Getting Beyond The Slogans Of The Past Facing The Changed Environment [Anthony McCarthy]

One of the least noticed curiosities of the Elena Kagan nomination fight were the Republican attacks against her on the basis of free speech. In the past, you would have been safe in assuming that it was the Republican right attacking her for being lenient to pornographers and the political left. But in 2010, it was the spectacle of the far right attacking a political moderate under the pretense that she was a danger to free speech. The far right was attacking Kagan from the platform formerly stood on by the defenders of Lenny Bruce and Larry Flint.

It’s a really remarkable thing, this flowering of free speech absolutism in the far right, the once defenders of public decency, the party of the 'values voters'. But as remarkable is what a bunch of saps liberals are for it. As in any new position taken by the right, the appropriate reaction isn’t merely skepticism. This is the conclusive proof that something dirty is afoot. Here, of course, it’s the defense of the Supreme Court rulings, made by the far right wing of the court*, opening up the propaganda machine to the direct funding of the corporate oligarches so they can install governments elected on the basis of lies and propaganda. Those rulings are so important to the Republican Party that they are jettisoning a position that the religious fundamentalist wing they’ve depended on for most of the century has held to be sacred. In that, they show that they’ve been playing those people for chumps. Using them to gain power in order to steal and plunder, throwing them only as much as they could get away with in order to keep their votes while not stirring a reaction. Having accused them of being corrupt and evil while acknowledging that they are ruthless and smart, this really isn’t surprising. What is surprising is that those taking themselves as liberal intellectuals aren’t learning from it. Apparently habit trumps evidence in that tradition.

Today’s Boston Globe Magazine has a piece recounting the once much more famous confrontation on the Boston Common between the vastly overquoted H. L. Mencken and the largely forgotten Rev. J. Frank Chase, the infamous head of the Watch and Ward Society.

The story, in short, is that Mencken’s magainze, The America Mercury, had published a chapter from a mostly forgotten book, about the hypocrisy of small town morality, dealing with prostitution. The issue had been banned in Boston at the behest of Chase, the head of the Watch and Ward. Mencken staged a publicity event in which he sold a copy to Chase on the Boston Common, was arrested and soon acquitted. Chase pursed the case through the postal officials and was eventually defeated through the courts. Etc, etc. It’s the template for most of the following cases in which the prohibitions of the 19th century gave way to increasing tolerance of first the frank, then the explicit, then the pornographic. The 20th century created a different society than the one that had existed in the 19th century. It was one that was confident and smug in its self-assured assumption that it was better than the hypocritical, bigoted, repressively moralistic culture of the declining generation. While I’d agree that in many ways it was, we are in a new century and it’s time for us to consider the downside of that 20th century legacy.

I wouldn’t quibble with the story as told by Neil Miller. As with most Sunday Magazine journalism, it’s a predictable piece, recounting the confrontation between the side taking itself as the protector of public morals and the side taking itself as the champion of freedom and modernism. You know how the story is supposed to be seen. You are supposed to know how you’re supposed to think about it. That reaction is as habitual and automatic in any good liberal as the reaction of an upstanding citizen of the 19th century who knew how they were supposed to react to a vast range of sexual expression. What I’d say is that there are few to no lessons you can take from that story, which is more than eighty years old, and compare it to the situation of today, the one in which the malignant effects of a totally unrestricted commercial media is a real danger to equality, freedom, representative democracy and, ultimately, the continued viability of the biosphere**.

We are in a different situation today than that of 1926 or even 1976. It is a situation created in large part by the abandonment by the courts and government of any regulation in pornography. But it’s created to an even larger extent by the expansion of media, filling up more and more hours of our lives, taking more of the time we might spend on thinking for ourselves, reflecting on what we’ve learned and observed. Consider how much of the time of most people in the past was not spent listening to, reading or watching media simply because it was unavailable or too expensive. Real life was what was freely available to them, REAL LIFE. Today’s media is ubiquitous to the point where you are a social outcast if you don’t stay hooked to it, carrying your own leash in your pocket. People, more and more, are thinking what the media tells them to, without having the down time to consider real life around them and to make up their own minds about things.

In its most dangerous aspect, that media is thoroughly corporate. Even if it was not concentrated in a few hands, the many hands that do hold it mostly share a single intention and ideology, market capitalism, enhanced profitability, people as comodity and profit generation.

That ideological concentration and power of the media to shape the public discourse has become a danger to freedom, not its guarantor. The increasing power of the big conglomerates of the media and dictatorial foreign governments which the corporations will kow tow to in the pursuit of its prime, profitable directive, only enhances that danger.

We have a media which promotes a nihilistic, steroid soaked profit worshiping dystopia which is mindless and violent, thriving on a system in which people can’t even face their personal finances realistically. And that's not mentioning misogynist, bigoted, caste bound and enthusiastically unequal. The stream of consciousness that an increasing number of people are floating is nightmarish and more polluted as it flows on. I don’t think it can continue indefinitely, I think we are headed for a disaster that the bromides of the 20th century libertarians can’t cover forever. I think we are at the beginning of that crisis and just as the most regressive politicians of the last century looked to the slogans and poses of the 19th century to cover up their cleptocratic un-egalitarian intentions, those of this century are looking to the slogans used by liberals in the 20th century for their cover. People should think about what happened to Mencken’s Magazine as his century wore on. The vehicle of press freedom, devolved into a crypto-Nazi organ.

The life that is a product of the last part of the 20th century is not going to be any more tolerable or viable than the one created during the 19th century. Having despoiled the natural environment to the extent it has been, that life will become unsustainable to a degree that it hadn’t become in 1900.

Freedom without equality and morality doesn’t produce an enlightened and tolerable life, it becomes a tool of raw power in the hands of those who already have too much of that.

* Adding to the ironies and hypocrisies of the Republican opposition to Kagan was their use of Justice Marshall, for whom Kagan clerked. While he was a great figure in civil liberties, Marshall cast a very unfortunate vote with the majority in Buckley v. Velo. The Republican Right can't pass up the chance to try to use a black man to scare it's supporters. They'll never give up that legacy of the 19th century until it stops working for them.

** Look how quickly the media is minimizing the disaster of the Gulf oil gusher, actively participating in the rehabilitation of BP, just as they have for their other sponsors in the past.

NOTE: We've gotten to a point where any explicit assertion of a moral position is sometimes taken as being unacceptable. I'm increasingly seeing comments on blogs complaining, not only about that, but some claiming that there really isn't any such thing as good and bad, even that "science" has proven there isn't. Consider the implications of that. Democracy and its principles are positions of morality, requiring people to accept and do things they'd rather not do, prohibiting things that they want to do very much. Democracy can't survive in moral nihilism. In the present day, with the increased potential of power provided by science and technology to a human population numbering in the billions, human life can't either. Our only chance is to define morality in terms acceptable to the changed environment we are in which will sustain us. Irresponsible, lazy, ignorant, malleable, pseudo- libertarianism isn't where it's going to be found.

Maurice Ravel Sonatina 2nd movement:

Minuet

Marcelle Meyer

A transfer from the LP, with the LP noise, but the playing is extraordinarily beautiful.


1. Modéré

2. Minuet 3. Vif

Monique Haas

Here is the entire Sonatina played by another great French pianist of that generation who knew the authentic tradition, first hand.

I've never been a great fan of Ravel's orchestral music and was a relatively late convert to his piano music. A lot of that might have been due to the abuse of his music by interpreters who either made it sound like an electric sewing machine or who went to the opposite extreme and slathered it with romantic schmaltz*. When you hear the authentic tradition you realize that the usual, dialectic between those poles simply doesn't apply. The clarity isn't colorless, the rhythm isn't either the what's typically taken to be rubato nor is it metronomic. Trying to describe it, I find I don't have the vocabulary. Which would be the point of doing it with music, after all.

* In his book The Compleat Conductor, Gunther Schuller documents the horrific distortion of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe by some of the most famous conductors of the past century. While he documents similar distortions practiced on other great composers' music, the mistreatment of that work (including tacking on of a corny ending that I'd expect Ravel would have been made sick to hear) is incredible.

Note: I have no idea why the word comes out in italics when you use the accents. I tried to fix it and couldn't figure it out.

[Anthony McCarthy]

It's time for Elizabeth Warren (by Suzie)

[P]rotecting consumers, ensuring that they aren’t the victims of predatory financial practices, is something voters can relate to. And choosing a high-profile consumer advocate to lead the agency providing that protection — someone whose scholarship and advocacy were largely responsible for the agency’s creation — is the natural move, both substantively and politically. Meanwhile, the alternative — disappointing supporters yet again by choosing some little-known technocrat — seems like an obvious error.

That's from the Nobel Prize-winning Paul Krugman, arguing for Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner doesn't get along with her, all the better. Obama needs to hear differing views, and not just from Republicans.

Warren, a Harvard law professor, has excellent credentials. When Sen. Chris Dodd questioned whether she could be confirmed, I got flashbacks to the question of whether Hillary Clinton could be elected. For more on her background and views, read this in Guernica.

P.S. My blogmate, Anthony McCarthy, supported Warren in a post Jan. 24. I don't know the vacationing Echidne's views on the subject.

Elena Kagan confirmed (by Suzie)

My headline was going to be "Senate Confirms 2nd Jewish Lesbian to Court," but the Save the Males website beat me to it. It continues:

The confirmation of the unsightly Solicitor General signals that the Illuminati satanic cult that governs America intends to use government institutions to enslave Americans.

When I'm searching for feminist views on the news, I wish I had a choice to exclude the extreme-even-to-extremists sites that hate women, and in this case, Jews. An example: "elena kagan" "feminist" but not "misogynist."

Friday critter blogging (by Suzie)

Camouflage kitty.

On a serious note, someone left two old pet carriers by my church's door last Sunday, with a couple of cans of cat food and a note explaining that the owners couldn't keep them. Inside, kittens nestled in old towels with bowls of water. A woman who fosters cats took them home, but she can't keep them indefinitely. During this recession, I worry about humans, of course, but I'm also sad to see all the abandoned animals.

Emmanule Chabrier

Feuillet d'Album

Marcelle Meyer

Another great French pianist I wasn't familiar with until happening across her on YouTube. I can name several male pianists of the period who are, or at least were household names who couldn't hold a candle to her. I'd guess we know at least one of the reasons.

[Anthony McCarthy]

Oldies But Goodies: Twelfth

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Arabian Knights

A Few Economics Posts

Which might be worth reading:

The Goddess Of Less-Than-Free Markets
is about health care as a marketable good and the problems markets have in delivering it efficiently and equitably. (For more on this, check out my Alternet article)

And here is my take on the way the Freakonomics guyz treat prostitution. At least one of the authors thought prostitution was an unserious topic.

Alien Thoughts

(This is a draft I found. For want of anything better I'm going to post it now, even though I have no idea what the events were that triggered my rant.)


Just wondering what an alien from outer space would have made of yesterday's news coverage and entertainment in the U.S.. Two women the focus of so much attention: Hillary Clinton and Britney Spears, and both of them found so very wanting. Would that alien have called home and told how ill-behaved the egg-bearing sex of humans is? Dominating the news like that! Out of control!

I'm imagining the alien sort of following my day, watching television, listening to the radio, surfing websites and reading comments threads on various political blogs, and I'm imagining what the alien might conclude from this condensed visit to our world. It would have to be somewhat humanoid, wouldn't it? Otherwise the chasm would be hard to cross. But suppose it came from a planet with some similarities, what would it think of this experience?

Now that I really get into this story, I can see the poor alien deciding that women are the criminal sex, the sex always in trouble, but also the sex which hogs all the media limelight. It might have wondered why the women who work in the media all look like elongated lamp-posts with a pair of balloons stuck roughly midway up when the men who work in the media appear to come from a wide distribution of shapes and sizes. Perhaps all the good women, the ones not covered in the outrage-stories, perhaps those women look like breasted lamp-posts? Yes, that seems logical.

No. That's a bad beginning. I'm not going to let an alien badmouth the ladies of the Fox News. Aliens should know better than that. But the alien could study some statistics on the numbers of famous women or of women hailed as geniuses or of women leading countries, or the statistics on income and occupations, showing the scarcity of women in the most delectable positions and their abundance among the poor. The alien could then look at the main religions, just to find out what the role of priestesses on this planet might be. Then a light bulb would appear in the alien's conversation bubble!

No. That turns too grim and boring too fast. Perhaps the alien could make friends with a young and eager conservative guy and ask him for answers to some of the questions the media coverage provoked? For instance, what is all the fuss about Hillary Clinton? And the young and eager conservative guy could explain, in great detail, that Hillary Clinton is pure evil. She kills people and stuff. And she used to be an egg-layer.

Then he could explain how women are the egg-laying part of the species, proven by research to be uninterested in most everything else but egg-laying (and being coy and salivating over rich, old, bald guys), and how it's very important that the number and spacing of the eggs must be controlled by the other part of the species, because otherwise we get Britney Spears and the end of this civilization on this planet. Or something like that? Then the alien and the conservative guy could go out for a few beers and to watch a stripper or two.

Or if the eager-guy conservative happens to be a fundie, he could tell the alien all about the bearded guy who also came from outer space and who decreed that the egg-layers must be modest, humble and docile. When they are not, the media rips them a new asshole.

Nah. That doesn't work, because what if the alien has no sex at all? Or even worse, what if the alien is a female alien? It might then conclude that our society is fairly contemptuous of its female half and at the same time almost oblivious of this contempt. Then the alien could just blow this place up.

Oh dear. I got all emotional there, didn't I?

I (don't) swear (by Suzie)

My mother didn't like the use of vulgar language. As a writer, she thought it was unnecessary. My father swore occasionally, sometimes invoking "dogs' blood and cholera." No car trip was complete without him shouting "Jesus Christ" from time to time. Early on, I wanted to be a journalist, and mainstream newspapers avoid curses and vulgarities. I rarely use them, unless I've hurt myself.

All of this is related to Echidne's post below on "suck jobs" as well as the fact that I'm about to eat a mamey. It's pronounced ma-MEE. I freeze when trying to say the word, lest I sound like I want to eat a mommy or that I'm using the preterite of mamar, to suck.

As far as I can tell, vulgarities involving sex are all gendered, and women don't end up on top, a phrase that also is gendered. Various uses of screw, f***, blow, suck and anal sex reinforce the idea that the one being penetrated (assumed to be a woman or a gay man considered to be acting like a woman) has lost power or control, as in being raped, or has been cheated, tricked, put down, or put in her/his place. Son of a bitch and bastard reflect poorly on mothers. And motherf***** often gets shortened to mother.

I don't care for this s***. I lean more toward damnation although I don't believe in it. What about you?

Oldies But Goodies: Eleventh

This one is good but don't watch the video. It is better without it.

Jacques Brel and Ne Me Quitte Pas

Suck Jobs

An old post which still might get this blog banned. If it already wasn't, of course. Which it is, in federal offices. Heh.

Who Threatens The Family?

(Re-posted from here)


I couldn't fall asleep right away last night and started thinking about the peripheral things that lurk in my snakebrain, one being the repeated echo of the term "patriarchal family" and the dangers it finds itself in. In the wingnut world the dangers the patriarchal family faces are much more serious than global warming, even more serious than the Islamofascistterrorists, because as Dinesh D'Sousa told us, if only we kept the patriarchal family safe we wouldn't get attacked. Get thee into your burqa, woman!

So. As I began to say, I did a squirrel wheel thought exercise with the dangers that supposedly threaten the patriarchal family: abortion, homosexuals wanting to get married, single mothers having children, lesbians having children without a father, mothers having jobs. Notice something very interesting? Nothing a heterosexual man might do is construed as a threat to the patriarchal family. Even extramarital sex and such is just fun and games for the men, but a real problem when women join in without the proper feelings of guilt and the needed societal shaming.

It's only the women and the gays and the lesbians which threaten the family. Taken at face value, the wingnuts are perfectly fine with divorced men not paying child maintenance or not seeing their children ever again. They are also perfectly fine with heads of patriarchal households who abuse or beat their spouses or children. I am not saying that this would be what heterosexual men do as a rule or even very often. But these things do happen, especially in a patriarchal family, and the religious and conservative right seldom gets its panties into a wad about them.

It is not really a defense of the family or the marriage these people are interested in, because if they truly were we would see much more writing about the nasty underbelly of the patriarchal family and its bad effects on the children, say. It is purely a defense of patriarchy, the costs be damned, and the attack is framed as one against "the family" because most everybody likes the idea of protecting something they think of as the family.

Oldies But Goodies: Tenth

Janis Joplin. Try listening to her after listening to someone homogenized and made appealing. It's a stunning experience. But so are many of her songs. This one is "Little Girl Blue."

A Composer Who Has Gone Into Unjustified Eclipse [Anthony McCarthy]

Ben Weber is a rare name in American music that should be better known today. In his book, American Music since 1910, Virgil Thomson said that he wrote “Music of great sincerity and emotional depth couched in a modified serialism easily acceptable”. I first became aware of him through “New Music for the Piano,” an important collection of pieces which was issued as a set of LPs played by the composer-pianist Robert Helps, in the 1960s and in a printed collection found langishing on may a university library shelf. The Humoreske Op. 49 is a quirky, engaging piece of music. I also played his Bagatelles, his very easy and tenderly melancholic Lyric Piece

I studied, though never played his wonderful Sonata da Camera for violin and piano*. I’ve always been at a loss to understand why he isn’t more often played and much better known. The passacaglia in the second movement would make an excellent stand alone piece.

There are two fascinating YouTubes of Weber's music posted by Leland Pitts**

The Rapsodie Concertante for Viola & Small Orchestra

Part I

Part II

The notes say that the piece was a commission by the great violist Walter Trampler and M-G-M Records, as they point out, it’s hard to imagine a major recording company doing something like that these days. Trampler was also the violist in the recording released of Weber’s String Quartet No. 2, Op. 35, re-released on CRI-New World, Gay American Compsers Vol 2.

The second YouTube is of his

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra


i. Deciso, non tanto allegro


ii. Andante con rubato

iii. Allegro


There is a decent discography of Ben Weber’s music which is, I believe, available through The American Music Center library, though most of it isn’t performed. It’s such engaging and interesting music that I don’t understand why that’s true. Perhaps that’s not a situation that will continue. One of Weber’s students, the composer Roger Trefousse has worked to honor his teacher and to promote the playing of his music.

You can a recording of his piece, mentioned in the review, ''Fantasia on the Name of Ben Weber, at his website.

* There was a recording of the Sonata made in the 1950s by no less than Alexander Schneider, violin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. It’s obvious that performers of that rank believed his music was worth playing. The commitment required to learn pieces this challenging by musicians of that quality is usually a pretty good indication of substance. I looked and haven’t found that performance has be re-released.

** Leland Pitts' YouTube channel, posting mostly unavailable performances of fine but little known music (with some fascinating period art work) is one of the most worthwhile things I’ve ever seen on the web. I am very grateful for it.

And Now For Something A Little Bit Different [Anthony McCarthy]

Since early in this blogging gig I've had fun poking holes in and fun at various items in the newspaper announcing various findings in the social sciences, most often using Kevin Lewis' column in the Ideas section of the Sunday Boston Globe as a jumping off point. Today he has something that I'm going to take seriously. Here it is:

The reckless toddler gender gap

In the nature vs. nurture debate, you can add another notch to the nurture side. Researchers asked parents of toddlers to react to imaginary scenarios of their child engaging in reckless behavior. Although there wasn’t much difference in how mothers and fathers reacted, there was a difference based on the sex of the child. With boys, parents reacted with anger and discipline, but with girls, the reaction was generally disappointment and a concern for safety. Underlying these differences was a belief that boys are inherently predisposed to reckless behavior, while girls can learn to follow rules, suggesting that parents are imposing gender norms from a very young age.

Morrongiello, B. et al., “Understanding Gender Differences in Children’s Risk Taking and Injury: A Comparison of Mothers’ and Fathers’ Reactions to Sons and Daughters Misbehaving in Ways that Lead to Injury,” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (July-August 2010).

One of the reasons I'm going to take this seriously is because I believe the last sentence is entirely true, we are subjected to the socially constructed gender expectations of our parents and other adults from almost as soon as they know which kind of genitalia we had at birth. While that kind of gender conditioning varies in its content and strength from person to person, it is certainly widespread enough to constitute a major factor in the individual lives of people and in the societies in which they live. It has determined our laws and the application of those, as well as the whole gamut of rules and codes of conduct. And those social expectations aren't universal or set in stone. They can be recognized and changed, through conscious decision and through unconscious rebellion against the tyranny of gender role assignments. Laws and rules change in time. What has feminism, and, indeed, the entire history of civil rights struggle, been except a refusal to remain restricted and downtrodden by social and legal role assignments.

But, presumably, we are supposed to take this conclusion seriously, that babies are very early subjected to these role models and patterns of thinking by the people who have the greatest effect in forming their thinking. Presumably social scientists are supposed to take it seriously. My question is why they don't. If this conclusion is valid, and I believe it is, then it overturns every assumption of all "hard wired", genetically determined, finding in the social sciences. You can't look at behavior as if the people behaving are unconditioned in exactly this way. You certainly can't ignore the learned expectations, most of them quite unconsidered and automatic, when they report on their mental states or their imagined reactions, as this study depends on. Though I've extremely skeptical that they exist, the possible methods of the social sciences would be unable to tease out any "genetically based gender differences" from the socialization of study subjects. Taken seriously, this study would render huge parts of recent social, behavioral and cognitive science orthodoxy useless.

I have a relative who can't get through the morning without checking a half dozen weather reports. One snowy morning as they fretted over the rather varied prophesies of the TV and radio weathermen, I asked who they believed when those gave different predictions. There wasn't an answer. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that the greatest accuracy of weather prediction outside of 48 hours was something like 11%. Given the range of vectors and possibilities, I doubt the social sciences do that well and in any given individual, their best guesses are likely to be entirely wrong.

Six Moon Dance And Friends

I own quite a few fantasy and science fiction books which ask questions about gender relations. Some of those I've written about before, but the topic is of endless interest to me.

The tricks a writer can use to discuss gender in the without-initial-rules world of alternative reality are not that many. A book could discuss gender the way it is perceived by our current societies, or it could side-step that by having gender be something different altogether (either nonexistent, temporary or officially accepted as multitudinous). This side-stepping was most famously done by Ursula le Guin in The Left Hand of Darkness, but many other applications of that principle apply.

Another way to address the topic is by reversals or by assigning the traditional female roles to men and vice versa. Melanie Rawns tried that in her trilogy Exiles (which still lacks the third book), but I found the reversal unconvincing, perhaps, because the society otherwise looked too much like something from our own history books (with the exception of the magic, naturally). I kept asking how it was that women had so successfully turned men into househusbands in that world.

Sheri S. Tepper's Six Moon Dance is a more believable attempt at a reversal, because Tepper lets us learn, as the book advances, why and how the power balance of gender changed on her imaginary planet, and also because the resulting balance still favors men in many, if not most things. To give you a flavor of the book, here is the opening:

"It's all right," Mouche's mother said. "Next time we'll have a girl."

Mouche knew of this because his father told him. "She said it was all right. She said next time..."

But there had been no next time. Why the inscrutable Hagions decided such things was unknown. Some persons profited in life, producing daughter after daughter; some lost in life, producing son after son; some hung in the balance as Eline and Darhos did, having one son at the Temple, and then a daughter born dead at the Temple, and then no other child.

The reason daughters are so valuable for farmers like Mouche's parents is that there are fewer women than men on this agricultural low-technology planet. Brides cost a lot of money to acquire but are necessary for the continuation of the family line. Farmers who have daughters get lots of money for them, money, which can be invested in the farm and which can be used to buy brides for the family's sons. Thus, daughters equal wealth in this society, even though the family line is centered on the sons.

Poor Mouche. His family has no daughters, the farm is going under, and he is a pretty boy. His parents need money. What to do? They are going to sell him to a Hunk School.

You will have to read the book to find out what a Hunk School might be. Then you will also learn why married men wear face veils on that planet and in what sense the arrangement benefits or does not benefit women or men. It's all quite interesting, providing weird distorted echoes of our society and perhaps letting us see the latter with greater clarity.

A third way of examining the power balance between the sexes might be the one which Barbara Hambly used in her Sisters of the Raven and its sequel Circle of the Moon. The gender rules in her book are initially fairly easy to recognize as what one might call the traditional Mediterranean ones, with covered women and strong male dominance in the public sphere, though she also adds borrowings from other cultures into the mix.

These rules are not changed in the book. What does change is one of the sources for the male power: magic. In the past, Hambly tells us, magic was a purely male ability. Not all men had it, but no women did. It was the men with magic who called in the annual rains, the rains on which the survival of the desert society depicted in the books depended. Then, suddenly, male magic dies and the whole society faces possible death.

At the same time, a few women here and there realize that they now have magical skills. These skills don't appear to obey the old rules, however, and they come into existence at the same time as the death of men's magic.

This setting looks to me like an interesting opening for studying gender power relations, even if it unfortunately sets that power up as a zero-sum game. Hambly doesn't really take that topic very far, perhaps, because she is more interested in the other topics of the books. But I'm hoping that she one day writes a third book on that imaginary society and tells us how it all went.

Here is my last thought on this topic: I think the best way to discuss gender in speculative fiction would be to take the existing sexual power relationships and their justifications and to apply that whole network to two groups of creatures which are clearly not men and women but still somehow linked in the sense of mutual survival. Doing that could throw some real light on the questions.


(Originally from here)

Crucial Decisions Which Must Be Faced By Barack Obama [Anthony McCarthy]

It's been two weeks now since the sliming of a fine woman by Andrew Breitbart, FOX and the rest of the Republican lie machine, exposed a deep and damaging deficiency in the Obama administration. Usually by this time the far right media has kicked up some dirt and the near right (most all of the rest of it) has run with the further sliming. As so often seen when it's a matter of the Republican lie machine, the dirt doesn't have to be authentic. That hasn't been successful in the case of Shirley Sherrod and there are reasons for that.

The fact that the Republican lie machine have been using its own, quickly abandoned, slime against the Obama administration's handling of it should make the president stop and take notice.

Derrick Jackson's column this morning is about the teachable moment presented by this incident, one which is rare in today's media-political climate, one in which a good person stands up for herself and is vindicated. In the column Jackson quotes Robert Gibbs as saying that President Obama doesn't have to be “the teacher in every teachable moment.’’ Oddly, I agree with Gibbs. In this case Barack Obama is the one who should be doing the learning and applying the lessons taught by Ms. Sherrod to himself and his administration. Ms. Sherrod is the teacher and so impressive in her continuing to NOT go the instant celebrity route that the numerous times she has appeared, since the libel broke, hasn't diminished her moral authority. That is rare. You have to conclude that it's her character, her history that have protected her from that. It hasn't gone to her head.

Barack Obama shouldn't take this as a teachable moment he should take it as a learning opportunity. Seen in its entirety what Ms. Sherrod has said carries a number of extremely important truths.

“One of the hard things I found out, when they were dealing with me, was that there was no person of color in the inner circle who talked to me to hear my story or whom I could talk to,’’ said Sherrod, the Department of Agriculture’s director of rural development in Georgia who was fired for false charges of reverse racism.

She found a similar situation at USDA itself. In an interview with columnists and reporters at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, she said that about 15 percent of USDA’s Georgia employees are black in a state that is 30 percent black. They are mostly in lower-grade, lower-paid positions. She said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has pledged changes, “but I don’t know how you do it without black people in your inner circles,’’ she said. “The question has to be asked, where is the real commitment?’’

It is an important question, why the administration of the first black president should have to learn lessons about equal opportunity, equal access to government service and the hard reality of what it's like to be a small farmer, maybe if they called themselves "small businesses" they'd get some respect from the people in the inner circle of the administration.

The opportunity to admit that this presents moral imperative to change course in his administration is one Barack Obama must take if he is anywhere near as astute as he has been sold as being. He should listen to the lessons of her experience that Ms. Sherrod has unfolded in all it's non-elite, blue collar reality. It is, exactly, that level of reality, where most of us reside, that this administration seems to resist facing.

If he doesn't take the lesson, I doubt he will save his administration even if he is reelected. Aside from the lost opportunity to reestablish his moral credibility, the failure to take the lessons of this incident will also be confirmation that Barack Obama has ceded political authority to his opponents inside as well as outside of the Democratic Party. If, as I suspect he will be, he wins reelection due to the Republicans nominating someone so unacceptable that the voters will overlook the shortcomings of an Obama administration that continues on its present course, I suspect a second term will be as wounded as the second Clinton term was. And Bill Clinton didn't have the Bush II recession and two wars dragging him down as Barack Obama does.

One thing that Barack Obama could use this incident to do is to prod the Senate to passing more of the huge backlog of bills that have already passed the House, the part of the government that the Obama inner circle seems to have no respect for, even as they carry the water for the rest of the Democrats in the Senate and in his administration. As Jackon said:

She said if someone with her history can be treated as if she had no history at all, the Obama administration risks being oblivious to real racial rot. As the right screams about imaginary injustices to whites, ripped-off black farmers are still losing land. The Obama administration supports $1.2 billion in final payments to address historic USDA discrimination, but the Senate still has not approved the funds. She said the country is still on a path “where we may not have any black farmers left.’’

Let's see some real pressure in the Senate to get that real and outrageous history of discrimination against farmers ended and righted. Associating Shirley Sherrod would give it far more of a chance than Barack Obama could on his own. I'm not going to believe that this administration or the Democrats in the Senate have learned anything until that is addressed.

If he fails to take these lessons, we in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party should face the fact that it's the leadership of the House of Representatives who listen to us, who really get us. We should get over the Senate and, if it is warranted by the facts and unavoidable, we should get over Barack Obama.

Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 (by Suzie)

You've got to see this video from the Story of Stuff Project. I'm having trouble embedding it. Nena Baker gives some background in the Huff Post:

Adults in the United States use an average of 10 personal-care products a day. That translates to exposures to more than 126 unique chemicals, not counting the untold number of chemicals used in any "fragrance" listed on a label, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

While some of these chemicals are perfectly safe, others may cause cancer, and problems with brain development and reproduction. This worrisome situation is why three Congressional Democrats -- Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin -- introduced the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 on July 21.

I'm too tired to write more because I've spent my evening salvaging stuff left beside the Dumpster in my apartment complex. A lot of students live here, and many clear out before Aug. 1. Maybe they're in a rush or they run out of room in their truck or van or they don't think they can repair something or they know their parents will buy new stuff.

Today, I rescued a dining-room table with chairs, a stereo receiver and speakers, a garbage bag full of men's clothes, a floor lamp, a dresser, and two large, frolicking dolphins carved out of wood that need only a piece of glass on top to be a table again. This was just the stuff that I know can find homes and that was reasonably clean. I'll try to get more stuff tomorrow before it gets shoved into the Dumpster.

Selling stuff to raise money & awareness (by Suzie)

When I read the news about the booby-loving middle-schooler (see my post 7/9/10), I had never heard of the Keep-a-Breast Foundation, which gets money from merchandise, such as the wristband the boy wore. I had, however, seen the Save the Ta-Tas T-shirts and bumperstickers in my apartment complex full of college students.

In 2000, the KAB founders "created an awareness campaign like none other by harnessing the power of art to communicate complex feelings and thoughts about health, the female form and ultimately about breast cancer." I'm sure many women appreciate the nonprofit's work. In case anyone doesn't know, however, art therapy and feminist art of the body were around long before KAB.

KAB helps women cast their breasts in plaster, with the casts painted by artists or the women themselves. The casts displayed on the website are mostly of perky breasts, even though many young women do not fit this mold.

"The success of these art benefits put breast cancer awareness on the map for a younger generation," the foundation's website says. I'm sure it educated some young people, but I don't heart hyperbole.

Not counting young women raised in religious cults or countries in which they get little information about their bodies, are there any who don’t know that young women can get breast cancer? After all, pink ribbons and merchandise are everywhere, and many of the media illustrations for breast-cancer awareness depict thin, young white women with their hand on their breast. If your memory isn’t good, Google images for “women with breast cancer” or check out Sociological Images.

It's great that KAB educates young people on cancer at booths, events, etc. But its website offers little that can’t be found better elsewhere, such as this Canadian site on breast self-exams or the Breast Cancer Fund on environmental toxins. If KAB lacks the money to improve its website, at least it could provide links to sites with more information.

The foundation also needs to be careful with health facts, such as saying: "Studies have shown that stress actually can promote cancer indirectly by weakening the immune system’s anti-tumor defense or by encouraging new tumor-feeding blood vessels to form." I agree, chronic stress is bad. But the National Cancer Institute says studies have not proven that chronic stress increases the risk of cancer, although it does seem to hurt people fighting cancer. Why am I nitpicking? Because many cancer patients feel blame, including blame that they can't create a stress-free life for themselves. In fact, I feel that right now as I'm writing on deadline.

Another blog post reports on the recent ASCO meeting, with a brief teaser about "sea sponges being used in treatment." News at 11!!! Here's only a slightly longer version: Studies suggest that women with advanced breast cancer who've already received a lot of treatment live longer by getting a new drug called Eribulin, which is synthesized from sea sponges.

While searching ASCO abstracts, I found the latest study of Eribulin and my cancer, a subtype of soft-tissue sarcoma. So, points to KAB on that. On its blog, I also found a great video on "The Story of Cosmetics," which I'll give its own post, but you can see it now. The first line has a bearing on this post: "This is a story about a world obsessed with stuff."

KAB can reach young people in places like the Warped Tour, a summer tour by performers who are mostly male, which might be less welcoming to other breast-cancer nonprofits. Its blog features a testimonial from a woman with breast cancer who, before she was diagnosed, educated her teen son after they saw a KAB booth at a concert. She says he later bought “I love boobies” wristbands for himself and his friends, and she felt proud.

KAB’s site has a breakdown of its fundraisers (not including the merch) and donations to other nonprofits, such as the Young Survivor Coalition. Last year, the foundation donated almost $8,000 to a survivor to help pay her medical bills. They have specifics for applying for a grant from Emergen-C; otherwise, I couldn’t find the criteria for their grants. It's possible that a survivor who donated to the foundation might want to know how she, too, could get help with medical bills.

The for-profit Loser Kids sells KAB's “I (heart) boobies” wristbands and T-shirts, and says 100 percent of the profits go to the nonprofit. Selling things attached to a cause drives traffic to commercial websites.

The for-profit Ta-Tas Brand Clothing, also based in Southern California, could be seen as a competitor with a similar slogan, the trademarked "save the ta-tas" vs. "keep a breast." It sells T-shirts, wristbands, Boob Lube, etc. I found the "Friends don't let friends lose ta-tas" T unnerving, perhaps because I've had to decide on how much of my body I wanted removed in surgery. I lost parts to save my life.

T-shirts sell for $26.95 up to $39 for a tie-dye version. The company gave 5 percent of its gross sales to many nonprofit organizations until the formation of the nonprofit Save the Ta-Tas Foundation in 2008, according to a letter from its controller, Lesli Gilmore. Now the foundation and the company donate to the Concern Foundation, which funds young cancer researchers.

Gilmore also noted: “The Brand largely supports overhead and administrative costs of the [Ta-Tas] Foundation, which is why you will see our operating expenses were less than 1% in 2009!”

I contacted the foundation in April because of the lack of information on its site. For example, I found a business page saying, “A portion of every sale is given to the fight against breast cancer,” but I couldn’t find what percentage “a portion” represented. When I went back recently, the site impressed me with its clarity.

Giving only 5 percent "is an abomination," one of my friends said. But another was glad to get any amount for cancer research.

Many nonprofits sell merchandise to fund their work and raise awareness. Many companies donate to worthy causes for tax reasons, public relations and marketing. Others tie donations directly to sales. In other words, buy their yogurt and they'll donate to the cause. Some, such as the Ta-Tas Brand, depend on the cause for sales. For example, if breast cancer got cured tomorrow, I think sales would drop, although women might still buy "I love my big ta-tas" shirts.

I could spend every day picking apart nonprofits, including ones I support. I’m singling out KAB and Save the Ta-Tas because of the marketing they chose. Kris Frieswick had an excellent article on the marketing of breast cancer last year in the Boston Globe, and Jeanne Sather has criticized it at length.

In my previous post on this topic, I asked whether the money and awareness raised is worth the sexy marketing. Sociological Images answers that question with a series of posts, including ones titled: “Do Breast Exams Because Boobs are Hot” and “Boobies Against Breast Cancer.”

Friday critter blogging (by Suzie)

I introduced Margaret's Sammy last week. Here she is, just hanging out, with the two older cats, Peanut and Punkin, who seem to be saying, "Remember, you loved us first."

Oldies But Goodies: Ninth

Excellent cleaning music. Obviously good for other things, too, but this is what I dust to. Every ten years or so.

Django Rheinhardt: "Minor Swing"

Popularizing Research in the Conventional Media

(This is a reprint from here. I believe the ideas I discuss in it are important enough to pardon the stilted language.)


Being a journalist with the task to write about research results for the general audience must be very hard. You are supposed to have the statistical skills to understand all kinds of methods, you are supposed to understand several fields of sciences and social sciences well enough to distill them into simpler sound bites, and you are supposed to write the popularization pieces in a few days' time.

Anyone who has done academic research in a field knows that the task is pretty much impossible. There are no Renaissance scholars with the whole toolkit hanging off their belts, no geniuses instantly aware of every single new study in every obscure academic journal, no Doctors of General Criticism out there. Certainly not with the job of popularizing social science research, say.

Add to that the usual restrictions journalists face. Where's the hook for this piece? Why would anyone want to read it? Where's the sex? How can you write the piece so that it presses all those emotional buttons which will guarantee maximal readership numbers? If you write a decent and careful analysis, won't the competing newspapers or websites steal the show from you?

I'm not envious of the jobs of popularizers. Still, I'm going to criticize the results of popularized versions of academic research. I see at least four major problems in what the media tells us about social science research.

The first one is that the need for a journalistic hook biases the studies which are given more publicity. A study which finds, say, that women and men are pretty much the same in some behavior will not be covering the front pages of any major magazines or newspapers. A study which finds, say, a 9% gender difference in something will not attract all those readers like a magnet. Much better to ignore the number and just talk about the chasm that separates men from women.

That the studies are selected for reasons which have little to do with how well they were constructed, how general the conclusions are that can be drawn from them or how much they are in agreement with the mainstream thoughts in an area of research is a serious problem. It makes the general audience draw faulty conclusions about what such studies in general find.

The second problem is also related to the journalistic need to find a hook, and that concerns the fact that issues become stale very fast. Hence, if a popularization of a bad study makes the headlines this week, the corrections and criticisms of that same study will not make the headlines next week. The story is old and stale, let's move on. Never mind that the story was also a false one, yet now remains in the memory banks of many in the audience.

The third problem has to do with the excessive reliance popularizations place on the authors of a study. Every single popularization I have read contains several direct quotes from the study authors. But the authors of a study are going to sell it. Their quotes are not going to be those of a neutral observer. The neutral observer is supposed to be the popularizer who, in general, does not have the expertise to actually provide the necessary counterweight.

This is assumed to be solved by the academic system which screens studies before they get into print. But the screening system has its problems. For instance, suppose that I started an academic journal called "Echidne Studies". To get published in it you must find good things about Echidne. I can gather together several like-minded people, people who appreciate the true essence of Echidne, and I can use those people as my anonymous referees, to make sure that all the articles published in the journal will be of interest to us Echidneites. Don't you think that some of those reviewers might let a few statistical problems slip through, assuming that the anonymous reviewers I picked contained any familar with statistics?

Then academic reviewers are busy people, in general, the number of journals that need reviewers is very large and some journals have a better reputation than others. All this means that anyone who really tries can find quite silly articles printed in some reviewed journal. Not all of those are equally worthy of public attention.

The fourth problem has to do with the way expert assessment is usually added to the popularizations, at least the better ones (the not-so-good popularizations skip this part altogether). This consists of asking someone else, presumably another researcher in the same field, for a quote about the study to be popularized. The problem in many of these quotes I've read is that they appear to be by someone who has not read the article at all. Whether this is actually true is impossible to state but mostly I learn nothing new from the additional expert statements. And these are always kept very, very short, certainly in comparison to the space the study authors are given.

I'm sure that there are more problems than these four. But even these four are serious problems, because the way most of us learn about new research findings is from those popularizations. As a result, we will end up distorted ideas about what research actually has found.
------
Another post on analyzing research and its popularizations is this one. Now I think it's the better post but the two overlap only partially.

Oldies But Goodies: Eighth

Another Nina Simone which links directly to something in me deeper than my ears.

Sinnerman.

Echidne On Marriage Through The Ages

Not quite, but I went into my archives to gather together a few posts about the Marriage Panic of Whatever Year you might want to look at. The panic is always about women. Men never panic about marriage, never, but women do. And so does the society in general.

The reasons for this vary. Usually the panic is about women not being able to find husbands because they are too educated or too old or too bossy-bots, but recently this old argument has been replaced by the sky-is-falling-oh-my-god argument about civilization collapsing because women aren't getting married enough.

When statistics showed that more educated women in fact have higher marriage rates, the panic changed into one worrying about the less educated women and how they could ever find or keep husbands! But this naturally has nothing to do with the marital stresses that are more severe when one has less money.

Reading many of my posts on this topic, one after the other, was most fascinating and revealing! The underlying patterns become visible when one does that: The insistent focus on WOMEN in these stories and not on men, the odd underlying smell of panic on behalf of the same women. It was a learning experience.

A few posts picked from the many in my archives:

The Eternal Shortage of Marriageable Men

On Flannel Knickers and Feminism

No More Mrs?

Bucking The Trend

Bad Girls Who Refuse To Wed

Oldies But Goodies: Seventh

Mississippi Fred McDowell and "Goin Down to the River."

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...