Crazy People and In-Laws

• Jun 25, 2007

Crazy People and In-Laws

The guy I told you about, the homeless guy who lost his ticket and says a conspiracy exists that prevents him form getting an ID; when i came in today Felipe had let him borrow some tools to work on his bike.

His stuff was spread out all over the floor, his bags, spare tires, shoes...
He kept going and going.
He started asking for different tools, and I told him we don't normally load out tools (which is true) but I wanted him to finish so he could leave, so I let him use one more wrench and took back the others...

Raving and rambling non-sense, and yelling at fare jumpers for some reason.

I was getting so tired of him.

And you know what?

He reminded me of your dad, or I thought how they were similar, and right when I thought that, I felt more sympathy for him. I felt a little more patient.
Which was odd, because I don’t generally feel sympathy for your father (or at least I never thought I did).
The only interaction I had with him was throwing him out of a restaurant, followed by calling him a liar and making vague threats which he took seriously enough to walk away when i told him to.
I feel anger at him for hurting you. Both when you were little, and for those things that lasted into adulthood. I resent the effect he has had on my life, through you.

So it surprised me that the association had that effect, but it was strong and undeniable. Maybe because I know that there is a connection between him and you. Maybe I see him as family (but then why do I not feel the same patience with my actual family?)

Of course, when he started yelling at every passing BART passenger because they hadn't prevented his stuff being stolen (it was apparently stolen hours ago, if not days; but it his mind, is was the fault of ll passers-by, because "people" don't do anything to stop it when they witness such things happening) I did tell him he had to leave.

Land Rover ad makes it explicit

• Jun 21, 2007

Land Rover ad makes it explicit

after listing off fancy technological off road features, the voice over says:

"despite the probability that you won't, the LR2 is designed for the possibility that you will"

American consumer mindset, right there.

Our homes, our cars, the self-storage industry (which has only existed since the 1970s and has doubled in the past few years) all guided by that principal.

Lets all take what we can grab before it runs out...
(and try to forget that it wouldn't be running out if we weren't all grabbing)

Prius v. my own Hypocrisy

• Jun 20, 2007

Prius v. my own Hypocrisy

Auto ads today would have you believe that 30-35 mpg is amazingly good.

35 is awful!
We have the technology to have affordable passenger vehicles that get 100mpg.
I'll avoid the technical details, but the potential is absolutely there. Without being a hybrid. Seriously. Trust me.

A small part of it is the industry's refusal to do it.
But the primary reason they don't exist is us.

You and I, my friend.

I just read an article in Mother Jones about this guy who volunteered with Habitat for Humanity - that is, until they wanted to put a couple of affordable homes in HIS neighborhood! Then he began to protest and look for legal recourse against his former organization's work.

We look down on him, but we are all him. We are happy to help, as long as the cost to ourselves is negligible.

We are unhappy with a car that takes 20 seconds to go 0-60, maxes out at 85, has room for only 1 passenger, a small trunk, seats with minimal padding, no A/C or heat, manual transmission, manual steering, no power brakes, no power anything.

And so I look at how popular the Prius is; even though the Insight was available years earlier, and gets nearly twice the average mileage (35-40 vs 70); even though 90% of or trips have one or no passengers, even though the speed limit is 65 and we rarely exceed it by more than 15mph or so - we want to know that we could carry 4 passengers at 95mph, and so the Insight doesn't sell, and is discontinued, while the Prius, with its pathetic 35-40 has a waiting list.


And what I realized is:
I drive. My (motor)bike gets 55-60mpg; good, about as good as available for a freeway speed capable machine sold today. That's still a lot of gas getting burned, a lot of pollutants in the air. Just to save me an hour of travel time here and there. Yes, my truck runs on 100% vegetable oil - but it has its own form of pollution, and it still has to come from somewhere, it has to get transported. I ride my bike to work...most days. Which means sometimes I don't. Yes, I have an ultra-efficient home - but it saves me money, plus I enjoy it.
So what, really, am I sacrificing?

And so, in my self-righteousness, I am exactly like the Prius owner.
I work for a non-profit and split my tips with the Coalition; but I don't volunteer (and I have no intention of starting to).
I am vegetarian, but mainly because the thought of eating flesh is sickening.

I guess it is a part of the human mind to despise most those people whose faults match our own most closely.

The people who abhor welfare usually inherited wealth or at least education and connections.
The anti-sex are secretly perverted, and the strongest homophobes are often as not gay. Narcs steal from the evidence room, and the woman who sent hate mail to the guy from the example above who stopped volunteering for Habitat, her home is just as expensive as his.
The deeply religious feel guilt for all their own sins (Christianity's appeal is that all sins are forgiven, as long as you have faith).

I always found the religious to be the most hypocritical and disturbing of all.
To apply the trend I have found, that must mean I am secretly religious myself...


... ... ...




Nnnoope!

Not even a little.

So, I guess that destroys my whole theory about indignant hypocrisy. Sometimes we just dislike something because its stupid; it doesn't have to be projection. That's good. I feel better now. Damn Priuses.

At One With Teh Dumb

• Jun 13, 2007

At One With Teh Dumb

Like ebonics, anti-intellectualism, and the re-election of President Junior, the deliberate misspelling and typos in internet chat culture is a glorification of stupid.
People continually search for innovative new ways to appear more ignorant than they really are.

Being stupid is not cool!

While we're at it, why don't we un-learn all language, give up technology medicine and agriculture, forgot how to make fire, and cut off our opposable  thumbs.

Some people are born with less intelligence.

That's OK. Some people are small, or ugly, or disabled, and that's no fault of their own, nothing to be ashamed of, and some people happen to be born retarded.

But being stupid on purpose, that's just, well, stupid.

With one significant exception:

At One With The Dumb, the album by Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggets, exemplified by their song "I Wish I Was Special"

Hopefully they will play it at their re-union show, Sunday June 24th, at "The Gilman" on Gilman in Berkeley.

Sexual Dimorphism, and Caveman Love

Jun 12, 2007

Sexual Dimorphism, and Caveman Love

Its the scientific term for species where the genders have non-reproductive body features which are distinct from each other, like a mallard's green head or a peacock's tail.  The fiddler crab probably doesn't count because his giant claw is used directly for the mating process.  Many species the genders are both the same size, but differential size sexual dimorphism is very common.

In insects, spiders, microscopic animals, some sea life, a lot of variety exists. Often the female is many times larger than the male, sometimes the male lives symbiotically or even parasitically within the female for a life time, or males live only a few days while females live for months or years.

In the larger animals, the chordates, there are two primary strategies. 
In some species, the males show off for the women, build a better nest, do a sexier dance, show off bright flashy colors, and the women get to choose. 

In others, the men threaten each other, fight if need be, and the winner gets his pick of women - or as many as he can handle, or even all of them.  In this case, it is purely a question of physical dominance.  It doesn't matter if he is ugly, or stupid, or mean.  As long as he's strong, he gets to mate with all the women, whether the other guys like it or not; not to mention whether the women like it or not.  Occasionally, in many species, the women have affairs with certain less dominate males, risking the wrath of Brutus for themselves and their partners.



Sexual size dimorphism is present in humans. 
The stereotype is that cavemen would hit a woman over the head, and drag her back to his cave.  Given our size difference, and the patterns of every other similar specie, there just might be some truth to that.

Most people assume that our size difference is meant to support a system in which women take care of young that are slow to mature (and by extension, takes care of the household as well) while her mate hunts. 

In truth, in most per-agricultural societies a far greater amount of calories comes from gathering than from hunting. Gathering doesn't require a whole lot of strength. 
There are few if any examples of species where the male is much larger and stronger and he is monogamous and invests energy in taking care of his mate and children.  The animals where both genders raise the children together, like penguins, both genders are similar in size and strength.

A female taking care of young is in need of strength, in order to defend them from predators.
In the species where the males have bigger muscles or antlers or horns, they use them on each other to win the right to claim women as their own.

We have obvious differences in both size and strength. 
However, we have largely decided as a specie that we prefer the strategy of non-dimorphous animals.  With our language and our intellect, we are not ruled exclusively by instinct, and we find we are all happier when we agree to a more civil system, (whether its arrangement by parents or mutual attraction). 
Both genders try to make themselves attractive, and both have the option of turning down advances - and there is a lot less violence as a result.
In an earlier time, post-cave-man but still pre-agriculture, we made use of our physical characteristics by adapting our body differences to monogamy, which lead to the misconception most of us have today.  Since the male is in fact stronger and faster, if somebody has to hunt for some occasional protein, may as well be him.

That doesn't mean our biology evolved for this purpose anymore than our fit with a keyboard means our fingers evolved for typing.

The modern world has no application for this difference in size.  And we have moved ever father from the roots of female clubbing and hair dragging.  We have criminalized cave-rape and in keeping with our modern idea of universal human rights, it is now a crime against the female, not against her father or husband.

And yet...

Women still want men who are taller than they are. 
Men are turned off by women with muscular arms.  We correlate masculinity with strength, which inherently implies femininity with weakness.  In the gym women do aerobics, men weight lift.  Its not about natural body type anymore, we put lots of effort into maximizing the difference.  Humans of both genders, even within a particular race or nationality, come in a huge range of shapes and sizes.  There are plenty of women who are taller than or stronger than plenty of men; but they rarely partner with each other, and are barred from competing against each other, because the woman is assumed to be at a disadvantage.  Even sporting events with several weight classes, or for children, usually separate the genders.

Why isn't a woman with big muscles sexy and feminine.
Why can't a short skinny man be hot?
Why can't they be alluring and seductive to each other?
If modern women are independent and capable, why do they still insist that their mates be bigger and stronger than them?  A woman lifting heavy in the gym will never be as powerful as a man lifting heavy in the gym, but there is absolutely no reason she shouldn't try.  For that matter, those no good reason a guy in the gym doesn't focus primarily on aerobics.

I always wanted a woman who could keep up with me, who could run and ride and climb and practice martial arts with me.  I much prefer a solid arm to a squishy or a bony one. 
5'2" Prince was just dripping with raw masculine animal male sexuality... before he became a Jehovah's Witness.

Biology is slow to adapt,
But when does our supposedly evolved mind-set catch up to our societal values?

Stuff smells

• Jun 11, 2007

Stuff smells

Anti-biotic

Latin for "Against Life"

That which kills, poison, death.

We consider it medicine. We use anti-life to keep us alive.


We don’t like to think that we are animals. The "higher" primates. "More" evolved - if a specie is still here, it’s equally highly evolved. We are just more recentlyevolved.
We like to think our motives are better, more pure or more altruistic - we want to make the world a better place, which shows we have souls; we are not animalistic, motivated by lust and hunger and fear. But altruism is common in social species, it is animalistic; and we are motivated by lust, hunger, and fear.

We teach our children early on - not on purpose, but by example, that things that are slimy are "gross". Amphibians, for example.
I can barely imagine a more pleasant sensual experience than a Japanese "SoapLand" - all slimy and slippery and soft and squishy and squirmy.

We, humanity, most societies, are antagonistic toward even just the concept of sex. We take it as given that knowing that sex exists will harm, or at least confuse children. Sex is bad for children? Without sex there are no children! Sex is life. We’re not going to learn how to bud off clone offspring anytime soon.

We like everything purified and sanitized. Sanitized for your protection. Antibiotic. Wouldn’t want to make your immune system have to work. Don’t drink the water. The people who live in second and third world countries drink the water everyday, and they haven’t all died. We avoid dirt. Dirt is soil. Soil grows plants, primary producers, that every other specie depends on for sustenance. Dirt is life. We can’t photosynthesize. We need dirt. A little dirt with your water, with your food, it won’t hurt you. What other specie drinks water only after its been distilled, or reverse osmosised? Its unnatural.

We can see, we can hear, we can feel, we can taste, we can smell. We don’t seem to care much for smell. Things have scents. Saying something "smells" is synonymous in our language for something smells bad. As though every smell were bad. Something is making a sound doesn’t automatically mean a gratingly annoying sound. Most creatures that smell, they use it, they recognize each other by smell, they find food. We don’t like each other’s smell. We wash it away. We deodorize it. The fact that we overly concentrate it with clothing even on a warm day certainly doesn’t help… Most animals don’t like the smell of strong chemicals, but who else finds the smell of their own species to be gross?

Some of the best things about being alive, like sex and food and some of the best play, is slimy and smelly and dirty and filled with bacteria - but not the kind of bacteria that are going to kill you.

We don’t find much visual stimulus to be repulsive. Seems like half of all scents stink to someone.

If we are protected from life, what is the point of living?
Why would anyone want to ingest something which is called an "anti-biotic"?

Email to Move-On.org

• Jun 2, 2007

Email to Move-On.org

I have to disagree with you on this one.

Gas prices need to go up; way up.

Americans drive frivolously.
Air pollution, oil wars, and possibly global warming, are not due to politician evil as much as they are due to consumer habits.
Oil companies - like most American corporations, make way too much money, but the people do not have a "right" to cheap gas.

If the oil companies are gouging, ride a bicycle, or take the train, or at least buy a smaller car.

We should not be encouraging move-on members to be on the wrong side of this issue.
Gas prices need to go up, the sooner the better. That is the ONLY thing which will drive alternative technology, efficiency, energy independence, and individual conservation.

Perverted sex

• Jun 01, 2007

Perverted sex

Now that I got your attention...



In the form most of us know and enjoy it, it is in fact a corruption, a perversion, of nature. Homosexuality, sodomy ( which technically refers to both anal and oral, hetero or homo), masturbation, the religious and the prudes are right in that respect.

Just like chocolate cake, ice cream, movies and roller coasters, drugs of every kind (aspirin for example), soft beds, gyms, clothing; what they have in common, we were smart enough to find something that has a particular effect on the body or mind, and find a way to exaggerate it, or produce the effect artificially.
We could not have evolved, originally, to eat prepared food. We would eat whatever grew. Acorns. Leaves. Roots. We invented grinding, adding water to create mush. Heating food. Now we have tortellini. Totally unnatural. We taste sweet, we like it, to get us to eat fruit. Not strawberry cheese cake. We have enhanced nature, found ways to stimulate pleasure zones.

Nature, our genes, only "care" about having the genes exist into the future.
It could be no other way.
Your body, your mind, it is nothing more than a vessel for carrying your genes. What you think of as your soul, your experience, your life, all of it is just an envelope, just packaging.
That's ok.
We have no claws, little teeth, no camouflage, no niche. Instinct is not enough to get us frail things to survive. We must have intelligence. And in order to have a goal, to direct that intelligence, we must have feeling.

And having both affords us the opportunity to take advantage of pleasure. We have no incentive to adopt our genes goal as our own (not counting the Mormons). There is only one goal which it makes any sense for us to adapt, and that is pleasure. (Not necessarily all in the selfish hedonistic sense, but then, being good to others, causing them pleasure, feels good. Ultimately, it is all about happiness, which in tun is gaining pleasure and reducing pain).
And so we use our intelligence to invent cooking, and to invent birth control. If sex didn't feel good, no one would do it, there would be no children, and we wouldn't be here to think about it. It has to, by default, for every specie that has free will.

Birth control is unnatural. So is abortion. The whole point of sex is babies. Undeniable. But unimportant. No one who objects on these grounds objects to our corruption of the rush of adrenalin intended for avoiding predators and cliffs that we get with roller coaster or sky diving on the equally true point that those are unnatural.

People figured out that sex feels good before the invention of birth control. Our collective psychology has not caught up with technology.

Babies bring up social realities which are more complex than hedonism can take into consideration. We must care about them. Same as before - if we didn't, we wouldn't be here. We're too vulnerable while waiting for that big brain to develop. Sea turtles probably don't have any hang-ups around sex. Babies take a whole lot of resources. You want to know yours really is yours before you spend those resources. You want your genes, not your partners other lover's. You can't watch her at all times. From her point of view, there is no real incentive to be only with you. Maybe the guy with fewer resources has better genes. Or, in her mind, he looks better. Same thing. The problem is universal, and everyone's problem is solved by introducing the concept of adultery, and making it the gravest sin imaginable.
Worse than murder. And this must be fully ingrained into every individual in society. Any one person who questions it could shatter the whole illusion. Incorporating it into religion, beginning the indoctrination from a young age, insures each person feels it is true inside themselves, no matter how little sense it makes.

Undeniable that in a family unit, the adults have control, by default. Their children are theirs. Not a political statement, just the practical reality. The idea that children are their own, their parents merely caretakers, this is new, developed from the expanding sphere of "human rights" which is a purely made up concept - a good one, no doubt, but certainly not natural.
And if you want to negotiate good price for your daughter you need to insure she is a virgin. Groom's family isn't going to want a wife who may already have a baby, none of their genes get passed on. But what incentive does she have? he may not want to be married at all, especially to whoever has been arranged. Marriage may be years in the future. Only way is to convince all daughters that sex is immoral. At the same time, men must believe that the most awful horrible immoral thing they can ever do is have sex with a maiden. Her consent does not matter, the crime is against her father; (and in this you have the beginning of what we today call statuary rape). An entire society has to believe sex is immoral except if in marriage, for reproduction. Otherwise people may start asking questions. We start children believing early, just like with patriotism or religion, because, like those, the idea is so stupid that no sane objective free thinking adult would ever take it seriously. And there in lies the roots of masturbation being seen as wrong - even though there is no risk of pregnancy, no harm to anyone.

But then, when no one is around, within marriage, what's to stop a married couple from telling each other they are trying for a baby when they both know they really aren't? And so then maybe sex for pleasure is ok after all (since its too hard to regulate), but only if its within marriage, and doesn't use birth control. Then its still bordering on "natural" which is the accepted rationalization for claiming immorality.
And you end up with a scale which makes various pleasurable acts more or less immoral based on how similar it is to sex for reproduction within a marriage. Birth control is not as immoral as oral sex. Adultery is less immoral than homosexuality. Any sexual contact with minors, consensual or not, remains the greatest offense (which is not questioned even as the definition of "minor" varies by as much as 10 years or more in different times and cultures).
My wife was still 17 our first few times, which legally made her my 'victim'; despite the fact that she intimated it. I could have done jail time and been listed for life under Megan's law for that. A few months later it was ok though.
Historically, rape was a crime against the woman’s husband (or father if she was unmarried). In the Bible, sex between unmarried people in the city, the woman was criminally liable, she would be punished, because it couldn't have been rape, because she could have screamed, and someone would have heard her and helped. In the countryside, however, only the man is prosecuted, for surely she called out, but no one heard. In the Bible the consequence for raping an unmarried woman was that the man had to marry her. Chances are, not the first choice of the victim.
Fortunately for all of us, humanity eventually figured out that everyone does better when everyone does better, that we can win at game theory if we all play altruist, and we invented the concept of human rights. Nature recognizes no rights. Evolution, survival, life, complex biology is complex chemistry is complex physics... Jackal chases a jack rabbit to eat - no rights involved. That's reality. But in addition to birth control, our intelligence allows us to invent "justice" and "equality". Human rights are no more natural than toilets, shoes, or agriculture; and they are all good things that make our lives a little easier, a little better.
Unintended consequence, since our collective human consciousness is uncomfortable with sex for hundreds of generations, unable to retract those beliefs, today woman are convicted of rape and child molestation, which, considering the reasons those were made sins, makes no sense. But its equitable to at least hold us all to the same standard - right?

In modern times with religion losing its all encompassing grip n our lives, with technology making birth control reliable, with concepts of rights equalizing people, changing relationships, with our greater awareness - it has barely scratched the surface of repression which has enveloped all of humanity.
In our "free" country, supposedly progressive and socially advanced, viewing partial nudity is considered a far greater threat to children than almost any level of violence. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one of the most detailed and realistic video games (in content, not just graphics) yet produced, a veritable orgy of violence, drugs, and crime, violence for profit, for revenge, for fun or simply convenience - has its rating changed to "Adult Only" only after it is revealed that a bit o code can reveal a fully clothed soft-core simulated sex scene.
A (female) member of the air force is sentenced to 3 years in military prison for participating in a consensual three-some, because the other woman was slightly drunker than her (even though she did not request prosecution).
As of only 3 years ago, "sodomy" (which includes not only anal, but also oral, sometimes penetration with "objects", and in some cases even mutual masturbation) was a crime in 14 U.S. states. 9 of them did not discriminate between homo and heterosexual couples (guess which ones). While a supreme court decision on Texas' law effectively reverses them all, they have not all technically been appealed, and can be enforced until somebody legally challenges them. A married, heterosexual couple engaging in almost any form of "foreplay" may therefore be arrested, and, depending on the state, sentenced to up to 10 years in a federal prison, plus lifetime notification of employers and neighbors under Megan's law that they are convicted sex offenders. (Next time some body around you claims we live in a free country, feel free to punch them in the nose for me).
Nudists are quick to point out that nudity does not imply sexuality - which is true, but to mention it in that context is a concession that public sexuality is inherently immoral, or harmful to children, or whatever its supposed to be. (By the way, it is legal for women to be topless in public in a surprising number of U.S. locals, including Washington D.C., the State of New York, and, Maine)

Ideas so ingrained it doesn't even occur to question them. We don't feel we need a reason to explain why its wrong. Its just wrong. Anything which "just is" - probably isn't. If someone is hurt, it's wrong. If no one is hurt, it isn't wrong. Simple.

So
What say you and I get a reliable form of birth control.
And get busy.