Mad Men - A Third Season Ends

I am still reeling from the season three finale of Mad Men; rarely has a mere tee-vee show so wantonly toyed with my emotions by cutting so close to life. Here's Heather Havrilesky, and I warn my three readers that there will be spoilers aplenty from this point forward:

Even as Betty and then Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) dress Don down with their unforgiving words, he almost seems to lean into their disapproval, as if he's relieved that finally someone's going to call him to the carpet for his clumsy, caddish behavior. Maybe he realizes he's been as much of a presumptuous asshole as Conrad Hilton, who cast aside his professional and personal relationship with Don the second he was no longer useful.

True enough, but I am not sure Betty belongs in the list of chasteners (more on that presently), and the list is incomplete without Roger Sterling and Pete Campbell. Bringing Roger into the conspiracy was the first instance in which Don had to abandon pride and set right a relationship he had abused, and it was Roger who expressly alerted him to the importance of valuing relationships.

Pete insisted on hearing from Don himself why the new firm needed his talents, and again Don abandoned pride and told Pete not only the truth but what Pete wanted to hear, that Pete Campbell has a genuine talent for seeing emerging novelties that others miss.

Most poignantly, Don confessed to Peggy that he sees her as not only a talented creator but a mirror of himself, a person who has survived to experience life from both sides of a profound trauma. From a man as vain as Don -- and we have to admit his self-regard is not without justification -- this is arguably the highest compliment he can give. To her credit, Peggy perceived the truth behind the vanity in this -- that for all his flaws, Don "gets" her and genuinely appreciates her.

Betty's dressing down of Don was of another sort, as I question whether she has anything to teach. When Don angrily confronts her over the relationship with Henry Francis, she affirms that all the affluence in which he has swaddled her is not enough, and then reminds Don that she knows enough to destroy him. Learning the full story of her husband's past has gone from riveting revelation to justification for separation to grounds for blackmail in a space of a few days. Both see that she is most of the way into her next relationship with a man of mystery who is issuing declarations of devotion and promises of support. For all her evident learning and polish, if she wants anything more than to be fawningly adored, she has failed to show it -- her father's characterization of her as a house cat ("an important person with little to do") seems vindicated. Don sees that this is not a relationship to value, and it's hard to see where he's wrong in that.*

More from Havrilesky:

The flashback to his father's death seems to signal that Don is finally going to put his daddy issues aside and shake off the shadow of his real identity once and for all. Now that his fake life is crumbling around him, something resembling an authentic life seems possible at last.

Uh, no. The real-fake boundary is one Don still has no way to bridge, and I don't see Don getting any closer to moving beyond his past. Indeed, the flashbacks in this episode were triggered by the looming reality that he would soon exit his children's lives, as his own father had done, so we learn, thanks to the strong kick of a horse. Don's separation comes from a different cause, but it is arguably more painful: the scene in which Don and Betty inform their children of their impending divorce is, I can assure you, one of the more true-to-life dramatizations ever to pass through tee-vee screens. Whatever successes and excitements attend the new firm the principals have founded, the pain of Don's alienation from his children will continue, and the flashbacks will come in train.

Havrilesky is mostly right with this:

Breathtaking, really, that each character's deepest desires and drives could be satisfied without screwing up the story or turning it into a fairy tale. In particular, the difference between Peggy and Joan and what they each want was beautifully expressed in seconds: Roger, Joan and Peggy are hunched over the books at the old offices, exhausted from their scrambling attempts to bring as much with them to the new firm as they can before they're locked out, when Sterling asks, "Peggy, can you get me some coffee?" Without wavering, Peggy snaps back, "No."

Next we cut to Don informing Joan, "I'm at the Roosevelt, but I'll need you to find me an apartment."

"Furnished?" Joan asks without skipping a beat, in that tone of professional nonchalance that makes her such a star. Sure, Joan's made to be a caretaker and organizer of men's lives, but does that make her miserable? No. She absolutely glows when she's s given an opportunity to do what she does best. [emphasis mine]

Truly we see a great step forward in Peggy's assertiveness in this small scene -- as well as the two scenes before with Don -- a step that is too long in coming. But I am struck by the diminishment of Joan Holloway's abilities as "a caretaker and organizer of men's lives," and I think Havrilesky has fallen into Matthew Weiner's trap of luring viewers into thinking that Joan's beauty somehow reduces her -- that because she is a beautiful woman, she has to be "dumb," whereas Peggy is more humble in appearance and therefore visually coded as An Intelligent Woman.

What an antiquated, pre-second-wave-feminism, 1950s-1960s way to think about women!

Yes, Joan is beautiful and aware of her sex appeal (and yes, willing to leverage that), but she is also strong, intelligent, and capable. When, a few episodes before, the unfortunate British newcomer had his foot nearly severed by a riding lawnmower, Joan ran toward the grisly scene and took charge as others fainted, shrieked, or backed away. She knows what everyone does (and how well), she knows where everything is (and where it should be), and shows a tremendous talent for organization, an unfailing eye for detail, and a careful insight into the strengths, weaknesses, and stresses affecting the people around her. This is no small collection of abilities, and goes well beyond "caretaker and organizer of men's lives," though it necessarily includes that. From the first episode of season one, Joan has has risen to every challenge placed before her, and I predict her role will expand and her merits will become more apparent in the new firm to which Roger shrewdly added her.



* There is more to say about Betty Draper. Certainly she has been betrayed, lied to, and neglected; more fundamentally, as much or more than Don, she finds herself in a life she clearly never wanted. From the fact that she has not outlined a clear alternative to marriage and children in a beautiful house in the suburbs, it does not follow that she has no basis for resenting the limitations of that life -- and this is so even if she had been living out the most perfect example of that life, i.e., with a husband who didn't withhold, lie, and cheat repeatedly. She has much in common with April Wheeler from Revolutionary Road, but lacking, I think, the same degree of self-awareness and ability (willingness?) to articulate her own agony. We know how well the self-awareness served April Wheeler in the end, so this may not necessarily prove to be a bad thing.

Never Trust a Glibertarian with Data

Really, given the glibertarian source of the data, I had a feeling it would come to this -- the spectacular failure rate of teen Oklahomans on a multiple-choice citizenship quiz, upon which I snarked in September, was very likely bullshit.

Absolutely definitive proof of fraud is not present, but Nate Silver, who is not a lying glibertarian determined to destroy the idea of public education, has the corrective:

Cannaday [also not a lying glibertarian] therefore had little difficulty setting up an experiment: he arranged to have all the seniors in the 10 secondary schools in his district take the Strategic Vision/OCPA survey. Cannaday tried to replicate the Strategic Vision survey to the greatest extent possible. The same exact questions were used, and as in the case of the original survey, the answers were open-ended rather than multiple choice. The survey was administered to a total of 325 seniors, including special education students.

Cannaday's survey however, found his students doing just fine: They answered an average of 7.8 out of the 10 questions correctly.

Sigh.

My apologies to the teens of Oklahoma, the teachers, the schools, and dearest Ponca City for accepting such a poor representation of the quality of learning in the state.

Hills, Valleys, and Dales

This is not an update.

• Another Dale, not this Dale, has hosted the 45th Humanist Symposium.
• Yesterday, despite gathering clouds, I had a pretty pleasant, albeit hill-rich, run of nine miles. Unfortunately, the weather proceeded to go from so-so to terrible, with strong rain pressed along by strong wind, and yet I still had ten more miles to cover before reaching the full nineteen that I had inexplicably set as my goal. When the lightning began, I was at in a clearing at the crest of Powell Butte. As much as I love Powell Butte and the principle of the Darwin Awards, I saw them as two great tastes that taste terrible together, and quickly headed to the vicinity of the exact same trees pictured here. That combined with some dumb luck kept me alive and miserable for the next several miles of puddles, piercing rain, numb hands, numb feet, and chafing. Yay!
• I have nothing on valleys. That was a tasteless inducement to draw valley enthusiasts to this precious, precious blog. Do I feel badly about this legerdemain? No. No I don't.

Carl Sagan Day

I don't quite know what it means, but I like it since it favorably concerns one of my very first man-crushes, Carl Sagan: Carl Sagan Day is tomorrow!

I assume there will be lots of science-y stuff going on. Holy crap, I was right!

I would ask that Carl Sagan Day not be contrued as suggesting that we should ignore Carl Sagan's work on other days. Here is a little piece from Pale Blue Dot -- shortly over three minutes of the kind of awe-inspiration he exuded like so much excess aftershave.

The Question of Being Party to the Party

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) sends regular fundraising appeals to at least two of my e-mail accounts, and generally, I am fine with that. As a Democrat, I want Democrats to keep and enlarge their majority in the Senate.

But here's the deal, DSCC, and the following applies to all manifestations of the Democratic party: you are very much on trial right now. Now is the time to stand up and behave as a political party.

I refer, of course, to Joe Lieberman, the former Democrat who now threatens to join a Republican filibuster of the majority's already distressingly watered-down health care bill. Though not a Democrat, Lieberman caucuses with the Democrats, and inasmuch as this means a damn thing, it needs to mean he does not filibuster bills the vast majority of the party's elected officials and constituents support.

Senators who block Democratic legislation should be stripped of all rights and privileges they currently enjoy as members of the party caucus, from committee chairmanships right down to parking spaces at the capitol, and everything between. Everything the party caucus has the power to remove, it should remove under that circumstance.

If Lieberman -- or anyone else in the party caucus -- joins a filibuster of any bill the Democratic majority is attempting to pass, and if Lieberman is not immediately dropped from the caucus as a consequence, then I will never give another dime to the Democratic party. Never. Not a single dime, and not a second's worth of volunteer effort, not if I live to be 150. I will not lift a finger for the Senate; not for the House of Representatives; not for the Presidency; not at the state level; not at the local level. Never. Zero. I will still contribute time and money to individual candidates who demonstrably embrace a policy agenda I can support, but this will pointedly exclude those who have enabled the Joe Liebermans of the world.

A political party lacking this basic level of party discipline is not a political party at all. It is instead a dead and pointless abstraction, one for which life is too short and resources too finite.

KUFO Presents Weenie & The Butt

In what ought to be local news, I happened to be listening when Portland's KUFO radio began its on-air days-long sassy robot-voiced countdown to inaugurate the changeover from Rick Emerson and Cort & Fatboy to what have turned out to be forgettable, predictable, unfunny, dumb-ass shock jocks -- and out-of-towners to boot.

I gave the new KUFO morning show several opportunities to win me over, but in the brief snatches of time when the new morning personality wasn't guffawing at his own material, he was saying idiotic, graceless, charmless, tiresome things: for example, a day or two ago, his comedic sensibility brought us the funny side of his intern's father's long-term coma, which was was not funny in the least, no matter how avidly he laughed at it.

As with so much else, this particular dumbing down was foreseen by the creators of Family Guy:



The new shows are somewhere between Weenie & The Butt and the show that Brian & Stewie develop together, Dingo & The Baby, which was, well, a lot like Weenie & The Butt: inane, witless, and utterly unnecessary.

Going forward, I won't be catching any more on-air publicity stunts from KUFO, as it now joins the long list of radio stations I avoid.

You'll Love John Cusack's New Yacht ... Or My Name Ain't Nathan Arizona!

Having just received the DVD of one my favorite movies ever, Raising Arizona, I admit I was expecting a little more from this mashup between it and the next big-budget piece of unwatchable crap coming at us, 2012. That said, I've seen worse, if only because Raising Arizona elevates everything it touches:



After the first ad-driven opening weekend, few will watch this film, and fewer still will be glad they did. The title is vaguely allusive to a bundle of nonsense, but really just vague; then again, who would go to a movie called Unpainted Huffheins (Cf.)?

(via The Film Talk)

"The tiniest sparks and the tenderest sounds" -- Middle Cyclone Awarded

I didn't quite realize amazon.com had editors, but it is apparently so, and they have named Neko Case's Middle Cyclone the album of the year for 2009. Huzzah!

For anyone not already aware of my hopeless fan-boy status with respect to Neko Case and Middle Cyclone, I refer you to my gushing encomium to the album from March of this year, and, if that's not fan-boy enough, to my pointlessly snarky kneecapping of some of the album's critics in May.

Mad Men: Back, and to the Left

To this spoiler-rich video summary of the penultimate episode of the current Mad Men season I will add the observation that its Betty-Don interaction can be construed as a vindication of blaming women for men's bad behavior.*

Consider that for all of seasons one and two, and continuing well into the episode previous to this one ("The Gypsy and the Hobo"), Don has been lying and philandering ceaselessly, treating his marriage vows in the same way that Dick Cheney treats the law. Betty has suspected this, she has at times known this, but she has stayed at Don's side, albeit less than happily.

Then comes "The Gypsy and the Hobo," the central drama of which was Don's complete, or nearly complete, self-revelation to Betty: he gave her a detailed account of his former name, his decidedly unheroic exit from the army, his previous marriage, such as it was. He let loose all his secrets, looking shaken and deflated as he did so.

Thus Don lost his mystique; the truth set him free in a way that years of flagrant philandering, lying, and scheming never did. Just one episode later -- just a few conversations later, really -- Betty is seen hiding away with another man, kissing him, cementing a new romantic bond, daydreaming of different ways of living, talking marriage. Disenchanted with Don -- mirrored by the larger society's sudden disenchantment based on seminal events in Dallas, November 1963 -- she matter-of-factly informs Don that she no longer loves him. To all appearances their marriage is over, and she's most of the way to a new man who looks the part but about whom she knows little.

One wonders if she'll be in much the same state with this second husband a few years down the line.

What would a Don Draper learn from this? Lie and cheat without serious consequences for years, but tell the whole truth -- unburden your darkest secrets, pierce the veil of mystery -- and everything falls apart. The truth, and truth's vulnerability, kills faster than a magic bullet.


* Note I said "can be construed as ...", which is not the same as "I believe ... " or even "the writer believes ... " I don't know what to believe, and I don't read minds. Not well, anyway.

Maine Reddens

Ah, Maine. I thought you were one of the good states, but no, you're still beset with bigots, or at best, idiots who will fall for the lies of bigots:

Maine became the 31st state to block same-sex marriage through a public referendum ... With 84 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday, the repeal proposal had 53 percent of the vote, even though polls had indicated the race was a dead heat.

Fuck you, majority of Maine voters, and I mean that sincerely. The disparity between opinion polls and actual vote suggests the possibility that some of you have trouble admitting your rank bigotry to pollsters. That feeling is shame, and it's the proper feeling to have, because what you've done here is shameful.

While you're under the sway of my charms, I now request the same thing I requested of the narrow majority of Californians who undertook a similar lurch a year ago:

Document your vote -- take a photograph of yourself, or write yourself a brief e-mail, or mail yourself a post card, or something of the sort. On the document, affirm that you voted to ban gay marriage in your state, and if you wish, write down the reasons for having done so. Put the document in a scrapbook, photo album, family archive, or some other safe place. Note that I am not asking you to show the document to anyone else, now or ever. Keep it as private as you wish.

The following is my prediction.

At some point in the future -- maybe a year, maybe three years, maybe ten years -- you will regret having voted this way. You will find yourself less and less willing to openly admit that you took this stand. You will look over your stated reasons and find them embarrassing. You will come around to the realization that being gay is simply a way of being human, and you will see the injustice in canceling and preventing the marriages of consenting adults, every bit as much as you presently see the injustice of banning interracial marriage or voting against someone on the basis of sex or race.

When that realization comes to you, I want the document to be there to remind you that you participated in and furthered injustice and inequality of the grossest sort.

I hope you enjoy the victory you've scored for bigotry today, because I honestly believe you'll be ashamed of it later.

Meanwhile, again: fuck off, and rest assured the inkling of shame some of you feel is not misplaced. For the unashamed among you, I believe it is only a matter of time before you realize how profoundly wrong, hidebound, petty, and indecent you've been. It won't be soon enough, but I trust it will happen.

Nietzsche, Man of Straw

TBWBoSRaDH* nicely captures what makes Nietzsche so many Christians' favorite atheist:

Friedrich Nietzsche was the product of a line of Lutherans pastors, so it should not surprise that his atheism engages so directly, and inverts so forcefully, the thrust of Christianity. As philosophy goes much of what Nietzsche had to say was captivating, but then I also find science fiction captivating, as well as some portions of the Bible. The atheism of Nietzsche plays on the terms of Christianity, and that is why Christians often admire his work. It is entirely intelligible to them insofar as it operates in the same universe of morals, albeit characterized by inversions. So naturally Christians castigate atheists who are not Nietzschians, such a stance creates much greater difficulty in fashioning rhetorical thrusts. Too many presuppositions simply are not aligned. [emphasis mine]

Nietzsche merely inverted some of Christianity's central claims -- mercy displays weakness rather than nobility, forgiveness is for the craven rather than for the virtuous, etc. -- and more fundamentally, his "god is dead" is most profitably read as his despair at a vast, meaningless, and disorderly cosmos.

All this said, making definite statements about what Nietzsche believed is a tricky business. By contrast, so-called 'new atheists' write and speak clearly, and challenge faith on terms its defenders prefer to wish away, namely, reason and evidence. This doesn't make them right, but it engages the questions on terms that mere assertions of faith, no matter how impassioned, sincere, or captivating, can never ultimately succeed. Nietzsche's acceptance of Christian frames and terms, together with his penchant for self-contradiction, bombast, bamboozlement, and obscurantism, makes for a superficially easier target. Like dissolves like.

Good luck with that one, Christians.

* Cf.

A Very Wikipedia Birthday

I blame our base ten numbering system for the emphasis I can't quite help placing on the fact that I turn 40 tomorrow. Normally, I strive to avoid ill will toward numbers and numbering systems, but the arbitrary assignment of meaning would seem incomplete without a little arbitrary casting of blame.

Wikipedia has a surprisingly rich write-up of the number forty, which begins rather matter-of-factly before warming up to the subject:

40 (forty) is the natural number following 39 and preceding 41.

Indeed it is! In my palsied dotage I am gratified to see Wikipedia conform to my longstanding bias for stating the obvious.

Not that it's any consolation, but P. Diddy and Matthew McConaughey are also turning exactly 40 tomorrow, joining a long list of celebrities that share the birthday but turn some other age. The clock ticks and bell tolls for bigger-than-Jesus rappers and extremely talented actors too.

A lot of interesting stuff has happened on our planet's collection of Novembers fourth, including last year's election of Barack Obama, the 1979 taking of the Iranian hostages, the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, the 1783 debut performance of Mozart's 36th symphony, and the 1677 marriage of William and Mary, without which the college of William and Mary would have a different name but would still suck ass at all varieties of football.

Sigh. I'm too old to be writing this. I honestly thought I would "grow up" before becoming "old." When can I expect to be issued my astronaut diaper?

(image source)

Justifying the Ways of Twitter

A blogger has certain responsibilities, among these being thoughtful answers to Norm Geras's questions about Twitter:

(1) Why would I want to record my daily activities for other people to follow? (2) Why would I want to follow the detailed doings of anyone else over the course of a day, and another day, and another day? ... (3) Who has time for it?

As this is my blog, my answers will have to do instead, and I answer as follows, based on my own rich, creamy experience with Twitter, which stretches all the way back to March of this year, a veritable eternity in the context of online social media.

(1) I would want to record my daily activities because I am vain, small, petty, self-promoting, and damnnear boundlessly narcissistic. There, I said it. Anyone who claims higher motives in reply to this is attempting the tired maneuver of concealing self-regard in false modesty. Yawn.

To be clear, there may be genuine reasons in addition to pure narcissism -- promoting sales and brand recognition are common wellsprings o' tweets, trying to lure inbound links to other online thingies is another common one, luring men into thinly-veiled prostitution operations appears to be a very common one, etc. One could distinguish between these promotions and rank narcissism, but to a close first approximation, a strong element of rank narcissism is behind every tweet ever.

(2) This very much depends, of course, on the entity followed. I want to follow, say, PZ Myers, Matt Yglesias, and Glenn Greenwald for the same reasons I want to follow their blogs: because they often express things I find informative, interesting, or otherwise agreeable. I want to follow Pandora because I like what Pandora does and I accept a certain amount of money-chasing mendacity if it provides a quick way to see their news feed and technical updates. I want to follow everyday human beings I know because knowing them entails, with or without Twitter, the desire to wedge myself up in their business.

(3) People who have time to read and write tweets include the unemployed, the unemployable, and people stuck at keyboards or text messaging devices all day -- you know, the usuals. I would guess that most users of twitter are like me in this way: I don't go to great lengths to read every tweet that comes from the people I follow. I know I've missed plenty of good ones, but I do what I have time to do and don't spend any time agonizing over what I've missed, whether I am following the right entities, or whether I have done justice to my follows in the way that I'd worry over a book I purchased but haven't found the time to read. Twitter is free; easy come, easy go; what is not worth doing is not worth doing thoroughly, etc.

Adding to the above, I have come to appreciate how Twitter provides a window onto our fickle, mutable Zeitgeist. Granted, the Zeitgeist is what it is, and always includes a strong proportion of Complete Crap, but the momentary vagaries of culture are famously varied in quality, seriousness, usefulness, and so on.

If Something Truly Big is happening in the world, it can be expected to surface on Twitter quickly. Twitter may not tell a complete version of it -- it probably won't, though it can become entwined with events in important ways -- but it will point the way to resources that do not have the 140-character limit, and this surfacing will happen in real time.

Browsing through the "trending topics" list has frequently acquainted me with fancies I would otherwise miss -- today's include "#unseenprequels," which is a meme in which people tweet the titles of movie prequels that have never been made. Without Twitter, these ten minutes during which countless thousands of people try to think up unseen prequel titles would pass by unnoticed, and our collective cultural imagination would be correspondingly impoverished: I, for one, shudder to think of an alternate reality in which I would never have even thought to type "Awkward Hook-Up at Tiffany's #unseenprequels", "The Gradually Coalescing Gas & Dust Cloud of the Apes #unseenprequels," "Drafting Private Ryan #unseenprequels," or "2000: A Space Iliad #unseenprequels."

Sadly, Twitter is exactly as stupid and pointless as social interaction itself.

Fair and Balanced

Something has gone wrong in Britain:

About 54% of the 973 polled Britons agreed with the view: "Evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism."

In the US ... 51% agreed that evolution should be on the curriculum alongside other theories, like intelligent design.

Across the 10 countries, 43% agreed with this statement.

It was found that Britons were almost three times more likely than Egyptians to want creationism and intelligent design to be included in the teaching of evolution.

Britons are more amenable to non-scientific material in science courses than Americans? More than Egyptians? How odd!

Of course, polls can be misleading in various ways, and perhaps an unusually high proportion of British respondents had something like this in mind:

Alison Ryan, policy adviser of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers Union, said that if a "good teacher handled the lesson", presenting creationism and intelligent design need not be problematic. "Science teachers could introduce creationism as a theory that some people hold, but that is not based on evidence."

I could see the value of broaching creationism as an example illustrating the difference between science and non-science, but there's quite a bit to teach and learn in biology, so I would hope not too much time would be devoted to this in biology class.

I hope the above, or something close to it, is what many or most Britons giving the ostensibly pro-creationist answer had in mind. Whether they did or not, science is not determined by popular vote, so even if 100% of Britons came to believe that creationism is a valid explanation for the diversity of life on earth, it would not make it so -- it certainly would not constitute evidence for it (millions and millions of people can indeed be wrong!) -- and it would not make it a good fit for science curricula.

Creationism in schools? Sure, in the "Bullshit 101" course, or the critical-thinking courses, or perhaps in the history of ideas courses -- but not in science.

(image source: Stephen Law, though it did not originate there)

Some Common Misunderstandings

Determined to rescue the sacredness of every sperm from the satirists and the naysayers, The Anchoress offers her services:

I can tell you what my own understanding is, and it may help some who just dismiss the stance of the Church as utter nonsense.

These florid words are the ones that may help:

Our creation is no accident, but the Love of God made manifest, and the “tools” or “materials” that He uses for that creation – committed love and the mysterious and miraculous products of that love – do, simply by their designation as “tools of God” demand a certain respect and recognition, because they are a great deal more than the equivalent of nasal mucous or earwax. They [sperm and ova] are the essentials of human creation, within us but as remote and mysterious as stardust, and therefore they are of staggering value and import. In THAT sense, yes, every sperm is sacred.

It's not clear what "in THAT sense" is doing here; the sense of "every sperm is sacred" under discussion sounds exactly like the one we know from Monty Python, only stripped of mirth and presented in dead earnest. Sperm cells are "essentials" of "human creation" never to be trifled with, and as such carry "staggering" levels of god-imposed significance. In a more properly observant world, priests would deliver last rites to every sperm cell that doesn't fertilize an egg; and given the numbers involved, I suspect this would severely cut back on the time available to rape children, and speaking for myself (not necessarily The Anchoress or her church), I call this a good thing.

I could quibble with "remote and mysterious as stardust," since neither sperm/ova nor stardust are nearly as remote or mysterious as they were when the Catholic Church still had enough sway to stifle science, but the more interesting question is where these weighty assertions lead. In the hands of The Anchoress, they manage to permit sex-for-procreation, and it alone, except when they don't:

every sex act, if it is truly to be respectful of God’s design and creation, must be opened to the possibility of new life ... if they take steps to suppress that possibility, then they have – essentially – excluded God from the act.

It goes without saying that god needs to be included in all sex acts, but The Anchoress helpfully went ahead and said it anyway. Allowing for the possibility of procreation is required of any sex act that god will join, and yet

sooner or later fertility ends, that does not mean sex ends. One of the common misunderstandings is that “the church says sex must always and only be about procreation, and if it’s not possible, then sex is a sin.” This is nonsense. Sex is the gift and privilege of married couples, both pleasurable and procreative. When fertility has come to an end, when the possibility of new life is no longer there, that means the procreation part has ended, not the pleasure.

Oddly, The Anchoress has now attached the words "gift" and "privilege" and even "pleasure" to sex, thereby leaving things far from the earlier twaddle about "essentials" of "human creation" with their "staggering" degrees of god-soaked meaning, and opening the door to the wanton obliteration of sperm cells.

So there you have it: contrary to common misunderstandings, every sperm is sacred except in cases where every sperm is not sacred; non-sinful sex is sex that can lead to procreation except where non-sinful sex is sex that cannot lead to procreation; Catholic teaching on these matters is a sound reflection of clear thinking and genuine authority except where it is a slapdash wreck of absurd superstitions and confused prejudices.

(via Sullivan)

Creation, So-Called

It's great to see that Creation, starring Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin and Bettany's real-life wife Jennifer Connelly as Darwin's wife, Emma, has found a distributor and will appear in US theaters.



It may or may not turn out to be a memorable film, but I will watch it with interest, and not only because Jennifer Connelly is in it.

Saturday Things

It has been the best of times, it has been the worst of times:

• A day since I came across it (via), but it still strikes me the same way: what a colossal asshole Steve Fuller is. Who is Steve Fuller, you ask? Don't bother spending much time on that before taking in his obituary to Norm Levitt. Readers of this blog will know that I am something of a student of asshole-ishness, but Fuller's effort exposes me as a rank dilettante.
• A far-flung correspondent reports to me from the Tulsa Run 15K that the event is rife with religious signs and religious music; three guesses as to the religion, and the first three guesses don't count. My correspondent also reports an odd excess of female participants in full facial makeup. Weird.
• Jason Rosenhouse:

  It is completely unremarkable that so many people think evolution renders Christian belief unreasonable. There is a reason so many highly educated people must write at book length just to show that major Christian claims about the world (that humans hold a privileged place in creation; that the world is superintended by a God who is all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful; that the Bible is inerrant and sacred) are not quite impossible in the light of evolution.

  I believe "not quite impossible" is today's best example of damnation by faint praise.
• Here is the amazing finish of the 10k in the 1964 Olympics -- apparently TV used to look this way:
  

I Pick Up Scents of Science

I knew I detected the scent of a jaw-dropping science thingy on the web, and here it is, a slider control attached to graphics that allows you to see the relative size of items ranging from a coffee bean to a carbon atom.

Fantastic!

My screen scrape, cool as it is, doesn't do justice to the item scraped.

(via Ian, via Sully)

God-Drunk Anti-Gay Animus Turned Up to 11

As the free world continues waiting for a coherent non-religious argument against legal equality in marriage, "amazing" is one word for this presentation taped in Washington DC; I would have gone with "shockingly stupid" or "astoundingly moronic." Do yourself the favor of watching the god-addled witness after minute three or so, when she turns the bat-shit insanity up to 11 and comes close to breaking the knob trying to find a 12:



Rightwingwatch.org has a distressingly extensive library of equally insipid videos of speakers and assorted bigots who can't seem to distinguish the United States from the theocracy they've constructed in their heads.

"Are you thinking of what to say or are you just looking at that door?"

The line above, as spoken by Betty Draper, inaugurates the most pivotal scenes of the most recent episode of Mad Men.

That's quite a line, one that passably summarizes the entire series to date: in their social world centered on advertising, salesmanship, pick-up lines, deception, and every kind of supporting verbal legerdemain, will the characters come up with the right words to answer the situation or will they depart, willingly or otherwise?

To the musings of Amanda Marcotte and Brian Moon, I will note the visual motif of open doors, which are rife in this episode -- for example, as it is framed, Betty and Don have their most significant conversation to date with an open door directly in the background of each. This builds the tension over whether the person Don left in the car will come walking through one of them, and underscores the broader theme of transition: moving forward, being there rather than here, decision, motion, leaving or staying, past versus future, changing from one place to another place, going from one state to another.

Conventional marriages, participants in which Don and Betty present themselves to the public, include a ritual of passing through an open doorway, and they also end when someone walks out a door.

The episode ends on what might be an even stronger line: without realizing the freight of the question, a neighbor -- while standing in an opened door -- asks Betty and Don with their trick-or-treating kids, "And who are you supposed to be?"

In reply, Don's look of shock combined with a wry smile suggests he is thinking of what to say while looking for a door.

Who indeed? Through what door?