perfidy

The folks at CT have hit the farking mother lode! Via several other people, they have hit upon the pastime of cramming together two book titles into one odious-- I mean, glorious-- über-concept. Witness:

The Joy Luck Fight Club: Chinese American daughters and mothers bond over fist fights, family history, dim sum and bouts of anarchy.

Heart of Darkness at Noon: English explorer misreads map, winds up in gulag.

The Way The Things They Carried Work: Children’s pictorial guide to the functioning of Vietnam era military hardware.

Tropic of Cancer Ward: More sex than you’d expect.

The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars My Destination: Five struggling artists share a studio and discuss teleportation, rape, tattooing and synaesthesia.

Remains of the Longest Day An old-style English butler is drafted to cater the invasion of Normandy.

Goodnight Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: Goodnight penal colony on the moon. Goodnight earth controlling the penal colony on the moon. Goodnight supercomputer named Mike.

Mason & Moby Dixon: Explorers cross the plains in search of giant mechanical white duck.

Moby Dick Tracy: Call me Ishmael…on your wrist radio!

The Sum of All Fears and Loathings in Las Vegas: A nuclear bomb is planted on American soil in the midst of an escalation in tension with the Soviet Union in an attempt to rekindle cold war animosity and prevent reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Then the ether kicks in…

I have proven to be singularly inept at such tomfoolery, and as such my paltry contributions are so far not worth sharing. Don't let that stop you from trying.

[wik] I'm just not very good at this...

The Wonder Boys of Summer: The sentimental tale of a past-his-prime Brooklyn novelist and the talented rookie who reminds him of his faded glory. A dog is shot, a car is stolen.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E Vanya: Retired secret agents sit around the samovar griping about lost love, old age, and declining property values.

Ham On Catcher In The Rye: Charles Bukowski’s autobiographical memoir about youth, prep school, existential anomie, and banging prostitutes.

Now we have our own near-Clueless-length post on the matter. Observe:

Phil linked to Dawn's, uh, statement? on her self-described "moderate" views.

Let's go find the most amusing sentences. Well, maybe those that are most amusing to us crazy-ass secularists.

"This is a typical tactic of secularists, angry leftists, libertarians, and others who attempt to use their own sense of moral superiority against those who take a principled moral stand. "
Our lead-off is this remarkable example of self-parody. I am reasonably confident she has no idea what she's just said.

"He takes the most far-out, "God Hates Fags"-type counterdemonstrators, and parades them as though everyone who opposes homosexual marriage must be like them."
Yeah, and the right would NEVER do this. ;)

"In fact, a recent poll showed that 20 percent of white evangelicals support civil unions"
Holy Cow! A whole 20%? Feel the love, everyone. At least from the 20%. The other 80%, maybe not.

"I personally would not oppose civil unions for homosexuals. Morally, I object to them very strongly. However, I am willing to allow them because I believe it is impossible at this point in time to turn back the tide of homosexuals wanting certain legal rights. "
No other reason? Just that one? You're just goin' with the tide? I can't be sure of what Christ would say about that, but there's gotta be something, somewhere.

"Marriage is society's model for the highest form of a human relationship—the two-parent family. Were the government to sanction any kind of "marriage" other than that between one man and one woman, it would send the message that marriage is only about with whom or with what one has sex."
The highest form. Wow. Didn't know that. Um, so why exactly? What part of regular, plain-ole straight marriage makes it the highest form? The parenting bit? This tells us what Dawn is really thinking, see? She doesn't feel that there is anything to a homosexual relationship other than sex. She said it. Right there.

"There's a reason why murder is a crime even when the person murdered is not a productive member of society. "
Even when? But it's almost not a crime? Me for the not understanding! Me not understand!

"Two men plot a murder and, just in case they get caught, they get "married" first. "
Oh, please. It's called the Fifth Amendment; go look it up. At least until we have Patriot Act III, and we lose it, on account uh terrur.

"Note also the hatred in Dennison's language, his reference to "the good Jesus People." Again, he's using the timeworn secularist tactic of painting anyone who disagrees with him as being hate-filled, while he is a kind and loving person who only has righteous anger. "
Allow me to further qualify precisely how we actually dofeel, Dawn! We do not think you are filled with evil. Rather, we recognize that you are filled with a gooey, Walmartish sort of self-righteousness, the kind that is most often found amongst those who have succeeded in surrounding themselves with large numbers of sufficiently like-minded persons, and have therefore not been challenged by intolerance, or often even had it pointed out to them. But maybe Dawn has a gay friend! Cluckity cluck -- too bad for him. She's trying to save a country here, dammit!

""Pray Until Something Happens."
Too good to pass up! Make up your own caption. ;)

"People like Phil Dennison—and I'm only singling him out because he put his views out there for all to see—subscribe to a relativist rationale, where liberty means pleasure to the exclusion of responsibility and truth. That is exactly the philosophy against which our Constitution was created to protect us."
Boy, do you ever not get America, babe. Liberty means that I get to decide, for myself, what pleasure and responsibility and truth are. We don't take Judeo-Christian (pick a denomination, any denomination) fundamentalist mores and hold them up as an ideal.

My ideal American is someone who keeps his religion to himself, carefully considers his actions when those actions impact others, takes political positions based on an honest balance of fact and opinion, and has at least a vague sense of why those who sacrificed themselves to create a country and society where individual freedom is paramount, and happiness (pleasure, if you will) is to be pursued.

Here is the great truth that Dawn just doesn't get, and why the tyranny of the majority is something responsible citizens must protected everyone against: Only 3% of the population of this country is gay. Just leave them alone. Stop your demonstrations, stop your hate, stop your attempts at "conversion", at "fixing", at all that crap. Just stop. Go away and find something else to do.

I think that a religious conservative's lack of respect for personal dignity and responsibility stems from their conviction that no such safe haven exists; that God judges all, and that judgement extends through individual actions to the judging of society.

You either believe in equality or you don't. Dawn believes in equality where it benefits her, or is convenient for her belief system, then reserves the right to draw whatever moral lines she pleases. That insidious self-righteousness is precisely one of the evils that the constitution is intended to protect us against; it becomes particularly and overtly dangerous when it seeks enforcement through law.

I can't help but feel that with a large percentage of the population out there being ready and willing to impose their morality on a small, hunted minority we must find a way to take power from the federal level and put it back in the states, where it belongs. We can't have nut cases pushing for homogenizing, hateful crap like the FMA. There has to be a safe haven, a place for people to go, where like-minded people can live in tolerance. It's a big country.

FMA people, please go live in your red states. Make all the draconian laws you want. Moralize amongst yourselves; pretend that God thinks what you think he thinks.

"Defense of Marriage"? Bullshit. It's "Attack the Fags". How about Dawn, or some other "Christian" (I use the term loosely because I know some real Christians, who live the teachings), tells us when she asks a "God Hates Fags-type counterdemonstrator" to leave the, uh, counterdemonstration. Or maybe ask them to wear a special T-shirt. Sometimes it gets hard to tell you-all apart.

A great many people are taking dKos to task for this statement

That said, I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

A lot of bandwidth has been wasted on finding just the right adjective for Kos in the wake of this stunningly rectrocranial eructation: "Cuban-style Socialist," "heartless" and so on.

Gentlemen, gentlemen, let's not bicker! Let's just all agree that one word sums up the Daily Kos on this day: "dickhead."

I left the coffee shop this morning; my coffee didn't have a lid. Raindrops wanted to be coffee drops; they made little splashes as they bullied plain old water molecules out of the cup.

This morning I have questions.

What percentage of music industry revenues actually ends up with artists, overall?

How much money is the US military spending on private security contracts in Iraq, right now?

Does joking about "perception is reality" make it so?

Is the strength of a democracy proportional to the freedom its citizens enjoy, their active participation/monitoring of their government, neither, or both?

3am is no time to fall asleep.

Phil has an excellent and nearly Clueless-length post on Gay Marriage up over at Catch Me If You Can. While I fondly remember Gay Marriage Day here at Perfidy, I don't particularly want to revisit it. So go over there and bother Phil.

120 extrasolar planets have been discovered over the last decade, orbiting 105 different suns. All of the planets so far discovered are Jupiter sized or larger, due to the limitations of current astronomical instruments, and none are believed capable of supporting life. However, an Open University team has conducted a study of extrasolar planetary systems to determine whether or not earthlike planets could possible exist.

Using computer models of the known characteristics of a sample of the extrasolar systems, they have calculated the possibility of Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zone - that region of a solar system that is neither too warm nor too cold to allow the existence of liquid water.

By launching 'Earths' (with masses between 0.1 and 10 times that of our Earth) into a variety of orbits in the habitable zone and following their progress with the computer model, the small planets have been found to suffer a variety of fates. In some systems the proximity of one or more Jupiter-like planets results in gravitational ejection of the 'Earth' from anywhere in the habitable zone. However, in other cases there are safe havens in parts of the habitable zone, and in the remainder the entire zone is a safe haven.

Nine of the known exoplanetary systems have been investigated in detail using this technique, enabling the team to derive the basic rules that determine the habitability of the remaining ninety or so systems.

The analysis shows that about half of the known exoplanetary systems could have an 'Earth' which is currently orbiting in at least part of the habitable zone, and which has been in this zone for at least one billion years. This period of time has been selected since it is thought to be the minimum required for life to arise and establish itself.

Furthermore, the models show that life could develop at some time in about two thirds of the systems, since the habitable zone moves outwards as the central star ages and becomes more active.

The team also examined the possibility of planet-sized moons of large gas giant planets might also exist in the "Goldilocks Zone" and also be capable of supporting life. A poster setting out the possibilities will be presented during the RAS National Astronomy Meeting.

Most of the planets so far detected have been (in galactic terms) close neighbors. If half of them could harbor earth like worlds, then the possibility for life is certainly much greater than we thought only a decade ago. Which raises again the Fermi Paradox - where are they? If habitable worlds are common, why have they not developed intelligent life? And why has that life not visited Earth?

Perhaps intelligent life is far rarer than we think it should be. Or perhaps the galaxy is a more dangerous place than our imagined in Star Trek's Federation of Planets, and the really intelligent races don't go around shouting at the top of their lungs - because they know that they'll get whacked.

Sharon says that Israel might move against Arafat

Al Franken has launched his new liberal talk radio show, the O'Franken Factor. His most famous book has, as its title, a reference to a hugely successful conservative talk radio host. The name of his new talk radio show is a rather lame rip-off of the name of a hugely successful conservative TV host's show.

Franken might have more success if he didn't appear to be reacting to conservatives; and instead was offering his own ideas, humor, or whatever.

Meanwhile, Marcland has some good thinks on the whole Air America phenomenon.

Salon is running a fascinating interview with Walter Yetnikoff, grade-A bastard and architect of CBS/Sony records in the 1970s-1990s.

Best known for being, what's the phrase, a colossal prick, Yetnikoff in his retirement is heavily involved in addiction-treatment programs (both himself and as a volunteer and donor), social services, and various charities in and around New York City. He's still a prick, an opinionated jerk with an opinion on every question you didn't bother to ask, but somehow, fascinatingly, he's at peace with himself as well.

Go read! Amazing stuff about him, the music industry, and why Paul Simon is a waste of space.

As much as I appreciate the effort that the creator of worlds has put into his epic photoshopped picture series, the medium just leaves me cold. Just like Opera, really. I recognize the talent and artistry, but in the end it's just fat people singing in languages I don't understand.

But this one panel really worked for me. Connected, you know, on a deep and personal level. As Allah might say, it makes a kufr feel funny in the pants:

[wik] As an added bonus, I'm unilaterally adding the Creator of Worlds to the blogroll. You got a problem with that, Jew?