oxymoron67

The Great State of Texas's State Board of Education's conservative advisors have made some ... odd... recommendations.

1) Cesar Chavez isn't all that important, and not worthy of mentioning. I guess because he was concerned with the rights of migrant farm workers, who are, after all, brown people, probably all illegals, and therefore don't deserve to be paid a living wage. He was a leading voice in the Latino community while he was alive.

2) Thurgood Marshall is also apparently not important enough to make the list. That's right, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, who made significant contributions to criminal, civil rights, tax and labor law, is just not all that important.

3) Anne Hutchinson, the religious dissenter who was thrown out of the Massachusetts Bay colony and helped found the colony of Rhode Island, is also unimportant. Never mind that she is an early example of feminism in the US -- the attacks on her were VERY misogynist in nature-- never mind that she helped establish the concept of religious freedom in the US-- never mind that she also pioneered the idea of civil freedom -- freedom to speak one's mind-- she's just not important.

Fascinating. Who would they replace them with? Or is this a case of anyone who challenges authority in America is not important enough to be remembered. For instance, I wonder if they discuss Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who also co-founded the KKK? If they do, do they discuss the KKK connection?

I had fun. The train was timely.

My sisters and I met up on Friday at Philadelphia's train station (they drove, I didn't.). From there we checked in at the hotel and went to the Star Trek and Galileo exhibits.

Both exhibits are at The Franklin Institute. Galileo is there until Sept. 6th; Star Trek, until the 20th.

The Star Trek exhibit is worth going to. They had lots of the original costumes, a history of the various ships named Enterprise (including the space shuttle and the aircraft carrier), clips of the various shows and movies, lots of props. It was a very well done exhibit exploring the science and science fiction behind Star Trek as well as its ... mythos, for lack of a better word.

It's interesting, a lot of the props that look so cool on the screen look like toys up close.

We had our picture taken on the Transporter Pad and then on the bridge of the Next Generation's bridge. Erin sat in the Captain's chair, Sandy was in the security officer's spot and I was in the counselor's chair.

It was great. I said things like "That ship that's about to fire on us? I sense great hostility from it."

My only complaint? the temperature of the exhibit. It was ungodly warm. I was soaked in sweat by the time we were done.

After a stop in the Star Trek gift shop, we went to the Galileo exhibit. Honestly, it was more of a "Galileo and his sponsors the Medicis" exhibit, but it still was great. It discussed, very briefly, the rise of the Medici family, and the fact that they not only were great patrons of the arts, but of the sciences as well.

I have some minor complaints with the layout of this exhibit: after a while all the compasses and sextants started to blend together... but the documents were neat, as were the multimedia things. Although one of the mutlimedia stations -- the one that detailed the wars between Florence and Siena-- was done completely in Italian with no English translation.

I could read it... I know Spanish and French after all, but it was a bit of a pain and I lost interest.

After that, we were all touristed out for the day. So we went to dinner and talked smack about family members not there caught up, then made plans for Saturday.

Saturday, we decided we wanted to do a Ride the Ducks Tour. It was fun: it lasted a little over an hour and we went by many tourist attractions then went into the Delaware River for a while.

Then, we quickly went through the Independence Hall visitor's center -- there was an exhibit there on Philadelphia's role in the Abolition movement and in the Underground Railroad. On our way to lunch, we passed where the Liberty Bell is, but, frankly, I wasn't willing to wait in line for an hour to see a bell.

After lunch, we walked over to the Constitution Center. That was fun. First, there is a performance piece about the Constitution, then we toured the permanent exhibits in the Center. We also bought tickets for the Napoleon exhibit currently there.

I was amazed at the amount of Napoleon's stuff that was there. I knew that Louis XVIII had much of it destroyed when the Bourbons were restored to power after Waterloo, so I didn't expect so many books, letters and articles of clothing. Yet, there they were.

My favorite piece? Discussing Napoleon's exile on St. Helena after Waterloo, well, St. Helena had a very humid environment, so when Napoleon was gardening, he would where his hair tied up in a scarf in the style of Aunt Jemima. (Josephine, herself a Creole from the French Caribbean, showed him the style.)

A really cool exhibit.

After that, we threw pennies on Ben Franklin's grave and then were, again, all touristed out.

Sunday morning, someone at the hotel pulled a fire alarm. This was the only glitch in an otherwise wonderful weekend.

Not really, no.

Certainly not in terms of education. In my family, boys didn't major in something like French and Spanish (my B.A.). Sp my family wasn't helping and my advisors were too busy. Fortunately, I could just follow along the paths of both majors.

In graduate school, I remember my first meeting with my advisor. It was partway through my first Fall term, and we were going to discuss what courses I should take the following term. I had planned out an hour for this, ready to hear which courses would work best for me.

I walk in, and he says "Well, in the French Dept. (where I was at the time), we're offering French Sociolinguistics and Foreign Language Instruction to Adult Learners. You should take those. Then, for your third class, well, you know what Linguistics and Spanish are offering. Take something appropriate.

That was it.

It took less than five minutes, and it was essentially "Take the classes we offer and then... eh... whatevs."

So, for the rest of my grad school career (even when I switched departments) I never really went to my advisors, instead picking the courses I wanted to take, with no regard for stitching them together into a greater whole. As a result, I've done coursework in Phonology, Syntax, Historical Linguistics, Romance and Indo-European Linguistics and Language Acquisition.

Then, when I landed this job... again, no mentoring. I was just pushed into the situation and left to sink or swim. (I've since found out that at least part of the administration didn't think that I was necessary, though I've since -- in their words-- "carved out a niche for myself, doing things they were unaware were even necessary before my arrival."

So, yeah, no real mentors.

An Overview of the Same Sex Marriage Debate

Love it!

"I'm not a bigot. I hate the sin but love the sinner."

It's clear that the person who put this together is pro-gay marriage, but it is a very nice format. I may e-mail it to my brother...

But this time, it's about our current favorite philandering governor, South Carolina's Mark Sanford.

I have to admit that, when all is said and done, I really don;t care about his personal affairs. People with messy personal lives are oftentimes very, very successful -- this is why I didn't care about Bill Clinton's blowjobs. He was getting the job done.

Still, I talk about Sanford for two reasons:
1) The hypocrisy. Here is a man who
a) claimed that Clinton should resign because his affair made him unfit to hold the office
b) says that gays can't get marriage because "that could destroy marriage"
c) claims to believe in the sanctity of marriage

Gay marriage will destroy marriage but an affair won't, apparently.

2) The absurdity of it all
a) He vanished for five days
b) over Father's Day weekend (a family holiday)
c) to have a liaison with his mistress
d) IN ARGENTINA
e) And then has several incoherent press conferences.

Damn.

Well, now, the South Carolina GOP has decided to censure him for his behavior. The caucus was split on whether or not to call for his resignation. Barring any proof of law-breaking here (funneling funds to the mistress, improper use of state funds, etc.), I would say that this is the right level of reaction.

Unless, of course, something else comes out.

I've read variations on the following theme on many websites: "Liberals are scared of Palin because she's successful without being a feminist."

1) Well, we could talk about how successful she'd be in politics without the feminist movement. The first woman governor wasn't until 1924, and the first woman governor who wasn't the wife/wiodw of a previous governor (Gov. Ella Grasso, Connecticut) didn't get elected until 1974.

So, women governors are recent things, and uncommon one, as over half the state in the US have not had one.

While Palin may not be a feminist herself, she owes the movement a little something.

2) I'm quite liberal, and my problems with Palin have nothing to do with Family Values or Feminism or envy of her success. As I've said to my brother, Palin attracts the worst elements of American conservatism, the folks that would say that I;m not American because:

a) I'm gay -- Only heterosexuals are entitled to be considered real Americans. I'm just a pansy. I should be happy that I'm not beaten up regularly and arrested for no good reason.
b) I live in NYC. -- After all, The US was a rural country-- and cities are full of those evil foreigners.
c) I am an intellectual -- There is a curious anti-elitism elitism to American Conservatism: a feeling that education gets in the way and that intelligence isn't to be respected.
d) I think evolution makes sense based on the evidence we have.

3) In her rambling poorly worded (and therefore poorly thought out) resignation speech, she mentioned something about people mocking Trig. That shouldn't have happened. I have fewer problems with the the brou-ha-ha surrounding her eldest daughter's pregnancy... after all, her predicament highlights the failure of Abstinence-only education.

4) Her complaints about the media rang kind of hollow to me. For one thing, conservatives have been playing that song since 1980, and with the advent of Fox News, they really should stop. For another, she didn't get the spotlight the way Obama did in some respects. For example:

A) Her pastor in Wasila -- He drove a "witch" out of a village in Kenya. Really.
B) Her husband's membership in the Alaska Independence Party: saying that Obama was linked to terrorists while she's married to a (former?) secessionist is interesting.

What happens next? I think she can't possibly run, at least in 2012, but she could still be influential.

Douchebags realize that they're not right for one another, have wedding anyway.

Now, they're upset that people feel they were jerked around.

Seriously... "We'll get married just to get the presents, then get the thing annulled a week later. Now, our friends and family are angry. We don't understand why."

1) This couple has the emotional maturity of ... maybe... six year olds. Spoiled six year olds.
2) The idea of the gifts as "reparation" for attending the wedding. Seriously? I don't care if you paid for it yourself. You're not entitled to anything.
3) How can these people be so aggressively clueless? Of course their loved ones are going to feel used. Because they have been.
4) These two should be forced to stay married, just so they don;t inflict themselves on anyone else.

I think I can add this couple to the list of "people who make the case for gay marriage stronger."

Because this? Not treating marriage like it's sacred. It's not even treating it as a business transaction. For these two, marriage was a con job.

Holy crap! Sarah Palin is stepping down as governor!

One of her points is that lame ducks travel around the country and internationally wasting taxpayers' time and money... hasn't she already done that? How often was she in Alaska post-election?

Also she says she believes in only positive politics? Didn't she all but call Obama a terrorist in the presidential campaign? How is that "positive"?

Still, a stunning move. It will be interesting to see what she does next.

I don't think anyone could ask for more.
( Some impressively scary stuff under the cut. )

(Yes, it's still slow at work.)
( Crazy under the cut! )

Can you tell that work is rather sluggish today?

Republican members of Congress ask Rep. Michelle Bachmann to stop her boycott of the census.

For those who don't know, Michele Bachmann is a special brand of crazy. Previously, she has blamed Democrats for the Swine Flu,; lied about the presence of The Flying Imams in Minneapolis in an attempt to smear someone AND has claimed that Pres. Obama may abandon the dollar.

In short, she's the Heinz 57 flavors of Conservative Crazy.

But let's focus on the census.

Rep. Bachmann has stated publicly that she won't fill out the census because the census led to the Japanese Internment Camps in WWII. This is possible. I do not know enough about the Japanese Internments to judge. However, she links that to ... possible internment camps for her? For conservatives? I don't know.

People in Minnesota, her home state, are worried because if this boycott takes off there, it could cost them representation in Congress.

And I would think that sensible conservatives would be worried because they have ANOTHER nut job to deal with.

It's the census. It's been happening regularly for over 200 years. If Rep. Bachmann has issues with either the questions or the management of the census, surely she could take it up with the appropriate people. This just seems like a bizarre headline grabber to me. Sort of like those people who believe that Obama wasn't really born in Hawai'i.

Arizona Senate approves bill allowing concealed weapons in bars.

I need to come clean here: I am quite liberal, yet I am suspicious of gun control laws. I come from a part of the country where most everyone hunts, so guns are common. But then again, so is gun safety education: just about everyone I know who owns guns is very safe with them: keeping them locked up, etc.

However, I think that mixing guns and alcohol is scary. Not allowing guns in bars makes sense to me. The analogy the article makes between alcohol and driving and alcohol and guns may not be perfect, but there is a point there. After all, the combination of alcohol and firearms led to my father's death. (Of course, there were underlying mental issues as well.)

Let's be brutally honest here: alcohol makes assholes forget they're assholes ... it makes people repress their manners, their inhibitions, etc. Dealing with a drunken idiot is bad enough, but an armed drunken idiot?

I'm not sure that there is a point to "If criminals know there's an armed populace, they won't commit crimes" logic. I've seen no statistics, no studies that support (or debunk) this idea. It sounds attractive, like the idea that the death penalty prevents murders... but studies have shown that the death penalty isn't a deterrent to crime, so I wonder if it's a simple response to an issue that needs a complex response.

I just don't think this is a good idea.

The more I hear/read about this, the stranger it gets. He just needs to shut up. I don't need to know all this stuff.

I certainly don't think that his wife needs to hear that even though his own personal Evita is his soul mate, that he wants to work on his marriage and fall back in love with his wife.

Why would his wife want this? "Oh thank God, I'm his second choice, and he's settling for me! We can both be martyrs! I can be the martyr because I'm sacrificing my personal happiness to stay with a cheater who has PUBLICLY STATED his soul mate is someone else and he can be a martyr because he gave up his soul mate for me. Never mind that he's a lying, cheating douchebag. Martyrdom is so much preferable to happiness! This is certainly better than divorce! This is precisely what we're fighting to keep gays from having."

Hell, why would HE want this? Odds are, his political career is over. He should just go and be with his soul mate. I can't imagine, after such a public humiliation, that his wife and children will easily overcome their justifiable anger and resentment. I mean what was going through his mind? "I could spend Father's Day weekend with my SONS and FAMILY or I could fly down to Argentina without telling anyone on my staff, because, God knows, I'm a governor, nothing could happen that would require my presence, for my piece on the side. Which should I choose?"

I get wanting to save a marriage, when it's possible. Especially when children are involved, I think it's admirable. But in this case, I think that too much has happened/been said. Sometimes, it's better to just walk away.

Sometimes I stun myself.

I was waiting for my bus this afternoon, when I realized I was singing out loud to my iPod. The song? Queen Latifah's version of Big, Blonde and Beautiful.

I was not merely singing... hand gestures and spinning were involved.

I know I spend a lot of time in my own private universe. It doesn't normally leak out like this, though.

According to my mother, my first word was "No."

She has said that she and my father had bets on whether their offspring would say "mama" or "dada" first. They cancelled the bet with me, because my first word was "no" and the second one was "cookie."

Clearly, even as a little one, I had my priorities straight: complaints and dessert.

Papal authorities say that bones belong to St. Paul.

It would be cool if these bones were St. Paul's (We can talk about Catholicism and relics some other time.), but it doesn't seem to me that this is conclusive evidence. Of course, the marble slab saying "Paul, Apostle Martyr" on it also lends credence to the story.

Yes, it's certainly possible.

Of course, we also think that we know where St. Peter's bones are. Heck, it's why St. Peter's Basilica is built where it is.

Why should we care? Well, a connection with our history, and not just Catholic history. St. Peter was the first pope -- the man who embodied the church once Jesus was gone. St. Paul was THE apostle responsible for spreading Jesus' word beyond Jews and into the Gentile. He was also probably the greatest theologian of the early church. Certainly, no one else comes close until St. Augustine or perhaps St. Irenaeus.

Having said that, from a modern perspective, St. Paul had issue, issues, issues. I agree with some of it. If you read his letters, St. Paul had a of temper, and he was very unyielding on lots of issues and many of his writings have a harsh edge to them. (Although one gay Catholic I know refers to the Letters of St. Paul to Timothy as one of the greatest love stories in the Bible. Certainly there was a mentoring relationship there.)

I wonder what St. Paul would have to say today. I would hope that his attitudes on women would be different. (And his attitudes on homosexuality... heck, on sexuality in general -- St. Paul seemed to think that all sexuality was, if not evil, certainly not good.)

Of course, St. Paul was alive in a time when Christianity was very splintered. We may think of early Christianity as a time of unity, but it wasn't. A unified church didn't really come about until the Council of Nicaea. (And even then.. the church wasn't very centralized.) So, St Paul was constantly trying to protect his flock from the heresies of other Christian groups AND to expand his flock as well. Also, in the years following Jesus' crucifixion, most Christians believed that Jesus was coming back soon, and the end times were nigh. This is the background that St. Paul operated in.

It would be cool if these bones were St. Paul's. To have that connection.

1) Moon

If you like Science Fiction movies, go see this one. This movie is everything that Sunshine wanted to be.

Sam Rockwell did an amazing job.

First, a word about cinematography:
If you like Sam Rockwell's ass, you'll love this movie. While there is only one brief nude butt-shot, he spends a great deal of time in either a flight suit or long underwear. The cinematographer clearly enjoyed shooting Rockwell's rear end in these outfits.

The plot: Sam Rockwell plays a man who is nearing the end of his three year contract working alone on an automated mining colony on the moon. (Hey. maybe this is where clean coal comes from!) He has an accident, wakes up from it... and things happen.

Rockwell's performance as the person who slowly figures things out is wonderful. His is the primary performance. Kevin Spacey plays the voice of his computer/helper, which is an interesting character in itself.

It's a wonderful movie.

2) Book review
Doomed Queens: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends, From Cleopatra to Princess Di by Kris Waldherr

This book is an interesting overview of women who were sacrificed on the altar of power. Many of the stories presented here will be people you are likely familiar with: Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey, for example. The author also includes some interesting also-rans in history (such as Berenice and Arsinoe, Cleopatra's sisters and rivals) and people no one talks about much, like Urraca of Leon and Castile, who was the first woman to rule a state in her own right in the West.

The entries are short, however, so you may find yourself wanting more information. Also, many of the entries deal with women who we know very little about, so that may be all the information there.

Still, an interesting overview.

It would be interesting to see the reverse of these women: you know, the women who ROCKED the throne: like Queen Elizabeth I of England or Isabella la Catolica or Eleanor of Aquitaine or Blanche of Castile. (I think that Urraca of Leon and Castile would also be included here.)

( Stuff about my great-grandfather under the cut. )

I've seen the previews for Bravo new show NYC Prep, and I have had a viscerally negative reaction to them. Frankly, it's a reaction that's totally out of proportion, so I'm trying to figure out why.

I'm not a fan of the whole "They're rich! They're assholes! Let's follow them around with a camera!" genre of reality shows out there right now (The Real Housewives of..., for instance), but normally I just think to myself "If I want to watch unpleasant people, I can go to a local bar," and change the channel.

In other words, static, unpleasant static, but static nonetheless.

But not this one. I'm almost irrationally angry at this one. Part of it is the attitudes of the kids in the commercials. They all irritate me. They come across as that delightful combination of smug, arrogant and clueless.

Now that I'm thinking about it though... they're all still in high school... they're still kids. If there is any time to smug and clueless in this life, it's when you're a kid. Life will beat you down soon enough.

Maybe part of it is that this show is about kids.

It's one thing to show adults being generally rude and unpleasant to one another. Everyone involved is an adult, after all, they've consented. This... with teenagers... if I were a parent, I wouldn't let my kid do this.

So, in the end, I'm having an ugly reaction to a show that I will almost certainly never watch.

Okay, I saw Up this weekend. If you haven't, go see it.

But the one I want to talk about is Angels and Demons, mostly because I'm Catholic.

No, I'm not offended by the movie. In fact, it wasn't bad. It wasn't wonderful: people who have just been branded on the chest don't just throw a shirt on and then run around Vatican City and they got some stuff about Catholicism wrong, but it was far and away better than The DaVinci Code.

Catholicism is one of only two major Christian faiths that could support a whole "big, scary religious conspiracy" thing -- Mormonism would probably be the other, and there are more of us. So, I started imagining a version taking place in the American Bible Belt.

Random religious dude: Four of our televangelists have been kidnapped. The kidnappers are threatening to kill one every hour and the hour starting at 8:00 pm tonight. We need your help, despite you recent attacks against us. *
Tom Hanks: To help you people I need access to Oral Roberts University's archives.
Actress who we're supposed to believe is a physicist even though most physicists don't spend time at their lab in high heels and a tight black skirt: We have to recover the anti-matter!*
(All walk over to archives)
Tom Hanks: This is it? Ten whole books?
Alleged physicist: And three of them are copies of that Ann Coulter book where she attacks evolution.
Random religious dude: She is a brave woman.
Tom Hanks: But if you read her arguments, you'd know that they made no sense.
Alleged physicist: Have you ever read a biology textbook?
Random religious dude: We don't put much stock in book learning around these parts.
Tom Hanks: I wonder if I'd have more luck at Liberty University.**


*Seriously, these were the major plot points of the movie.
**Rev. Jerry Falwell's university