Via @bendimiero, this is an actual question asked in the March 11-13 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll:
Here is a question about the actor, Charlie Sheen. As you may know, he frequently has used the word "winning" when talking about himself. Based on what you know about his recent behavior, would you say that Charlie Sheen has mostly been winning or mostly been losing in the past few weeks?
It's hard to believe so many of the US people consistently vote against their own interests, support foreign invasions justified by unsupportable evidence, can't name both their senators, and don't know shit about Africa except that they're pretty sure President Obama was born there when we've got such a stellar fucking media.
[Trigger warning for sexual violence; rape apologia; victim-blaming.]
The gang rape case in Cleveland, Texas (background here, here, and here) continues to generate some of the most vicious victim-blaming I have ever seen in my life, which, after six years of doing this, is really saying something.
Case in point: This CNN piece, which includes the following:
The alleged gang rape of an 11-year-old girl has torn apart a Texas community, with some focusing on the girl and her parents as much as, if not more than, the 18 people accused of sexually assaulting her.
...On Thursday, Quanell X, a community activist, traveled from Houston to help stage a town hall meeting called to address rising concerns -- especially in Cleveland's African-American community -- about the case.
Among other issues, he said that the girl didn't do enough to stop the alleged assailants.
"It was not the young girl that yelled rape. Stop right there -- something is wrong, brothers and sisters," Quanell X said. And, speaking over yells of support from the crowd, he also questioned the role of the girl's parents. "Where was the mother? Where was the father?" he said.
If the fact that there are people who will argue with a straight fucking face that an 11-year-old child "didn't do enough" to stop eighteen young men from raping her doesn't convince everyone with a capacity for reason and any trace of decency that we live in a culture that supports and condones rape, I can't imagine what possibly could.
As an aside, something I've noticed about the reporting on this case, as in the linked CNN article, is that the alleged assailants are pretty commonly referred to as "the 18 people accused." People. Anyone else suspect that if it were 18 young women accused of assaulting an 11-year-old boy, there would be some more gender-specific reporting...? Which, hilariously, would be justified on the basis that it's an anomaly, while not pointing out gender when the perpetrators are men is typically justified because "women can rape, too."
Lots of people email me about things they'd like me to promote on Shakesville. There are fewer things that will get me to hit the delete button faster on such solicitations than a mass email which opens with the salutation: "Hey, guys!"
Threaded between the days and months and years of politics and culture, the posts and pictures and film of people and things with influence and consequence in orders of magnitude only history will tell, has always been something simpler, smaller, more intimate. Though it wasn't a conscious design, part of this blog has always been a love letter to Iain, filed mostly under the unassuming header "News from Shakes Manor." My partner and best friend Iain and I met online 10 years ago today: March 15, 2001.
[Video Description: Pictures from over the course of our relationship, set to Travis' "Flowers in the Window," the CD single of which was one of the first gifts Iain gave me. (Lyrics here.) It arrived in the mail with a half-smoked cigarette, so I—then still a smoker—could finish the rest of it and imagine we were sharing a smoke together, like we did when we weren't separated by an ocean.]
Our meeting was a totally random one, all because of an Oscar Wilde quote, and if anyone had asked either one of us—4,000 miles apart on separate continents, and I then married to someone else—on March 16 if we thought ten years later, we'd have built a life together in a little house in exurban Indiana, I'm pretty sure we both would have, after a moment of surprised consideration, said yes. Because from almost the moment we first exchanged words, it felt like joining the last two pieces of an enormous puzzle together.
By the time we had our first kiss in London's Norfolk Square, we had already exchanged "I love you"s, already had our first fight, already figured we'd spend our lives together. We did everything backwards; it was only after we had come to trust one another implicitly and confessed our deepest secrets and bared our insecurities and flaws and idiosyncrasies in all their dubious splendor that we gazed into each other's eyes for the first time—and realized in that moment we'd been right to invest in that most foolish conviction the nuances of our online relationship would translate seamlessly into real life when we finally met.
And by the time we'd completed all the tedious paperwork required to apply for the fiancé visa which would allow Iain to move to the States, his stay predicated on our getting hitched within 90 days, we'd been in each other's presence just a little over a month, spread over the course of a year. The rest of the time we spent apart, connected only by the internet, the phone, and the mail. A six-hour time difference meant little sleep for both of us; he stayed up too late; I got up too early. We were constantly sick with missing each other, and the worry that our paperwork would never come through. But it did—and on June 12, 2002, we were married by a judge in a 10-minute ceremony...and then we went out for burgers.
When we were apart, all we could talk about is what it would be like when we were together. Sock feet on hardwood floors. Lazy Sunday afternoons. Curled up on the couch on a wintry day, under the same blanket, each reading a book we couldn't wait for the other to read. Hugging whenever we wanted. Going to dinner and the movies for a real date. Making dinner together in our kitchen, bumping hips and sharing a glass of wine. Never feeling again the joy of being together cast in the long shadow of knowing it wouldn't last. When we spoke about how we would never take for granted the chance of being together, even then I thought we would. I figured there would come a time when not every day felt precious, when the routine of life inevitably replaced our gratitude.
But it hasn't. Every time we snuggle up on the couch to watch a film, I think about the time when we couldn't. Every time he takes my hand, I remember a time when it wasn't possible. Every evening, when he walks through the door, I am happy to see him, and the memory of seeing for the first time at King's Cross station, walking toward me on the platform clutching a book bound in red leather, lays itself across my heart.
I wish I could write something grand to sufficiently capture these 10 years, with everything good and everything bad and everything delightful and everything hard. I wouldn't know where to begin. Or where to put the ellipses at the end—because the truth is, Iain is always ahead of me when it comes to our relationship: He knew first that he loved me, and probably knew first that I loved him. He told me he loved me first, standing in the street outside a bar in Edinburgh, shouting into the phone, "I love ye, Lissie! I love ye!" He was ready to move, to apply for a visa, to get hitched, to get our shared life rolling before long before I'd even considered all the possibilities. He has always seen our future with clarity, and patiently waited for me to catch up and let him love me in the vast and encompassing ways for which I'm never quite prepared.
I wish I could write something wise, share some insights about love or relationships or something. I wouldn't know what to say. What I've learned seems like it should have been self-evident, and probably is to most everyone else, or seems inadequate somehow. I have learned that loving someone is easier than letting oneself be loved, because the latter requires a profound vulnerability that everything else in this world recommends we avoid. I've learned that, "Tell me things," is an excellent conversation-starter. And I've learned that kindness is not overrated.
I wish I could write something that would do justice to what has been the most important relationship in my life, with a person so fundamentally decent, so witty, so interesting, so indescribably dear to me. But the truth is, if I could do it justice with a few words on a page, it wouldn't be worth writing about in the first place.
I love you, Iain. Thank you for every day of the past ten years.
If you've been paying close attention, you might have noticed that the White House just announced its strategy to prevent bullying. The Obama Administration was so busy working on this super big project, that it "forgot" to do anything meaningful with respect to Egypt, Libya, the war on unions, or any number of other pressing issues. So, I just knew that that whatever it came up with was gonna be *amazing*.
You can see that it's got a lot of useful tips for victims of bullying. Also, apparently the White House would like to politely ask bullies to stop it already. Problem solved.
For the bieberillionth time, the Obama Administration has simultaneously over and underestimated its power, and I am shocked I tell you, shocked*.
Via: Colorlines -- Where italics indicate the intensity of my complete and utter nonshockedness.
26: The percentage [note: video begins to play automatically at link] "of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll [who] say they're optimistic about 'our system of government and how well it works,' down 7 points since October to the fewest in surveys dating to 1974. Almost as many, 23 percent, are pessimistic, the closest these measures ever have come. The rest, a record high, are 'uncertain' about the system."
Oh, you didn't think, just because we're nearly done, that wrapping this mess up would be easy, did you? Because if you were under the assumption we were through with speechifying, dear reader, you've got another thing coming. (Judas Priest reference!)
Noah had been savaged for many hours, of course, brought to the brink mentally and physically in his interrogation. No one would blame him if he didn’t immediately recognize his visitor—the man was so rarely seen outside of his natural, elegant habitat. Yet despite all of these mitigating factors, Noah knew instantly whom he was staring at because it was his own flesh and blood: the legendary Arthur Gardner.
No surprise. We all knew it was Darthur, right? I still haven't quite figured out why he's a legend. The book keeps vacillating between Darthur being this celebrity PR genius, and him being the invisible puppetmaster. Besides that, who refers to their own father as "legendary"? I sure don't. And my father is a grade-A asshole, worthy of legendary bigot douchebag status. But you didn't come here to read about my daddy issues. You came here to read about Noah's daddy issues.
But before we discuss that, let's look at the author's consistency issues.
From chapter forty-five:
They spent a few minutes cleaning Noah up as well as they could, unstrapped one of his hands, adjusted the table to a more natural recline, and even slipped a couple of flat pillows beneath his head.
From chapter forty-six, less than 300 words later:
Arthur was taking the high ground, as usual; seated in this way the old man towered above his son, who was still bound securely to the metal bed.
Whoops! Editors? Who needs em! Though, according to the acknowledgements at the front of the book, Beck has an editor whom he thanks profusely. I guess that's nice of him to do, but it seems he's only enabling them at this point.
"This woman you became involved with," Arthur Gardner began, "do you have any idea what she has cost us?"
"I don't know," Noah said. His voice was hoarse from lack of moisture, and from the suffering they'd already put him through. "Billions?"
The old man's fist came down on edge of the table, hard enough to break a bone.
"She cost us impact!" he shouted.
Ugh. More diarrhea of the keyboard. You know what would have been better: "I don't know," Noah said, his voice hoarse. "Billions?" No need to go on about how he's thirsty and been tortured. We're all adults here, we can all grok why Noah might have trouble speaking.
But of course, Darthur isn't concerned about the fiscal impact of Molly's meddling, it's the PR he's concerned about. Duh. Let's look at something here, shall we? Molly had nothing to do with their plan going to pot. At all. Remember a couple chapters back when she was arguing with Noah?
"Open your eyes, for God's sake. They've got everything, and you've got nothing. All you're going to do is get us both arrested or killed or put into an unmarked hole in the middle of the desert."
"I have to try."
Molly all but admits her efforts are futile. She knows it. Noah knows it. Neither of them had anything to do with the nuke detonating early. It was Danny Bailey who'd set it off. Bailey, who'd had no direct contact with Molly since he'd been picked up on Friday. Remember that? The bogus cop raid on the teabagger bar, presumably arranged by Darthur and the NWO? Then he was conscripted into service with Kearns, secret agent and patsy for the same NWO. It was Bailey who'd figured it out, sort of, on his own that it was a false-flag op he'd been duped into. It was, with absolutely no help from Molly or Beverly or Hollis or Noah, that Bailey ruined the operation. So, what the fuck is Darthur talking about? It was his fault, more or less, that Bailey was there to make muck of things.
You know what's the worst thing about this book? It isn't the crap writing, the infantile worldview, the garbage political philosophy. No, it's the insulting way it presumes the reader is a fucking dolt who can't remember what happened chapters earlier, or even paragraphs earlier. Fuck you, Glenn Beck, and your dogshit book.
Darthur continues:
"It was to be a clean and spectacular event, a thing to be leveraged into a leap forward toward our new beginning. Instead it's become a complete debacle. We were left with an almost unnoticed explosion out in the empty desert that barely rattled a teacup in the nearest town. There aren't even any pictures—we've had to resort to artists' conceptions and special effects. We'll be up all night trying to make a credible story of it all, to salvage the greatest effect we can. After all the years of preparation it was rushed forward, against my advice, due to the actions of this meaningless resistance. Which my son was somehow a part of."
No pictures? So the super spy network that Bailey just went on about on the phone with 911, with their satellites and Big Brother cameras everywhere, didn't catch anything? Wow. You think they'd at least have their spy satellites trained on Nevada since they knew there was going to be a nuclear explosion that very day. And no one felt it? That seems ... unlikely. There was never any indication what type of nuke it was Kearns had, but assuming it was something in the 100 kiloton range, that is likely to trigger a pretty big fucking blast, maybe equivalent to a 5.0 magnitude earthquake. I'm no earthquakologist, but that shit is going to be felt for a few hundred miles, at least. No? Oh, who cares. The point is, Darthur is pissed because no one died, and their coup or whatever it was is in jeopardy. (No Greg Kihn joke, sorry.)
Darthur's next bit is a bit odd.
"Not that it's been a total failure. Your friends lost before the fight even began. We've spent years painting them as a fringe group of dangerous heirs to the likes of Timothy McVeigh, and of course they'll be revealed as the villains behind this failed attack." He stared off into the distance as if he were talking to no one in particular. "It's too bad that these friends of yours have been so transparent in their desire for violence. They wave signs with slogans about 'reloading' and watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. They wear shirts that endorse the 'targeting' of politicians, and, Noah, let's not forget about that unfortunate incident you got yourself caught up in at that downtown bar. These people never wanted to give peace a chance—and now they've shown just how far they are willing to go to send their message." He was actually smiling, clearly enjoying a sadistic satisfaction with it all.
Because, really, they have been transparent in their desire for violence. (Note actual teabagger violence for reference.) Maybe Beck is trying to tell his readers to tone it down a bit. I dunno. It certainly isn't an inappropriate suggestion. Then again, the vibe I am getting from this is exactly the opposite. It reads to me more like "Hey, they're gonna call you a bunch of violent whackos, so why not really give 'em something to complain about?!" Especially since it's the only thing standing between them and the NWO. Oy.
"Thankfully, there's already talk of suspending the presidential election. Though either candidate would have been equally useful in the aftermath, it will be a powerful bit of symbolism nevertheless. Many sweeping pieces of helpful legislation will be rushed through in the coming days with little or no debate, and those will be used to clamp down further on what remains of this Ross woman's pitiful movement. And naturally, a wholesale roundup is under way to ferret out all those connected with these backward revolutionaries, with full support of the media and the cowering public."
For the record, I am still unclear when exactly this is supposed to be set. Sometime after 9/11, sure. But is this 2008? 2012? I don't know which election year they keep referring to. And speaking of 9/11, this is obviously a reference to the Patriot Act™, ushered in after 9/11 with little to no discussion. Of course, it was Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity who were its biggest cheerleaders. I don't get why Beck thinks no one will remember that. Then again, he thinks we can't remember what happens paragraph to paragraph in this mess.
Darthur then goes on for five paragraphs about Saul Alinsky and "selfish and ignorant meddlers" and how people are too incompetent and foolish to govern themselves. The same shit he went on about before. The same fear of the NWO and the UN or whatever Beck is always blathering on about. "The United States should never have survived as long as it has, but all good things must come to an end. The system is broken beyond repair." But coming in its stead is "One world, ruled by the wise and the fittest and the strong." Blah blah blah. " We'll give the people a purpose: a simple, regimented, peaceful life with all the reasonable comforts, in service of something greater than any single, selfish nation." You get the idea. Communism, I guess? Or Socialism. That's a popular word these days.
There's some talk then about Noah's mother. (Did she ever get a name? I don't remember.)
"Your mother," Noah's father began, "meant a great deal to me. I saw in her my last hopes for humanity. She had her weaknesses, but in thinking back on it now, those weaknesses may have been what drew me to her. She believed in people, for one, that the good in them could outweigh the bad. For the brief time I was with her, a touch of those weaknesses even spread to me. We had a child together, though I'd sworn I'd never bring another human being into this world. But she poured all of her innocent dreams into her son.
"And as she lay dying, your mother told me that I should expect to see wonderful things from you, Noah. I've held on to that hope. But as I stood out there just now, watching outside this room for the preceding hour, I had to wonder if this was to be the end of my ambitions for you."
So, Padmé Noah's mother was good and pure and kind, and maybe there is some bit of her in Noah. How sweet. By which I mean "trite." And Darthur coldly watches his son be tortured. What a jerk! By which I mean "yawn." But still, Darthur has hopes for his son.
Blah blah blah. More paragraphs of Darthur speaking. Which I don't care about. Neither do you . Trust me.
The old man stood, walked to the door, rapped on the frame three times, and then came back and took his seat again. After a moment, others entered the room, a different group of professionals than Noah had seen before.
The technicians had already begun their preparations. Now some brought heavy copper cables and electrodes and fastened these to various points on Noah's body with wraps of white tape. A cold dab of conductive gel was applied to his temple on one side, and then on the other.
Really? They're going to electroshock Noah back to health? Oh, god.
Arthur Gardner nodded to one of the seated technicians.
"And now," he said, "let's find out together, once and for all, if Noah Gardner is really his father's son."
Wow. Okay. Is this thing almost over? Yes. One more chapter to go! Thank the maker.
The New York Times editors address the ongoing abuse of Pfc. Bradley Manning, "who has been imprisoned for nine months on charges of handing government files to WikiLeaks."
[Manning] has not even been tried let alone convicted. Yet the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama's support to do so.
Private Manning is in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. For one hour a day, he is allowed to walk around a room in shackles. He is forced to remove all his clothes every night. And every morning he is required to stand outside his cell, naked, until he passes inspection and is given his clothes back.
Military officials say, without explanation, that these precautions are necessary to prevent Private Manning from injuring himself. They have put him on "prevention of injury" watch, yet his lawyers say there is no indication that he is suicidal and the military has not placed him on a suicide watch.
...Many military and government officials remain furious at the huge dump of classified materials to WikiLeaks. But if this treatment is someone's way of expressing that emotion, it would be useful to revisit the presumption of innocence and the Constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
...Far more troubling is why President Obama, who has forcefully denounced prisoner abuse, is condoning this treatment. Last week, at a news conference, he said the Pentagon had assured him that the terms of the private's confinement "are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards." He said he could not go into details, but details are precisely what is needed to explain and correct an abuse that should never have begun.
The editorial notes that State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley "resigned" last weekend after saying that the military's treatment of Manning is "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." I have seen no comment from Secretary Clinton on Crowley's original statement nor his "resignation," and I am both curious and concerned about what her position is regarding Manning.
As for Obama, at whose desk this and all other bucks stop, this is yet another grave betrayal of the promises he made during his campaign to get elected, as Glenn Greenwald notes here.
It's long been obvious that the Obama administration's unprecedentedwaronwhistleblowers "comes from the President himself," notwithstanding his campaign decree -- under the inspiring title "Protect Whistleblowers" -- that "such acts of courage and patriotism should be encouraged rather than stifled." The inhumane treatment of Manning plainly has two principal effects: it intimidates future would-be whistleblowers into knowing that they, too, will be abused without recourse, and it will break him psychologically (as prolonged solitary confinement and degrading treatment inevitably do) to render him incapable of a defense and to ensure he provides whatever statements they want about WikiLeaks. Other than Obama's tolerance for the same detainee abuse against which he campaigned and his ongoing subservience to the military that he supposedly "commands," it is the way in which this Manning/Crowley behavior bolsters the regime of secrecy and the President's obsessive attempts to destroy whistleblowing that makes this episode so important and so telling.
...When Obama was asked on Friday about Manning's treatment, he said in part: "I've actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures ... are appropriate. They assured me they are." When George W. Bush, in his book, attempted to justify his torture regime, he wrote, as summarized by Newsweek's Jacob Weisberg: "When [Bush] asked 'the most senior legal officers in the U.S. government' to review interrogation methods, 'they assured me they did not constitute torture.' Case closed. You can't argue with the choices Bush defends in this book, because he doesn't argue them himself. He describes, asserts, and cites any authority handy, usually the authority he hired to defend his decisions" (h/t WLLegal).
There are always people who get agitated when I use the "The Third Term of George Bush Is Going Splendidly" tag, and I'll be happy to stop using it as soon as Obama stops fucking acting like George Bush.
You can find out how to help/support Pfc. Bradley Manning here.
“I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person.”- State Rep Virgil Peck [R(epugnant)-KS], refusing to apologize after stating, upon hearing about a program that uses hunters in helicopters to shoot wild swine, that the program might be a good way to control illegal immigration. “It looks like to me if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works maybe we have found a [solution] to our illegal immigration problem."
I think there are people from Kansas who just might disagree with you on that one, Peck.
There's still an inordinate focus on the nuclear plants in Japan, so news on the grave humanitarian crisis is harder to come by. But it is an incredibly serious concern: There are food, medical, and shelter shortages, and sanitation is becoming a problem in many of the worst-hit spots. Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave links to aid organizations in comments. I continue to recommend donations to Doctors Without Borders, who are in Japan and assessing needs for vulnerable populations in particular.
[TW] Although opportunistic sexual violence is not being reported yet that I've seen, we have seen such reports following every large-scale natural disaster in the past few years. Doctors Without Borders is also excellent at providing care to survivors in chaotic environments, which is another reason I strongly recommend them.
Flames and smoke billow from a petroleum-refining plant damaged by the Japan earthquake in Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture, on March 13. [Photograph by Kimimasa Mayama, EPA.]
A widening cloud of radiation on Tuesday added to the misery of millions of people in Japan's devastated northeast, already short of water and food and trying to keep warm in near-freezing temperatures.
As bodies washed up on the coast from Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami, injured survivors, children and elderly crammed into makeshift shelters, often without medicine. By Monday, 550,000 people had been evacuated after the cataclysmic events that killed at least 10,000.
Panic swept Tokyo after a rise in radioactive levels around an earthquake-hit nuclear power plant north of the city, causing some to leave the capital and others to stock up on food and supplies.
The humanitarian crisis was unfolding on multiple fronts -- from a sudden rise in orphaned children to shortages of water, food and electricity to overflowing toilets in packed shelters and erratic care of traumatized survivors.
With homes leveled, towns washed away and jobs gone, many were wondering if they stay and rebuild.
"We survived, but what are we supposed to do from here?" said Sachiko Sugawara, 63, now living at one of the shelters.
Bodies were stacking up at morgues and the chronically ill were running out of medicine.
"People are exhausted both physically and mentally," said Yasunobu Sasaki, the principal of a school converted into a shelter in Rikuzentakata, a nearly flattened village of 24,500 people in far-northern Iwate prefecture.
Four days ago, Otsuchi was just another Japanese coastal town, a destination for surfers and lovers of remote beaches. Now, only a supermarket and a Buddhist temple remain standing amid a sea of devastation.
Like most of Japan's northeast, Otsuchi was rattled by Friday's massive earthquake and then flattened by the ensuing tsunami. Officials fear more than half the town's population of about 19,000 is buried under the rubble.
"Otsuchi reminds me of Osaka and Tokyo after World War Two," Tadateru Konoe, president of Japan's Red Cross, told Reuters, as rescue workers swarmed over rubble, twisted metal and debris, some of it ablaze.
"Everything is destroyed and flattened. This is a complete disaster. In my long career in the Red Cross, this is the worst I have ever seen," he said.
AP—Japan rescuers pull 70-yr-old woman from debris: "Rescuers pulled a 70-year-old woman from her toppled home Tuesday, five days after an earthquake-spurred tsunami tossed the house off its foundation in Japan's northeast. The rescues of the elderly Sai Abe and a younger man pulled from rubble elsewhere in the region were rare good news following Friday's disaster."
New York Times—In Stricken Fuel-Cooling Pools, a Danger for the Longer Term: "Even as workers race to prevent the radioactive cores of the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan from melting down, concerns are growing that nearby pools holding spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger. The pools, which sit on the top level of the reactor buildings and keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems and the Japanese have been unable to take emergency steps because of the multiplying crises. Experts now fear that the pool containing those rods from the fourth reactor has run dry, allowing the rods to overheat and catch fire. That could spread radioactive materials far and wide in dangerous clouds."
Nuclear experts have thrown doubt on the accuracy of official information issued about the Fukushima nuclear accident, saying that it followed a pattern of secrecy and cover-ups employed in other nuclear accidents. "It's impossible to get any radiation readings," said John Large, an independent nuclear engineer who has worked for the UK government and been commissioned to report on the accident for Greenpeace International.
"The actions of the Japanese government are completely contrary to their words. They have evacuated 180,000 people but say there is no radiation. They are certain to have readings but we are being told nothing." He said a radiation release was suspected "but at the moment it is impossible to know. It was the same at Chernobyl, where they said there was a bit of a problem and only later did the full extent emerge."
AP—Stocks Plunge As Japan Nuclear Crisis Worsens: "Stocks nosedived and bond prices rose Tuesday as the nuclear crisis in Japan intensifies following a deadly earthquake and tsunami. The Dow Jones industrial average slid more than 240 points, or 2 percent, shortly after the market opened. That followed a 10.6 percent drop in Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average."
What are the worst* song lyrics you've ever heard?
* Meaning "terribly written," e.g. bad metaphors, derivative ideas, shitty rhymes, whatever, not meaning "offensive." If you do reference lyrics that have the capacity to be triggering, please insert TWs accordingly.
This is a genuinely fascinating TED presentation (for which I've searched unsuccessfully for a transcript) given by Professor Deb Roy, who, with his wife, Professor Rupal Patel, taped over 200,000 hours of audio and video of their home environment during the first three years of their son's life, thus amassing a massive dataset unlike anything else available to researchers working on language development.
The incredible value of this project is indisputable. I am thrilled by the mere thought of it and intensely curious about the findings, which will trickle out over years of study.
But I'm also deeply uncomfortable about the inherent consent issues—namely that Roy's son was incapable of giving his consent to participate.
Obviously, we imbue parents with the right to consent for infants/children, because they cannot understand why they must get a shot in the arm that hurts to prevent the contraction of a deadly disease (as but one example). Primarily, we give parents the right to proxy consent for things that must happen immediately—medical care, starting school at a developmentally appropriate age, etc.
So, I get that Roy and Patel couldn't wait until their son was old enough to give informed consent to record his language acquisition. By the very nature of what they wanted to record, recording necessarily pre-dates the ability to consent.
I also understand that Roy and Patel quite obviously wanted to immediately begin analyzing the data, because it is of both personal and professional interest. And though they stand to potentially profit from the findings, by virtue of Roy's role as CEO of Bluefin Labs, I believe they have an authentic interest in developing better strategies for language impairments and related disabilities, too.
But. Did that have to begin now? Surely it possible to hold the data until its child subject was old enough to consent to have the data processed by strangers? Were there compelling reasons to do otherwise? Do whatever pressing reasons for releasing the data to researchers now trump the child's right to privacy and right of consent?
I don't pretend to have definitive answers to those questions.
Roy explains: "With many privacy provisions put in place to protect everyone who was recorded in the data, we made elements of the data available to my trusted research team at MIT so we could start teasing apart patters in this massive dataset, trying to understand the influence of social environments on language acquisition."
And I appreciate and respect that. But privacy and consent, while inextricably linked, are not the same thing.
I'm not convinced there exist any valid reasons for scientific experimentation, invasive or passive, to trump consent. I'm well aware that many arguments to that end have been made, to justify everything from the Tuskegee Experiments and experiments on Guatemalan prisoners and patients (among others), to medical school examinations on unknowing surgery patients, to experimental surgeries on intersex infants. Suffice it to say, that history doesn't make me more inclined to believe that science can/should ever trump consent.
When I think about why it is that I privileged intelligence over kindness, and what about my socialization influenced that choice, I realize there were a lot of messages which conspired to inform my (bad) priorities, like treating intelligence and goodness as virtually synonymous concepts, and regarding intellect as aspirational and kindness as optional, but perhaps nothing was as important as this: I was taught way more about how to be compliant than I was about how to be kind.
When I took Dudley out for a walk earlier, he made a beeline for a particular shrub, where he sniffed intently for a few moments, then looked up at me proudly before walking away. At first, I didn't even see at what he was sniffing.
But then I looked closer...
And closer...
Until I finally saw what it was that had caught his nose.
Despite this indubitably impressive camouflage, the warren of rabbits who live in our garden rarely even rely on this evolutionary safeguard, frequently just sitting out on the lawn like, "Yo, what's up?" They are either unusually friendly, or possibly stupid, rabbits who are simply not afraid of people or giant rabbit-chasing dogs.
Or dogs that are supposed to chase rabbits, anyway. Dudley's utter indifference to chasing this rabbit, upon having discovered it, might indicate why he was a retired racer before the age of two.
"They're coming after the Internet hoping to destroy the very thing that makes it such an important [medium] for independent artists and entrepreneurs: its openness and freedom. [Net neutrality is] the First Amendment issue of our time."—Senator Al Franken, on Corporate America's intent to make the internet less free and restrict the flow of information.
Given the role social media is playing in revolutions around the globe right now, it's not difficult to see why they believe crushing the internet is an integral step in their ongoing coup/corporate takeover of the US government.
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, producers of the new documentary series "The Search for Deeky's Next Great Boyfriend," airing this fall on FartTV.
Stephanie: On Rape, the Media, and the New York Times Clusterfuck [TW for sexual violence and rape apologia. I feel like a wanker linking to this, because I'm quoted in it, but it's such a good piece I didn't want to not link to it just because I'd look like a wanker if I did.]
[Trigger warning for hostility toward autonomy and agency.]
As if it's not bad enough that the anti-choice folks are doing everything they can to limit a woman's access to safe and legal abortions, they're arresting them for even thinking about it. Via fiver at Daily Kos:
Ms. Taylor became light-headed and fell down a flight of stairs in her home. Paramedics rushed to the scene and ultimately declared her healthy. However, since she was pregnant with her third child at the time, Taylor thought it would be best to be seen at the local ER to make sure her fetus was unharmed.
That's when things got really bad and really crazy. Alone, distraught, and frightened, Taylor confided in the nurse treating her that she hadn't always been sure she'd wanted this baby, now that she was single and unemployed. She'd considered both adoption and abortion before ultimately deciding to keep the child. The nurse then summoned a doctor, who questioned her further about her thoughts on ending the pregnancy. Next thing Taylor knew, she was being arrested for attempted feticide. Apparently the nurse and doctor thought that Taylor threw herself down the stairs on purpose. [Italics in original.]
In the end, Ms. Taylor was not prosecuted; not because it was a wild-ass charge, but because she was not in her third trimester.
It's a good thing those Thought Police can't hear what I'm thinking about them because they are some seriously ungracious thoughts.
There are some other examples of the same kind of mind probe and manipulation at the hands of the "pro-lifers": a woman in Florida was forced into a hospital for prescribed bed rest to avoid a potential miscarriage because she told her doctor that she couldn't take time off work. And a teenager in Pennsylvania was denied an abortion without parental consent because she was deemed incapable of making an informed decision due to the bad grammar on her court application. As fiver notes, in the eyes of these people the women are fully capable of being mothers (by force), but clearly incapable of making their own decisions about their pregnancies.
The supreme irony is that every time someone proposes hate crime legislation to protect women or the LGBTIQ community or some other group from persecution, the right wingers carry on until Hell won't have it about the Thought Police taking control.
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