A 'Nym is Not an Unknown

I like Google+, I do, but I'm not liking their recent purge of pseudonymous folk at all.  It's not right that people like Bug Girl and DrugMonkey face the choice between revealing their real names or getting banned.  And we're not talking just having their profiles deactivated, no, it's worse than that: they were exiled completely from Google+, not allowed to even follow along in silence, all for the terrible crime of not writing under their "real" name.  Fortunately, it seems they're now allowed to view, but nothing else.

Google+ is going to have to deal with a few facts or shrink dramatically.

A 'nym is not an unknown.  Names are easy to fake.  Reputations are not.  Over the months and years, pseudonymous folk build up a reputation, and that reputation follows the 'nym.  So let's not pretend that a pseudonym is the same as anonymous.  Some people still get confused about that - apparently, Google+ is, too, and it's pathetic at this late stage in the game.  Allowing people to use their pseudonyms will not throw open the gates to barbarians and trolls.  Disallowing 'nyms won't prevent people from being assclowns.  What Google is doing is about as sensible as banning all Muslims from airports because the vast majority of people who hijack planes are Muslim.  You harm a lot of very good people for very little gain.  There are better ways of guarding against undesired behaviors.  Such as, banning the people who actually engage in those behaviors, regardless of whether they use their real names or not.

Google seems to have this idea that people only use a 'nym because they're up to no good.  That's ridiculous.  There are plenty of excellent reasons why someone wouldn't want to go by their real name.  I chose a pseudonym a long time ago (ye gods, nearly twenty years, how time flies), not because I wanted to hide my real self but because my legal name isn't one I want on the cover of my books.  Grow up with a last name associated with a very kitschy retailer, deal with the endless no-longer-funny jokes, and on top of that have a character filch your first name, and before long, you're having nightmares about doing very Not Nice things to fans who unwitting tell you the Not Funny Joke for the billionth-and-eleventy-first time.  In the interests of public relations, I have to be a 'nym.

But there are deeper reasons.  Much, much deeper.

I do not want my identity stolen.  I do not want to be stalked.  I do not want current or future employers deciding my liberal tendencies or my atheism or whatever else makes me suddenly unemployable, despite an exemplary track record.  I do not want my rapist able to locate me simply by searching my name. Those, it seems, are reasons enough not to operate online under my legal name.  Besides, my legal name weirds me out, now.  I hear it and it sounds wrong.  I'm Dana Hunter, online and off (except at the office).  That's me.  Not this stranger on my driver's license.

There are 'nyms out there who have even better reasons.  'Nyms who risk death by being who they are, and would potentially be tracked down and killed if they went by their real names - Muslims who deconvert, for instance, or women escaping abusive former spouses.  There are 'nyms who would be ostracized were certain things about them known: that they're LGBTQ, or atheists.  There are 'nyms who would lose their jobs for saying what they do: whistleblowers, or simply people who have a lot to share but whose companies don't want them to discuss anything even tangentially related to their employment in public.  All of these 'nyms have something of interest to say, something of value to contribute, and the intertoobz would be a far poorer place were they silenced.  Google+ certainly will be a sanitized wasteland if they're all exiled from it.

And how does it possibly make sense to force 'nyms to use their real names, even if they're able?  We don't know who the fuck John B. Smith is.  We don't care.  We know a 'nym, and a 'nym is who we're looking for when we go to add that beloved person to our circles.  And how do you, Google, know that John B. Smith is the name behind the 'nym?  Because it's a "real" name, not something even the most drug-addled hippie parent would have named a child?  How do you know that real-sounding name wasn't just cobbled together from a few random entries in a phone book?  We don't present proof of identity when we sign up.  Google doesn't have Dana Hunter's driver's license or birth certificate on file.  (Should they ever ask, though, I can point them to a rather large number of people in both my online and offline worlds who'd know who Dana Hunter is and could easily pick me out of a crowd.  Even my parents know me by my 'nym.) 

The solution to whatever it is Google's hoping to prevent by banning 'nyms - whether it's sock puppetry or trolling or general asshattery - isn't the nuclear option of banning everybody with an implausible name (including Chinese ones).  Just witness the security procedures that put innocent kiddies on no-fly lists only to let a terrorist named Richard Reid on board, no questions asked despite the bomb in his shoe, to see how effective such tactics are.  Targeted tools that enforce consequences for actual bad behavior make better sense, don't ensnare the innocent quite so often, and ensure actual results.  That's much more useful to a community. 

Google+ is new, and there are bound to be growing pains.  The real test is to see how they respond to their mistakes.  If they're smart, they'll fix their policy and let the poor exiled 'nyms back in with a swift apology.

If not, my profile may not be long for Google+, whether they cotton to the fact I'm a 'nym or not.  I don't think I'd want to be part of an environment that's unremittingly hostile to my Bug Girl and DrugMonkey friends.

You can help them do the right thing by adding your name (or 'nym) here.

Dear Richard Dawkins: You Do Not Know What It's Like to Live in Fear

Oh, dear.  Richard Dawkins is having difficulty understanding why being invited to coffee in a hotel room at 4 in the morning by a strange man can be traumatic for a woman. And, upon realizing he'd begun digging himself a hole, proceeded to rent a backhoe.

A great many people, women who live with the reality that women are the overwhelming majority of the ones who suffer sexual assault and the men who understand that reality, have taken Richard to task.  Most have done a finer job of it, but I can't help but add my voice.  You wanted it explained to you without the use of the word "fuck" every other sentence, and you said you would apologize if we did so.  Let's see if you're a man of your word, then, Dear Richard, who I still do love and respect despite this egregious error in judgment, not to mention human understanding.

By virtue of having been born with vaginas, women are under constant threat.  That is true for women in societies where patriarchy reigns, and it is just as true in America, where we've slowly and painfully won some degree of equality.  Richard, you seem to believe that an invitation to coffee is not on the same order as having one's genitals mutilated, and that is true.  What you fail to understand is that this simple invitation could lead to something similar enough, or worse.

When a man approaches a woman, we have no idea of his motives.  It doesn't matter how nice he is, or how innocent his motives, or how innocuous the question.  Ted Bundy was a very nice man.  His motives seemed completely innocent: he just wanted help with carrying his books, or loading his boat onto a trailer, or whatever other ruse he'd come up with.  And women who fell for it ended up dead.

Richard, this is what you don't understand: women live under constant threat of rape and murder, and it's the nice men just as much as the obvious creeps we have to be wary of.  Let me explain to you what goes through my mind when a man I don't know asks me to join him in some isolated place: I wonder why he wants to get me, a perfect stranger, in a place where he controls my escape routes and there are no witnesses.  And you think I can use words to fend him off.

You may believe women in these situations are overreacting.  The gentleman only invited the lady to coffee, alone, in his hotel room, at four a.m.  In the world you inhabit, if someone asked you to join them for a drink and conversation, that is all it is.  For a woman, there's every possibility that the man is not interested in coffee and conversation at all, and simply declining the offer puts us at mortal risk.

Here is what can happen with that: I can use words to tell him no, not interested, and he very possibly could go from Mr. Nice Guy to Mr. No-Bitch-Turns-Me-Down.  He could do that in an instant.  The chances of him being one of those men is small, but it's not non-zero.  It's not a chance I can ignore.  So while I'm telling him no, not interested, I'm having to think of the worst case scenario, and what I'll do.  What environmental weapons do I have on me?  What are my chances against his greater strength?  Should I run now, or will facing him down without fear get me out of this situation?  What will I do if the worst happens?  How am I going to survive this encounter?

You think a man can solicit a woman for sex (and asking her to coffee alone in his room in the wee hours is nothing short of that), in an elevator, and all she has to do is say no.  You think she has an escape: press a button to get out.  Here's a way for you to test whether this theory is plausible: ask one of your body builder friends to get you on an elevator, alone, and attempt to escape him by pressing a button and exiting down a deserted corridor.  See how easily you can break free if he grabs you; see if you can remain conscious if he punches you out.  See if anyone will bother to respond to your screams as you're dragged down the corridor.  See if anyone bothers to call the police.  Then explain to me just how easily I can escape a potential assailant, and how "zero bad" being solicited for sex in an elevator is.

Maybe you'll listen to a man who understands:

"Whether or not men can relate to it or believe it or accept it, that is the way it is.  Women, particularly in big cities, live with a constant wariness.  Their lives are literally on the line in ways men just don't experience.  Ask some man you know, 'When is the last time you were concerned or afraid that another person would harm you?'  Many men cannot recall an incident within years.  Ask a woman the same question and most will give you a recent example or say, 'Last night,' 'Today,' or even 'Every day.....'

"It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different - men and women live in different worlds.  I don't remember where I first heard this simple description of one dramatic contrast between the genders, but it is strikingly accurate: At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, and at core, women are afraid men will kill them."

Gavin de Becker spoke for me when he wrote those words.  I read them a few years after I was raped, as I was still trying to find a way in the world between abject terror and dangerous overconfidence.  If you've never been victimized in that way, nor at any real risk of ever being sexually harmed, it's extremely hard to understand the constant fear.  Do you want to know what my first thought is, upon meeting a male stranger?  It's always, "What are the chances he'll end up stalking, raping or killing me?"  And that question is asked at every stage of the relationship.  I have many close male friends who would be shocked to know I constantly reassess them for risk.  I can't trust anymore, Richard, because it was a friend who decided that if I wouldn't date him, he would break into the house and take what he wanted by force.  It was a friend who refused to hear the word no.  And if I could be victimized by one friend, whatever on earth would lead me to believe any other friend could be trusted to hear my words, much less a stranger?

I won't even go in to the other bullshit women deal with in our society.  Just read a few headlines.  You'll notice that we are constantly dealing with men who want to control our reproductive choices, who consider our health and well-being less important than theirs, who seem to believe we are more property than people.  And if we let any of that slide, even the simple things like believing it's fine for a man to impose himself on a woman in a hotel corridor at four in the morning, then we'll lose what precious progress we've made.

Men need to understand the world women live in.  They need to know what it's like to go from coasting along without worries to instant fight-or-flight fear with a few seemingly-innocent words from a stranger.  Because until they understand that simple fact of our existence, they won't understand all of the other subtle ways society conspires to keep women from gaining equal footing with men.

We live in constant fear.  And what right do you have, Richard, to denigrate us for our response to that simply because the situation didn't lead to harm this time?

Because this is the truth of it: you could so easily not have been talking about Rebecca Watson because she used the example of this man's 4 a.m. approach as an example of the kinds of things it's inappropriate for men to do to woman.  You could so easily have been talking about her rape or murder instead.  And then all of these men, such as yourself, who are complaining that she blew a completely harmless situation out of control would be asking how she could have allowed herself to be in such a dangerous situation as being alone with a stranger.

Think about that the next time you're tempted to explain to women just how silly their fears for their safety are.

You're a smart man, and an empathetic man, so I think you can understand.  So listen to us.  Read the following posts, and try to comprehend why what you said was so very, egregiously inappropriate.

Blag Hag: Richard Dawkins, your privilege is showing.

Butterflies and Wheels: A priest and a rabbi go into an elevator and… and Getting and not getting.

ICBS Everywhere: On Sexism, Objectification, and Power.

Greg Laden's Blog: Rebecca Watson, Barbara Drescher and the Elevator Guy and Women in Elevators: A Man To Man Talk For The Menz.

Almost Diamonds: Rebecca Watson Sucks at Reading Minds and A Letter to Professor Dawkins from Victims of Sexual Assault.

Bad Astronomy: Richard Dawkins and male privilege.

Pandagon: Because of The Implication.

Skepchick: The Privilege Delusion.

Bug Girl's Blog: A letter to Richard Dawkins from Victims of Sexual Assault.  This one shows rather nicely how well words work to prevent sexual assault, i.e., they usually don't.

This post on Shapely Prose from 2009 captures a woman's reality perfectly, and I wish I had written it: Guest Blogger Starling: Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced. Via this excellent post, via Jen.

For those who think it's enough to say no, and that no means no, and that men will understand a good, firm no, see Yes Means Yes: Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer.

And I know you've read these posts at Pharyngula, because you stuffed your foot into your mouth there, but I place them here for curious readers and men who need the example of a guy who gets it: Always name names!, The Decent Human Beings' Guide to Getting Laid at Atheist Conferences, and Oh, no, not again…once more unto the breach. 

If I've missed anything (and I'm certain I have), my readers can catch us up in the links.

A note to mansplainers and men who refuse to get it (and the few women who are either hopelessly naive or willfully blind): I may or may not moderate this thread, and I have absolutely no problem publicly shaming.  Do not insult the victims of sexual assault by telling us how most men aren't rapists, and how we don't have to fear these little situations.  Because of you, I'm turning anonymous commenting off for an undetermined period of time, so that you won't be free to spout your nonsense without attaching your name to it.  This means assault survivors who don't want their status broadcast won't be able to add their voices, and I'm sorry for that.  They should be able to speak safely.  But I refuse to let cowards spew abuse without fear of repercussion on this of all threads.

On Terry Pratchett and Escape Routes

This news brought tears to my eyes, because I adore Terry Pratchett and I never ever want the world to be without him:

Three and a half years ago, Terry Pratchett, the beloved author of the Discworld series, announced that he has early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Now he's made an even more startling announcement.

Pratchett, who has campaigned in his native United Kingdom for the right of assisted suicide, has begun the formal process of assisted suicide in Switzerland, one of the few countries in the world to legalize euthanasia. Specifically, this would take place at Dignitas, a clinic that provides qualified doctors and nurses to assist with the patients' suicides. 

Those of us who read Eric MacDonald's beautiful blog know Dignitas.  It's an amazing place, and I'm glad it's there.  Because people need escape routes.

Which one of us wants to live on beyond hope?  Mind gone, life destroyed beyond recovery, each day one more endless slog of suffering and humiliation?  Very few of us, I'd bet.

And because of Switzerland's compassionate laws and clinics like Dignitas, Terry Pratchett doesn't have to.

Does the news he's planning on ending his life shock and sadden me?  Of course it does.  I'll miss him terribly.  He's changed my life in so many ways, given me so many precious memories curled up with a Discworld book.  It hurts to lose him, hurts to know that the series will end far too soon, and that I won't have a chance to ever shake his hand and say a heartfelt "Thank you."  But, people, he has Alzheimer's.  It's already mauled his ability to write, and it will progress to the point where he can't write at all.  It will steal his mind away, leaving a shell, and perhaps just enough awareness to know what's happening.

I am a writer.  I have a damned good imagination, but I can't imagine many things worse.

And how much worse is it when there's no way out, no way to choose the moment, no way to cut out those awful bits at the end and go out on a high note?  To live in fear that one day, you'll wake up and have nearly nothing of you left and know that it will only get worse and yet be forced to live through that nightmare for an unknown length of time?  I can't speak for Terry, but I can speak for myself: that fear would consume me.  It would poison all the good moments left.  Much better to know there's an escape route.  Much easier to live those last good days fully and happily when there's an exit available.  Even if I can't bring myself to walk through that door - and really, until I've got my hand on the handle, how can I know if I'll have the emotional strength to turn it? - knowing it's there would be an enormous comfort.

I've often said we treat our pets better than people.  We don't let them linger on in horrible pain, not if we're good and strong people who can do right by them.  I've made more than one trip to the vet with a beloved pet when there was no hope of any more good days, or too few to justify all the bad ones.  I've held them as they died.  And it's hard.  It's so hard.  But it's the right thing to do.

Why shouldn't I be able to do that for my mother, who lives in dread of suffering and dying like her own mother did, mind gone and only a confused, agonized shell lingering on?  Why shouldn't I be able to choose people to do the same for me?

People have this knee-jerk horror at the idea of someone taking their own life.  They seem to believe no one should have that choice, and they give reasons.  Some, I even agree with.  This isn't a decision that should ever be made lightly: it needs to be understood that it's irreversible, and that some things are worth living through for a bit to see if they get better, because they so often do.  This isn't a decision that should ever be forced on a person.  But there are so many ways to ensure those things are suitably addressed, and they shouldn't stop us from allowing people who want it an escape route.

As for the other reasons, such as it's God's choice and not ours - well, those arguments are invalid.  So are the slippery slope arguments used as camouflage for the religious ones.  We're not going to see grandmas and grandpas bundled off wholesale just because assisted suicide is legal.  There may be isolated incidents.  You know what?  There already are, and always will be, and demanding a perfect system with no errors is just another way of ensuring the escape route stays blocked off for everyone forever.  So fuck that.

I hope, once those papers are signed, Terry Pratchett can breathe a sigh of relief and get on with living a lot more life before the time comes.  I hope we don't lose him so soon.  But at least he's got the escape route open.  No matter when he chooses to go, at least it's his choice, not the disease and not society.  He won't be trapped with no way out.

It's time other people got to have that same choice.

(Eric MacDonald on Pratchett and the Choosing to Die program is well worth reading.)

What I Have Learned by Watching Carmen

Don Jose is an absolute idiot.

*Addendum: It's pretty damned rude for an interviewer to keep interviewing a singer when the singer's bleeding all over the place.  At least get the poor guy a tissue....

Why the Fuck Do People Get Married?

I've just spent the last hour-and-a-half researching wedding shit for a scene I'm writing, and I can think of only two words: fucking paininthearse. 

If I ever have the misfortune to have someone I actually love pop the question, the first thing I'll ask before even considering saying yes is, "Are you good with eloping?"  If the answer is yes, then my answer might be yes.  It depends on whether ye olde significant other plans to have a big reception later on or not.  If not, then all is well.

This is some crazy shit we engage in when it comes to signing a few documents saying you're not longer a Miss.

It's the Apocralypse

Back in my day, all you could get was Hello Kitty erasers, stationary sets, backpacks, that sort o' thing.  And it was just for the kiddies.  It all made sense.  It was just as it should be: sweet and innocent and totally kitschy.

This is just wrong:

This is a horrible thing to do to wine.  And of course, Stephen Colbert has an idea where this trend could be going next:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag - Hello Kitty Wine & Pig's Blood Filters
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Forget pale horses.  This, my friends, is the harbinger of the end.  Next thing you know, there'll be Strawberry Shortcake condoms and Power Rangers butt plugs.  Every damned fad is destined to be resurrected as something adults-only, because apparently companies are too lazy to come up with original adult fads. 

And thus continues the infantalizing of America.

The Architecture of the Unexpected

One of the books I picked up during my unexpected side trip to Half-Price Books was Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, by Edward S. Morse.  It contains surprises.

I didn't look at it closely before I bought it.  I needed something on non-Western architecture, and it fit the bill.  That's all I needed to know.  Now I've cracked it open, and it's given me several shocks.  For instance, I didn't anticipate its antiquity - it was written in 1885.  As Clay Lancaster points out in the Preface to the Dover Edition, this is a good thing - Morse was able to study Japanese architecture before the West left its footprint. 

The second shock is the fact it was written by a scientist.  Morse was in Japan to study brachiopods.  He was teaching zoology at the Imperial University in Tokyo.  Things like art and architecture were a sideline to him, until his friend Dr. Bigelow told him to stop bothering himself with brachiopods.  "For the next generation the Japanese we knew will be as extinct as Belemnites," Bigelow said.  And thus, a zoologist wrote a book about houses.

Then, reading the Preface by Morse himself, I see him thanking none other than Percival Lowell for "numerous courtesies."  Small world, isn't it just?  I'd had no idea that a man studying brachiopods and dwellings in Japan would have anything at all to do with my hometown astronomer, but there it is.

Perhaps the most unexpected shock is this: Morse is a wonderful writer who makes you laugh.  You don't pick up a book on architecture expecting a good giggle, but how can you not laugh when you come across a passage like this as Morse discusses the influence of Japanese art and architecture already evident in America in the late 1880s:

It was not to be wondered at that many of our best artists - men like Coleman, Vedder, Lafarge, and others - had long before recognized the transcendent merit of Japanese decorative art.  It was however somewhat remarkable that the public at large should come so universally to recognize it, and in so short a time.  Not only our own commercial nation, but art-loving France, musical Germany, and even conservative England yielded to this invasion.  Not that new designs were evolved by us; on the contrary, we were content to adopt Japanese designs outright, oftentimes with a mixture of incongruities that would have driven a Japanese decorator stark mad.  Designs appropriate for the metal mounting of a sword blazed out on our ceilings; motives from a heavy bronze formed the theme for the decoration of friable pottery; and suggestions from the light crape were woven into hot carpets to be trodden upon.  Even with this mongrel admixture, it was a relief by any means to have driven out of our dwelling the nightmares and horrors of design we had before endured so meekly, - such objects, for example, as a child in dead brass, kneeling in perpetual supplication on a dead brass cushion, while adroitly balancing on its head a receptacle for kerosene oil; and a whole regiment of shapes equally monstrous.  Our walls no longer assailed with designs that wearied our eyes and exasperated our brains by their inanities. We were no longer doomed to wipe our feet on cupids, horns of plenty, restless tigers, or scrolls of architectural magnitudes.  Under the benign influence of this new spirit it came to be realized that it was not always necessary to tear a flower in bits to recognize its decorative value; and that teh simplest objects in Nature - a spray of bamboo, a pine cone, a cherry blossom - in the right place were quite sufficient to satisfy our craving for the beautiful.

Isn't that delightful?  I expected a dry treatise on Japanese architecture.  What I'm getting is plenty of architectural information, but I'm also getting a lesson in style, an intimate glimpse into history, a draught of art, and the delectably dry humor of a man who has  suffered one too many brass children holding lamps.

There's also something to learn of sociology in here.  Morse says, in his Introduction:

It is extraordinary how blind one may be to the faults and crimes of his own people, and how reluctant to admit them.  We sing heroic soldier-songs with energy and enthusiasm, and are amazed to find numbers in a Japanese audience disapproving, because of the bloody deeds celebrated in such an exultant way.  We read daily in our papers the details of the most blood-curdling crimes, and often of the most abhorrent and unnatural ones; and yet we make no special reflections on the conditions of society where such things are possible, or put ourselves much out of the way to arouse the people to a due sense of the degradation and stain on the community at large because of such things.  But we go to another country and perhaps find a new species of vice; its novelty at once arrests our attention, and forthwith we howl at the enormity of the crime and the degradation of the nation in which such a crime could originate, send home the most exaggerated accounts, malign the people without stint, and then prate to them about Christian charity!

In the study of another people one should if possible look through colorless glasses; though if one is to err in this respect, it were better that his spectacles should be rose-colored than grimed with the smoke of prejudice. 

He's right, you know.  Utterly, absolutely right.  His observations and advice were excellent then, and they're excellent now. 

So here we have a book that not only explores Japanese architecture, but art, society, and human nature.  Morse isn't afraid to compare and contrast.  Many authors engage in that trick, but few are as brave as he is in exposing the warts as well as the wonders both of the society under observation and his own.  In the Introduction, in fact, as he's mentioning that there are some Japanese houses he doesn't like, he balances that by noting that English homes aren't so special, either:

Still another English writer says: "It is unpleasant to live within ugly walls; it is still more unpleasant to live within unstable walls: but to be obliged to live in a tenement which is both unstable and ugly is disagreeable in a tenfold degree."  He thinks it is quite time to evoke legislation to remedy these evils, and says: "An Englishman's house was formerly said to be his castle; but in the hands of the speculating builder and advertising tradesman, we may be grateful that it does not oftener become his tomb."

Morse took seriously the concept that one shouldn't forget the beam in one's own eye while whining about the mote in another's.  Of course, in this case, he was dissing England, not America, but we get the sense that he's lumping things East and West, by way of comparison - England's faults, therefore, became our own.

Morse was writing in an age where science wasn't as segregated as it is now.  Scientists could let their curiosity take them where it would - and if that meant throwing over brachiopods in favor of building materials, that would do.  Adding social studies to the mix, even better.  Books could breathe.  There wasn't such a rigid focus on sticking to the subject at hand (just ask Melville, who found it perfectly reasonable to insert several chapters on cetaceans in the middle of an epic adventure story).  Tight focus is admirable, but I think sometimes we focus the beam a little too much.  We forget that things are inextricably connected, because we're so used to erecting partitions.

That's why it's nice to read a nineteenth-century book on architecture.  All of the things that go in to architecture - the society, the environment, the history of the culture and the 1,001 things that influence the way a building is built and used - get explored, without apology, and without fear that a dose of opinion and humor will somehow cheapen the work.

We probably don't need a return to the extremes of 19th century segues (and if you're wondering what I mean by extremes, pick up an unabridged copy of Les Miserables for a weighty example).  But it certainly wouldn't hurt if fiction and non-fiction writers of today took a hint from Japanese architecture, and instead of erecting walls, used easily-rearranged partitions instead.

Things to Bring Up In Arguments With Cons

A few posts on Crooks and Liars you should absolutely not miss, especially if you get bogged down in discussions with Cons:

When they babble there's no problem with racism and class divisions in this country, point them here. Be prepared to explain to them why, after generations of piss-poor treatment and rampant discrimination, black people may not have the warm fuzzies for white people, because you just know they'll fall back on the "But they do it too!" defense.

When they brag about Faux News ratings in the mistaken belief those mean something, direct them here. Good luck trying to get them to understand that the majority of Americans aren't obsessive fucktards who hang on Glenn Beck's every spew.

And when they whine for the 1,989,346th time about how that report on right-wing extremism dishonors the troops, bring this to their attention. You may find it difficult getting through their skulls that neo-Nazis infiltrating the military dishonors the troops far more than reports advising that various extremist groups might target service members, but in the end, perhaps a fact or two might penetrate.

I know, who am I kidding, right? But let's not give up hope just because the majority of them are hopeless fools.

"Time Wastes Too Fast" - A Tour of Monticello

This is absolutely glorious, a beautiful tour through Thomas Jefferson's house and his life. Consider yourselves invited.



(Tip o' the shot glass to mcjoan, who's served up a plethora of interesting items.)

What Does Torchwood Have To Do With DADT?

So glad you asked. Cujo's got your answer.

I love it when pop culture and political news can be combined into teachable moments, don't you?

Things That Piss Me Off: Shallow Culture Edition

Back when Tarja quit Nightwish, I remember reading the band's criteria for a new lead singer. They nattered a bit about great voice, etc., but above all, they said, the singer must be physically beautiful. With extra emphasis on the beautiful. And you know what? They ended up with someone gorgeous - who's not a fucking patch on Tarja. She doesn't have the voice for symphonic metal. That's why our relationship ended when Tarja went solo.

What brought this to mind? George at Decrepit Old Fool found a gem:

Wow.

I’ve heard that the music industry is driven by how photogenic performers are, as much as by how the music sounds. But see if this performance by unknown Susan Boyle on a British talent show, doesn’t make you want to stand up and cheer. And be amazed by the emotional impact of unexpected difference between expectations and reality.

Only for a dear friend like George will I subject myself to idiotic British spinoffs of American Idol. And I'm glad I did. Susan Boyle has a double chin, a pug nose, a body that figures in few teen male fantasies - and a voice that belongs on Broadway. Fuck her lack of fashion sense. To hell with cultural ideals of feminine beauty. It enrages me that a voice like hers got confined to her shower and a circle of friends just because she's not a physical knockout. Besides, don't these shallow little money-grubbing record execs realize that two hours with Stacy and Clinton would turn her into a supermodel? If physical appearance is that damned important, fucking hire somebody to solve the problem with some clever clothes and makeup tricks. Or maybe, y'know, stop being so fucking superficial.

Listen to this and tell me this woman doesn't deserve a CD just because she's not a pin-up:

Great music transcends physical appearance. You only need a great body if you have no fucking talent. And I think the response to this woman proves that in spades.

I'll tell you what delighted me about this, aside from the fact that Susan Boyle is one of the only people who's ever sung Fantine right and the fact no one expected her to because they were too busy laughing at her frumpy appearance: the expression on Simon Cowell's face. Mind you, I've always liked Simon. I've a soft spot for absolute bastards with British accents. But usually the poor man looks tortured. He genuinely loves music, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why he's always so acerbic. Wouldn't you be were you in his shoes? And while the other two judges were reacting with shock, awe and tears, he just sat back with a blissful smile that said he'd been transported. This was what he'd been waiting for. Yes, I melted. I likes to see Simon happy.

Simply outstanding, all round.

Feasts for the eyes are nice, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that physical beauty doesn't have its place in the list of Things That Make Life Worth Living. But it's not so essential that it trumps all other glorious talents. Susan Boyle could've had running sores and an ear growing out of her nose. It would've ceased to matter the second she opened her mouth and sounded that first ethereal note. There's beauty, and then there's beauty, and I don't want some jackass denying us such auditory euphoria simply because he thinks only sexy bodies sell.

There's a fan club, by the way. C'mon over and join the rest of us who love a lovely voice.

Huzzah! We're Not So Special

Pretty soon, the only thing that'll mark humans as unique among animals is the fact that we can build skyscrapers and have to argue constantly with creationists. We sure as shit can't claim culture:

Now, Andrew Whiten from the University of St Andrews has published the first evidence that groups of chimpanzees can pick up new traditions from each other. In an experimental game of Chinese whispers, he seeded new behaviours in one group and saw that they readily spread to others.

Whiten ran an experiment in which he taught some chimps, but not others, how to extract food from trick boxes. He then put those chimps in a position to be observed by other chimps who couldn't interact directly with them. And this is what he discovered:

Whiten found that the techniques were accurately and quickly transmitted between the different chimpanzee groups. His experiment clearly shows that chimps have an immense capacity for learning new behaviours from their peers. They do this accurately and different groups can acquire and maintain several varied cultural traditions.

In light of this evidence, the regional behaviour patterns seen in chimp groups across Africa are, without a doubt, the result of cultural transmission. In the wild, rival groups are often hostile towards each other and it is unlikely that chimps sit down in jungle conferences to share new ideas. But females do move between groups and Whiten believes that they carry new cultural traditions with them.

Deary, deary me. That sounds an awful lot like what happens in traditional human societies, don't it just? That's going to get the creationists' knickers in quite a twist.

I know some people get really steamed over the idea that we're not on some high pinnacle above the mere beasts, but I find things like this comforting. I feel like humanity is less alone in the universe. Not to mention, no needing to worry about how, if humans are supposed to be teh awesome, we're often so bloody, bloody ridiculous. We're just natural, no better and no worse than the rest of our cousins, but with the responsibility to at least try to use the brains evolution gave us to become better creatures.

Satire - It's ALLLIIIIVVVEEE!!!11!!

Remember your Poe's Law, my darlings, and enjoy:

Unfortunately, liberals have distorted the history and meaning of Thanksgiving because they see everything through the ideology of victimhood, which is a glass-half-empty view of history. Thanksgiving to liberals is a celebration of purported genocide against the Indians perpetrated by the Christian pilgrims. But in fact this is not what Thanksgiving is about at all. As usual liberals are ignoring the real victims here.

Thanksgiving celebrates the day that Pilgrims and Indians sat down to eat together before the gay secularist Indians divided this country and tried to foist their atheism and savage decadent culture on the God-fearing pilgrims. The pilgrims were rightly appalled by Native American culture where transgendered “two-spirit” people or “berdache” were accepted as normal members of the tribe. To Native Americans, who were ignorant of the Bible’s proscriptions against homosexuality and running around practically naked, there was nothing wrong with squaws marrying squaws and braves marrying braves. The pilgrims did not care what Indians did in the privacy of their own teepees, but they did not want their children exposed to this immorality. So the pilgrims were forced to defend themselves, just as Proposition 8 supporters, under assault from gay activists, must defend themselves now.

Read the whole thing. It is made of awesome.

Apropos of nothing, I had a gander at the blogs Jon Swift follows. Our very own PTET is up there.

You're famous, love!

(Tip o' the shot glass to Crooks and Liars)

Condemned to Repeat

EX PRAETERITO PRAESENS PRVDENTER AGIT NI FUTUR- ACTIONE DETVRPET

History became a living thing in Roz Ashby's and Ken Meier's hands.

On the first day of Western Civilization I, they handed out a quote and asked us to date it. It was a typical "kids these days" rant, full of complaints about their manners, their dress, and their stunning lack of respect toward their elders. Most of the class guessed it had been written in the 1950s or 60s. Professor Meier revealed, with a delightfully sardonic smile, that we were all wrong. The rant had been written by Socrates more than two thousand years ago.





Titian, An Allegory of Prudence

I still have the handout they gave us that day: "The Value of History" by Robin Winks. I'd signed on as a history major because I love the past. I hadn't, until then, thought of it as something of urgent importance. But the professors' punk, their impassioned lecture on the vitality and relevance of history, and Winks' case for its value changed my perception entirely.

History wasn't just curiosity. It wasn't simply tradition and heritage, important to preserve for its own sake. It was also essential in order to understand the present and navigate the future.

"From the past the man of the present acts prudently so as not to imperil the future," Titian inscribed on his famous painting. We should chisel that saying into every monument. Those who don't take the past seriously, who treat history as a trivial handful of facts, interesting stories, and events that have no bearing on today, won't have the wisdom to create a better future.

"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it," George Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason. Too many don't listen to that warning. How many times have we weathered a crisis only to discover that it had all happened before? Individuals, organizations, entire nations have rushed themselves over cliffs that others fell from before, when a safe way down had already been discovered.

It's true that things change, and no situation is exactly the same as another. Some people seem to believe those cosmetic differences mean there's nothing to learn. And so, mistakes get repeated. Safeguards get torn down because no one seems to remember why they were put in place to begin with. Blinded by the present, looking toward the future, we don't see what history is trying to show us. We strip away the protections that people made wise by the events of their own day put in place in order to protect the generations to come. We're seeing the effects of that now, in a myriad of ways: our failed imperial experiment in Iraq, the erosion of our Constitutional rights, and the crisis in our banking industry brought on by the repeal of regulations enacted to prevent another Great Depression.

That was another age, those who disregard history say. Things are different now. And they plunge in, believing they're blazing new trails when they're traveling down well-worn roads.

The past is never truly past. "Great events have incalculable consequences," Victor Hugo said in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Some of those consequences echo down through ages. You can't understand what's happening now if you don't understand what happened then. The effects are still being felt. What we do now will impact generations to come.

"This black page in history is not colourfast / will stain the next," Epica warns in their song "Feint." We can't prevent that stain, but history can give us advice on how we can limit its spread.

Some things, perhaps, we'd rather forget. But as Chaim Weizman knew, "you cannot deny your history and begin afresh." History comes with us, whether we will it or no. Denying it gets us nowhere. Embracing history, knowing it, allows us to accomodate its effects.

History is of great practical value, then. But that's not the whole of its worth. It offers perspective and proportion. Knowing what others survived gives us hope for a future in dark times. It can put current events in context, just like your old dad giving you the yarn about having to walk to school barefoot in the snow uphill both ways as a kid. I often take comfort from that when the world seems like it's coming apart at the seams. It's frayed, often torn, before. We always manage to patch it back up somehow. Civilization has been through worse. As long as we avoid following the same paths that led other ages to worse, we'll probably do just fine. I tell myself that a lot these days, and I have plenty of history to prove it. From history comes hope.

There's delight in seeing ancient people behaving the same way we do. We tend to get only the broad brushstrokes of history in school. We don't get the delightful, everyday bits, the ones that tell us people are people everywhere. Read Socrates griping about the idiot kids in ancient Athens, or abu Nawais looking for his next drink, and you realize that they were people like us. There were fart jokes in the cradle of civilization and risque graffitti in Pompeii. The more you learn of history, the more you realize that the things we consider larger than life arose not from some golden age of supermen, but from mostly ordinary people doing their best to deal with times that were no more or less challenging than now. The best days are indeed behind us - but they are also now, and they are ahead. How much easier it is when we can pick the brains of our ancestors, pluck up their best ideas, and avoid their worst mistakes. It's practically cheating!

"He who cannot draw on three thousand years of history is living merely hand to mouth," Goethe once said. When we neglect our history, we impoverish ourselves. History gives us a chance to live richly. When we can draw on thousands of years of knowledge and experience, we're no longer condemned.

The Current Impossibility of Satire

I adore skilled satirists. Voltaire and Mark Twain enjoy a special place in my personal pantheon of literary and philosophical heroes for their immense talent in the art. Every time I read them, I wish I could be even a fraction as good. Sarcasm I can do. Mockery comes easy. Snark seems an inborn trait. But satire? That's hard work, and takes far more brains than I possess. I'd have to work at it.

Sadly, had I pursued that goal and honed my satirical skills, the effort would have been wasted. This was brought home to me a few nights ago, as I was reading the chapter on Voltaire in The Western Intellectual Tradition:

Further, satire is intimately connected with urbanity and cosmopolitanism, and assumes a civilized opponent who is sufficiently sensitive to feel the barbs of wit leveled against him. To hold something up to ridicule presupposes a certain respect for reason, on both sides, to which one can appeal. An Age of Reason, in which everyone accepts the notion that conduct must be reasonable, is therefore a general prerequisite for satire.

Oh.

Bugger.

Well, I should have known, shouldn't I? In an age where Poe's Law reigns, satire is dead. How can you satirize your opponents when their outrageous stupidity taxes even the most active imagination? I've seen it happen often enough - the neo-theo-cons fall hook, line and sinker for a perfect parody. Satirize them, and they think they've been complimented. I could come up with a scathing diatribe worthy of Voltaire, which everyone but the clinically dead should recognize as completely ridiculing their world view, and they'd believe I've come over to their side. And I can't even write satire for folks like you lot - how many times have you had to thoroughly research a piece, including tracing the history of its creator throughout their career, just to be absolutely sure it's not some utter fuckwit spouting some extraordinary new bullshit that they really truly believe?

You can't satirize a group of pig-ignorant, batshit insane, self-righteous fucktards who constantly satirize themselves. Voltaire himself would be defeated by these people.

Sarcasm, mockery, and snark it is, then.

Outstanding

Kaden frequently ships me over little cultural gems I never would have found on my own. He outdid himself tonight.

I'd never heard of Def Poetry, and if I had, would've written it off - it's the "Def," you see, brings up terrible memories of my hair-band days, when I thought bands such as Def Leppard were the shit. But Kaden knows that all he has to do is hook me with a quote.

Try this one: "Knowledge cures ignorance. So if you're in the know... be fucking contagious!"

If that's not an Elitist Bastards battle cry, I don't know what is.

And the rest simply blew me away:



Do you have chills? I have chills. Fucking outstanding, that is. It's raw, revealing poetry at its absolute best.

Fucking contagious, indeed.

Thoughtful (If Snarky) Answers to Thoughtless Questions

One of the things that stood out like a red coat on a soldier during the whole cracker debacle was the sheer quantity of snivelling. In a thousand permutations, the charming and concerned Christians raised the cry: "Why don't you desecrate the Koran? Why are you always picking on Christianity? Wah!"

Religious fuckwits being religious fuckwits (and mind, we're not talking about the Christians here at the cantina who responded with rationality, restraint, and no little amount of hysterical laughter over the antics of their "brethren"), they decided the answer must be: "PZ's afraid of the scary Mooslims!!1!!!11!"

In a word, no. And he proved that. The Koran ended up nailed to The God Delusion and the cracker, and all ended up in the trash, a vile act of desecration the Muslims have yet to start sending death threats over. To an atheist, no religion's paraphenalia is sacred. And it's not fear that keeps us from bashing Islam with the same abandon with which we bash fundamentalist Christianity.

It's prevalence.

That simple.

You may have noticed that I don't spend a vast amount of time around here unleashing the Smack-o-Matic 3000 upon the Animal Liberation Front, Harlequin Romances, white supremacists, or any one of ten thousand other ridiculous groups or detriments to culture. I might reach over and give any one of them a sharp rap on the knuckles from time to time, but I won't dedicate multiple posts to them.

They have no power.

They don't have the numbers, the organization, or the importance to be any great threat to my way of life, and there's only so much stupid I can handle in a day. They're not a priority.

Now, I know what the outraged little rabid Christians are going to scream: "But it was Islamofascists who attacked America!"

Yes, indeed, 'twas. And it was the born-again fuckwit in office who allowed them to succeed. It's the cons in power who used that one terrible day to push through their religious and political agenda.

I know who the greater threat is, thanks ever so much. A handful of fanatics trickling in from overseas have got nothing on the native-born God brigade here.

Muslims haven't achieved the kind of political power in this country that threatens the Constitution, no more than ALF has. They don't have the kind of numbers to try to impose their religious fuckery by legislative fiat on this society. I don't see Muslims getting themselves elected to school boards so they can sneak Intelligent Design and God into the classroom. I don't see Muslims in high office doing everything they possibly can to create a theocracy. Until they have political and social power, fundamentalist Muslims just don't matter much to me on a day-to-day basis.

They pop up their heads, I'll be happy to use the Smack-o-Matic to play whack-a-mole before they get out of hand. Until then, I'm frantically busy with our own batshit insane theocons, thanks ever so much.

And there's another important component here. They've never had power in this country. They're a minority. They've got all they can handle trying to keep the old, established, have-to-make-up-persecutions-because-they're-not-actually-persecuted Christians from destroying them.

Do you hear of Christians getting racially profiled at airports? No.

Christian phones being tapped without warrants simply because, as Christians, they're assumed to be terrorists? No.

Is it Christians being tortured in Guantanamo Bay? No.

Is Monkey Boy George a fundamentalist Muslim? No.

Are Muslim universities turning out droves of right-wing asshats who then go on to infest every level of our government and come up with creative explanations as to why torture is perfectly legal? No.

Christians, on the other hand, have had vast power in this country from the bloody beginning, and they keep demanding more. So, while I might find Islam just as ridiculous as Christianity, and I despise fundamentalism of all stripes, I'm more inclined to give the few fundamentalist Muslims in this country a wee bit o' a pass. So what if they want to impose Sharia law and all manner of other fuckery on us? It's not even vaguely possible for them to do so at the moment, and in the meantime, they're suffering really real persecution for being brown and calling God by the wrong name. My morals tell me you don't apply the spiked boots to the bloke bleeding on the floor.

When the fucker gets up is a whole other matter. We're not there yet.

You won't see me being gentle on terrorists. You won't see me indulging overwhelming religious stupidity just because the perpetrators happen to be a minority - if we have even a hint of what Denmark faced with the outrageous reaction to a few tasteless cartoons, you can bet the Smack-o-Matic's coming out. But I'm not going to go out of my way searching out examples of fundamentalist Islamic stupidity out of some misguided attempt at balance.

Do I fear the reaction if I piss off the Islamic fundamentalists, who have at times demonstrated a rather distressing tendency to respond to ridicule with violence? No.

Listen. All a Muslim fanatic has the power to do right now is kill me. A Christian fanatic, on the other hand, has the power to destroy everything in my life that made it worth living.

You tell me what I should fear more.

Popular Tastes Frighten Me

I took some time away from the blogging to mess about with Project Playlist and my Amazon recommendations. The results have been instructive.

First off, it disturbs me that Amazon thinks I want Madonna CDs just because I bought Duran Duran and U2. They need to develop a smarter program, one that can look at the totality of purchases and say, "While Dana might appreciate a few cheesy pop bands, things like Madonna are right out. Let's not make her want to projectile vomit this evening."

Second thing, I can pretty much tell just from the search results if I'm going to like the music. If the artist search returns more than a few selections, it's probably not my cup o' tea.

It's an interesting aspect of my psychology. There are a few things that take the culture at large by storm that I adore - take Batman, for instance - but my tastes usually run to the obscure. I don't usually run with the pop culture crowd. When I worked for a bookstore, I was able to determine which books would make me want to flick a Bic by the number of people salivating over them. That helped me avoid a lot of utter crap. Like John Gray. *Shudder.*

Music's no different. People love to ask me what I listen to, and when I tell them they've never heard of it, they get all puffed-up. "I have eclectic tastes!" they announce. "Bet you I'll know it!"

After I've bludgeoned them with Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, Nightwish, Operatica, Epica, Sirenia, and Blind Guardian, they usually give up, eyes glazed and neurons fused. There's only so many times you can ask, "What kind of music are they?" before you realize you owe me a dollar.

Thanks to Amazon and Project Playlist, I'll now have a new batch of fun. How many here have heard of Delain? Combichrist? Helium Vola? Estampie? Jon Oliva's Pain?

I thought as much. But that's okay - my tastes aren't your tastes. Understandable.

The thing that really climbs up my nose is when people who listen to every pop phenomenon that hits the airwaves, watch every episode of Survivor, and read whatever tripe Danielle Steele's spewed out now try to claim they're eclectic. Loving everything everybody else does doesn't make you eclectic - it just means you're a trend slave. Which can be fun and fulfilling, I'm sure, but for fuck's sake, know your limits. Don't try to go head-to-head with a black metal chick with a heavy appreciation of the symphonic who didn't pass out when read Chuck Palahniuk's story "Guts."

It's an accomplishment:

While on his 2003 tour to promote his novel Diary, Palahniuk read to his audiences a short story titled "Guts", a tale of accidents involving masturbation, which appears in his book Haunted. It was reported that to that point, 40 people had fainted while listening to the readings.[13] Playboy magazine would later publish the story in their March 2004 issue; Palahniuk offered to let them publish another story along with it, but the publishers found the second work too disturbing.

Yup.

And if you want to know the truth, Chuck's works disturb me a lot less than pop culture. I just don't get pop phenomina. And it frankly terrifies me that millions upon millions of people's imaginations get captured by such things as Brittany Spears.

Paris Hilton.

American Idol.

Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Excuse me, please. I suddenly feel faint...

Of Course He's Just Like Batman - In the Bizarro Universe

If I'd had any cookies before reading this Andrew Klavan excerpt, they would've been tossed:

What Bush and Batman Have in Common
July 25, 2008

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”

You need glasses, you delusional fuckwit.

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war.

You need a new brain, you delusional fuckwit.

Off your medication again, I see. Let's just take a moment to do some kicking with the spiked boots: Batman didn't ignore warnings that terrorists would strike in his city, stubborn stupidity and a habit of posing in flyboy outfits doesn't equal "fortitude" and "moral courage," and Batman fought strictly on the defense. He didn't go around starting wars against the wrong damned people and then proclaim himself a hero for it.

And I really don't think the Nolan brothers had Bush in mind when writing this film, except when they were writing the beating-information-out-of-people bits. I noticed they were a lot more thoughtful about the morality of that, now that Monkey Boy George has shown us exactly why such things as torture are banned by international treaty.

I see your insanity continues to spew forth. What now?

Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Batman is villified and despised for being a dangerous, unknown quantity outside the law who also really fucks things up for the buggers getting rich off of other people's misery. Bush is villified because he's a raving fucktard who thinks he's entitled to do whatever he wants. Batman struggles with the morality of what he does and makes every attempt to put serious limits on his own actions. Bush uses other people's fear and uncertainty to grab as much power as he can, and you'd have to break his hands to pry it out of them. Batman ensures that the tools he has that could lead to people's rights being violated are used for uber-brief periods of time, in as limited a way as possible, and then immediately ensures their destruction, further adding a layer of security by placing the really noxious tools in the hands of a man guaranteed not to abuse them. Bush recognizes no limits in either time or scope, places the dangerous toys in the hands of completely evil fuckers, and uses every trick possible to permanently expand his toolbox. Is that enough, or should I go on?

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

You just pulled that one out of your ass, buddy. It reeks of fresh bullshit.

Batman limits himself to one thing: making the dangerous people stop hurting the mostly innocent people. He won't kill a criminal. He won't use any more force than absolutely necessary. He hounds them only to the gates of Arkham, even when he knows there's a chance they'll break loose and wreak havoc again. You see, he has morals and a sense of proportion - neither of which your hero Georgie Boy possesses. He operates outside of the law, but he's not lawless. Bushie, on the other hand, uses the excuse of "criminal sects" redefine the law to his liking, to accrue power to himself, and to satiate his own thirst for war.

By the way, just so you're made aware of this, because I know it's not something you and your reality-challenged buddies consider very often, especially not when you're getting all hard over the latest round of torture and mayhem on 24, but: Batman operates in a fictional world. It's not real. Heroes in fiction and heroes in real life sometimes have points in common (although not in this case), but they're not the same. Fictional heroes, in fact, would quite often get their arses thrown in prison in this reality, no matter what kind of good they might be doing.

Things that work in fiction don't work in reality. If Bush and his cronies had understood that, we wouldn't have had government fucking officials citing Jack Bauer when trying to explain why torturing people is the right thing to do. The Jack Bauer Defense doesn't make torture right. Saying that Batman's feared and hated for the good he does doesn't mean that Bush is feared and hated for doing good - he's feared and hated because he's a power-mad little fucktard who's shat all over this country's laws, ideals, economy and identity. He's hated and feared because he deserves to be.


No amount of trying to equate him with Batman is going to change that. Get the fuck over it, Andrew. That big W on Georgie's chest doesn't stand for Wonderman, it stands for Whackjob.


Welcome to reality. Enjoy your brief stay.

Sapere Aude!

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!"--that is the motto of enlightenment.

- Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"

The Enlightenment. Those two words send a cascade of awe and delight down my spine. They set synapses to firing like chains of fireworks. Names and ideas erupt from the sparks: Newton, Spinoza and Leibniz released science and mathematics from their classical and medieval cages and advanced them by light years in a virtual instant. Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau struck through chains and risked their lives to set human minds free. Locke, Smith and Montesquieu set forth major components of political and economic philosophy that led to democracy and capitalism. Franklin, Jefferson, and Hamilton created a whole new kind of nation from scratch. Beethoven, Mozart, and Goethe elevated music and literature to heights they had never known before.

Men, and not a few women, dared to know, and changed the world.

There had been hints of an awakening for centuries. A few flames burned dimly in the Middle Ages. A few flames flared up brilliantly during the Renaissance. But the Enlightenment was a conflagration, a wildfire beside a candelabra. In less than two centuries, the scientific method arose and began advancing knowledge at an incredible pace; the foundations of democracy and liberalism were laid and thriving nations built on them; education was no longer a prerogative of the fortunate few, but a practical gift offered to a broad swath of the population. The entire Western way of thinking changed virtually beyond recognition. All of those ideas we take for granted - freedom of religion, equality, political and civil rights, and countless more - emerged because of men and women who refused to remain ignorant.

Look at the lives and work of any group of Enlightenment thinkers, and you'll see similarities. They were desperate to know and understand. They were determined to use rational thought to overcome superstition. They believed in man's ability to understand the world. They didn't believe religion had all the answers, or even most. They weren't afraid to challenge established authority; indeed, they often risked their lives to do so. They found ways to make end-runs around the censors, evaded every attempt to silence them, and believed beyond doubt that what they were doing was right, necessary, and valuable.

They argued with absolutely everyone, each other included. They accepted no limits to their curiosity. There was nowhere to them that Man was forbidden to go.

All is not lost when one puts the people in a condition to see it has intelligence. On the contrary, all is lost when you treat it like a herd of cattle, for sooner or later it will gore you with its horns.

-Voltaire

In the salons of Paris, the coffee houses and Gresham College in London, in the dining rooms and halls of power all throughout Europe, intellect raged. Pamphlets, books, magazines, scientific papers all poured into the streets and captured the imaginations of men and women who then used those ideas to create new governments, societies, and values. Knowledge was passed into the hands of ordinary people, and those ordinary people did extraordinary things with it.

The two revolutions of the 18th century, the American and the French, get all of the attention, but neither would have been possible without the revolution in ideas that preceded them. Never before in the history of Western civilization had common people been entrusted to govern. Even Greece, that thriving original democracy, was more of an aristocracy than anything else. But the Enlightenment thinkers believed that all regular people lacked was education and the freedom to use their native intelligence. Given those things, a peasant could rise to rule. Peasants eventually did.

It wasn't just the aristocracy and absolute monarchy that the Enlightenment thinkers overthrew. They broke the stranglehold religion had over the populace. Religion didn't escape their scrutiny. The sacred got subjected to the same empirical analysis as the natural world, and where it was found wanting, it suffered the same scathing criticism unleashed on politics, pseudoscience, and ignorance. Some of them treated Christianity with respect and reverence, but they were in a minority. Most Enlightenment thinkers had no use for a Church that sought to keep people in ignorance and servitude, a faith that led to intolerance and claimed miracles it couldn't prove, and religions rotten with hypocrisy.

"Let's eat some Jesuit," Voltaire wrote in Candide. Baron d'Holbach proselytized for atheism, churning out a flood of books and pamphlets proclaiming that there is no God, only nature, and that only a society of atheists has any hope of being truly moral. He often had to publish his books under innocuous titles to evade the censors. But other philosophes left nothing to doubt with theirs: among the books on offer was Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious. Pretty revolutionary for a world in which religion still ruled.

Other books might have seemed innocent enough until they were opened. Woolston's Six Discourses on the Miracles of Our Savior proclaimed the Resurrection of Christ "the most notorious and monstrous Imposture, that was ever put upon mankind." Voltaire, when completing the Philosophical Dictionary, wrote, "Theology amuses me. There we find man's insanity in all its plenitude." Jefferson removed all of the miracles from the Bible, a decision which Hume would have applauded.

The only sacred thing was the pursuit of knowledge. Rational thinking, empiricism, science, and intellect reigned supreme. The next world meant very little to them, if anything at all. People had to make a difference in this one. And that was exactly what they set out to do, and succeeded. They brought us the modern age.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

-James Madison

The Enlightenment never truly ended: its results permeate every aspect of our lives. But there hasn't been another time quite like it since. The passion for knowledge has been eclipsed. We've entered an age in which ignorance rather than intelligence is celebrated. As Kant said, it's easier to be immature, to let others do the thinking. We become habituated to the yoke: we become afraid of freedom. "The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult," Kant wrote. "Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone."

He could have been describing our age.

Fundamentalist religion is attempting to rein us in. Governments want to control, not serve, the governed. This has always been the case. The powerful never relinquish power easily, and they always desire more power. It's easier for them to take it from people made willfully powerless.

War, poverty, ignorance and despair are rising all around us.

We should be thrilled.

After all, the Enlightenment grew out of a desperate age. Europe was torn by war, crushed by despotic governments, ripped apart by religious strife, and it was from this harrowing that the philosophes grew. When I look at the conditions surrounding the Enlightenment, I see clear parallels. Strife can destroy people: it can also galvanize them.

I think we're standing on the cusp of a new Age of Enlightenment.

Bloggers are the new pamphleteers. What bloggers are saying today about politics and religion, life and learning, show the same spirit as those tracts poured from the pens of subversive thinkers who went on to redefine the foundations of the world.

Comments threads and message boards have become the new salons, where ideas are exchanged and intelligence elevated. Those discussions wouldn't have been out of place in the most illustrious gatherings of learned people.

All we need is the passion, the commitment, and the courage those revolutionaries displayed. Nothing is beyond us. But we have to step outside of the little boxes we've put ourselves in. Scientists need to brush shoulders with artists. Writers need to converse with mathematicians. Political philosophers and musicians should mingle. That cross-fertilization of knowledge is what leads to world-shaking ideas, quantum leaps in human understanding.

Politeness and deference are sweet social ideas, but we can't defer to those who would impose ignorance and superstition. Contention was the order of the day during the Enlightenment. We should never shy away from it. Conventional thinking will get us nowhere. The world is on the cusp of a crisis: we're never going to get anything solved if we don't break away from tradition and habit. We won't solve a damned thing if we don't risk capsizing the boat.

The philosophes changed the world not by force of arms, but force of mind. Their ideas, their writings, their experiments, are what changed the world irrevocably.

It can happen again. Ignorance has no power to stand against those who dare to know. And those who dare have the power to change everything.

Here and today begins a new age in the history of the world. Some day you will be able to say - I was present at its birth."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe