G. The Level Playing Field?

This is a post I never quite completed. It belongs to my feminism series but I couldn't maintain the tone and approach of that series and so I set the post aside.

Yet the point I wanted to make is important. It has to do with the general idea that all societal playing fields are now level. Nothing stops women from excelling if they wished to do so, nothing!

Discriminatory laws have been abolished, discriminatory institutions have changed (except for, er, many religious institutions and the armed forces), and if women still experience discrimination they should just sue!

Preferably under a Democratic administration. But really, such suits are unnecessary because the playing fields already are level (if not slanted to favor women) and the reason women earn less, for instance, is because they choose to do so.

I was channeling both my inner Independent Women's Forum gal (IWF is an anti-feminist ladies' auxiliary of male wingnuttery) and the MRA guyz there. They both argue that women have only themselves to blame if they earn less, on average, than men do, because that is a consequence of their own poor choices.

Some of those choices are based in just women's general desire to avoid hard work and risky occupations, tell the MRA guys. Because what's really behind men's higher average earnings are those relatively few men who build skyscrapers. Yup.

Some choices are based on women's desire to have children, tell the IWF gals. Of course children in this view benefit nobody but the woman who has them so choosing to have children is just like choosing an ice-cream flavor! No need for societal interest in such decisions.

All this is based on the argument that the playing fields are already level or even slanted to favor women. But let's take a closer look at the major playing field most of us have to enter: The labor market.

Is that playing field level? Note that the way workers are treated in the labor markets, even today, is based on an implicit assumption that every worker is primarily a worker. He (and it used to be "he") is assumed to have someone at home who cooks for hims, does his laundry, minds his children and takes care of his elderly and/or ailing relatives: a stay-at-home spouse. But all that maintenance work is the traditional chore of women, something women are responsible for.

A labor market which does not offer proper parental leave or other similar arrangements is not a level playing field when societal gender roles are unequal.

None of this means that women wouldn't make choices. Men make choices, too, including, for some, the choice of entering a dangerous occupation because it pays more. But these choices are always carried out under constraints. And the general labor market constraints are not identical for men and women even in the absence of any gender discrimination.

Which brings me to an analysis of one particular labor market: traditional tough-guy blue-collar occupations. The usual (and statistically incorrect) MRA argument is that men earn more because of those jobs which also have a high mortality rate. If women really walked the talk of equality they'd all sign up to build skyscrapers in New York!

Just imagine signing up for one of those jobs. It's well known that women entering these kinds of jobs suffer form an unusually high level of sexual harassment of an especially nasty type (such as finding a used condom inside your lunch sandwich). Not all men practice such harassment, of course, but a few bad apples can spoil a female worker's whole day, not to mention the more severe problems of not being accepted into the team when job-security may be dependent on that very fact.

Anyone doubting that this would pose an additional hurdle for women entering a particular occupation are either much tougher than I am (congrats and welcome to the divinity circles) or have never been the only woman in a job like that.

So the playing fields are not necessarily level, even in countries where the laws may have become mostly gender-neutral.

Oldies But Goodies: Sixth

This is a Finnish rock song from the 1970s, I think. I like it because it is in Finnish and because the tune is catchy and though the words are risque they are not sexist. The guy is asked to dance by a woman and they either dance for hours and hours or do something else for the same amount of time. He gets ever more tired but she does not and won't let him stop. Put on your dancing shoes!

Rauli Badding Somerjoki: Filing and Planing

F. The Longest Revolution

This is the last post in my feminism series, as it exists today, though I am going to add a half-finished post to the series tomorrow.

More On Democracy Being Strangled By the Ivy [Anthony McCarthy]

Neal Gabler has diagnosed the problems with the Obama administration as coming from his attachment to Ivy league culture, in pretty much the same way I have been for the past several months. He puts it into context with the Best and Brightest who got us involved with the civil war in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His analysis of the class aspirations of the Obama inner circle add to what was previously said here.

In many ways, Obama was a sucker for this kind of coldblooded, upper-crust approach to policy and the elitism that went with it. Half-white, half-black, half-American, half-African, part Kansan, part Hawaiian, middle class and transient, Obama made the primary plaint and question of his book, “Dreams From My Father’’: Where do I belong? That question was posed as one of racial identity, but in the end, whether he fully realized it or not, Obama found himself not in black culture or white culture but in the culture of the best and the brightest. That’s where he belonged. That’s where he seemed to feel most comfortable.

So it is really no surprise that he has packed his administration with what one might call The Best and the Brightest 2.0 — people who are as dispassionate and rational and suspicious of emotion as the president prides himself as being: a bunch of cool, unflappable customers. (The exceptions are Vice President Joe Biden and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.) Like The Best and the Brightest 1.0, these folks — guys like Larry Summers, outgoing budget director Peter Orszag, and Tim Geithner, on the economic side; and William J. Lynn 3d, deputy secretary of defense, and James Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, on the foreign side — are Ivy-educated, confident, and implacable realists and rationalists. Like their forebears, they have all the answers, which is why they have been so unaccommodating of other suggestions on the economy, where economists have been pressing them for more stimulus, or on Afghanistan, where the president keeps doubling down his bets.

He points out that one difference is that today's aspiring administration elite are largely first generation ivy, from non-ivy league parents. As was said here yesterday, they are so invested in their social status, hard won through their merit - and I'd guess their ability to one up and bluff in the pretensions of infallibility that are common in academic circles - that they sacrifice everything else in order to maintain what they've won. It's no way to govern a democracy, it defeats any democratic progress when they will trade it away to the members of their newly joined class. As Gabler puts it:

But in elitism as in religion, no one is more devout than a convert, and these people, again like Obama, all having been blessed by the Ivy League, also embrace Ivy League arrogance and condescension. On this, the Republican critics are right: The administration exudes a sense of superiority.

The United States government is run like a ruthless den of thieves when the Republicans are in office, running it like a men's club isn't enough of an improvement under the establishment Democrats. There are real Democrats, largely concentrated in the House and in state legislatures who have to assert themselves more. If the progressive caucus in the House had played hard ball with the White House and the Senate, more effectively, they might save this administration from itself. That they will have to overcome the snobbery and elitism within the administration and the Senate to do it only means they will have to play really hard.

No one should overlook that just about every one of the people we are citing as a problem here is male. Mixing machismo in to the Ivy League, so many of which were so recently all-male, is also a problem.

Note: I'm still blogging from a system I'm not familiar with, I have no idea why I can't attach a title to that piece below, but it's mine and it's entitled

The Bogus Science of Studying Prayer [Anthony McCarthy]

Kevin Lewis, the author of the Boston Globe "Uncommon Knowledge" derived from recent publications in the social science journals, touts yet another study of the effects of prayer. In this case it's asserting of "how prayer prevents drinking".

A recent study supports an interesting approach to curbing alcohol consumption: regular prayer. In surveys, people who reported praying more often also reported less alcohol consumption and fewer alcohol-related problems, and more prayer was associated with less consumption and fewer problems over the next several months. Of course, people who pray a lot may be less prone to drink anyway, so the researchers randomly assigned people to regular prayer or nonprayer tasks and then asked them to report their alcohol consumption after four weeks. Those who were assigned to pray drank significantly less than those who weren’t.

Now, I am religious, I suspect, but don't know, that thinking and meditating on ethics, morality, closely examining my conduct for its morality, as well as its rationality, are good and effective. I've got nothing at all against prayer, so long as it's not of the kind that Mark Twain cites in one of his better known short pieces. But prayer cannot be the subject of scientific study.

In the abstract of this study, published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors it says:

Participants assigned to pray every day (either an undirected prayer or a prayer for a relationship partner) for 4 weeks drank about half as much alcohol at the conclusion of the study as control participants.

"Undirected prayer" starts out being too undefined and undefinable. As I pointed out here before, you cannot even control whether or not the activity you're calling "prayer" is the same action even twice in a row, not even in the same person. The same person very well might be doing different "things" depending on the impossible to define "state of mind" they are in from minute to minute. And "prayer", even as defined in the vast and changing ideas of various religions and religious people, is of wildly different formal definition. Is the rote mumbling of the 23rd Psalm the same kind of thing as the intense concentration of mindfulness meditation?

If you can't define a behavior in order to isolate that behavior, if you can't detect its actual presence except by self reporting*, if you can't reliably exclude it from your control group, what do your results mean? How can you know what they mean?

Why Isn't This A Huge Scandal Drawing Outraged Reactions In the Lefty Blogs? [Anthony McCarthy]

I know I've been hard on Harvard the past few months, I've heard a few people think I should stop beating up on them and now when they're on their uppers too. Due to a number of factors, including negligence and incompetence in their corporate leadership, the endowment of Harvard lost $11 billion, leaving it, a few months back, to struggle along on a mere $25.7 billion. So, you can see why they might not be in a position to pitch in to save the Our Place daycare center for homeless children in Cambridge, the city were the most august institution of learning happens to be. After all, it is in need of $160,000 in order to serve the children who depend on it.

If Our Place is forced to close, Kopesky worries that the homeless parents who bring their children to the center will no longer be able to finish school or look for jobs during the day.

She also worries about the impact on the children, who come from homeless shelters, many from domestic violence shelters, Kopesky said.

I'm sure if the fellows and others in the Harvard corporation weren't so busy trying to loosen the money bags of its alums and the fat cats in order to bolster its sadly depleted endowment they'd be willing to step in and lend a hand. You'd think they could at least pass the hat for these children and their parents. And that's only Harvard. Imagine if MIT pitched in as well.

Earning Respect The Old Fashioned Way [Anthony McCarthy]

What a week to be without a computer to call my own!

The first thing to learn from the sliming, abandonment and subsequent vindication and rising of Shirley Sherrod is that her example disproves one of the foundations of machismo and patriarchy. In every way she showed that she had more courage, more wisdom, more fortitude, higher ethics and a greater devotion to duty than any of the men who lied about her from the right or who joined in with them from the Obama administration. Being one of the rare individuals who have stood up to the FOX centered right wing lie machine, STOOD UP TO, NOT PRETENDED THEY DIDN'T EXIST, and to have won against them to the extent that the FOX liars turned tail and made believe they weren't the ones who ran with Breitbart's cut and paste lie, should teach Barack Obama more lessons about politics than he's learned in all his previous experience.

The macho inner circle of the Obama administration could learn something from Shirley Sherrod but it's unlikely they will. She is the kind of person that Rahm Emanuel calls names and which the entire administration has turned its back on since before they took office. This incident is about as pure a microcosm of the problem with the Obama administration, its cynical and cowardly capitulation to the right in the Democratic party and the Republicans, the corporate oligarchs at the expense of its voter base. People are wondering why Barack Obama hasn't gotten the political benefit of his, admittedly, important steps forward, that record of needlessly giving away even more progress to people who will never support him out of sheer cowardice is the reason. He comes across as a strong, bold voice, but the voice has turned out to conceal a timid, conventional politician, albeit one who is very intelligent.

The qualities and principles which made Ms. Sherrod stand up and tell the truth while the administration triangulated itself into a disaster is of the first importance for the Obama administration and Democrats to discover. I think one of the keys is in her hesitancy to take a job in Washington instead of staying in Georgia. Molly Ivins was right, just about everyone in DC ends up saying the same things and doing the same things. The DC milieu rewards cowardly conformity, it rewards corruption and it punishes integrity that disadvantages or could possibly, conceivably endanger the massive system of privilege that is centered there. Entry into the DC elite is not granted to everyone, just as a law degree from an Ivy isn't granted to everyone. Many of the people in the administration, at the higher levels are either full members of the DC elite or they aspire to it. They aspire to the large salaries gotten by corrupting the government on behalf of the wealthy, the glitzy social life, the privileges, the attention, the call that they want you for Meet The Press. They love the attention.

Ms. Sherrod has shown us a good example of how stunningly impressive it can be to tell the simple truth, to refuse to distort it, to refuse to back down in the face of FOX and the entire corporate lie machine going full tilt. It's a lesson that, tragically, ACORN didn't learn fast enough. Maybe it's because she is an individual, she had no organization to protect, she wasn't invested in circling the wagons and trying to wait out the lies. That she was able to win by telling the simple truth the only thing she was invested in should tell the Obama administration something. That the truth is the bedrock, it is the only thing that really will set you free and make progress. It should tell them that MOST of the American People will recognize the truth when they see it and that lies, even those told by the minions of Murdoch on FOX, those started and spread by Drudge, Breitbart, and the rest of those with ties to the DC media, must be fought tirelessly and constantly. Fighting lies is as important as telling the truth to begin with. Lies have the financial support of the oligarchs, our only weapon against them is truth and integrity and bravery and unflagging courage such as we had the privilege of seeing this week.

What we see in the Obama administration isn't a bold step forward, it's baby steps taken by people too invested in the system to challenge it, too afraid of losing a fight to really take it on. Its the same thing we see in the Democratic caucus of the Senate and the Blue Dogs in the House. Barack Obama promised us leadership he has given us Rahm style politics. If there's a job that someone with Shirley Sherrod's integrity and courage should be offered it's as Chief of Staff.

Thank you, Shirley Sherrod. You have given me a reason to believe in the power of good.

Echidne Performs Gender

Well, I perform gender in the divine world. But I gave a stab at trying it in the human world, too, here.

Support women’s history (by Suzie)

A purple guitar. A dozen cookies. An original T-shirt from the 1977 National Women’s Conference. An elegant booklet containing the poem Maya Angelou wrote for Bill Clinton’s inauguration.

These are some of the goodies in an online auction for the National Women's History Project in Santa Rosa, Calif. Please pass the link to others who may be interested, and don’t hesitate to bid against me. The auction started on the 19th, in honor of the first Women’s Rights Conference in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

Our auction ends on July 28, which is the birthday of Lucy Burns, a passionate suffragist who worked tirelessly to secure women's right to vote. Lucy Burns demonstrated her commitment throughout six arrests and imprisonments for picketing the White House on behalf of Woman Suffrage.

Molly Murphy MacGregor, a co-founder, had been a high-school social studies teacher before becoming executive director of the educational nonprofit. She says it’s looking to merge with a nonprofit partner to continue its mission: “to recognize and celebrate the diverse and historic accomplishments of women by providing information and educational materials and programs.” She writes about this in a letter on the website, which includes current partners, an interesting list of women’s organizations.

The end of the NWHP would sadden me, but if I’ve learned anything from women’s history, it’s that other women will carry on. I asked Molly to write something for this blog, and she sent the following:

In 1980, five friends founded a grassroots organization, which, with some audacity, we named the National Women's History Project. Our goal was to add the week that included March 8, International Women's Day, as Women's History Week in the school calendar. Our purpose, in addition to encouraging teachers to consider women as a topic, was to promote a view of women's history that was multicultural and international, and recognized women's work, both inside and outside the home.

In the intervening years, the week has been expanded to a month, and the National Women's History Project has grown into a national institution that promotes women's history throughout the year.

Teachers, librarians, historians, publishers, workplace managers, and other interested individuals -- women and men -- helped build, not only a national institution, but more important, a national movement. The history of the National Women's History Project includes countless stories of angels who arrived just in time to help us write a business plan, do a video series, design a poster set, write a press release,* and share their skills with us. It has been the extraordinary generosity of thousands that have allowed us to establish a Women's History Resource Center as well as to design and distribute our Women's History Resource Catalog and our award-winning website.

Our latest challenge has been the same as that of all nonprofit organizations. How do you survive such a deep recession? For us, the recession caused an extraordinary drop in sales, which are the major source of our funding. Of course, donations were also dramatically reduced as everyone struggled just to pay their bills. There is no question that 2009 was our most difficult financial year, but with the help of our auctions, the Bickford Foundation, the nonprofits who joined us as partners as we prepared to celebrate 30 years of "writing women back into history," and the angels who continued to volunteer and donate whenever and whatever they could, this year is much better.

In the thank-you notes I write to people who send us donations, I really try to let them know that we would not be here without their support. I know this is also true for most nonprofits. When I open a note from an elderly woman, who is apologizing because her donation is only $5, I want to cry with gratitude. To know that even on her limited income, she still considers the work we do important enough to make the sacrifice she is making, so that she can send us a check, is the ultimate validation of our work.

*That’s where I fit in.

Bidding for good (by Suzie)

My church had an online auction, and I decided to go a little wild and bid on a balloon ride. It should be interesting, I thought, unless I fall to my death. Anyway, all the money goes to my church.

Wrong. My church got little or nothing. My irritation grew when I saw feminist groups using the same company, BiddingforGood. I changed my mind after talking to its CEO as well as the executive director of the National Women’s History Project. The project has an auction with BFG now, and I’ll write about that later today.

Last year, Executive Director Molly MacGregor was afraid she’d have to end the project before its 30th anniversary. But she said the BFG staff was a great help when the project did an auction last August. She told me: "Our auction made $4,000, thank God, thank God, thank God!"

Women make or influence most purchases. Charity auctions are geared to “affluent Baby Boomers, typically female,” BFG CEO Jon Carson said in this article. (I can’t speak for his company, but I know women from their 20s on up who go to silent auctions, depending on the cause, especially if there’s an opportunity for networking. Many nonprofits mix in cheaper items so that people with lower incomes can participate.)

BiddingForGood falls into the category of cause marketing. Using its resources, a nonprofit can expand beyond its usual donors to increase awareness and donations. Companies can expand their markets and get good PR. For them, it’s product placement.

A nonprofit pays $595 a year to run online auctions on BFG. It also pays a fee depending on how much it raises from online bids: 9 percent of the first $20,000; 6 percent of the next $30,000; 3 percent of the next $40,000.

Nonprofits can supplement their auctions with items from BFG, which started its Instant Item program last year. It finds goods and services, and if a nonprofit sells one of these, BFG takes 33 percent of the final price. For Labor Day, Carson said in an email, his company will roll out new tools to help nonprofits find more items on their own and manage their auctions.

BFG started offering consignment items in 2004, but began winding down in 2005, he said.

We still have 16 suppliers (down from around 50 at the peak) and we will be taking down another 5 in mid-August ... [The vendor] gets whatever price they sell the item to the nonprofit for. Nonprofits typically set the opening bid for that price and then get anything over. Sometimes the nonprofits mark up the opening bid so there is some profit in it for them if it only gets one bid. This ultimately is between the nonprofit and the consignment partner.

To be honest I’m not a big fan of typical consignment as it’s not a very good deal for the nonprofit (37% of the items never get a bid and on average they only take home 23% of the gross auction revenue). The problem is the vendors take 100% of the first bid and, because most of the stuff is expensive, the nonprofits don’t get a lot of additional bids, which is where their profit lies (note: we do not charge our 9-6-3% fee on the vendor cost). The nonprofits will tell you it’s all found money, there is no risk, easy to access, and that they often use the items to spice up their catalogues but I personally think they would be better served working their own contacts. That said, many are small orgs and they just don’t have the horsepower or contacts to get higher-end stuff.

Here is my guess: In an auction, any item identified only with numbers came from the nonprofit. If the item has “CMP” before the number, then the item is either on consignment or is an Instant Item. You can tell Instant Items because the description says who donated it.

It bothers me that nonprofits don’t spell this out, but Carson says: “Keep in mind that these things are usually run by a harried group of part-time volunteers (many have FT jobs) who are overwhelmed and who are just trying to get across the finish line.” In live auctions, he notes, nonprofits don’t list how much they have spent on the auctioneer, their staff, the food, the hall rental, etc.

Have you ever helped run, or bid in, an auction for a nonprofit?

Friday critter blogging (by Suzie)

My friend, Margaret Shepherd, found Sammy abandoned by a major road. Here she is at four weeks.

Oldies But Goodies: Fifth

Hildegard von Bingen. Partly because she was a truly fascinating woman and partly because this is the music I listen when I wish to clear everything out of my body and mind and replace that with lightness and joy. It's not the religion behind the music that speaks to me but the praise and the glory of the pure sounds.

This video has some chatter at the very end, sorry.

Vision of Hildegard von Bingen, voice Hana Blochova-Kvinterna

E. The Female Body As Property

The fifth post in my series. Don't forget to read the comments in these.

Utterly Hilarious

Is this piece about Real Men. I laughed and laughed and laughed until I had to cross my legs. But more seriously, I have learned that the history of gender roles was nothing like the stuff history books contain! Nope.

Women were treasured in the past, because of their wombs. The wombs had to be kept safe and then of course breastfeeding made it necessary for women to have no rights at all. They couldn't very well go out to hunt the mammoth which was the only source of food in the olden days. The only! Don't listen to those mean feminists who talk about gathering and shit. No, it's all about hunting and sweat lodges for days afterward for the Real Men. They had no time to cure the meat, what with the sweat lodges, so of course the women did that and a few other chores while having a couple of babies hanging off their breasts.

But women were treasured in the past! Men would rise up the minute they walked into that mammoth-hunters' circle! Men were all knights who wrote ballads about the lovely ladies and fought duels over them!

Then men got a little bit too excited about protecting women. Stuff like burqas and laws that kept women from education and many occupations... Still, it was really to protect the uteri which were necessary for the survival of the species (through parthenogenesis, I guess).

But in any case the writer of this hilarious and totally ignorant piece is looking for a mammoth-hunting guy who will pop up the minute she enters the room and will only call her a c**t in the locker-room, not to her face. Which men do today because of feminism and women not staying at home under male protection. Calling women c**ts to their faces, I mean.

Oh dear...

Oldies But Goodies: Fourth

This is Laura Nyro who should be in the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame, both for her singing and for her songwriting.

I love her art. Even the screechy bits are meant to be there. This is what I listen to when I feel overwhelmed and want to be energized in the long-term sense: "When I Die."

Another Nasty Travel Observation

I swear I don't make only nasty observations! The sky, for instance, is the bluest of all blues, the clouds like innocent baby lambs, the forests greener than emeralds and so on. But where else can I complain about finding this cartoon in a fairly large Finnish newspaper?

The text translates as follows: The woman in the cartoon reads a paper which states that a harasser (or something a bit stronger) of women has been arrested. She then swears (oh f**k or something similar).

The joke is of course the assumption that old and ugly women would actually like to be the targets of sexual harassment or violence. Then there's the whole idea that sexual violence is something rather innocent. A good basis for a few jokes about age and ugliness in women.

This is a very old joke. I find it astonishing that it's still found funny, tho.

D. The Invisible Women

The fourth post in my feminism series. After I wrote it I started seeing even more invisibility, combined with the visibility of tits-n-ass and other gender markers.

I also realized that the television, movies and even journalism offer us one kind of false visibility: The few women who are major movers-and-shakers, for instance, are covered much more than the men at equal levels of power.

This makes powerful women seem more common than they really are. Like a group picture of a large group where the two women in the group are seated in the center front and wear red suits. (I saw one of those after a major meeting of government heads.) The less powerful women? They truly are invisible in the media.

I now think that the problem I describe in that post is even more complicated than the post allows, but an essential ingredient is the invisibility of women as individuals with their own personalities, characteristics and talents, combined with an odd visibility of women's sexual markers. These grow from the same root.

Oldies But Goodies: Third

Eva Cassidy. I love almost everything she sang but "Route 66" is a particular favorite because we hear a different Eva here. This song makes me dance.

Little League star on ESPN tonight (by Suzie)

This is a trailer for tonight's "E:60" at 7 p.m. Eastern time. Geena Davis, who narrates the show, says:

At age 13, she may be the best Little League pitcher in the country. She has not lost a game in four years.

Here's a longer article on her.

ETA: Whoops, sorry for the coding problem, which put acres of green space between the headline and the embedded video, which I had to unembed. I hope you will go ahead and click on the trailer anyway.

C. Our Father Who Art In Heaven

This is the third post in my feminism series. The title says it, pretty much. Rita Mae Brown once said that as long as God is He, he is God. I'm not sure that we shouldn't reverse that sentence. And neither am I sure that having goddesses would fix problems. But fundamentalist religions bear much responsibility for the unfair treatment of women. Much.

Oldies But Goodies: Second

Another artist I love and one of her songs: Nina Simone singing "Do I Move You?" The lyrics are not quite worth her genius, but the song would be a perfect bedroom song, ahem.

An Angry Travel Observation

It's 90 degrees Fahrenheit. What would you call a person who in that heat dresses a five-year-old girl in black tights, a long-sleeved shirt, an ankle-length dress and a woolen head-scarf, while her slightly older brother runs around in shorts and a t-shirt?

No, 'religious' is not an acceptable answer to that question.
------
Nicer travel observations later.

B. The Planet Of The Guys. Oh, With Gals, Too, Naturally!

The second post in my feminism series. It has something to do with that feeling of finding oneself so very often tugging at someone's coat tails, asking to be heard.

No more Swiss chocolate for me (Suzie)

And I'm taking all my money out of Swiss banks. Oh, never mind, I don't have any money. But I wish there were some way to protest the Swiss letting Roman Polanski go free.

His lawyers say they didn't expect this, but many of us did. After all, Swiss women couldn't vote on the federal level until 1971, only six years before Polanski raped a 13-year-old.

In a search, up popped a 1981 People article that refers to statutory rape as a "morals charge." The article is about Nastassja Kinski, who said her sexual relationship with Polanski started in 1976, when she was 15, which was legal in both Germany and France, where they were. Later, he got "demanding and possessive." This quote is in a 1997 article that paints her as a Lolita: "Then as now, she wanted to be watched, and then taken." The writer's approach absolves any of the much older men who "took" her. Her relationship with Polanski ended in 1979, when she completed her role in "Tess."

In the middle of this relationship, he raped Samantha Geimer in 1977. Maybe Kinski was too strong for him, and he wanted a younger girl he could control more easily.

The Washington Post has a great editorial on Polanski. The NYT quotes Guido Balmer, a spokesman for the Swiss Justice Ministry, saying that extradition procedures will be changed to allow for "larger judicial considerations and political considerations.” He added that there was no political pressure in this case. I'm not sure what that would look like if political leaders voicing their opinions doesn't count.

Entertainment Weekly has an awful piece, with the headline: "Roman Polanski: Is his legacy affected?" I wonder if there are editors who say: Make your column stupid and offensive so that we can drive up traffic. If so, they got to Dave Karger, who recalls the excitement in the auditorium when Polanski won an Oscar for "The Pianist."

But Polanski’s detractors can also be forgiven for thinking he’s a criminal who never really had to pay for his crime.

I'm not so forgiving of the celebrities who support Polanski. In case you forgot, they include: Woody Allen, Jonathan Demme, Harvey Weinstein, Sam Mendes, Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, John Landis, Debra Winger, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Pedro Almodovar, Alfonso Cuaron, Isabelle Adjani and Salman Rushdie.

---------

For some good journalism, read the Portland Tribune on its research into the allegations against Al Gore. Unfortunately, websites simplified the story once again with headlines such as: "Al Gore accuser 'not credible' fails lie detector test‎," even though the Trib explained that failing a polygraph test ...

would not have dissuaded the Tribune from publishing the story; polygraph machines detect physiological changes, not lies. Their findings are inadmissible in most courts. And, according to three polygraphers the Tribune contacted, the machines are least reliable when administered to sexual assault victims.

I hope Judge Alison Floyd in Cleveland got this memo. She was the one who ordered young rape victims to take polygraph tests after their rapists had been found delinquent (i.e., guilty). She later backed off her plan.

Filthy Rich as A Dangerous Pathology [Anthony McCarthy]

Note: For some reason I can't get a link from this computer. You can find the article mentioned in the Magazine section of today's Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe Magazine has an article this morning about the continuing McMansion disease that is such a blight on so many suburban and rural landscapes. These awful places, vulgar, irrationally designed, profligate in their consumption of materials and utilities and maintenance schedules, sometimes lived in by only a few people, are more than just esthetically dreadful, they are a red flag of something much worse. They show a pathological condition that isn't confined to any neighborhood unfortunate enough to have one put there. Apparently the recession hasn't finally stopped this craziness. The rich, apparently, we always have to put up with.

Considering the horrible effect the super rich, and those who aspire to become super rich, have no us, on the world and the environment, shouldn't their obsession with accumulating too much money and property be looked on as a dangerous mental illness? You are supposed to look on someone who has dozens of cats or whose house is chuck full of dusty salt and pepper sets or movie magazines as nuts but someone who has more money than hundreds or thousands of people would use in a long and relatively affluent lives, people who are embarked on a bloody and sociopathically indifferent quest to add to their enormous hoard is considered heroic. Which obsession has more inherent danger to other people and the biosphere?

Instead of looking on these people as being role models to be copied, they should be seen as the dangerous people they are. Dangerous as in, yes, they and those who aspire to be like them are the people who have caused things like the Gulf oil gusher, other environmental disasters, wars of conquest, genocidal despotisms, criminal neglect of horrible social problems and have had a hand in every major unaddressed political and environmental problem we have today. And, at the bottom of it, they do so to irrationally acquire more wealth than they or their known family members will ever use. If you doubt the corrupting influence of wealth accumulation, look at the judges who have overturned the drilling moratorium over the past few weeks as they hold stock in the very companies that would be inconvenienced.* Consider the political, legal and media cultures that accept that level of corrupt conflict of interest as a given instead of something to be forbidden and severely punished in those who so sordidly violate their public office.

It's been pointed out many times that you're far more likely to be robbed by a corporation than you are by some pathetic poor person, it would be surprising if you hadn't been already**, It's quite likely that most of the scary people you encounter are scary largely because of the greed of the mega-rich who drive the unemployment rates up, who make the cost of housing ruinously high, who thwart a living wage, healthcare, education, relief mental health services, hospitalization for the truly unable and a host of other blights on our society. They determine the regressive political and cultural atmosphere which has made the United States one of the most violent countries in the developed world. A growing number of people are beginning to realize that the foremost reason for the recession is the fact that the Reagan-Bush regimes have handed over huge amounts of wealth to the filthy rich and there just isn't enough to go around. It turns out that the old rising tide analogy in which the improvement of the lot of the poorest was supposed to leave the rich even better off is just so much flotsam and jetsam on the polluted waters. There aren't unlimited resources, there aren't going to be. The choice is between many people having a decent life and a small number of the criminally insane stealing and hoarding most of it. Our political, legal and cultural orthodoxy favors the insane, we have to change that.

* No country which doesn't hold judges and politicians to a very high standard of integrity will remain a democracy. The bars on conflict of interest in the United States are a fiction. They allow politicians and judges to use their official positions to enhance their wealth, and if not theirs, directly, their closest family members. Instituting real laws and rules on conflict of interest are another area of neglect created and fostered, of by and for the pathologically acquisitive.

** I haven't been brave enough to do the post on the actuarial magazine my state legislator sometimes gives to me. Someone, apparently, sends them to everyone on his legislative committee. The several I've read through are pretty disturbing.

What To Do On A Boring Day

Mostly just silliness.

My Computer Got Fried In An Electrical Storm [Anthony McCarthy]

and I'm using borrowed computers I'm not familiar with. Thus the even rougher than usual editing.

I've ordered a replacement.

Loss of Faith 2010: Diverting Habits of Thought That Could End Up In Our Extinction [Anthony McCarthy]

The news that the cultural mountebank Saatchi has decided to leave his collection of contemporary art to the British Nation received all of the attention it deserved, which wasn’t all that much. Did you hear about it?

Saatchi is the guy who got a lot of attention in the United States a number of years back by displaying the soi disant image of the Blessed Virgin with elephant dung in his traveling “Sensation” show, leading to the inevitable, entirely predictable, pro forma display of prefab performance umbrage by Rudy Giuliani and William “rent a right wing rant” Donohue. Just what damage the mother of Jesus, who went to her eternal reward about 2000 years ago, suffered from the slight is a slightly interesting question. That’s probably the only slightly interesting one evoked by the artistic experience. I was led to believe from my catechism classes that being in heaven was a state of complete and eternal happiness. You’d think just finding out that there is an eternal reward would sort of compensate for the slings and arrows of hucksters with outrageous fortunes down here below, wouldn’t it?

Just as predictably, the rote outrage on the right led to an equally rote reaction on what likes to take itself as being the trendy left. Though what defending a filthy rich ad man’s well paid for kitsch from its critics has with anything important enough to take up the attention of the political left is a vitally important question.* This is evidence of nothing more than the fact that having the right enemies isn’t necessarily enough to make someone a hero, except to people whose bestowal of that title is too casual to make it meaningful. The trendy reaction has, itself, become so habitual as to be uninteresting.

Anyway, if there is one thing that’s clear in this it’s that Sa
Saatchi is a bullshit art collector, assuming the gender of the elephant. His collection, from every description and the reproductions of it I’ve seen, would appear to be the tedious pursuit of ephemeral attention getting through a display of expensive, elaborate and vacuous silliness. It's about as artistically important as what paper napkins to choose for a child's birthday party.

Of course among the rote retorts made to anyone questioning the artistic significance of this kind of thing is “What is art? Can you define it? ” And that might be an interesting consideration. That question is unanswerable in any objective sense. “Art” is an artificial designation given to objects and performances. Being artificial, the concept of “art” has no objective existence from which we can derive reliable classifications that almost all reasonable people would agree to and which could be applied with something reaching the status of reliability. When it’s something which has no objective existence, widespread agreement would be what constitutes what “art” is. At least in the most secure definition. In the world of collectable art, that widespread agreement no longer exists and has been replaced by market price. It’s “art” if you can sell it for a large amount of money to people of an equally artificial cultural status derived by the size of their money hoard or where they get published. To repeat, since what they deal with is a series of artificial distinctions and standards, contemporary art critics and commentators have accepted the replacement of the previous criteria of their profession with the even more artificial dictates of the art market. To a great extent mainstream criticism has become an exercise in avoiding being considered an oppressive fuddy duddy who won’t go along with the happening and with it, the refusal to buy the mutant tulips and the enhance their reputation by expressing their faith in the durability of the bubble. How often do you hear art critics say about art that has traded at large prices and been shown in esteemed venues, “this is garbage”?

The answer to the various dodges of the critics, that “art is whatever produces an artistic experience”, was good to shut down the tedious tape loop tripe from the champions of idiocy, even if it isn’t an objective definition. Though, for those who experience something to do with a work of art, it is rather self apparent. Now a days, though, you don’t have to have an experience from art to be one of its forthright defenders. It’s reached that level of abstraction and so “art” has become entirely superfluous, something to casually mention you’ve seen to people you want to impress. I doubt that most of the staunch defense of “art” from criticism is about the art but is, also, a political manifestation.

There is also a minor market in critical fogeyism which decries the falling away of standards, though that’s generally tied to ultra conservative politics and petulant annoyance that they might have to learn something that they didn’t get a good grade in at university. I’ll forego the infinitely complex matter which includes conservative sticks-in-the mud who mistake their accustomed and comfortable expectations for objective criteria. Neither group of critics would seem to have much of anything valuable to say. The good news is that none of us are required to listen to any of them or to have anything to do with bullshit art, whatever you would include in that category.

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

The most interesting part of this spectacle, for me, at least, is what it tells us about the consequences of there being many areas of life about which it is not possible to reach an absolute definitions and how we construct imaginary connections and glittering cities of thought out of habit. Many things in intellectual life are a matter of artificial and so arbitrary definitions. Many of the ideas we grow to believe are objectively real, are imaginary. Many of those arbitrary definitions take on the intellectual and social status more rightly given to ideas which have stood up under use and which were well made to start with. Lesser ideas seem as if they should have that kind of status, not because they’ve been tested but merely out of intellectual habit and by association with where they come from. As with the habit of distorting things with graphic representations, I think this denial of the artificiality of many of our most basic ideas is a product of habits developed through trying to approach them on the same basis that the legitimate subject of science can be**. That habit of thought, the limits that it unconsciously imposes, the hindrance to new ideas and possibilities are very important things to think about.

For the past several years I’ve been doing a lot of reading about scientific epistemology and related topics, looking at both what science was invented -by people- to do and the necessary limits imposed by those people in order to do it.

As has been said here before, cience was invented to produce more reliable knowledge about the physical universe, it was made to do that and it can’t do anything else. It does that by methodically focusing on phenomena, identifying them, observing them, measuring them, analyzing them and publishing the conclusions reached about those phenomena in order for others to take a rigorous look at the research and to see if they can reliably reproduce the results. And when science follows its methods and practices it has, actually, produced information that is the most reliable basis for thinking about those phenomena it has studied and acting in order to influence them to produce a result. It is almost certain that someone reading this will assume I'm rejecting science when that is obviously not what this is about. This is about the habits of thought that come from, exactly that success, both ideas about social and moral status and more general habits of thinking. That reliability has enabled people to enhance their power to manipulate the physical universe to their ends, sometimes beneficially, thought, it seems ever more obvious, for the most part malignantly. Mistaking questioning of the moral status of science and scientists for a rejection of its methods is another habit which will be the subject of a future post.

But the habits gained from depending on the reliable products of well done science leads to problems, among those is the most obvious, that only those things that have been and can be subjected to the methods of science produce those results. Nothing that hasn’t been subjected to them successfully falls within the realm of scientific activity.

A lot of the trouble in thinking about science begins with the matter of it requiring rigorous focusing on discrete phenomena. When you focus, you limit what you’re looking at, you exclude things you believe at the time are not relevant to what you’re looking at. That doesn’t mean those things stop existing, it doesn’t mean that they might not be relevant to what you’re looking at. You can look too narrowly at something and find that you need more than you see. In that case one of the mistakes you can make is to make something up to replace what you’ve gone to pains of excluding or which you can’t observe. The social sciences, in particular, trying to observe extremely complex and, ever more unfortunately, unobservable phenomena have so institutionalized short cuts and fill-ins that frequent overturnings of its most basic holdings have become entirely expected events, unremarkable in their oddly and obviously demonstrating the exact opposite of what the purpose of science is, to achieve enhanced reliability. In fact, as some of us have come to expect, pointing out that fact will produce the most enraged reaction by those who just so want to ignore that clear and dangerous fact.

The effectiveness of physical science has led to it becoming about the most reputable activity and profession in the modern world. That reputation is due, to some extent, on the integrity of many scientists about their work. Some scientists are very honest about their work, the nature of their work and its position in life and human society. And, ultimately, the honest status of science depends on that kind of intellectual integrity. Science doesn’t work if there isn’t honesty about its subject matter, at least. Though there are different kinds of reputability, not all equally reputable. I think that most of the modern reputation of science in the greater culture is due to its use by commercial organizations to make money. Scientists produce things that can be sold, they can extract valuable substances from the earth and from living things which create wealth for themselves and those who employ them. That results in the more widespread status of science. Science, itself, has no ethical content. Those scientists who practice ethics in their work don’t derive them from their observation of the physical universe, they can look forever and they won’t find them there anymore than they will political ideology or preference in what picture to hang in their office***.

But people are very odd creatures, we seem to want to see morality and ethics where there aren’t any. We seem to want to have a priesthood of elite moral authorities and there are people who, similarly, want to inhabit those positions****. There is no rational reason for people to have reverence for scientists merely because of their profession, not anymore than they do judges or heads of state or artists or religious clergy or, sleaziest of all, those in the mass media. The lazy and unconsidered assumption of enhanced moral status is both granted and accepted, often even in the full face of it being in direct conflict with reality. Many members of these priest hoods, these intellectual and academic aristocracies are among the most rapacious criminals we have among us. A number of them are con men, as clearly dishonest and sleazy as the supremely superficial and untalented artists continually on the make or sports heroes. The major virtue of the arts and sports is that the acknowledgment of them is voluntary. These other areas of life aren’t. Though their status and their skills and tools make the scientific, commercial, legal and political crooks far more dangerous and outrageously destructive. Among their most useful tools, though, is the automatic and unconsidered granting of moral status to them.

I think that among the more disreputable members of various priest hoods, there arises a conflict due to turf protection and the necessity of pilfering followers. But that’s a minor matter, however distracting, entertaining and absorbing. The bigger problem for us, who have no choice but to deal with them, is to remove that bad habit of unconsidered trust in the face of its being betrayed. Unlike the bullshit artists, we have no choice but to deal with what they do.

Note: After several years of dealing with, discussing, arguing about the religious beliefs of scientists, it occurred to me one day that there is no reason to care what a scientist thinks about religion than what a street sweeper or politician thinks about it. Certainly there isn’t based on their professions. What is there about the study of the physical universe that would lead anyone to think that a scientist would have special insight into the non-physical? While I’m sure there are other points of view, from now on I’m going to gage the seriousness with which peoples’ religious ideas should be taken to their moral and ethical conduct. And that’s got a lot more to do with how fair someone is, now well they treat other living beings than it does how many letters they’ve got after their names.

* We have two lefts in the west. The play left that spends most of its attention on stupid things like defending commercial art and the real, and it would seem, much smaller left that tries to do important things. I don’t think the real left should spend its time on that play left stuff, it’s a distraction and a trap that keeps important things from getting done.

** All intellectual systems carry inherent defects, yes, even the ones we cherish and use for thinking about life. The habit of assuming those methods which work very well for understanding and manipulating very simple physical phenomena which can be effectively observed work for everything is one of the most basic defects in our post Enlightenment culture. The simple fact is that the methods and habits of the physical sciences only work well because the things they study are not terribly complex. There is little to no reason to believe that they can be effectively applied to very complex areas of life that can’t be observed. I think that a lot of the disasters we are facing flow from the habit of pretending we can achieve reliable results and find reliable knowledge through a dishonest and phony application of the forms of science to things that can’t be fit into it. When that’s done, especially when it’s coupled with the methods of the Anglo-American legal system, you get technologically enhanced disasters that could kill us all. It is already more devastating in its destruction of life than the violence of the theological systems that produced the Thirty-Years War and other, relatively, primitive epochs of blood shed which didn’t have recourse to the enhanced power that science has given us. If they hadn’t had the products of their contemporary science and technology, the religio-political power centers in those conflicts would have killed far fewer people.

*** Evo-psy’s definition of morality as an inherited survival strategy depends on so many distortions of definition and methodology that it being called ‘science’ is dishonest.

**** The personal gratification of the elite in science, the possibility of economic benefit and membership in a sort of aristocracy are certainly known to motivate many members of priestly classes of various kinds. That scientific priestly classes come into conflict with some segments of the, largely, superceded religious priestly class is hardly to be marveled at.

Friday flower + blogging (by Suzie)

You got the Ginger fauna earlier; here's the ginger flora. Before I began blogging, Echidne offered up Friday critter blogging as a respite. When I started on Fridays, I wanted to maintain this tradition, but I didn't always have a critter. So, I've had photos of sunsets, birds, butterflies, gardens and flowers -- everything you'd expect on a serious and intellectual radical-feminist blog.

My Friday flowers make me think of NYCweboy's Friday Floraludes, which are better than mine, or at least, more arty.

Hillary Clinton's race for the presidency brought me to blogging. Although I don't read as much as I did then, I still enjoy the bloggers who supported her in the primary, such as NYCweboy. I found the Lurking Canary blog just after she stopped posting. I'm not surprised that the Apostate's blog is now protected. I miss regular posts from Anglachel, but I'm happy to see Octogalore return.

What blogs do you miss?

Friday critter blogging (by Suzie)

"Why do you point that thing at me every time I try to sleep?" Ginger asks. She doesn't play with toys very much. But she likes to sleep against things, and this one just happened to be handy. She also loves the sun, and the line in the carpet marks the beginning of strong sunshine.

Oldies But Goodies: First

This is a series about music I like. I grew up not listening to any and only found music quite recently, so the things I like may not be wonderful musical pieces, but they say something to me. Not lyrics, so much, but the music and the voice.

Different songs have different meanings. This one is a prayer song: "If It Be Your Will".

Humans pray or swear and there is a purpose to that, never mind if nobody is listening, and this song is nothing but that purpose.

Worth Reading Today

On child molestation and female priests. How are the two the same?

Why Politico stinks. (Check out who funds it.)

A. The Right To Go Out

I am going to re-post material which deserves a second reading during this vacation of mine, and the series on feminism falls into that category, including the comments to the posts.


This is the first of the posts in my Why-Feminism-Is-Still-Needed series. In hindsight, I tried to make the invisible visible.

My Vacation

I'm going to be traveling and such for the next month. Vacation, European style! Replenishing the brain and the body! Not Writing All The Time!

I may put up new stuff during that time but not to as regular a schedule as my usual one. Suzie and Anthony McCarthy are not allowed to go on vacation, so they will also be posting (makes a Scrooge face). In addition to that, I have pre-posted things from my archives which deserve a second reading and some oldies-but-goodies music: tunes which connect to something else in me than just the ears. And I have written some new posts which I'm sending to the future. So it's going to be summer re-runs from me.

Racist And Obscene

(Note: Think carefully about your surroundings before listening to the linked tapes, if you choose to do so.)

That is how those recorded phone calls by Mel Gibson to his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva are characterized.

And yes, they are obscene and racist. But nothing more? I'm not convinced. Count how many times c**t is used in them, for example. Indeed, Gibson's anger is totally focused on the ways that a woman can be bad and what a good woman would be like.

Who Do You Write Like?

I haven't done these silly quizzes for ages. But they are fun. You can go to this site and find out which famous author your writing style mostly resembles. All the usual caveats apply, meaning that it's meaningless. But a nice time-waster.

Summertime

It would be great if I didn't have a summery head cold. Gah.

History Repeating Itself

The Know-Nothing movement of the 1840s and 1850s had this platform (though a source for it is not provided at the link):

* Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries.
* Restricting political office to native-born Americans of English and/or Scottish lineage and Protestant persuasion.
* Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship.
* Restricting public school teacher positions to Protestants.
* Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools.
* Restricting the sale of liquor.
* Restricting the use of languages other than English.

It's not quite the platform of the Tea Party but the similarities are pretty obvious. Assuming that this indeed is the platform of the American Party (an alternative term for the Know-Nothing movement).

Domestic Violence Incident

USAToday reports on a workplace killing spree in New Mexico:

A man in a domestic dispute with his girlfriend opened fire at his former company Monday, killing two people and wounding four others before fatally shooting himself.

The man, 37, had worked at Emcore Corp., a fiber optics and solar power company based in Albuquerque, where his girlfriend still worked, Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz said at a news conference.

Police said they had not identified the victims and would not confirm whether the girlfriend was among the dead. They also did not identify the shooter.

The couple had two children, who are safe and with police, police spokeswoman Nadine Hamby said. The gunman and his girlfriend had at least one previous domestic violence incident in Rio Rancho, an Albuquerque suburb, but the dispute had not been reported to police and there was no arrest, she said.

"There is a relationship between the offender and the victim," Hamby said.

I have bolded the bits which don't make any sense to me. What information is added when we are told that the dispute between a man and his girlfriend was a domestic one? Do people in such a relationship have foreign disputes, too? It sounds like an attempt to label one type of dispute as something different from other types of disputes.

Then that bit about "the gunman and his girlfriend had at least one previous domestic violence incident."

Did she attack him? Or what? How did they share this incident? It's such an odd formulation. As if domestic violence incidents are something external which just fall on people and as if such incidents are somehow equal fights. Either she attacked him or he attacked her or they attacked each other, and which of these might be the case does matter, given the later events.

This could just be an example of police lingo. But I'm smelling a trend in these stories, one which labels violence which is domestic as something potentially different from other types of violence.

Evidence And Beliefs. Which comes first?

Digby discusses a series of articles highlighted in the Boston Globe. They are all about our puny brainz malfunctioning in ways which might threaten democracy, if the latter is defined as improving with better informed voters.

Because the studies the Globe discusses appear to show something quite depressing:

New research, published in the journal Political Behavior last month, suggests that once those facts — or "facts" — are internalized, they are very difficult to budge. In 2005, amid the strident calls for better media fact-checking in the wake of the Iraq war, Michigan's Nyhan and a colleague devised an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories, each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs found in Iraq (there weren't), that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell), and that the Bush administration imposed a total ban on stem cell research (only certain federal funding was restricted). Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study participants to see if the correction took.

For the most part, it didn't. The participants who self-identified as conservative believed the misinformation on WMD and taxes even more strongly after being given the correction. With those two issues, the more strongly the participant cared about the topic — a factor known as salience — the stronger the backfire. The effect was slightly different on self-identified liberals: When they read corrected stories about stem cells, the corrections didn't backfire, but the readers did still ignore the inconvenient fact that the Bush administration's restrictions weren't total.

Is it time to scatter ashes all over ourselves and to rend our hair, those of us who are into politics as something that might in fact matter a great deal? I wouldn't go that far, and the reason is that by 2005 we already had the Fox News as a major propaganda outlet, one which told outright lies and then called them facts. We also had the blogosphere, both the right and the left one, and several sources used exaggeration in a way which distorted the truth. And we had Rush and Ann and the whole right-wing talk-show system as well as the odd left-wing talk-show of similar type.

My point is that IF we were offered carefully checked information in the first place, our worldviews would not build faulty information into their walls and windows and doors and then being corrected on that information wouldn't collapse the house on our heads. Now it does, for those individuals who get their factoids flavored with truthiness without any real correction in the initial building stages.

But given the current trend to several subjective truths in general, yes, there is some cause for worry. The recommendations in the Globe article focus on the supply side: demanding better fact-checking by the factoid producers. I don't see that happening in the near future. Still, we should keep the pressure on the media to do just that.

Reading those articles made me feel funny (as in funny=peculiar). If I'm suffering from the same "backfire" and "motivated reasoning" problems (as defined in the Globe piece), then how can I write about the piece as if I was outside the problem? Indeed, how can the researchers carry out their studies as if they are outside the problem?

The way to reconcile all this is by assuming that the problem is not universal or at least that there is some way of escaping it. The Globe points out a few solutions:

It would be reassuring to think that political scientists and psychologists have come up with a way to counter this problem, but that would be getting ahead of ourselves. The persistence of political misperceptions remains a young field of inquiry. "It's very much up in the air," says Nyhan.

But researchers are working on it. One avenue may involve self-esteem. Nyhan worked on one study in which he showed that people who were given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information than people who had not. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you'll listen — and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won't. This would also explain why demagogues benefit from keeping people agitated. The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are.

There are also some cases where directness works. Kuklinski's welfare study suggested that people will actually update their beliefs if you hit them "between the eyes" with bluntly presented, objective facts that contradict their preconceived ideas. He asked one group of participants what percentage of its budget they believed the federal government spent on welfare, and what percentage they believed the government should spend. Another group was given the same questions, but the second group was immediately told the correct percentage the government spends on welfare (1 percent). They were then asked, with that in mind, what the government should spend. Regardless of how wrong they had been before receiving the information, the second group indeed adjusted their answer to reflect the correct fact.

I also suspect that if the corrections were included in a more emotional package they might work better. For instance, if the topic has to do with how much the government should spend on welfare, showing a suffering family getting help or showing that 1% as a penny coin (as in one cent out of each dollar the government spends) rolling off a table and spinning for a while before landing on the floor, the message might squeak through those erected ramparts. After all, Fox News does this in reverse all the time. Just read those creeping lines at the bottom of the screen! They are full of emotional hints which may go straight past one's intellectual sensors.
---
A postscript. I should add here that I have had my worldview collapse. It's an extremely painful experience and how one rebuilds that necessary framework must vary from person to person. Thus, I have some sympathy with those who cling on to false information as if it was a life-raft, because that ocean of not-knowing is a frightening place. But if the raft has holes you are going to have to learn to swim anyway.

Mansplaining

Scene I: I'm at a boring official-type cocktail party, holding my glass awkwardly in my hand. I'm introduced to a man who, upon hearing that I'm an economist, launches into a ten-minute sermon about what is wrong with economic thought. He took a course in economics in college and he follows the news avidly, he tells me.

When I try to interject a few refinements (and a more explicit statement of my training etcetera) he repeats the main points of his essential sermon, all the time staring intently to see if I'm learning anything.

I desperately look for a way to escape, because other alternatives are a) continue to be (wrongly) schooled in my specialty, b) drown him in a counter-sermon given in technical economics or c) smash my glass against his forehead and use the resulting weapon to cut his neck arteries.

Scene II: I'm a new blogger in feminism but a very, very old hand in the field. I have read everything I have been able to get hold of, including all those academic papers, and I have spent a few decades thinking and researching the issues. A commenter tells me that he had a few beers with his friends the previous night and they figured out how feminism should be done. I'm then given the gist of this intense study and experience. He is hurt by my coldly polite response, because he is on our side, and if this is how I treat potential allies I should be losing.

Scene III (and this is a recent one): I'm schooled on how complicated issues about women and men and inequality are and how I don't address those complications because I don't see them. But the man schooling them does see them, by osmosis, presumably, as feminism is not his field.

These examples are from my own life, but there is a much better Internet example of what I'm describing here: mansplaining, and it is this one.

The definitions of mansplaining in the Urban Dictionary are fascinating:

To explain in a patronizing manner, assuming total ignorance on the part of those listening. The mansplainer is often shocked and hurt when their mansplanation is not taken as absolute fact, criticized or even rejected altogether. Named for a behavior commonly exhibited by male newbies on internet forums frequented primarily by women. Often leads to a flounce. Either sex can be guilty of mansplaining.
The members of the equestrian community were unimpressed when Bob posted an essay that mansplained a solution to a horsy problem they were all well-acquainted with.
---
to delighting in condescending, inaccurate explanations delivered with rock solid confidence of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course he is right, because he is the man in this conversation
Even though he knew she had an advanced degree in neuroscience, he felt the need to mansplain "there are molecules in the brain called neurotransmitters"
---
A meaningless term used by small-time radical feminists on Internet blogs. Essentially utilized as a way to shut down any male- or person they perceive as male- who dares to express an opinion that differs even slightly from their own warped version of reality. Even the fymynysts are unsure of exactly what it's supposed to mean- only that it has the word "man" in it and therefore must be bad and evil.
Man: "Personally, I mostly agree with you, though I disagree when you say-"

Feminist Retard: "Oh, the mansplainer is mansplaining how everything works, we should be so grateful for the mansplainer!"

Man: "I'm just sharing my opinion..."

Feminist Retard: "Wow, look at the mansplainer go! He has it all figured out, right my fellow wymyn??"

Man: "Never mind"

Feminist Retard: "Good job sistyrs, we chased away that mansplainer."

None of them seem quite right to me. The third one is more about how a sexist would define mansplaining or how someone would define the anger of a person unfairly accused of mansplaining. The second one has an excellent example of mansplaining but it's not necessary to be slimy or even inaccurate to be mansplaining. The first one is closest to how I would define this phenomenon, but it still lacks something, this:

"assuming total ignorance on the part of those listening when that assumption is clearly unwarranted"

Teaching Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, material that is covered in any Economics 101 course would be mansplaining. Teaching me feminism of the most basic sort is mansplaining when it happens after the teacher is aware of my experience and/or credentials in the field.

And the reason is a very obvious one: By ignoring information about the person getting the mansplaining, the mansplainer is telling that what that person knows is either irrelevant or untrue, not worthy of respect at all. Or perhaps even worse, the mansplainer never gave any thought to what the intended audience might actually know. If that intended audience happens to be an expert in the field and the mansplainer a layperson, the overall effect is to seriously diss the expert, to essentially argue that she is NOT an expert.

How would you react if someone did this to you in your field? If someone simply wiped out all those years of hard work you have put into learning it? Wouldn't you feel insulted? Wouldn't you get angry?

The direct feminist application to mansplaining is when a man tells women how their lives really are. To see why that is outrageous, do a simple gender reversal.

And yes, women can certainly be guilty of mansplaining, though I have never had a woman subject me to it. Likewise, men can mansplain to another man. Perhaps this is as common as the experiences many women have had being at the receiving end of an eager mansplanation? We would need a study to answer this question conclusively. My guess is that man-to-woman mansplaining is more common, simply because women are not viewed as experts as often as men are.

Coping with mansplaining is tricky. Nobody likes to hear that they have been mansplaining and the reaction one gets is a bit like that third definition in the above quote. Then there's the problem of equating mansplaining with all discussion and debate when the participants are not matched in expertise.

Should laypeople just shut up? Of course not! Just debating something is not mansplaining, unless it resembles what I described above and if it is done with proper respect for the intended audience. That respect includes trying to understand the audience and what they already might know.

Echidne On The Game Of Bipartisanship

*settles down comfortably, moves snake to the other shoulder, clears throat, begins*

How do you define victory in politics?

Let's use the American political system for that. If you control the administration, the House and the Senate, aren't you pretty close to a temporary victory? Wouldn't you think (ignorant as you are of the rules of the Congress and also of the multi-dimensional chess game Democrats play) that controlling all these three would mean that you have been victorious? Or at least capable of -- hmm -- getting change done?

That paragraph is what an outsider might think, and it turns out to be all wrong. It turns out that having the administration, the Senate and the House means that your hands are tied! Probably behind your back. Except, of course, if your party is called the Republican Party.

Democrats in power are impotent without the support of the opposition (who hates your guts), and to get that support requires that you compromise on your policies, make them smaller. It is as if you agree to douse only every tenth of the fires that burn wild, not all of them, if only the opposition (who hates your guts) will vote for more fire-fighting money.

Some of them will pretend to do exactly that, but withdraw their support at the very last moment (Lucy and the football in Charlie Brown). Then, because of some multi-dimensional chess strategy (impossible for mere mortals to fathom), you will still go on with the plan to attack only every tenth fire.

This the opposition (who hates your guts) will use in two ways: First it will scream about all the fires still raging. Obviously the government can't fight fires and it should not even try.

Second, it will scream about all that money spent on fire-fighting. We can't afford to put even 10% of the fires down! Who will think of the children of the future? They are paying for all this fire-fighting, and would in any case prefer to be born into a scorched land.

And suddenly even the lukewarm compromise policies appear too dangerous. Hence the desire to actively copy Republican policies instead, such as watering down Social Security and putting Medicare on a strict diet.

The opposition (who hates your guts) can't possibly fight against its own policies, right? Except that it can, of course. It hates your guts, after all.

Passing time with health-care professionals (by Suzie)

In my post this Friday about breast-cancer awareness, I mentioned that time passed while I pondered the issue. I didn’t have space to explain how I passed the time, but since Anthony is absent, let me tell you:

A woman in scrubs lead me to a back door of the medical office. We went up an automatic lift -- "hold on!!" -- to what looked like a bank-vault door. We entered a room where I had to get up on a narrow table and lie face down, but I had to do it with one hand because I had an IV in my finger because an RN couldn’t find a fitting vein elsewhere. (Video at 11.) The table had two holes that allowed my breasts to dangle in mid-air.

Welcome to the breast MRI.

I had the MRI because someone had found something on a routine mammogram that gave them pause. I had to get a diagnostic mammogram, and a health-care professional warned me that this one would sort of squish my right breast. I wanted to say, "I just had my breasts flattened like roadkill by the regular mammogram. This is worse?!" SQUISH.

I then had a sonogram of the suspicious breast. Not a good day to wear silk. My MRI showed something in my left breast, and so, I then had a sonogram of my left breast. The Powers That Be decided that I probably just had cysts, but I have to go back in six months.

In the midst of all of this, I had to reschedule my MRI because the night before I had abdominal pain. I called nearby friends. The husband, a semi-retired neurosurgeon, asked me my symptoms and then said, “I don’t think it would be inappropriate to go to the ER.” His wife, who drives as if she was behind the wheel of an ambulance because she’s from the Boston area, picked me up. I faced a wait of about 20 minutes in the ER before I could even see a triage nurse. No, this wasn’t Saturday night after a gang shooting. This was a Monday night. Apparently, people had toughed out the weekend hoping to see a doctor Monday, only to find that they couldn’t get an appointment for two months. Btw, an AP article says ER wait times may worsen under the new health-care law.

So, we called the cancer center to weasel our way into their after-hours clinic. There, a nurse asked what number my pain was on the scale with the smiley-to-frowny faces. “Give me morphine or kill me,” I said.

Then, the projectile vomiting began. My friend, a retired school nurse practitioner, spent years in middle schools. She knows her way around vomit. She peered into the pink plastic tub the way that others have looked at animal entrails.

I was very dehydrated, and the nurse couldn’t start an IV. He called for backup, which resulted in a nurse on each arm, poking away. The one who successfully stuck me was the night nursing supervisor, a slim blonde in pink with pink sapphires who was probably Vajazzled in pink. It was Barbie with a butterfly needle. And this was before I got the morphine.

Sunday Dog Blogging

This wonderful picture is by Ali and her dog created it and poses in it after a nice swim.