Month: December 2010

Dan Ariely explains how black pearls became more valuable than white ones.

Tracy Clark-Flory reviews the first sex game for the Xbox Kinect (for a NSFW YouTube simulation, check after the jump):

[E]xciting! At least in theory. There's been a lot of hype around the potential for harnessing the device — which turns the human body into a remote control — for pornographic pursuits. However, the first glimpse of what that could mean is decidedly unsexy.

The preview shows a developer moving his hand this way and that, which causes a disembodied hand to feel up a virtual girl in the game. As some bloggers have suggested, it's like watching Thing from "The Addams Family" get busy — which is rather unsettling (although, hand and amputee fetishists might disagree). This is a beta release and the preview is limited to "fondling-only mode," according to Nerve, so you can look forward to full-body interaction. Teledildonics are also likely to be introduced so that users aren't just humping air.

I have to say I'm baffled that this is the best we've come up with. Combine the multi-billion-dollar porn industry with today's most advanced technology and all you get is a perverted mime act?

Drum roll, please:

For the ladies there's always the Shake Weight.

Laura Norén dives into the sociology:

Urination is a biological function that has been subjected to a great degree of social control. Unfortunately, urban design has not kept pace with the demand for clean, easily accessible public restrooms for humans. And there has been no attempt to create any kind of system to deal with canine urine. In most cities it is illegal for humans to pee in public but both legal and widely accepted for dogs to pee where ever they like (in New York, they cannot pee on the grass in parks). …

One of the odd side effects of the introduction of the new TSA pat down procedures is that it revealed just how many people struggle with incontinence, either needing to urinate frequently or needing to wear diapers (or both). I was aware of those issues before the TSA started sticking their hands in private places, but I wasn’t sure how to simultaneously think about adult diapers, dogs peeing on the street, and taxi/truck drivers peeing in jugs while still in their cabs. Where social control is very strong – as it is in the case of urination – it can almost trump biological needs, especially if the biological needs offer a level of control.

(Hat tip: Flowing Data)

Emma Grady looks at a new report, which grades apparel companies on their factory conditions:

The As You Sow report, called "Toward a Safe, Just Workplace: Apparel Supply Chain Compliance Programs," the first publicly-available analysis of its kind, provides a scorecard based on company programs, including factory auditing, remediation, continuous improvement, collaboration, company management accountability, and transparency.

Dan Wilbur's site is definitely worth a stroll.

Victor Davis Hanson is defending liberal learning in its classic sense:

…the therapeutic academic Left proved incapable of defending the traditional liberal arts.With three decades of defining the study of literature and history as a melodrama of race, class, and gender oppression, it managed to turn off college students and the general reading public. And, cheek by jowl, the utilitarian Right succeeded in reclassifying business and finance not just as undergraduate majors, but also as core elements in general-education requirements.

In such a climate, it is unsurprising that once again we hear talk of cutting the “non-essentials” in our colleges, such as Latin, Renaissance history, Shakespeare, Plato, Rembrandt, and Chopin. Why do we cling to the arts and humanities in a high-tech world in which we have instant recall at our fingertips through a Google search and such studies do not guarantee sure 21st-century careers? But the liberal arts train students to write, think, and argue inductively, while drawing upon evidence from a shared body of knowledge. Without that foundation, it is harder to make — or demand from others — logical, informed decisions about managing our supercharged society as it speeds on by.

Amen, and academia has certainly had its indefensible ticks and excesses, but the cause VDH is arguing for is harmed, not helped, by buying into the lazy stereotype that the whole academic left makes all history and literature into identity politics.

The utilitarians aren't the only right-leaning commentators that require pushback. Later in the essay, a more specific critique is made:

During the 1960s and 1970s, committed liberals thought we could short-circuit the process of liberal education by creating advocacy courses with the word “studies” in their names. Black studies, Chicano studies, community studies, environmental studies, leisure studies, peace studies, women’s studies, and hundreds more were designed to turn out more socially responsible young people. Instead, universities have too often graduated zealous advocates who lacked the broad education necessary to achieve their predetermined politicized ends.

There is truth there too, though various studies programs weren't merely aiming to create socially responsible graduates – they also sought to direct attention in the curriculum to subject matter that had long been illegitimately ignored. Nonetheless, it's great to see a defense of liberal learning – and its timeless relevance to … living and thinking well.

Do gay activists, including myself, want to doubt it now? Of course, it’s my job to push, to criticize, to explain, to shame, to encourage. But I did so precisely to advance what has happened today, and am glad that it was a small part of the climate that made it happen. I reiterate what I wrote barely a week ago:

It seems to me the events of the last month or so reveal that the Obama administration has finally delivered the goods for the military, which is hobbled by this dated, counter-productive policy, and for the gay community, by moving the issue deliberately  through the Congress before the executive branch or the judicial branch.

Like 2009’s removal of the HIV ban, which was as painstakingly slow but thereby much more entrenched, this process took time. Without the Pentagon study, it wouldn’t have passed. Without Obama keeping Lieberman inside the tent, it wouldn’t have passed. Without the critical relationship between Bob Gates and Obama, it wouldn’t have passed. It worked our last nerve; we faced at one point a true nightmare of nothing … for years. And then we pulled behind this president, making it his victory and the country’s victory, as well as ours. We also know now what a McCain administration would have done: nothing. The disgraceful bitterness and rancor and irrationality that the Senator has shown these past few months reveal just how important it was to defeat him and his deranged, delusional side-kick in 2008. Here’s the presidential statement:

Today, the Senate has taken an historic step toward ending a policy that undermines our national security while violating the very ideals that our brave men and women in uniform risk their lives to defend.

By ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, no longer will our nation be denied the service of thousands of patriotic Americans forced to leave the military, despite years of exemplary performance, because they happen to be gay. And no longer will many thousands more be asked to live a lie in order to serve the country they love.

As Commander-in-Chief, I am also absolutely convinced that making this change will only underscore the professionalism of our troops as the best led and best trained fighting force the world has ever known. And I join the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the overwhelming majority of service members asked by the Pentagon, in knowing that we can responsibly transition to a new policy while ensuring our military strength and readiness.

I want to thank Majority Leader Reid, Senators Lieberman and Collins and the countless others who have worked so hard to get this done. It is time to close this chapter in our history. It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed. It is time to allow gay and lesbian Americans to serve their country openly. I urge the Senate to send this bill to my desk so that I can sign it into law.

(Photo: Olivier Douliery/Getty.)

A reader writes:

Few political figures have enraged me more over the past decade than Joe Lieberman. He has, and will have, much to answer for, beginning with his incessant undercutting of Al Gore during the 2000 recount, to his feverish (and continuing) support for the Iraq War, to his vanity-laden refusal to accept political defeat in 2006, to his endorsement of McCain in 2008, to, finally, his truly disgusting behavior during some of the most crucial hours of the struggle to enact health care reform.

And yet . . .

And yet, here he has been over these past few weeks, truly, genuinely, and tirelessly on the side of the angels, working like hell to overturn a grave injustice to patriotic Americans who want nothing more than to serve our country in dignity, and without having to live a vicious lie, and force their family, friends, and loved ones to do the same. Lieberman alone pulled this back from the abyss, when many, many others thought it was over, thought that DADT would live on, zombie-like, for years to come, and for no justifiable reason.

Whatever the reason, be it political calculation (he will probably face a tough reelection battle in 2012, should he choose to run once more), genuine moral conviction, or, most likely, an uneven and complicated combination of the two, he has pulled off a not-so-minor miracle, and earned a deserved place in our nation's history as a champion of human rights.

Democrats have not, and will not, forgive and forget Lieberman's many outrageous political transgressions and betrayals over the years–nor, in a very real sense, should they. But if Lieberman ultimately goes down to defeat in 2012, at least it will be a much more honorable one than anyone would have thought likely up until a few weeks ago.

But also recall who decided it was much better to keep him in the fold than expel him. Meep meep indeed.

My mind and heart are full of cascading thoughts and feelings today. For the most part, I think of the past, and the countless gay men and lesbians who have served their country with honor over the decades and centuries. Today is their day as much as it is that of the current gay servicemembers. They form a brigade through time that has finally marched into the open clearing of equal dignity.

Yes, the path of gay soldiers is unlike that of, say, African-American soldiers. Unlike the brutal exclusion and then segregation of African-Americans, gay soldiers were always in the ranks, just in a near-invisible cage of mandatory dishonesty and involuntary fear. But the impact of the emancipation into full and proud members of the military is as deep as for any other group of Americans. It means, as it did for the first black soldiers who fought for the union, that this country is truly theirs’ for the first time – because they have finally been allowed to fight and die for it without lying about who they are. They have been relieved of the burden of mandatory shame. Only those who have labored under such crushing psychic pressure can know how truly liberating this feels.

It’s been more than three decades since Leonard Matlovich appeared on the cover of Time magazine. It’s been more than two decades since this struggle began to reach the realm of political possibility. From the painful non-compromise of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, through the big increase in discharges under president Clinton, via the wars and civil marriage breakthroughs of the first decade of the 21st Century to the calm and reasoned Pentagon report of December 2010, the path has been uneven. We need to remember this. We need to remember constantly that any civil rights movement will be beset with reversals, with dark periods, with moments when the intensity of the despair breaks the hardiest of souls.

But we should also note that what won in the end was facts and testimony and truth. There is no rational basis to keep qualified and dedicated gays from serving in the military. It was confidence in this truth – not assertion of any special identity or special rights – that carried us forward. And the revelation of the actual lives and records of gay servicemembers – all of whom came out of the closet and risked their livelihoods to testify to the truth – has sunk in widely and deeply. These men and women had the courage to serve their country and then the courage to risk their careers, promotions, pensions, salaries and, in some cases, lives to bring this day about. They represent an often silent majority of gay men and women who simply want to belong to the families and country and churches and communities they love, and to contribute to them without having to lie about themselves. This, in the end, was not about the right to be gay, but the right to serve America. Like all great civil rights movements, it is in the end about giving, not taking.

This Luckovich cartoon says so much so powerfully:

And this points to a deeper truth. What the gay rights movement should, in my view, be about is not the creation of a separate, protected class of victims. It should be about enlarging the circle of human freedom so that there are no excuses left, no classes of pre-ordained victims, just individual citizens living different lives with no group-based discrimination.

This does not deny the uniqueness of different cultures, the value of a distinct minority, the differentness of race and gender and orientation and religion and geography. It merely says that politics should be indifferent to this cacophony of voices and carnival of color. Politics should merely address those core civil inequalities that keep groups separate, alien and mutually suspicious. By removing the bar on military service and the bar on marriage, the gay rights movement is, slowly, increasingly, making America more whole and the gay rights movement obsolete.

I long for that day. But I will always cherish this one.