of his name for being stereotypically black. It's like correcting spelling while making a spelling error.
AND: My own first name is also hard to spell, even as it is easy to spell.
IN THE COMMENTS, PART 2: Susan said:
I'm a TNC reader, but what a weird issue for him to flip out over, given that his grammar and spelling are atrocious.Jim Treacher said:
[Link.]
[Link]
Ann, I can't believe you showed such fuckin' disrespect to Ta-Tasilly Coat.
Randy Barnett and Eugene Volokh on the constitutionality of the health care mandate.
This video, which goes for over an hour, begins with former Attorney General Ed Meese introducing Senator Orrin Hatch and Orrin Hatch introducing the professors:
[CLICK FOR VIDEO.]
ADDED: I apologize for spelling Randy's last name wrong. Corrected now. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional orthography, it's that there is no "e" on the end of Randy's last name. (And I need to finish writing my Religion and the Constitution exam.)
[CLICK FOR VIDEO.]
ADDED: I apologize for spelling Randy's last name wrong. Corrected now. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional orthography, it's that there is no "e" on the end of Randy's last name. (And I need to finish writing my Religion and the Constitution exam.)
For the mixed-up annals of gay rights.
"The Irish Supreme Court has ruled that a gay man who donated his sperm to a lesbian couple should be permitted to see his 3-year-old son regularly — in part because Ireland's constitution doesn't recognize the lesbians as a valid family unit."
UPDATE: Details here:
UPDATE: Details here:
The case arose out of a situation where the lesbian couple, who were in a long-term committed relationship, decided they wanted to have a child with the aid of a sperm donor. They decided it would be better for the child if the sperm donor was known to them and the child, and had a relationship with the child, who would know this was his or her biological father.
They drew up an agreement with the father, in this case specifying the nature of the relationship between him and the child, including the fact that the couple would parent the child, while he would occupy the role of “favourite uncle”. He would have no financial or other obligations towards the child, and his contact with the child would be by agreement with the couple.
When the child, a boy, was born, the father wanted more involvement than the couple felt appropriate and after a number of fraught meetings, relations between the father and the couple broke down.
They decided to visit Australia for a year and he took legal proceedings to prevent this, along with proceedings seeking guardianship and access to the child. He lost in the High Court and appealed to the Supreme Court, where he won the right of access, though not guardianship.
44% of Americans would prefer to have George Bush back as President.
Bush's numbers were low, but compared to what? Putting Obama next to Bush, 44% of us pick Bush. You miss him now that he's gone, huh, America? You kicked him when you had him, and now...
I got that link via Meade. Remember Meade, talking to Texans?
I got that link via Meade. Remember Meade, talking to Texans?
When we got up to leave, Meade leaned over to the man and said: "When you go back home, say hi to my favorite Texan."These days they long for that cooling spray of water to the face.
"Who?"
"George W.!"
You should have seen the man's reaction. It was as if someone had suddenly sprayed water in his face.
"The stomach is just a swelling in the gut - it's primarily a vessel."
"You can manage very well with no stomach and the sisters will live perfectly normal lives."
2 sisters have their stomachs removed as a precaution against a rare form of cancer that runs in their family. The stomach, I'm surprised to read, is not essential, and the young women will still be able to eat. They must eat tiny amounts, but they can still consume and digest. They've just lost the holding tank for food.
2 sisters have their stomachs removed as a precaution against a rare form of cancer that runs in their family. The stomach, I'm surprised to read, is not essential, and the young women will still be able to eat. They must eat tiny amounts, but they can still consume and digest. They've just lost the holding tank for food.
First steps.
Having practiced in the front yard the previous evening, yesterday, I was deemed ready to ski from one end of our block to the other. Then, we threw the skis in the back of the car and drove over to Picnic Point. I think I put in close to a mile on skis. Haven't fallen yet. Haven't scooted out of control anywhere. Just loving the snow... and the ski instructor.
Snowed shirtless.
At yesterday's big Bascom Hill snowball fight between the lake shore dorms and the southeast dorms. 3,000 students, including these guys:
That photo is by Isabel Alvarez of The Daily Cardinal. Lots more pics at the link, not all of which are by Alvarez, but here's another cool Alvarez picture — of a guy using a snowball to stanch a bloody nose.
You've got to love those endlessly hardy Wisconsin students. It's really quite wonderful! It says here that was the "first-ever full day of canceled classes" — crazy! — and what better time to show up on campus?
There were also huge snowmen all over town. Check out the video of the Great Snowman Wall of Gilman Street (and what happened when the snowplow truck came through):
More reports of snow-related Madison doings here — like those guys who rolled a 10 foot tall snowball out into University Avenue.
That photo is by Isabel Alvarez of The Daily Cardinal. Lots more pics at the link, not all of which are by Alvarez, but here's another cool Alvarez picture — of a guy using a snowball to stanch a bloody nose.
You've got to love those endlessly hardy Wisconsin students. It's really quite wonderful! It says here that was the "first-ever full day of canceled classes" — crazy! — and what better time to show up on campus?
“We just don’t have what it takes to win a snowball fight,” said Greg Stravinski, a junior and Witte Hall resident who fought for the southeast dorms. Stravinski admited the lake shore dorms easily won the fight.$45? I bet there are many guys here who would do it just for fun.
“Southeast comes out stylish,” he said. “We’re all prettied up and the second the snow starts flying we get worried ... lake shore is always there until it’s over.”
Most of the snowball attendees wore standard winter attire, but some of the more enthusiastic students donned goggles, helmets, shields, gorilla and penguin costumes, gigantic slingshots and shovels.
One student from Witte left all his winter gear behind and charged Bascom Hill in only his boots and underwear on a $45 bet.
There were also huge snowmen all over town. Check out the video of the Great Snowman Wall of Gilman Street (and what happened when the snowplow truck came through):
More reports of snow-related Madison doings here — like those guys who rolled a 10 foot tall snowball out into University Avenue.
Now, we're supposed to feel guilty about wanting to eat fresh fish instead of frozen.
"Flying fillets from Alaska, British Columbia, Norway, Scotland or Chile so that 24 hours later they can be served 'fresh' in New York adds an enormous climate burden, one that swamps the potential benefits of organic farming or sustainable fishing... [W]e need to get over our fetish for fresh. With the challenges facing the world’s oceans mounting, buying frozen is a powerful choice that concerned eaters everywhere can make."
Well, fuck fish. We never liked it that much anyway. Is that green enough for you?
Well, fuck fish. We never liked it that much anyway. Is that green enough for you?
"The spark of the divine that still steers within each of us..."
Or something like that. Are you listening to the live stream of Obama's Nobel speech? I am.
Ah, it just ended. I only heard the last part. About hope. And divine steering by sparks or whatever. [ADDED: The official text was "that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls." So "stirs," not "steers."]
In the part I didn't hear, Obama acknowledged the awkwardness of accepting a peace prize while conducting 2 wars:
ADDED: I'm looking for the religion-oriented things in the speech. Obama rejects "the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam." He says "no Holy War can ever be a just war."
Ah, it just ended. I only heard the last part. About hope. And divine steering by sparks or whatever. [ADDED: The official text was "that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls." So "stirs," not "steers."]
In the part I didn't hear, Obama acknowledged the awkwardness of accepting a peace prize while conducting 2 wars:
"Perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars... One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries — including Norway — in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks...."Presumably, the speechwriters brainstormed about all the peace-y things about war.
Urging his listeners to “think in new ways about the notions of a just war and the imperatives of a just peace,” he said the “instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.” But, he said, the practice of war should be governed by “certain rules of conduct.”
The United States, he said, “must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war.”
Peace, he went on, was “unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear.”
ADDED: I'm looking for the religion-oriented things in the speech. Obama rejects "the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam." He says "no Holy War can ever be a just war."
For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint — no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of ones own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith — for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.He's doing meta-religion, making assertions about what is in all the religions. All religions have this idea of treating outsiders to the religion the same as insiders to the religion? There's a logic loophole whereby he can deny the modifier "major" to any religion that doesn't hew to the principle. That's why the Islamic terrorists have "distorted and defiled" Islam: It's not really Islam because they weren't following the Golden Rule.
Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature.Always.
... [W]e do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place....Although Obama acknowledges the immense evil spurred by ideas about God, he presents God as the source of our ability to find our shared humanity and to abandon unjust wars. Atheists can stew off in a corner somewhere, apparently.
So let us reach for the world that ought to be — that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls....
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Eugene Robinson on Tiger's women: "What's with the whole Barbie thing?"
"No offense to anyone who actually looks like Barbie, but it really is striking how much the women who've been linked to Woods resemble one another. I'm talking about the long hair, the specific body type, even the facial features. Mattel could sue for trademark infringement."
Really? Here's Barbie. Here's a montage of faces that have horizontally faced Tiger's. I'm sorry, Eugene, but these women are just not that pretty. Barbie is very pretty and glossy and made-up, but in a daytime, cheerleadery way. The Tiger women are all made-up for nighttime, indoor work, and they are not all that pretty. Tiger's wife is the Barbie. Tiger's women to cheat on Elin with are all getting away from Barbie/Elin. It strikes me as a touchingly ordinary search for sex that feels dirty.
A Woody Allen joke: "Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right."
Robinson rambles on:
If you clicked on the Barbie link and heard the voice of Barbie, don't you think she sounded an awful lot like Mira Sorvino in her Oscar-winning role — as a prostitute, naturally — in the Woody Allen movie "Mighty Aphrodite"? I say "naturally," because they are always handing out Oscars to actress who take on the amazing challenge of playing a whore.
Barbie, sluts, Woody, Woods...
Really? Here's Barbie. Here's a montage of faces that have horizontally faced Tiger's. I'm sorry, Eugene, but these women are just not that pretty. Barbie is very pretty and glossy and made-up, but in a daytime, cheerleadery way. The Tiger women are all made-up for nighttime, indoor work, and they are not all that pretty. Tiger's wife is the Barbie. Tiger's women to cheat on Elin with are all getting away from Barbie/Elin. It strikes me as a touchingly ordinary search for sex that feels dirty.
A Woody Allen joke: "Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right."
Robinson rambles on:
If adultery is really about the power and satisfaction of conquest, Woods's self-esteem was apparently only boosted by bedding the kind of woman he thought other men lusted after -- the "Playmate of the Month" type that Hugh Hefner turned into the American gold standard.Which Elin is, but — what is wrong with you, Eugene? — these other women are not!
But the world is full of beautiful women of all colors, shapes and sizes -- some with short hair or almond eyes, some with broad noses, some with yellow or brown skin. Woods appears to have bought into an "official" standard of beauty that is so conventional as to be almost oppressive.What is wrong with Eugene Robinson? He is seeing race, race, race. The Tiger women look white to him — are they? — and, beyond that, some big hair, big makeup, and big boobs makes them Barbie. Hardly.
His taste in mistresses leaves the impression of a man who is, deep down, both insecure and image-conscious -- a control freak even when he's committing "transgressions."I don't think so. I'd say he's a man who went for the Playmate ideal in choosing a wife and aimed low for cheating. He was the opposite of image conscious and controlling, and that's one of the reasons his fall from the god-like stature he had for us is so very long and hard.
***
If you clicked on the Barbie link and heard the voice of Barbie, don't you think she sounded an awful lot like Mira Sorvino in her Oscar-winning role — as a prostitute, naturally — in the Woody Allen movie "Mighty Aphrodite"? I say "naturally," because they are always handing out Oscars to actress who take on the amazing challenge of playing a whore.
Barbie, sluts, Woody, Woods...
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The first big snow is about to hit Madison...
... and we just bought cross-country skis. I've never done any kind of skiing. Never so much as had a ski boot on my foot. But Meade has been skiing for 25 years, and I got him to move north, so despite my advance age of more than twice 25, I'm going to give it a go. For good measure, we bought snowshoes!
"Paramedics removed a woman from Tiger Woods's Florida home early this morning and transported her to hospital...."
"... WESH-TV reported that a patient at first refused to be taken for treatment, but was later listed as an 'advanced life support' patient and transported to hospital. WESH broadcast footage of what it called 'a middle-age' woman being taken into the hospital on a stretcher."
Another mystery. Should we avert our eyes?
Video.
ADDED: Apparently, it was TW's mother-in-law. And, hey, isn't this headline (hilariously) mean?
Another mystery. Should we avert our eyes?
Video.
ADDED: Apparently, it was TW's mother-in-law. And, hey, isn't this headline (hilariously) mean?
Stanley Fish finds Sarah Palin's book "compelling and very well done."
Unlike compulsive Sarah haters — like Andrew Sullivan and Michelle Goldberg — Fish looks at the book as the form of literature it is, an autobiography:
Now, what's especially cool about Fish's essay is that he confronts the smugness of his readers, the NYT readers. Instead of the chummy, we-hate-Sarah chatter that defines the liberal/lefty blogosphere, Fish slaps his friends in the face. You think you can write this lady off? You're idiots — he says, in so many words:
Here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. Family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustains us....
[W]hile autobiographers certainly insist that they are telling the truth, the truth the genre promises is the truth about themselves — the kind of persons they are — and even when they are being mendacious or self-serving (and I don’t mean to imply that Palin is either), they are, necessarily, fleshing out that truth. As I remarked in a previous column, autobiographers cannot lie because anything they say will truthfully serve their project, which, again, is not to portray the facts, but to portray themselves.Since "Going Rogue" is "satisfying and artful" and shows us what Palin is really like, it succeeds. Fish, an expert on literary art, explains the "architectonic structure" of the book in some detail. Go read that.
Now, what's especially cool about Fish's essay is that he confronts the smugness of his readers, the NYT readers. Instead of the chummy, we-hate-Sarah chatter that defines the liberal/lefty blogosphere, Fish slaps his friends in the face. You think you can write this lady off? You're idiots — he says, in so many words:
Do I believe any of [what Palin has written]? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she does, and that her readers feel they are hearing an authentic voice. I find the voice undeniably authentic... It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety. It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. (“An American life is an extraordinary life.”) It says, don’t you agree with me that family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustains us? And it also says, vote for me next time. For it is the voice of a politician, of the little girl who thought she could fly, tried it, scraped her knees, dusted herself off and “kept walking.”So look out, you smug fools. She's real. Like Reagan was real.
In the end, perseverance, the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character. It’s what makes her run in both senses of the word and it is no accident that the physical act of running is throughout the book the metaphor for joy and real life. Her handlers in the McCain campaign wouldn’t let her run (a mistake, I think, even at the level of photo-op), no doubt because they feared another opportunity to go “off script,” to “go rogue.”...
The message is clear. America can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I’ve stumbled and fallen, but I always get up and run again.
Here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. Family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustains us....
Monday, December 7, 2009
"In Face of Skeptics, Experts Affirm Climate Peril."
Affirm? We're doing affirmations now? "Skeptics"... affirmations... is this religion?
Does a law school's anti-discrimination policy trump a student organization's freedom of speech and religion?
The Supreme Court granted cert in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez:
The Christian Legal Society at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law requires officers and voting members to share their religious beliefs, including that "Christians should not engage in sexual conduct outside of a marriage between a man and a woman."
The group filed a federal law suit after the San Francisco law school refused to accord it official status. The school said all official campus groups, which are eligible for funding and other benefits, may not exclude people because of religious belief, sexual orientation and other reasons.
Al Gore is trying real hard to be the shepherd.
The climate doom-master has written a poem (in his new book "Our Choice"):
And we will know that he is the lord when he lays his vengeance upon us. Us sheep.
Here is how the poem begins:Nuance. You know how I feel about nuance.One thin September soon... Gore wrote [the poem]... because his editor nixed his request to include a separate chapter on the impacts of climate change. After all, Our Choice is supposed to be about solutions... Undeterred by his editor’s ruling, Gore re-imagined his impacts chapter in poetic form.
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun
Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea
The result is a surprisingly accomplished, nuanced piece of writing.
The images Gore conjures in his (untitled) poem turn a neat trick: they are visually specific and emotionally arresting even as they are scientifically accurate.So it seems Gore is trying real hard to be the shepherd:Snow glides from the mountain... [T]he final lines of Gore’s poem certainly apply to the governments that will gather in Copenhagen from December 7 to 18 for what is regarded as humanity’s last chance to avert absolutely catastrophic climate change.
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly
Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest
For the lightning’s celebrationThe shepherd criesIs Gore himself that shepherd? No matter. What counts is that the hour of choosing has indeed arrived and, as documented in Our Choice, we do have the tools to survive—if we choose to employ them.
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools
And we will know that he is the lord when he lays his vengeance upon us. Us sheep.
When did Bruce Springsteen start looking like Robert De Niro?
Oh, strangely De Niro was there too. And Obama, of course. Obama said De Niro had "emotional audacity." I love when the Prez uses his own buzzwords to praise other people.
And why wasn't Robin Williams there? Because Springsteen appears to be wearing Mork from Orc suspenders.
And why wasn't Robin Williams there? Because Springsteen appears to be wearing Mork from Orc suspenders.
Another Drudge juxtaposition.
Unfair! Too cruel!
ADDED: Remember back in 2007, when Rush Limbaugh asked if the nation was ready to watch a woman age the way a President ages in office? From the archive (members-only link):
Ha. It was Drudge back then.We are a culture that is obsessed with looking good and perfection because it's seen, we see, that those are the people having a good time. Those are the people that have fame. Those are the people that have wealth. Those are the people that seem to have success. So, people out there trying to emulate it, and I saw this picture on Drudge yesterday of Mrs. Clinton taken in New Hampshire. It's not a very flattering picture...
I think Pamela Anderson would have a better shot at getting elected president of this country [than Margaret Thatcher]....I challenge Limbaugh to substitute "Sarah Palin" for "Pamela Anderson" in your old riff about America's obsession with good looks and see where that takes you.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
"Stop 'going green.' Just stop it."
Says Mike Tidwell. Why?
[S]urveys show that very few people are willing to make significant voluntary changes, and those of us who do create the false impression of mass progress as the media hypes our actions.We're a nation of laws, and, in Tidwell's mind, that means not that we are free but that we need law telling us every last thing we ought to do: Individual voluntary action is a big distraction from what we really need — compulsion.
Instead, most people want carbon reductions to be mandated by laws that will allow us to share both the responsibilities and the benefits of change. Ours is a nation of laws; if we want to alter our practices in a deep and lasting way, this is where we must start. After years of delay and denial and green half-measures, we must legislate a stop to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
Of course, all this will require congressional action....
"I feel like we're like an unemployed couple who just went out and decided to adopt a special needs baby."
"You know, I mean, that's really kind of what we're doing. And that's like, whoa, y'know, that terrifies me."
Special-needs columnist Thomas Friedman attempts to say something about Afghanistan.
ADDED: From March 2008, another Friedmanism:
Special-needs columnist Thomas Friedman attempts to say something about Afghanistan.
ADDED: From March 2008, another Friedmanism:
Clark Hoyt, the NYT "public" editor, thinks the NYT has handled the Climategate story "appropriately."
I understand why the Times preferred to link to the database on somebody else's site instead of hosting it: They're afraid of being sued for copyright infringement (though I think if it were anti-war material they'd take the risk and argue fair use). But I can't accept the core of Hoyt's defense of his employer:
The biggest question is what the messages amount to — an embarrassing revelation that scientists can be petty and defensive and even cheat around the edges, or a major scandal that undercuts the scientific premise for global warming. The former is a story. The latter is a huge story. And the answer is tied up in complex science that is difficult even for experts to understand, and in politics in which passionate sides have been taken, sometimes regardless of the facts....They just interview scientists and don't actually try to understand the science? Even when there is evidence of deceit, they don't pry themselves away from their dependence on interviews with scientists? Drastic, mindboggingly expensive policy changes are proposed based on this science, making this potentially the biggest fraud in history. Why isn't the NYT on fire trying to figure everything out and helping us readers see into the controversy? The best we can do is to give our readers a sense of what the prevailing scientific view is... Really? That's the best you can do? Just a "sense" of what "prevails" among scientists? Then the best you can do is to be part of the very problem you ought to be studying: The scientists' efforts to create an impression of consensus.
[Erica Goode, the NYT environment editor said]: “We here at The Times are not scientists. We don’t collect the data or analyze it, and so the best we can do is to give our readers a sense of what the prevailing scientific view is, based on interviews with scientists” and the expertise of reporters like [Andrew] Revkin.
Tiger Woods refusing to talk to the police ≈ Desiree Rogers refusing to talk to Congress.
Maureen Dowd doesn't really have anything new to say about Tiger,
But Tiger is a private citizen, and he faced potential criminal charges, either for himself or his wife. Dowd doesn't even mention the Constitution in connection with Woods — even as she's going for parallelism — but Woods had a constitutional right not to talk to the police, and I assume he was well advised by lawyers as he chose not to talk. He had a right to do what he thought was best for himself. The public may be interested in him, and he needs to worry about our loss of respect for him, which would hurt his lucrative career in product endorsement, but he doesn't owe us anything.
Rogers, on the other hand was working for the government, in a position of a public trust, and her refusal to account for herself was quite a different matter. The constitutional provision for executive privilege is not like the individual right against self-incrimination. It's a matter of separation of powers having to do with the ability of the executive branch to function independently. If it is invoked, it should not be Rogers protecting her own interests. It should be because it serves the public good for the executive branch to be free of interference from Congress. It may well be that there are legitimate reasons for maintaining secrecy about the details of planning and carrying out a big White House dinner party. There are some delicate, sensitive matters in party planning, no? One could imagine Congress picking apart such things for the devious purpose of distracting and weakening the President.
Dowd says:
Tiger may have been the greatest pro golfer but he was an amateur adulterer. His puffed-up ego led him to leave an electronic trail with a string of buffed and puffed babes. Like so many politicians before him, Tiger ignored the obvious rule: Never get involved with women who have 8-by-10 glossies.Amusing writing. But with nothing much to say about Tiger, Dowd makes a column of it by forcing a parallel with Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary who purported to stand on constitutional principle as she refused to talk to Congress about the White House gate-crashers. Tiger, you see, refused to talk to the police.
But Tiger is a private citizen, and he faced potential criminal charges, either for himself or his wife. Dowd doesn't even mention the Constitution in connection with Woods — even as she's going for parallelism — but Woods had a constitutional right not to talk to the police, and I assume he was well advised by lawyers as he chose not to talk. He had a right to do what he thought was best for himself. The public may be interested in him, and he needs to worry about our loss of respect for him, which would hurt his lucrative career in product endorsement, but he doesn't owe us anything.
Rogers, on the other hand was working for the government, in a position of a public trust, and her refusal to account for herself was quite a different matter. The constitutional provision for executive privilege is not like the individual right against self-incrimination. It's a matter of separation of powers having to do with the ability of the executive branch to function independently. If it is invoked, it should not be Rogers protecting her own interests. It should be because it serves the public good for the executive branch to be free of interference from Congress. It may well be that there are legitimate reasons for maintaining secrecy about the details of planning and carrying out a big White House dinner party. There are some delicate, sensitive matters in party planning, no? One could imagine Congress picking apart such things for the devious purpose of distracting and weakening the President.
Dowd says:
Both Tiger and Desiree hid and stayed silent because they mistakenly thought they were protecting the Brand. But despite their marketing savvy, these two controlling players spiraled out of control.That sounds clever and amusing, but only if you don't try to imagine what Woods and Rogers might be hiding and how, if they spoke, their words would be used to damage them further. Dowd assumes that the truth has or will come out: "Don’t stonewall. Admit your mistake before others piece together the embarrassing facts." That is: It's the cover-up, not the crime. It will hurt more if you don't come clean. But I think there are things about what happened the night Woods ran into the tree that will never come to light. And who knows what more there is to the gate-crashers story? It sounds pretty frivolous, and we are expected to get over it. A slight glitch that represents nothing else of any concern. But is it?
"'Hu's the Communist?' I thought he was asking a question."
A joke about a photograph of Obama and the president of China. More jokes told by Sarah Palin here.
(And can someone tell Politico it's Hu Jintao, not Hu Jinato.)
(And can someone tell Politico it's Hu Jintao, not Hu Jinato.)
Saturday, December 5, 2009
The $127 million losing streak.
Terrance Watanabe, you old fool.
Mr. Watanabe's situation illustrates the often-uneasy relationships casinos have with their biggest clients, also known as "whales." Casinos vie to lure these high rollers by doling out luxury suites, use of private jets, and a cadre of personal handlers to fulfill every flight of fancy, from wire transfers to fishing trips to Alaska....Well, is there some point at which you would blame the casino?
In a series of emails signed by Mr. Ning, the Harrah's marketing executive, the casino company laid out the terms that it was willing to offer him, which included "a special formula just for Mr. Watanabe."
Mr. Ning specified such offers as tickets to the Rolling Stones, $12,500 a month for airfare and $500,000 in credit at the gift stores. Harrah's also offered 15% cash back on table losses greater than $500,000, special high-limit games and other incentives....
"The little mouse, Jerry, I believe, gets ahold of thread and runs with it causing an entire sweater to unravel from the bottom to the top..."
"... and leaving a cat, Tom probably, naked in front of a crowd in an auditorium. Ha ha ha ha ha. This is great."
That's Chip Ahoy, somewhere in the depths of the "What an asshole"/global warming thread. Since this is a day on the blog that began with the suggestion that we ought to declare Sweater Christmas, it made me want to do a new post knitting it all together by embedding "Undone — The Sweater Song," but embedding is disabled, so you'll have to pull the thread and walk away over at YouTube. And I did look for that Tom and Jerry unraveling. Unsuccessfully.
That's Chip Ahoy, somewhere in the depths of the "What an asshole"/global warming thread. Since this is a day on the blog that began with the suggestion that we ought to declare Sweater Christmas, it made me want to do a new post knitting it all together by embedding "Undone — The Sweater Song," but embedding is disabled, so you'll have to pull the thread and walk away over at YouTube. And I did look for that Tom and Jerry unraveling. Unsuccessfully.
"It was just sort of a recognition that, 'Duh, that's what in effect the commander understands he's been told to do.' Everybody said, 'He's right.'"
The "'whoa' moment" in the deliberations over the Afghanistan strategy:
In June, McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a PowerPoint slide: "Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population."
"Is that really what you think your mission is?" one of the participants asked.
In the first place, it was impossible -- the Taliban were part of the fabric of the Pashtun belt of southern Afghanistan, culturally if not ideologically supported by a major part of the population. "We don't need to do that," Gates said, according to one participant. "That's an open-ended, forever commitment."
But that was precisely his mission, McChrystal responded, enshrined in the Strategic Implementation Plan -- the execution orders for the March strategy, written by the NSC staff.
"In her luminous memoir..."
I thought the memo had gone out that the word "luminous" had been banned from book reviews:
Several years ago, overwhelmed by the flood of material unleashed annually by the publishing industry, I decided to establish a screening program by purchasing only books that at least one reviewer had described as ''astonishing.''That's Joe Queenan, writing in the New York Times in 2007, but now here's the New York Times with its 10 Best Books of 2009, calling a memoir "luminous." How can I trust their judgment? To be fair, they didn't call anything "incandescent" or "astonishing."
Previously, I had limited my purchases to merchandise deemed ''luminous'' or ''incandescent,'' but this meant I ended up with an awful lot of novels about bees, Provence or Vermeer. The problem with incandescent or luminous books is that they veer toward the introspective, the arcane or the wise, while I prefer books that go off like a Roman candle. When I buy a book, I don't want to come away wiser or happier or even better informed. I want to get blown right out of the water by the author's breathtaking pyrotechnics. I want to come away astonished.
"Those were the days my friend. We thought they'd never end."
The days have ended for Liam Clancy.
"Liam Clancy, the man Bob Dylan described as the 'best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life,' has died. He was 74."
Oh, my friend we're older but no wiser, for in our hearts the dreams are still the same...
"Liam Clancy, the man Bob Dylan described as the 'best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life,' has died. He was 74."
Oh, my friend we're older but no wiser, for in our hearts the dreams are still the same...
I have an idea: Sweater Christmas!
Let's buy Christmas (and Hanukkah) presents. Why not agree amongst your loved ones that everyone will buy a particular type of present? For example: Everyone buys everyone a sweater...
... or a scarf. Have Sweater Christmas. Or Scarf Christmas. Or Sweater/Scarf/Gloves Christmas. It would be so much simpler and nicely reciprocal. And if people are traveling by plane, it will be easy to slip these things into the suitcases and nothing's going to get broken.
Or do you think you need to be more creative? If so, I have a suggestion! It's The Hoof Candle, from D.L. & Co.:
$150.00!
IN THE COMMENTS: The comments are off to a great start, with Pogo:
... or a scarf. Have Sweater Christmas. Or Scarf Christmas. Or Sweater/Scarf/Gloves Christmas. It would be so much simpler and nicely reciprocal. And if people are traveling by plane, it will be easy to slip these things into the suitcases and nothing's going to get broken.
Or do you think you need to be more creative? If so, I have a suggestion! It's The Hoof Candle, from D.L. & Co.:
Aunus, the roman version of pan, is the companion of the nymphs and god of shepherds and flocks. His lower half being that of a goat represents our barbaric nature or beastial side of our humanity: indulgence and celebration. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans often designed their furniture with the legs of beasts, this grounded the pieces to the earth and paid homage to the animal nature in all humans. D.L. & Co.'s Effigy Wax Sculptures are exquisite, exceptional works of art, each a timeless treasure to appreciate and admire. Due to the non-linear shape of the sculpture, the wick does not run from the top to the base.Aunus, my ass. Sweater Christmas, okay? That will serve my "beastial" nature quite well enough.
IN THE COMMENTS: The comments are off to a great start, with Pogo:
I'm gonna have an Ambien n' golf club Xmas.And Wardwood, "Sweater and animal":
Hold the Escalade.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Was Tiger Woods sleep-driving when he crashed?
An emailer writes:
Looking for that news article, I found this:
ADDED: The emailer was Elliott Althouse (no relation). And, in the comments, several people say that a person unconscious with a head injury might snore.
I had a eureka! moment last night. Tiger was not awake when he crashed his car. This is why he was said to be snoring in the street by the neighbor in the police report. He probably is using ambien and "sleepwalked" the whole thing. His wife probably broke the window to attempt to wake him up, following him out of the house, but obviously being behind enough in time that he already had gotten in and started the car. This type of thing is a very common side effect of ambien. He can't sleep because his wife had already found out about the girlfriends.... I'm surprised I haven't seen this explanation offered by anyone.Here's a news article saying he was sleeping and snoring in the street after the crash:
They found Woods apparently unconscious in the street, while his wife, Elin Nordegren, standing nearby. Woods was shoeless, in a T-shirt and shorts.Sleeping and snoring in the street after all that? You don't snore when you're knocked unconscious, do you? That sounds like a sleeping drug, which also explains how the highly skilled Woods could drive so badly.
"He was actually snoring," [a witness] said.
Looking for that news article, I found this:
From Radar: "[Rachel] Uchitel told friends that she and Tiger liked to have sex while taking the drug Ambien. Uchitel told one pal, 'You know you have crazier sex on Ambien — you get into that Ambien haze. We have crazy Ambien sex.'" Readers: Is that a thing? We've witnessed people in an Ambien haze, certainly. But Ambien sex? This makes us feel old not knowing this.Is it all fitting together now?
ADDED: The emailer was Elliott Althouse (no relation). And, in the comments, several people say that a person unconscious with a head injury might snore.
Palin goes birther.
Sarah Palin was asked "Would you make [Obama's] birth certificate an issue if you ran?":
"I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers," she replied.But I thought she thought the question of Trig's parentage was not fair. Do 2 unfairs make a fair in her thinking? Is she saying that since people got all "weird" and "freaky" on her, she wants equal treatment for Obama in the "weird" and "freaky" department?
"Do you think it's a fair question to be looking at?" Humphries persisted.
"I think it's a fair question, just like I think past association and past voting records -- all of that is fair game," Palin said. "The McCain-Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area."
McCain's campaign counsel has said the campaign did look into the birth certificate question and, like every other serious examination, dismissed it.
Palin suggested that the questions were fair play because of "the weird conspiracy theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn't my real son -- 'You need to produce his birth certificate, you need to prove that he's your kid,' which we have done."
The female female impersonator.
An interesting category, but who would we put in it? Guy Trebay starts with Wendy Williams. (It's an article about Wendy Williams.) But who else? He suggests Phyllis Diller, but then he backs off:
And as long as I'm in YouTube, here's the great Phyllis Diller:
And here she is with Groucho Marx — and she's the one with the drawn-on eyebrows — and here she is with Liberace.
Anyway, the topic for discussion is female female impersonators. And Phyllis Diller. And eyebrows...
But Diller was a comedian...(Ahem. Diller lives. Born in 1917 and alive.)
... and so are her spiritual descendants, people like Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho, women sharp enough and shrewd enough to wade into the cultural scrapheap that is gender and recycle all the trashy signifiers they find there for laughs.Williams is different, Trebay says, because she's a talk show host.
Like a kooky media divinity, a god in a comic book myth, Williams, 45, is permeable, superpotent and with no observable boundaries. She performs tricks on the air that involve her surgically amplified bosom. She suggests to guests like Omarosa Manigault Stallworth, the confrontational star of “The Apprentice,” that she look into facial fillers to correct the marionette lines that frame her stiff, practiced smile. She vows to keep her audience up to date on her vaginal toning. She cries, but then on television lately it’s hard to shut off the waterworks.Nice. But I'm more interested in the general idea of the female female impersonator. The first person who sprang to mind for me is Dolly Parton. And Marilyn Monroe. And then Courtney Love, Madonna, Lady Gaga.
“You just have the audacity and the unmitigated gall to say what you think and let the chips fall where they may,” Williams said.
And as long as I'm in YouTube, here's the great Phyllis Diller:
And here she is with Groucho Marx — and she's the one with the drawn-on eyebrows — and here she is with Liberace.
Anyway, the topic for discussion is female female impersonators. And Phyllis Diller. And eyebrows...
"Am I glad that a hapless 77-year-old man won’t be put to death by the State of Florida? Yes, I am."
"Am I concerned about a Supreme Court that dispenses empathy so selectively? Also yes."
Linda Greenhouse wants more evenly spread empathy.
Linda Greenhouse wants more evenly spread empathy.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
It's the "Special Wood-Themed" Edition of Bloggingheads!
With me and Hanna Rosin!
Topics:
Topics:
The racial angle to the Tiger Woods saga
Will high-status men invariably cheat on their wives?
Is lack of sexual desire in women an illness?
The impossibility of writing a non-awful sex scene
Hanna: Sorry, Tolstoy—happy marriages are fascinating!
Ann: Don’t give books as holiday gifts
Raisins, orgasms... what's the difference?
Here's another big NYT Magazine article for women that I didn't want to read, but I'm reading now to use in a Bloggingheads episode. It's been on the most-emailed list all week, this "Women Who Want to Want" business. I looked at it when it came out and the intro about staring at raisins really irritated me. I felt like I was reading the 1969 bestseller "The Sensuous Woman" again. 40 years later, I still remember the advice — for women in search of an orgasm — to get an ice cream cone and pay a whole lot of attention to every detail of the thing. But jeez, at least you got an ice cream cone. Orgasm or not. In 2009, it's a damned raisin?!
But I will go on, because I said I'd talk about it. Get past the raisin.
"I’d like you to start by examining your raisin... Study its shape, its contours, its folds. Touch the raisin with a finger. Look into the valleys and peaks, the highlights and dark crevasses. Lift the raisin to your lips."This is going to help you want to have sex — to "want to want"? When I read that, I want nothing. Nothing at all. And get that raisin out of my face.
But I will go on, because I said I'd talk about it. Get past the raisin.
[Lori] Brotto is careful to keep in mind that not all women who feel erotically uncharged are desperate to change. Some may not be dismayed in the least.... [B]etween 7 and 15 percent of all young and middle-aged women... feel distressed over the absence of desire....So you could either find a way to feel sexual desire or get over feeling bad about the way you really do feel.
Brotto is now studying... a sample of 70 women who... are sent home with assignments — to observe their bodies in the shower and describe themselves physically in precise and neutral language, in phrases that hold no judgment; and, after another session, to repeat over and over, “My body is alive and sexual,” no matter if they believe it. They are taught about research that shows that belief doesn’t matter, that the feeling will follow the declaration. And they are instructed, in their sessions, to place the raisins in their mouths, to “notice where the tongue is, notice the saliva building up in your mouth . . . notice the trajectory of the flavor as it bursts forth, the flood of saliva, how the flavor changes from your body’s chemistry.”Back to that raisin. Is there a fruity nugget in this big bowl of oatmeal? Is it that women really have sexual feelings, but they emerge during a sexual encounter and may go unnoticed because we aren't good at noticing them? Or is this mainly about defining mental disorders in the D.S.M. — there's something called hypoactive sexual desire disorder (H.S.D.D.)? I'd like to hear less about raisins and Buddhist — it's always Buddhist — techniques of mindfulness or whatever, and more about who's channeling money where....
As is so often true in the poorly financed realm of sex research....
8,000+ words on Elizabeth Weil's marriage.
In the NYT Magazine. Seriously, I did not see the value of all this. Help me out. I agreed to talk about it on a Bloggingheads episode, to be recorded in a few hours, and I cannot figure out what is interesting here... aside from the fact that the husband's cooking obsession entails the use of very expensive ingredients. There were those "Taoists Thrusts" for the "Multi-Orgasmic Couple," which were mainly about visualizing one kind of animal or another burrowing into some sort of hole, but really, I found nothing to justify all this blather about one couple. And this is a condensation from a memoir. There's nothing even wrong with Dan. He works out. He cooks.
He was now reading Soviet-era weight-training manuals in order to transform his 41-year-old body into that of a Marine....She's vaguely dissatisfied with the man even as she feeds us the stuff of envy. Yes, your man is very muscular and he feeds you delicious food and you feed me 8,000 words.
On a ho-hum weeknight Dan might make me pan-roasted salmon with truffled polenta in a Madeira shallot reduction.
"Now, if they put a noisy hot dog stand that keeps you up at night, doesn't that violate the statute?"
"Well, you can have quiet hot dog stands during the daytime."
Justices Breyer and Scalia concern themselves with hot dogs (transcript PDF) in a case about whether public access to newly added beach is a "taking" of the property of homeowners who previously had private beach extending all the way to the water:
Justices Breyer and Scalia concern themselves with hot dogs (transcript PDF) in a case about whether public access to newly added beach is a "taking" of the property of homeowners who previously had private beach extending all the way to the water:
“You didn’t lose one inch,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer told the lawyer for the owners, D. Kent Safriet. “All you lost was the right to touch the water. But the court here says you in effect have that right because you can walk right over it and get to the water.”
The new strip of land is as wide as 75 feet in places, and the public has access to it.
“If somebody wanted to put up a hot dog stand on this new land,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked, “would you have the right to tell them they can’t?”
“Absolutely not,” Mr. Safriet answered.
Justice Breyer said the relevant law did protect the owners’ right to enjoy their land in peace, meaning they could at a minimum ban “a noisy hot dog stand that keeps you up at night.”
Justice Antonin Scalia found the middle ground, as it were. “You can have quiet hot dog stands during the daytime,” he said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor added that even before the beach project, “a hot dog stand could have sat in the water.”
"Comedian Chris Rock undoubtedly put it best when he said, 'A man is only as faithful as his options.'"
"And few men have the sexual options of the most famous athletes in the world.... Fact is, over the last century the greatest athletes of whatever day are virtually winless against sexual temptation.... Look, infidelity can take down elected officials (though not John Fitzgerald Kennedy and, in the final analysis, not William Jefferson Clinton). It can rub out a guy in the office, like Steve Phillips of ESPN. But it's not taking down the greatest athletes of our time."
That's from sportswriter Michael Wilbon. Ah, but wasn't Tiger Woods perceived as a special god-like man? And isn't that key to the most lucrative aspect of his career, endorsements?
That's from sportswriter Michael Wilbon. Ah, but wasn't Tiger Woods perceived as a special god-like man? And isn't that key to the most lucrative aspect of his career, endorsements?
Forbes estimated earlier this year that Woods was the first athlete to surpass $1 billion in career earnings, more than 80 percent of that coming from endorsements with companies such as Nike, Gillette, Gatorade and AT&T...Time Magazine's Bill Saporito says:
[C]ompanies that may have wanted to align themselves with Woods might rethink that -- particularly companies whose target audience is women or children. Part of Woods' appeal has been his pristine image, off the course as well as on, and events of the last week have tainted that, making him an easy target....
I don't think he's going to lose very many endorsements. Sure, he has been revealed as a fraud, but Michael Jordan, another big sports fraud and the very role model for Tiger, is still selling.... [B]y some respects, he'll only become a bigger attraction. Tiger's on the cover of People. He's now moving up in the Jon and Kate–Brad and Angelina celebrity solar system. You know what happens next: an appearance on Oprah with his wife Elin, national contrition. And even bigger ratings at his next tournament. Unless, of course, Mrs. Woods throws the bum out.Ah, yes. The Church of Oprah. But is Elin willing to be used that way? Who knows? I'm seeing that there is a prenuptial agreement, with frantic renegotiations going on. Elin is, it seems, needed in the shoring up of Woods's image, and there is a ton of money to be thrown around to overcome whatever preferences the woman might have. But talk about things that make women feel bad about a guy. Manipulating a wife with vast sums of money after abusing her with affairs....
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
For a while there, it looked as though a vote today in the NY Senate was going to legalize same-sex marriage.
Witness the excitement.
But it was not to be:
But it was not to be:
The bill was defeated by a decisive margin of 38 to 24. The Democrats, who have a bare, one-seat majority, did not have enough votes to pass the bill without some Republican support, but not a single Republican senator....
... State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx made an impassioned argument against same-sex marriage, describing his continued opposition as reflecting the broad consensus that marriage should be limited to a union between a man and woman. “Not only the evangelicals, not only the Jews, not only the Muslims, not only the Catholics, but also the people oppose it,” he said.
Orin Kerr notes a convergence of lawprof blogging and lawprof scholarship.
"Back in 2005 and 2006, a lot of law-professor bloggers wondered whether blog posts could and would serve as ways to advance scholarly ideas about law. At the time, I was very skeptical... and I now think my old self was wrong.... In the past five years, legal blogs have become an acknowledged and accepted part of the world of legal scholarship.... It might be because more law professors are blogging. It might be because our experience has been that what profs say on their blogs is usually the same as what they say in their articles.... [T]here seems to be more of a convergence between scholarly blogging and 'traditional' law review articles today than existed 4 or 5 years ago. That convergence encourages more scholarly blogging and recognizes its value."
All that may be true, but I still maintain, as I did back then, that blogs are a distinct form that offers the opportunity to write in new, challenging, artistic ways. Reading Orin's post reminds me to think of myself as a true blogger, not a professor taking advantage of a device to push out scholarship. Of course, I want credit and regard for my writing here, but because it is different, not because it is the same.
All that may be true, but I still maintain, as I did back then, that blogs are a distinct form that offers the opportunity to write in new, challenging, artistic ways. Reading Orin's post reminds me to think of myself as a true blogger, not a professor taking advantage of a device to push out scholarship. Of course, I want credit and regard for my writing here, but because it is different, not because it is the same.
Tiger Woods concedes his "transgressions" and invokes the "important and deep principle" of a "simple, human measure of privacy."
"Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means. For the last week, my family and I have been hounded to expose intimate details of our personal lives."
You don't need to say anything you don't want to say, even to the police. But if they have evidence of a crime the fact that you are well-known shouldn't get you immunity from investigation that ordinary people don't have. Now, the tabloids have no interest in the transgressions of ordinary people, but you've made yourself interesting to us, and you can't stop them. You can refuse to talk to them, but they can find other people to talk to.
You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye.
He wants privacy, and he wants that woman to become nothing... a number... whaddyacallit.
ADDED: Has it ever occurred to you that maybe golf is not like painting? Maybe spunkier is not what you need for great golfing.
You don't need to say anything you don't want to say, even to the police. But if they have evidence of a crime the fact that you are well-known shouldn't get you immunity from investigation that ordinary people don't have. Now, the tabloids have no interest in the transgressions of ordinary people, but you've made yourself interesting to us, and you can't stop them. You can refuse to talk to them, but they can find other people to talk to.
You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye.
He wants privacy, and he wants that woman to become nothing... a number... whaddyacallit.
ADDED: Has it ever occurred to you that maybe golf is not like painting? Maybe spunkier is not what you need for great golfing.
"Architect Clive Wille, 56, shouted 'Die, you bitch' as he tried to suffocate third wife and former secretary Susan Wille, 38, on their marital bed."
But Susan still wants to be friends with him. The judges said: "Nevertheless I am of the view only a significant sentence can be justified given the serious nature of the offence." Significant sentence? 7 years. (It's the UK.)
"The ABA editors, however, have put us up against one of the oldest and most popular legal sites, Althouse."
Wow. Professor Turley is really trying to kick my ass.
[W]e are up against one of the top three and best recognized sites. It is, therefore, the ultimate Dave and Goliath moment. The Cinderella Man moment. The Crossing of the Delaware moment. The Hail Mary moment. Yes, it is your moment. Think of the children, the unborn, the undead. Think your pets, your country. Think of me for God’s sake.
"It is the ultimate Grinch to suggest there is no God during a holiday where millions of people around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ."
Said Mathew D. Staver, of Liberty University School of Law, reacting to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's "No god? ... No problem!" ads.
I like the way Staver blithely invokes a mythical character as he asserts that God is not a mythical character.
I like the way Staver blithely invokes a mythical character as he asserts that God is not a mythical character.
"It's time for traditional media companies to stop whining."
Said Arianna Huffington to the trad media types who don't like what the internet has done to their business. She thinks they ought to quit complaining that sites like hers are using the news they produce and be grateful that her site is sending them traffic.
"Up to now, the president hadn’t done anything to upset any of the constituency groups of the Democratic party."
Now he has. Thank heavens for that.
Despite the shortcomings of the speech, Obama made the right policy decision. He deserves credit for that. It won’t go down well with the antiwar, pacifist left wing of his party. That’s not only his base. It’s his political home.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
"We must deny al Qaeda a safe-haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government."
"And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s Security Forces and government, so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future.... [W]e will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban’s momentum and increase Afghanistan’s capacity over the next 18 months...."
ADDED: I only got a chance to watch the last 15 minutes or so. (Office Christmas party.) But I'll say what I thought: He sounded oddly stern, like he was lecturing us. Annoyed at us. The words were meant to be inspirational but there was no lift... no lift of a driving dream. Is he tired of being Obama? Or was it the vibe in the room? I don't think those West Point folk liked him too much. He made some pauses that felt awkward in advance of grudging applause, and the response at the end was minimal. The camera searched among the faces and found only grim ones. No one glowed with the fire of Obama-love.
AND: "America – we are passing through a time of great trial." I wanted to feel that line, but the delivery was cold and perfunctory. I had to imagine Reagan saying it to understand what it was supposed to mean.
ADDED: I only got a chance to watch the last 15 minutes or so. (Office Christmas party.) But I'll say what I thought: He sounded oddly stern, like he was lecturing us. Annoyed at us. The words were meant to be inspirational but there was no lift... no lift of a driving dream. Is he tired of being Obama? Or was it the vibe in the room? I don't think those West Point folk liked him too much. He made some pauses that felt awkward in advance of grudging applause, and the response at the end was minimal. The camera searched among the faces and found only grim ones. No one glowed with the fire of Obama-love.
AND: "America – we are passing through a time of great trial." I wanted to feel that line, but the delivery was cold and perfunctory. I had to imagine Reagan saying it to understand what it was supposed to mean.
Do we need to try to understand Charles Johnson?
"[Johnson's] explanation is a little thin. It’s more an illustration of how he’s flipped out, from right to left. But apparently it works like this: If you disagree with any element of half of the American body politic, you disagree with the whole thing. This makes you saner, more compassionate, more embracing of diversity. Probably smarter, too. And if you agree with any element of half the American body politic, you agree with the whole thing, and you are a crazy hater. But the whole thing is crazy and hateful...."
Personally, I don't need to go through the exercise of figuring out what happened to Johnson. I've avoided him all these years because he seemed too extreme and hateful. Now, he's fired up about other people being extreme and hateful? And he's fired up in a way that seems extreme and hateful? I do not need to go there. That was never my scene.
Personally, I don't need to go through the exercise of figuring out what happened to Johnson. I've avoided him all these years because he seemed too extreme and hateful. Now, he's fired up about other people being extreme and hateful? And he's fired up in a way that seems extreme and hateful? I do not need to go there. That was never my scene.
"Their description of me made me sound like an arrogant prick."
John Horgan talks about the science of and his experience with eHarmony, in a Bloggingheads episode that begins with his revelation that he is separated from his wife and headed toward divorce. He doesn't talk about why he is getting divorced — that would be even more inappropriate than all this openness about dating while one is actually still married. But we wondered about his marriage. His wife is Suzie Gilbert, and here's an article about what she's been doing in recent years:
In any event, good luck to all, human and bird. I know the human being and bird can coexist peacefully.
Gilbert floundered before landing work in a nearby Hudson Valley animal hospital and later volunteering at a raptor center. Hooked, she opened her own rehab operation, Flyaway, Inc.I love the use of the verb "floundered." Before she found birds, she was like a fish.
“Some people are drawn to cuddly things,” she notes. “But I’m in awe of these creatures that can hurt you. I can’t get over their strength and nobility. It’s a force of nature.”And here's a description of her book:
In this captivating memoir, Suzie Gilbert tells the rollicking story of how she turned her family life upside down to pursue her unusual passion for rehabilitating wild birds....Compassion and dreams... and a whole lot of birds. But eHarmony thinks the husband is an arrogant prick. Well, Horgan has quite a sense of humor about himself, I think. He's smiling and laughing there, isn't he? Or is that a grimace, a rictus?
She began bringing abused and unwanted parrots home and volunteering at a local raptor rehabilitation center, activities she continued for the next eleven years, even as she started a family. Then came the ultimate commitment to her cause: turning her home into Flyaway, Inc., a nonprofit wild bird rehabilitation center.
Gilbert chronicles the years of her chaotic household-cum-bird-hospital with delightful wit, recounting the confusion that ensued as her husband and two young children struggled to live in a house where parrots shrieked Motown songs, nestling robins required food every twenty minutes, and recuperating herons took over the spare bathroom. Gradually, however, the birds came to represent the value of compassion and the importance of pursuing even the most unlikely of dreams.
In any event, good luck to all, human and bird. I know the human being and bird can coexist peacefully.
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