The Avengers and Why We're Living In the Future

So, I just got home from watching The Avengers. And first of all, if you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and go see it. Whether or not you're a fan of superhero movies, you will like this film. Without making this a post about the specifics of why it is awesome, there is a reason it is making as much money as it is. So, go see it. I'll wait.

...

How'd you like the movie? Awesome, right? Sweet. Let's get into why we're living in the future.

I make this argument a lot- usually when some new technology comes out and everyone is fawning over it. I say this most often when people make changes to their cell phones via WiFi, and the example that I use most often is a story about the zoo. A friend of mine and I were at the zoo one day, and we wanted a picture of a tiger, but the big cat was lounging too far away for our cell phones to really get a good shot. No problem, says I, and I quickly pull up my app store and grab a free camera zoom app. Within sixty seconds, the camera on my phone can now zoom close enough to get a decent picture- not just enlarging a pre-existing small picture, mind you, it actually zooms. I accomplished this -this fundamental alteration to the nature of my phone- without plugging in to a computer, for free, in less time than it took for me to type this paragraph.

So, what does this have to do with The Avengers?

In the movies previous to this one, especially Thor, the idea is proposed that some of the "magical" aspects of the various superheroes (again, mostly Thor), are actually super-advanced science. This theme of science that borderlines on the arcane is repeated again and again throughout the Marvel universe: Tony Stark can build a fuel source that provides more energy from a generator the size of a baseball than a conventional coal plant could ever hope to output; Bruce Banner turns himself into a nigh-invulnerable, unstoppable force of anger and rage; Captain America becomes the ultimate soldier at the peak of human physiological development; Scarlet Johansson is hot. All miracles of super-science.


"Don't forget about Hawkeye, Dan!"


For better or worse, the real world doesn't have Tony Stark or Bruce Banner running around to solve all our problems. But that doesn't mean we aren't cracking into the realms of super-science, ourselves. Take, for example, the ITER- or the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. Slated for a commercial debut of somewhere between 2030-2050, a fusion (as opposed to fission, big difference!) power plant such as this would revolutionize the way we think of energy. Or, if power plants ain't your thing, consider a helmet that the Army is reportedly developing that could read your brain's activity and compose messages from it- essentially, a telepathy helmet. Or, hey, apparently James Cameron feels like blowing up asteroids to mine their sweet, sweet metallic-rich cores.
This is all besides the fact that while I was typing this, I downloaded a new music album to my phone while I Yelped where I'm going to get dinner from, while video-chatting to my parents.

If we can just... not blow up the planet for the next 50 years or so, I firmly believe that we're going to be staring down the barrel of a glorious super-science future.

Obama Out of the Closet for Gay Marriage

So, earlier today, President Obama said he supports gay marriage. Simply put, these are my thoughts.

First of all: this was politically motivated. Coming on the heels of North Carolina’s state constitutional ban of gay marriage, Obama wanted to shore up some support from his base- support that has been lackluster by many accounts. I believe that he made the determination (correctly so) that a lot of the people that would hate him for supporting gay marriage were also people that weren’t going to vote for him anyway… but that a lot of the people that would appreciate his support of gay marriage were people that might be less likely to vote or donate if he didn’t support it. “My views are evolving”, my ass; he waited for the right time to drop this bomb, and saw an opportunity here.

Second, he was not boxed in by Joe Biden. Uncle Joe might have his “Big Effin’ Deal” moments, as well as a horrendously awkward introduction of another Head of State, but he’s not going to paint his boss into a corner on an issue this big. He was the man on point for this issue. I’ve no doubt that he honestly believes what he said about being comfortable with gay marriage, I just believe that his job was to channel that belief into a pragmatic political strategy, stick his neck out and gauge the response. Since there wasn’t enough vitriol spat at him, the plan for Obama to voice his support after the NC vote went forward.

Third, things are going to get ugly. And I mean UGLY. This is one of the biggest battle lines in American politics, and it gets people pissed. Those who support gay marriage have long been without a big-name champion; now they have one, and as far as champions go, you don’t get any bigger name than the President. With presumptive-nominee Mitt Romney still coming out against gay marriage, people have their figureheads to rally around. Expect woefully inaccurate attack ads from both sides in all 50 states. Expect a firestorm.

Fourth: this is, all in all, a good thing. If you’re against same-sex marriage… then, I’m sorry, but you’re simply wrong. Allow me to support my position with some handy bullet points, now with 15% fewer calories.

The “research” that says it’s terrible is wrong, wrong, and wrong some more. The idea that kids do better in two-parent homes is correct- but it doesn’t matter which sex the parents are. They just need good parents.

The idea that marriage is something that needs to be defended (by straight people) is ridiculous when nationally, just about half of marriages end in divorce… and is doubly absurd when the states that resist gay marriage the hardest are also the states with the highest individual divorce rates, highest rates of teenaged pregnancies (and the higher rates of teenaged marriage... and divorce). That’s some high and mighty instiution you’re defending, there! (Get off your self-righteous horse, Southern States.)

The idea that it’s against the Bible or God’s Will for the nation or something- tough cookies. There’s that whole separation of church and state deal. (First Amendment; "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". It means the government can't pass a law giving preference to any one religion or it's opinions. Not even yours. So essentially, whatever it is you interpret God's opinion to be on gay marriage, it doesn't matter; the issue has to be handled based on its mortal, non-religious merits.)

And lastly, people sure don’t want Big Government getting involved in their lives… until they do. You can’t have it both ways, kids. Either tell the government to GTFO as a whole, and let each state decide… or, have the government come in and accept the results on a national level. But you might want to have Uncle Sam make a ruling on it quickly, because as time goes on, you might not like the results.

Obama’s Failed Economic--- Waaaiiit a Minute!

Mitt Romney has shut up about this issue specifically in recent weeks, and wisely so, though he still bashes the stimulus as a whole. The bailout of the American auto industry was at best an incredibly risky maneuver, and if it hadn’t have worked even a little bit, you can believe that conservatives would have crucified the President on this one. The fact that even the spin machines have gone silent about it, though, shows pretty clearly just how successful it was. Let’s break this down by company.

• Ford: If you’re a George R.R. Martin fan, you could go so far as to call this automaker Dorn; they are the only of the Big Three to remain Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. For those of you unfamiliar with A Song of Ice and Fire, this means that they are the only of the major American automakers that were able to survive the economic crisis without a government bailout. Their brand is down across the world but it’s rising in the States, enough so to offset the other losses. They earned just over 20 billion in 2011, cutting their debt from the past year by about 6 billion dollars and eliminating a tax allowance they’d been given to help them out back in 2006. (Why is a special tax reduction not considered a bailout? Not sure.)
• Chrysler: Uncle Sam shelled out 12.5 billion dollars to keep Chrysler afloat, and of that money, 11.2 billion had been repaid as of July 2011. We’re still out 1.3 billion, but that’s because the automaker actually did too well. Apparently, the government expected them to take until 2017 to pay everything back, and so they set up an interest schedule to match that expectation. Because Chrysler paid the people back too soon, they saved themselves interest payments later on. They just went on to quadruple their quarterly profits over last year’s quarter, putting up a whopping $437 million dollars in the bank- their best quarter in over a decade. They’re on track to post 1.5 billion dollars in profit over the course of the fiscal year, which will be up from 183 million last year. For those of you following along at home, that’s about 8.2 times what they made last year. That’s kind of a big deal. If it means that Chrysler is doing that well, especially considering that during times of $4.00+ gasoline its most popular model is a fucking truck.
• General Motors: GM appears to have had the slowest recovery of the Three. (Their information is also hardest to find). Their increase in stock prices has helped evaporate another 2 billion of the government’s bailout losses, but apparently they’d have to double their worth from this point to completely clear what the American people are out.

The politics of money are always tricky, because you can’t have two side-by-side economies to study in which one gets the bailout and the other one doesn’t. Because of this, economic policy might be one of the most spin-prone areas in the national discussion, as one side can say “The recovery would have been twice as bad without the bailout!” while the other one screams “It would have been twice as good without it!”. Both provide legitimate-sounding statistics from both biased and impartial-sounding sources (if they cite their sources at all, but that’s another rant).

Nina Easton, Mayor of Wrongville

It’s scheduling week here at the hospital; the twice-yearly week long exercise of figuring out which classes go where on the master schedule of my wing. We were fortunate in that the planning itself only took a day, but now we have the rest of the week to finish paperwork, write new course descriptions, and so forth. For me, this doesn’t take too long, and so I was left enough time at lunch today to check out what was going on around the internet. And that is when I found this op-ed.

First of all, let’s ignore the fact that the author, Nina Easton, is a conservative. I’m not a big fan of the “They disagree with me, so they must be wrong” mindset that has infected my country in years past, and so I try to combat it whenever possible. For instance- if she’s worked for Fortune, the LA Times and the Boston Globe, she’s probably at least fairly on top of her game. So don’t brush her off just because she happens to be a conservative talking about the virtues of “The 1%”.

Nope, we’re going to assume for the sake of this post that Ms. Easton is a purely non-biased reporter, speaking her mind without a political agenda behind her.

And we’re going to assume that  she’s unbiased because if we don’t, and we believe that she’s just a conservative mouthpiece, then her writing is immediately as invalid as Glenn Beck’s or Keith Olberman’s.

And we’re going to assume that she’s unbiased, because even if we do, she is still completely wrong.

Ms. Easton’s article is based on the same tired assumption that a lot of conservatives have been making, and that is that the furor surrounding the One Percent is based on jealousy. She bases her fifth paragraph on the notion that people who’re mad at the mega-rich want their money stripped from them and moved into their own community, like they want President Obama to swing in like some governmental Robin Hood to give the poor their due.

But I don’t think that’s what this anger Easton complains of is about. People want larger salaries of their own, but I don’t think they want someone else’s money. This isn’t about being angry at someone because they’re successful, it’s about being mad at someone because they became successful at the expense of their workers. CEOs that continue to take enormous bonuses immediately after laying off some percentage of their labor force. Finance moguls who profit by cheating their clients and then escape any significant punishment. These seem to be what the “99%ers” are really upset about.

“But there are communists at the Occupy rallies that want all the rich to hand over all their money!” Yes, and there are Secessionists at NRA rallies that still talk about preparing for the inevitable war between the government and their local “militia”. Spare me your generalizations about the Occupy Communists and I’ll spare you my vitriol for your Rambo Wannabes. There are crazies at every rally.

But I digress. I’ll counterpoint my own argument: CEOs taking huge salaries and bonuses.

Global finance is fucking complicated. I’m personally of the opinion that monetary sums in the neighborhood of the trillions-of-dollars-mark is actually imaginary, but some people are smart enough to actually finagle this possibly-imaginary system to produce real-world results. People that can do that do deserve big salaries, because if they don’t get paid, yeah, they’re gonna go find someone who’ll shell out the cheddar to please them.

But. Just because John Q. Employee doesn’t understand how the price of grain in India affects the rubber trade in South America, that doesn’t mean that he deserves to get the axe so his boss-of-bosses can get another couple thousand on their bonus check. When this happens to one person, or in one company, its unfortunate… but the now-jobless employees could just go get jobs elsewhere. When this happens on a national scale and becomes the status quo, however, people become embittered on a national scale, and that bitterness becomes the status quo. Don’t act so goddamn surprised that people are up in arms over the super-rich when it seems like every CEO is doing this.

Earlier on than this, she states in her third paragraph that “The 1% club stands accused, accurately, of more than doubling its share of the nation's income since 1980. By 2007 it controlled nearly 24% of total income, the second highest in history, after 1929. (In 2009 its share dropped to 17%, suggesting that recessions aren't necessarily kind to the rich.)”

This is not an argument I would make if I were trying to draw support to my point of view. The richest 1%’s collective bargaining power dropped from ONE QUARTER OF ALL AMERICAN WEALTH to just a paltry SEVENTEEN PERCENT? Boo fucking hoo. If I were her editor I would have deleted this paragraph from her entry so hard the computer would have exploded. I would have then taken the ashes and thrown them into the goddamn sea, just so nobody would ever read what Nina Easton almost perpetrated on my point of view.

Easton states in her fourth paragraph that “Railing about the 1% club has become shorthand for expressing outrage not only over growing income disparity but also about the state of the nation's working class.” I would agree with that as a one-off statement, but since it isn’t a one-off statement, it can only be viewed as the most accurate thing Nina Easton has accidentally said all day.

She notes in her sixth paragraph that Wall Street bonuses have dropped “18,000, or 13%, to $121,150. It is the second lowest average in the last eight years, topping only the $100,850 of 2008. This estimate tracks cash payments and doesn't include stock options or other forms of deferred compensation that haven't been realized.” Again, this is not something I would say out loud if I were trying to assuage the malice directed at the One Percent. A bonus of $100,000 is still nearly four times what I make as a salary, after taxes, and I sure as shit don’t get stock options.
Again, my job is different than a Wall Street suit’s, but as long as we’re comparing, I’d like to see him swing by my unit and handle some of our boys. Just sayin’.

She does make some good points; she states that there are some legitimate reasons why the One Percent are making so much freaking money these days, such as technological advances that allow companies to globalize in ways that simply were not possible even twenty years ago. (Her comparison is to a performer in the 1600s. I'm not sure why.)
She also cites the fact that womens’ salaries are rising, and she states that if you take a random well-paid One Percenter male, odds are he has an equally educated female counterpart in house as well. With her salary on the up and up, she claims that it’s only natural for the rich to become richer without any devious dealings going on- and on the face value of that factor, at least, she could be right.

But unfortunately, while she’s right in isolated pockets, she’s wrong on the foundation of her article. Like so many others, she falls into the trap of thinking that this “populist rage” is based on jealousy, and not out of our observation of how warped the system is in favor of the rich. She touts the belief that the rich are faulted for their success, and fails to even acknowledge -no, outright denies- that the rich have become as successful as they are in large part by exploiting their workers and clients. That’s where this “populist rage” is coming from (which, I’ll add, wasn’t generating a peep of protest from conservatives when the Tea Party was the new thing, but that’s another rant). I’m not trying to defend Occupy as a movement, as it is largely a worthless endeavor these days, but the underlying sentiment?
That isn't going anywhere.

Modesty Is For People Who Suck (Some Links NSFW)

"Modesty Is For People Who Suck" is a line that I came up with a couple years ago. I find it funny that I’m the one spreading it around work, and it’s a bit of a joke to me- but in other ways, it isn’t. I decided to write about its underlying components of confidence versus conceit today, through an examination of the portrayal of womens’ sexuality by the media.

I don’t think I’d be causing anyone to double-take if I informed you that a lot of fashion outlets tend to base their ideal of beauty around a slender figure. Runway models have been stereotyped as under-eaters, bulimics or anorexics for years- often with a fair amount of truth behind it. If you look at any female-targeted weight loss plan, many of the “after” pictures have women that have gone down to a size 2, if not a size 0.

The fact that there even IS a “size zero” is ridiculous in my mind. Zero implies a lack of value; a complete absence of whatever it is you’re measuring. Even the most emaciated waistline still has some size to it, and therefore, it cannot be zero. Claiming the size of a dress as such is baffling to me- claiming that you’d aspire to be that size, or the implication that you should be that size, is even stranger. Your waistline should be non-existent? Give me a break.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. My point is this: Confidence has a lot to do with how someone looks. That’s not going to change any time soon. But, it also has a lot to do with how you perceive yourself to look. Change your perception, and even if you don’t shed a single pound, you can believe that you look better. This, in turn, can make you carry yourself better (after all, if you think you’re hot shit, why wouldn’t you? You’re hot shit, after all)- and when you carry yourself like you’re worth a million dollars, other people are more likely to treat you better. At the very least they’re typically less likely to mess with you, because someone who is self-confident is less likely to put up with heinous bullshit.

Enter the small but growing plus-sized movement. This is a movement you might have seen here and there; Glamour had a cover a while back with a bunch of “plus” sized models without Photoshopping, or you might have stumbled onto the Curve Appeal Tumblr, or any other venue that extols the bigger girls. These are good things, in my opinion, because they instill confidence in a group of people whose confidence is more likely to be somewhat eroded from the constant assault on their forms that the media hits them with.

It instills confidence- but not conceit.

There’s a big difference. Confidence is knowing who you are. Confidence is knowing your path and walking it, demanding equality when it is due, and doing your thing with swagger even when the haters go and hate. Conceit, on the other hand, makes you believe that you are better than everyone else, and it makes you believe that you deserve special treatment.

The “plus size is awesome” movement doesn’t go around telling girls that they’re better than skinny girls- which is what a lot of fashion outlets have been telling their readers, albeit in reverse; that skinny is better than big. The plus-size movement has been telling girls that they are at their best when they look like they ought to, not when they try to mash their bodies into a shape eight sizes too small. Is there a difference between being a big, curvy girl and being legitimately unhealthy in your size? Of course, and people need to be real with themselves; if you’re lazy and eat like shit, or if you have a glandular problem (or whatever else), you need to take extra care of yourself. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about confidence, which could be summed up by the line, “A little swagger is a good thing”. A buddy of mine used to say that. “Modesty is for people who suck” represents conceit, though I say it jokingly (usually). So keep your swagger, people, be you male or female, size 0 (ugh) or size 10.

Why Queen Elizabeth Hates Holidays

11:20am- I wake up after a fun night on the town with a buddy of mine. After asking my plants how they slept, I move them back onto my balcony and wish them a good day.

11:28am- The bamboo and the oregano are arguing again, so I move them to opposite sides of the balcony. Personally I think the oregano started it but I don't want to take sides.

12:45pm- I lose a couple rounds of video games to mouth breathing 13 year olds. I disagree with their assessments of my sexuality and of my mother. I review the merits of introducing my mouse to the inner workings of my monitor. I decide against this- barely.

1:40pm- I begin writing this account. By now it is occurring to me just how little there will be for me to do today, as tomorrow is Easter and therefore nobody will be around to hit the town tonight. This disappoints me, and so I begin filling the day with things such as balancing my finances, laundry, and eating breakfast.

1:42pm- I have finished balancing my finances, my laundry, and my breakfast. This does not bode well.

2:02pm- My situation has deteriorated to the point where I am considering playing Warcraft.

2:03pm- I play Warcraft.

2:04pm- I remember why I stopped playing Warcraft for 3 months.

2:59pm- After being tricked into joining a Tough Mudder team, I get an email stating that team practice is today. An opportunity to embarrass myself in front of my team? Count me in!

4:02pm- I finish saving my terrible friends from their own blind fumblings through WoW, and grab a bit of lunch. I start imagining all the things that a Mudder team practice will include. Given the fact that my team is both comprised mostly of beautiful women, and our team is (apparently) going to compete in the Least Clothed costume contest, I'm confident that today's dry run will include an acceptable lack of modesty.

4:11pm- I receive a text from our team leader that practice is actually canceled due to everyone bailing- because of Easter. My dislike for family holidays grows.

4:21pm- After my team leader tells me what I already know (that nobody is around to hang out with, but Happy Easter!), I decide to go for a run. I tell the potted hanging fern to make sure that the plants on the deck don't get into it again, and I hit the bricks.

5:39pm- I return to find the basil pot knocked over. Its undamaged, but I have my suspicions. I move it inside and start trolling the internet.

5:47pm- Success! One of my lines comes back with a fish. A friend of mine is heading out tonight. I might not have to forsake human interaction this weekend after all!

7:23pm- A second friend of mine claims interest in causing trouble. Given their two natures, I begin considering how worth it a charge of Criminal Mischief would be on my record. I decide that this would be very worth it, and I celebrate with a quick round of Civ 5.

8:00pm- I, Queen Elizabeth, have given the Danish Empire the business. They, meanwhile, are decidedly out of business .

9:00pm- I get dinner and a shower. Can't be running around town like a raggamuffin, after all.

10:50pm- I have now watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I have reassessed my earlier position; the two robots who can't read might be racist after all. What I have not done, oddly enough, is met up with either of my two friends. This strikes me as odd because after both specifically told me they were going out, they decided on a "radio silence" approach to the conversation. I begin to suspect that they have either been killed by Decepticons, or that they are Decepticons. Both of these possibilities seem plausible, and I begin barricading my apartment for the inevitable siege.

11:35pm- I have now triumphed over my foes as Akali, the Fist of Shadow, and all of League of Legends trembles before my name. Still no word from the Decepticons; they probably saw my game as observers and were like "FUCK we ain't messing with THAT guy, did you see how he gave those pixels the business? It's like he's Queen Elizabeth or something!"

11:38pm- I have given up and changed back into my gym shorts for the rest of the evening, deciding to at least finish that bottle of white wine that isn't going to get drank any other day of the week.

11:39pm- In the spirit of Easter, I first fill my glass with water. "And now for my NEXT trick!" I announce to my apartment (which is empty, other than the Transformers movie (which is on again for some reason) and my plants), "Ka-CHOW!". I then empty the water and re-fill it with the wine, declaring that I am the Savior reborn. My plants, which have seen this trick before, are not impressed. Oh well.

Happy Easter.

News Flash: Old White Man Yearns for Victorian Sexuality; Film at 11:00.

I recently read this article on CNN, and I felt that I should respond. For anyone who doesn’t make the jump, the author, William Bennett, states that a “hookup culture” hasn’t resulted in happiness and that the place to find real fulfillment is in marriage. He goes on to say that “deviant” sexual acts such as bondage debase both men and women, and that such things are not what the feminist movement of past decades was fighting for. He makes the point that novels such as “50 Shades of Grey”and similar TV programs support the subjugation of women, and he finds it odd that during a time when such an uproar is going on about the “war on women”, that so many women would be buying the book so fast the stores can hardly keep in on the shelves.

Bennett’s first and most obvious mistake is that the women that take part in this sort of relationship don’t like it.

Now, allow me to get the necessary PC disclaimer out of the way: We’re not talking about domestic or sexual abuse. We’re talking about relationships between two law-abiding, consenting adults.

That being said, he’s making the assumption that the women involved in relationships with such sexual activities as a “room… full of chains, clamps, whips, canes, flogs and cuffs” are there against their will. He relates once again the story of the female protagonist of 50 Shades, bemoaning how she turns from an innocent girl to a “sexual submissive” for some corporate suit-type guy. He completely ignores the possibility that the girl enjoys feeling dominated specifically within the context of that exact sexual encounter. I’ve never read the book, but considering he’s generalizing from the book to American culture at large, I don’t need to know the whole plot in order to say this: It’s possible, that with the girl acting as a representative for all women in America, that she leaves the “Red Room of Pain” and goes on to kick ass the next day at work. Maybe she’s a high-powered exec too. Maybe she’s a cop or an EMT, or some take-no-prisoners politician who goes to the mats for her constituents. She could be an amazing teacher pursuing a career in the administration of schools, a small-business owner who just recently expanded, or a Marine.

My point is, Bennett assumes that her desire to be submissive and dominated in the bedroom with this particular guy (this might not (and probably isn’t) with all guys, either) means that she’s got some desire to be submissive and dominated outside the bedroom. And that just might not be the case.

Second of all, and this is almost as bad as the first point: He seems to be making the assumption that the only people who like to be dominated are women.

I invite anyone who believes that previous statement to take a casual jaunt around the video-hosting website of your choice and do a search on BDSM. How many of the people being worked over are male? A fair number of them? That could be because some people like being hit with a whip. Some of them are female, and some of them are male. Some people like hot wax, being tied up, or being stepped on with heels. Everybody has a kink- men included.

So, those are the first two assumptions that he makes, but they are not the worst. In my opinion, the worst assumption that he makes is the third one- that “hookup culture” is not only bad for women, but bad for society as a whole.

The very article he quotes when grimly warning us that “women are no happier than they were in the 1970s” says, and I quote,

…How bad are the heartaches, anyway? According to New York University researcher Paula England, the war stories about the hookup culture are greatly exaggerated. The average college student has about one hookup a year, and most people end up in a long-term relationship at some point in college. Beyond college, women are much less vulnerable to assault than they have ever been, according to a 2011 White House report, largely because they have more power to leave bad relationships.

This is, to put it simply, not an issue of what is damaging to American society; it is an issue of what is damaging to Bennett’s perception of American society. He’s not the only one with such views, I’m sure, but for him to come out and say that he believes we should take more of a lesson from Victorian England (and when I think of healthy sexual expression, that’s the time period I think about) is so absurd it’s laughable.

He does, of course, stick in his obligatory jab at the LGBTQ community by stating that the deepest sexual satisfaction comes from traditional marriage, and slips a literary eye-roll in there by mockingly calling the term “derisive”.

In closing, the one thought I was left with after reading this article is, “MAN that dude needs to get laid.”