July 2009
Monthly Archive
Gimme my money
| Posted by Chill on 31 Jul 2009 |
Wow, didn’t think this would happen.
The House voted Friday to slap restrictions on how Wall Street executives are paid after nine banks that took government bailout money rewarded thousands of their employees with bonuses topping $1 million each.
Bowing to populist anger and defying President Barack Obama’s suggestion that government rely on incentives instead of intervention to curb excessive salaries and bonuses, the House passed the bill on a 237-185 vote.
Of course, it has little chance of passing the Senate and there’s a good chance Obama would veto it, but still — it’s something.
Stupid comment of the day is mine!
| Posted by Chill on 31 Jul 2009 |
Had to make a new post for this one, because it is awesome!
Apparently, I won a stupid comment of the day award!
That’s me, pissing people off and making them do embarrassing things to themselves all over the place. My dad once said, “Son, I think you were born with both middle fingers sticking straight up.” And he’s right. I do seem to have an, umm, way with people.
I love that I have that power. The funny thing is, she writes a good blog, but is just stubborn and hot-headed — like me. But I actually listen to evidence and care about it. Most people don’t. She doesn’t. Join the club with 99.9999% of the rest of humanity.
I won’t hold it against her.
The confusion is too deep
| Posted by Chill on 31 Jul 2009 |
Some of the things she says here are true, but much of it is rambling pond swill, and not backed scientifically. No, I am not talking about evolutionary psychology, I am talking about evolutionary biology — two different fields often conflated by people who apparently cannot read.
It’s a tragedy that the two share similar names (which causes the barely-literate to confuse them), because one is pretty firmly based in empirical evidence and the other one, well, is not.
I’m not saying everything she’s saying is wrong. Much of it isn’t. But it’s said as someone with little to no grounding in science, who has no idea of the relevant literature in the field, and is so convinced of her correctness that no amount of evidence will sway her. It’s amazing that people across all walks of life are this way. It’s a very human thing.
So there is no reason to really respond. It would take books, years, of her reading things she has probably never read, and has probably never even heard of, when she may not (probably does not) have the scientific grounding to even parse the papers. Who has time for that kind of debate? Not me. Not you.
Someone’s wrong on the internet? Wow. And that’s about all the time I have to devote to that.
It is amazing, though, how incurious people are, and how little they care about what the evidence says. This seems to be largely incurable.
Update: Yes! I got banned! I know I’m not being intellectually honest unless I get banned from most sites that I comment on.
Not that I set out to do it; it just happens. It means I’m saying things people don’t want to hear, which in my case is all evidence-based. Huzzah!
Update II: Apparently, I’m sort-of unbanned. Boring!
Diasporas and skin
| Posted by Chill on 31 Jul 2009 |
On the other hand, this is one of the best things I’ve read lately.
I’m not patriotic at all — far from it — and having lived overseas, I know that America, despite all its flaws, accepts newcomers and immigrants better than most any place in the world — yep, even Western Europe, where a black man with a partially-Islamic* past would have about as much chance of becoming president as Ronald Fucking McDonald.
In China, for instance, there is more racism against ethnic groups I am too ignorant to even tell apart than I’ve seen in America against people who are obviously vastly physically different. That counts for something, even with all our grave sins of late.
*Yep, I know Obama’s father later became an atheist.
Selection
| Posted by Chill on 31 Jul 2009 |
This is probably wrong, because there is pretty strong evidence that the female of our species is and has been under greater sexual selection pressure than the male, so chances are the average (or more likely, the better-than-average) female is more appealing to any human’s innate aesthetic sense than the average male.
But, shhhh, don’t tell that to anyone, because it is one of those morally-offensive-but-true things you aren’t supposed to talk about if you are a good little liberal — that many of the characteristics of women were produced by soulless sexual selection. Why that is supposed to make women less human, or even matter a fucking bit, I have no idea.
And though I’m mostly a liberal, I’m certainly not good nor doctrinaire, so I am free to call bullshit. And I will. And I did.
One Canada
| Posted by Chill on 31 Jul 2009 |
We could stop using one Canada of energy by making homes more efficient.
Broken social scene
| Posted by Chill on 30 Jul 2009 |
I’m not in academia, but I can’t imagine living like these people she describes.
My partner and I have no kids — and never will — but we share the workload pretty equitably. If anything, I do a bit more cleaning than my partner does, though she does all the low stuff because my knees aren’t so good. And we just don’t mow the lawn at all, because we have no lawn mower, but if we did I’m sure she’d do her half just like everything else.
It’s amazing how people perpetuate broken, bad social structures from the past into the future. Like Julia Sweeney once pointed out, most people have very little capability of — or desire for — introspection or examination.
Nip tuck
| Posted by Chill on 30 Jul 2009 |
I’ve got the Tanya Tucker song “Delta Dawn” stuck in my head.
I like the song, but I can’t get it out. The only solution is trepanation.
The gilded cage
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jul 2009 |
Michael Chabon explores a theme that I’ve written about before.
When my family and I moved onto our street in Berkeley, the family next door included a nine-year-old girl; in the house two doors down the other way, there was a nine-year-old boy, her exact contemporary and, like her, a lifelong resident of the street. They had never met.
The sandlots and creek beds, the alleys and woodlands have been abandoned in favor of a system of reservations—Chuck E. Cheese, the Jungle, the Discovery Zone: jolly internment centers mapped and planned by adults with no blank spots aside from doors marked staff only. When children roller-skate or ride their bikes, they go forth armored as for battle, and their parents typically stand nearby.
That sounds unimaginably horrible to me. Like many people, I wonder how this treatment changes — and if it changes — how people behave in adulthood, or just contributes to extended adolescence that some people seem to allow to linger on into their thirties these days.
Darting to and fro
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jul 2009 |
Acquired taste
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jul 2009 |
I don’t understand the concept of acquired tastes.
In my case, I either like something or I don’t. No matter how many times I consume something, I like it the same amount. That never changes.
In the case of beer, I disliked it the first time I got a taste of it when I was six or seven, and dislike it just as much now. I dislike olives just as much now as I did when I was four, despite having tried them hundreds of times. And coffee, the same, though I’ve only tried that dozens of times.
I could try beer, coffee, etc., a hundred thousand more times and I’d never acquire any taste for it. I’d just get more disgusted. On a basal level, I just can’t grok this “acquired taste” thing.
I believe people when they say it, but it has no application to my life — just like I believe that the sun is millions of degrees, but I can’t really conceptualize that in any way that relates to my life.
Parroty of themselves
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jul 2009 |
Saw several green parrots kickin’ it in the yard this morning. They are quite noisy.
This species, probably.