Heretics' almanac

Kansas and Sex and the City

It may take another two years before the whole Red vs. Blue state issue gets mainstream media attention again, but in the meantime I've read Thomas Franks's book "What's the Matter with Kansas," which is an attempt to explain why so many people (e.g., a majority of Kansans) seem to vote against their own self-interest when they lean to the right.

The question is pretty interesting, after all.  Franks points out that Kansas has long been a hotbed of populism, even as it exemplifies mainstream America.  He differentiates between the "mods," devoted Republicans with which one can honest disagreements (think Bob Dole, a Kansan); and "cons," right-wing activists with whom no useful debate is possible.  The cons belong to lower socio-economic strata, are inconsistently religious, and above all deeply suspicious of the "liberal elite," the "latte-drinking, Volvo-driving," well-educated crowd that seems to make a home in (as Bush pointed out) Massachusetts.

This year's most outragous word

The word of the year, according to the American Dialect Society, is:

red/blue/purple states (further explanation unnecessary)

though I have to say that "urban archipelago" may turn out to be the word that best covers the insight from this year's election returns.

Voted the most outragous was:

santorum: the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

Not bad - a lesson in ehmm biology and dialect at the same time.   As it turns out, there's a whole movement to make this term stick (so to speak) in order to soil (so to speak) Senator Rick Santoro's name for his obsessive and detailed talk about sex between two males (even though he apparently is against it - the sex, I mean, but probably also the use of his last name). 

The ADS voted it in, but noted that newspapers were unlikely to carry it, and they were right.  So now it's up to the blogosphere.  I'm doing my part in the interest of free speech.

Femininity and feminism

I'm a big admirer of Laura Kipnis (and she even looks kinda hot in her picture), and she doesn't let me down with her new article in Slate, about why feminists don't want to look, eh, unattractive.  She points out that there's a contradiction between feminism and femininity in that:

Femininity is a system that tries to secure advantages for women, primarily by enhancing their sexual attractiveness to men.  It also shores up masculinity through displays of feminine helplessness or deference. But femininity depends on a sense of female inadequacy to perpetuate itself.

while...

Feminism, on the other hand, is dedicated to abolishing the myth of female inadequacy. It strives to smash beauty norms, it demands female equality in all spheres, it rejects sexual market value as the measure of female worth.

So I have two things to say about this:

Merry ehmmm Christmas

I live in the village of Maplewood, (in)famous lately for banning all Christmas-themed "stuff" from its public schools.  Our village square has a Dickens village and a Chanukkah setup, but this is the kind of place where people carefully say "happy holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas."

Of course, it's a little silly since Chanukkah is over, leaving Christmas as the dominant holiday still left to be happy about.  My Norwegian friends shamelessly wish me a God Jul ("Merry Christmas"), and I've given up trying to explain that while I appreciate the sentiment, my family won't be doing much for Christmas, but that I certainly hope they have a joyous Christmas. 

There shouldn't be anything wrong about wishing someone who celebrates Christmas, a merry, meaningful, joyous Christmas.  For them, it's not just a random holiday - it's the watershed event in the liturgical year (if they're religious) and a celebration of warmth, light, generosity, and family if they're not.  And I certainly don't take offense if someone wishes me a holiday like that, even if I'm not going to do anything on my end to fulfill the wish.

Orthography and typography

In this week's edition of The New Republic, an article about about Jim Sensenbrenner uses the term "über-pundit" (about Norm Ornstein).  Note the umlaut there.  Similarly, the New Yorker will add a diaeresis to vowels in compound words such as reëlected and coöperation so we don't inadvertently pronouce it "reel-ection" or "coop-eration." 

It used to be that printed matter was limited by the keys available on your typewriter.  Conventions such as replacing "ø" with "oe," "å" with "aa," and "æ" with "ae" were common among Norwegians typing letters home.  Now it's possible to produce the correct characters using the alt-sequence on your keyboard, changing keyboard layouts, or copying and pasting the characters from the Character Map in Windows.  Thanks to Unicode, pretty much any of the world's characters can be represented on a browser.  Still, a Norwegian friend of mine with the last name Søreide who works for a Swedish bank (in Norway) must accept the fact that the Swedes want to spell his last name "Söreide," which is incorrect.  (His wife's last name is Lütken, with the umlaut).  On the other hand, my friend Gunnar Sjøwall could possibly get away with reverting his last name to the original Swedish Sjöwall, though that might seem unpatriotic.

Why do haredi and left-wing radicals smoke?

Unless things have changed in the last few years, smoking is very fashionable among the radical left in Europe.  It's not just the snooty intellectual smokers of Gitanes; it's also the Norwegian working-class-wannabes that light up cigarettes to assume an eastside dialect that never really existed.

It's ironic, because I honestly can't imagine a more cynical, greedy industry than the tobacco industry.  Whether it's subliminal advertising to minors, lack of corporate accountability, barriers to trade - you name it, the tobacco industry is on the forefront pushing the limits of what is legal and way beyond what is ethical.  You'd think dyed-in-the-wool socialists would be vehemently opposed to smoking if there were any consistency in their philosophy.

I suppose there's something anti-establishment about smoking, but it should have worn off by about age 17, when the rebels realized that smoking is pretty much like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Are Americans also destroying cruise ships?

Aftenposten, which aspires (usually without much success) to be Norway's least bad newspaper, provides us with this tantalizing headline of profound global importance:

Fat Americans Destroying Cruise Ship

The world's largest cruise ship can't take the world's largest nationality.

It turns out that furniture on the Queen Mary II is breaking under the weight of overweight passengers, and since "most of our passengers are American," Aftenposten eyed an opportunity to go America-bashing.  I suppose the world would be a better place if these fat Americans could just stay away from the cruise ships and leave the poor furniture alone.

Of course, that would put the Queen Mary out of business, lots of people out of work, etc., but hey, these Americans should learn to stop destroying things.

More bickering on second-hand smoke

Bjørn Stærk (not a smoker himself) believes that the UK is making a mistake in considering a ban on smoking in pubs, restaurants, etc.  A debate ensues on his web page, centered primarily on civil liberties.  Liberty, one contributor writes is:

...the freedom to do what you want with your own property.  Do you own the disco?

Bjørn is not convinced by the evidence that second hand smoke is dangerous to your health.  The debate on the page devolves into astonishingly uninformed debate on what a monopoly is.  There is the suggestion that market forces should decide the matter: those who prefer not to experience second hand smoke can go to smoke-free bars; others can go to bars where smoking is allowed.

Plugging Wikipedia

Wikipedia has quietly grown into the world's largest encyclopedia and shows no sign of losing pace. It evolves through a remarkably democratic process - anyone is welcome to post, and anyone is welcome to edit other people's entries. There are mechanisms to point out abusive entries and edits, and there is something known as an NPOV dispute, NPOV standing for "neutral point of view."

This is as good a place to understand the nature of the conflict as any you're likely to find. The aspirations of an encylopedia are to provide a comprehensive introduction of a subject, and sometimes (probably usually) there are disagreements about fundamental aspects of the subject.

Perhaps the good people at Wikipedia should allow for a structure around an issue for all the NPOV disputes, where the entry is a question that multiple parties can answer in their own way.

See the future in Maine

I'm into my last 24 hours of vacation here near Camden, Maine. This is the kind of place that makes you feel a little off for thinking too abstractly. People here build things solidly, taking into account the hardships of winter. They are - by and large - resilient in the face of economic cycles. They enjoy good food and good company, but don't seem to relish in excess. They're politically ecclectic, but tend to elect centrist politicians from either party.

The state is in transition. A kayak guide (with a graduate degree in philosophy) (what else?) told me that there used to be two Maines: the southern and the northern parts. Now there are the coastal and the inland part, with the dividing line going a few hundred yards from the coast. There are beautiful houses along the shoreline that are inhabited at most a few weeks a year; permanent residents mostly can not afford these places and live inland.

For all this, "authentic" Maine is nothing to get too nostalgic about.