Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize! Conservatives bust a gasket...

...and some liberals discover, suddenly, that they don’t like the Nobel Peace Prize.

Okay, so I think that the Nobel Committee made an interesting choice in choosing President Obama. It might even be fair to say that they made a premature and, from a domestic political point of view, bad choice (because of the downstream political implications not because of some inherent unworthiness of Obama). However, as I think about this award I begin to think that, perhaps, it is more understandable than it might seem at first blush. Now, I admit, my first blush thought was “why?” but then I thought a little more deeply about it as the day went on. Looking at America from the outside, which the Nobel Committee is doing, Barack Obama has already accomplished a couple of measures of astounding courage. Firstly, he went to Egypt and gave a speech where he claimed, right out front, that America was not the enemy of Islam. Let’s be real about current-day American politics, that took serious cast-iron cajones to do. Sure, sitting here in Portland, OR it seems like an everyday thing to say “members of my own family practice Islam” but while Portland is an American city, America is not Portland. There are places, many of them only a minutes drive from Portland, where saying “members of my own family practice Islam” is tantamount to saying “and I cheered as the planes crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon”. That alone took courage. Barack Obama has, in something less than a year, begun the rehabilitation of America’s image abroad. Secondly, Barack Obama’s election is a singular event in world history. It may not have occurred to people here but this is the first time in world history that a majority white nation (meaning European or its spin-offs) has ever been headed by a non-white person.

Now, I will admit that some of the critique of Obama--that he has not spun-down the Iraq or Afghanistan wars in six months is somewhat justified but only just barely. I recognize that, as liberals and progressives, we are not used to thinking about military matters beyond the knee-jerk, reflexive “military = bad” mantra. However, it may well be that, in fact, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars cannot be spun down too much faster than they are and I am not entirely convinced that spinning down the Afghanistan war is the right thing to do. Certainly we cannot spin down the Iraq war tomorrow. Or next week. I would be pleased if our forces were largely out of that country by the Summer of 2011. Wars are complicated endeavors and, as much as we might not like to think in these terms as liberals, there are both tactical and strategic considerations that our war-planners must take into account. They must do so. It’s what we pay them for.

The Afghanistan war is a bit more complicated. On the one hand, I know enough history to recognize that Afghanistan is proof of Vincini’s (from the Princess Bride) Dictum: Never get involved in a land-war in Asia! It is the place where empires go to learn humility. On the other hand, whether we like it or not, we now do have a strategic interest in the region. That strategic interest is, Pakistan. It is not in our strategic interests for Pakistan to go the way of Afghanistan circa 1999. It simply isn’t. Iraq doesn’t have nuclear weapons. Iran probably doesn’t have them. Pakistan definitely does. We know this. The Taliban know this. Al Qaeda knows this and, most sobering, India knows this. India, by the way, also has nuclear weapons so it is in the best interest of all parties concerned for there to be a very stable region between Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. So we are torn in two different directions. On the one hand, we don’t want to occupy Afghanistan. The Afghanis don’t want us there. And we know, because we watched the Soviets learn humility in these same mountains, that this is a lesson we would just as soon learn vicariously than by the blood of young men and women.

I have to take a moment to criticize my own political faction for a moment here. It is inexcusable for so many progressives who are on the right side of the cause of peace to be so dangerously naive about geopolitics and war. Yes, dangerously naive. We are reflexive in our opposition without thought. We do not, in the main, bother ourselves with considerations like strategic interests or tactical necessity. If we are going to oppose war, we should bother ourselves to understand, at some level, that which we oppose. I think, however, that some of our opposition is, again, merely reflexive and not necessarily principled. By this I mean that we are opposed to America making war. We are opposed to the West making war. We are opposed to Israel making war. But we are not opposed to, say, Palestine making war. I wonder how many progressives would howl and scream if China, say, invaded Taiwan (not Tibet) without provocation. How many would protest if China invaded, say, Iran? Why do I think that any outcry would be muted if present at all? Before you flame me, gentle reader, ask yourself why you are opposed to the Afghanistan war? (The Iraq war is a different situation because it was clearly not justified by any strategic or tactical imperative and so opposition to it is entirely justified.)

All of this to say that while I’m not sure that Obama is doing the right thing in Afghanistan, I’m willing to admit that he might not be doing the wrong thing. What if he is? Would we, as progressives, know? Would we care? One commentator I read on HuffPo observed that Obama didn’t deserve the Nobel prize because the United States maintains a large nuclear arsenal. Let us say, for sake of argument that we could destroy our nuclear arsenal in less than a year (we couldn’t) would it even be an intelligent thing to do? I would argue that it might not be. I would like to see us seriously draw down our nuclear arsenal and I would like to see the rest of the world agree to go to a zero-nuke state in my lifetime. I doubt that is going to happen. (And even if we did, the same people who are upset that we have them would become instantly upset at any plan conceived to dispose of them because of the wastes--at which point you have to make a choice. This is, by the way, what I mean when I talk about reflexive anti-Americanism.)

So, does Obama deserve a Nobel? Yes and no. As I said at the beginning of this essay, I think it is premature and that it creates a domestic headache that I’m willing to bet that David Axelrod would just as soon not have to bother with. On the other hand, I hope that this creates more pressure on Obama to rise to the occasion. He has been bestowed with the laurels of greatness. It is now up to him to live up to the great vote of confidence he has been given in the form of this honor.

Now, having said enough about progressive reaction to this news, let me express my utter joy and glee that conservatives are busting a gut over this. Every time the conservatives think “okay, now we’ve got him!” events intervene and change the dynamics on them. Last week conservatives were glorying in “world rejects Obama” because Rio got the 2016 Olympics. But now, they can’t argue that the world shares their view of Obama. In fact, the two groups they find themselves in bed with are two groups that they loathe---international peace activists (some) and Al Qaeda. You just can’t buy that kind of entertainment! As they usually do with all things Obama, conservatives are over-reacting and, once again, overreaching. Our President just won the most prestigious award you can be given and they hate it. It’s the little things that make life sweet.

HuffPo commenters bring the crazy to LCROSS

So, tomorrow, at 4:30 AM PST the LCROSS satellite will impact the Moon. (I’ll be up with my telescope to watch should be GREAT viewing conditions) Below is just one of the more sane comments posted on the web site (yes, this was one of the more sane ones). The scientific ignorance on display is absolutely breathtaking.

Bomb the moon? Are we insane? Are we space cowboys now? Why is everything we do to be bomb?
The moon shares a delicate etheric web with earth, which is why she controls the ebb and flow of tides, the menstrual cycle in women, enhances growth at night, responsible for gravity, and excites passion to poetry when gaze at. Bomb the moon? How about Bomb NASA! and save trillions of dollars of taxpayers money to be use to pay off our debt, help create universal healthcare, stimulate economic growth, and a dozen other matters of national urgency. NASA is not necessary anymore. It is outmoded, outdated, and without any real purpose.

Here are the numbers my colleague, Richard and I worked up:

   73459000000000000000000 kg  (Moon)
                      2366 kg  (Maximum mass of LCROSS Centaur Impactor)

                      3000 kg  (Hummer H2)
                         0.00000000000000009662532841448 kg (the "bug")

Mass of an average bacterium: 1 picogram. Weight of the "bug" above: 0.09662532841448 picogram.

So... if 1/10th of a bacterium hits the windshield of a Hummer, does it swerve?


Part 2:

So, I got up at 4:00AM (ouch!) and took my telescope out in the backyard on the hopes of being able to see the impact and the plume. Unfortunately, because I’m in Portland, it became overcast about 4;25 so I wan’t able to resolve much of anything. Frustrated, I went back inside to watch it on NASA TV which turned out to be anti-climatic. In my hopeful naivete that intellectual honesty is not just two, completely unrelated words in the dictionary, I went back to HuffPo to see what, if anything, the doomsayers were saying on the subject. Needless to say, my hope that someone anyone might have the courage to say “well, guess I was wrong” was ill-founded.

One person, SUSANINCOLUMBIA, posted a heartfelt and completely wrong-headed lament stating that she would “never be able to look at the moon in the same way”. Another poster, posted that “even though there was no reaction yet” there was sure to be one because “for every action there is a reaction”. The irony of her invocation of Newton’s Third Law was, apparently, entirely lost on her. I attempted to explain that there had been a reaction, which was the debris plume ejected from the lunar surface, and that this was the very reaction that NASA and every scientifically literate poster (all 9 or 10 of us) on that thread had predicted there would be.

At this point I began to despair. Not because the Moon would have its revenge in some vague, unspecified manner, but because I had believed that after the Bush administration and the reign of the non-reality based conservatives, the Progressives had ‘gotten it’ and decided to be the reality-based political faction in America. HuffPo has convinced me that, in fact, reality has no political constituency in America. These same people, who I have no doubt express frustration that conservatives reject the science of climate change for no scientifically adequate reason completely ignore the math and the physics of the LCROSS mission. Instead of ‘being humble before the data’ (which is readily available) they instead go on about vague prophecies of doom that will befall humanity or, just as stupidly, they draw a distinction between a meteorite hitting the Moon and a satellite hitting it as if the physics of those two events are fundamentally different, governed by different laws.

At one point, I had an epiphany that some of the opposition was the reflexive anti-Americanism that conservatives so often accuse liberals and progressives of indulging in. I began to muse upon the question of “what would the reaction be if it had been, say, India or Pakistan or China or Brazil?” I imagine that there would have been nary a peep or worry but because it was Americans this action had to be opposed. Why? Because it was, laughably, militaristic. That’s right, gentle reader, a physics experiment no more different, really, than dropping a stone into a lake observe the water ejected was an act of aggression. It made me embarrassed to be a Progressive, quite honestly.

I have known, for quite some time now, that Americans are scientifically illiterate but every time I think I have a grasp on the breadth and depth of the problem, something like this happens and I realize that we are in much more dire straits than I had imagined we could be.

To reiterate, opposition to the LCROSS mission falls into the falling species

• The Moon will be knocked out of its orbital position.
• It will throw off “the balance of the Universe” or the tides or gravity or women’s menstrual cycles or astrology.
• It is an ‘act of aggression against the beautiful moon, the only one we have’.
• It will lead to “Wal-Mart and Disneyland on the Moon” (SUSANINCOLUMBIA again)
• The militarization of the moon (Einstein10--on whom more later)
• “A reaction and it will be bad”
• It will throw the moon off by ten or twenty feet and this will affect the tides (Einstein10 again)
• We have no right to mess up the pristine moon until we learn how not to mess up the Earth (The typical anti-space program, anti-science mantra of the scientifically ignorant.)
• The Americans are doing it therefore it is bad.

The problem with all of those arguments is that not a single one of them is specific. In fact, to call them vague is to give them altogether too much credit for being coherent thoughts at all! What’s more, they are all based on pure emotionalism. Not emotion but emotionalism. By that I mean that they are driven not by any facts carefully considered but merely by “I don’t like this”. All of the reasons are, in point of fact, backfill to attempt to justify a position that is entirely unjustifiable.

One poster even invoked the ‘hollow moon’ idea. Yes, the purpose of the mission isn’t what NASA stated it was but to determine if the Moon is hollow. Naturally, he invoked the ‘Great Scientific Conspiracy’ to cover up the truth. Now, what I find fascinating about this little gem is that it perfectly illustrates one of the problems with anti-science in almost all of its forms. On the one hand, scientists are, if anti-scientists are to be believed, a bunch of incompetent boobs stumbling about trying to find new and ever more expensive ways to piss of Nature. On the other hand, they are fiendishly secretive and capable of maintaining such perfect operational security that the NSA, KGB and Mossad can only look upon their opacity with awe, envy and wonder. It would appear that the scientific community can carry on conspiracies of such fiendish and byzantine nature that only the most dedicated can even suss them out or understand their convolutions. Yet, these same scientists can’t seem to get correct the mass of the moon, or explain its tidal locking, or the flight of bumblebees, or the evolution of species. One would think that their utter incompetence would preclude being able to maintain such incredible levels of secrecy but apparently not.

Then there was Einstein10 who does what anti-science proponents do so much, namely invoke the name of a Great Scientist, almost always Einstein and then quote him, almost always out of context, from his letters or from “Ideas and Opinions”. All this while being almost entirely unaware of or interested in his prodigious body of scientific work or the implications thereof. Einstein10 was one such poster on HuffPo. When challenged, he would quote Einstein at us but when challenged to provide a single prediction of specific doom OR to even give a description of either Special or General Relativity in his own words, he would either disappear or simply quote more Einstein. It is insulting to the memory of a truly great scientist to treat him this way in the name of “respect” but there’s not much that can be done about disrespect for the memory of the dead.

I will say that the last 36 hours on HuffPo has given me a much better understanding of why PZ Meyers of Pharyngula and Steven Novella of the New England Skeptics Society are encouraging scientists and scientifically literate people to boycott Huffington Post. In-between the decidedly pro-woo spin given to articles related to medicine and health and the pervasive anti-science culture there, I imagine that both Drs. Meyers and Novella are trying to keep a generation of scientists from going to an early grave, either from repeated blunt-force trauma to the head from banging on the desk or from aneurisms vessels brought on by sudden spikes in blood pressure.

Oh and although I doubt anyone reading my blog needs to be told this, the Moon does not cause gravity. Gravity is caused by the warping of space-time by mass. The Moon and the Earth are bound to one another because of their gravitational masses, and both were created by gravity and held together by gravity but the Moon does not cause gravity here on Earth and the Earth does not cause gravity on the Moon.

Stay rational.

Some things never change

Saw this at The Daily Dish and thought to spread the meme around.

One cannot help but notice the familiar theme of “that which I disagree with is communism” and “the person I disagree with is the anti-christ”. Can we just have a moratorium on the political use of the words ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ in this country until such time as our educational system gets around to teaching Americans that A> words have meaning and B> those meanings actually count for something.

If you don’t know what socialism is, then you shouldn’t be calling something you disagree with socialist. Because socialist isn’t a synonym for “I don’t like it”. The same applies for communism.

Living through history

“Where were you when you heard...” is the question of our time. Depending upon the generation you belong to, those moments may be different. For my parents, the seminal events are the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, JFK being shot, MLK being shot and killed in Memphis and men landing on the Moon. For my generation, it was the Challenger exploding, Reagan being shot, John Lennon being shot, the September 11 attacks and now, the election of the first non-white person as President of the United States. So much of the history we remember, those ‘where were you when’ moments, are negatives. Looking at the list above, all but two of them are really negative events. But those two! There are two things this nation has done in my lifetime that we, all of us, can be unrestrainedly proud of--landing on the Moon and electing a black man named Barack Obama to the highest office in the land. We have no reason to be ashamed of the Moon landing and even if you didn’t vote for Obama, one has to admit that this bursting through is an event that not only did many of us not imagine seeing in our lifetime but this event heralds a new day in race relations. I’m nowhere near naive enough to believe that this means that America is ‘post-racial’ or that we have somehow magically slain racism once and for all. This new day that has dawned is not THAT day. What has changed is that four-fold; how whites see black people, how black people see ourselves, how blacks are seen by foreigners and how America, as a whole, is seen by foreigners. The way whites will look at black people has forever changed. The President is a kind of temporary embodiment of the nation, in a similar psychological way that a king or queen was back when people really believed in the divine right of kings. That a majority white nation elected a black man to be that embodiment is a powerful statement about how far we have come. What’s even more amazing is that Obama won in the face of, perhaps, the most racially charged Presidential campaign since Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat back in 1948! How black people see ourselves will also undergo transformation. A generation (let’s hope) is going to grow up and in their formative years will have seen a black President. The “Leader of the Free World” or “The Most Powerful Man in the World” now looks a bit like me. Young black children will now know that along with black doctors, black lawyers, black astronauts there is one more job, that most prestigious of all American jobs, that they can aspire to. What’s more important is that Obama shows a path for negotiating the minefields of race. Most of the time, as far as I read him, he moves through the world as if his race were not going to be an issue. When it becomes an issue, as it inevitably will, he addresses it. He does not pretend that it is not an issue but neither does he make it the core of how he projects himself into the world. It is a method and balance that I understand and hope that I, myself, manage to achieve on a more-or-less consistent basis. He pays proper homage and respect to those who came before him, while not behaving as if nothing has changed. Things have changed. In 1967, the year of my birth, there was NO WAY a black man was going to be elected President. Certainly not a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, writing on the Friday before the election related the following story: (requires free login) The other day I had a conversation with a Beijing friend and I mentioned that Barack Obama was leading in the presidential race: She: Obama? But he’s the black man, isn’t he? Me: Yes, exactly. She: But surely a black man couldn’t become president of the United States? Me: It looks as if he’ll be elected. She: But president? That’s such an important job! In America, I thought blacks were janitors and laborers. Me: No, blacks have all kinds of jobs. She: What do white people think about that, about getting a black president? Are they upset? Are they angry? Me: No, of course not! If Obama is elected, it’ll be because white people voted for him. [Long pause.] She: Really? Unbelievable! What an amazing country! While this story addresses my last point, vis a vis how the rest of the world sees America, I want to focus on how the rest of the world views blacks first. Notice that this woman’s view of black Americans is that we can be janitors and laborers but not the President. When Barack Obama goes forth on missions of State he will be the symbol of America to the rest of the world. It is sad but instructive to note that Americans, in exporting our cultural products like movies, TV, music, have exported racism as well. Lastly, this will change how people around the world view America. One of the things I couldn’t help notice as reaction poured in from around the world was that people all over the planet, people who had no direct, first-hand knowledge of the struggle of black people in this nation were weeping, crying and I realized that it was because, in their view, they got their America back. I know that we progressives/liberals can be blind to this from time-to-time but people around the world believe in America. They believe in what we say we stand for and they think that we mean it at least some of the time. The last eight years has been like having a great, goofy golden retriever go full-blown Cujo on the family but the dog is so big and strong no one can take it down. The election of Obama is a sign that whatever madness had gripped us as a nation, might have begun to dissipate. I hope so. I am not alone in that. I imagine that there are the better part of 6 billion people on the planet (notwithstanding the 40 - 50 million Americans who voted for McCain) who agree with me. One other thing about Obama’s surprise election. I had long thought that if I saw a black President in my lifetime, the first one would be a conservative Republican of the Colin Powell model. Instead we got a center-left former community organizer who is a Democrat. I am shocked and it really does put the lie to the conservative mantra that we are a center-right nation. We aren’t. The Deep South is center-right, the Midwest is center-right, but the coasts, with the exception of the four Southeastern states below the Mason-Dixon line are center-left. We are NOT a left-leaning nation, we are a confusing mix of the two. We push too far in one direction, perhaps, and self-correct back the other. We went far, far to the right. So far to the right that it looked like we were about to rendezvous with history. We ended up having a rendezvous with history but not the kind that some of us feared was coming.

And then it hit me

I live in a world without Ted Kennedy. I know I wrote about this earlier, but it wasn’t until I got home that it really sank in that he’s gone. I’ve been a political junkie a long, long time. I grew up in a family of Kennedy Democrats. When I was a young Republican (still weird to say that) he was the Enemy but I was aware of how he had always been on the side of the little guy. Conservative as I was, I was still black and as such a direct beneficiary of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. As I got older and came to something that could be called political and intellectual maturity and left my youthful conservatism behind, I came to truly admire Ted Kennedy. Was he a flawed man? Yes, all humans are flawed--myself as much or more than anyone. But he was a true liberal who, I believe, got really serious after Bobby Kennedy’s death and the tragedy at Chappaquddick. The grown-up Ted Kennedy became a consummate legislator, a statesman in the best and truest sense of the term, and a light for liberals.

He was able to compromise and negotiate with people with whom he might otherwise disagree vehemently in order to get something done. This is an art--the very core--of politics. Kennedy could do this better than most and probably better than anyone remaining in the Senate and, as such, was spectacularly capable. We can think Kennedy for the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Title IX and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

As I said in my earlier post, Ted Kennedy was always there just part of the background of American politics. Now there’s a hole in our national pantheon and we will likely not see his like for a long time to come.

Queer anarchists get it exactly wrong on DADT

Over at Queers Against Obama the following was posted:

If a George Bush policy had had the systematic effect of bringing death, injury, sexual assault, harassment, psychological trauma, and suspension of civil rights to poor queer and trans people, while expanding the might of the military, there would have been widespread outrage from queers, anti-war activists, and liberals. Yet President Obama is able to push forward such a policy under the guise of equal rights and with the hearty encouragement of spellbound liberals and wealthy gays.

This was my response:

I'm going to chime in as a minority opinion here. For the record, I am veteran of the US Army, a black lesbian, daughter of a WW II veteran, mother of a current soldier, sister of a retired Army officer, and a thorough-going progressive. I think that Ms. Ariel Attack gets it almost *exactly* wrong in her essay. In order to understand why, a bit more background is necessary.

I grew up in an upper-middle class family--my parents were college professors--and as such, when I enlisted in the Army there was much to-do about it. Kids from my class background went to West Point or Annapolis or the Air Force Academy, or they did ROTC at university. They didn't *enlist*. But I did. It was the first time in my young life that I had to *depend* upon people from the working-class. Before that working-class folks were my poorer relations in Louisiana and Alabama, my best friend Jeff and his mom, or the tenants my parents rented to. Because of that experience of having to depend upon folks who were from a wildly different class background than I was, I got a much needed education in class that took some of the winds out of my sails.

What's more--and this is the crux of the issue for me--I met people in the military who were from little postage-stamp towns where the only people who knew that the place existed were the folks who lived there, the postal service and the military recruiters. One woman in my unit, her nickname was Tennessee (and the first woman I kissed, incidentally), was from such a town. Joining the Army was her way to get out--to get an education, to see a bit of the world, to give herself a *chance* to have a skill she could levy into a job when she got out so that she could move someplace where being queer wasn't likely to get her killed. (This was the middle 80's, a very different America)

When I was kicked out of the Army for being queer (although my commanding officer called in a favor so that's not what my discharge papers say) I ended up moving to the Bay Area and came out. Once DADT was passed (to my horror, Clinton screwed that up) and I found myself having this exact same discussion in groups of my Queer Nation and Lesbian Avenger cohorts, I thought about Tennessee. The struggle for gays and lesbians to be able to serve in the military is about people like Tenn, who needed a chance out. Not some chance out in some utopian anarchist dream that isn't coming true as long as we are homo sapiens sapiens with our peculiar evolutionary history but in a foreseeable future. She needs that chance *today* when she's not got the grades or perhaps the money to go to school out of state, isn't going to follow the captain of the football team to university, and is just looking for some way to get herself started in the world.

I find it ironic that people who allegedly proclaim to love the working-class so much are so quick to look down on them for making rational, good choices from *within their own context*.

RIP Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy died at 77 from brain cancer. While conservatives may very well be dancing on the streets (or, more likely, there will be the predictable false claims that he was universally loved) or laughing along with Limbaugh, as a die-hard progressive who grew up in a family for which the Kennedy name was spoken in reference, I will be mourning. He was a great liberal champion--of labor and of health-care. At this point, I would like to see President Obama tell the Dems in both the house and the senate to go back, start the health-care reform bill over from scratch, and pass the bill that Kennedy would have wanted to see pass. That would functionally be Medicare-for-all (or at least all who want it).

I’m rather tired of the Democratic party pussy-footing about this trying to figure out which way to go. Write a truly liberal health-care reform package, understanding that with the possible exception of Snowe and Collins of Maine, it is vanishingly improbable that the President will get any Republican votes. So if you know that no matter what you do, with the exception of doing nothing, that the GOP is going to vote ‘no’ why even bother pretending that they’ll behave differently? Kennedy, who has worked around these yahoos since before I was born, understood this. I wish more Democrats in Congress understood it as well as he did.

Max musings in the morning

        I’ve been reading John McWhorter’s “Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority” and cannot recommend it highly enough. That said, I am also finding it a distinctly uncomfortable book because in his writings I find myself challenged to think about whether I mean it about a color-blind society. I am almost certain that I do and the frisson I feel is more fear of breaking with left-wing orthodoxy thus threatening my good Progressive credentials. I pride myself on having earned and kept my Progressive chops through the nineties, when I was in the streets with ACT-UP, Queer Nation, and the Lesbian Avengers. Even my first job in high-tech was at a Progressive ISP called IGC-APC which provided Internet service to organizations like Green-peace and the Rainforest Action Network.

        There is a Progressive orthodoxy about blacks in America that I think has played itself out and needs to be questioned. Specifically, the question of Affirmative Action needs to be looked at again. Not the goals which are completely laudable and which are clearly for the good. Rather, we who call ourselves Progressive or Liberal need to look at the real world effects of Affirmative Action and ask ourselves if the cost-benefit analysis comes down on the side of continuing the idea--at least in its current form. What are these real-world effects? They can be enumerated as follows:

1. Affirmative Action clearly breeds resentment. Now, there are times when it may be more or less appropriate to say “well, that’s just the way it is”. For example, there was no paucity of white resentment over integration and to that I would have to say “too bad”. The goal of making certain that the Constitution fully covered all of America’s citizens outweighed the resentment recalcitrant whites might have felt over things changing. The same could be said about voting rights for either blacks or women. There are, however, times when we should look at what others are saying and really give it the most fair hearing possible. I have heard too, too many whites who grew up poor express resentment that “no one gave me a break” to dismiss that as mere free-floating resentment. Who needed a break more to get into a top-tier school? My partner, who grew up one of four children of a single-mother making less than $30K a year in Utah in the 90’s or me, youngest of two children who grew up in a house where my parents combined income, when I left home in 1985, was at least $120K? Clearly, the answer of any sane person would be my partner. A class-based Affirmative Action would be altogether more justifiable than a race-based one.
2. Affirmative Action keeps an undue focus on race. I want to make it clear, I am proud of my heritage because in my veins runs the blood of people who took the worst that America had to throw at a people and who managed, somehow, to find the courage to get up every morning and keep on keeping on. However, as proud as I am of that heritage and as much inspiration I draw from it, their accomplishments are not mine and my accomplishments are not theirs. Ultimately, I want to be judged on my own competency and I would be profoundly insulted to find out that I had ever gotten a job or admitted to a school because I was less than the best possible candidate. What’s more, it is inconsistent to want favor to flow toward me because of my phenotype while simultaneously saying that I do not want disfavor to befall me because of that same phenotype. If the latter is actively happening to me then I have grounds on which to claim the former. But the converse is also true. If I gain the former, I have no standing upon which to reject the latter.
3. Affirmative Action sets up a double-bind for blacks. While it has not happened at my current employer, I have had jobs where co-workers wondered, out loud mind you, if I had gotten the job because of Affirmative Action--if I was filling a quota. That is a terrible feeling and one that no one should have to experience. (Even though I have had a co-worker who asked if I was raised by a white family because of my diction but that’s a different story.)
4. Affirmative Action is anti-meritocratic. Now, I understand that on the Left there is a lot of talk against meritocracy but if we are fair, we must recognize that meritocracy is the best chance we have for a truly fair and just society. Some of the critique of meritocracy is “who decides what is merit”. On one hand, that’s a valid question worth exploring. On the other hand, at some level we know what merit is. I work for a software company, we can tell the callers who know what they are doing and those who don’t. There’s no absolute standard or checklist, it is intuitive. If I have to explain what a file system is and the person on the other line has the job title of developer or system administrator, then that person is not competent because there is no excuse for anyone with those job titles to not know what one is. None. Ever. If your doctor is incompetent you know they are and you will no longer go to them. So in a very real sense the question “who decides what counts as merit” is a false question. No one would get on an airliner with a pilot who they heard asking “what do those big round things do” when pointing at the engines. If there is something with the potential for fairness that is greater than meritocracy, I am unaware of it.
5. Culture matters. By this I mean you cannot expect that if black kids genuinely believe that doing well in school is somehow to be “acting white” that black kids will do well in school. The problem, then, becomes not the school but the culture that tolerates the utterance of the statement “doing well in school is acting white”. To see this one need only compare the varying fates of three groups---blacks born BEFORE 1950, Afro-Carribean blacks who have migrated to the United States, and blacks born AFTER 1965. Blacks born before 1950 grew up being taught that an education was the key to liberation and that the crime was NOT that we were expected to learn but that in many venues we were either not ALLOWED to learn (being barred from the best schools, etc.) or that our education counted for absolutely nothing (the old joke of “Q. What’s a black man with a PhD called in Mississippi? A. Nigger). But blacks born in that era did not believe that to be well-read was to be non-black. Rather, it was to be integrated and to be resistant to the slings and arrows of outrageous racial misfortune. Afro-Carribean blacks who migrated never bought into the idea that being educated was somehow to betray blackness. Thus we have the example of a Colin Powell (who also was born before 1950). It is only blacks of MY generation who were born AFTER 1960 who suddenly started propagating this meme which, as far as I am aware, sprung up quite independently in the black community, that to be educated and integrated was to be non-black. This meme operates entirely independent of whites and, in fact, is not something I can ever recall hearing from white students at school but heard from black students on a regular basis.
6. Life is not perfect. It has never been perfect, it never will be. All you can do is the best with what you have.
7. There is absolutely no way to guarantee equality of outcome. It simply cannot be done. For example, I have taken a couple of writing classes in the last few semesters to break myself of some bad habits I picked up posting on USENET groups. From day one, both my professors and my fellow students recognized that I was far and away a more sophisticated writer than most of the other students in the class. I had several advantages over these students and so there is no way that there could be equal outcomes in that class. The only thing that the professors could do is judge each student’s work on the same merit (although, quite honestly, I went to my professors and said that I wanted them to judge my work as they would someone in a 200 or 300 level class because I was taking the class to break bad habits and get through some pre-reqs, in the case of one class). My advantages are that I am older than most of the other students in the class, meaning I have had more time to do more reading. I grew up in an academic environment so I was exposed to writing and reading from a very early age. I also read very broadly. All of these are, in fact, advantages I have that most of my fellow students did not. Given that, there is no way that there could be equal outcomes between me and any other given student in that class. I was going to get an “A” in those classes unless I simply refused to work or worked below my abilities. We on the Left, who are perfectly comfortable with the idea that there are people who have artistic talent and those who do not, those who have musical talent and those who do not, and those who have athletic talent and those who do not must also accept that there are people who have intellectual talent and those who do not and that given the kind of society we live in, where the best money is to be made (the aforementioned athletics and music not-with-standing) is going to be made by those who are best at manipulating symbolic logic. In other words, mind workers. Lawyers will make more money than baristas. Doctors will make more money than cashiers. GOOD lawyers will make more money than mediocre ones. GREAT doctors will make more money than so-so ones. This is not a prima facie sign of discrimination or racism unless one is going to posit that ALL the GOOD lawyers are of one race and that the best lawyers of another race can achieve is mediocre. This may not be a comfortable truth but it doesn’t make it any less true. What we can do is to provide opportunities to people and to not allow non-relevant barriers to achievement be put up. What we cannot do is ensure that every one who wants to go to Princeton gets into Princeton. Nor can we ensure that every Princeton graduate makes $80K a year out of the starting gate. That is not achievable. Now, if what we find is that NO blacks get into Princeton ever--and by this I mean that a black student who has never gotten a ‘B’ in her life, got a perfect score on the SATs, etc. cannot get into Princeton--then we have a problem that needs to be addressed. The same goes for bank loans. If I and one of my colleagues, who make the same amount of money, have the same time in our careers, have the exact same credit rating cannot get the same loan from the same bank (in other words, if you hold every relevant variable constant) then the bank had better be prepared to explain why it is that two individuals who are identical on paper cannot be treated identically if the only difference is ethnicity.*

        Now, to say all of this is not to say that there are never situations where an employer might not want to go out of their way to find someone like me. I’m currently in school, debating whether to go the route of education (in which case I’ll teach high school biology) or public health (in which case I’d like to work for one of the local hospitals as an epidemiologist). In the former, I would not feel particularly adverse to the idea of the Portland School District seeking me out to teach in North or Northeast Portland. Since the population of that school would be largely black having a black woman with dreadlocks in biology class, involved with the science club, etc. would be immensely valuable to those students and provided that I otherwise met the qualifications and performed well as a teacher I see no reason why the district should not go out of their way to recruit me. However, the cart is still before the horse. I would be the best candidate for a teaching position and the fact that I was a black woman would be something the school gets “for free”. All of that said, it would still be unacceptable for the district to pass over, say, a white teacher who had a M.S. in Biology and 20 years experience over me if I only had a B.S. in Biology since she would be the far more qualified candidate. My argument, vis a vis the teaching position, is only valid in as much as the district might take some steps to find and recruit me but not to hire me if I were not the best qualified candidate who also happened to be black.

        However, in my current employment situation my being black does nothing for my employer. It does not matter and has absolutely no influence on either my job performance nor on the success of our customers. It would make no sense for my employer to go out of their way to recruit a black employee because there is absolutely nothing my race would bring to the table and any indirect benefits of my being black (diversity) are nice and shouldn’t be dismissed but they are completely irrelevant to the business we do. In the case of me as teacher, an argument could be made that I could be a figure of inspiration to my students and so if I can be found an effort should be made to find me.

        This, to me, seems a more sane way of navigating the treacherous waters. It avoids the problematic area of sticking students with a teacher who is not qualified while at the same time recognizing that there is a real, on the ground reality that black children do not see adult blacks who are scientists very often. Having a real, live, scientist who is black in the classroom on a day-to-day basis may provide a benefit down the road that is unforeseen. And it would only make sense in the very limited context in which I am speaking and is, ultimately, predicated on my being the best qualified person. Again, all I’m saying is that as a recruitment effort not a hiring decision, the district might be well served to seek me out however they might go about that.

        There’s a society that I believe is possible wherein we are functionally color-blind while at the same time recognizing that there are, from time to time, distinctly non-colorblind actions. For instance, the link below is about a decidedly non-colorblind action that took place in Philadelphia, quite ironically. What this means is that, for the Left, we have to recognize that equality of opportunity is possible while equality of outcome is not.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,531024,00.html

        


        

A fantastic weekend

        This was an amazing weekend. I was on-call but other than one very brief issue, nothing else happened all weekend. This left plenty of time to work in the yard. I made a healthy dent in getting rid of the blackberries in the backyard. Our BBQ was delivered and we’ve enjoyed two meals grilled.

Angus was supervising by laying in the shade.

Prop 8 ruled constitutional!

This is a latter-day Dred Scott decision. The court has ruled that the rights of a minority can legitimately be put up to a vote by a majority.

Court upholds Prop. 8 but lets marriages stand
(05-26) 10:29 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- California voters legally outlawed same-sex marriage when they approved Proposition 8 in November, but the constitutional amendment did not dissolve the unions of 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who wed before the measure took effect, the state Supreme Court ruled today.

My first batch of beer

Well, I brewed my first batch of beer! It’s a hefeweizen which I am going to add some raspberry flavoring to before I bottle it. It went okay, not terrific. I forgot to take a hydrometer reading before I added the yeast and I’m now wondering if I overcooled the wort.

Roger Cohen wimps out on torture in the NY Times

In a very disappointing op-ed in today’s New York Times, Roger Cohen argues that President Obama is correct that we need to “look forward and not back”. I disagree strenuously. I voted for Obama, in no small part, on the strength of his policy that we do not torture and that we, as a nation, respect the rule of law in both our rhetoric and in our deeds. If crimes were committed, and by any rational definition of the term torture is a crime in both American and international law, then those who have done the acts should stand trial for them. I’m not saying that I we should round up every CIA agent and frog march them in chains. I would actually be willing to give the agents who did the torturing light sentences but Cheney and Zen Master Rumsfeld should definitely stand in the dock for their participation as should Condi Rice.

I would like to think that Obama would have the courage of his convictions. He knows what the Constitution demands in this situation. He should do it.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?ref=opinion

Op-Ed Columnist - No Time for Retribution - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?ref=opinion

Afrofuturism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I saw this the other day

Afrofuturism or afro-futurism is an African diaspora cultural and literary movement whose thinkers and artists see science, technology and science fiction as means of exploring the black experience.[1][2][3] Afrofuturist or afro-futurist may also refer to a futurist who engages in comtemporary foresight into long-term cultural, social, and political developments for black people, or simply a futurist who happens to be a black person.
In the late 1990s a number of cultural critics, notably Mark Dery in his 1995 essay Black to the Future, began to write about the features they saw as common in African-American science fiction, music and art. Dery dubbed this phenomenon “afrofuturism”.[1][3]
In "Black to the Future," Dery writes,
Speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture—and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future—might, for want of a better term, be called Afrofuturism. [...] If there is an Afrofuturism, it must be sought in unlikely places, constellated from far-flung points. We catch a glimpse of it in the opening pages of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, where the proto-cyberpunk protagonist—a techno-bricoleur “in the great American tradition of tinkers”—taps illegal juice from a line owned by the rapacious Monopolated Light & Power, gloating, “Oh, they suspect that their power is being drained off, but they don’t know where.” [...] Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings such as Molasses, which features a pie-eyed, snaggletoothed robot, adequately earn the term “Afrofuturist,” as do movies like John Sayles’s The Brother From Another Planet and Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames. Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland is Afrofuturist; so, too, is the techno-tribal global village music of Miles Davis’s On the Corner and Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, as well as the fusion-jazz cyberfunk of Hancock’s Future Shock and Bernie Worrell’s Blacktronic Science, whose liner notes herald “reports and manifestoes from the nether regions of the modern Afrikan American music/speculative fiction universe.” Afrofuturism manifests itself, too, in early ‘80s electro-boogie releases such as Planet Patrol’s “Play at Your Own Risk,” Warp 9’s “Nunk,” George Clinton’s Computer Games, and of course Afrika Bambaataa’s classic “Planet Rock,” records steeped in “imagery drawn from computer games, video, cartoons, sci-fi and hip-hop's language,” notes David Toop, who calls them “a soundtrack for vidkids to live out fantasies born of a science-fiction revival courtesy of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind).” Techno, whose name was purportedly inspired by a reference to “techno rebels” in Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave, is a quintessential example of Afrofuturism. [...] Afrofuturism bubbles up from the deepest, darkest wellsprings in the intergalactic big band jazz churned out by Sun Ra’s Omniverse Arkestra, in Parliament-Funkadelic’s Dr. Seuss-ian astrofunk, and in dub reggae, especially the bush doctor’s brew cooked up by Lee “Scratch” Perry, which at its eeriest sounds as if it were made out of dark matter and recorded in the crushing gravity field of a black hole (“Angel Gabriel and the Space Boots” is a typical title). African-American culture is Afrofuturist at its heart, literalizing [the SF novelist William] Gibson’s cyberpunk axiom, “The street finds its own uses for things.” With trickster elan, it retrofits, refunctions, and willfully misuses the technocommodities and science fictions generated by a dominant culture that has always been not only white but a wielder, as well, of instrumental technologies.
According to the cultural critic Kodwo Eshun, the British journalist Mark Sinker was theorizing something very like Afrofuturism in the pages of The Wire, a British music magazine, as early as 1992.
Afrofuturist ideas were incubated and elaborated on the eponymous list-serve established by Alondra Nelson in 1998. Participants in those conversations include Alondra Nelson, Paul D. Miller, Alexander G. Weheliye, Nalo Hopkinson, Sheree Thomas, Art McGee, Ron Eglash, and Kali Tal.

Afrofuturism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrofuturism

Holiday party and haute cuisine

My company had their holiday party last night at the Portland Golf Club. What was really interesting was that this is probably the most upscale place we’ve held the party at, at least since I’ve been going to them (I missed my first year because I hated my department but I’ve gone every year since) and it was the weakest, as far as food and libations went, of the three. The food itself had haute cuisine portions (a tiny beef tenderloin medallion, in a passable sauce with a dollop of mashed potatoes, three or four wilted green beans which had been cooked in a balsamic vinaigrette and an edible orchid). The desserts, however, were even worse. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of cheesecake (another thing from my childhood that I used to devour) but I love a good mousse. Chocolate mousse, as my partner likes to point out, is something that is hard to screw up because even if it falls you still have this wonderful, rich, chocolate confection. But not in this instance. It was edible but overly bitter and it’s almost as if they made it from Nestle’s Quik instant chocolate milk. I’m not saying they did but it tasted as if it had. While we had drink coupons (and Jaime and I used them) at one point I wanted a Long Island ice tea but they wanted, wait for it, $11.50 for it! No, I had a local mico-brew (at a much more reasonable $4.50) instead.

Last year we had it at a private ballroom in downtown portland and it was buffet style. Much better food in much better varieties and the drinks were more reasonable.

That said, it’s been a while since I’ve been in a golf club and I forgot how the other 5% lives. Not sure that I would want that. The company at my table, however, was excellent.

Caribou Barbie sez: "Science is hard!"

So Sarah Palin appears to believe that fruit fly research is just so much pork driven by the Fruit Fly lobby, perhaps. Or maybe the world Fruit Fly Collective are pulling the strings of Big Fruit Fly Research.

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So, here’s the thing. Fruit flies are a standard model system in genetics. They have conveniently short generation times so you can watch gene flows move through them quickly. Research on Drosophilia has played a huge part in our expanding knowledge of genetics. So well done, Governor, you’ve demonstrated that even on the issue you claim to know so much about your knowledge is toilet paper thin.

National Media: Do Your Jobs!!!!

As a citizen, I want to enlist you in a project. Please send this on to your friends and family. This will probably fail. Most petition drives to pressure corporations do fail. However, We the People, have to try to get the media to do their jobs. This piece is an attempt to remind you, the citizens, and the media what their jobs are and how they have utterly failed at it. Please feel free to forward or repost this.



This is the most important election of our lifetimes, perhaps the most important election since the election of 1932. The future of our country is literally on the line, the very nature of what kind of country we wish to be is the central question in this election. Yet, from the media, you wouldn’t know it. It’s not just the horse race coverage. It’s the outright tolerance for blatant falsehoods uttered by the campaigns. In another year, if we weren’t at war, if our economy was strong, perhaps, PERHAPS we could afford this cartoon of campaign coverage. But this isn’t that year, this isn’t that election.

As Paul Begala put it in a piece today:

If John McCain and Sarah Palin were to say the moon was made of green cheese, we can be certain that Barack Obama and Joe Biden would pounce on it, and point out it's actually made of rock. And you just know the headline in the paper the next day would read: "CANDIDATES CLASH ON LUNAR LANDSCAPE."
The thing is, he’s absolutely correct. The headline would NOT be, as would be appropriate, ‘“McCain asserts that the moon is made of green cheese. Is he mad?” or “McCain lies about the composition of the moon”. Rather, it would be the headline that suggests that, in fact, there’s legitimate reason for debate as to the composition of the moon. Yet, we know--not think but know--that the moon isn’t made of green cheese so why does the media treat these statements as the same?

I’m going to use two examples from today and yes, I’m a Democrat and yes, I’m an Obama supporter and I’m sure that a Republican could come up with his own examples. The continually repeated lie about the Bridge to Nowhere. Governor Palin is on the record, on camera, saying that she supported the Bridge to Nowhere but now, she can assert, without any penalty, that she didn’t support it AND that she sent the money back yet, it is again demonstrably true that she kept the money and only dropped support for it after Congress had put the kabosh on the project. Now, in my family, if you said something was so when it wasn’t and you knew it wasn’t so, you were going to be called a liar. Yet, the media is letting McCain and Palin get away with lying.

The second example, also a lie, is that Barack Obama authored and voted for a bill that would teach sex education to kindergarten kids. This is not true. He voted for a bill that would have age appropriate sex education which for little kids meant teaching them about appropriate and inappropriate touching. The language of the bill is available at the Illinois State Legislature website, you can read it yourself, it doesn’t say what the advert says it does. Again, the story is that there is ‘controversy’ over Barack Obama’s vote. But there isn’t controversy. The McCain campaign is lying and the media is actively participating in the lie by not calling it a lie. When my son would say that he had done his homework when he hadn’t, I told him he was lying.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the media should pillory McCain or Palin or any other Republican because they are Republicans. I am saying that you folks in the media get paid well to do a job and part and parcel of that job is to be the keepers of the 11th Commandment which is; “Thou Shalt not get away with it”. That’s your job. If someone on camera or on tape tells you something that is demonstrably untrue, your job, the ONLY reason you are worth your salary no matter how big or small it is, is to point out the fact either right then and there in the interview or in the article later on. It is not objectivity to say “some say the sky is blue while the McCain campaign stated that the sky is green”. Objectivity is saying “Candidate X said the sky is green, so we went outside and did some investigation and we found that the sky is blue.” Being a reporter means following up and asking the candidate, “Ms X, the sky is demonstrably blue. Why would you say it is green”. Now, it’s possible that candidate X may not like that you pointed out that the sky is blue. They may call you a New York elitist or claim that you have a bias against this party or that. Let them!!! It’s not your job to be loved, it’s not your job to be liked, that’s what your dog, your friends, your family and your cat are for. Your job is to always and forever keep the fear of the electorate in the minds of politicians! They should be terrified of telling a bald-faced lie lest it be discovered and they be called out for it. Yet, this campaign, you let them get away with the most grotesque and outright lies.

What’s more, you, media people, continue to hype up the most trivial aspects. Are we, the rest of us who can only consume your products, to understand that you don’t find foreclosures at their highest rate since the Great Depression newsworthy enough to focus on that in the campaign? Should we take your utter inability to ask direct and even-handed questions about the war to be a sign that you don’t care, don’t think we care, or you are just so utterly and pathetically unintelligent that you can’t think of a single relevant, policy-oriented question to ask the candidates?

You have a job, media. There’s a reason that the Founders put the First Amendment in the Constitution and it wasn’t to protect the rights of an 18th century Larry Flint. Rather, it was because a free and open and, quite honestly, obnoxious press was crucial to preserving our democracy. There’s a reason the press is referred to as the Fourth Estate. While your role is not Constitutionally mandated, it was Constitutionally protected. You have shown, in this election cycle (and a number prior to it that I could mention) to be almost entirely unworthy of the protections that we give you. The very least you could do is the minimal description of your job. Entertaining us isn’t in your job description. If I want entertainment, I’ll turn on The Simpsons when I want news I’m going to turn on the news or pick up my paper or surf to a news website. What I’d like to see there is reporters doing their jobs.

Do your jobs, media. Your job is as important, perhaps more so, than any three branches of government. We, the 300 million of your fellow citizens who rely on you to tell us the news of the day, need you to do your jobs. So far, in 2008, you are letting us down and I, for one, do not care about your predictable mea culpas that you will do as the 2012 campaign kicks off.

Do. Your. Jobs. If you can’t, get the hell out of the way and let someone else do it for you if you can’t figure out how to do it yourself. To quote from the movie “Network”, ‘we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!’
Adrienne Davis, Portland, OR

Should Gays and Lesbians Be Thanking Mother Nature for the Genes?

I wanted to address the idea of whether or not homosexuality is a question of ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’. To put it in more modern words, whether or not homosexuality is caused genetic or a choice. Firstly, the question may be meaningless. By that I mean that there is no satisfactory solution to the question as it is stated. Why? Because whether a given behavioral trait is genetic or environmental is, for any practical purpose, unanswerable. We are not products of traits that either are imposed on us by our genes or produced by our environments. Our genes do not, in any meaningful way, operate isolated from our environments. Our environment, although seemingly separate from our genes, is still influenced by them. So to suggest that homosexuality must be either genetic, in its entirety or environmental, in its totality, is to miss something exquisite going on in nature. Nature, once you look beneath the surface, is usually cleverer than we are.

There are a couple of issues enclosed in the question of ‘is homosexuality a choice or not’ and before I go about trying to answer them, I’d like to try to tease out the separate questions. Question #1 goes like this: “What causes homosexuality. Why are some people gay or lesbian”? Question #2 is best phrased like this: “If homosexuality is not a choice, what possible evolutionary reason would keep those genes around”. Question #3 goes like this: “If homosexuality is proven not to be a choice, what does that mean for the gay rights movement”? I’ll answer each one individually.

What causes homosexuality?

I will own, up front, that this is going to be a really cheap answer. No one knows, definitively, why some people end up being gay or lesbian. There is, however, a convergence of evidence that points to it being a, more or less, innate trait. At some level, it would appear that people are born gay or lesbian. This, however, is a very different statement than saying that something is entirely determined by our genes. Although what filters through to the popular media gives the impression that there is a gene ‘for’ any given trait that is not exactly the case. Certainly, no working biologist would suggest that there is a gene ‘for’, to take one example, risk-taking. So, part of the purpose of this article is to introduce you to a different kind of language for talking about our genes. What is more accurate is to say that there are certain genes (genotypes) that express (phenotype) a particular behavior, in interaction with their environment.

Now, before someone should take the last part of the above sentence to mean that I am suggesting that environment means the usual (and hopelessly outdated) tripe of ‘absent father’ or ‘overbearing mother’ or childhood sexual trauma or any other such pseudo-psychological babble, that is not what I am talking about. By environment what I mean is the complete set of historical experiences that any given individual passes through from the moment they are conceived. Make absolutely no mistake, the womb is part of our environment and is as much part of our history as any house we ever live in. So, for example, if your mother was malnourished during her pregnancy with you, you may (counter-intuitively) have more of a tendency to put on weight.

So, returning for a moment, to the question of gene-environment interaction I’d like to talk a moment about what genes do and do not do. It is, generally, thought that genes code for particular traits. Therefore we’ll say that one has a gene ‘for’ brown eyes or that one has a gene ‘for’ such-and-such malady. In most circumstances, it is convenient but not accurate to talk about genes in this way. Our genes code for proteins. Proteins are little molecular machinery, of various chemical natures, that go about the business of building bones, tissue, cells, brains, etc. If you have, for instance, brown skin your body produces significant quantities of a substance called melanin. Your genes code for proteins that are in charge of melanin production and you will have, on average, darker skin than someone who has genes that do not code for as much of that substance. If you then live in a place that does not get as much direct sunlight then your skin color will be, on average, lighter than someone with similar genes who lived in a place with high direct sunlight. This might sound like I’m stating the painfully obvious but note the language. Specifically, note the use of ‘on average’. In biology, it is useful to think of things happening on a gradient and each individual lies somewhere along that continuum. So, is there a gene for brown skin? Well, yes and no. There’s a gene that produces greater or lesser amounts of melanin. Everyone, who is not an albino, produces some amount of melanin. It would be slightly more accurate to say that there is a gene ‘for’ albinism, but most accurate would be to say that albinos lack the gene that produces melanin.

Another example, before we move on to the heart of the question of some kind of proximate cause of homosexuality. Take height. If you have been to Europe or have been in a really old (older than the 19^th century) building, you might notice how low the ceilings are. In London, one might think that one has stepped into a village of Tolkiens’ hobbits. But you know better and you realize that the average height of people really was shorter than Westerners are today. Why? It is not, as intuition might suggest, because humans have evolved such that the average height for European women has increased from just under five feet tall at the start of the Industrial Revolution to around five-foot five-inches at the start of the Information Revolution. Rather, what has happened is that people in the West eat much better, are exposed to far fewer childhood diseases, and generally are healthier as children and growing adolescents than they were a few hundred years ago. What that has created is a situation where human height has been allowed to increase closer toward the maximum allowed for by our genes (which code for the proteins that make up calcium and muscle mass). So, lurking within the genes of your long lost relatives from the Old Country was the potential for a five foot ten inch woman, but chances are very few of your ancestors grew to that height. However, because you are fortunate enough to have been born in the Twentieth century, your genes had more of an opportunity to express them.

This is what biologists mean by gene-environment interaction and I hope that my two illustrations shine some light onto how these factors dance together.

So, back to the central question. Is homosexuality genetic? Most probably yes and not entirely. Since sex, desire and romance happen primarily in the brain here is my speculation. There is probably some sequence somewhere on our chromosomes that causes a particular protein to either express or not express while the fetus is in utero. The mother’s body, responding to this chemical presence turns on or fails to turn on some other chemical cascade that results in the brain forming in such a manner that the person, when their sexuality really kicks in, has a predisposition toward homosexuality. Because of the social stigma placed on homosexuals, the individual with this particular genetic-environmental mosaic then has some variety of responses to their emotions and at some point, hopefully, comes out and accepts themselves. That’s the best answer I’m comfortable giving and I’m sticking to it.

All of this, however, begs question number two. So onto that issue.

Passing through the sieve—Does Darwinism preclude homosexuality being genetic?

If you are not willing to concede that Darwin might have had some clue as to what he was talking about then not a great deal of this will make sense. Again, because I feel the need to own my own bias, I will say that I’m an absolutely unrepentant Darwinian. I think Darwin had one of the best ideas anyone has ever had and I know that, to use the phrase of one eminent biologist “nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution”. So, if we accept that there is probably some level of genetic component to homosexuality then it begs the question of how it could survive the ruthless winnowing of natural selection.

I’m going to suggest a hypothesis, and own that it is only a hypothesis but one that makes the most sense to me. Homosexuality has passed through the sieve of evolution not because it, in and of itself, is adaptive but because whatever genes that influence homosexuality are themselves adaptive when expressed in a certain kind of body. By adaptive, I mean it in a very strict sense, namely in the sense that it enhances the reproductive fitness of whomever is carrying that gene. Reproductive fitness simply means whether or not an organism leaves around more descendants than someone else.

That’s just one possibility but it is the one that makes the most sense and doesn’t get into the messy (and discredited) arena of group selection.

That said, let’s remember that being homosexual does not preclude reproduction and so there’s still potential for whatever genes ‘for’ homosexuality to pass through generations in that manner. Lastly, it is important to remember that, according to what is called ‘kin selection’ one need not reproduce oneself in order to benefit one’s genes.

If one is a sibling (or a non-identical twin) then one shares one half of your genes with your siblings. This means you share a quarter of your genes with their children. So let’s say your sister has four children, you have none. Something happens to your sister and you raise her children, you have now ensured that four times the amount of your genes will pass on to the next generation than you otherwise would have. So, even if homosexuality really were a reproductive dead-end it would still have any number of paths it could take from generation to generation.

Where the rubber meets the road—What does all this mean for gay rights?

So, having demonstrated that homosexuality really could pass through the merciless sieve of natural selection and having presented a plausible (although almost certainly too simplistic to be accurate) model of what might cause homosexuality we leave the relatively non-controversial arena of biology and enter the world of politics and culture. We have come to question #3: If homosexuality is proven not to be a choice, what does that mean for the gay rights movement?

One answer is that it might not mean anything at all. Those who are against gays and lesbians existing are going to remain so regardless of any findings of science. But for the larger society, what might it mean? As a rule, in America we have the idea that we are compelled to be tolerant (in both personal and legal matters) of those who have an inherent difference. Homosexuality is probably inherent enough that to speak of any ‘change’ is quite meaningless. However, does that mean that if a smoking genetic gun is found the NGLTF can close up shop and go home? Probably not.

What it might mean is that parents might not guilt trip their children when they come out. Schools would be compelled to not tolerate harassment of gay or lesbian students in the same way and for the same reasons that they cannot tolerate harassment of Latina or Chinese students. Businesses might become compelled to not fire homosexual employees because they are homosexual. It might even create the circumstances for full recognition of same-sex marriages. However, it would be a mistake to think that the entire architecture of heterosexism will come tumbling down should some biological Einstein come up with a gene-environment interaction that survives the scientific vetting process.

Although I understand the desire for us, as gay and lesbian people, to once and for all put to pasture the idea that we ‘choose’ our sexual orientation I would suggest that, perhaps, we are missing a point. Religion is ‘chosen’. No one is born Catholic and yet we protect Catholics from discrimination in employment, housing, etc. We are very right to do so, so it is not ‘choice’ qua choice that has created the circumstances we face. It is some other cultural baggage that we need to address.

That said, finding the smoking gun would be a triumph of biology. Understanding why some people are gay or lesbian would shed light into the whole arena of human sexuality. And, perhaps, the discussion of gene-environment interaction will finally put the tired and outdated ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’ debate out to a well-deserved rest in the pastures of intellectual history.

Lynching Advocate Toby Keith: Obama "Talks, Acts, And Carries Himself As A Caucasian"

What Toby Keith said was racist. I was raised by a black father and a black mother, both college professors and throughout my childhood I had people say, first to my parents and then, as I got older, to me how 'articulate' and 'intelligent sounding' I was. It's racist when the likes of a Jessie Jackson says it, it's racist when the likes of a Noam Chomsky says it, and it's racist when the likes of Toby Keith says it.



So, one more time, just so everyone here on HuffPo can understand this and then go offline and tell your friends and family:



1> THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TALKING WHITE. THERE IS GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT ENGLISH AND THEN THERE'S EVERYTHING ELSE.



2> Being educated, intelligent and articulate is NOT, let me repeat that, NOT just for whites or Asians. Black and brown-skinned people can be and ARE educated, intelligent and articulate. It is NOT 'acting white' to read for pleasure, to think deeply about matters and to attempt to articulate them in an erudite fashion.



3> While there is no shame in being uneducated it is not something to stand up and be proud of either. While being educated and intelligent does not make you a better human being, it is nothing to be ashamed of either.



Got it? Good.



Cheers

LF
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Comparing and Contrasting Creationism and Evolution

On one of the discussion groups I participate in, the issue of creationism came up. I posted the following to the group as a means of comparing and contrasting between Creationism and Evolution. My argument is that there are a number of core differences between how creationists and scientists deal with their respective ideas. One of the first and most poignant things one notices is that in evolutionary biology, work proceeds apace without any reference to creationism. One could read through journals and never encounter a single reference to creationism. Put more bluntly, evolutionary biology stands on its own as a scientific theory. It explains phenomena based upon its own rules and need not look to creationist literature for definition. On the other hand, Creationism is what I call a negative theory. By this neologism, I mean that creationism can only define itself in reference to evolutionary biology. There are no free-standing creationist ideas, meaning that all of creationism can be encapsulated in the statement: “Evolutionary biology is wrong, therefore creationism is true”. This is stunningly sloppy logic. It is akin to assuming that because I don’t care for eggplant, that I must like okra.

I’ll spare you the discussion group specific run-up and jump right into it:

 I Googled for the exact same terms, changing ONLY the word
creationism or evolution.  I will take a representative sample of text
from *each* result which appears to best demonstrate the respective
positions.  My first search was "Genetic evidence for evolution" and
"Genetic evidence for creationism":
Here is a representative sample from a paper on evolution:
From the Abstract:
Rapid evolution driven by positive Darwinian selection is a recurrent 
theme in male reproductive protein evolution. In contrast, positive 
selection has never been demonstrated for female reproductive 
proteins. Here, we perform phylogeny-based tests on three female 
mammalian fertilization proteins and demonstrate positive selection 
promoting their divergence. Two of these female fertilization 
proteins, the zona pellucida glycoproteins ZP2 and ZP3, are part of 
the mammalian egg coat. Several sites identified in ZP3 as likely to 
be under positive selection are located in a region previously 
demonstrated to be involved in species-specific sperm-egg interaction, 
suggesting the selective pressure is related to male-female 
interaction. The results provide long-sought evidence for two 
evolutionary hypotheses: sperm competition and sexual conflict.
From the Discussion:
We have demonstrated that the female reproductive proteins ZP2, ZP3, 
and OGP are subjected to positive Darwinian selection. These results 
lend support to the models of sperm competition (1, 18, 19), sexual 
conflict (2, 20, 37), and cryptic female choice (15) driving the 
evolution of reproductive proteins, because these models involve male- 
female interactions. It is important for functional as well as 
evolutionary studies to examine the rapid evolution of both female and 
male reproductive proteins. Functional studies can glean important 
information not only from conserved regions of the molecules but also 
from the divergent regions under positive selection, because the 
latter may be functionally important for specificity. Our analysis 
identified several sites in ZP3 under positive selection. These 
include a region previously implicated as functionally important in 
sperm-egg interaction (41–43). Additionally, a region in ZP3 
immediately following the signal sequence was identified (Fig. 1 
Right) for which tests of functional importance have not been reported 
and which our data predict might also play a role in species 
specificity. The sites we identified in ZP2 as likely to be under 
positive selection are candidates to test for functional importance in 
ZP2's role as receptor for acrosome-reacted sperm (21, 27).
It is likely that the evolution of additional female and male 
reproductive proteins also are promoted by positive Darwinian 
selection. For example, many reproductive proteins (including ZP2, 
ZP3, and the sperm protamines analyzed here, but not OGP) are found in 
the 10% most divergent sequences from an aligned set of 2,820 human- 
rodent orthologs (ref. 51 and our unpublished analyses). These 
reproductive molecules are as divergent as many genes involved in 
immune response. Another ZP glycoprotein (ZP1) is also among these 
rapidly evolving proteins, but insufficient phylogenetic sampling to 
date precluded its analysis by using likelihood ratio tests. Future 
sequencing and phylogenetic analyses of these reproductive proteins 
are necessary to determine whether their rapid divergence is promoted 
by positive selection or caused by lack of constraint. It also will be 
important to determine in general what proportion of reproductive 
proteins show signs of selectively driven rapid evolution seen herein.
Our demonstration of positive Darwinian selection in female as well as 
male reproductive proteins lends support for models of sexual conflict 
and sperm competition driving the divergence of reproductive proteins 
(2, 20, 37). Although the nature of the selective pressure remains 
unclear, our observation that selection acts to diversify a region in 
ZP3 previously identified as functionally important for species 
specificity suggests that the selective pressure may be related to 
male-female interaction, in this case sperm-egg interaction.
The entire paper, so that you can read the whole thing (I cut out 
2/3rds of the paper for the sake of length and because it gets VERY 
technical), is located at:  http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.html
One will note that in neither the abstract OR the discussion is ANY 
reference made to creationism.  (You will not find it in the technical 
text that I omitted either)  You will also notice, in the conclusion, 
that the authors make a positive argument FOR evolution not a negative 
argument *against* creationism.  This is what we would expect from a 
proper scientific paper.
Here is what the search for creationism pulled up:
32.   Genetic Distances
Similarities between different forms of life can now be measured with 
sophisticated genetic techniques.
Proteins. “Genetic distances” can be calculated by taking a specific 
protein and examining the sequence of its components. The fewer 
changes needed to convert a protein of one organism into the 
corresponding protein of another organism, supposedly the closer their 
relationship. These studies seriously contradict the theory of 
evolution.a
An early computer-based study of cytochrome c, a protein used in 
energy production, compared 47 different forms of life. This study 
found many contradictions with evolution based on this one protein. 
For example, according to evolution, the rattlesnake should have been 
most closely related to other reptiles. Instead, of these 47 forms 
(all that were sequenced at that time), the one most similar to the 
rattlesnake was man.b Since this study, experts have discovered 
hundreds of similar contradictions.c
DNA and RNA. Comparisons can also be made between the genetic material 
of different organisms. The list of organisms that have had all their 
genes sequenced and entered in databases, such as “GenBank,” is 
doubling each year. Computer comparisons of each gene with all other 
genes in the database show too many genes that are completely 
unrelated to any others.d Therefore, an evolutionary relationship 
between genes is highly unlikely. Furthermore, there is no trace at 
the molecular level for the traditional evolutionary series: simple 
sea life   fish   amphibians  reptiles  mammals.e Each category of 
organism appears to be almost equally isolated.f
Humans vs. Chimpanzees. Evolutionists say that the chimpanzee is the 
closest living relative to humans. For two decades (1984–2004), 
evolutionists and the media claimed that human DNA is about 99% 
similar to chimpanzee DNA. These statements had little scientific 
justification, because they were made before anyone had completed the 
sequencing of human DNA and long before the sequencing of chimpanzee 
DNA had begun.
Chimpanzee and human DNA have now been completely sequenced and 
rigorously compared. The differences, which total about 4%, are far 
greater and more complicated than evolutionists suspected.g Those 
differences include about “thirty-five million single-nucleotide 
changes, five million insertions/deletions, and various chromosomal 
rearrangements.”h Although it’s only 4%, a huge DNA chasm separates 
humans from chimpanzees.
Finally, evolutionary trees, based on the outward appearance of 
organisms, can now be compared with the organisms’ genetic 
information.  They conflict in major ways.i
A couple of things you will otice.  Firstly, there is hardly a 
sentence that doesn't talk about evolutionists or evolution.  If 
creationism is such a strong scientific position why is it that it 
cannot stand on its own?  (And in this instance, I quoted the page in 
its entirety).  Secondly, you will notice that not a *single* argument 
in favor of creationism is made.   This was from In the Beginning: 
Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood  which is a book put 
out by the Center for Scientific Creation (which is why I favored this 
over the ICR although a page came up for them which, upon reading, had 
the same kinds of flaws).  The letters standing on their own all 
represent footnotes which I ran down and found that those quoting 
evolutionary biologists or other scientists were all misquotations (in 
fact, one such quotation is such a flagrant and obvious one that I 
merely had to put in the name of the scientist quoted and the first 
several hits were ALL about the misquotation which makes one wonder 
why a purportedly scientific organization would put it in their book 
and on their website).
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/LifeSciences37.html
One last comment before moving on.  I have been FAR more generous with 
creationism than with evolution.  After I had found my representative 
sample for creationism and genetics, I kept looking for results, 
following some 25 links in the hopes of finding ONE paper that had the 
kind of scientific gravitas that my representative evolutionary 
biology sample did.  I could not find one.  EVERY web page I found was 
similar in that it did not make a case FOR creationism, it made a case 
AGAINST evolution.  I took the *third* result from my search on 
evolution (third on the first page of results) purposely eschewing 
TalkOrigins pages.
In other words, while taking pretty much the first thing I could find for evolutionary biology I looked for the BEST thing I could find for creationism and the most solidly academic thing I could find still didn’t stand on its own.

Obama Should Stop Lecturing African Americans

About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I feel like Mr. Peabody

This morning, I was mucking about with Entourage and then switched back, deleting the Entourage calendar in iCal. I managed to do this before switching my To-Do list back, thus all of my To-Do items went away. This was the second time since I’ve owned this machine that I have done something so entirely clueless. However, thanks to Time Machine I have managed to get them back and it just looks so cool. I need not worry about deleting things as long as I do so after I’ve been home from work or elsewhere that I’m disconnected from the Time Capsule (see below). (The actual Tardis on top of my TC (also named Tardis) is a USB hub)

I love mornings

I never thought I would be ‘that woman’. The one who is up at six in the morning on her own power, but that is who I have become. Some of it, no doubt, is a function of having our bedroom with an eastern exposure. The sun breaks over Mount Hood, the Willamette valley is flooded with the first, eight minute old rays of light, dawn seeps into our window and the light strikes my eyes. Then a cat will stir and I am awake. Many a work day morning that has saved my ass! In no possible way am I complaining, at least not on those mornings. Over time, as this tendency to wake early has become more pronounced, I have come to enjoy it.

This Saturday morning, I was up at 5:30. I thought, briefly, about going back to sleep but got out of bed to check on the back-up I’ve been running (the travails of setting up a new network) and that was all she wrote. The next thing I was hunched over my Mac, waiting for the last six gigabytes to go across the wire so I could unplug the wire and take it to the desk. I started streaming Weekend Edition, listening to host Bob Simons’ sonorous voice and two hours have passed. I started playing around with some photos in PE* and suddenly it was a quarter of eight.

(I’ve just heard Simon say that comments by Obama where he says it plain, when he says that the GOP will say, “did I mention he was black.’ Anyone who thinks that it *won’t* happen is living in some kind of fantasy world. McCain, of course, will have to try and stay above it but for him to be excoriated for saying what is manifestly obvious to anyone is just ludicrous and another example of how the media tries to turn the narrative to generate interest. He has opted out of public financing, Obama knows what is coming at him because the GOP *will* try to make Americans fear Barack Obama. He’s going to have to be brilliant because large parts of it are going to come out sideways. But to suggest, for example, that FOX news does not function as anything so much as a PR branch of the RNC is to engage in a willful blindness to the reality of modern American politics. )

At any rate, these quiet bits of the morning have become the very best part of my day. The world is largely quiet, those sounds that intrude are distant, street sounds that remind me that I live in a city. The only sounds are of Liam being Mighty Panther Ninja Cat and Willow sneaking up on me to escape the MPNC and NPR. Those moments where I can only write if I have only my own words in my head are what I love mornings for. At 8:40 on a Saturday, having been up for three hours, the day feels full of potential.

Lesbian pioneers' marriage decades in making - CNN.com

Lesbian pioneers' marriage decades in making - CNN.com


Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the women who founded the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization in the United States will be married today. This makes me so very, very, happy. They have been together almost six decades and were, in part, an inspiration for a story I wrote a number of years ago called Romantasy.

Years ago, when I was a wee young baby-dyke, I was going into the 7-11 in the Castro District in San Francisco on my way to the Dyke March. Del and Phyllis were coming out and Del, the butch one, winked at me. Nothing at all sexual, just a “you kids are cute” wink that had my knees quivering. I will forever remember that one glance from a butch woman, 45 years my senior. At that moment I determined that whatever it was she had, I wanted THAT so that when I was a crusty, old butch I could melt some other baby dyke as I was.

Del and Phyllis are pioneers who made it possible for me to come out in the late 80’s. I hope that my love, Jaime, and I are as happy when we’ve been together 50 years. If any two people on this planet have earned their happiness, it’s these two.

Reflections on my 20th Pride festival

It’s kind of amazing for me to think about but this is my 19th Pride parade. Since 1989 I have always gone to Pride whether I was living in San Francisco (where I went to my first 12 Pride celebrations) or Portland, where I’ve done the last nine. At any rate, I am now sitting at Tom McCall Waterfront Park waiting for the Parade to start. This is one of only five where I have been purely a spectator. No drum, no marching with some non-profit or volunteer group or another. Some of that is that I think I’ve become somewhat jaded. It’s just another Pride festival. For Jaime, however, it’s all still new and fresh and exciting as this is only her second Pride and so she still has the excitement, the sense that it’s all new. We’re waiting for the roar and shaking of Dykes on Bikes, which last year in San Francisco, was renamed to the “Women’s Motorcycle Contingent” for reasons that still mystify me. It’s Dykes on Bikes, such as it always has been and, in my mind, such as it always will be.

Yesterday, I spent a good portion of the day at the Festival. I was on the setup crew for my Toastmaster’s club and, of course, had to wander the Festival for a while collecting my yearly queer SWAG. This year the pickings were kind of slim, but again, I’m a jaded old dyke these days and while I’m happy to be here with my wife if I had it to decide, I would have stayed at home and maybe done some writing. The parade should be here relatively soon now.

I’ve run into a few people this weekend, including someone from the old Lake Merritt Breakfast Club. She mentioned how good I look with some weight on me, reminding me of how skinny I once was.

Over the years, Pride has changed. There are a lot more families here. It used to be that kids were a relatively rare sight at Pride. We are surrounded by a family of four or five kids, maybe more. The other thing that has changed is that there are a lot more teenagers these days. It does my heart good to see so many teens who come out of the closet at such a young age. To me, coming out at 15 is amazing since I came out at 21. Wow, the years that have flown by. The old radical activist, member of Queer Nation and ACT-UP and Lesbian Avengers that I was feels somewhat ambiguous about how things have changed. On the one hand, this is what we worked for. This is what it is all about, creating a world where lesbians and gays can come together with our families. On the other hand, this means that things have been toned down considerably to accommodate the families. It’s not quite as queer, not quite as radical, not quite as in-your-face as it used to be. But this is the goal of all liberation movements, to become irrelevant which is not to say that the gay rights movement is irrelevant yet. Not nearly yet. But this is still no longer what it once was.

I started my day with talking to Debra Floyd, someone I met when I was a wee young baby dyke and she took me and Tracy and Nicole under wings.

Perhaps this feeling of nostalgic ennui is that because my son and my best friend, Jeff, are away at war and my father is ten years gone, almost to the day. (It will have been 10 years on July 1st). Whatever the reason, I feel very subdued today. Quiet and non-talkative. I don’t have much motivation to hang out at the Festival afterward although we almost certainly will.