Title of "Czar" damaged beyond repair

Sonofabush, the nearest thing we ever had to a Czar in the original "Cesar" sense of that title, has tried three times to appoint a high ranking Fall Guy in charge of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though he sweetened the deal by throwing in the title "Czar", [crown not included, it is not standard military uniform], he has been turned down by each of three generals offered the post. The fact that the Department of Defense already has a well understood chain of command and one in which all the current players know their roles has not fazed the Confounder-in-Chief. He simply plans to plunk this new position, with the usual Republican dotted line connections, some place on the DoD org chart and endow it with power to tell anybody to do anything. Yeah, right, that'll sure work good.

A sweeping generalization

Is this the week readership ratings are compiled for newspapers? Is this the month avid page-turning and clicks can be turned into higher advertising rates?
NY Times has not one, not two, but three "science" sex related articles on dating, the gendered brain and summarized findings on recent research into sexual arousal. If my local TV news did that, along with cheesy teaser spots, I'd know for certain that it was sweeps month.

The magazine length article on which aspects of getting in the mood researchers find to be more illusion than real, in its entirety, is a fun read. Don't be put off by the NYT registration.

This one paragraph particularly struck me:

The results suggest that having a good set of sexual brakes not only dampens the willingness to commit rape or sexual abuse, but the desire as well, giving the lie to notions that “all men are the same” and would be likely to rape their way through the local maiden population if they thought they could get away with it.

Men are victims of this myth, behind women in severity of consequences but at least as likely to suffer consequences either through trying to be what they aren't or living with success at being what they shouldn't.

I assume one of the reasons my blog has never caught on is that I go off on goofy tangents and do not have a predictable category of content: no product means you can not have a "brand name". Quality control is not much in evidence either. In self fulfillment of that prophesy, I will now lurch into an uncalled for speculation.

Consider this quote from the first paragraphs of the sexuality article:

For researchers in the field of human sexuality, the wide variance in how people characterize sexual desire and describe its most salient features is a source of challenge and opportunity, pleasure and pain. “We throw around the term ‘sexual desire’ as though we’re all sure we’re talking about the same thing,” said Lisa M. Diamond, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Utah. “But it’s clear from the research that people have very different operational definitions about what desire is.”

But wait a minute here! Sex, is absolutely essential behavior, a primitive pan-species performance sina qua non. How can it be so varaiable? I find in this an opportunity to sketch my accounting for the varieties of religious experience. [And yes, I did read James' book, so there!]

This "variation" is perceptual. What we individually perceive looks random because that part of our brain that is aware of anything and able to report it is very poorly connected to those deep and ancient centers of action that must have existed long before our species branched from other monkeys. [Mr. Dodson, don't leave! Even if you did branch sooner, the analogy still applies to you!] This randomness of perception, I speculate, is similar to the reasons many have a feeling that their religious impulses are real yet few, if honestly answering, would report the same exact feelings as the members of their own church. Religion cannot be dismissed as a purely intellectual mistake: it is deeply rooted behavior and that is why it will set up shop in the average mind with or without tutoring and acculturation. And why, like sex, behavior around the impulse is rife with myths and desperate if furtive efforts to "be normal".

This speculation wanted to be a long and scholarly post or series...the drafts lay wadded up in the buffers of my blogger account. I will never have the time to get it convincingly right so I am going to let myself get it wrong, at last, at least.

hmmm. I think I left out politics.

Everybody gets to have an opinion.

I don't use the word "ho" to describe anyone. I don't think I know anyone to whom the word actually applies...but then I was not at White house press conferences in 2003. Because I don't know anyone of whom I think such things, I do not use that word. Ask Don Imus again why he uses that word. And why, of all things, he uses it to describe college educated and athletically gifted young women. Apology works better when sought for out-of-character things one does. What he said was not out of character, just a little bit to the right of the out-of-bounds line.

The man strung up his own noose. I would not advise the Rutgers Women's basketball team to entertain Mr. Imus' attempt to get forgiven and duck the abiding contempt his entire career has miraculously avoided so far. It might be too late anyway: the real powerhouses of America's public conscience, soap and stationary have just given a thumb$ down. Leave him swinging. He does not operate his mouth differently than me or anyone else: he said what he said because at some level, that is who he thinks those women, or all women, or black women are or he has a very sick sense of how to sound "cool".

Everybody gets to have an opinion. Who doesn't have to be responsible for their own opinion?

---

This post is gratuitous piling on. I didn't go to Rutgers. I don't follow basketball. I never listened to more than a minute of Imus at any time in my life...that was about as much as I could stand. For people who get rich pandering to ignorant angry middle aged white men, all the negative Google hits are deserved, so here is mine. Now, bring on those GOP candidates that want into the Imus spotlight.

Do we consider all who voted for the same canididate "unoriginal"

I made some comment yesterday at Majikthise. The few comments later a commenter on the thread showed us his superiority by saying "what a bloggy echo chamber". That is when it hit me: this is pure spin...its what you do to try to cheapen the appearance of consent and perhaps even of majority. There is of course a lot more depth the issue than whether one man's group-think is another man's consensus. Lindsay takes it all apart in her particularly thorough way. It needs airing as the number of comments accruing there attest.

all I am saying is

If you won't look into the mind per se' to see how it works, you have little basis for proclaiming the authority of the hogwash--shared or idiosyncratic--that bubbles forth from it.

I have had a brutal time trying to write one post. If I hit publish, it would show up: too long, repeating most of my already tedious complaints and pleasing to nearly no one, not even me. I could quit now. I have blown huge chunks out of the schedule for my work and personal life trying to hit the balance between the [but it is not "the", there are many a] religious view of our existance and various rational and science-informed views. It is a crazy-making effort. Perhaps bringing the mad and the sane into one dialog will always be a mad enterprise. But I am satisfied with that one sentence. And I really have to go finish those tax returns now.

While you are wiping the grafiti off your blog...

...remember the stakes seem low for a poster or commenter who can't or won't identify himself. But when he goes over the edge and makes threats and posts lies it is often because you have in fact landed a solid blow to his myths and he has no better response than to change the subject to something like your own safety. For him the stakes were high...and he lost. And then lost his temper into the bargain.

I am still on the fence about whether new rules will help in a world that does not really want them , whether seasoned bloggers do or do not like rules. Either way, you only need to remember that the only fire under all this smoke was that you were probably right in barbecuing some sacred cow and all that you got for a response was bull shit, even if it is scary bull shit.

The Kathy Seirra nastiness is looking more like a storm system than a squall.

Just because someone is cheap and cowardly, you can't assume they are harmless. But make them work for their gains on the substance of your posts by pointing to any threats or personal attacks as admissions of defeat.

UPDATE: I just noticed that Chris Bowers at myDD gets an appropriate handle on the resolutely clueless treatment the MSM dish to blogging.

Running with Broken Glass

Running with Broken Glass

As if the thing seen in the mirror were so painful
That we toss a brick of denial and shatter it.

Some of us later pick up a few pieces of the glass
Just to carry, we are not sure why,
Wrapped and tucked where the edges won’t cut us.

Then, odd magic, a critical mass of hurt
Conjured and convoked at Amanda’s place.
The invitation works, its safe there.
And perhaps with a tear or a sigh lay our piece
On the page one image appears in the puzzled bits

On the back of that image, a strength, an ownership

For the last two days, Amanda has managed to uncork a bitter vintage that few of us would show even if we helped crush the grapes. It strikes me there is some healing there.