Vox Populi

Is flippery-floppery a procedural offense or a cosmetic one?

It’s admirable to be stubborn and right. Dangerous to be stubborn and wrong.

It’s good to flip-flop if you’re in the wrong. Not so good to do so if you were right to begin with.

I tend to admire people who flip on account of compelling evidence.

In the end, they’re both pretty mediocre politicians. So, reaching deep to find a rationale to actively back Kerry instead of just getting high and watching Cartoon Central for the next 6 months, I’d have to focus on the “character issue.”

Albeit, they are more stereotypes than anything else, nevertheless, they are being eroded into feminine, wimpy, touchy-feely, symbols of the fairyistic agenda entrenched in the media. Will any real men, if there are any left in the media, please take a stand for the few remaining real men in the world? I implore you, please. The last thing you want is a real man, like myself, having to take it upon my shoulders and purchase one of these media conglomerates and turn it right side up, reeking havoc in the process…I will give you six months. If things do not change then Hell is coming for breakfast!

Hats? They strip for hats?

And all this time I’ve been offering them money…

So baby, why don’t we figure out the cost/benefit ratio of faking an orgasm … back at my place.

In a sexual relationship, we presume that the two partners have some mutual incentive to make each other happy. Even in one so utilitarian as prostitution, there’s a mutual exchange of benefits. Are we to assume that any conclusions to be drawn from this are applicable to a courtroom setting where the defendant and the jury have absolutely no mutual interests at all? Or must we depend on a very slender (and not stated by Landsburg) assumption that mutual interest exists because the jury believes that this particular defendant may someday be on a jury that’s trying them?

As if that weren’t sufficiently suspicious, take a look at this whopper from Mialon’s paper:

The model predicts that love, formally defined as a mixture of altruism and possessiveness, increases the probability of faking ecstasy …

I like Economics. I really do. I read books about it. But anyone who would describe love in those terms either has never experienced it or doesn’t perceive it in any way I would trust.

Scientific research is directed towards finding fixed relationships between physical objects. One can scientifically determine if a diamond is real by making certain scientific tests that define a diamond. Orgasm is can not be defined like a diamond, because it is not a physical object like diamond. Therefore, genuinity of orgasm depends on the state of mind of the man at the other end of the line.

Does it not sound more political than scientific?

Only if you are a dualist. If you take the assumption that the area you are studying boils down to matter eventually, then you can study it under your definition of science. However, that is by no means THE definition of science.

I didn’t see any actual discussion of game theory in sexual role-playing. I read some discussion of motives for game playing but that is not the same thing.

Even though the writer said the author used it, I don’t see it in the article. Game theory is generally used to analyze player behavior and thus allow a prediction of the probability of something happening in the future; not to analyze something that may or may not have happened in the past.

If the wife keeps her maiden name then the kids become the point where the name of one parent is given preference over the other’s. And if we adopt the Spanish method, then it is at the level of grandchild that the surnames of grandfathers finally trump those of grandmothers. Neither solution answers the fundamental question of equity; it just makes all of our names a bit more unwieldy.

I don’t mean to be critical of those proposals in particular. In the end, it is simply an intractable problem. There is no way to have family names indicate a relationship (e.g., ancestral lineage, or which kid is yours when you show up at the elementary school) in a standard fashion that can be interpreted by the rest of society as you encounter it while still maintaining perfect gender equity.

The Spanish practice is regular though still male-centric; the father’s family name is the principal one for the children, while the mother’s family name is the secondary one. The father’s family name continues, while the mother’s is passed down one generation.

Let the gender decide. If we have a daughter, she’ll get my wife’s last name; a son gets mine.

Ms. Roiphe is being a tad to disdainful about this whole matter. Names have for a long time had a certain sort of power and prestige, and being able to control their use depending on the situation is a weighty power indeed. Just how “shallow” is being able to not be known as “Mrs. Smith” in many contexts, if one doesn’t want to be? Being able to play with your name depending on the particular role you wish to play is a quite important matter of personal identity. The fact it can be altered underlines, not belittles, its importance.

One other slightly patriarchal aspect. Consider the dictionary definition of “maiden”, then consider what “maiden name” implies.

I spent part of my summers working North Michigan Avenue mostly on the Wrigley Building with its huge clock. We would rig the building using manila hemp rope and wood scaffolds with a 2 x 4 rail to keep you from backing off it. Pulling the scaffold up the building would numb the arms. Each summer the building was washed and it would take on a new white appearance standing out amongst all the other buildings as you looked northward up Michigan Avenue.

While I would not recommend building another Wrigley Building, I would hope there would be more imagination put into play in the appearance of newer buildings. No more boxes please!

Work with me, people. If you seriously confuse Wonkette and Kausfiles I have to seriously challenge you to prove you are not mentally disadvantaged. Kaus is a real wonk (who wonks the wonk as it were), Wonkette (aka Ana Marie Cox) is a gossip fiend who covers politics because she lives in D.C. There’s no substance, and zero debate of any issue, in Wonkette…let’s face it, most if not all of the bitching is from Lefties who find it terribly inconvenient that Kaus is spotlighting Kerry’s (significant) flaws in a liberal publication…Any one Kaus piece is necessarily light on substance because his format is more stream of consciousness…taken as a whole, he provides interesting left-of-center commentary that is unique for not coming out of the DNC hivemind. I’ve long believed that every publication needs a quasi-apostate like this to check its biases and blind spots (too much of Slate suffers from having so many biases and such enormous blind spots). It’s always depressing to encounter partisans who strenuously assert that the party line must be parroted by all.

Jack, you never bust the balls of your fellow scribes or media figures, do you? You’re never gratuitously mean in your take-downs, are you? You and Kaus are all sweetness and light, right? Tim Noah is a “We are the World” kind of guy, just like Suellentrop and young Mr. Ballbuster who spends his days trashing what’s in other people’s magazines. Not to mention all those folks who excerpt the dirt from people’s books and pepper their excerpts with puerile comments. Maybe you wanna stop over at McSweeney’s  snarkwatch site and rat out these evil people to Heidi Julavits, Dave Eggers and company.

Oh, how we here dream of having hours to produce copy; to have a budget, or editor, or even creds. Seems like if there’s really going to be a free market place of ideas, as well as a full and frank exchange of information, the number of stalls would be pretty vast. There’s got to be someone on the outside fringe. There’s always somebody pushing the envelope. How could it be otherwise? The fringe isn’t supposed to fit in with the rest of your bullshit world. “Journalistic values” huh?– the last refuge of a lap monkey.

All of the above and more certainly applies to Kausfiles — including bumblebee attention span, toddler-level complexity, and Ahabesque obsession (of late) to top it off. At least as gossip goes, Gawker and Wonkette are unpretentious and damn entertaining - the gossip-blogger in Jack Shafer’s own backyard is borders on the depressing, and seems to have mistaken himself for an actual journalist.

Maybe it’s proof that the net still doesn’t have enough gravitational pull to exert a true influence without hanging onto the apron strings of the old media. If you talk about the big boys they may just talk about you in return, producing a sense of equivalence in the process.

The whole phenomenon is a little like the relationship between a radio talk show host and his favorite, witty caller. It’s not that there’s no dialogue but you can’t ignore that the power of agenda setting runs one way only.

[F]act is this kind of cheeky commentary has a “Made ya look!” factor that’s irresistible. In the olden days, it would be High Satire. Now that nearly everyone has mastered crude irony, perhaps it’s currency is worth less. But it’s still fun.

Early in his life, Dahmer became heavily influenced by the writings of Gandhi and Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”. He was convinced that death was a commodity more suited for cottage industry rather than mass production. Imagine our collective benefits if his insights were known before the world wars, or even Vietnam. He ran into trouble with the law because experimentation on human subjects was still taboo. Today, he would be sitting on half a dozen NSF grants.

Anyone out there the oldest child? You know what I’m talking about – for a brief shining moment you get to the only one, the center of attention, and the apple of your parents’ eye, then all of a sudden have a new little squirt comes along. Mom and dad forget all about you except when something goes wrong, and meanwhile this new kid can do no wrong.

Ok, now imagine if God’s also getting on the action. Yeah, he’s picking favorites too. This is the OT God we’re talking about, and you’re the only four people on earth, the Big Guy has plenty of time to micromanage.