Category: Other People

I can’t resist thinking of Ashcroft when I hear news about people this ignorant about their own bodies.

Voters of Somerville! State Representative Ciampa, who voted to outlaw gay marriage, now has a challenger, Carl Sciortino. Sciortino seems to have the right ideas about housing too. I guess, at least, Ciampa is sticking to his guns… because despite what the right says about “anti-democratic judicial activism,” voting against gay marriage is voting yourself out of office in Davis Square.

Speaking of which, the Globe had a good article which I can’t seem to find online (they have a terrible website…) about the phrase “the traditional meaning of marriage” and how it’s a good example of the etymylogical fallacy. That particular error is made when one argues that the historical definition of a word necessarily has some sort of bearing on its current or future definition. That is, in my grandmother’s day, “cool” meant chilly, but that’s got no bearing on arguments about hipness or jazz. The article also notes that “wedlock,” the most common pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon word for marriage, actually means “contract proceedings” and could well be applied to any particular contract, such as land, feudal tribute, or car leasing.

On the editoral page, of course, Jeff Jacoby commits all the logical mistakes outlined above. My favorite part, however, is where Jacoby complains that the arguments of the anti-marriage right have been portrayed as bigoted.

I know it hurts to be insulted that way, Jeff, but that’s called “accurate reporting.” Nobody wants to hear it, especially not in a headline, but you really are a bigoted and ignorant bastard. I’m sure that the former Rev. Shanley could appreciate the pain of being vilified by the right-thinking world at large, but that doesn’t make it any less fair or just to portray you as a bigot than it was to portray Shanley as a sexual predator.

I wonder if Jacoby has been assigned to make flawed arguments so the Globe can claim it makes some token effort to appease its presumably crucial rich-bigot audience (the poor bigot, of course, reads the Herald), or if he actually believes what he says. Either way, I pity him. He and Nick Petreley make me think I could succeed as a journalist if only I slept with the right people– although I shudder to think of the people I’d have to sleep with. I mean, Jacoby. Ewww.

The folks over at the libertarian political rag Reason are fond of running little lists of government mistakes and overreaches, in the hope that they can illustrate their truths by example, and maybe elect some more small-government folks. Or something like that. Anyway, here are two absurd government overreaches promulgated mostly by the right.

In Britain, anyone under sixteen is now forbidden to do much of anything involving contact with others. Kissing, fondling, probably even close dancing, are technically against a new law, which is deliberately going to go unenforced. Great. Also they’ve finally gotten around to outlawing necrophilia, which I imagine was not specifically named in the past– you’d presumably be charged with some other corpse-treatment crime. OK, so it’s a silly law, but I imagine it’ll get sorted out.

More importantly, in the US, the FDA has written religious law into state policy by refusing to allow emergency contraceptives (a.k.a. “the morning-after pill,” sold under the brand name “Plan B”) to be sold over the counter, despite its medical board recommending exactly that.

What does this mean? It means that a council of doctors has determined that the drug is safe and useful, and that it should be available to people who want it, but that the FDA has bowed to political pressure from the religious right and will refuse it. Smaller government indeed.

Hullabaloo links to a Salon article in which Joe Conason interviews Joseph Wilson (who exposed the “Yellow Cake” lie and whose wife was subsequently outed as a CIA agent, endangering her life and whatever missions she may have been on)… the gist of the article is that Wilson grew up Republican in a Republican family, and this administration is not the Republican party he grew up with.

Conason: What’s the difference in the GOP from when you were growing up?

Wilson: If you’re fiscally responsible, this is not your party. If you believe in a moderate foreign policy characterized by alliances, free trade and the ability to operate in an international environment, this is not your party. If you believe in limited federal government, this is not your party. If you believe that the government should stay out of your bedroom, this is very definitely not your party. In fact, I would argue that unless you believe in the American imperium, imposed on the world by force, or unless you believe in the literal interpretation of the Book of Revelations, this is not your party.

I imagine Reason will be backing LaRouche this year?

Indie-rock gardening. Oh yeah.

More on how bariatric surgery is often done badly and causes huge complications. Gastric bypass is a surgical answer to a problem with huge psychological components, it needs to be accompanied by huge amounts of counseling, exercise, and dietary changes. Otherwise, you’re treating the fatness, but ignoring the root causes of overeating.

Is the medicine worse than the cure?. Depression can feed on emotional detachment– it prevents you from forming real bonds, it drives people away… and not having those bonds can drive you deeper. So, the medication weakens those links. It’s treating the unhappiness, but it’s not solving any emotional problems that might have gotten the patient into the mess to begin with. Of course if it’s just a chemical issue, then it makes sense. But that sounds like a rare patient who’s just got a chemical imbalance and won’t benefit from counselling.

Obese children more likely to be bullied, says study.

The article does point out that these kids also become bullies more often than skinny kids, but doesn’t establish which way the correlation runs: are bullies likely to become fat from eating all the candy they take from their smaller peers? Do bullied children seek solace in food, and refuse to exercise, and get heavy, in a self-perpetuating cycle of shame and regret?

No, they don’t ask any of the really interesting questions.

Car chasing, beer drinking ballplayah. Wicked pissah.

Hey, this could really be our year…

Ow ow ow ow ow. Thanks to Dana for the link. Ow ow ow ow. Ow.

Curing homosexuality? Now, if you have a married man who goes out and has sex with other men on the side, and wants to curb that behavior, it seems to me that his problem is less “he needs to be cured of homosexuality” than “he is unfaithful and needs to learn to be faithful.” Obviously, issues of sexuality need to be addressed there, but really, if he were “cured” of homosexuality, would it be OK then for him to continue cheating on her with women?

The memorial service, on Saturday the 27th of March, began with music (Bach, by a string trio), followed by an invocation from Psalms. Then the woman with the string bass, the man with the fiddle, and the man with a banjo came up and played “I’ll Fly Away.” Then people shared stories, and at the end as people left, the string trio played “Sheep May Safely Graze.”

I talked about how when I was little I wanted to be like David because he was a race car driver, and that’s what every kid wants. But as I grew up, and grew away from wanting to race cars, I learned to admire him for other reasons, and I still want to be like him.

My brother read from the Torah: apparently the section he’d been assigned for his bar mitzvah was also the portion for the day that David died. It was a list of instructions for how to build the ark of the covenant: it shall be made of acacia-wood, and it shall be so many cubits by so many cubits, on and on. Joel said that when he was thirteen, he had a terrible time coming up with some sort of exegesis for this to be read before the entire congregation, but now, he really understands it: God loves precision engineering.

At the end of the program they printed his motto, “there is never enough time, there is never enough money, and nothing ever fits.” True to form, when he was taken away in the hearse, he was too tall for it and they had to bend him awkwardly.