Monthly Archives: January 2014

Danica McKellar Teaches Female Stereotypes

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Girls Get Curves

Back in the 3 January birthday post, Ever Since Marion Davies, I wrote, “The great film director Sergio Leone was born in 1929. Interestingly, he isn’t even listed on the front page birthdays of IMDB. Who is? Danica McKellar who I’ve never heard of…” This does not mean much. It is common that I won’t know a single one of the film celebrities who IMDB lists. This caused longtime reader and insightful commenter Rick Fane to write:

FYI – Danica McKellar played Winnie Cooper, the girl next door on The Wonder Years. She took some time off from her acting career to study Mathematics at UCLA where she graduated summa cum laude.

She has written several books which encourage girls to resist hiding their intelligence and to sing the praises of math and science.

I have never seen The Wonder Years, which is not exactly shocking. But I had heard of this series of books—most likely on NPR: math books for girls by Hollywood actress… You know the drill. Although I’m not keen on actors writing books, I liked the idea. I truly think that the reason people in general don’t like or “get” math is because math teachers are, with few exceptions, dreadful.

So I went to the library and picked up Girls Get Curves, a book on high school geometry. I provided a really big picture of the cover of the book so you could get a good idea of what’s in store. Don’t misunderstand, I get it: it’s like a magazine cover with enticing articles like “How do you attract guys?” and “8 self-esteem boosters.” But given the playfully seductive picture of Ms. McKellar, I have a really big problem with, “inside: body image quiz!” Hey girls, does this cover make you feel inferior? Does it make you feel like you’re an ugly cow? Well, then you’re normal. But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna rub it in your face! (To be fair, the earlier books by McKellar have far more acceptable covers.)

I want to be clear: I didn’t read this book. I read parts of it. I skimmed it. Actually, I think that Danica McKellar should get third author status on this book. First, the book is more designed than written. There is no indication of who designed it, but it is well done in the sense of looking good. In terms of being distracting, it’s terrible. But I’ve been in the publishing biz for a long time now, I know that its all about getting people to buy books not read them. Second, the book is filled with compelling if stereotypical images by Mary Lynn Blasutta, who gets credit only on the copyright page.

I am at a distinct disadvantage in discussing this book, however. I know the subject rather well. I am a male. And I am long past my wonder years. So it is probably meaningless that I hate this book. But I think if I were a young female, I would also hate it. This is not to say that all young females would hate it. But given that when I was a boy, I didn’t want to be a stereotypical boy, I assume if I had been a girl, I wouldn’t have wanted to be a stereotypical girl. And this book screams, “OMG! You can be a bubble headed girl and still be good at math!”

Except, you know, you really can’t. It’s long been know that girls turn off to math at exactly the time they turn on to boys. Now there is still some question as to whether this is a hormone thing or a social thing. The evidence (that I’ve seen and I am certainly no expert) is that it is a social thing. And this book does not encourage girls to be themselves. It pushes them to be a very stereotypical image of a 15-year-old girl. Consider:

If Taylor wears pink, then Lizzie wears pink.
If Lizzie wears pink, then Jessica wears pink.
If jessica wears pink, then Brittany wears pink.

And then we’re given this new info:

OMG, Taylor is wearing pink.

Without that last line, we just have a bunch of conditional “rules.” But when we find out that Taylor actually does wear pink, it sets off a chain reaction that causes not only Lizzie to wear pink but also Jessica and Brittany!

OM-fucking-G! I can forgive everything but “pink.” And that it is about dressing up. And… Oh fuck it: it’s all horrible.

It is also no surprise that every image of a girl or woman in the book is slender. In fact, in one of the “testimonials” in the book, we have “Jessica Keramas.” Before, she was, “Overweight and shy.” It doesn’t matter what she is now, except, of course that she is slender and extroverted. It is very clear that both overweight and shy are pejoratives. And given the rest of the imagines of females in the book, I can only geuss that Keramas was not anything close to, say, Chris Christie. But Keramas is quoted saying, “Math skills helped me get in shape.” Yeah, all you tubbos, learn a little math and maybe a boy won’t be so disgusted with you!

I may not have ever seen The Wonder Years, but I know what it is. It’s that show with a kid from The Princess Bride. See, I’m not that out of it. It wasn’t a sit-com, but it was still more or less the 1990s equivalent to Leave It to Beaver. It presents an idealized kind of reality with stereotypes galore. And that’s fine with entertainment. But in the case of Girls Get Curves, I doubt very seriously that much education is getting done. I think books could be written that do what this one claims to do. But I suspect this is a book that parents buy their daughters, who just let the book collect dust.

The problem is that the book is part of the problem of telling girls to be a certain way. On top of that is the message, “And it’s okay to be good at math!” But the first lesson is so much stronger than the second. It drips from every page. In fact, the cover is the perfect example. If you look closely, you can see some lines and numbers. But the take away from the cover is, “Ain’t Danica McKellar hot?!” So instead of “it’s okay to be good at math” it is “it’s okay to be a certain kind of girl and be good at math.” If the book was only purchased by those kinds of girls (Sorry: the parents of those kinds of girls!) it wouldn’t have been a bestseller.

To Dream the SNAP Benefit Dream

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Paul RyanHave you heard the news, sonny?! The Republicans are concerned about poverty! It must be true, because everybody’s talking about it. And the Republicans are making speeches! But they aren’t interested in little things like food and shelter and, you know, education. They are interested in dreams. The Republicans want the poor to dream again. After talking to Paul Ryan, Bishop Shirley Holloway said, “Paul wants people to dream again. You don’t dream when you’ve got food stamps.” And they want the poor to dream big. Marco Rubio said, “Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American dream.” That was quoted in a PBS News Hour article titled without any sense of irony, The War on Poverty: Not Just a Liberal Campaign.

Oh yes! The Republicans care about the poor. That’s why they’re united in cutting extended unemployment benefits. That’s why they’re united in cutting food stamps. That’s why they’re united on leaving the working poor without medical care. And so much more! Matt Yglesias noted of Bishop Holloway’s statement that food stamps prevent dreaming, “Scott Winship, a conservative policy analyst who’s working with Ryan’s staff concede that this kind of thing ‘makes Republicans look like they’re just punishing poor people, which in my experience is a common side-effect of punishing poor people.”

Marco Rubio Time Magazine CoverSo what we have here, is failure to communicate. And I do mean that. This is just another re-branding effort by the right. Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio both support slashing food stamps and unemployment benefits. But they say a couple of things about allowing the poor to dream and the “liberal” PBS says that conservatives have started their own war on poverty. And it isn’t just PBS. In general, the mainstream media just follow right along. It doesn’t matter what the Republicans do, it’s what they say that matters. So there is failure to communicate. Conservatives lie and the media report those lies as fact. It must be true, Gwen Ifill said it!

Paul Krugman’s column today was, Enemies of the Poor. But even he is being too easy on the conservative movement. He notes, “The point is that a party committed to small government and low taxes on the rich is, more or less necessarily, a party committed to hurting, not helping, the poor.” First, the Republicans are not not not committed to small government; they are committed to big government that helps the rich. But we can talk about that some other time. The point is that hurting the poor is not just some side effect of their ideology. It is a key part of their ideology. And you only have to look at a blog post Krugman wrote today to see this.

In You’re All Losers, he shows that the use of the word “losers” in books has gone up by a factor of four since the 1960s. You see, the problem is that it is a big deal when a Republican politician stands up and says that we have to do something to help the poor. It doesn’t matter that the politician has no actual policy ideas and that it is clear that “helping the poor” really means “hurting the poor.” It’s news! But when a Republican politician says yet again that we are stealing from the “producers” and giving it to the “moochers” that’s not news. No one’s interested in that.

After running in circles trying to put the best spin on all this Republican anti-poverty talk, Jonathan Chait concludes where I started, “If Republicans only care about poverty policy insofar as they can use it to rebrand their party for 2016, it seems fair to conclude that they don’t actually care about it at all.” And indeed they don’t. I would go further. Maybe the real anti-poverty program is to allow all the poor to die quickly. That would be a highly effective program. Of course, being dead is even worse for dreaming than food stamps.

John Singer Sargent and the Haiti Earthquake

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John Singer SargentFour years ago today was the 7.0 M earthquake in Haiti that killed over 200,000 people. The death toll was so high because it struck the most populated area of the country. In all, over three million people were affected by it. I think Haiti is an embarrassment to the west. There is no reason for us to allow its people to live in such poverty and suffer so much. But of course, that’s the modern American way: people are divided into the winners and the losers—the producers and the moochers. If someone was a winner, they would be smart enough not to be born in Haiti. The country is still suffering as a result of that earthquake four years ago. But you won’t see it covered much in America. Al Jazeera America did a pretty good job of covering it the last couple of days, as far as I could tell. For more information see CEPR’s Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch.

On this day in 1729, the conservative icon Edmund Burke was born. Actually, he was fairly liberal until the French Revolution. And then he saw that some people we behaving badly and so he ran back to the womb of conservatism: faith in aristocracy. In other words, he was a reactionary. But it’s important to remember that although people like David Brooks and George Will like to quote Burke, there is little that connects him to the modern conservative movement. Regardless, if you ever feel the need to read Burke, read William Hazlitt instead.

Other birthdays: sculptor Francois Duquesnoy (1597); novelist and playwright Frances Brooke (1724); French painter Jean Beraud (1849); writer Jack London (1876); singer Tex Ritter (1905); philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906); singer-songwriter Ray Price (1926); screenwriter Alan Sharp (1934); boxer Joe Frazier (1944); actor Kirstie Alley (63); one of the worst people in the world and a substantial reason our politics is so bad, Rush Limbaugh (63); crime fiction novelist Walter Mosley (62); radio personality Howard Stern (60); actor Oliver Platt (54); probably evil businessman Jeff Bezos (50); and multi-media artist Rob Zombie (49).

The day, however, belongs to the great painter John Singer Sargent who was born on this day in 1856. He was primarily a portrait painter, and an extremely successful one. Those are mostly what you see when you see him in a museum, because that’s what people paid him for. But his landscapes and city paintings are quite different, and I think much more compelling. A good example of this is the following Street in Venice, that I think is just wonderful:

Street in Venice - Sargent

Happy birthday John Singer Sargent!

Deep Thoughts on Sherlock Season Two

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SherlockI finally got around to watching the second season of Sherlock. It is a well made series. But there is a real limit to how much of it I can take. The biggest problem is what they have done to Holmes himself. In the original stories, he is brilliant and arrogant and flawed; but he really does care about humanity. This Holmes is more or less a psychopath. His motivations are exactly the same as those of Moriarty: simple amusement. There is no moral underpinning of Holmes; he could easily have been Moriarty.

This is all seen in the way that the show deals with Homles’ drug “problem.” In the first episode of Sherlock, it is implied that Holmes used to use illegal drugs—presumably cocaine. But now, he uses cigarettes as a substitute. This doesn’t make a lot of sense. Are we really to believe that the brilliant Sherlock Holmes couldn’t manage his illegal drug habit without Lestrade and company figuring it out? Regardless, it is kind of a brilliant thing. When Doyle was writing, the use of cocaine was seen very much the way that cigarette smoking is seen today: a nasty habit. I doubt seriously that the producers are aware of this; they are just taking the easy way out of a difficulty with the original character in the modern world. In other words, they lucked out. (However, any period Sherlock Holmes—for example, the Robert Downey versions—that don’t deal with cocaine are simply cowardly.) We have a really screwed up society where psychopaths are perfectly fine for a modern day Sherlock Holmes, but brilliant and otherwise law abiding people with drug addictions are terrible. And in Sherlock, they have swapped an arrogant man who really did care about people but who also injected cocaine and morphine from time to time, into a man who doesn’t care about people but who has more acceptable vice.

The last episode—which was nonetheless great fun—doesn’t make much sense. It is based (loosely as always), on the short story “The Final Problem” where it looks like Holmes and Moriarty have both fallen to their deaths over the Reichenbach Falls. In this case, Moriarty has destroyed Holmes’ reputation and is now making him commit suicide to cement the reputation. He does this by threatening to have Watson, Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade murdered if he doesn’t. There are lots of problems in this episode. First, we’ve never gotten any notion that Holmes cares one wink for Hudson or Lestrade. What’s more, in order to set up the destruction of Holmes’ reputation, Moriarty has to destroy his own, killing himself and being forever known as a mediocre actor whom Holmes hired to played the part of “Moriarty.”

In the end, Moriarty—who was the most interesting character for most of the series—turns out to be whatever the plot requires. In particular, he is brilliant when he needs to be and clueless when he needs to be. He doesn’t think of major things in this episode. If he were this careless throughout his career, he never would have become the criminal legend he is supposed to be. And that’s especially true in terms of the fact that while he thinks to follow the three Holmes “friends” throughout his fiendish plot, he allows Holmes himself the latitude to work out an entire fake suicide. I will come back to this in moment.

The whole dynamic of Holmes and Moriarty is supposed to be like God vs the Devil. And just like that more ancient pair, it is clearly one-sided. Holmes always seems to think one move further out in the chess game than Moriarty. That would be fine, except that Moriarty (just as the plot requires) is always way ahead of Holmes except when it matters most. Arthur Conan Doyle only made up the character of Moriarty as a way to kill off Holmes. In Sherlock, he is central to the series. So I don’t see why they’ve killed off the character. Holmes needs Moriarty and Moriarty needed Holmes. Thus it made no sense for Moriarty to want to kill or otherwise destroy Holmes in the first place.

Now about that fake death of Holmes… I don’t mind fake deaths. But in this episode of Sherlock, we see him quite clearly on the ledge. We see him crying, which we would not see if he knew he were faking his death. We see him step off and fall to the ground. It is broad daylight. There was nothing blocking the view. We see Holmes clearly dead on the ground. There was no way for a fake body to be pushed off and then replaced by the made-up Holmes. Yet clearly, that is what is going to be claimed. The chemistry girl who is in love with Sherlock clearly helped him out with all that. I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem with it being directed in a way that clearly deceives the viewer.

Note a few things. Holmes’ hands are waving while he is falling—so it isn’t just a dummy who is falling. Also, he drops his phone before falling. I get that. Later, someone (the chemistry girl, most likely) ran back up to put it there because it couldn’t fall with him because he had to have been using the phone from somewhere else (because he could see Watson when he was talking to him). I assume that the producers will feel they need to explain how Holmes faked his suicide, because of the way the episode was written—especially Holmes telling the chemistry girl that he needs her. Thus the show will claim something like this:

  1. Watson’s view was obstructed, as though that matters;
  2. Holmes kept telling Watson to stay back, so he couldn’t see it wasn’t Holmes;
  3. There will be something about the bicyclist who stopped Watson from getting to Holmes’ body right away.

The big problem is that there are lots of people around when Holmes falls. Are we to believe they are all in on it? Were they all the Baker Street Irregulars dressed up to look like middle class people? I actually expect it to be something like that. It is rubbish.

Given that Moriarty is most definitely dead, the series will probably get better. Remember that Moriarty has only become a big character since Doyle wrote the books and stories. He was never meant to be more than a plot device to kill off Holmes. And as much as the character was a delight in Sherlock—he really did make the rest of the characters seem dreary—the show was constantly implying that every criminal case that Homles was involved in was actually backed by Moriarty. That’s just silly. So hopefully, the show will go back to what I first liked about it: the focus on a really likable modern day Watson.

Jim Hightower Is Just One of Us

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Jim HightowerOn this day in 1503, the great Italian Mannerist painter Parmigianino was born. He was a master, but a bizarre one. He was known for his physical distortions of forms. For example, the highly stylized Madonna with the Long Neck, presents the Virgin Mary with an almost giraffe neck. The Vision of Saint Jerome shows Jesus as awkwardly tall and Jerome with a very long finger.

The Norwegian composer Christian Sinding was born in 1856. He is best known for his lyrical piano compositions. They can be overwhelming. A good example of this is Rustle of Spring, which would probably drive you crazy if it were twice as long. But as it is, it’s kind of cool:

The great Russian composer Reinhold Gliere was born in 1875. He is especially known for his ballets. Like many Russian composers of that time, he used a lot of folk melodies, which may explain the enduring charm of this work. A good example of this is Russian Sailor’s Dance:

The great Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann was born in 1906. He is best known for the original synthesis of LSD. On 16 November 2013, the 75th anniversary of the first synthesis of the drug, I wrote:

It’s a big day in drug history. Seventy-five years ago, Albert Hofmann synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. I remember a story (possibly apocryphal) dating back to the 1970s. On the first day of Introduction to Chemistry, a certain professor would walk in and write on the chalk board:

C20H25N3O

He would then say, “This is the chemical formula for LSD. I don’t want to be asked for the rest of the year!” Of course, it would take at least another year of chemistry to gain the skills in organic chemistry to learn how to make it. In his way, Hofmann was as much an advocate for the drug as was Timothy Leary. And he was so right up to his death a few years ago at the age of 102.

Other birthdays: pathologist James Paget (1814); botanist Joseph Charles Arthur (1850); Munich School Greek painter Georgios Jakobides (1853); the great American sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder (1870); physicist G W Pierce (1872); Australian painter Nora Heysen (1911); science fiction writer Jerome Bixby (1923); television producer David Wolper (1928); guitarist Lee Ritenour (62); and actor Amanda Peet (42).

The day, however, belongs to the great political humorist Jim Hightower who is 71 today. I still enjoy reading his column at the back of every issue of The Progressive. In addition to being very funny, he’s also very insightful. He’s responsible for two of my favorite lines. He was the first person to reference “trickle-down economics” as “tinkle-down economics,” as I discussed in Pee on Me. And he also said that Bush the Junior was “born on third base, thought he had hit a triple.” Here he is ten years ago on The Daily Show:

Happy birthday Jim Hightower!

Christie 2016 Bumper Sticker!

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Christie 2016 Bumper Sticker
Made Especially for Frankly Curious by: Andrea English

On Thursday night’s Colbert Report, he presented a bumper sticker for a potential Chris Christie 2016 presidential campaign. I often grab these, as I did with the Slow & Measured faux movie poster about Harry Reid’s approach to filibuster reform. I also did it with The Daily Show‘s excellent Obama Hope poster parody, Mitt Romney: No We Can’t! For some reason, I am the only person who sees fit to grab these things, and they are very popular. So when I saw the Christie faux bumper sticker, I knew I had to have it.

Generally, it is simply a matter of pausing the video, doing a screen capture, and then editing to size inside of Gimp. But this time, there were three problems. First, is that they blurred out the word “fuck.” Second, is that since they placed the bumper sticker on a car, they distorted the shape of it. And third, the quality was surprisingly bad, even with a capture done in full screen mode.

Lucky for us, we have an artist more or less on staff—Andrea English. So I asked her if she could fix it. I’m not sure that she did. I think she may have just recreated it. She’s rather good at this kind of stuff. When the local Republican Party was doing a bumper contest, I came up with “Fuck America: Vote Republican.” And she created:

Republican Bumper Sticker - Designed by A. L. English
Made Especially for Frankly Curious by: Andrea English

That bumper sticker has been very popular. I doubt that the Christie bumper sticker will be as popular. It has less general usefulness, especially now that I think there is no chance he will run for president. Before, I thought that he would run. Now, I tend to think he won’t even serve out his second term as governor. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving man.

And if I’m wrong, I’m sure he will fuck me over. And given that Andrea lives in New Jersey, he is already fucking her over!

Update (12 January 2014 3:07 am)

Barbara Buono agrees with me. I can’t believe this “liberal” interview. As if it was Buono’s job to uncover Christie’s coruption. But as she notes: she tried. No one cared. And that includes most of the people on MSNBC. But she is right on when she says, “He will be leaving the governor’s office before his term’s up, but it won’t be to run for president.”

I’ve been angry for a while about how Buono was treated by both the Democratic Party and the “liberal” media:

Barbara Buono
Why Has the Democratic Party Abandoned Barbara Buono?
Back to Normal in New Jersey
Obama and Buono and Christie
I’m Official in Love with Barbara Buono

The Last Two Words on Chris Christie

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John Dean Speaks“John Dean.”

Richard Nixon did not know about the Watergate break-in before it happened. That’s important to know. The reason that he was forced to resign was that he knew about and approved of the cover-up. And just as important, the cover-up wasn’t about Watergate but about the larger project that the Nixon administration was involved in: the dirty tricks and the retribution against real and perceived enemies. So in a larger sense, the big reason that Nixon was wrong was that he was the one who wanted his administration to be run as effectively a criminal enterprise.

I think the similarities between Nixon and Christie are overwhelming in this regard. There is no doubt that Christie designed his administration in a very corrupt way with the over-arching idea that it could get the most done in such a liberal state if everyone understood that any resistance to Christie’s will would be punished. This is important: it isn’t just that Christie knew about this, it is his own design; it is the way he works.

So just like Nixon with Watergate, I don’t think Christie knew about this particular bit of retribution against Fort Lee. But there is no doubt that his people did it because that is the way they work; that is the way Christie’s people knew that Christie expected them to work. It’s possible that Christie did know about it, but it certainly wasn’t the case that his people would have felt that they needed to get his approval about it. So let’s just give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he was not in on the original conspiracy.

Fort Lee Traffic JamThat brings us back to the great question about the Watergate break-in and Nixon’s involvement. Howard Baker famously asked, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” I have the same question about Christie, “What did the governor know and when did he know it?” Because I absolutely don’t believe that he didn’t find out that some of his closest people were involved in a conspiracy to punish Fort Lee at the same time that we all did. That doesn’t strain credulity; it requires credulity combined with an intense desire to think the best about Christie. In other words, it requires a really really stupid Josh Barro.

When the traffic in Fort Lee started backing up, and it became an issue with accusations, Christie could not have failed to at least wonder if this wasn’t the work of his own people. It was, after all, the way they did things in the Christie administration. And as the controversy continued and built, there must have come a time when Christie asked one or more of his people what was going on. And I certainly think this happened well before his big meeting in December—three months after the event. A big meeting is not how he would have approached the issue. He would have asked key people quietly and with no one else around if there was anything to all the allegations.

Look at the way that Christie has answer questions. Politico reported, “When asked about that claims that the closures were ordered for political retribution, Christie said ‘absolutely, unequivocally not.'” Okay, but that isn’t the question now, is it? No one really thinks that Christie went to an aide and said, “Let’s cause a four-day traffic jam in Fort Lee”—much less, “Let’s cause a four-day traffic jam in Fort Lee to get back at…” He’s safe on that count just like Nixon was safe on the count that he did not order the Watergate break-in.

But what we have here is a very intelligent and sophisticated politician. And he has only acted on a big controversy surrounding him twice. The first time was in December when he had what amounts to a show meeting telling his people to admit to any wrong doing. The second time was when he fired two people, only after their misconduct was front page news. Chris Christie knew that his office was responsible for the Fort Lee traffic jam long before he fired anyone. And that means that he withheld information about the conspiracy. And that means he was involved in a cover-up.

Chris Christie - Richard Nixon

The only thing that will save Christie is if there is no John Dean in his administration. John Dean, as you should recall, was White House Counsel for Richard Nixon. And Dean rolled over on Nixon. Without Dean, I doubt Nixon would have been forced out of the presidency. Well, there are a lot of potential John Deans out there. David Wildstein’s attorney has already made it perfectly clear that his client would have quite a lot to say if he were granted immunity. And as this whole thing becomes a criminal matter when people are looking at prison time, I believe there will be more people who will have stories to tell. I won’t be surprised at all if someone says, “I told the governor what we had done while it was still going on!” Regardless, someone is going to say something that will show that Christie was lying when he said he only found out when the story broke this last week.

If I were Chris Christie, I would be very worried about those two words. Who will be the member of his administration who fills that role? Who will be Chris Christie’s…

John Dean.

It’s Raining, But Not for Long

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Irma ThomasWe have had basically no rain this season and it isn’t looking like there will be much rain in the near future. But today, and today only, it is raining!

This is, folks, my biggest worry about global warming. Rising temperatures should cause more rain. And indeed, the models all predict more rain. It is just that it mostly falls over the ocean where it doesn’t really help us. In graduate school, I worked with a guy who did great (really meticulous) work correlating temperature and rainfall for the United States. The results were that the United States is going to become a much drier place. As a result, food production (especially things like wheat and corn) will be pushed north. And if you really think that this couldn’t one day end up in a war between the United States and Canada, then you are naive and probably don’t read this blog anyway.

In general, I don’t talk about this issue to people because what’s happening this year doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But I am definitely worried. And what all this means to the natural environment is totally unknown. Animals can migrate. So can plants, but they do it really slowly—far too slowly to deal with what we have going on. The earth will muddle through the whole thing, but it could still be a catastrophe. Meanwhile, conservatives are unwilling to do any kind of a risk analysis. Two years ago this month, I wrote, A Really Big Problem. I asked a question:

Let’s suppose there is only a one percent chance that global warming is actually happening. If it does happen, it is going to have a profound effect on future generations, and certainly for the next five generations, it is going to be worse for the next than it was for the last. If this has only a 1% chance of happening, isn’t it a good idea to be truly conservative and try to stop it from happening, rather than continuing on as we have for the sake of the fossil fuel industry?

That’s what I just don’t get. Conservatives act like it is absolutely impossible that this is happening. Clearly there is enough evidence that it deserves that we invest some resources into countering it. But actually, there are three stages of global warming denial:

  1. There is no global warming!
  2. There is global warming, but humans aren’t the cause!
  3. Humans are causing global warming, but there is nothing we can do about it!

There are people in all of the categories. I get really annoyed at the people at stage one. These are the people who claim that it is all a hoax. And why is it a hoax? Why would all those scientists lie? Because of all the money! ExxonMobile made $41 billion in 2011, but it is some climate scientist with his $50,000 a year job who is lying because of the money. And note: if a climate scientist found results that countered the prevailing theories, he would not only get a lot of money, he would become famous. That’s how science works!

The people at stage two are making a better argument. The climate system is complicated and correlation is not causation. Of course, the case for anthropogenic global warming is a lot more than that. But mostly people at stage two talk about the sunspot cycle and wave their hands around a lot. The terrible thing is that solar forcing is the first thing that goes into the models. And a complete accounting of solar changes has been included in the models for the last two decades. So these people really have nothing to back up their claims other than their desire to believe.

The stage three people anger me the most. These are the exact same people who claim that we must balance the federal government budget today because we are destroying our children’s future. Well, economically, that turns out not to even be true. But they make that inter-generational argument. However, we can’t do anything to hurt profits today even though it will have negative effects on future generations and it may well have catastrophic effects. It is simply untrue that we can’t do anything about global warming. It is true that doing something about it may be expensive. But that’s very different from having no options. These are the worst kind of people: they don’t give a damn about the kids but they are more than willing to use them to further their political agendas.

But like I said, it is raining today. And I love the rain. So here is one of my favorite singers Irma Thomas singing the hell out of “It’s Raining” by another Louisiana legend Allen Toussaint:

Rhino Horror Story

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RhinosThis is the horror story, but it takes me a while to get to it…

In general, I’m not a Twitter fan. At first, it was great because I followed people I normally read, so it kept me up to date on what was going on. But it got to be too much. I wasn’t getting anything done other than reading. The main thing I use Twitter for is to publicize this blog, and it does about as good a job at that as I can expect given the small number of followers I have. On the other hand, when I piss off someone with a large following, literally thousands of people will come and read me. I have tried to avoid allowing this to make me write any differently than I normally do. And I think I’ve succeeded, because the truth is, as much as I like the traffic, I don’t like it when people yell at me and call me stupid. (Not that I’m thinking of anyone in particular, Josh Barro.)

Anyway, when Andrea got on Twitter, she took to it like a fish to exactly the kind of water that it prefers. As she has become something of a prominent atheist, she quickly gained a following. This resulted in my getting some atheist followers. It also resulted in my getting into some discussions with theists and atheists alike. And I have to say: both groups are in general made up of awful human beings. They both prove that if God exists, he is not a loving god. Slowly, and delicately, I untangled myself from this group.

Soon, I came into contact with another group. A much better group! Film geeks! Well, these are my people! This very evening we geeked out over filmmaker Walter Hill. On another occasion, I was not ridiculed for making the nerdiest of film geek tweets, “Neo would say “00100000 00100001″ Nanook would say ” !” And Mork would say, “Nanu!” Get it? Of course you don’t! Neo from The Matrix is saying in ascii binary ” !” Nannook of the North was a silent film, so he is saying ” !” And the Mork comment is just silliness because “Nanu” sounds like “Nannook.” Ah, my people.

After this, I became involved with a number of wildlife people—not just people who love wildlife, but people who work to save and protect wildlife. The connection was that I had just seen the film Blackfish and it had a profound effect on me and I think I started tweeting things out. This introduced me to Ms.OpRoar, who kept tweeting out these absolutely beautiful wildlife photos. In fact, I got an article out of one of her photos, Orcas In the Wild—Free! She has a great love of and concern for rhinos.

I guess this is the great thing about Twitter, because I don’t know this woman. In fact, I only assume she is a woman based upon her account name. I know she likes wildlife and I know that rhinos are a special thing for her. So this evening, as I made dinner, I was watching Al Jazeera America (because I don’t watch MSNBC anymore) and they had a segment on rhino poaching. So I ran to my computer and tweeted to Mr.OpRoar, “Rhino discussion right now on @ajam.” Sadly, by that time, it was over. But I promised to see if I could find it online. Most likely, I will be able to find it tomorrow.

Tonight, however, and this is where the horror story starts, I found a video “Al Jazeera Correspondent – The Last Rhino.” It is less than an hour and I really think you should watch it. It shows humans are their worst and at their best. And a whole lot in between. My regular readers know: I do not think death is the worst thing; pain is. I was prepared for a lot of senseless killing. I was not prepared for the senseless cruelty. After ten minutes, I had to turn it off. I was writing my birthday post and sobbing while I watched the video. I couldn’t work. The worst of it is at the beginning. The rest is about people who are trying to stop the poaching.

The story is very similar to that of the drug trade. The people who do the actual work of poaching, are incredibly poor. They are well compensated, of course. But I have a hard time seeing them as the true villains, even though I don’t especially mourn their deaths. But the true culpability is further up the chain. As a young poacher says, “They make a lot of money and we don’t get much. We get almost nothing out of poaching.” These are the words of the desperate. Compare him with John Hume who has a ranch of 700 rhinos. He “harvests” their horns, and I will admit that it all seems to be done properly. But as a rich man, he has that luxury. I think he’s vile. I don’t want to go into it in detail here, but in addition to everything else, Hume is wrong about what would happen if they allowed a legal rhino horn trade. Buyers would soon conclude that the wild rhino horns were more powerful for whatever the use. I know that a legal trade would not reduce the killing of wild rhinos, but it very well might increase it.

It is the oldest story in the world: the rich getting the poor to do their dirty work so that the rich can get even richer. Or at least feel richer. But here it is causing the extinction of a wonderful animal species in the most cruel way imaginable. I highly recommend watching the video.

Afterword

Also: three cheers for Al Jazeera. They do really good work, and you should check out Al Jazeera America!

Chris Christie Is No Laughing Matter

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Chris ChristieYesterday, when I saw Chris Christie’s press conference, one line really stood out to me, “I was done with my workout yesterday morning and got a call from my communications director…” I had a feeling that was going to make a lot of people laugh. “Chris Christie working out?” But I know that’s the truth. He’s an ambitious guy. He wants to be president and he knows that his weight stands in his way. What’s more, like most fat people, I’m sure he is painfully aware that most people think that his weight reflects poorly on character—incorrect as that belief may be. So I’m sure he is trying to do a Mike Huckabee.

Look: I loath the man. He is a great example of what’s wrong with American politics. He talks populist, but his politics are entirely elitist. He got the people of New Jersey to vote for him despite the fact that they disagree with him on every major policy question in modern America. And above all, he’s a bully. I don’t really care about his physical weight, but he throws his metaphorical weight around and abuses the least among us. The fact that those calling themselves Christians voted for him is sad. The fact that he calls himself a Christian is absolutely unbelievable.

So I think the man should be despised and has no business being in our public life. But I don’t think we should laugh at his attempts to get his weight under control. The truth is that being on the pudgy side is actually much more healthy than being “sit-com fit.” But I’m afraid that Chris Christie is quite a ways past the optimal weight. (Even still, his high weight and excellent healthcare will doubtless beat my optimal weight and terrible healthcare.) So we should applaud Christie’s efforts to deal with his weight.

Good God! The man is waking up early and working out. Do you know what I’m doing at that hour? Trying to stay asleep so I don’t have to deal with the day. Hey, we all have our crosses to bear. Christie apparently eats a lot and I don’t really like leaving the house. I tried to start an Agoraphobics Anonymous group, but no one would ever come to my house; and I couldn’t go to theirs. Sorry about that, the joke just came to me and I had to share it. Moving on…

I got around to watching last night’s The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Neither show was so low as to make a joke about Christie’s morning workout. But each of them included that part of the press conference. And on both shows, the line got a big laugh. And I understand. It is all about what we as a society think of fat people: they are lazy and gluttonous. Well, I don’t think that’s Christie. The seven deadly sins are: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Based upon everything I know about Christie, I would have to put wrath, greed, and pride well above sloth and gluttony. It does, however, highlight what an awful human being he is.

But I think it is wrong to laugh at the man about that. That’s especially true when I’m pretty sure his wrath (hatred of his enemies), greed (power lust), and pride (just listen to him) will win out over gluttony and sloth. In fact, I think I already see it. He looks better than he did a year ago. Regardless, Christie should be taken very seriously—just like a venomous snake.

Robert Reich Is Optimistic About GOP Failure, I’m Not

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Robert ReichDespite what it says on the sidebar, I do not read Robert Reich every day. For one thing, he only posts about twice a week. But for another, I find his optimism inspiring but exhausting. Among my friends, I am considered the optimist. This is faint praise. Still, I think of myself as vaguely optimistic. I really do think that things will get better. Sometimes; I mean on good days; when I’m drunk. No, no, no! I’m more optimistic than that. But I consider myself a realist, and Reich’s optimism at least borders on the unreal.

Let us look at his article yesterday, Why The Republican’s Old Divide-and-Conquer Strategy—Setting Working Class Against the Poor—Is Backfiring. His argument is that the Republicans were very effective at portraying the poor who used SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid as just those “shiftless blacks” driving around in their government paid-for Cadillacs. That wasn’t even true then: the poor have always been primarily white. But what was true is that if you had a job, it was good enough that you didn’t have to be on SNAP and Medicaid. Now most of the poor who qualify for these programs are people who are working—many of them working multiple jobs! His conclusion: it is going to be hard for the Republicans to get middle class whites to vote against their own interests in the name of “getting” those “shiftless” poor.

The article is a good one and it lays out what I think is an even bigger problem: insecurity in the middle class. It used to be that if you had a decent middle-management job at some corporation, you knew that as long as you did your job well, you were set for life. That’s no longer the case. Pretty much the conservatives have gotten what they always wished for: a nation of contractors—at least as far as the middle class goes. This isn’t a situation that anyone except the very wealthy like. But unlike the poor, the politicians do listen (a little) to the middle class.

Where I think that Reich gets a bit too optimistic is in saying that the Republican divide-and-conquer strategy is backfiring. He’s right that it is hard to use this particular strategy of convincing workers that people on welfare are the enemy. But the Republicans have been very inventive in coming up with different ways to divide and conquer. After all, their think tanks don’t spend their time coming up with policy. They can use 100% of their resources on coming up with ways to set different sets of people against each other.

Now, it is true that the great conservative propagandist Frank Luntz seems to have given up the project. According to him, there are no longer magic words that can convince people to support policies that go directly against their interests. But give the Republicans time. I certainly think that cracks have appeared on what was always an unstable dam. Their evil geniuses are working on the problem, however. And right now, they have real power in Washington. And even if they lose that, the courts will be conservative for many years to come.

Robert Rubin and the Villainy of the New Democrats

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Robert RubinSome people don’t like that I’m so hard on the New Democrats. I don’t want to over state it, but there is a reason: they have been destroying the nation for two decades! So now we find Robert Rubin ranting on about “financial discipline.” On the pages of the Financial Times he tells us, Sound Government Finances Will Promote Recovery. He thinks he is threading the needle. More or less he is saying, “We don’t have to make a choice between job creation and economic austerity because economic austerity will create jobs!” This is a funny attempt to thread the needle give that this is exactly the argument that those calling for economic austerity have always made. I’m afraid Rubin has missed the eye of the needle by quite a ways.

As I discussed last year in, Alberto Alesina Wasn’t Right, the idea of “expansionary austerity” has been shown to be a cruel joke. Alesina argued that if businesses saw that governments were balancing their budgets, they would decide that the future looked bright and start spending. This is, of course, a supply side story of how the economy works. By this way of thinking, what drives the economy is the supply of goods rather than the demand for goods. It doesn’t work that way at all. Even a child should see, businesses create the products that they believe their customers will want. Thus, if a business owner sees that most of his customers are unemployed and have very little money, he will not hire more people to produce more products that his customers won’t buy.

But I’m not an economist, so let’s hear what a great economist has to say about the rubbish that Rubin is shoveling. Brad DeLong wrote, Department of “Huh”?!: Where is the Arithmetic in Robert Rubin’s Financial Times Piece?[1] So DeLong provides the math and it turns out that stimulus is a great idea and austerity is not:

Right now the US government can issue a 30-year inflation-protected maturity with a yield of 1.5% per year. Right now if the U.S. spends an extra $100 billion next year it gets $200 billion of increased real GDP and $67 billion of additional tax revenue next year, for $33 billion of additional debt and $500 million of additional annual debt interest in the further future. If $200 billion of additional GDP next year has a long-term boost to GDP of even 1/100 as large–either as extra workers set to work brush-up on their skills, as organizations and capital learn more about how to produce, or as greater corporate cash flow leads to productive private or as government purchases are diverted to productive public investment, the extra annual debt service is more than covered by extra taxes produced by higher potential output. Rubin says that stimulus is “no substitute for fiscal discipline.” But as long as interest rates and economic slack are at their current levels, stimulus is fiscal discipline. It is the failure to undertake fiscal stimulus right now that is long-run fiscal profligacy.

Of course, I have an answer to DeLong’s question. There is no math in Rubin’s op-ed because austerity is a matter of faith, not economics. When business owners are asked why they aren’t hiring, they say it is lack of demand for their goods. It isn’t that they think the government is going backrupt. It isn’t that they are concerned about “regulations” (although I’ll admit with all the right wing propaganda, a lot of businesses are unnecessarily worried about Obamacare). It is that they don’t have the customers and cutting spending will—Are you ready to be shocked?!—make the situation worse.

For four and a half years, Robert Rubin was Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. And as such, he was the architect of Clinton’s strong dollar policy. I understand that people who don’t know much about economics immediately think, “But don’t we want a strong dollar?” And the answer is, “Yes! If you don’t want a job!” A strong dollar is great for people who already have lots of money. It means they can buy imports very cheaply. But it also means that our exports are very expensive. Thus, other countries don’t buy as many of them. Thus, fewer Americans are employed. When you hear “strong dollar” just think “gift for the rich from the poor.”

This is a great example of why our government is so messed up. The Democrats are supposed to be liberal. But the last two Democratic Presidents and the current one are all economically conservative. This is why the Republican Party has stopped being conservative and is now radical. Given that the Democratic elites have taken over all the old conservative economic policies (and in many cases made them even more conservative), what are the Republicans to do? Truly, I don’t know what their options were, but the one they picked was, “Go crazy!”

So we are left with a country where even conservative voters are to the left of the Democrats on economic issues. Yes, I still think we must vote for the Democrats. If the party wins presidential election after presidential election and controls huge majorities in Congress, the party will move to the left on economic issues. But the Democrats are currently not much of a choice. If you only care about gay marriage, then the Democrats are not bad. If you care about abortion rights, then the Democrats are pretty good. If you care about birth control, the Democrats are very good. But if you care about anyone who might exercise those rights having a decent job, then the Democrats are really quite bad. And Robert Rubin’s career and recent op-ed proves that.

[1] DeLong is a great economist, ’tis true. As a writer, not so much. That should have been, “Huh?!” Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.