Category: Thoughts

People like this give the South a bad name. I mean, where do you get off saying things like “Atheists … don’t have personal values”. Your personal values and mine are not even all that incompatible. But your ignorance is painful to me.

Look at the line “I do solemnly swear (or affirm).” Why does it say affirm? Because some people do not take oaths before God, because they do not believe in such a thing. Really. That and refusing to swear allegiance to anyone else but God. So, there. You’re just all wrong. Now, crumble before my obviously superior intellect.

Contempt for religious fundamentalism, like contempt for George W. Bush, is a caustic and potentially destructive emotion, but it’s one that most civilized human beings tend to wear as a badge of honor these days.

Some conservatives are in favor of marriage, while others seek to diminish it, put it on the defensive. If you are in favor of love, commitment, honor, and union, then you are in favor of marriage for all.

In a twist on my favorite rationale, people have begun to worry about details like who proposes to whom, and where do we hold the ceremony, and what do I wear, and will my in-laws hate me, and what kind of ring, and what kind of cake, DJ, reception, flowers?

It’s good to see, really, and I think it can make the uncomfortable heteros a little more comfortable, a little more aware that the major concerns of a lot of gay people are about the same as theirs: going on a date, falling in love, meeting the parents, planning a future. It’s the kind of feel-good view of humanity that wedding-related movies celebrate and feed on. Next up, “My Big Fat Gay Wedding.”

Every time I get bored with Volokh, they come up with something really provocative, like this entry: if marriage is for heterosexual procreation, why aren’t the sterile forbidden to marry?

Plus, logorrheic debate on the same subject at TNR, which I haven’t even bothered to read more than half of.

It’s so obvious that I’m right, I can’t comprehend the people who disagree with me. At all.

Unfogged compares the gay marriage issue to one of my favorite objects of analogy: indie-rock snobbery. When your favorite band becomes popular, and all the teenyboppers like it, you feel that they’ve sold out. When marriage becomes popular, and all the queers start liking it, you feel that marriage is sullied, even though your relationship isn’t any different.

Now, reasonable people like my friend Mark say to me “I don’t get it. My marriage doesn’t need to be defended against anything. I’m married to a woman, she’s married to me, and how does anyone else’s marriage threaten that?” But we’re not dealing with reasonable people, now are we?

Slate suggests that the serious political strategy is not just to say “fair’s fair” or harp on the church/state issue, as I have been saying, but to promote marriage, and make it open to everyone. Say “we like marriage, marriage is the foundation of a stable society, let people get married. What, you’re opposed to stable relationships? You’re opposed to families?” But that slides perilously close to the stand-up comic’s line: “since people’s sex lives dry up after marriage (so goes the conventional wisdom), the right should support gay marriage, because you’ll end up with lots of sexless gay couples watching TV at night.” Har har har.

I still like my libertarian/economic rationale (‘deregulate the bridal industry’). Not because it’s serious– that might be a side-effect but it’s not a really good reason for supporting marriage. No, I repeat myself about this because I hope that it drives a point home: there’s a significant split between the ‘small-government’ right and the ‘religious-government’ right, which are unified only by dislike of the Democrats.

If the Dems can position themselves as the party of sensible commerce (Free trade, fairly!) and sensible morals (tricky– but remember Jesus was a liberal), they’ll be able to grab some moderate votes. More importantly, they’ll increase infighting in the GOP, which will give it less of a “coherent policy” image and more of a “disaster waiting to happen” image.

Our Leaders have brought us a couple of shockingly ineffective policies over the past few decades. The drug war economics bear out the fact that supply is much more elastic than demand for drugs, and that the drug war is basically unwinnable.

And of course FreewayBlogger has been pointing out the error of our military and automotive policies with the wonderful Hummer slogan “10 miles/gallon, 2 soldiers/day.” Not to mention the the delightfully chilling “You can have my gun when you pry it from the fingers of my cold, dead child.”

There’s a new, and highly-reviewed Boondocks anthology. I’ve got a copy and it is indeed very, very good. I like angry humor. I feel like we do indeed have a right to be hostile. Given that we’ve got misogynistic lying bastards in the White House.

On the other hand, I feel genuinely hostile to things that are a little too sincere and treacly. They make me uncomfortable, and then my discomfort makes me uncomfortable. After all, lots of people like that stuff, and my disdain for it probably indicates snobbery. And what if I end up bitter and alone and writing a book about how democracy really isn’t any good and people should be led by their betters, namely me. Where would I be then?

At large race:
Matt O’Malley, because he has a good platform and a good website to promote it.
Michael F. Flaherty, Maura Hennigan, and Patricia H. White, because the Phoenix likes them. And very much not Roy Owens, who’s a nutjob..

In my district (Eight, Fenway/Back Bay/Kenmore), although I like Carmen Torres because she’s got strong ideas about urban development, I think I’m going to vote for Michael Ross, who has the right kind of experience in urban planning and city management, is younger, and is endorsed by the Phoneix.

For further reference: Candidate Profiles, and Phoneix Endorsements.

Not very surprising news: people buy and sell drugs, even when they are in mental hospitals. Everyone knows you can get drugs in prison, but in a hospital, where there’s less security? Gee, you think?
In athletics, there is a history of cheating and doping, and we’re not over it yet by a long shot.

Some people have misperceptions about popular holidays.

Psychologists and sociologists are studying brand loyalty. Wow, psychological attachment created in a social setting is being studied by professionals, and scientific learning is being applied to commerce.

And once again, a lot of people like to live alone. This is a slightly better perspective– CSMonitor describes it as a trend rather than a movement, and explores some of the implications, rather than promoting or decrying it. It’s especially noticeable in places like Boston, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. where there are large numbers of young unmarried people– something like a third of Boston is between 18 and 30.

Loners need a club like the anarchist club needs a president.

I am annoyed when people whine about getting Canadian coins instead of US coins but I do like the idea that people might actually just send me some random cash. Oh please world, send me your Euros so that I can insult the French with them. I’ll be sure to mail them all back to the EU government, honest.

I am very suspicious of branding but I am a sucker for Honda motorcycles.

I’m getting tired of LOTR madness. Even the number of things making fun of LOTR. I mean, really, how much time do we need to spend on this?

A lot, I guess. Helen pointed out that we do in fact need manuals telling us what not to wear, and I guess she’s right. There’s a lot of shows for it too– Queer Eye, What Not to Wear, and Fashion Emergency, just for starters.

There was a condo around the street from my house that I ogled. It had a for-sale sign out front so I called. They said it had sold in under 2 weeks for over 600k. This was a condo, mind you, with basement bedrooms.

The word of the day is butt call, the accidental calls you get when people sit on their phones and it dials a speed-dial number. The side-effect, of convenience, is the inconvenience of others.

More on unintended consequences, this time with respect to the US war on drugs:
Reason magazine on heroin addiction, (they have a strong libertarian bent, so you know they’re going to be arguing that the drug laws are stupid).
Criticisms and directions on how to fix US drug policy, by some guy named Randy, whom I don’t know much about,.
Note also the previously posted questions for public health students.

Other unintended consequences: intellectual properly policies that are insufficiently clear can leave you open to annoying jokesters. And failing to plan for the extended character sets of non-English languages can leave your software mocked mercilessly by the famous Joel.