Penis Explodes During Sex.

The shuttle broke up over Palestine, Texas today, as you can see in this map from MSNBC: It could not conceivably be a coincidence that the shuttle, with an Israeli on board, broke up over a town named Palestine. I guess this goes to show who's really in charge: Allah. Christians be warned.

The space shuttle Columbia: Bummer. Bush's remarks: First he said the requisite tragedy-and-heroism stuff, then spread on the God-butter pretty thick:

In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing." The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home. May God bless the grieving families, and may God continue to bless America.

Why is this necessary? Because the Religious Right expects him to? Because he's forever indebted to religious fundamentalists for a huge portion of his support base? Because he really believes it and doesn't mind shitting on the 200+ year secular history of the U.S. by saying such things? And why is God just a passive observer and soul-collector in this case, but "God was definitely in control" in the case of the flipped Jeep? This God fellow confuses me. He's like a rich and generous but absent-minded brother-in-law. "Phil said he was gonna lend me two grand to keep me out of the poor house! What the hell happened?" "Well, unofficially, he blew off work today and went hang-gliding, but, officially, you didn't have enough faith." "Darn. So his schizophrenia is really my fault. Now I understand."

Remember that stupid animated version of Animal Farm, with the bizarre non-book ending? You may know this already, but it was funded by the CIA. I didn't know that. This article by Louis Menand looks, among other things, at how Orwell has been appropriated by damn near every ideological and political color in the spectrum, especially those that otherwise clash. I've always ranked 1984 as one of the defining reads of my life, along with The Sun Also Rises and Crime and Punishment. The Menand article has me reevaluating why. No conclusions yet. I just feel lucky that I escaped my teenage years without reading The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged or Battlefield Earth. Who is John Galt? Fuck you, that's who. [Note: Excise last paragraph before posting -- crass.]

Strangest erotica ever.

Bias

I've just finished reading a Group 2 book by Bernard Goldberg called Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. The fist few chapters are a laborious read. They flow like something between a vengeful rant and a conspiracy theory. Once you get past the openning sections, though, it actually gets pretty interesting. Goldberg provides a chapter presenting his take on The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS which is actually somewhat compelling. When he finally starts presenting examples and statistics, he makes a lot of good points along with questionable ones. On the whole I'd say the book is more good than bad. It kicks off with a long story of what happened after Goldberg published an editorial accusing a CBS News piece of expressing blatant bias against Forbes's flat tax. Being himself an employee of CBS News, you might guess that such publication would bring Goldberg a lot of grief, setting the stage for his book. I might list the order of topics as follows:

• The news networks screwed me, so I'll call them the Mafia.
• Dan Rather was my friend, but now he hates me so I hate him too.
• What did I do? Nothing! No really, what did I do!? News guys suck.
• Newsrooms are overwhelmingly populated by Democrats. They always identify conservatives as "conservative," but rarely identify the political orientations of liberals.
• Homelessness was a huge story under Reagan but suddenly wasn't interesting any more under Clinton.
• AIDS reporting has always been littered with misrepresentations.
• Racial politics in newsrooms produce all kinds of distortions in what ends up on the air. Interesting examination of newspaper practices too.
• More stats on political orientation within the media. Dan Rather sucks. CBS loves whistle blowers, why do they hate me?
• Men get screwed in the media. And nobody cares.
• Ratings and race: why the news magazines only show stories about white people.
• The media won't report studies that might offend or disturb career moms.
• Newscasters say unconscionable things like "I would be happy to give [Clinton] a blow job just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs."
• The networks are losing their market because they suck.
• American news media water down their coverage of the Arab world. There is reluctance to portray widespread anti-American and anti-Israeli attitudes in moderate Arab nations such as Egypt. For example, a newspaper supported by the government of Egypt has published stories about how Jews use "the blood of Christians" to make passover food. The same newspaper also reported that Israeli operatives distribute drug-laced candy that makes Muslim women promiscuous. The same newspaper also ran a column thanking Hitler for taking "revenge in advance" on the Jews. This is a pretty interesting chapter.
• Dan Rather sucks.

I think the book was actually worth reading. It is probably unfortunate that it isn't read by more Group 1 readers. It's at the hub of Group 2, and no doubt many conservatives interpret it is vindication for whatever they believe. You can't call them ignorant because there are no accurate sources of information these days.

Two nights ago, I watched Jacques Derrida butter an English muffin. No, it wasn't a sleep-over at his house. I saw the film Derrida. I don't dislike Derrida as much as I do other post-modernists, cause he doesn't expose his ignorance of science as often as people like Lacan or Kristeva do, but I still can't say I'm a fan. And the film was silly and intentionally reflexive, sometimes comically so: at one point, we get a shot from a tall building of someone filming someone filming Derrida as he walks down the street. Wow. Deep. Chris and I engaged in some similar stupid shit with our digital cameras in Lars Medley's apartment over the holidays: Chris shot me shooting Tyler Pendleton shooting the TV. (Chris, do you still have that shot?) Maybe if Tyler invents something called "de-re-deconstruction" and becomes a famous French philosopher with wild white hair, I can get a limited nationwide distribution for my next film. Perhaps someone with a greater number of philosophy classes under his or her belt can give me a run-down on Derrida and the current Conventional Wisdom on him, and where they think he'll be relegated in the history of philosophy. Is Heidegger really as important as Derrida seems to think?

State of the Union: I think Chris's identification of honesty as a key component separating Group 1 and Group 2 books (see lower down on the page) is pretty damn accurate. Witness the NPR coverage of Bush's SotU address last night. Mitch McConnell, senator from Kentucky, was on the phones with Dan Schorr and the gang for the post-speech analysis, and nothing McConnell said was at all substantive. All he did was re-word Bush's remarks (and, in some cases, just regurgitate) and reaffirm his allegiance to anything and everything the prez said. One wonders if Republicans would adopt the same attitude if Bush had done some mid-speech improvising about the dire importance of passing his proposed Mandatory Baby Rape Bill. "Well, the President showed some impressive leadership tonight on the baby rape issue, Daniel, and Americans responded. Americans know that the country was founded on the principles of mandatory baby rape and they know that tax-and-spend socialism isn't going to bring baby rape to the regular, God-fearing citizens of this great nation. It takes character and action. Tonight President Bush reminded us why he's so popular with normal, patriotic Americans, and why he was elected so decisively back in 2000." Honesty. It's supposed to be a virtue, but in the world of American politics, dare I say it, it often leads to death. It's probably the biggest reason why liberals got in the mess they're in now. Michael Moore, the popular and populist left-winger, has an entire chapter in the Group 1 book Stupid White Men about how Clinton was a terrible president. He constantly complains about the wimpishness of liberals -- and he considers himself a liberal. He's simply being honest. Clinton was not a great president. In many (most?) ways, he sucked. So did Reagan. Even from a right-wing perspective, Reagan did some things that sucked. But you'd never hear a blue-blooded Republican say a bad word about Reagan. He's a god. It's a basic tenet of rhetoric and propaganda. People are stupid. Don't appeal to their common sense, exploit their stupidity. If you act like you know what you're talking about, people will assume you do. Most liberals (technical Democrats like Lieberman excluded) spend too much time trying to analyze the issues and decide on a proper and clear-headed course of action (and, these days, in congress at least, try to agree as often as possible with conservatives). Republicans just read from the Official Conservative Script in a confident manner, and then wave the flag. Guess which one elicits a more powerful response.

It seems appropriate tonight to say something related to the State of the Union address. So it seems we're going to war and, coincidentally, God is on our side this time. The words spoken by President GW Bush were not unlike words spoken by virtually every 20th century American president. Bush is merely following the predictable path laid out for him by many previous generations, perhaps stretching back as far as the honrable President McKinley. It reminds me of a jingle I worked on a few years ago. It's good for just about any American political party, for TV and radio ad spots, etc. The words are by God, and I set it to music. It goes like this:

I could heal the sick (if I wanted to) save the damned, feed the poor make a Christian of every Jew! I could end all the wars, and bring world peace; set prisoners free, and make the blind see, but I want you to do it for me! I want you to do it with democracy! Be the party of God! Let your light shine! Put your political faces In places where I won't show mine! Be the party of God! Tell the world who's in charge! Build an army so fine-- Let the hand of man stand in for mine!

I think this would be a timeless classic pep-song for any party that chose to adopt it. It somehow seems to be continuously applicable.

You may have heard about the kid who survived a car crash by flying through the air and grabbing hold of some power lines. This article from The New Orleans Channel explains the story, but adds a curious ending:

Justin Elan drove the other vehicle that was involved in the accident. He said that one of the things that caught his attention was a Bible that Thompson had in his jeep. Thompson agreed that surviving the accident almost without a scratch was miraculous. "God was definitely in control, and that's all I can say. There's no way that a coincidence would happen that I made it through five rolls (with) no head injury, not wearing my seatbelt, and flew onto power lines," Thompson said. "And I just happened to land on the neutral power line that had now power."

I can accept that people seldom understand the definition of "coincidence." But when during all this did Elan have time to notice the Bible in the other car? Did he notice the Bible while speeding toward Thompson's jeep? Was he distractedly nodding his head with approval when he caused the accident? Or did the Bible fly out along with Thompson during one of the five rolls? And why did the New Orleans Channel feel moved to quote the religious interpretation of the survivor?

No one ever says "Man, God was amazingly uninvolved in my incredible brush with death today!" This doesn't get said because God doesn't enter the mind of a non-religious survivor. I therefore propose to all my non-religious friends and associates that, should you ever find yourself in amazingly fortuitous circumstances which draw media attention, remember to note how unmiraculous it all is. Perhaps also mention how you are proud to be in the luckier tail distribution of the completely explicable statistics of chance events. "The odds of me getting rescued like that must be the same as being in a plane crash! I guess the coin toss was really on my side this time!"

More news from crazy upside-down land (Japan): interest rates in Japan went negative over the weekend.

Bankers said the rate on overnight call money traded between banks dropped to minus 0.01 percent and minus 0.02 percent for January 27-28. By borrowing at a negative rate, borrowers, thought to be foreign banks on Friday, pay back less than the amount borrowed. For the lender, the operation is a way to reduce yen exposure at a time when confidence in the Japanese banking system is low.

I don't envy Kenneth Feinberg. Nor do I hate him. Even though, yes, he's an autocratic bastard who often seems to be disbursing from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund in a wholly arbitrary manner, he's also privy to a lot of whining and disingenuousness that you and I are not. After the NYTimes article, check out this article from The New Yorker. Below are some highlights:

With awards below the average -- currently about $1.5 million -- [Feinberg] was almost always willing to add a few hundred thousand; on one occasion, I heard him promise to give a widow an additional half million dollars for no other reason than that she had come in with her two small children and asked for it. As far as I could make it out, Feinberg's reasoning in these cases amounted to: Let's do what seems to work, and worry about how to justify it afterward. With awards in the very upper reaches, by contrast, he was staunchly, even theatrically, recalcitrant. One lawyer told Feinberg that he had calculated the proper payment for his client to be between sixteen and seventeen million dollars. "You've lost your fucking mind!" Feinberg exclaimed. "This guy should file a suit." "He might; you're giving him every reason to," the lawyer replied, calmly. "I want him to!" Feinberg said. "And do me a favor: hold a press conference. Say I wouldn't give the guy sixteen million dollars -- tax free!".

------------------------------

Not surprisingly, Feinberg's position has infuriated the families of the most highly paid victims, who accuse him of acting arbitrarily, unfairly, and, finally, illegally. One day, I was sitting in Feinberg's office when a man whose wife had earned nearly four hundred thousand dollars a year came in to appeal his award. After several million dollars in offsets because of a life-insurance policy, the man was set to receive two million dollars. He felt he deserved at least another million. Feinberg asked the man whether he thought payments ought to be made solely on the basis of income, even if this meant that some already affluent families would receive ten million dollars in taxpayer money. "Yes, absolutely," the man responded. "The idea is to compensate me so my life style doesn't change, and my life style is different from a guy washing dishes. I don't live in a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-month apartment. I live in a place that costs me five thousand dollars a month in mortgage payments."

I don't know how I would handle myself in his situation. On some days, I'm sure I would feel sorry for everyone who came through the door. On others, I might vomit from victims' cold reductions of dead relatives to dollar amounts, and tell 'em to hit the bricks.

And I don't think a disbursement scheme exists that would please everyone. Feinberg is a masochist.

Vatican: Oops! I did it again! It seems like that wacky Roman Catholic Church just can't get anything right! It seems Irish Catholic convents were running laundromats for profit in which young girls were used as slave labor. The last of these laundries closed in 1996. You can read more about it here! According to ABC News:

Operated by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order, the laundries were virtual slave labor camps for generations of young girls thought to be unfit to live in Irish society. Girls who had become pregnant, even from rape, girls who were illegitimate, or orphaned, or just plain simple-minded, girls who were too pretty and therefore in "moral danger" all ran the risk of being locked up and put to work, without pay, in profit-making, convent laundries, to "wash away their sins."

Ever bashful, the Vatican still hasn't mustered up an apology. Don't worry girls! The Church will come around in a few centuries or so! Oh gosh, the Catholic Church is just the quirky goof-up of western society. They always just seem to be one step behind modernity. I think the Vatican shenanigans would make a pretty crazy strip in the Sunday comics.

Abortion and "Responsibility". I came across a weblog post somewhere comparing the anti-abortion position to a pro-responsibility stance. In response to this, I wanted to state my own position in general terms. The following principles seem pretty basic, fairly obvious, and, I think, close the book on a variety of issues:

• Separation of church and State - its in the Constitution. I also consider this to be one of the few core ideas worth keeping from my Baptist heritage (although Baptists today seem to have mostly forgotten about it). This is also easy to apply: if a law is based on a strictly religious belief, the law is bad.
• Separation of my business vs your business (i.e. negative rights). This means that consenting adults have a right to do what they want with themselves and each other, provided no coersion is involved. Simple idea. I think it's listed somewhere amongst life, liberty, and property

Let's apply these ideas to abortion. First, how do we know its wrong to have an abortion? The best argument for this claim seems to be: because a religious or spiritual authority tells us so. Particularly in the case of first-trimester abortions, non-religious people are in almost universal agreement that the embryo is an ill-differentiated cell mass. Nothing more. The clash over the supposed "rights of the zygote" is clearly a religious one. If abortion is legal, the state endorses no side. The religious are free to not have abortions in accordance with their own conscience. If abortion is made illegal, it can only be said to be the state's endorsement of a religious belief.

As for responsibility: why is it the state's role to enforce "responsible" decisions? Consider an analogy: unprecedented numbers of Americans are getting irresponsibly fat. Lyposuction is an easy way out. But the only responsible thing for an obese person to do is to make a lifestyle change. So the state outlaws lyposuction. And the conservative pro-diet-and-exercise crowd scorns obese activists by saying "You should have controlled your own urges to stuff your fat faces with donuts! You made your bed, now you lie in it!" This scenario is absurd, because clearly the poor self-control of the obese is no one else's business. There are fat people and there are unwanted pregnancies. Both conditions arise from powerful biological urges. To say "you should control yourself" is ignorant, condescending, and (most importantly) not your concern.

The abortion debate has a fundamental imbalance: the burden of proof is on the anti-abortionists because they want to control someone else's actions. It just isn't enough to say "abortion is wrong." You have to prove that the state has a valid, non-religious interest in stopping it. Areas of relevant state-interest: public health, economics, education, and so on, always benefit from free access to abortion. Health: abortions are now many times safer than giving birth. No costs for prenatal care, etc. Economics: planned families are astronomically more prosperous than unplanned ones. Prosperous families engage in more commerce, investment, etc. The social benefits are overwhelming, once we acknowledge that people's bodies and minds are designed with the central goal of reproducing, and sometimes (very often in fact) the biological facts of being human can frustrate the higher intellectual goals of a planned life.

The Mainichi Daily News never disappoints me. Today I found a photo essay on Japanese ice cream flavors. The flavors range from wasabi to corn to eel. Octopus ice cream was one of my favorites:

Want to tantalize the taste buds with a tentacle? If so, Octopus Ice Cream is the go. Japanese have been able to come up with an amazing variety of uses for octopus, ranging from delicacy to porno movie prop. Little wonder that octopus has found its way into ice cream, then.

The Photo Essays page also has a currently running memoir on the period 1995-1999. Listed among the "personalities of the period" are the Japanese high-school girls, whom the Mainichi suggests are the most powerful economic force in Japan. Their buying power was apparently drawn from their parents' income, but the Mainichi also says

Many supplemented their pocket money by flogging their supple young bodies to older men through enjo kosai, a euphemism for prostitution that literally translates as compensated dating. Many of the enjo kosai girls graduated to the dyed yellow hair, miniskirt-clad, platform-shoe wearing young women highly visible on most of the nation's streets.

I'm afraid that if I go to Japan I will be stricken with a permanent face of bewilderment.