Posts - July 2004

The Letters Game. This is fucking insane, not to mention addictive. Type the letters that appear on the screen, but do it before the letters reach the other side. Careful — they go faster and faster.

(And I’ve learned that it doesn’t help to randomly pound on the keyboard — you lose points for pressing incorrect letters.)

Four years ago I was living with my friend Mitch. One summer morning he woke me up and said: “It’s Lieberman.” The news had just announced that Al Gore had chosen Joe Lieberman as his running mate.

Four years later I’m living in my own apartment. At 7:30 this morning, my phone rang. It was Mitch. “NBC News says that Edwards is the running mate,” he said.

We joked that from now on I should expect a phone call every four years from Mitch telling me who the running mate is.

Anyway, I think Edwards is a fine choice. I liked him in the winter, and I like him now. There are too many months and unpredictables ahead to determine right now who’s going to win the election, but Kerry certainly hasn’t hurt his chances by picking Edwards.

I’m very happy.

Matt and I had a very patriotic yet contemplative Fourth of July weekend. On Saturday afternoon we saw Fahrenheit 9/11, which was both entertaining and depressing. Because Matt lives in the financial district, we saw the movie at the Regal Cinemas in Battery Park City, meaning that when it was over, we walked out of the fourth-floor theater to be confronted with a panoramic view of Ground Zero even before leaving the building.

There below us was where it all started.

On Sunday — the actual Fourth — we went to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a Living Memorial to the Holocaust, also in Battery Park City. The permanent exhibits take up three floors: the ground floor covers Jewish life in Europe and the U.S. before World War II, the second floor covers Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and the top floor covers Jewish life since the War. The museum also contained two temporary exhibits: Ours to Fight For: American Jews in the Second World War, filled with items to look at, and, on a lighter note, Shalom Y’all, a collection of photographs of Jews in the South.

After making our way through all of the exhibits, we came to an open room with rows of windows that looked out on New York Harbor. There, with the tragedy of the Holocaust and the miracles of survival still on my mind, we could see the Statue of Liberty, its torch raised high, and Ellis Island, where my grandfather arrived 81 years ago to the day. (July 4, 1923.) American flags waved in the wind.

That night, Matt and I and two of his RAs walked down to the South Street Seaport, where we saw bright, beautiful fireworks in the sky.

Happy belated birthday, America. I’m not always happy with what goes on in this country, but I’m still glad it exists.

Here’s a fascinating Salon.com interview with author Neal Stephenson from April. (You may need to view an ad before getting to see the whole thing.)

(I’ve just begun reading The Confusion, the second book in Stephenson’s “Baroque Cycle,” and I love it as much as the first book.)

I’m a slow reader, and this gives me an inferiority complex. Matt reads faster than I do, and so does my dad; so do lots of other people, in fact. I just feel like I read too slow for someone of my intelligence.

I think there are two reasons I’m a relatively slow reader.

The first reason is that I’m overly interested in details. Even though I’ll just wind up forgetting the details of whatever I’m reading, my overly curious brain wants to pick them all up anyway.

The second reason is that I just plain enjoy reading and language. I like to savor the words, and sometimes even the ideas. I’ll be reading something, and it will spark a thought, and my mind will wander off into uncharted regions for a minute or two. And then I’ll realize I’ve been drifting and I’ll get back to the book.

I guess I’m torn between wanting to finish reading whatever book I happen to be reading so I can go on and read even more stuff, and wanting to just sit back and enjoy the act of reading itself.

The thing is, intelligence is so often associated with speed, so my relatively slow reading speed makes me feel dumb. I do sometimes have problems registering information — strangely, I’m usually better at picking up something complex through words on a page rather than having someone tell it to me — which makes me feel not just dumb, but socially undeveloped.

I have more thoughts on the use of text to convey information, which I’ll get to discussing at some point.

Desmond Tutu: “Homophobia equals apartheid.”

Gnod — type in an author, movie, band or artist, and get a graphical representation of similar ones. Kinda cool.

I got an unexpected package in the mail yesterday. It was a big box, addressed to me, with no return address. After I decided it wasn’t anthrax, I opened it.

One of my readers, Chris, sent me a real Tin Man!

It’s made out of tin cans, screws, washers, and wire, with a red wooden heart on the front. I think the feet are sardine cans.

Isn’t that the coolest?

Thanks, Chris!

Obituary of R.W. Burchfield, former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

I really like this letter printed in today’s New York Times:

How sad that the Europeans are beginning to emulate American work hours (front page, July 7). In aspiring to American-style gross domestic products, they may just find themselves with more American-style problems, like increased incidence of depression, obesity, youth crime and breakdown of family relationships — all of which place an increasing burden on the economy.

American economic prosperity may enable the average American to enjoy more comforts and luxuries than the average European. But for all that, Americans don’t necessarily have a higher standard of living than other (developed) nations — just a higher standard of “having.”

A standard of “having” is not the same as a standard of living. It’s important to keep that in mind.

I’ve been playing around with PHP and have set up some countdowns in my sidebar: the number of days until Election Day and Inauguration Day, and the percentage of time in the Bush administration that is over. Perhaps I’m being optimistic on the latter, but ya gotta think positive, right?

Watch the trailer for “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” a new movie about the bias of Fox News.

Is President Bush a Homo?

Here’s a two-parter. The board of the Washington, D.C. Metro has apparently made a big blunder — it’s shrunk the trains on weeknights after 10 p.m., forcing people to crowd into cars and even miss trains due to lack of space (and then wait 15-20 minutes for the next train). Not a good idea for a region that’s trying to promote itself as a thriving center of metropolitan nightlife. But fortunately, after lots of complaints, the board is rethinking its decision. As of last week, Metro workers were going to monitor trains to see if people were being left behind on platforms. “If it requires us to keep all or part of the system at four-car trains instead of breaking them down [into two-car trains], that’s what we’ll have to do,” according to Metro Chief Executive Richard A. White.

I don’t live in D.C., of course, but I’m curious as to how this turns out.

Tomorrow, the U.S. Senate will vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment. Please sign a petition from MoveOn.org that is being sent to Congress. Moveon.org can also give you the appropriate phone numbers so that you can contact your senators.

While it’s unlikely that the amendment will pass the Senate (it doesn’t seem to have the support of the necessary 67 senators), it will be wonderful if the amendment doesn’t even muster 50 votes. Check the current tally (at least I think it’s still current) to see where your senators stand, and then please sign the petition either way.

Via Mike, here is a MetaFilter post about autofellatio (safe for work, as it’s just text) that has evolved into an interesting discussion of whether autofellatio would be gay. Some choice quotes:

Imagine the visceral experience of A) holding your dick; B) having your dick in your mouth. A is very penis-centric in experience, I think; more on the having one’s dick held side than holding one’s dick side. In contrast, B is very mouth centric; more on the sucking a dick side than having one’s dick sucked side. Heterosexuals have their dicks held, and their dicks sucked, but they don’t primarily hold dicks or suck dicks. Autofellatio is more like cocksucking than it is like having one’s cock sucked.

Calling all autofellatio lawyers.

And:

Actually, I just got into a discussion about this with pips and I told that while the idea of sucking a dick (my own or anyone else’s) is a definite turn off (and she said the same for the female equivalent), I admitted that idea of another guy sucking my dick didn’t neccessarily turn me off, since, in the dark anyway, it’s just another wet hole.

This means I have the gay, dosen’t it?

Hee hee.

From today’s Media Notes column by Howard Kurtz:

The press goes nuts over undecideds every four years….

I have no quarrel with folks who are trying to make up their minds between Bush and Kerry. What drives me crazy is voters who are not undecided but willfully ignorant. That is, they can’t make up their minds because they pay so little attention to politics….

I thought about this after reading a Washington Post interview with Charlotte McFarland, an Arkansas woman who has lost a number of jobs. She said she’s definitely not voting for Bush. Fine. But then she said:

“I don’t know about Mr. Kerry. I just don’t know where he stands on the issues.”

Excuse me, but it’s not all that hard to find out. Pick up a newspaper, grab a magazine, turn on the television, listen to the radio. Kerry’s positions are out there. He repeats them every day….

Whether you like Kerry or he leaves you cold, whether you feel a Massachusetts senator with a wealthy wife can connect with the problems of average folks or not, is very much a gut-level individual decision. But to say you don’t know where he stands is just another way of saying you haven’t bothered to find out.

Amen. Ignorant people don’t deserve to have the press slavering all over them.

Ads from the Human Rights Campaign, including several on the Federal Marriage Amendment. Some are print ads, some are video.

Some good ones are here, here, and here.

The Federal Marriage Amendment didn’t even come up for a vote. Only 48 senators voted for ending formal debate and putting the amendment up for a vote; 50 voted to block the amendment. (Kerry and Edwards were on the campaign trail.)

Republicans who voted to block the amendment: Susan M. Collins (Maine), Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), John E. Sununu (N.H.), Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colo.) and John McCain (Ariz.).

Democrats who voted to vote on the amendment: Zell Miller (Ga.), Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.). Boo on you. I don’t know why Zell Miller even bothers calling himself a Democrat anymore, seeing as how he’s speaking at the Republican National Convention. What a joke. At least he’s retiring.

Anyway, at least this is over, for now.

Matt and I have decided to take a short trip to D.C. from next Thursday through next Sunday (July 22-25). We’d love recommendations on:

- where to stay (someplace decent but affordable)
- where to eat
- where to go and what to do

Although I spent eight years living just two hours from D.C., I didn’t visit all that often. We’ll probably do the Smithsonian, etc., but any other ideas would be great.

Last night I rediscovered my love of men’s choral music. That’s an odd thing to write, given that I resumed singing men’s choral music nearly a year ago. But we performed a joint concert last night with the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus, a gay men’s chorus visiting from San Francisco, and they absolutely blew me away — which is no wonder, as the group is led by Joseph Jennings, who is also the music director of Chanticleer.

Perhaps music just sounds better when you’re listening to it instead of performing it. But it wasn’t just that; they really sounded superb, and they sang a wide-ranging program. The highlight for me was a traditional Georgian working song from Georgia (the country, not the U.S. state), listed on the program as Naduri. A smaller ensemble performed Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus, one of my favorite Renaissance motets, and it reminded me how much I love singing Renaisasnce music. Our most recent concert consisted entirely of American choral music, which is nice, but Renaissance polyphony engages the left and right sides of my brain like no other music can.

The concert concluded with a joint performance of the Biebl Ave Maria, which is extremely special to me because it’s one of the signature pieces of the Virginia Glee Club, with which I sang in college and law school. The piece consists of two sets of choral parts that complement each other — one set sung by a larger chorus, and the other sung by a smaller chorus. The San Francisco guys sang the main choral part from the stage, and we sang the other part from the balcony. It came off really well.

Now that I’m all inspired, I’m going to have to listen to my Glee Club CDs sometime soon.

Great flash animation starring George W. Bush and John Kerry singing “This Land is Your Land,” with various political cameos.

Maps of the neighborhoods in New York and D.C. with the highest concentrations of gay couples (see sidebar).

Also, apparently the Jersey City “metro area” (whatever that is) has the tenth-highest concentration of gay couples among all metro areas in the country. (You can also see lists by state, town and zip code.)

At the Albertville winter Olympics, condom machines in the athletes’ village had to be refilled every two hours. And in Sydney the organisers’ original order of 70,000 condoms went so fast that they had to order 20,000 more. Even with the replenishment, the supply was exhausted three days before the end of the competition schedule. (For the record, athletes who were in Sydney report that the Cuban delegation was the first to use up its allocation.) Salt Lake City in 2002 went even bigger: 250,000 condoms were handed out, despite the objections of the city’s Mormon leadership.

– “Let the Games Begin.”

Happy 35th anniversary of the moonlanding.

Anil writes about leaving New York and about what the city has meant to him.

Sometimes I really wish I believed in God. Or, rather, I wish I believed in an afterlife.

But I just don’t, and I can’t. I believe that human beings, the first creatures with brains sophisticated enough to contemplate their own existence, created God (and gods) in order to explain that existence. I believe that they invented the afterlife because they either couldn’t conceive of nonexistence or were too afraid to do so.

The easiest way to freak myself out is to try to imagine what would exist if there were no universe — or if there had never been a universe. What would there be instead? What foundation does our universe rest on? It makes me dizzy and scared. It’s as if our brains aren’t built to conceive of such things. It brings to mind Krona, the DC Comics character who ruptured the fabric of the universe by flouting his society’s rules against trying to discover the universe’s origins. We weren’t meant to bite into that apple.

I believed in God when I was younger — partly by default, and partly because I was afraid not to. What if I didn’t believe in God and it turned out He existed? Would I be punished? Other than these metaphysical issues, it just seemed like a Bad Thing not to believe in God. You were supposed to believe in God.

Somewhere along the line, though, I decided that I didn’t. Perhaps it was when I asked my dad about the point to life, and he responded that there wasn’t any point to life. I just know that as I grew older, and I began trying to figure out my philosophy of life, it seemed much more plausible to me that people made God up. Science seemed much more reliable. Then I read a little bit about existentialism, and it clicked with me.

So what’s my philosophy of life? We just exist. Human beings evolved, just as everything else on the planet evolved. Human beings certainly aren’t perfect:

- we have to go the bathroom at inconvenient times.

- have you ever really looked at a person walk? it’s a really inefficient way to move forward — so much wasted energy.

- our wisdom teeth and appendix are useless.

- we can’t communicate telepathically.

So evolution has a long way to go.

Everything can be explained by science. If we can’t explain it, it just means we haven’t hit upon the explanation yet. Imagine a Neanderthal trying to explain comets.

There’s no particular reason we’re here — we’re just here. Nobody’s watching us. When I die, I will die, and after that I will never, ever, ever exist again.

Someone who believes in God once told me that my view of things sounds really gloomy. Well, just because it’s gloomy doesn’t mean it’s not true. Anyway, I’m not trying to be gloomy. I’m trying to be honest.

It scares the crap out of me, though. I’d love to believe in an afterlife. In my ideal afterlife, there’s an infinitely large library containing every book ever written. There’s even a book to represent each person who’s ever lived — a biography that’s also a sort of visual blog-like device that lets you relive any moment of any person’s life through that person’s eyes. You can achieve some sort of total consciousness or state of ultimate knowledge.

I don’t know — it could be true.

It’s not that I think about the futility of life all the time, but lately I don’t have any clear goals, and I can’t see myself finding any. I’ve got a decent-though-unexciting job with great hours and excellent benefits, and I can’t see myself finding one that’s better. I’ve got a wonderful boyfriend, at least. But I’ve looked for some overriding life’s goal for years now, and every time I think I’ve found one, I turn out to be wrong. That worries me.

Perhaps if life were more fulfilling, I wouldn’t be so worried about dying. But I am. I’ve completed college and law school, I’ve come up with a million goals and decided none of them was the one, and now here I am at a semi-decent point in my life and I feel like this is as good as it gets, career-wise. From now to age 80, this is what it’s all going to be like.

But I don’t want things to be that way.

While writing the last couple of paragraphs, I’ve felt some optimism that things will get better, but I’ve realized that it will happen only if I take the necessary risks.

So there’s hope yet.

There’s always hope…

100 Days, 48 States. Daniel Cohen travelled around the continental U.S. via motorcycle, collecting “passport stamps” from National Park sites (here’s an explanation). One of my favorite parts of this site is the national map with links to the routes he traveled each day.

I love this stuff — it’s always been my dream to take a long stretch of time and travel all over the country.

More National Park Service stuff:

A page on the official National Park Service typography used on all brochures, guides, and so on, familiar if you’ve ever visited a NPS site.

Guidelines for use of the typefaces, and some basic guidelines to typesetting in general. (As I’ve noted before, I dig this kind of stuff.

A collection of maps of all National Park Service sites, viewable by state or in alphabetical order.

Tomorrow morning, Matt and I are off to Washington, D.C. for a four-day getaway. We’ll be back Sunday night, so my blog will be on a break for a few days. Farewell!

Matt and I got back from D.C. on Sunday night. I haven’t yet had a chance to write about the trip, but we had a wonderful time. I hope to write a full post soon.

Just wanted to let you all know I’m still alive. More later.

I’m still working on my narrative of our D.C. trip; it’s turning out to be much longer than I’d intended.

In the meantime, if you didn’t get a chance to see them last night, read the speeches of Barack Obama and Teresa Heinz Kerry. Parts of them were pretty magnificent, even if Teresa looked like she was wearing a Starfleet uniform or something.

So here it is: our trip to Washington.

I was a little nervous about the trip, as it was my and Matt’s first vacation together. I worried that we’d get sick of each other or get into an argument or something. Fortunately, that turned out not to be the case.

[Read more →]

!sekiY

I’m going to try to sort out my thoughts on the upcoming election.

I’m nervous about it. Perhaps I’m just a pessimist when it comes to politics; perhaps it’s just in my nature to give too much credence and power to those who disagree with me, and to belittle and lack confidence in my own viewpoints.

I think this has to do with my own psychological makeup. When I was growing up, I put all my self-worth into being respected by authority figures; I wanted to play by the rules, please my teachers and my parents. And at some point I felt I’d learned that I could do nothing but disappoint them. I was too strange — too smart to hang out with the normal people, but not successful enough to make my parents happy. This made me feel ashamed; they were right, and I was always wrong. This continued past childhood. For instance, it took me forever to come out of the closet; I was too scared of what might happen, too scared of making my parents angry and of being seen as an outcast by society.

I tend to see most Republicans as latter-day incarnations of those authority figures. Therefore, I tend to see them as automatically correct, and those who oppose them
(such as me) as automatically wrong. I don’t really believe that’s true, but it does seem to be the position I’m naturally inclined to take if I don’t work hard to fight against it within myself.

And yet, once I’ve decided that I’m right, I see that there are people who just as stridently believe that I’m wrong.

For instance, I’ve read some of the comments here:

Today, the Dems are NOT a loyal opposition; and if Bush wins I don’t expect the press, nor most rich elites, to change.

I’m stunned that anyone in their right mind can’t see that Bush and Cheney are the true “rich elites” in this campaign, giving their other “rich elite” friends a ton of unnecessary tax breaks and caring nothing for ordinary middle-class people.

I can’t imagine behaving in the rabid fashion that the extreme left has for the past few years…

I’m stunned that someone can say this despite Clinton’s impeachment over something completely unrelated to his presidential duties.

I used to think that logical arguments always win the day. But they don’t. And that scares me.

The following things also make me nervous: Fox News, Teresa Heinz Kerry, electronic voting machines without paper trails, Bush’s edge in the polls when it comes to the terrorism issue (despite the fact that he hasn’t reduced the possibility of a terrorist attack), Kerry’s inability to articulate a coherent and consistent message (up to now), conservative columnists who write well.

About that last point: I tend not to be a knee-jerk voter, and therefore I do try to at least consider some of the conservative arguments I hear. Sometimes they seem to make sense (when it comes to foreign policy, anyway), and I feel like an idiot for disagreeing. But then I read someone with whom I do agree, and the balance is restored.

I’m voting for Kerry. But I have no idea who will win this election, and should Kerry win, I have no idea how successful he’ll be. On the other hand, I can’t stand the thought of four more years of George W. Bush in the White House.

It’s interesting how political views can be an extension of one’s personal psychology.

I walked into my office building this morning and stopped at the little snack kiosk to buy a small bottle of apple juice. There’s usually no line, but today there were a few people in front of me. The woman who was next in line turned to me and said, “I’m not in line.” I said, “Oh, okay,” and I walked ahead of her to pay for my juice. After paying, I turned around, and another woman who had been there was looking at me.

“I was in line,” she said.

I hadn’t meant to cut in front of her. I didn’t think she was in line either, especially since the first woman had been looking at me when she’d invited me to go ahead.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.

“No you’re not.”

Excuse me?

“Yes, I am,” I said.

“No you’re not,” she said, sharing a look with the first woman. I don’t know if it’s because I was a guy or because I was a white guy.

“Look, I’m truly sorry, and I don’t know why you think otherwise,” I said, irritated, as I walked away and headed toward the elevators.

I was so pissed off. If someone apologizes to you, you give that person the benefit of the doubt. You don’t act like a bitch about it.

Oh, and good morning. :)

So, I liked Kerry’s speech last night, which means that the TV media will probably find some major quirk or characteristic in it and declare it to be a bad thing and harp on it over and over again until it becomes a major meme and the undecided TV-watching public that can’t think for itself accepts the meme as fact. See, I thought Al Gore made a terrific case for himself in the first 2000 presidential debate, which taught me that I am far from a reliable barometer of public opinion.

Kerry was the most animated I’d ever seen him, which I loved. And he devoted a huge chunk of his speech to national security, and led with that topic, both of which were big plusses. I was surprised that he denounced the current administration as much as he did. I was especially surprised that he mentioned Dick Cheney by name; I guess he was milking the fact that public opinion is largely against Cheney these days. But I worry that some out there will emphasize the most confrontational parts of his speech and use them to make the whole thing sound negative.

A really important read, by the way, is this profile of Kerry, particularly of his views on foreign policy, in last week’s New Yorker.

Jeb Bush says Florida’s electronic voting machines are reliable. But even Republicans disagree.

Well, I was wrong about the media not liking the speech.

The Case Against George W. Bush, by Ron Reagan.

This is a must-read. I *heart* Ron Reagan.

Here are the photos of our trip to D.C., taken by Matt. Despite my promptings, Matt didn’t want me to take any pictures of him, so there’s none of him and lots of me.