While I haven't really done much in the way of research into this, I was struck recently by the circumstances of the Florida vote, and the danger of alienating a consituency, even one as small as the military (and a voting block that represents less than 1% of the American population is small indeed). With this being election time, quite a few conversations on politics have cropped up of late. Not shockingly, it turns out that the accepted (not officially, but certainly socially) overt political stance is deeply conservative. A lot of that is due to common conservative tenents, like respect for traditions or religious service (although ask people to donate money to military causes, and suddenly people are much less than their brother's keeper). But no small part of it is due to uniquely military issues, and for this Democrats are fighting a long up-hill battle. Between Carter and Clinton, quite a few here think that Democrats have a lot for which to answer.
The Clinton downsizings and budget cuts deeply hurt the military, and anecdotes about having to save 550 cord (high tensile parachute cord used for almost everything) or being unable to find 100 mph tape (duct tape, also used for almost everything). Of soldiers in the Ranger regiments, which are the chosen ones of the Army, capable of obtaining almost everything because of how kickass they are, having to ration bullets or of walking miles to the range just to zero their weapons. (For the non-Army: shooting skills are highly perishable, and for a unit like the Rangers, kickass commando types, maintaining those skills is one of their highest training priorities, so anything which interferes with that training degrades a defining capability of the unit.)
Beyond the budget cuts, Clinton's behavior in office and treatment of the military left scars many still won't forgive. Because Special Forces is closely affiliated the Rangers, almost everyone here was either a Somali Ranger or very good friends with one (one of our training cadre ran the Mogadishu Mile). Accordingly, Clinton's decision to vacate Somalia infuriated a lot of people within the Special Operations community. Rules of Engagement during the 1990s presented a lot of people who were sent into harms way with numerous untenable choices. The classic example was that soldiers confronted with an individual weilding a weapon and obviously intending to fire at US troops could not fire first. There are grounds for merit in the ROE, but for a soldier, the prospect of having to wait to see if you had been shot before you could resolve the threat to your person is deeply unsettling (read: fucking terrifying and frustrating).
So, to bring this about to my point, it occured to me that the Florida recount had literal tons of unopened absentee ballots from overseas military personnel. While there were certainly copious amounts of under- and over-voted ballots that needed counting from indigenous Floridians, razor-thin margins of 500 people are small enough for even the military to have its say. I doubt those absentee ballots were sufficient to be decisive on their own, but still it presents at least the illusion that the rank and file can participate in elections, and perhaps have their voices be heard. With only 1.2 million people under uniform, that voice is far from audible.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Human enhancement
I've always found the discussion of doping and human enhancement to be fairly fascinating, in large part because it begs the question of what constitutes "legitimate" growth. The discussion takes a still more interesting turn when the discussion shifts from such "idle" activities like sports to "professional" activities like journalism, or academia, or students. In both cases, we have some fairly hard limits on how quickly any individual can improve their performance; they hit a wall. At a very basic level, the drive to transcend merely human limits may be one of the more fundamental drives out there. We want to touch the stars.
Already, "normal" enhancements like availability to better food or the time to exercise have started to delineate some clear class differences. While I was in China, it was fascinating to note how much taller younger generations were than those that had preceded them. They came from families with enough money to afford meat and basic protein when they were children, which meant that their growth wasn't stunted in the way it had been in earlier generations. Here in the States, the dialectic of skinny vs. fat or the differences of longevity relative to income levels hits the exact same notes.
So, it all begs the question of how icky these enhancers are. I don't really have a lot of problems with their use, in whatever context, even if I acknowledge there is a clear purity issue. But, just as a part of maturity is accepting the hard walls that constrain your life, maybe it's the sign of our time that we can tear down those walls. And, as precursors to things like cybernetics or transcending the mind/machine interface, we have a chance to both better define and better understand the human condition. (And go watch Ghost in the Shell.)
Already, "normal" enhancements like availability to better food or the time to exercise have started to delineate some clear class differences. While I was in China, it was fascinating to note how much taller younger generations were than those that had preceded them. They came from families with enough money to afford meat and basic protein when they were children, which meant that their growth wasn't stunted in the way it had been in earlier generations. Here in the States, the dialectic of skinny vs. fat or the differences of longevity relative to income levels hits the exact same notes.
So, it all begs the question of how icky these enhancers are. I don't really have a lot of problems with their use, in whatever context, even if I acknowledge there is a clear purity issue. But, just as a part of maturity is accepting the hard walls that constrain your life, maybe it's the sign of our time that we can tear down those walls. And, as precursors to things like cybernetics or transcending the mind/machine interface, we have a chance to both better define and better understand the human condition. (And go watch Ghost in the Shell.)
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Debbie does Paris, and Moscow, and...
It's worth remembering that monogamy isn't precisely natural, and even as a cultural artifact deviates across the globe. While the predominant narrative says that men are the prisoners of their biology, women are no saints in this one either. This isn't a gendered issue, or even just a human issue--biological imperatives are pretty indifferent when looking at any of God's creatures.
Of course, an easy argument is that marriage then represents our opportunity to rise above our bestial natures, to transcend the atavist. And there is merit to this, to be sure, but in doing so, we should be very clear that frame marriage thusly, we transform marriage and monogamy from a natural occasion to a cultural artifact (this is the thesis of Matt Ridley's fascinating The Red Queen). Culture is subject to change and evolution. It might not be pliable, but it is neither static nor universal.
If the origins of marriage are cultural, then so too are the ends, and into this gap steps Pamela Druckerman's Lust in Translation. How we as Americans frame cheating and infidelity are radically different than the rest of the world. Cheating happens everywhere, but in America, life ends. A cheating spouse demands public implosion, "my world falling down around my ears", before we can move on. We demand full accountability and full subservience--every tryst is documented, and every phone call screened by the aggrieved partner.
A not-small portion of the vitriol direction at Hillary stems from the perception that the only reason she stayed with Bill was because he was a political asset, that it was pure political machination. She disobeyed the culture code that demanded that she prioritize her broken heart before her career, and by inverting that formula, revealed herself to be the heartless beast of caricature.
So maybe, possibly, somehow, all these scandals give us an opportunity to address our narratives of marriage and relationships head on. We're in the midst of redefining both, yet our conversations largely surround norms weathering the storm of rapidly changing moderity, and we don't really articulate either the norm or the assault. Instead, we get progressively more confused and frustrated, as we struggle to define whether a single date is actually a date or if we were just hanging out. We are lost when events like those of the past few occurs begin to wash over the desk, and we try harder and harder to reify ossified standards. And given the spate of friends getting married, this seems like a topic of more than academic interest.
Of course, an easy argument is that marriage then represents our opportunity to rise above our bestial natures, to transcend the atavist. And there is merit to this, to be sure, but in doing so, we should be very clear that frame marriage thusly, we transform marriage and monogamy from a natural occasion to a cultural artifact (this is the thesis of Matt Ridley's fascinating The Red Queen). Culture is subject to change and evolution. It might not be pliable, but it is neither static nor universal.
If the origins of marriage are cultural, then so too are the ends, and into this gap steps Pamela Druckerman's Lust in Translation. How we as Americans frame cheating and infidelity are radically different than the rest of the world. Cheating happens everywhere, but in America, life ends. A cheating spouse demands public implosion, "my world falling down around my ears", before we can move on. We demand full accountability and full subservience--every tryst is documented, and every phone call screened by the aggrieved partner.
A not-small portion of the vitriol direction at Hillary stems from the perception that the only reason she stayed with Bill was because he was a political asset, that it was pure political machination. She disobeyed the culture code that demanded that she prioritize her broken heart before her career, and by inverting that formula, revealed herself to be the heartless beast of caricature.
So maybe, possibly, somehow, all these scandals give us an opportunity to address our narratives of marriage and relationships head on. We're in the midst of redefining both, yet our conversations largely surround norms weathering the storm of rapidly changing moderity, and we don't really articulate either the norm or the assault. Instead, we get progressively more confused and frustrated, as we struggle to define whether a single date is actually a date or if we were just hanging out. We are lost when events like those of the past few occurs begin to wash over the desk, and we try harder and harder to reify ossified standards. And given the spate of friends getting married, this seems like a topic of more than academic interest.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The essential human contradiction
Obama's speech today in Philly was something to watch, to put it mildly. What really astonishes me in reading the chattering classes and the public comments throughout the day is how often people are censoring Obama for failing to provide a full-throated denunciation of Rev. White. Instead, Obama offers that he certainly knew of White's comments, that he saw and heard them for years, yet the comments themselves are but one facet of White's identity as a black man and as an individual. He credits White with having flaws, with having complexity and contradictions, with being human. His observation about his grandmother perfectly captures this dilemma, and (to me) reveres her humanity, reveres her for being her, rather than accepting her as the archetype of a saintly grandmother.
Similarly, these criticisms are predicated on the same assumptions as Lewis' inane trifecta that Jesus could not be "just" a good moral teacher because he claimed to be the son of God; if Jesus was not in fact the son of God, then he was either lying or a lunatic. I'm more than willing to accept either label. But using the label doesn't change the essential qualities of his sermons. It only cautions us that we must remain skeptical and use reason to sift truth from falsity. Only in a binary, essentialist construction can Jesus be a liar or a lunatic yet be incapable of espousing good moral philosophy. He can be either a liar/lunatic or he can be right, but not both. He must be either Knight or Knave.
The same fallacy appears when discussing sexuality. A rather novel piece in this weekend's WaPo outlook explored Eliot Spitzer as a literary character, looking for contradictions and flaws, glorious virtue and reviled vice. Only if we assume that our moral paragons, our avatars, must be stainless, and that the presence of flaws disqualifies someone or their policies, only then can we say that Spitzer's tragic flaw invalidated all his work on human trafficking and modern slavery. By definition, a tragic flaw is tragic only because of the contradictory counterpoint between good and evil.
This same binary metric is also the same issue that poisons discussions of gendered differences.
The argument goes that if we type-cast girls as being inferior in math, it becomes FACT and in so doing we deny them an opportunity to grow, to struggle, to evolve. We have distilled their essence into the stereotype that "girls are bad at math". And this schema is equally (if not moreso) prevalent in the minds of those who fight against this stereotyping, because they want to reify the worldview that men and women should be interchangeable. That they use their own essentialist definition doesn't make it any less essentialist.
As an example, let's look at the old saw that it takes women twice as much work to get half as far. It is certainly possible this is because they aren't being recognized appropriately, as if they worked equally hard to get half as far. But it could also be because they're working really inefficiently, as if they worked twice as hard to get equally far. One doesn't preclude the other. Unless we oversimplify and stick everything into little boxes of "essential" character with nice binaries.
Anyways, in each case, we assume we can capture someone's fundamental essence in a turn of phrase (racist and anti-Semite; lair, lunatic, or Lord; viceless "Steamroller" or worthless adulterer; "anything you can do, I can do better"). We do it habitually, as a normal course of life. It is easy to think that people have some core identity from which all actions, thoughts, and beliefs flow. And constructing that heuristic obscures contradictions, complexities. We dismiss too easily, and we don't give enough people credit for simple human individuality. The fascinating, contradictory essence of the everyman is that he isn't every man.
Similarly, these criticisms are predicated on the same assumptions as Lewis' inane trifecta that Jesus could not be "just" a good moral teacher because he claimed to be the son of God; if Jesus was not in fact the son of God, then he was either lying or a lunatic. I'm more than willing to accept either label. But using the label doesn't change the essential qualities of his sermons. It only cautions us that we must remain skeptical and use reason to sift truth from falsity. Only in a binary, essentialist construction can Jesus be a liar or a lunatic yet be incapable of espousing good moral philosophy. He can be either a liar/lunatic or he can be right, but not both. He must be either Knight or Knave.
The same fallacy appears when discussing sexuality. A rather novel piece in this weekend's WaPo outlook explored Eliot Spitzer as a literary character, looking for contradictions and flaws, glorious virtue and reviled vice. Only if we assume that our moral paragons, our avatars, must be stainless, and that the presence of flaws disqualifies someone or their policies, only then can we say that Spitzer's tragic flaw invalidated all his work on human trafficking and modern slavery. By definition, a tragic flaw is tragic only because of the contradictory counterpoint between good and evil.
This same binary metric is also the same issue that poisons discussions of gendered differences.
The argument goes that if we type-cast girls as being inferior in math, it becomes FACT and in so doing we deny them an opportunity to grow, to struggle, to evolve. We have distilled their essence into the stereotype that "girls are bad at math". And this schema is equally (if not moreso) prevalent in the minds of those who fight against this stereotyping, because they want to reify the worldview that men and women should be interchangeable. That they use their own essentialist definition doesn't make it any less essentialist.
As an example, let's look at the old saw that it takes women twice as much work to get half as far. It is certainly possible this is because they aren't being recognized appropriately, as if they worked equally hard to get half as far. But it could also be because they're working really inefficiently, as if they worked twice as hard to get equally far. One doesn't preclude the other. Unless we oversimplify and stick everything into little boxes of "essential" character with nice binaries.
Anyways, in each case, we assume we can capture someone's fundamental essence in a turn of phrase (racist and anti-Semite; lair, lunatic, or Lord; viceless "Steamroller" or worthless adulterer; "anything you can do, I can do better"). We do it habitually, as a normal course of life. It is easy to think that people have some core identity from which all actions, thoughts, and beliefs flow. And constructing that heuristic obscures contradictions, complexities. We dismiss too easily, and we don't give enough people credit for simple human individuality. The fascinating, contradictory essence of the everyman is that he isn't every man.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Do I hear a cosmic snicker?
I guess the best way to capture my life at the moment is to describe what I'm about to start. As part of my training for basic and SF, I need to do ruck marches. So, starting this week, that'll be at least 2 3 mile marches in 45 minutes with a 30-lbs pack. By the time I leave for GA, it'll be around 18 miles in 4ish hours in a 50 lbs pack (yeah...).
The thing is, I don't own much of anything. I basically own clothes (which I need clean and unwrinkled for work), my workout stuff (which is a little hard to both carry and wear simultaneously), and books.
The thing is, I don't own much of anything. I basically own clothes (which I need clean and unwrinkled for work), my workout stuff (which is a little hard to both carry and wear simultaneously), and books.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Emporer's Club, Geisha, and You
In reading through the spate of "inside scoops" on high-end prostitution, a figure has cropped up a number of times, specifically, that in as many as 40% of the rendezvouses, no actually sexual contact occurs. What gets even more interesting are the descriptions of these ultra-high tier hookers and that they are operating in effect as a paid mistress, a companion. Especially as these trysts involve repeated meetings and dating, the line between pure sexual object and someone more intimate begins to blur. As I was reading through the above article, it brought to mind nothing quite so much geisha.
I'm not even pretending to be an expert on geisha or prostitutes, but after reading Memoirs, my interest was certainly piqued, and I've flagged geisha as a topic of continual curiosity. A large reason I found geisha culture so intriguing is that it was a relationship substantially more complex than casual prostitution. Just as in any profession, there are copious tiers and classes and, as best I understand it, the lower rungs of geisha were rife with blunt sex-for-money. In those contexts, their appeal was their relative scarcity; even though a only modest income was necessary to purchase a geisha's services, a common workman could rent a prostitute. Their appeal was status, at least at the lower levels. This was a rationale put forth in the WaPo for Spitzer.
But as you start to ascend the caste system, the issues get muddier. High-priced geisha were trained in tea ceremonies, flower arrangement, art, dance, music, conversation, the finer points of sumo, politics, culture, and whatever else their patron might desire. In short, they started less like whores, and more like Whores of Mensa (also, it appears I'm not the first to make that connection). Compare that description to the one given describing the tiers of high-end prostitution, and the explicit mention of their educational attainment, not to mention their highly restricted stables of men.
So, it sounds like we're talking about a companion. For some men that is a more superficial title than for others; it really is just about the sex. But for some, and especially for those in a culture that created and venerated geisha, it wasn't. And just like the articles from last week saying that it turns out teenage boys have more on their minds than sex, so too do men.
I'm not even pretending to be an expert on geisha or prostitutes, but after reading Memoirs, my interest was certainly piqued, and I've flagged geisha as a topic of continual curiosity. A large reason I found geisha culture so intriguing is that it was a relationship substantially more complex than casual prostitution. Just as in any profession, there are copious tiers and classes and, as best I understand it, the lower rungs of geisha were rife with blunt sex-for-money. In those contexts, their appeal was their relative scarcity; even though a only modest income was necessary to purchase a geisha's services, a common workman could rent a prostitute. Their appeal was status, at least at the lower levels. This was a rationale put forth in the WaPo for Spitzer.
But as you start to ascend the caste system, the issues get muddier. High-priced geisha were trained in tea ceremonies, flower arrangement, art, dance, music, conversation, the finer points of sumo, politics, culture, and whatever else their patron might desire. In short, they started less like whores, and more like Whores of Mensa (also, it appears I'm not the first to make that connection). Compare that description to the one given describing the tiers of high-end prostitution, and the explicit mention of their educational attainment, not to mention their highly restricted stables of men.
So, it sounds like we're talking about a companion. For some men that is a more superficial title than for others; it really is just about the sex. But for some, and especially for those in a culture that created and venerated geisha, it wasn't. And just like the articles from last week saying that it turns out teenage boys have more on their minds than sex, so too do men.
Monday, March 10, 2008
With apologies to Mr. Lurhmann
I want to be old enough to see the wonders of the world, and young enough to be wide-eyed as I do.
I want to be old enough to see the horrors of the world, and young enough for them to sear my soul anew each time.
I want to be old enough to feel heart-wrenching suffering, and young enough that I don't have to bleed just to know that I've alive.
I want to be old enough to make a difference, and young enough to think that I actually can.
I want to be old enough to be worldly, experienced and accomplished, and young enough to invent new ways of screwing up daily.
I want to be old enough to have lived a life of adventure, and young enough that that spirit never failed me, even as my body will.
I want to see the sun rise over every continent on the planet, and young enough to wonder where I'll be tomorrow, even if I'm exactly where I was when I went to sleep.
I want to be old enough to have broken my heart many times over, and young enough to be excited about trying again.
I want to be old enough be old enough to love wisely and well, and young enough to be excited every morning when I watch you open your eyes.
I want to be old enough to live my life to the fullest, and young enough that as I do, I laugh until I cry, and cry until I laugh.
I want to be old enough to not begrudge the price of pain, and young enough to live a life of joy.
Being alive is easy. Living is hard.
I want to be old enough to see the horrors of the world, and young enough for them to sear my soul anew each time.
I want to be old enough to feel heart-wrenching suffering, and young enough that I don't have to bleed just to know that I've alive.
I want to be old enough to make a difference, and young enough to think that I actually can.
I want to be old enough to be worldly, experienced and accomplished, and young enough to invent new ways of screwing up daily.
I want to be old enough to have lived a life of adventure, and young enough that that spirit never failed me, even as my body will.
I want to see the sun rise over every continent on the planet, and young enough to wonder where I'll be tomorrow, even if I'm exactly where I was when I went to sleep.
I want to be old enough to have broken my heart many times over, and young enough to be excited about trying again.
I want to be old enough be old enough to love wisely and well, and young enough to be excited every morning when I watch you open your eyes.
I want to be old enough to live my life to the fullest, and young enough that as I do, I laugh until I cry, and cry until I laugh.
I want to be old enough to not begrudge the price of pain, and young enough to live a life of joy.
Being alive is easy. Living is hard.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Tear for Samantha Powers
So, it turns out Samantha Powers, my hope for Obama's foreign policy, has resigned her position with the campaign. To be sure, she wasn't even a whisper for SecState or NSA (as far as I know, at least), but she was certainly a high profile adviser on foreign policy. I have my doubts about Obama's FP credentials and having Powers on the staff went a long way to assuaging those concerns. After A Problem from Hell, I've started tracking down quite a few of her previous writings, and I gotta say, I've developed a bit on a wonk crush on her.
But this... I'm not at all impressed with how Clinton and Co. is handling this either. Yelling at her about "off-the-record" (which was clearly stated in the interview) is just petty and petulant. To me, this has reflected much poorer on Clinton than on Obama, and Power seems to have acted honorably throughout. This, as well as how the Clinton campaign has handled a lot of their attacks on Obama (the talking with dictator's comment from the YouTube debate last July) end up really depressing my opinion of her and her campaign.
As a person and a candidate, she's shown some very interesting sides and has made some very astute comments, but as a politician and as a campaigner, she's gone for the knees in some ugly ways. And when you're trying to steal a youth vote who seems to idolize a candidate whose platform is based on avoiding such personal attacks, who are repulsed by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, and who think Bush's/Rove's tactics in the 2000 primaries were despicable... going after Obama in this way really sounds like a way to cripple your appeal to that group. The backlash is worse than letting the comment out there. It's dumb politics and it's petty. And it couldn't have happened to a better person.
But this... I'm not at all impressed with how Clinton and Co. is handling this either. Yelling at her about "off-the-record" (which was clearly stated in the interview) is just petty and petulant. To me, this has reflected much poorer on Clinton than on Obama, and Power seems to have acted honorably throughout. This, as well as how the Clinton campaign has handled a lot of their attacks on Obama (the talking with dictator's comment from the YouTube debate last July) end up really depressing my opinion of her and her campaign.
As a person and a candidate, she's shown some very interesting sides and has made some very astute comments, but as a politician and as a campaigner, she's gone for the knees in some ugly ways. And when you're trying to steal a youth vote who seems to idolize a candidate whose platform is based on avoiding such personal attacks, who are repulsed by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, and who think Bush's/Rove's tactics in the 2000 primaries were despicable... going after Obama in this way really sounds like a way to cripple your appeal to that group. The backlash is worse than letting the comment out there. It's dumb politics and it's petty. And it couldn't have happened to a better person.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
"You don't strike me as an Army kinda guy..."
The nigh universal reaction to informing people I've signed up for the Army has been "you never really struck me as the Army type". Which confuses me, as a lot of these people (as far as I know) know very few (if any) Army people. So, that leaves me wondering (a) What is "the Army type" and (b) what qualities of mine strike others as ill-suited for the Army (b.2) what is the mismatch people are identifying between the qualities of "the Army type" and me?
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The insecure evangelical
As I was reading yet another article on the single vs. married life style of young adults, I was reminded that a non-insignificant portion of the drive to evangelize stems from insecurity. Indeed, one reason why proselytizers are so fanatical in their chosen course is because they doubt the choices they have made in their own lives. The more people they can convince/browbeat/persuade to follow the same course and to make the same choices, the more acceptable their own choice becomes. There are few faiths more fervent, more evangelical, and more fragile than the faith of a new convert.
Religion is the most obvious example, but it is certainly not the only. The reason I linked the above article is that it highlights so much of the tension between the singles vs. the marrieds, and how each side keeps looking across the fence to see the color of the grass. The gazer will inevitably sniff at the inferior quality on the other side of the grass, inevitably enough they lose the authority to sniff persuasively. The central mentality is that the more people you can convince to follow the same path, likely for the same reasons you did, the safer your choice. Just because you create the bandwagon for everyone to hop on to doesn't make it any less of a bandwagon; the fallacy is the same whether you help others on as when you hop on yourself.
Mea culpa. I've noticed that as I approached my choice to enlist, I become much more vocal about the merits of patriotism and service. I think I've made the right choice, and I stand by it, but I am all too away of the risks, both physically and emotionally, my choice entails. My choices are my own, but when other people make the same choice for the same reasons, it's easier to feel it is a safer decision.
To be sure, some bandwagons, like electricity or showering, are good to be on. But just because someone makes a logical, cogent argument for doing something doesn't mean they are secure in their choices. So my caution is simply thus: the harder someone tries to convince you of something, their show is probably more for their own sake than for yours. If the truth really will set you free, sussurration will be just as moving as shouts from the rooftops. So evaluate the argument, but don't forget to evaluate the arguer.
Religion is the most obvious example, but it is certainly not the only. The reason I linked the above article is that it highlights so much of the tension between the singles vs. the marrieds, and how each side keeps looking across the fence to see the color of the grass. The gazer will inevitably sniff at the inferior quality on the other side of the grass, inevitably enough they lose the authority to sniff persuasively. The central mentality is that the more people you can convince to follow the same path, likely for the same reasons you did, the safer your choice. Just because you create the bandwagon for everyone to hop on to doesn't make it any less of a bandwagon; the fallacy is the same whether you help others on as when you hop on yourself.
Mea culpa. I've noticed that as I approached my choice to enlist, I become much more vocal about the merits of patriotism and service. I think I've made the right choice, and I stand by it, but I am all too away of the risks, both physically and emotionally, my choice entails. My choices are my own, but when other people make the same choice for the same reasons, it's easier to feel it is a safer decision.
To be sure, some bandwagons, like electricity or showering, are good to be on. But just because someone makes a logical, cogent argument for doing something doesn't mean they are secure in their choices. So my caution is simply thus: the harder someone tries to convince you of something, their show is probably more for their own sake than for yours. If the truth really will set you free, sussurration will be just as moving as shouts from the rooftops. So evaluate the argument, but don't forget to evaluate the arguer.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Obesity and the middle class as environmental hazards
So, as a totally random connection, it seems like being obese is better for tax-payers dollars and that the burgeoning middle classes of the third world will ruin the environment. Cheers eh?
Interestingly enough, it appears that if we wanted to target the most expensive group to eliminate their costs of health care as burdens on taxpayers, we should go after octogenarians, not the fat. Despite the number of studies discussing how expensive state-subsidized health care and prevention of obesity is to the tax-payer, it emerges the elderly consume a far greater proportion of the tax pie. In fact, despite the elevated costs of direct treatment associated with obesity, the decrease in life-span ends up saving money (although I don't think the years of unearned wages, i.e. tax revenue, is factored in). It's a good day when we can argue that letting people die of heart failure is their patriotic duty to help balance the budget and cut profligate spending, no?
Likewise, the per capita costs of sustaining a middle class on standards of living on par with the US and Europe would obliterate the environment. These effects extend beyond just the direct exhaust of cars (although the Tata's "People Car" will do a great job in making it cheaper and easier for everyone to pollute... isn't development great?) to include food production or oil. Even if we accept their exists sufficient carrying capacity of the globe to sustain the current population, I seriously doubt (although I don't have the stats to back this up) that the globe has a carrying capacity to sustain the current population at least middle class standards. Issues like the price of foodstuffs and potable water is already causing social upheavals and violent conflict.
So the confluence between these two articles is that in two actions more or less regarded as indisputably good, i.e. living healthier and living better quality lives, are bad for you, your friends, and society. Living longer and healthier is more expensive than living lives that are short, brutish and ugly.
But to give this post a point more interesting than just being cavalier, we need to seriously question assumptions, both about living longer and about living better. If you push your life expectancy back from 75 to 95 by eating better and exercising more and spend the last 10 years going in and out of hospitals fighting cancer, diabetes, and mental degeneration, does your quality of life improve and do you account for the tab you ask your friends, family and society to pick up on your behalf? Then again, maybe we just need to learn that paying the $200 billion to $1 trillion annually to help people live healthier lives might just be the cost of doing business in a modern world.
Whereas if the goal of development is really to put a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot, then all of us, rich and poor, might need to learn how to make do with a smaller car and a scrawnier chicken... hopefully a car that'll get us to work and a chicken sufficiently healthy to feed us; divided too many ways, no one "wins". And if national and global economic inequality is causing such social angst and conflict, and if the inequality is not reconcilable by giving everyone a seat at the adult's table, then maybe the price of international peace and stability between the haves and have-nots is sticking everyone at the kiddie's table. And before you start figuring out how fewer material possessions that might entail, remember the price could very well include things like health care and years of life expectancy. You might be able to give up the new H3, but how attached are you to your 80th birthday?
Interestingly enough, it appears that if we wanted to target the most expensive group to eliminate their costs of health care as burdens on taxpayers, we should go after octogenarians, not the fat. Despite the number of studies discussing how expensive state-subsidized health care and prevention of obesity is to the tax-payer, it emerges the elderly consume a far greater proportion of the tax pie. In fact, despite the elevated costs of direct treatment associated with obesity, the decrease in life-span ends up saving money (although I don't think the years of unearned wages, i.e. tax revenue, is factored in). It's a good day when we can argue that letting people die of heart failure is their patriotic duty to help balance the budget and cut profligate spending, no?
Likewise, the per capita costs of sustaining a middle class on standards of living on par with the US and Europe would obliterate the environment. These effects extend beyond just the direct exhaust of cars (although the Tata's "People Car" will do a great job in making it cheaper and easier for everyone to pollute... isn't development great?) to include food production or oil. Even if we accept their exists sufficient carrying capacity of the globe to sustain the current population, I seriously doubt (although I don't have the stats to back this up) that the globe has a carrying capacity to sustain the current population at least middle class standards. Issues like the price of foodstuffs and potable water is already causing social upheavals and violent conflict.
So the confluence between these two articles is that in two actions more or less regarded as indisputably good, i.e. living healthier and living better quality lives, are bad for you, your friends, and society. Living longer and healthier is more expensive than living lives that are short, brutish and ugly.
But to give this post a point more interesting than just being cavalier, we need to seriously question assumptions, both about living longer and about living better. If you push your life expectancy back from 75 to 95 by eating better and exercising more and spend the last 10 years going in and out of hospitals fighting cancer, diabetes, and mental degeneration, does your quality of life improve and do you account for the tab you ask your friends, family and society to pick up on your behalf? Then again, maybe we just need to learn that paying the $200 billion to $1 trillion annually to help people live healthier lives might just be the cost of doing business in a modern world.
Whereas if the goal of development is really to put a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot, then all of us, rich and poor, might need to learn how to make do with a smaller car and a scrawnier chicken... hopefully a car that'll get us to work and a chicken sufficiently healthy to feed us; divided too many ways, no one "wins". And if national and global economic inequality is causing such social angst and conflict, and if the inequality is not reconcilable by giving everyone a seat at the adult's table, then maybe the price of international peace and stability between the haves and have-nots is sticking everyone at the kiddie's table. And before you start figuring out how fewer material possessions that might entail, remember the price could very well include things like health care and years of life expectancy. You might be able to give up the new H3, but how attached are you to your 80th birthday?
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
CNN: News Porn
I've been meaning to write about how CNN (and CNN.com especially) for a while, but this story about a kitten taken surfing pushed my last button. It's a nice and benign enough story in it's own right, and who doesn't love kittens? Especially wet and clearly unhappy kittens taken on a weird stunt that was oddly filmed on high quality equipment (whether commercial or public, I don't know, but this clearly wasn't some guy with his cell phone filming this). But when we just had giant primaries (covered above), a war in Iraq (no stories), at least three prominent African disintegrations (no stories), Pakistan spiraling dangerously (nothing), global warming (silence), more comments from the director of national intelligence and the director of the CIA about waterboarding (*crickets*) and CNN wants to talk to us about Heath Ledger (who apparently was consuming a personal pharmacy) and surfing cats, there is no better way to frame CNN than as news porn. The most trusted name is journalism has become a tabloid. They even have articles on why bad kissers don't get action (shocker!).
For years now, it's been my personal metric that at any given time, CNN.com will have around 10 prominent stories as their headline links. Of these links, 3-5 will be entertainment related or titillating. At time of writing: Ledger's autopsy; Holloway's dad being pissed about a disrespectful laugh (I consider myself a news junky and I had to google this one); an article about Conan, Stewart and Colbert's antics during the writer's strike; a defendant hitting their lawyer in court; and the stupid surfing cat. Any death is tragic, but this type of coverage from an ostensibly serious "paper" of record is just shameful.
But, in their defense, they're only responding to what people click on and read. Looking at the lists of "most read" articles on CNN or Newsweek (#1: 6 Gym Health Hazards) or Time and you'll almost always see 2-3 of the top 5 places taken by the same ilk. Funny/amusing stories make reading the paper fun, rather than just reading about tragedy after tragedy, but they need to be justified with thoughtful, legitimate journalism if one wants to treated more seriously than gossip rags or blogs. The people are saying what they want, and one can't really fault the media for giving them what they want. But one can fault them for pandering, and for not striving to elevate the public discourse. UNHAPPY SURFING CATS ARE NOT NEWS!!! ahem.
For years now, it's been my personal metric that at any given time, CNN.com will have around 10 prominent stories as their headline links. Of these links, 3-5 will be entertainment related or titillating. At time of writing: Ledger's autopsy; Holloway's dad being pissed about a disrespectful laugh (I consider myself a news junky and I had to google this one); an article about Conan, Stewart and Colbert's antics during the writer's strike; a defendant hitting their lawyer in court; and the stupid surfing cat. Any death is tragic, but this type of coverage from an ostensibly serious "paper" of record is just shameful.
But, in their defense, they're only responding to what people click on and read. Looking at the lists of "most read" articles on CNN or Newsweek (#1: 6 Gym Health Hazards) or Time and you'll almost always see 2-3 of the top 5 places taken by the same ilk. Funny/amusing stories make reading the paper fun, rather than just reading about tragedy after tragedy, but they need to be justified with thoughtful, legitimate journalism if one wants to treated more seriously than gossip rags or blogs. The people are saying what they want, and one can't really fault the media for giving them what they want. But one can fault them for pandering, and for not striving to elevate the public discourse. UNHAPPY SURFING CATS ARE NOT NEWS!!! ahem.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Truth, Justice, and... Nazis?
So it turns out the Swedes have expelled a student from their premier medical school because (a) he's a Nazi (or at least was one), and (b) he is a convicted murderer, who served six years in prison and was currently serving on parole. Ever since a friend of mine from high school was convicted, I've always been interested about issues of rehabilitation and reincorporation into society. Ostensibly, our system dictates that upon completion of serving a sentence, the individual is considered to have repaid their debt to society, no? Even when we sentence serial murders to 934 years in prison, we maintain an implicit assumption that if they were capable of living that long, they would have paid their due. On those grounds, it would say that, having served his time, and abiding by the terms of his parole murder should not disqualify him from becoming a doctor.
If we're going to assume that even after serving a prison sentence he is still unfit to re-enter society, then that begs two questions: (a) for sufficiently egregious crimes, like murder (let's say first degree) or rape, if we assume they will always be a burden to society in prison and a threat outside, it seems like we could make a strong case for capital punishment. Even though we hope he won't commit another murder, it's better to take the life of one definitely dangerous/unsavory/guilty party than to risk the lives of, at least, another innocent, especially when our lack of forgiveness and reintegration is predicated upon a concern that the probability of a repeat is a better than even chance. Self-defense, both individually and socially, demands no less. So, to say he should not be a doctor because he might kill again is an argument for why we should kill him first, and covers the instances where the risk/fear/likelihood of him killing again are better than even.
This also leads to situations where we think he won't kill again, but we aren't convinced he'll never kill, i.e. we think something like "his murder was really inflamed passions and drinking" (2nd degree or manslaughter). At this point, we are more concerned about issues of justice than self-preservation, which begs the second question (b): if we aren't going to consider serving prison sentences sufficient to re-integrate criminals into society then why lock them away at all? Yes, we say it is to punish the offender and to give them a taste of what they're missing, but that's retributive justice, and flawed justice at that. In theory, retributive justice is to return upon the criminal punishment commensurate to the crime they committed. An-eye-for-an-eye is harsh, but it isn't a-life-for-an-eye. It must be proportional, otherwise the state incurs a debt in reverse. So if we're sending people to prison to compensate for the crime they committed, then retributive justice argues they've paid their dues and they should come back. Our failure to reintegrate them therefore implies either (1) the prison sentence was insufficient if they get out and still have to pay off a public debt by wearing their scarlet letter (meaning our Nazi friend should be a doctor, he just needs more years behind bars first, but how many?), or (2) sending them to prison was never about justice, it was about revenge, hardly an activity suited to a just or advanced civilization, and we want to hound our Nazi for the rest of his life. So if we're left with the idea that our failure to reintegrate them into society means the taxpayers wasted huge sums of money keeping them in prison in the first place (our half measure was worse than no measure) without realizing justice, or we're petty and/or cruel.
My overall point is this: what does our disinclination about accepting this man say about us, about our society, and about our glass house?
If we're going to assume that even after serving a prison sentence he is still unfit to re-enter society, then that begs two questions: (a) for sufficiently egregious crimes, like murder (let's say first degree) or rape, if we assume they will always be a burden to society in prison and a threat outside, it seems like we could make a strong case for capital punishment. Even though we hope he won't commit another murder, it's better to take the life of one definitely dangerous/unsavory/guilty party than to risk the lives of, at least, another innocent, especially when our lack of forgiveness and reintegration is predicated upon a concern that the probability of a repeat is a better than even chance. Self-defense, both individually and socially, demands no less. So, to say he should not be a doctor because he might kill again is an argument for why we should kill him first, and covers the instances where the risk/fear/likelihood of him killing again are better than even.
This also leads to situations where we think he won't kill again, but we aren't convinced he'll never kill, i.e. we think something like "his murder was really inflamed passions and drinking" (2nd degree or manslaughter). At this point, we are more concerned about issues of justice than self-preservation, which begs the second question (b): if we aren't going to consider serving prison sentences sufficient to re-integrate criminals into society then why lock them away at all? Yes, we say it is to punish the offender and to give them a taste of what they're missing, but that's retributive justice, and flawed justice at that. In theory, retributive justice is to return upon the criminal punishment commensurate to the crime they committed. An-eye-for-an-eye is harsh, but it isn't a-life-for-an-eye. It must be proportional, otherwise the state incurs a debt in reverse. So if we're sending people to prison to compensate for the crime they committed, then retributive justice argues they've paid their dues and they should come back. Our failure to reintegrate them therefore implies either (1) the prison sentence was insufficient if they get out and still have to pay off a public debt by wearing their scarlet letter (meaning our Nazi friend should be a doctor, he just needs more years behind bars first, but how many?), or (2) sending them to prison was never about justice, it was about revenge, hardly an activity suited to a just or advanced civilization, and we want to hound our Nazi for the rest of his life. So if we're left with the idea that our failure to reintegrate them into society means the taxpayers wasted huge sums of money keeping them in prison in the first place (our half measure was worse than no measure) without realizing justice, or we're petty and/or cruel.
My overall point is this: what does our disinclination about accepting this man say about us, about our society, and about our glass house?
Friday, January 18, 2008
Sex, love, the pill and divorce
Somehow, this week has had a fascinating one for sex. First, we had a two-part series at Slate with an economists take on incarceration rates, female education, the pill, and divorce; the second the cover piece of Time discussing the biology and neurochemistry of dating and sex. Both articles are fascinating reads (and I'm essentially going to summarize the relevant points, for you lazy readers), but the interesting similarity between the two is the argument (/implication) that the pill bears considerable responsibility for the rising rates of divorce.
For the economist of Slate, the process works like this: Women before the pill were subject to the whims of getting pregnant. Once you control that variable in a woman's life, suddenly a woman can pursue education, jobs, and careers that involve significant preparatory training or schooling, law, for example. (A fascinating statistic is the notation that each year a woman delays before her first pregnancy raises her lifetime earnings by 10%.)
The flip side is a feedback cycle the author notes that where "no fault" divorce became established, women needed to retain employability in case their husband ditched them. But because they were employable, they were also capable of ditching their lousy, cheap-ass husband and striking out on her own. "No fault" divorce on it's own couldn't have enabled to rates of divorces, after all, what's the point of a girl leaving a bad marriage if she can't fend for herself because she's uneducated or doesn't have enough training for a job to take care of her and the kids? Only when women were sufficiently empowered by the training, education and experience afforded to them by the pill could they afford to walk out the door.
Framed in this way, the high rates of divorce aren't an erosion of social values, they're natural adjustments in people's lives as they realize they didn't quite know who or what they were getting involved in. It gets mentioned in passing divorcees are, in general, happier a year than widowers or widows; a statistic that certainly reinforces divorce as a correction. Even so, the relationship between "no fault" divorce and an population of educated, experienced and ambitious women appears to be a natural elevation of divorce.
The relevance of that second article addresses how well women select their mates. As it turns out, women on the pill have a fairly bad track record for selecting genetically compatible mates. Some of the genes responsible for controlling the immune system are known as major histocompatibility complex (MHC). These genes are primarily responsible for controlling tissue rejection, so if your mate's genes are too similar to yours, your babies are self-aborted in the womb. Among their many other traits, women can smell the genes (and taste, via kissing; fun and educational!), meaning women can subconsciously evaluate a prospective mate's compatibility and therefore the likelihood a child would be carried to term. Except that women on the pill can't. The result is women coming off the pill to have children and suddenly correctly reading all the signals they should have been reading ages ago. They realize their mate sucks (genetically speaking) and want to move on to other prospects, i.e. divorce.
To finally interject my own voice into all of this, it all suggests that as things currently stand, and while divorce is certainly not inevitable, divorce is a factor that must accepted in modern relationships. For better or for worse, the narrative of our life's romantic arc is again corrupted. Just as we aren't really sure what dating is, or how it's different than hooking up, we can no longer be sure that our "true" love will be with us 'til death do us part. I'm certainly not suggesting this is the unavoidable outcome of dating; I'm no where close to that nihilistic. Instead I'm simply saying that the idea of permanent self-actualization through your spouse doesn't quite seem so self-evident either.
If we approach marriage as a job, as the author of the Slate article argues, then can we really expect anything different from our generation? If we're impermanent enough to take 8-10 jobs over the course of our professional career, do we really have grounds to be all that shocked or surprised over a few marriages?
For the economist of Slate, the process works like this: Women before the pill were subject to the whims of getting pregnant. Once you control that variable in a woman's life, suddenly a woman can pursue education, jobs, and careers that involve significant preparatory training or schooling, law, for example. (A fascinating statistic is the notation that each year a woman delays before her first pregnancy raises her lifetime earnings by 10%.)
The flip side is a feedback cycle the author notes that where "no fault" divorce became established, women needed to retain employability in case their husband ditched them. But because they were employable, they were also capable of ditching their lousy, cheap-ass husband and striking out on her own. "No fault" divorce on it's own couldn't have enabled to rates of divorces, after all, what's the point of a girl leaving a bad marriage if she can't fend for herself because she's uneducated or doesn't have enough training for a job to take care of her and the kids? Only when women were sufficiently empowered by the training, education and experience afforded to them by the pill could they afford to walk out the door.
Framed in this way, the high rates of divorce aren't an erosion of social values, they're natural adjustments in people's lives as they realize they didn't quite know who or what they were getting involved in. It gets mentioned in passing divorcees are, in general, happier a year than widowers or widows; a statistic that certainly reinforces divorce as a correction. Even so, the relationship between "no fault" divorce and an population of educated, experienced and ambitious women appears to be a natural elevation of divorce.
The relevance of that second article addresses how well women select their mates. As it turns out, women on the pill have a fairly bad track record for selecting genetically compatible mates. Some of the genes responsible for controlling the immune system are known as major histocompatibility complex (MHC). These genes are primarily responsible for controlling tissue rejection, so if your mate's genes are too similar to yours, your babies are self-aborted in the womb. Among their many other traits, women can smell the genes (and taste, via kissing; fun and educational!), meaning women can subconsciously evaluate a prospective mate's compatibility and therefore the likelihood a child would be carried to term. Except that women on the pill can't. The result is women coming off the pill to have children and suddenly correctly reading all the signals they should have been reading ages ago. They realize their mate sucks (genetically speaking) and want to move on to other prospects, i.e. divorce.
To finally interject my own voice into all of this, it all suggests that as things currently stand, and while divorce is certainly not inevitable, divorce is a factor that must accepted in modern relationships. For better or for worse, the narrative of our life's romantic arc is again corrupted. Just as we aren't really sure what dating is, or how it's different than hooking up, we can no longer be sure that our "true" love will be with us 'til death do us part. I'm certainly not suggesting this is the unavoidable outcome of dating; I'm no where close to that nihilistic. Instead I'm simply saying that the idea of permanent self-actualization through your spouse doesn't quite seem so self-evident either.
If we approach marriage as a job, as the author of the Slate article argues, then can we really expect anything different from our generation? If we're impermanent enough to take 8-10 jobs over the course of our professional career, do we really have grounds to be all that shocked or surprised over a few marriages?
Friday, January 11, 2008
What is the triumph of feminism?
In the past week or so, there have been a spate of articles amping the discussion of sexism and feminism in the presidential race, from Gloria Stienem's op-ed Women are Never Frontrunners, replies to the same, discussion of Hillary's sniffle, disappointment at the same, and discussion of the age divide on how feminism is framed. All of which leads me to wonder about the present state of feminism and how we construct gendered narratives. To put it this way, would the triumph of feminism be the election of a woman to the most powerful office in the world, or the defeat of a woman on the basis of her record?
For me, I would argue the second. The idea of electing a woman with an ostensibly inferior record appears to be as much about punishing patriarchy as about elevating women, and while that might be nice symbolically, it comes at the cost of leadership and competence to the highest office of our government, to make no mention of restarting a cycle of inequality, not ending injustices. So unless the differences in record are slight enough that the opportunity cost to America is negligible, it seems as though we empower one woman at the expense of the nation, despite the symbol we create for other women.
Rather, a better symbol would be justly fair treatment of a women on the basis on the pragmatic, not the biases of sexism. If we can say a woman lost the vote because she was less competent that her opponent, and not because she was a woman, then it seems as though we've progressed. We will have entered a place where, while we acknowledge her femininity, we are more concerned with her efficacy than her gender.
Of course, her gender cannot be neatly parsed away from her competence. Two issues immediately spring to mind that would explicitly mandate her gender to be a core question of her competency: the argument that women would be kind, gentler, and more collaborative; and the ways in which others would respond to her, such as Arabic leaders. There are myriad more subsurface issues here, but in the end, I think feminism can claim a purer victory to have a woman legitimately lose than to have one illegitimately win. Of course, the purest of all would be a legitimate victory, but that doesn't give us many chances to explore conflicting values, now does it?
For me, I would argue the second. The idea of electing a woman with an ostensibly inferior record appears to be as much about punishing patriarchy as about elevating women, and while that might be nice symbolically, it comes at the cost of leadership and competence to the highest office of our government, to make no mention of restarting a cycle of inequality, not ending injustices. So unless the differences in record are slight enough that the opportunity cost to America is negligible, it seems as though we empower one woman at the expense of the nation, despite the symbol we create for other women.
Rather, a better symbol would be justly fair treatment of a women on the basis on the pragmatic, not the biases of sexism. If we can say a woman lost the vote because she was less competent that her opponent, and not because she was a woman, then it seems as though we've progressed. We will have entered a place where, while we acknowledge her femininity, we are more concerned with her efficacy than her gender.
Of course, her gender cannot be neatly parsed away from her competence. Two issues immediately spring to mind that would explicitly mandate her gender to be a core question of her competency: the argument that women would be kind, gentler, and more collaborative; and the ways in which others would respond to her, such as Arabic leaders. There are myriad more subsurface issues here, but in the end, I think feminism can claim a purer victory to have a woman legitimately lose than to have one illegitimately win. Of course, the purest of all would be a legitimate victory, but that doesn't give us many chances to explore conflicting values, now does it?
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