| Ramal Rewis
Now, I'm not going to name names here. But let's say that you're nearing the end of an investigation of a narcotics distribution ring, and are running out of funding and generally your superiors are happy with you, but want to close it out, having convicted somewhere around thirty people. Let's say you want to reinvigorate said investigation, and you had a potential link to a highly visible, high profile individual. The link is tenuous, but enough to bring it to the media's attention. Would you bring it to the public's attention? cranked out at 3:50 PM | |
|
Thomas Sowell is a Douche
I'm not sure of Thomas Sowell believes this, or if he chronically suffers from being hit in the face with a shovel. This is a classic example of what it means to "blatently misrepresent statistics." For example: When it comes to full-time year-around workers, there are more heads of households who fall into that category in the top 5 percent of income earners than in the bottom 20 percent -- in absolute numbers.Of course, he fails to note that the bottom 20% of income earners includes students who work part time, the structurally unemployed, single mothers, migrant workers, and the "idle rich" he says are no longer a valid concern. See, the funny thing is, when you live off your savings, you fall into the lowest 20% in terms of income. You could go so far as to say that the bottom 20% is almost fully people who are not working solely as a means to get by. According to the 2002 census, the upper limit for the lowest fifth of income earners is $17,916 pretax dollars. A majority of those in said grouping don't work full time, not becuase they're lazy, but becuase they just don't happen to be doing it for a living. In fact, he basically says as much later in his little diatribe: But studies that follow the same individuals over time find that most of those in the bottom 20 percent of income earners are also in the top 20 percent at some other time in their careers.Now, if this is actually true (and, no offense to fuckface, but I doubt it), then it would tend to suggest that a large portion of those who are in the lowest 20% are things like retirees, who previously happened to be making a lot of money. Again, the "idle rich". He claims that everyone who works eventually ends up in the top income brackets. This is just a lie. To really believe what he's saying is true, you'd honestly have to think that a non-college educated individual with only manual labor experience can somehow boost themself up into being an investment banker or something, yet doesn't want to. The simple fact is that, more than any other factor, the income bracket a person is born into is the best indication of where they will end up. cranked out at 10:32 PM | |
|
When All Is Said and Done
I've spent most of the afternoon reading various essays on Znet, in the NYT, and around the internet. All of them seem to have something in common: when the rhetoric ends, they haven't actually said anything. Decrying the actions of the US throughout Central America and the Middle East, there are a grand total of zero solutions proposed. Zero alternatives. Fifty thousand problems with the way the US has carried out its foreign policy, without a single thing to show for it. If the implication one is to draw from this is that we would be better served sitting back and watching as despots and local dictatorial regimes murder and enslave the people they ostensibly represent, that's one thing. But it's difficult to seize the moral high ground when the argument for letting a myriad of people die is that the alternative is a significantly smaller number reach their demise. Chomsky especially seems to paint a contradictory dichotomy of action - either we act, in which case we are neoimperialist profiteers only out for the corporate profit motive, or we fail to act, in which case we are... neoimperialist profiteers who lack the moral courage to cut into corporate profits. Act - and you're evil. Fail to act - and you're evil. We act at the beckoning of the UN in Kosovo, and are painted as murderous savages who are unwilling to let the locals solve their own dispute in a democratic manner. We fail to act in Rwanda, and are called to task for being unwilling to stop a genocide. For all the criticism which can be mounted about the conflicts we choose, and the fights we pick, it's shooting fish in a barrell to criticize the various administrations like that. Spouting populist vitriol in the course of making a political criticism is the easiest thing in the world. Slogan chanting in a fugue state, demonstrating against the WTO and IMF, all of these things may be in the pursuit of a valid goal, but at the end of the day, undermining the discourse with which decisions ought to be made is categorically more harmful than any policy any institution on earth can pass. Informed decision making is not done with a brick flung through a window, any more than it can be made with the treads of a tank. In principle, both sides seem to be charged with rhetoric about making intelligent and humane decisions. In practice, neither side seems to want to sit down and actually make said decisions. It's easier to get a book deal attacking something than constructing. Ask Ann Coulter. Ask Noam Chomsky. I want one of the leftists to answer a few questions. If there is a strong dictator in a region who is beginning to embark on a genocide, and the only other locus of power is an equally dictatorial, yet more stable and less genocidal individual, who do you support? Neither? And if foreign investment in a region is "exploitation", does that mean the US is exploiting Britan? That Japan is exploiting the US? Obviously just a start, but I get the feeling that it's not the sort of subject Zinn would write on. It's not monochromatic enough. Attack journalism is profitable, but after all the articles are sold and ink dried on the publishing contracts, what have they really done to help solve the problem? Nothing. cranked out at 3:20 PM | |
|
Revolution
There comes a point in the evolution of a country where the anachronistic practices and policies which govern the people are no longer pertinent. The entangling jungle of legislation has grown so dense, that navigating the corridors is no longer possible, except by the most enterprising and educated of individuals. The reformation of the institutions of the land have been built on the ruins of so many past incarnations that the foundation now trembles, and the patchwork solutions which have so far prevented disaster threaten to tear and crack at the edges. Our Republic is crumbling. We currently live in a society where nearly ten percent of all adults suffer from chronic depression in a given year, and around five percent of women will develop either bulimia or anorexia in their lifetime. A majority of people currently living will, at some point in their life, need to be medicated in order to make it through the day. Thirty thousand people killed themselves last year. The number of children who either develop chronic disorders as a result of nontreatment is staggering - and not helped by the fact that ten percent of children under eighteen are uninsured, including seventy-five percent of children classified as "poor" and fifty-three percent of children just above the poverty line. These are real problems. These are plagues upon a people, and things which a morally cognizant person ought to find repugnant to the extreme. Yet, despite the myriad of problems facing us as a country, what are the issues which command the attention of our leaders? We chase ghosts through the corridors of power, snatching at a dictator here and there in an effort to effect 'justice' in the world - yet we shrug our collective shoulders when there is a lack of admonishment towards individuals within our own country who defrauded retirees out of tens of millions of dollars. Our attention spans are taxed by the intricacies of insider trading, leaving the preferable black-and-white rhetoric of fighting a war against evil. Africa is in shambles as a direct result of the colonization and exploitation of the continent, yet the debate centers on whether or not it's okay to hand out condoms. The structure of our healthcare system incentives insurance companies to litigate claims instead of paying them, because it's been shown to be less expensive - yet reproductive rights take front and center. People are being killed by the fast food industry, as our immune systems give way to viruses bred in the muck of the slaughterhouse - but the FDA delicately weighs the relative merit of another pill to give men erections. What we seem to lack in large measure is perspective. The foundation of our collective edifice rots, while we fret over whether the drapes match the proverbial sofa. We've become so jaded to poverty, failing schools, and violent crime that they've faded to the periphery. An entertainment culture, the problems which we find of paramount importance are those of gay marriage, and whether or not the president skipped out of National Guard duty. The discourse over the impending election is diluted into ten-word answers, and thirty second sound bytes. We want simple solutions to incredibly complex problems, and are afraid to admit when we don't understand something. The aggregate of this is the piece mail construction of social initiatives. Scholastic theory which predates the First World War, changed every decade to accommodate the new fad in child rearing. Afraid to start over from scratch, we continue to hope that, despite the utter failure it's been so far, just another test, or just another federal statute, will change it. Our foreign policy is predicated upon a mode of thinking which is transparently outdated. The whole thing is symptomatic of a desperation to believe that our system is maybe just misunderstood and misapplied, and not misconceived. There's a desperation in all of this which is really kind of sweet. The raw, dogmatic faith of a religious zealot who willfully misinterprets reports that, despite appearances, the world is, in fact, round. Our system isn't working, yet we're doing everything possible to distract ourselves from that inevitable conclusion. Something is broken. That much is clear. The only question is how much longer we can go pretending otherwise before we're forced to choose between fixing it, or suffering the shock of a revolution. Not of the type which redraws boundaries or includes tanks in the streets. A quieter one. While we’re off prosecuting Oscar Wilde, our empire will slowly fall out from beneath us. Bit by bit, our ‘superpower’ status will simply fade away as new leaders come to the forefront. The thing which allowed us a period of greatness was that we, for a brief period, were the ones who could stand on principle. Whether or not we lived up to the ideals we espoused is another question altogether – but at least we had the ostensible moral high ground. We’ve lost that. Now, in a last attempt to inflict ourselves upon the world, we’ve gone on a crusade to maintain relevance. The world isn’t buying it. We’ll continue to decline. We’ll continue to make our exit, gracefully or not, unless we can rework the system from the ground up. But the first step is admitting that we’re wrong. The first step is getting beyond our stubborn willfulness. And it seems as if it’s a first step nobody is willing to make. cranked out at 2:39 AM | |
|
Spoiling for a Fight
Andrew actually mentions something I think is completely true in the case of most people who are debaters. The ability to elucidate any idea which is external yet not to consider one's self seems to be a pervasive symptom of the people currently on the circuit. I think this leads not just to skewed social relations, but also a general lack of introspection. Most people tend to have neither the speaking ability to transmit information about either themselves or other things, but there is a danger in having the latter without the former. People rarely think about whether or not what they say is actually true in principle, and about whether they believe it. Making arguments becomes not about person passion, but in fact about winning said argument. Most individuals don't seem to understand the power of the spoken word, when delivered convincingly. But it's there. Another consequence of being around argument on a near constant basis, I've found, is that when people talk about issues of consequence, I find it hard not to immediately brace to counterattack. This makes for discussions with a certain breed of people nearly impossible, and may or may not have contributed to my current reputation (at least among those who I am casually aquainted with) as "contentious"*. Whenever someone says anything, I immediately find myself trying to find fault with it. That could be a problem. * = "bastard" also acceptable. cranked out at 11:31 PM | |
|
Links Between Al Qaeda and John Dewey?
Education Secretary hates teacher's union. You know what? He's right. The teacher's union is likely the most pervasive organization currently in politics in the United States. They are the main, if not sole, driving force behind the manufacturing, assembly-line mentality which has plagued public schools for the past fifty someodd years. The focus on education and the schools are built now to accomidate career teachers, people who don't want to be fired no matter how poorly they perform, and who feel they, and not the students, are due the bulk of the expenditures of the cash-strapped districts. They limit the ability of teachers who actually do care in order to keep standards lower for the rest of them - and the second anything is done which begins to encroach upon their precious little domain, the unions jump on it. They tout educational reform, yet flex their political muscle whenever anyone tries anything new. You cannot make the argument that a tech high school ought to have the same hiring requirements and the like as a regular school. Moreover, by trying to enforce national standards for everything from salary to benefits, they end up screwing over both the poor districts - who are unable to lower class sizes by hiring more teachers because of the artificially set pay levels - and the districts where the cost of living is higher - who are forced to compromise on unnecessarily low levels of pay. Moreover, it prevents districts from having flexible salary levels. There's no reason an individual hired to teach for a school shouldn't be able to waive health insurance in order to get more pay, if that's what they want. There's no reason why experiments in learning should be stifled becuase the bureaucracy forbids it. Here's a novel idea - if you want teachers to have more money, and you believe that they are currently not getting enough to live on, don't force them to pay a significant percentage of their paycheck to a nonvoluntary organization. Especially when these costs are artificially high by supporting a national infrastructure, rather than keeping unions relatively local, independant cells. On top of this, the amount of money which goes into lobbying and funding candidates for relatively little political capital in return? You could possibly give that back to the teachers. Or you could give it to districts which are currently underfunded. There are about fourty million better uses for the raw capital that the various unions have access to - if they actually cared about education. You know what, though? I don't think they do. The union isn't there to actually improve the quality of schools in the country. It's there to strongarm local and state governments into pouring money into the school system in such a way that it lines their pockets. It's not some poor teachers who would otherwise be prevented from working at a fair wage - it's a political junta. And the people who are hurt are the ostensible beneficiaries of these self-made martyrs: students. The one thing which is harming the quality of education in this country more than anything is the teachers unions. More damage has been done by these unions disallowing flexibility on a local level for education, by destroying the quality of public schools, then has ever been done by a terrorist group. The systematic problems plaguing our society on practically every level - from social discrimination within the school system as a whole, to racism as a result, to the cycle of poverty - can in some way be traced back to the failing school system. So before the NEA president threatens to sue the federal government for what can, at the very worst, be called a poor turn of phrase, maybe they should consider if there's some merit to the Education Secretary's meaning. cranked out at 10:11 PM | |
|
Greatest Conversation Ever
It turns out the version of AIM I have saves every conversation I've ever had. So I decided to go through and delete them all, but in so doing, stumbled somewhat randomly upon the following: Estella3888*: so I have to write a scene right before someone discovers a dead body assyrian pi: Umm assyrian pi: Wouldn't that be just like any other scene? assyrian pi: Like, ostensibly, prior to the discovery of the dead body, people would act just normally Estella3888: well i suppose Estella3888: i don't know what to dp assyrian pi: Unless by "dead body" you mean "America" assyrian pi: Then they'd be on a ship or something Estella3888: interesting assyrian pi: "Arrr!" assyrian pi: Oh man, pirate time Estella3888: that would be awesome Estella3888: there's supposed to be suspense assyrian pi: How much more suspence can you get than pirates? assyrian pi: You can have a gay pirate assyrian pi: And he's going to come out to his swashbuckling crew assyrian pi: But then they discover America! Estella3888: wow assyrian pi: And it can be a metaphor for his discovering his own delicate, delicate pirate soul :-) Estella3888: you are incredible assyrian pi: That's what the feds say. assyrian pi: "The sea misted over the barnacle-encrusted hull of the ancient ship, moistening the cracked and dried lips of Marti the terrible. His scurvy-darkened tongue darted out of his mouth, lizardlike, as he thought, 'Arrr, where can I get me some cherry lipsmackers?'" Estella3888: oh wow assyrian pi: "Marti knew today was the day he would have to tell the crew his deep, dark secret. He couldn't keep killing cabin boys who threatened to expose him. He ran his hands over the hilt of his cutlass, a fine blade which had seen many a sea battle - all paltry affairs when stacked up against the turmoil which rocked his soul" assyrian pi: Oh man Estella3888: amazing assyrian pi: "They had come off course in avoiding battle with an English galleon off the coast of the British colonies - the slave trade was a profitable one, and slavers made for easy prey. A shame, still, that his custom tailored heart-buckled boots had been singed in the last raid. He would have to find that great French shop, you know, the one by the river... next to the place where you can get those tiny little croissants?... No, not Jaques, it starts with a B. Oh whatever." assyrian pi: I can stop any time. Estella3888: you are absolutely incredible assyrian pi: I'm prepared to pretend you mean that in a complimentary manner. * = Name changed slightly to protect the innocent cranked out at 9:35 PM | |
|
Special Interests
Bush is accusing Kerry of accepting "special interest money" (link via: PLB) and hence being somehow "unprincipled." This is one of those things in politics which I've never understood. The appeal of "principled" politicians is somehow completely lost on me. If I were electing someone to office, I would want a person who has absolutely no predilection towards any dogmatism or singular ethic whatsoever. I want her to get to Washington and do exactly what I tell her to do, or in situations where polling data is unavailable, I want someone who will consider a bill or action on its merits in terms of serving the public good - not becuase of some crazy stance they happen to have, or universal heuristic they use. If there's a bill which sends $100 billion in aid to subsaharan Africa, but has a gag rule preventing it from being used in abortion clinics, I want my representative to vote for it - despite the fact that, if I were electing someone, I would want a pro-choice candidate. When "principles" get in the way, the less optimal solution starts being the one which comes out, and tortured convolutions of perfectly sensible bills end up being the result. Beyond that, "special interests"? Any group which gets money together and contributes it to a candidate is likely a "special interest." Nobody gives money generally, and across the board, to any candidate who happens to want it. Even "private donors" are generally contributing to the candidate who will further some specific agenda they hold. You think that when Henry Ford IV cuts his check, it's because he just wants to help the party who coincidentally supports subsidizing the manufacturing sector of the economy and opposes lowering tarriffs on foreign machinery, like cars? But that's the flip side. Saying that special interests influence a candidate's opinions and voting is a little like saying that the cupcake you buy tasted how you wanted it to becuase you payed for it. It's a silly causal argument about how the money causes candidates to change their mind on fundimental issues. Why would you contribute to someone in order to alter their fundimental beliefs, when you could just support a candidate who already believes what you do? This sort of name calling doesn't make sense. Yet I suppose that's what politics is, now. Throwing around words which are utterly vapid, but sound generally good - "compassionate conservative" and so on. For that matter, why would you want to elect someone who's not a "Washington insider"? Would you take stock advice from someone who was a "Wall Street outsider"? Would you buy a car from an Australian aborigine? Would you trust your medical health to someone who was just using good ol' folk sense, though didn't really "have experience with neurosurgery"? Please. Politics is the only place where we want people to appear honest without being so, and appear compassionate while privately fueling our own personal interests without having any actual regard to the rest of the known world. cranked out at 1:00 PM | |
|
Banana Rama (things I plan on writing more about in the near future)
- New pet theory: the main test for the justness of an entitlement program is whether or not, in the longitudinal view, it can actually end or decrease the problem it is set up to mitigate. Affirmative action for minorities, then, is just, while affirmative action for the poor is not. Federal money is better spent on the poor in education than the biologically handicapped. This seems to go against what I percieve to be current thought on the issue, which is that we're somehow trying to "make up" for nature, and decrease the harms of the genetic lottery. Most people asked, I believe, would say that a poor underperforming student is less deserving of public assistance than someone who has Huntington's. This view seems to be unwarrented. - For the record, I've been saying since my Livejournal days in 2001 that Bush wouldn't be reelected. Just keep that in mind when he loses by 15 points in November. When Cato and Heritage come out against a republican candidate you know there are sharks in the water. - People spend way too much time letting fear control their lives. They'll go out of their way and freak out in an effort to keep their doors locked and so on and so forth, becuase it gives them this weird illusion of safety. While it does contribute to safety marginally, it's silly to stress out about these things so much. The assumption of a general malevolence on the part of society is something which actually ends up increasing the net harm propegated within said society. The general atmosphere of distrust engendered by fear is the thing which actually makes the fear warrented. - Speaking of which, more and more I'm starting to consider the old "collective action" problem. It seems like it's impossible for any individual to effect a real change in society at large, and this seems to prevent anyone from doing anything. We need more Kantians and fewer Mill bitches. - Anyone who has comprehensive statistics on abortion in states with and without parental notification laws, as done by anyone without an axe to grind, I'd appreciate if you'd send them to me. I haven't been able to find shit, and don't have access to Lexis from home. cranked out at 12:52 PM | |
|
cranked out at 4:54 PM | |
|
Next Up: The Maine Event
Maine teacher sues district over curriculum restrictions, pot pies. There's a teacher in Maine who is alleging that his inability to teach his seventh grade social studies class about ancient Greece is an infringement of his first amendment rights. In fact, he's gone so far as to say that becuase this restriction was placed on the curriculum for religious reasons, it's a constitutional violation. I find this claim highly spurious. There seems to be a consensus that letting individual states, districts, and even schools, choose what they teach tends to lend towards the optimal education. It allows locals to learn about their area's history, and more closely tie them to the community - it makes, for example, sense that Florida would teach about the Seminoles, and Colorado would teach about the Sioux. It just lets there be more diversity, and more relevant information. Likewise, in the US, schools tend to teach about the Mayflower and Columbus, not becuase they were necessarily the first Europeans here, but becuase the intellectual and social legacy which currently dominates the continent is primarily signified by those voyages. When we teach history to our kids, it's significant to acknowledge that it isn't so they actually have a large cross-section of knowledge from which to draw, it's part of a greater narrative about where they come from. School at the level of seventh grade is more about constructing a coherant framework of the world than it is about giving a diverse base of knowledge. What Mr. Cole is assuming in saying that he should be able to teach these kids about all these various things is that the primary function of having history in seventh grade is to avail kids of new and interesting ideas. This is simply not the case. Most of these kids aren't really going to get any of the actual historical forces he's talking about - going over the collapse of the Eastern European economy, for example, would probably beyond the scope they're aiming for. And Greece is simply too far removed to really assimilate in the way we'd like if they don't first have a solid grounding in the here and now. The relevant curriculum cited by the state for the grade level is one where students can "identify the sequence of major events and people in the history of Maine, the United States, and selected world civilizations." I simply fail to see how the restriction to, what he calls, "Christian civilization" doesn't meet this curriculum goal. The shape of US history, especially in Maine (nee: Massachusetts?), tends to be one which was driven by "Christian" civilizations and, to some extent, their interactions with certain non-"Christian" civilizations. And unless the "selected world civilizations" cited are Mongolia or Indonesia, the local board seems more than justified in limiting the scope of what teachers can present in social studies to England, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Subsaharan Africa, Australia, and to a lesser extent, Mexico, El Salvador, Cuba, Guatamala, Japan, and China. Not to mention all of American history, and the entire existance of Maine as a state. It's not as if he's being completely pinned down here. And while his lawyer complains that, ?He can?t even teach the history of anti-Semitism (or the) history of ancient Greece,? having this sort of standard in place also means other teachers can't teach that blacks are inferior to whites, the Rwanda genocide, and the very anti-Semitism that he wants to teach the history of. Having curriculums makes the standards open to the community, while giving the teacher free reign, while leaving her quasi-accountable, makes the issue much less clear. By laying out exactly what is and is not to be taught, there is no question about what can be laid out to kids. There is no intrinsic benefit to letting individuals determine the content kids are taught, even if we might think that the methodology ought to be left up to the individual to a degree. If a teacher were in there saying that dinosaurs were actually still alive as a vast government conspiracy, I'd want him fired, too. The teacher's job is not to determine what is best for kids, that is why we have parents. Sorry for saying so, but I trust even the dumber parents to make good decisions for their kids more than I trust a dispassionate government employee with no real knowledge of the kids and their background. Mr. Cole is an employee of the state, he is there as a means to an end not chosen by himself. You do not have a first amendment right to express yourself, using your employer as the medium. Even apart from that, religion is also hardly the only community standard which is expressed in education. All sorts of normative ethical and cultural ideas are impressed on kids through the schools. This isn't such a bad thing. Passing on the ethos of your society, handing down certain ideas, isn't in and of itself a negative. There's so much love of letting people decide for themselves what worldview they want to subscribe to, people forget that a parent bringing up a child in a dissonant and cacophonous world of contradictory messages that in the end, none of the various cultures are actually understood or adopted by the kid in question. Look, schools have become too much a business. If communities could actually use them to give kids a sense of the identity of the place they were in, we would end up with a more diverse culture. Schools are being used to cookie-cutter homogenize* the entire youth. Everyone thinking the same is something we don't want, and diversity is the goal we're always reaching towards, yet everything which engenders diversity is seen as bad. Someone says "religion," and the world is quick to jump and talk about how schools, where kids spend a majority of their developmental years, should be sterile, with no access to any idea which isn't purely secular and factual. We want these places to be free of "value judgements," and so the result is kids who are nihilistic towards value. Everyone wants parents to give their kids some sort of values, but how? One doesn't learn their value system from being told what system to espouse. It's within the context of the world, and what we learn about it, that these sorts of values are really locked in. Schools teach this context, but they're teaching it absent the important and relevant methods by which to judge. More cultures is a good thing. If Mr. Cole wants to accomplish the ostensible goal he's sueing for, he needs to realize that the best way to do it is allow these kids to become integrated into the framework the community has set out for them. * = "cookie-cutter homogenize" is my new favorite phrase. cranked out at 1:14 PM | |
|
Inbreeding
I was watching ESPN today, and they had a shot on Sportscenter of someone who has become near and dear to my heart: Prince Charles.  "Macarena: 0, Prince of Wales: 1 One of the things which is most striking about this individual is that he seems not to be human, in the conventional sense. Not that he doesn't have the correct number of digits or anything, just that there is clearly something about him which suggests a genetic makeup which is slightly off. Maybe it's the ears. Maybe it's the head. It's just not something I am willing to spend too much time speculating on. But is this trend within the royal family really something we should be mocking so much? I mean, while it may be pronounced within such a constrictive social class as royalty, this same sort of effect seems as if it should gradually be borne out within the general population to the same degree. Consider a few factors. Attractive people should, if the world makes sense*, be statistically more likely to inbreed than someone who is a member of the general population. This is according to the very simple fact that someone who is attractive has manifestly fewer options to choose from, if they are going to get someone who is "up to their standard." Moreover, because attractiveness is a function of genetics - an arbitrary attractive individual is statistically more likely to be related to another arbitrarily chosen attractive person more than they are a given member of society. As you increase the level of attractiveness, this becomes statistically more likely to what seems to become a statistically significant degree. Social mobility also provides a mechanism for inbreeding among the attractives. Someone who is attractive is more likely to climb social classes - this isn't just true insofar as there are the automatic admissions (ie: modeling), but just generally a form of subconscious promotion within society. Given two people, the more attractive is more likely to be hired. Or have a tire changed. Or be able to bend the rules. This is not just something which is anecdotally true - it's been pretty well borne out by a number of studies**. This means that the concentration of attractive people towards the upper half of the social spectrum, and therefore the concentration of a given set of DNAs, is even greater. There are other factors which also feed into this, of course. Someone with a lot of money is likely to be of a higher social class - but this tends to be a short-term, and only very extreme, exception. In two generations, a very rich family will begin to be more attractive (due to acquiring attractive members through marriage and interbreeding) and only move from there. The problem being that the effects of inbreeding also tend to imply a loss of attractiveness - eg, the Vanderbilts. However, this tends to a large part to be undermined at the upper-middle or lower-upper class levels, since within these populations attractive people will still tend to "congregate." The same sort of effect invariably arises for other genetically desirable traits which are strongly influential in the society one keeps. Intelligence being the one which immediately comes to mind. The same sort of thing happens - and possibly even to a higher degree, as intelligence (more than physical beauty) tends to dictate not just the social circle one ends up in, but also the geography one is a part of. If this effect is, in fact, borne out, it seems to be a pretty great one from an evolutionary perspective. Inbreeding is one of the primary ways recessive genes gain expression in people. Why would one want the upper echelons of a biological population to be the ones whose offspring is being "experimented" on? Well, for one, it means that a trait which is not necessarily beneficial might be allowed to endure for multiple generations. This is generally good as a way of biologically hedging bets - if all your sick, your tired, your huddled masses are the ones getting a trait which they could otherwise not put to good use (Can you imagine if a good CPA had the math skills of some autistics?) then it might die out, despite being useful. On top of this, the Attractives are more likely to breed frequently - so the failures would be negligable, in the grand scheme of things. In the interest of full disclosure, it's also possible that this is true, but a significant percentage of the population just happens to possess these genes, and so the disproportionate ratio of moderately attractive or plain looking people to attractive or smart people offsets the effect just by sheer volume. That doesn't change, however, the fact that if you happen to be a genetically desirable individual, you're more likely to fuck a distant cousin. The interesting fact is that this seems also to hold for people who are exceptionally stupid or ugly. Possibly to the same extent, insofar as someone who is either stupid or ugly is less likely to have some mitigating factor which increases their Breedabiltiy Quotient than the analog in the attractive/smart/socially advanced population. On top of this, the lack of mobility and unaffordability of affluent urban living tends to also confine these populations over generations (In the swamps of Alabama, let's say). THIS extreme makes sense - since this is the exact type you want to try out your genetic traits on. Though the propegation into the general population of these traits will be much slower, but safer. I guess this would actually be desirable in conjunction with the Attractives having the same effect at the other end. Imagine the population of humanity as a football, with the bulge in the middle being most people. Traits sort of trickle up and down into the gene pool as a whole from this sort of mechanism. As always, if anyone knows of an actual study of this, or something I've missed completely, let me know * = ie, if someone of X level of attractiveness (or who assesses their own level at X, and does so with a small degree of error) generally tends only to be interested in procreating with someone of X+ level. Mismatches occuring due to outside factors (wealth, social status etc...) or misevaluation on the part of one of the individuals. This doesn't take into account "soulmates" as an a priori selective process or the use of any chemical compounds - or plastic surgery. ** = Including, but not limited to, every third episode of 20/20. cranked out at 12:16 PM | |
|
My Milkshake
Men's Journal did a story on the "twenty-five toughest guys in America." Naturally, I assumed that this would include the usual list of random fire-fighters and such. People who, you know, have a job which is risky and involves copious amounts of sweat, and who are typically fetishized. Instead, it's a list of people who fall either into "not really tough" or "stupid." For example: Brett Farve isn't even the toughest quarterback, let alone toughest football player, let alone toughest guy in America. This is the former. Example 2: There's a guy who rides his bike off a cliff. He got stiches in his chin and broke two ribs on consecutive days. Latter. What about that guy who cut off his freakin' arm to get out from under a boulder? That guy deserves his own advice column. You can just imagine how that would go. "I'm feeling trapped in a relationship..." cranked out at 8:51 PM | |
|
<3
Stupid blogger killed my post. I'll redo it later. cranked out at 10:33 AM | |
|
Superbowl T&A
You have to admire the FCC, and the moralists in our country for their lovely consistency. They tune in to watch a contest where two groups of people try to maim each other while scantily-clad women look on and cheer. During commercial breaks, there are ads featuring no fewer than three different types of pill for erectile dysfunction, and a dog ordered to bite a guy's crotch. There's a constant stream of violence and sex beamed into your house on two-hundred high definition channels every second of every day, and the FCC chairman has the audacity to call a two-second nipple shot "outrageous" and "offensive" and "It was the finale of something that was offensive. The whole performance was onstage copulation." Has Mr. Powell seen MTV? I'll let you in on a secret: There's a whole channel of "onstage copulation" sponsored by the very people who did the halftime show. In fact, if I recall, there are two. The lyrics to Justin's songs all have overt sexual themes and lyrics suggesting the objectification of women. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with that, as such. But if the FCC is going to get all hot and bothered over a long-range nipple shot which lasted for a quarter of a second, it would behoove them to watch The OC or The Young and the Restless... or anything at all on daytime Spanish TV. This, it should be noted, is also from the same chairman who earlier wanted to relax ownership standards to allow the five companies who already own something absurd like 75% of all media markets to encroach even more upon what is still sort of virgin territory. The fact that he can be angry about a nipple while advocating that sort of thing shows just what kind of idiot value system these people have. I think it's characteristic of this government to want to seem moral, and so fixate on stupid little things like this to avoid actually taking a look around. Just so we're clear: televising lies and overt propaganda? Fox-tastic. A one second shot of something 52% of the population has two of*, and a slightly smaller percentage has three of? "Unforgivable." Also of note here is that Powell has recently started complaining about how the music "these darn whippersnappers"**are listening to is "darned offensive"**, and believes the state of the radio industry is regrettable, adding, "Back in my day, we respected our elders! And only had one radio station, and they only played that tasteful kid Buddy Holly!"** Personally, if I had such a problem with the state of the radio industry, I would try to... you know... not extend Clear Channel Communications' reign even further, given that they are pretty much solely responsible for the state of the medium these days. But that's me. The worst part is, this isn't just some government bureaucrat who is going overboard. The Washington Post had a number of letters to the editor printed about the "Prime-Time Peep Show," one of which read, "Thanks, NFL, for making life even harder for responsible parents to explain to impressionable teenagers." Look: let's not kid ourselves. Kids have seen more than that. A teenager isn't going to be confused by the existance and function of a nipple. Many of them have even delicately sipped nourishment from one during their early days. Apart from three kids in Branson, Missouri, everyone who saw that shot at the Superbowl had seen one before. Getting all bent out of shape about it is stupid, and everyone who is doing so is either naive or hypocritical. The only thing worse than the media overcovering such an insignificant story, of course, is the media covering itself on the topic of whether or not the media is blowing this story out of proportion. Having sat, huddled in blankets, for a majority of the day, I got to listen to six different ESPN personalities tell me that this story was getting too much airtime. I'm sure in two days, there will be either letters or op-eds in the big papers saying the same thing. And they'll be right, but it's still annoying that, with everything going on which legitimately concerns the people in this country, the thing that is covered is sex. There's an irony in these people using sex to sell articles about how deplorable it is that the Superbowl halftime show may have used sex to sell itself. These are the same people who went on and on about blowjobs and cigars and 'the dress' all those years ago during the Clinton impeachment. It's also somewhat hard to take their indignation seriously when there's a big-ass, full-color picture of Jackson with her exposed breast put right next to it. Almost as hard to accept as a former coke-head calling upon the NFL to ban steroids. Or someone who used his familial connections to get out of a war feeling cocky enough to tell people they have an obligation to serve their country. Or someone whose daughters are perennial underage drinkers driving home parental responsibility. But I digress. The whole thing was just another spectacle. Sit back, and enjoy it, and stop trying to make such a big fucking deal out of everything. For once, it would be nice if something like this happened, and people said, "Huh. Seen it." and flipped the proverbial channel, rather than starting a campaign over a relatively vapid evil. * = Yes, men have nipples. Yes, fat men have breasts. No, I don't care. ** = Not actual quotes from Michael Powell cranked out at 6:38 PM | |
|
Feel This Post
I'm not really sure why, but reparations for slavery have come back into vogue as something to bash, since a recent lawsuit against a number of formerly slave-using companies was dismissed. The main problem people seem to have with this sort of "payoff" program is this "sins of their fathers argument." For anyone who is unaware, this takes the form of "people who haven't owned slaves are not morally or financially culpable for the effects of slavery." Honestly? I don't even understand how this begins to be acceptable. Imagine, if you will, there's a company. We'll call them Ndow chemicals. This company is knowingly dumping waste into a river which then contaminates a local water supply.This makes many people sick, and a couple generations later, the children of the people who had previously lived in that town initiate a lawsuit against Ndow, becuase they have medical bills inherited from their parents as a direct result of actions taken by this group. Now, it's unlikely Ndow has the same stockholders. In fact, if you wait 40 years, it's highly unlikely they'll have the same employees, either. Yet this is still a situation where the employees, who weren't even blood related, still ought to be the ones to bear the cost of making sure that these other individuals, whose parents were sick or died, are compensated. This seems like a clear, unambiguous case. Or, in a less real-world, slightly more contrived example which might be clearer, let's say a guy named Ted murders your parents and steals their house. He then gives his son the house, and you are brought up by a foster home. Is it really that outrageous to say that he should have to give the damn house back, becuase otherwise he'd be "suffering for the sins of his ancestors"? There are slight differences, insofar as there was an illegal action, but that doesn't really seem to be what's at issue here. The fact is that certain people are worse off becuase of the unethical, and in many cases illegal, actions of a set of individuals. Trying to erase that should be a key goal in any sort of just society. The other main objection people seem to have is that just giving money isn't going to actually erase inequality. This is a lesser form of the normal "laws of X type have been implimented poorly in the past, therefore laws of X type are categorically bad" argument. Our system simply doesn't allow for other methods of compensation. If you initiate suit against, say, ConAgra, becuase their subsidiaries were largely slave owners, you can't get them to do very much beyond give money to help improve communities. Just becuase the current form the suits have taken isn't the best, that doesn't make reparations as an institution bad. I'm not necessary for or against them, I'm just saying, the attacks which have been mounted are pretty damn weak. cranked out at 1:47 PM | |
|
Superbowl XXXVIII
I lost money on the superbowl. That ragtag group I thought was composed completely of pushovers went to show that they, in fact, can keep a game with the Patriots close, if not actually beat them. I was overwhelmed by the performance of one person specifically, and I'll get to that in a second, but I want to congratulate the champions of yesterday's superbowl: 
"We're #1!" Now, I realize interest in The Game has been waning for the past few years - and this year was slated to be an all-out trench war, with very low scoring. I understand that. But is that really a reason to pretty much openly rig the game? The Patriots were straight up mugged of a turnover when a certain pass was ruled "incomplete" after the reciever got both hands on it, tucked it, turned to run, and was hit for what should have been ruled a fumble. Or when they called a touchdown not a touchdown, despite it clearly being so. Or any of the number of other highly questionable calls the officials made when the game stopped being close. Oh, and a special "fuck you" shoutout to the New England defensive coordinator. "Hey! 3rd and 10, they haven't been able to get a play off. That's unfair. Hey, I know, since it's an obvious passing down, let's blitz and throw man coverage! That way, they should be able to get at LEAST the first down!" I know I'm being that type who comments on bad plays after a game? But come fucking on. Anyone who's played Madden and is an obsessive blitzer (::cough::) should know what a bad idea that is. It's very simple, and yet there was a complete failure to understand such a simple concept. And it cost me money. Next year, when you're scripting the Superbowl? Please do us all a favor and don't script it for the bookies. Bookies kill children. cranked out at 10:59 AM | |
|
| template © elementopia 2003 |
 |
