Too Easy

A friend of mine posted this video on Facebook, a thirteen-year-old kid addressing this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He's even written a book. I was prepared to be impressed. And I was.



I was utterly blown away by the word salad.

Come on, people. Yeah, he's a cute kid. Yeah, he has poise. Yeah, he can throw the buzzwords around. But do you really not understand that there was not one bit of content to anything he said?

You want to know what's wrong with the "conservative" movement in this country? Try the fact that a thirteen-year-old on his way to an audition can engage an audience at the same intellectual level as the movement's professional thinkers.

Of course, the kid did do one thing better than all the adults at the conference. He left early. Smart boy.

Thanks, Laurie.

Two Copyrights Can Make a Wrong

Sham pulp culture buried in time
True pulp culture there to be plundered

I stopped by Pharyngula this morning, as I usually do on Sunday mornings, to see whether there were any questions for the radio show. There weren't, which was fine. We got more questions during the show than we could fit in.

What was at Pharyngula was a link to a feature-length animated movie by Nina Paley.

"Aha," I said to myself, "That's what she's been doing!"

I used to read Nina's Adventures (here's a fun one), and I missed their cheerful cynicism, so, discovering that she had a blog, I decided to play a little catch up.

I didn't find quite what I'd expected. Instead, I found another lesson in why the current U.S. copyright law hurts artists:

Even with the $50,000, I still may not be able to clear all the songs. So far only Warner-Chappell and EMI have informally agreed to those terms, but they haven’t issued contracts yet, and they can still change their minds for any reason. The rest of the rightsholders are under no obligation to agree. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, will they work with me or against me?

What's the big deal, right? Of course she has to clear copyright on the music in her movie. Well, yes, but the copyrights she's clearing are for 1920s jazz songs. The singer is dead, the writers are dead, but the corporations that now own the rights live on. And on and on.

For three years, Paley's been working to be able to distribute this film built around music older than anyone who's going to read this post. And so, another artist I admire is supporting QuestionCopyright.org.

1920s.

We pay our artists next to nothing to feed our minds and our hearts. How much can we afford to charge them for the materials they need to do it?

Jane Yolen (whose views on copyright I don't know), tells a story about a letter she received from an elementary student. This student had been assigned Jane's book Wizard's Hall and had noted several similarities between Wizard's Hall and the Harry Potter books. Indignant, the child asked the teacher whether J. K. Rowling was going to sue Jane for ripping off Harry Potter.

The teacher suggested the student look at the respective publication dates.

Oh.

Now the student wanted to know whether Jane was going to sue J. K. Rowling.

Jane suggested, with the patient gentleness that is one of her charms, that if Rowling wanted to send her something for the idea, she wouldn't turn it down. But no, she wasn't going to sue.

She could, perhaps, have sued, but (back to my opinions) what would have been the point? Harry Potter wasn't terribly original, but that wasn't why kids loved it. In fact, kids adored some of the least original parts of the books: the magic wands, the lonely orphan, the staunch friendships, the classic British boarding school format, the rivalries, the rebellion. If Rowling had insisted that every part of her book had been untraceable in modern children's literature, would anyone have read it? And what would have happened to all those kids inspired to read had Jane sued?

If Harry Potter doesn't seal the argument against long copyrights for you, try reading Will Shetterly's fable, "The People Who Owned the Bible."

But when his Lulabelle ran off with a Bible salesman, Jimmy retired to one of his mansions and refused to let anyone print any more Bibles or use the Bible in any way that raised money.

The surviving churches sent delegates to Disney, begging them to get Congress to shorten the copyright period to put the KJV back in the public domain. But Disney had picked up the rights to a Restoration revenge tragedy that looked like a great vehicle for Britney Spears, so they made a counteroffer.

It's funny as hell, but how far is it really from what would happen?

Nina Paley could use your help to get this movie fully free from its copyright issues. You can go see whether you think its worth the help. She needs donations to pay off the record companies. She needs server space and bandwidth for distribution. She may still even need a lawyer. There's just one thing she's asking you not do.

Many more formats will be online by March 7th, the day Sita Sings the Blues airs on WNET TV (part of Reel 13 on March 7 at 10:45 pm). These will be higher resolution and free to copy and share. If you want a copy, please wait for the higher quality formats instead of capturing the very compressed channel13.org streaming version. As the artist, I want the highest quality versions to circulate; it’d be sad if a super-compressed capture started torrenting first. Together, we can keep quality high!

So please don't distribute the film yourself--not yet.

So check beneath your fingernails
In between your toes
Right between your earlobes, darling,
That's where culture grows

Atheists Talk--Massimo Pigliucci

How to Tell the Difference Between Science and Bunk
Atheists Talk #0059, Sunday, March 1, 2009

Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, of the Stonybrook Institute in New York, is a biologist and a philosopher who has published about a hundred technical papers and several books on evolutionary biology. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, selected "for fundamental studies of genotype by environmental interactions and for public defense of evolutionary biology from pseudoscientific attack." Massimo is also an atheist and has published articles in Skeptical Enquirer, Philosophy Now, The Philosopher's Magazine and American Atheist Magazine.

Greg Laden, who has been a frequent and popular guest on "Atheists Talk," is an evolutionary anthropologist and professor at the University of Minnesota. On Sunday, Greg turns the tables and does the interviewing, talking to Massimo about Ken Miller and the role of god in tweaking the genome at strategic moments, whether or not man is some sort of elevated creature according to biologists who should know better, and the role of pseudoscience in weakening the public's understanding of evolution.

Produced by Minnesota Atheists. Directed by Mike Haubrich. Hosted by Stephanie Zvan. Interview by Greg Laden.

• Evolution Debate – Pigliucci v. Hovind, Infidel Guy


• Science and Fundamentalism; A Strategy on How to Deal With Anti-Science Fundamentalism


• Vows – Gillian Dunn, Massimo Pigliucci


• Why I Disagree with Ken Miller


• Ken Miller Responds to Massimo (and vice versa)


• Why Didn't Darwin Discover Mendel's Laws?


• Massimo Pigliucci Wikipedia


• Rationallyspeaking.org at Scientific Blogging

Podcast Coming Soon!
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Write a review of Atheists Talk

Listen to AM 950 KTNF on Sunday at 9AM Central to hear Atheists Talk produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call the studio at 952-946-6205 or email us at radio@mnatheists.org.

Assessing the Odds

A while ago, I looked at the renewed proposals to expand gambling in Minnesota and concluded that it didn’t make sense, in a time of declines in the national gaming industry, to spend money on new gambling infrastructure in the hopes that it would start generating revenue soon enough to be of help. At the time, I noted that state lottery revenue was up in a bare majority of states, but numbers for Minnesota weren’t available. They are now.

I'm doing my heavy blogging for the day over at Quiche Moraine. Today I continue looking at whether adding more gambling as a source of state revenue makes any sense for Minnesota.

Class Warfare

Analysis: Obama plan to finance agenda with tax hikes on rich elicits class warfare cries

The budget outline includes activist initiatives on energy, health care, education and climate change.

It would boost taxes on the wealthy, oil companies and other businesses while cutting Medicare and Medicaid payments to insurance companies and hospitals to make way for a $634 billion down payment on universal health care. It would also limit charitable and other tax deductions for the affluent and trim spending on government subsidies to big farms.

Predictably, Republicans complained, much as they had done during last year's presidential campaign, that Obama was pitting the haves against the have-nots.

Why is it only class warfare when those who aren't wealthy are asking for something? What is it the rest of the time? Class occupation? Class siege? Classicide? Or is it just that only the rich have class?

Asked whether the class-warfare argument could complicate White House efforts to win support for some of its big priorities, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "No. And I think it's important to understand that what the president has enumerated in his budget today is precisely the blueprint and series of promises that he made over the course of two years in a campaign ... that the American people voted for."

The Best Love Songs

...are the ones that look beyond the first blush.

I used to think I didn't like love songs, that they were all kind of banal and repetitive. Cute, but not very interesting. Then I discovered it was a Tolstoy problem [pointless Anna Karenina reference]. It was only the perfectly happy, love-makes-the-world-perfect love songs that I didn't like. Luckily, they're not all like that.

The Ship Song

...but when I crawl into your arms, everything comes tumbling down.

I'm not sure which of these two songs is my favorite. I like the simplicity of the Nick Cave, particularly this version. The live version of the Marc Almond is a little more thoroughly produced than the album version, which I prefer. But the Marc Almond song is, in the end, a little happier, and it turns out that I like happy love songs, as long as that's not all they are.

Under Your Wing

...and the passing of my youth seems like a new beginning.

Inspired by Scicurious, who wrote about "The most annoying love song ever written."

A Royal Scandal?

Rumors swirled in the monarchy of Heckofalot today, as the Twitter account of The Princess filled with what at first appeared to be postmodern song lyrics:

/;;;;;;..[;[;[;;[;[;;;[[[[p;[[[]][]'[;;[[]\\]]'[;pp[o/ki/'ookk/kkoo''/000/..0'++===p-///=/9i-//uuhh

and later lapsed into apparent code:

.-.0.000/

000000.00

Residents were first amused but rapidly grew concerned for the safety of the royal family. They were promptly reassured by The Prince (or is he The Butler?).

Ummm... Ignore those tweets from @bethanyg. The "Tiny Tyrant" got to her machine before I could close the lid.

The Princess threw her voice and authority behind the story.

Sorry - while I was at Arts Advocacy day, @duchessbeatrix decided to reinvent social media — on my account.

However, rather than calm the masses, these Tweets only raised new concerns. Her Grace, the Duchess of Heckofalot has long been known to Tweet in her own distinct voice.

Thank you to everyone who attended the my official birthday celebration at the palace. Thanks to everyone else for wishing you could.

This charmingly despotic voice is also in evidence at Her Grace's blog.

Unlike other monarchies, we do not grant knighthood to any random pop music star or captain of industry that wonders in the door (Britain I am looking at you). We take such titles seriously here. To become a knight in Heckofalot, I will beat you on the head with my scepter until you cry and beg me for a title. Not only will this prove you worthy but it also makes me giggle.

None of these official communications did anything to prepare the citizens of Heckofalot for today's Tweets. "Is something wrong with our dear Duchess?" they wondered aloud. "Surely, The Princess and The Prince (or is he The Butler?) would tell us if anything were amiss!"

But that was only the public speculation. Away from the prying eyes of the pervasive social media, other theories were put forth. People spoke in hushed tones of thwarted invasions and aborted palace coups. They also whispered of a theory that your correspondent trembles to commit to print.

Yes, in their offline privacy, the citizens of Heckofalot turned to one another and asked, "Does our Duchess tipple while she Tweets?"

A Year on Propranolol

The part I remember best is waking up with my head down on my arms. On my desk. With the voices around me, it only took a moment to figure out where I was. Oh, crap. I decided I must have fallen asleep at work. What could be more embarrassing than that?

Then I remembered.

I know the science on propranolol, emotion and memory is all terribly last week, but I've never promised or even particularly tried to be a current events blogger. Also, I still owe Juniper a blog post, and while this isn't that post, it gets at some of the later stages of how my emotional life changed from child to adult.

I still can't say what switch flipped between my junior and senior years of high school and took me from deeply depressed and anxious to moderately functional. My social circle hadn't changed much, but the individuals I hung out with within the circle did. It might have been the one newish friend who I knew wanted something from me but who didn't reject me when it wasn't something I could give. Come to think of it, I can't imagine how that lack of rejection could have been anything other than critical.

Whatever happened in high school, time and success and independence were all very good for me. So was Ben, although that is, again, another story. Eventually, depression was brief (still despair-deep, but brief) and tended to be set off by triggered memories.

The anxiety never went away, though, as might be expected. (Ed, I promise. I'll keep reading you even if you stop posting about my life.) I still haven't learned to fall asleep properly when anything remotely exciting is happening, much less anything where people are relying on me. For most of my life, the time before sleep has been filled with obsessive deconstruction of the prior day and planning for the next--or fiction. I prefer the fiction.

Waking life was hardly free of anxiety either. As an adult, I've been one of the people whom others look at and ask, "Can you do this?" Usually it's something I haven't done before, so I'm as curious as they are. I rarely say, "No," but this tends to leave me with big unknowns in my life, big opportunities to disappoint. I'm not fond of disappointing people.

I was over 30 before I realized it, but I'd been getting migraines on a very regular basis since at least junior high. I didn't know that's what they were, because in a way, I was one of the lucky ones. Only a few migraines a year actually hurt. For the rest of them, the debility came from strange visual and somatosensory effects, hypersensitivity and confusion.

I love my doctor. When I walked in with a big list of symptoms that could, even in this day and age, get me labeled "hysterical" and said, "I think I get migraines, although mostly they don't really hurt," she pulled out her PDA and started checking off symptoms rather than immediately referring me to a psychologist. We tried a few drugs for treatment of symptoms, including some stunningly bitter pills that dissolved on the tongue. They worked, but they were nothing that insurance was going to cover at the frequency I got migraines, and they did nothing to cut down the frequency.

Then she asked me how I felt about abortion. She already knew I wasn't planning to have kids, but she wanted to be sure I wouldn't feel compelled to carry to term if I accidentally became pregnant while on propranolol. If I would have, she'd have prescribed something else. The idea of congenital defects was obviously quite disturbing to her, pregnant as she was.

With a few more checks of my blood pressure against the lowest recommended pressure for the drug (I was borderline), she sent me off with strict instructions to either come in or check my blood pressure with one of the in-store cuffs every few days for the next few weeks and a six-month prescription. Six more months were to follow if it helped and didn't produce undesirable side effects. After that, with a little luck, I'd be migraine-free.

Believe me, I checked my blood pressure. Getting used to propranolol felt almost as strange as the migraines. I felt so light. It wasn't lightheadedness, except when I stood up too quickly. (I learned how to get out of bed slowly, in stages.) I was just light.

It took me a while to realize I couldn't get really upset if I wanted to. I could still recognize things that were wrong, and I still acted to fix them. I just didn't do it riding on a wave of righteous adrenaline. I could get angry and act angry, but I couldn't feel the same degree of anger I was used to. Flooding my body with adrenaline no longer produced any noticeable results. My reputation for calm in the face of chaos became more than just me putting on a calm face to keep others from freaking out and getting me going. It was now true.

The same thing happened with anxiety, of course. I didn't get any less ambitious in what I attempted, but facing failure no longer raised all the ghosts of failure past. I can't tell you whether I thought about my childhood during that time, thus stripping it of the negative emotions attached to it. I can tell you that the longer I spent without anxiety, the further away those memories got. That anxious kid became less and less someone I knew. I'd already trained myself not to think of my childhood often. The drug removed the emotional triggers that kept me remembering whether I wanted to or not. It let the present run on uninterrupted.

Maybe that could have been a bad thing, an unexamined life and all, except that I'm nothing if not introspective. Not only had I mined my memories for the lessons they could provide, but I had lived in them far longer than they deserved. Distance was a mercy and a pleasure.

The propranolol got rid of the migraines, too. Mostly anyway. I still get them occasionally, just as I haven't completely trained myself not to respond to non-immediate threats with a burst of adrenaline, particularly around election time. And I still haven't learned to sleep well.

Still, a year on propranolol was one of the best things I've ever done for myself, even considering the waking up at work.

I'd been sitting at my desk, having just raised my soda, when someone came around the corner to ask me something. I quickly swallowed--too quickly, setting off one of those pointless but painful esophageal spasms. Pretending I wasn't about to gasp with pain, I turned to listen to my coworker. When I felt the roaring in my ears, I took a couple of deep breaths to hold back the black, but it was too late.

People look at you differently when they're afraid you might drop on them at any time. A bottle of prescription drugs and the explanation, "I swallowed funny," don't quite cut it. They gather around. They want you to lie down and take things easy and reassure them several times a day for the next several weeks that, really, you feel fine. No, really.

Yes, passing out at work because your blood pressure is low and doesn't respond well to pain is ever so much more embarrassing than falling asleep.

Reappeared

Home again, having paid out much sleep debt, eaten much good food, shriveled my fingers in the hot tub and spent many hours in silly and serious conversation with friends. This weekend's game of choice was apparently creating the world's most insipid revolutionary slogans.

• Foreground the optical substrate!
• Up with the hoi polloi!
• Inconvenience the bourgeoisie!

We were also the zoo exhibit of choice for several does with yearlings.

"Stay here between us, kids. You'll be safe. They're behind glass."

"Why don't they do anything? They're just staring at us. Do they act like that in the wild?"

"No, honey. They're much more dangerous in the wild."

"Eek! One moved! Run away!"

Anyway, off to bed so as not to undo all the good I just did myself.

Reappearing

Yeah, still unplugged. But I'll be back. And since my last post about music got me friends showing up at the concert, I'll let you know where I'll be (in April). The song just seems appropriate.

I Disappear

How could I resist? It's all I want, and now I guess I've got it.

Gone Away

I'm taking a vacation from the internet this weekend. At least mostly. We'll see how the withdrawal goes. I might not be able to stand it.

Okay, I'm making it fairly difficult for me to get on the internet this weekend. Good enough? In the meantime, check out someone else.

I just met Crystal and Vic this weekend, although I've liked Crystal's blog for a while. I recommend going to find out why she's just not all that concerned with online privacy. Vic's a little more concerned, but he's talking about sociopaths, so that seems appropriate.

Mme. Piggy is totally stealing our shtick with a restaurant review. I mean, sure, her blog's called Food Devotions and Kermit Love, and she was doing it first, but is that any excuse? And why haven't I had pho?

Muse is ranting. I always like that. This time, it's about epigenetics.

Scicurious is reminding me (as though I needed it) why I love her so. She's answered the "Why Am I a Scientist?" question that Ambivalent Academic started. She says she just sort of fell into it, but everything else about her answer says she was made for the role.

Jessica pointed me at Pride and Predator. It's in Variety. It has to be true, right?

And oh, people are posting stories. Okay, Kelly's is a play, not a story: Waiting for Inspiration: A Writer’s Morality Play In Half An Act. Juniper's is actually lots of stories about getting malaria and the effects of trying to prevent it. Plus exploding taxis. PalMD finished his story of his trip to Honduras after Hurricane Mitch. Greg is still adding new Congo memoirs, although there's a rumor he's nearly done. And Quiche Moraine is starting its own nice little collection of stories.

Wait, why am I taking a break again?

Good Times

Considering how much corporate money went into keeping the Republicans in power for as long as they were, there's something satisfying about hearing a successful, large-company CEO saying (essentially), "I'm about as independent as they come, but I have to say it's strange to hear the Republicans talking about how the stimulus bill is going to mortgage our future. I mean, considering what they did, I think they pretty well had that covered."

Not as satisfying as watching an election in which the corporate money wasn't a big deal, but satisfying.

Extra satisfying when sitting across from the table from someone who had a coworker in my office nearly in tears with the nasty things he said about why McCain lost. That part was very nice.

That is all.

[Updated to hopefully fix an annoying search engine glitch.]

Origin of Species

Aah! I can't believe I forgot to post this last week. Oh, unfortunately still all too relevant. It is, of course, The Front, nerdcore master extraordinaire.

Origin of Species

Think how much like paradise that's gonna be.

The Ironies

Saturday's post was probably the most cynical thing I've ever written. I hope it was worthwhile, but I'm probably never going to know. What I do know is that I've burned up some self-respect and likely the trust of several of my readers. I'm sorry for that.

It went like this.

I'm not big on rules. I think that rules about communication are particularly harmful, since they control who gets to communicate. And it pisses me off when people try to control the avenues of communication.

Not that communication doesn't follow rules, but the rules are local, worked out between individuals--or not. When they're not, people have basically two choices. They can stop trying to communicate, or they can pretty much butt heads ad nauseum. This may or may not eventually end in the local rules being established.

Most of us tend to take this process for granted. We've been navigating the tricky waters of opening communication most of our lives. We don't think about it; we just do it. We develop strategies, which eventually become habits because they work most of the time.

Not all the time. And when they don't work, we've got not just head-butting going on. We've got head-butting between experts, because everybody's strategy works most of the time and it would be so much easier if everyone followed our rules and they could work all the time and, really, how hard is it to change just a little so my rules work again and they're not even really rules, just what works, and why won't you cooperate and are you trying to be difficult and it's just. not. that. hard.

But they're still rules. They're still arbitrary rules based on what works most of the time for most people. And my good friend was the one being told he should follow someone else's rules, which made my opinion on the matter suspect. I was being limited in my ability to communicate.

So I reversed the situation. I picked a different victim, one I was less associated with. I picked a bunch of things generally considered to be good ideas when communicating online, and I hit my victim with them as though they were written in stone.

It worked. People jumped on board and joined the finger-pointing, in comments and email (and thank you to the one person who told me by email that I was wrong). Despite me saying they weren't rules, someone called them my rules. Despite me pointing out that I was the last person who should be in a position to judge Janet, only one person commented that I was applying the rules differentially. I was, deliberately. I was a bully, plain and simple, hurting someone based on the fact that she didn't follow my rules, even as I refused to acknowledge that I was deeming them rules.

It took thirty-some comments and almost two days for someone to point that out. Even Becca, who is so good at spotting bullshit (some would say too good sometimes), didn't challenge me. I was starting to think I'd need to do it myself.

I can't tell you how many people didn't argue because I spoke with an intimidating authority. I can't tell you how many thought the rules were good ones that everyone should follow. All I can tell you is that it took far too long for someone to tell me I was as full of it as I set out to be.

Nobody should be able to do what I did. Communication requires two parties, and they should both (assuming sane adults) always have a say in the rules.

That part really is just that simple.

Oh, Hell Yes

I've mentioned previously that March will be a good music month. In addition to the new Madness album, I have tickets to a band I thought I'd never get to see live.

Yes, the Squirrel Nut Zippers have reformed and are doing another tour, starting in Minneapolis. Okay, so it's a little ironic that I'm seeing them here, having just been to their neck of the woods last month, but I'll take what I can get. How can I not, when they write songs just for me.

Put a Lid on It

Now the girl's in overdrive. Some of your pals want to stay alive.

Not to mention some truly sweet surreal Eastern European jazz fusion. No, I didn't know what that sounded like until I heard this song either. Now with awesome retro video.

The Ghost of Steven Foster

If we were made of cellophane, we'd all get stinking drunk much faster.

I got my tickets today. Sooo happy.