The Scientist's View

4.25.2007

Is it necessary to honk all the fucking time?

For those of you who are not familiar with where I live, it is a neighborhood called Takoma and it is up towards the north end of the diamond. Bubba and I live right next to the Metro which is quite nice and I can walk to the farmers market and Co-op which is great. Add in a liquor store across the street and I'm as happy as a clam.

Well I was happy until Spring hit and now everyone is out and about. And apparently unable to drive 100 feet without honking. There goes one right now.

Honking whilst in the wacky intersection outside my house is only part of the problem. That, at least, is traffic related. But just like the litter that is ubiquitous in the neighborhood as then weather warms, so are the noxious sound waves emanating from car horns.

My absolute favorite is when some big ass land yacht is sailing around the neighborhood above the speed limit and they honk at every intersection to let people know that they are not stopping and others need to get out of the way. Judging from the people who are driving, they are not late for anything of consequence, rather they are just asserting their dominance through the car and its horn. Just delightful.

My second favorite is "call and return". Baby Mama sees one of her peeps driving around. One honks and screams (very loudly) something that sounds like "Hey" with 20 syllables. The other honks back and yells something unintelligible. They then scream at each other for 1-2 minutes (still in their car) and do another honk call and return goodbye.

My third favorite is the pimp's beep. This is always a twofer. The first sin is the double parking when there are open spots all around - but why go through the bother of parking? Just park your piece of shit in the right of way and scowl at anyone who comes by. Then there is the inevitable honk to indicate to the rider (the person being picked up) that the driver has arrived and is waiting. Walking to the door is FAR too much work. If the rider is not down in under a minute, this will turn into a long series of honks interwoven with unintelligible obscenities. There are almost always children around or in the driver's car. Thus the adults are passing down the behavior through the generations. Just ducky.

The least offensive is the quick staccato "Hi" honk. This is a quick toot when you see one of your peeps on the street. This application of the horn sounds much like the cardinal - almost a quick chirp followed by a hand waving outside the window. I could do without this, but, as honking goes, this is only borderline offensive.

I only bring this up because honking has really gotten out of control up here in Takoma. It is incessant and utterly unnecessary. Even when I owned a car, the horn was used only for a very rare case of effect. Delicate Flower and I had a honking incident on Wisconsin when we were headed up to Whitetail for our ski afternoon. But then again, I have thought of the horn, much like nearly all TV, as noise pollution and try not to inflict it on others.

4.24.2007

Radio Interview




HI All -

I had a quick little radio interview last night with Radiogay.ca - its an internet streaming radio station. I was interviewed about my Orientation vs. Preference blog I posted a while back.


I talked with Herman Nilsson and Chris Chang for their show Unglued! which will be on the air this week on Thursday night at 9:30pm Eastern time. Radiogay is in Vancouver and their schedule is shown in Pacific time. Radiogay.ca is easy to stream through iTunes - I listen to the station all afternoon at work. A very eclectic mix.

In other news, the boys were all back together again last night with me playing mother hen. Chaka and the Young Lovers visited for cards and for Chicken Panang. I gave this recpie two tries and it was good both times.

J&J were my guinea pigs on Sunday - they loved it. And now the gay gaggle has endorsed it as well. Recipe to follow this week - deceptively simple to make. I paired it with jasmine rice for a totally Thai experience.

We also played a quick round of Hearts with Delicate Flower pulling out the win (29), I was in second place (86), and the final hand I shot the moon to put Chaka and Bubba over 100 (both tied with 106). PnJ stopped by whilst we were playing and he was fetching in a nice pink tie. DF was not so shabby in his corporate attire. I worked from home yesterday and had on ratty khaki cut-offs and rugby T-shirt. Chaka was fetching as always in jeans and a nice collared shirt.

Drag queen name of the night (we are on a drag queen kick lately):

Bubbles du Pop

Well I have to travel to Iowa later this week for a quick visit to Des Moines. I might not be blogging much for the next few days. But I'll fill ya'll in on the goings on here if I have the chance late in the weekend.

I just might take some action photos of a Des Moines drag show to share.

4.22.2007

My kingdom for some fresh basil

Well I have it in my head to make some Chicken Panang. I have never made it before but I found a pretty straight-forward recipe, I have some fresh Red Thai curry (my aunt works at a custom spice store in Littleton, CO and they make everything fresh - the spice blends and rubs for meat are AMAZING), and the weather is perfect for cooking.

So I just lacked some fresh basil. I went on a hunt this morning from 10:30-11:30am.

1.Whole Foods in Silver Spring. For those of you who have not been out to the inner burbs, this is an OK WF store. Lots of heteros and kids -particularly on Sunday mornings. And this morning the store was FULL of straight guys with kids doing their shopping. They all looked displeased with having to go shopping and they all looked VERY frustrated. The sexual tension from these domesticated males was almost stifling. Oh and there was no fresh basil.

There were a few homos at the store and a couple saw my red hanky (LINK IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK) in my back pocket. The red hanky is a joke that started on St. Patrick's Day - I am doing it to see how long it will actually take for someone to approach me about it. So far the hanky approach is a total failure. But the red does get some homos a little excited. This couple did look slightly flush as they waited behind me in the checkout line.

2. So I jetted off to the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Co-op and it was jam packed. Oh, I forgot it was Earth Day. So it was all the eco-crunchy-liberals in crocs and their brats outside listening to some Joan Baez drag show. I am usually more accepting - but I was on a mission and these people were in the way. I did get some more Lavender Shampoo (smells so good and is organic), I refilled on my Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds (it is scented with real spruce oil, fully biodegradable, and very sudsy), I got some more Lavender/Rosemary bulk soap (saponified by local lesbians and totally organic), but no basil.

3. So then I ran down the street to the Takoma Park farmer's market. The "beef kid" was there which I took as a good sign. The beef kid is 20 or so, always looks slightly hung over, sells organic meat and eggs with his dad, is so generic that he is the boy next door, and all of that makes him extremely hot. Tends to cruise too - I think he might be family. So I said hi and then had to wade through the throngs to find fresh basil. Of course, they had 1000s of small live basil plants but the leaves were all the size of a dime and too young to have any good flavor. No basil!!! Skunked.

So I went to the Big Bad Woof to get Linus a treat and they have Doggie Ice Cream again!!! Linus was thrilled - and he got his ice cream after a bath. He looks and smells wonderful!

So I will be making Panang without basil - I'll share the recipe if it tastes OK. I'm thinking about using the Young Lover's as guinea pigs - they are scheduled for cribbage tomorrow night. If Chaka can make it over, we might play a couple rounds of Hearts.

4.21.2007

Weekly beef comes in a different flavor.

Hi All....I fell in a google hole this morning looking at drag queens performing in Midwestern bars. I happen to find a rich trove of images from a bar in Des Moines called The Garden Nightclub. Sorry Hot Mama....no Daniel Craig this week.




Mama after three cosmos!



Love it!



This is how Jimbo looks Sunday morning after Blowoff!




Chaka and me all dolled up for a night on the town!




I am NOT making some pink ass drink!



Delicate Flower's alter ego - a boozed-up hooker in a nurse's outfit!



Miss Champagne Showers - what a GREAT name!




Now that is my kind of angel!

Fluorescence vs. Incandesence

I've always had a problem spelling fluorescence....

Rush Limbaugh, of all people, had an interesting take on the incorporation of the new compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) over the old fashioned incandescent bulbs.

First, some physics:
The fluorescent light bulb operates on a two step process: 1) an electric field is run through a partial vacuum which contains some mercury and the excted electrons in the mercury atoms will change back and forth between high and low energy states and this energy released between the states is as photons in the UV range and 2) the UV light is run through a phosphor coating which undergoes optical fluorescence (or luminesence) where the UV will be absored by the phosphor and emitted at a lower wavelength which is now in the visible spectrum.
The efficiency of these CFLs is remarkable and the phosphors have been modified to give a more balanced specturm in the visible range.

The incandescent light bulb operates similar to a toaster. The bulb is a partial vacuum and an electric current is run through a filament in the bulb. This part of the filament that generates the light is very resistant to transferring electricity (i.e. has low conductivity). These are often tungsten but can be a range of metals or alloys. The heated filament now has electrons going up and down in their excited state and release the energy as photons - often in the IR to reddish range. These lights give a wonderful soft glow in a pleasant range of the visible spectrum, however most of the energy is lost as heat as opposed to light - very inefficient.

Now the point:
Rush, amid all the bile he spews, occasionally makes a good point. And his point regarding CFLs is this. Enviromentalists are all upset about the use of the incandescent bulb and think it should go the way of the dinosaur. Fair enough. Further, the environmentalists want to use CFLs to replace the incandescent bulb to promote energy efficiency. Sounds like a good plan.

However, CFLs do contain mercury. Not alot, but when you make 100 million bulbs then the amount becomes significant. Further, these bulbs are not made in America but primarily in China. Rush brought up the point - the environmentalists want Americans to replace all of their incandescent bulbs with CFLs but, in doing so, they will be faciliating the spread of mercury vaopr across America. Also, all those dollars will be going to China and what regulations will they have on safely handling the mercury that goes into the bulbs??? And how to recycle the mercury from the dead bulbs? Mercury is toxic to both the young and the old - particularly as vapor. Its effects are most pronounced in the nervous system which is the primary cause of death for long term exposure.

No easy answer here. Just a point to consider when buying bulbs.

4.19.2007

Part of normal discourse

Jimbo has a good post today. I happen to agree with him about his thoughts about the question: "So what do you do for a living?". This is not a sign of someone being judgemental or boorish. In fact, it is one of those normal questions that allows a conversation to start.

I think that the art of conversation is dying quickly, if not dead already. But when conversing with someone new to you, you do have to offer up some personal information (as do they) which may include how you pay for your existence upon this planet. In the olden days of yore, it was quite obvious what people did - one would just take a look at the sign above the door (e.g. a barber, dentist, cooper, blacksmith, etc.). When people of yore lived in smaller collectives, work and life were enmeshed nearly completely. But now things are a little more compartmentalized and a person lives here, works there, and socializes in yet another place - identifying what people do is a little more difficult. Asking what someone does is not so much a challenge as it is a simple and obvious initial question.

Believe me - I would LOVE to be able to say what I do. But when I say "I am a plant geneticist", I usually get one of three responses: 1) they turn and walk away (it happens), 2) they make some comment about how I must be smart and then walk away, or 3) they don't acknowledge that I said anything and pick a new question.

I stopped taking it personally long ago. And I am not ashamed of what I do, but I know that it is such an esoteric job that it doesn't translate to the broader community. Now, I just grin and bear it. And I try to help the conversation along by making some self-deprecating statement about being a geek. Well timed self-deprecation is a a staple of conversation - and, in and of itself, is also a lost art.

So when asked, just spit it out and move on if you really don't want to discuss what you do. Another basic tenet of conversation is that you never press someone on something that they wish not to discuss. For those that press in the conversation about things you wish not to discuss are the rude ones.

Peripheral Bitch:

I would posit that the people who are most unhappy when asked this question "So what do you do?" are 20-somethings who work low-end retail. They have to work in these sorts of jobs because they want to live in the city but they have no marketable skills other than getting older guys to buy them drinks at Halo. Remember that for this crowd of emaciated chicken, us fat,old,bitter,wrinkled trolls are expected to bow in reverence of their youth and "vitality" and litheness. This reverence includes never asking them difficult questions (i.e. where do you live, what do you do, discussions about politics, etc). Also this reverence would be thinking that statements like: "OMG, how could you NOT know what Paris Hilton did today?" are somehow charming. And of course, buying them drinks, lots and lots of drinks, while enduring quotes like "Oh I know you did not just buy me a drink with rail vodka!".

4.16.2007

Now that is a Nor'easter


If you ever wanted to see a classic comma shaped low typical of the Nor'easter - here is a textbook example. I'll call this one the "Tax Day Storm". Note how massive these storms can become - with the low centered right over NYC (see the center of the spiral) and a dense shield of precipitation rotating counter-clockwise off of the North Atlantic and into the Canadian Maritimes and the New England states and a front that extends down to the Bahamas.
The pressure currently is 28.66 inches of Hg in NYC which is about as low as these storms will produce and is on the order of a small hurricane.

Additionally, this storm is occuring about a month later than it should. Most Nor'easters in March can be very powerful (the St Patrick's Day storm this year) but the synoptic pattern changes of Spring tend to suppress the deep troughs in the jet stream needed to form these storms. However, this year is unlike most. A strong El Nino in December and January turned into a classic winter pattern dominated by polar highs and coastal lows. We've had a bipolar winter!

Note that weak El Nino years tend to mean lots of summer hurricanes. They should start to appear in the Gulf of Mexico in two months - usually some weak hurricanes will first form in the Gulf and ride up over the Florida Peninsula and along the east coast in mid- to late- June.

4.15.2007

Mary Please


Its Chaka's drag name and it is the look on Jimbo's face at the rugby match yesterday....Bretty caught us in a candid moment. I'm in my Indiana Jones get up and Jimbo looks fetching in royal blue.

Why "Preference" should be used to describe sexuality - but isn't

Chris Crain has a long post about gender differences and that difference as it plays out in self-identified gay individuals.

This whole area of gender differences as they play out in behavior is often simplified to the point of becoming unrecognizable and horribly, horribly inaccurate. There have been long treatises on homosexuality for decades now - its causes and its effects.

Homosexual behavior is pervasive in higher animals, particularly mammals. Joan Roughgarden has done significant work in this area. A theoretical basis for the persistance of homosexuality being conserved through evolution has been addressed at some length by Richard Dawkins of The Selfish Gene. And there are alot of other variations on these themes.

From a evolutionary/population biology standpoint, Richard Dawkins has addressed, most directly, the persistance of homosexuality and evolution. Homosexuality clearly has some evolutionary benefit (I think the sterile worker idea in bees is a great place to found this arguement). The null hypothesis is that homosexuality should die out because these individuals do not pass on their genes to the subsequent generations. However, homosexuality still hangs around.

My pop psychology/pseudoscience thought is that homosexuality is certainly NOT an orientation for every person. In fact, preference is the correct term for most people and orientation is only for those who are statistical outliers (i.e. the tails of the distribution).

I think for many Kinsey 6 people, there is no choice. These Kinsey 6s talk exclusively about orientation - and that is probably an accurate interpretation of their sexuality. Fine - they can walk around and say that they are absolutely gay and that that gayness is not a choice and that they are good people who deserve equal rights....and so on and so forth. This is the 90s view and has been VERY useful (along with HIV/AIDS activism) to get some basic civil rights discussions going - it also allows the HRC-style approach to gay marriage and Gays in the Military. This approach is: "Gay people are no different that straight people and gay people deserve equal rights".


But viewing sexuality, and particularly homosexuality, as a bimodal distribution with two maxima around the Kinsey 0s (as the absolute maxima and straight) and the Kinsey 6 (as a local maxima representing the "not a choice" gay people) is (I think) very, very wrong. This bimodal distribution is really far fetched when you consider other distributions in nature. Occam's razor would state that this very unusual bimodal distribution is a unlikely explanation. I would argue that the term "preference" is far more accurate for most people than "orientation". Clearly "orientation" is an apt description for those extreme examples (e.g.Kinsey 6s), but these cases are a minority.

My feeling is that we need to think about sexuality as something much more fluid. The net sexuality of a person has a number of inputs: 1)genetics, 2)societal influence, 3)mental state of the person, 4)current conditions that the person is dealing with, etc etc etc.

A very blunt example of why preference might be a better term than orientation is for prisoners: "Gay for the stay".
Another very blunt example might be LUGs: "Lesbians until Graduation". Gay advocates using the 90s model might get very upset about these as extreme examples. But my point is that both of these cases are, in fact, legitimate phenotypes. The genotype and the environment combine to form the phenotype (what you see). And the phenotype is not static/constant/invariant/etc.

I would argue that people are constantly changing their position on the Kinsey scale based upon their genetics and the myraid of environmental forces. The discussion of a "gay gene" as the sole cause of homosexuality is at best silly and at the worst, a gross oversimplification. This sort of gay/not-gay bimodal idea is regularly transformed into a sensational stories and an excellent fund-raising causes. Ellen DeGeneres has worked this idea to death! This gay/not-gay debate can be used to sell papers and "inform" people about human rights by gay advocacy groups. But this conceptualization of gayness as an "orientation" has no real bearing on the true nature of homosexual activity or homosexuality. Discussions about orientation has been a useful phase in the drive towards equality for all in American culture - but the orientation discussion is probably becoming stale and definitely inaccurate.

There is a genetic component to homosexuality but, for most people, it gets DROWNED out by the environment. If you are young and experimenting, are you gay? What is your Kinsey scale when you are goofing off with the neighborhood kid or the Boy Scout camping trip? Later, what is the same person's Kinsey scale when you are getting married to a woman that he deeply loves and cherishes? A zero? How long do you have to average thoughts/acts/partners to come up with a Kinsey rating? Think about it - totally subjective!

What would the soldiers in ancient Sparta be - gay? Or ancient Athens? Or Rome?

I would argue that most people are swimming in the Kinsey 2 to Kinsey 4 range most of the time but are "identifying" as Kinsey 0 or Kinsey 6 based upon the pushing and shoving of environmental influences in our society.

How would people identify if society were not so bimodal in its approach (i.e. Gay on one side and Straight on the other)? How would people behave if they grew up in a sexuality neutral environment? The discussion would be almost always offered in terms of preference - orientation is far too fixed a term to handle the fluidity of sexuality. And orientation has such a fixed quality about it...which is why it has been so useful for the 90s style discussions about gay rights.

But "preference" presents a diffuse and nebulous view of sexuality that is difficult for many people to conceive. And certainly difficult for gay rights organizations to project as a "educational opportunity". This sort of "preference" concept implicit in people making choices based upon their genetics and environment requires people in a society that has a gay/straight mindset to begin thinking about something quite different. This mental conflict might be "How Gay am I?". Can you ask men and women to think about how they feel deeply in their own hearts and to go through laborious self-examination of where people are on the Kinsey scale?

In our culture, as it is now, this preference discussion is neither possible nor realistic. Our popular culture cannot handle soemthing as nuanced as "preference". Additionally our culture finds protracted discussion of complex issues anethma. However, because society cannot handle the level of nuance necessary for discussing sexuality in terms of "preference", does not make the idea of discussing sexuality in terms of "orientation" as either correct or accurate. Orientation is an idea that sexuality has been stuffed into because it is an easier sell and can be grasped by the population (to a degree). Preference is a far more difficult sell from a political standpoint and a non-starter when you think about Western religion and tradition.

Everytime you make a cell phone call, a honeybee dies....

Seems like Jimbo and I are on the cutting edge of ecology/conservation since we are low tech wireline phone users and have shunned the evil radiation spewing contraption known as the cell phone. The nefarious cell and its networks may be causing the world-wide slaughter of hundreds of millions of innocent members of the species Apis melifera, or the common honey bee.


From The Independent:

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

4.14.2007

Who fired Imus

WARNING - LONG SCREED POSTED BELOW


Oh...I love the Imus non-sense for the pure stupidity of it all. I really do. It has exposed the fault-line in American media empire that ought to remain hidden.

There is NOTHING about this that has ANYTHING to do with the First Amendment. This has EVERYTHING to do with who funds the entertainment/media machine. Imus was fired by the advertisers. MSNBC did not fire him nor did CBS - they actually cowered in fear of agitating the companies that spend huge sums of money to run silly ads in between content. While some of the various enemies of Imus may be picking over his carcas, this whole sordid mess reaffirms my core belief that if you are trusting anything that comes from network or cable (i.e. has a commercial in it) then you are kidding yourself.

Is Lou Dobbs a loose cannon? Of course not, he is a ratings juggernaut since he started his anti-illegal immigrant rants (remember a few years back when he was banished to the 11pm shift on CNN and in danger of getting the ax?) He starts agitating and now he's back to 6pm and is a marquee name in the CNN stable. You know, Aaron Brown was the one person who I actually would stop and watch from time to time. I really liked him - I thought that he tried to mix in some useful content betwixt the pablum and did it with a wry smile. Then Katrina blew by and Anderson Cooper goes down to New Orleans and gets "mad". Bye bye "nice" Aaron, hello "mad" Anderson. This fundamental shift towards vitriol and salacious details (CNN virtually stopped reporting anything else when Anna Nicole died) is driven by short term goals in viewership - which is driven by who??? Yup the advertisers. No secret there....been that way for ages.

What is particularly interesting now is that it took so litte pressure to get Imus fired. There was almost no resistance by Viacom & CBS chairman Sumner Redstone, no real leadership from CBS prez Leslie Moonves, and GE tossed Imus as soon as P&G called and said that they were pulling spots during the daytime (not on Imus' show, but for the entire daytime - which is how MSNBC actually structures their ad deals - you don't buy a show, you buy a window of time). Both CBS (which is still partially controlled/owned by Viacom) and GE/NBC failed to go to the mat for someone who has made them money, and in the case of CBS/Viacom - A LOT of money.

However for Imus to keep his job, there would have to be a substantial discussion about how people address each other in the media; be it in songs, or videos, or on talk radio, or news shows, whatever. Both GE and CBS/Viacom would have to start answering difficult questions about ALL aspects of their media empires. If they kept Imus, they would have to make pledges to clean up their content or make statements that the company thinks the content is just fine - in short, the company would have to take a stand on how it makes its money. And that is far too large a discussion to have with advertising revenue hanging in the balance.

So Imus gets the ax and we are back to Ho this and Ho that on MTV (Viacom/CBS), Ho this and Ho that on Clear Channel radio stations(oddly taken over by private equity now that their cookie cutter formats are becoming less profitable), Ho this and Ho that in movies by Universal (GE subsidiary), Fag this and Fag that on Disney/ABC, and so on.

The politicians are powerless to do anything other than whine vaguely about race relationships and being respectful (filler) because this is all pure capitalism. When you operate in a capitalistic model (as the media sometimes does) - you can be fired for saying anything/anytime/anywhere. The only thing that protects people from being fired is their inherent value and earning potential (remember that past earnings mean NOTHING). Note that as soon as Imus' earning potential was threatened, so was Imus. But these same advertisers will support the same hate speech on other outlets - and that is their perogative. When media subsidiaries have given the bridle and the whip to the advertisers, then the subsidiaries will have to do the bidding of the master.

Imus is just a symptom of a much larger "problem", or perhaps condition. Americans have subsidized the majority of their entertainment content by advertising and seem quite happy to do it. But, from a business perspective, I feel that this sort of messy exposure just drives people to pay for content and skip the adverts - Podcasts, iTunes, satellite radio, webcasts, blogs, etc. When episodes like Imus come up, people might actually stop and think about their options - these sorts of things can break the consumptive intertia of the masses. These couch potatoes might get a vague inkling in their head that there might be other choices - and in fact, there are alot of options out there. You just have to pay a little to get them.

I'd say pay for your content and then you get to vote with your pocketbook.
Some examples:
1. Drudge had an excerpt about Frank Rich holding forth on the whole Imus thing in Frank's "famous" Friday column. If you every needed a reason to dump that horrid liberal pretentious screed called the Times, it would be Frank Rich. Such banalities can be found on many blogs (including mine) for free and with far less condescension. I refuse to accept having some journalist (with the easiest major at univeristy) be pendantic because they write for the "Times". And when you stop subscribing to the Times, you send a message. I did.
2. The Post did its series over the Winter on "Being a Black Man" - I found it exploitative and degrading. I stopped reading the paper. Plus the coverage has gone downhill over the past two years.....far less content and far more "analysis" which is usually as insipid as most blogs (including mine) and I can read those for FREE!
3. The WSJ has really great content in all kinds of different areas and I keep subscribing. I really like it and I vote (with my dollars) for it.
4. The New Yorker is as good as ever and it gets my dollars. A must read for anyone who likes esoterica.

The way that you consume things (anything really) is effectively voting in favor of one thing or choosing one thing over another. Same thing with media content. Do you really want to give your proxy to Proctor and Gamble to decide what content is fit for mass consumption? Or Verizon? Or Ford?

Politicians are where the media empires want them

I had a nice impromtu exchange in my comments on the "That was fast" entry.

An excerpt from Anonymous' second post about VAN's comment about Nurse Nan (Ann Coulter)

The one caveat that I think makes Ann slightly different than Imus is that in the political arena, people rarely mean what they say. I think most of America perceives things coming out of the mouths of politicos as merely a tool meant to accomplish some specified end, not as an authentic statement of belief whereas, ironically, the Imuses, the Howard Sterns, and the Lettermans of the world are supposed to be more authentic, in tune, or closer to their fans. So it is almost more outrageous to hear this type of speech coming from a celebrity than a political type because you feel ilke they actually mean it.

That people feel more connected to or better represented by celebrities than politicians is a little scary....


Well said..I wish I could call you something other than Anonymous (how 'bout Damn Right). Well Damn Right's point is an excellent example of the warping at the hands of Hollywood/media machine. Now you and I know that politicians are no paragon of virtue, but somehow every starlets' binge and purge/rehab/fight/OD/pregnancy what-have-you gets rewarded with AMPLE coverage and when politicans do just about anything, it gets a snippet of time on the news and then its back to Nancy Hollowell, Anna Nicole, or whatever other upper class, straight, white woman that the news is fixated on during that cycle.

Now I ask you, how can a politician look good in that sort of an environment. If the only way you get substanitative coverage is to behave badly. Think of that hoax of a governor in NJ for example - I nearly puked when I saw his visage on the cover of the Advocate. Or Christine Todd Whitman in a very public dismissal a few years back (also from NJ), or another NJ fiasco, the Corzine mess from last year. The non-story of the year HAS to be Obama and Hillary (who cares - it will be decided in January...and neither of them are saying anything substanitive anyways).

Meanwhile the really good shit never gets out fully. I WANT to see who is on the DC Madam's list. Will DWT's three gay (and Republican) senators be called out for their role in passing legislation against gay people or voting against gay-positive legislation - they were named this past week on his blog. I want to know why Karl Rove gets to write e-mails from the White House and then delete them at will using the RNC as cover. I want to know about the surge on Iraq now broadening into a extension of service from 12 to 15 months. Alberto Gonzoles is still employed - WHY? The Supreme Court just ruled that carbon dioxide can be regulated by the EPA - this is a MAJOR policy shift - just got a little footnote.

I could go on all day about the things that SHOULD matter but DON'T matter in the current media landscape.

My point, that I might finally get around to making (as Bubba would say "Honey, land the plane"), is that Damn Right hit the nail on the head. Politicians are held in lower regard than entertainers/media types. And that is exactly where Hollywood wants them - malleable and under the thumb of the media empires. Every citizen, who has substanitive interests in politics or is looking for better coverage, has turned off networks long ago (and now cable it would seem) and has hit either radio, web, or specialized publications to get content. This leaves a large swath of the channels on the cathode ray tube showing more and more garbage as the less politically motivated are left sitting in their chair and need something more debasing to watch while they eat their snacks.

Why worry about politics when you can see what Paris Hilton is doing now.

4.12.2007

That was fast

Well Imus got fired in less than a week from both his TV and radio gigs. That was faster than Trent Lott back in 2002.

A reader left a comment:

I'm waiting to Al Sharpton to apologize for his comments regarding the Duke Lacrosse players.


And Tawana Brawley and Crown Heights and so on and so forth.

Just a rhetorical question here. Why do you think that Isaiah Washington was not fired from ABC's hit show "Grey's Anatomy" for calling another member of the cast a FAG while Imus gets the sack for calling someone a nappy headed ho?
Perhaps, as Kinsey-1 has noted, we don't have a gay Al Sharpton or a lesbian Rev. Jesse Jackson to shed light on cases of hateful speech. It just shows how little impact gays have when they are politically disjointed as a class of people.

With effective leadership and a focused message, Isaiah's scalp would have been tacked up on the wall. But there is no leadership in this regard. To wit, the Junkies (right here in DC) call each other Fag every day and no one raises a stink. And the Blade has a running set of stories about which person called who a Fag but it never changes anything. Fag is pervasive and virtually unpunishable...Isaiah keeping his job as example number one that gays have no bearing in our greater culture other than as a political football (marriage) or as mincing entertainment on TV (Just Jack).

Today is a low point in the already low state of discourse present in pop culture.

4.11.2007

Some festive items from the Blade

I was coming back from a late workout last night and picked up a Blade. For my out of town hetero readers, it is a free gay newspaper. So they have a Bitch Session and this week had a couple of festive entries:

Please help keep our steam room clean: Swallow!


Gays might as well stay home this week because their ain't no cherries left in this town.

Perhaps the most interesting was a letter to the editor entitled: Stop reinforcing racist stereotypes.

Ostensibly this was about NAACP honoring Isaiah Washington after his Grey's Anatomy "debacle". I'll type out the first paragraph for the purposes of reference.


How dare Kirchik [the author] state that "homophobia is especially prevalent among African-Americans"? There is no data to support such an arguement. The results of the study he cites reveal the opposite: Balcks are more likely than whites to support civil rights for GLBT people. While it is revealed in the same study that blacks are more likelyto view homosexuality as immoral, this view is not synonomous with homophobia (which is based upon fear and hatred). As a black lesbian, most of the homophobia I have endured since coming out has been at the hands of whites, not blacks. It's a shame how the mainstream gay press often creates and reinforces negative stereotypes of blacks as homophobes and bigots.


Remember - If you discriminate by saying gays are immoral, that is not hate - it is a theological discussion. Being called a sinner by other black people is not hate - it is just a personal belief because you are wrapping yourself in God's love and His Word.

Give me a fucking break. Hateful speach is hateful whether you use God as the excuse or not. Someone needs to get this womyn out of PC-land and into reality.

Oh and if you call people nappy headed hos and you are white that is hate - BUT - if you say that and are black, the same advertisers will support you on BET. That is the principle at work here. It is not the hateful message (note hip-hoppers can call women everything under the sun and the advertisers keep pouring in the cash), it is the person who delivers the hateful message that makes it "hateful". Had Imus been Al Sharpton would this have even cause a ripple? Of course not - when we have gotten to the point that the content of the message is completely enmeshed in who said it, things have probably gotten a bit out of hand.

4.10.2007

Globalization killed Fido

The recent genocide of pets by the greedy capitalists highlights one of the many problems (which are discussed rarely, if at all in the popular press) with globalization. When you distribute your supply chain across the world, you lose control of the quality.

The genocide of pets by greedy capitalists is an excellent example of this point. The wheat gluten from China was tainted with melamine. This tainted product then crosses the ocean and is dumped into the North American manufacturing complex. At this point the tainted gluten is mixed with other components at a range of facilities (by different companies) and canned as food for your pets.

Why is wheat gluten cheaper to mill from wheat kernels and ship to North America than to produce here.

Think about that for one second. Wheat grows all through the Midwest and we subsidize the price (which is one of the reasons bread costs much more than it ought to). Anyhoo - a country with 1 billion people (and has problems feeding its own lower classes) has room to grow this wheat for animals and also to process it? Nope - I'll posit something even worse. We ship our wheat to China (or China buys it from Russia or some other country with a net excess) - China then mills it for a variety of purposes, and then sends it back. I'm going to guess that this milling step is so over-regulated in America that it is "an unreasonable burden" and so multi-nationals have pushed this step to countries where oversight is lax (or non-existant).

So the multi-nationals have cut out the expensive step to minimize costs but we see that there is a serious problem with this particular cost-cutting step. When melamine gets mixed into the food supply, what controls are there to detect its presence? Clearly none. Fido is your canary in the coal mine.

My solution!!! Buy local, organic produce for yourself and your pets. Both Linus and Kidogo get food that is 100% organic and 100% produced in America. It costs about 5 times what Iams costs, but I don't worry about these pernicious effects of globalization in my cat and dog's food. Vote with your pocketbook and keep small businesses that produce niche products here in America alive. And keep alive the idea of quality in products - at least some ideal higher than buying it because it was "cheaper". I'm sure all the dead Fidos and Fluffies who have passed onto a better place because a multi-national needed to become more "efficient" are thanking their owners for buying the cheapest food. Yes kids, as I had to point out to my mother, Iams is essentially high end saw dust. So is Pedigree. And anything else you see in Safeway. As the pet genocide has pointed out - all of these multi-nationals that make pet food and have outsourced componenets of their supply chain care less about your pet and more about their profit. The only way to punish is to vote with your pocketbook.

Where to get a range of high quality, all organic food? Big Bad Woof in Takoma is a fantastic local store that carries only the best. Plus they have pet adoption each week and lots of really creative and fun stuff for pets and their owners. Give it a look. Linus gets Lamb and Rice Blackwood and Kidogo gets the Feline Fresh line from Artemis.

Went fishing


Sorry for the long lapse. I had to travel to North Carolina for some work and some fun - which included crappie fishing on Good Friday. The dogwoods are out in NC and that means it is time for crappie fishing. My father and I caught a bunch of crappie, as well as some largemouth bass, a random white bass, bowfin and a bunch of channel catfish. Oh, and a few stickfish as well.

The picture above is of a crappie - note that its mouth is very very thin. This presents several challenges, which is why many people fish for crappie.

The first challenge is that crappie bite very, very softly. Usually the bobber will twitch a little (wait...), then it will very slowly cruise along the surface (wait...), and when the bobber begins to descend underwater - you then take in the slack in the line.

The second challenge is in setting the hook. Once the bobber is heading underwater, you have to be gentle in the hook set. I like to let the fish finish taking out the slack and essentially let the fish set the hook itself. My father is more of an active hook setter. The problem with setting the hook too early is that the crappie carry the minnow (little minnows (1-2 inches in length) are best for lake fishing) in their mouth (the bobber twitch and the bobber cruising stages) and when the bobber begins to go underwater is when the bait is moved from the mouth and onto the hard, fleshy palate. If you set the hook too early, you will rip the fish's mouth up by pulling the hook out.

Largemouth and smallmouth bass season is right around the corner - get your pole ready Jimbo, we got some fishing to do!

4.03.2007

When will MADD get mad?

A brief follow-up to the post about being a polite cell phone user, it reminded me of a long-time grudge that I have with MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). If you will remember the mid-1980s and Ronald Reagan wanted to raise the drinking age to 21 everywhere. He pimped MADD (and highway funds) to get his way. But this campaign on drinking had pernicious side-effect. The legal limit for being intoxicated has dropped and insurance companies are making a fortune if you do get popped.

Now no one says that we should be driving around hammered - BUT, when study after study has shown that drivers on cell phones are as bad (or probably much worse) than a drunk driver - where is MADD and the outrage? It was SO over the top in the 80s - mothers weeping about kids killed by drunks. But what happens when a suburban mom with 3 rats in her Navigator and a cell phone stuck in her ear talking about Botox mows down someone? Or the weavers on the Beltway with a phone jammed in their ear?

Why not legislate this out of existence....not hands free or any of that silliness. How about no cell phone use in the car. In Britain, everyone in an accident is breathalyzed on the spot. Wouldn't it be interesting to check everyone's cell phone usage in the minute prior to an accident. If they were talking and an accident happened - I say they should get the same punishment as a drunk driver. I mean in California they are taking away cars for DUI infractions - but they allow people who are effectively drunk (by cell phone usage) to zip all over town.

If MADD really cared more about human life than the moral crusade, this organization would be on the cell phone while driving issue like stink on shit.

4.02.2007

Just a friendly reminder...

Since I have been riding the bus, it has become very apparent to me that cell phones are just plain evil. However, when riding on public transport, one must "go with the flow" - cell phones as well as the unpredictable and full application of the brakes are the two main liabilities. (Although the horrified suburbanites have these fears of smelly people and lice. I have yet to encounter either - then again I'm usually not paying any attention.) The worst part about the cell phones are that nothing juicy is EVER discussed. If people were talking about the gory details of messy break-ups and bad sex, I'd LOVE it. Just once I'd love to hear some homo talking about what a voracious piggy bottom his partner is while claiming to be a top stud and then talk about the 18 inch dildos and the red hankies etc etc etc. Those would be good times!

Alas, the conversations are all banal and generally people talking to other people who they kinda like but not enough to use their free time for the conversations. I don't know if there is a term for this yet, but you have to know it is bad when your friend only calls you from the bus and sounds bored and the conversation abruptly ends when the caller arrives at their destination.

Anyhoo...here is a list of the current list of "10 rules for cell phone etiquette" as written by Dan Briody:


1. Thou shalt not subject defenseless others to cell phone conversations. When people cannot escape the banality of your conversation, such as on the bus, in a cab, on a grounded airplane, or at the dinner table, you should spare them. People around you should have the option of not listening. If they don't, you shouldn't be babbling.

2. Thou shalt not set thy ringer to play La Cucaracha every time thy phone rings. Or Beethoven's Fifth, or the Bee Gees, or any other annoying melody. Is it not enough that phones go off every other second? Now we have to listen to synthesized nonsense?

3. Thou shalt turn thy cell phone off during public performances. I'm not even sure this one needs to be said, but given the repeated violations of this heretofore unwritten law, I felt compelled to include it.

4. Thou shalt not wear more than two wireless devices on thy belt. This hasn't become a big problem yet. But with plenty of techno-jockeys sporting pagers and phones, Batman-esque utility belts are sure to follow. Let's nip this one in the bud.

5. Thou shalt not dial while driving. In all seriousness, this madness has to stop. There are enough people in the world who have problems mastering vehicles and phones individually. Put them together and we have a serious health hazard on our hands.

6. Thou shalt not wear thy earpiece when thou art not on thy phone. This is not unlike being on the phone and carrying on another conversation with someone who is physically in your presence. No one knows if you are here or there. Very disturbing.

7. Thou shalt not speak louder on thy cell phone than thou would on any other phone. These things have incredibly sensitive microphones, and it's gotten to the point where I can tell if someone is calling me from a cell because of the way they are talking, not how it sounds. If your signal cuts out, speaking louder won't help, unless the person is actually within earshot.

8. Thou shalt not grow too attached to thy cell phone. For obvious reasons, a dependency on constant communication is not healthy. At work, go nuts. At home, give it a rest.

9. Thou shalt not attempt to impress with thy cell phone. Not only is using a cell phone no longer impressive in any way (unless it's one of those really cool new phones with the space age design), when it is used for that reason, said user can be immediately identified as a neophyte and a poseur.

10. Thou shalt not slam thy cell phone down on a restaurant table just in case it rings. This is not the Old West, and you are not a gunslinger sitting down to a game of poker in the saloon. Could you please be a little less conspicuous? If it rings, you'll hear it just as well if it's in your coat pocket or clipped on your belt.

4.01.2007

More beef please...

This comment was left by Hot Mama:

where is the daniel craig? the ladies need some craig, sweetie.


Well, I want to be sensitive to the needs and wants of my readership. Requests for more beef are always welcome!


Hot Mama, here is Daniel Craig.



This robin's egg blue swimsuit is the equivalent of Julia Robert's brown and white polka-dot dress in Pretty Woman - it takes a color that is not necessarily fashionable and turns it into something altogether fabulous. Now I ask you, if this swimsuit was red - would it be as hot? Hot Mama, you are not allowed to answer that -because I know you just want him to get rid of that flimsy piece of cloth!



Here, is a still shot from a movie. His unit would be classified as "party size".



I like this picture because it shows how stunningly handsome DC is.



The supermodel pose.



A classic shot from the set of Casino Royale.



Action photo...he looks so BUTCH!



I just wanted to see the bathing suit again.



Skinny and with shaggy hair.



A still shot from the movie "Infamous"



And we'll end with a stunning shot. Doesn't the bathing suit look FAB?

Hope you ladies (and guys) enjoy.