Wednesday December 29, 2004

The degree of the death and destruction on the coasts of the Indian Ocean is positively beyond comprehension.

The Thai government knew that an apocalyptic earthquake had struck just off the Sumatran coast. They were unsure of the magnitude — later found to be a staggering 9.0, the strongest tremor worldwide since 1964. As they had known from past experience, an intense quake could trigger a tsunami, a massive wave that would reach staggering heights, traveling at unbelievable speeds. They decided not to issue an alert to their public, based on inconclusive evidence, even though there was a significant chance that there was a tidal wave out there.

The tsunami struck an hour later. More than 10,000 casualties in Thailand have been officially reported, a figure almost certain to skyrocket. Had an alert been issued, those on the coasts could have taken a leisurely walk inland, sparing virtually all human life. So why did the government not take action? Tourists. Yes, thousands are dead because the hotels and restaurants and whatnot would lose money if the feared tsunami did not destroy anything. Now there are no hotels or restaurants and the patrons are dead. Lovely, isn’t it?

And if you’re trying to flee countries that don’t care about the lives of their citizens, good luck. Among your choices are Comair, the airline whose computers can’t count to 32,768, and US Airways, who is in such a disastrous state that they are asking employees to volunteer to work over the New Year’s weekend to prevent a rerun of last week’s huge luggage disaster. As an observation, this is a sign that a company isn’t doing well. Indeed, they’re likely to be out of business in weeks.

So there’s that.

Saturday December 11, 2004

<UPDATE> A great article from Psychology Today. Why are you so screwed up? Perhaps it’s time to start (to borrow a phrase) “talkin ’bout my generation.” I don’t agree with all of their theses, but a lot of it is worth reading. In short, if you screw with the system, the system fights back. So don’t create the system in the first place. </UPDATE>

<UPDATE2> I’m glad that the police are taking down some of the great menaces in our society today. Yep. Ten-year old girls with scissors. (And it gets worse.) </UPDATE2>

I just saw the film “Closer.” I would tell you that it’s the Jude Law film, but he’s in about sixty-five of them this month, so that wouldn’t be of much help.

(As an aside, I saw a movie poster at the theatre for a remake of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” with Johnny Depp starring as Willie Wonka. This is a travesty against humanity that must be stopped. Hollywood, please stop remaking every movie. Stop putting people in roles that make no sense for them.)

Anyway, this flick was a self-destructive carnal squaredance. Two guys and two gals, switching back and forth between the two potential mates, immutably going off and screwing one eagerly just as things settled with the other and destroying what they had, only to end up doing the same to the second person with the first person that they left. This happens at least seven times. It was an interesting psychological examination.

What I find interesting is the absolute unforgivability of a tryst. Especially in this film — there was no concealment of the infidelity, nor was there any sort of sense that something was wrong. They all considered love and sex to be totally separate things, yet expected far better of their partner. So how could an atheist cheater be destroyed when the atheist cheater that they fell for cheated? For that matter, what would be wrong with cheating at all? It was hard to tell if these people really had hearts at all … so who cares what body part goes where?

Perhaps the scariest part was that this movie came out feeling kinda uplifting to me. Thoughts would be appreciated on all of this.

Thursday December 2, 2004

More social commentary, because I’m apparently still not in a creative writing mood:

So if you were constructing a sex education program, how might you try to convince your students about the dangers of sexual activity? (I’m just assuming that is the goal. I’m not even debating whether abstinence-focused education is a good idea, which I don’t think it is.) Well, there might be several workable approaches, but I don’t think that one of them is DELIBERATELY LYING TO YOUR STUDENTS.

Apparently, at the intersection of Machiavellian brainwashing and social conservatism is the idea that the most efficient way of keeping children from having sex is just to make things up about it to scare them senseless. A report issued by Congress noted outright lies in widely-used sex education curricula. Examples:

* One-half of all gay males have HIV/AIDS.
* Condoms fail about one-third of the time.
* STDs can be transmitted through sweat.

<UPDATE> Oh, and the ball keeps rolling down the hill. Apparently, the social conservative agenda involves actually trying to turn America into Pleasantville. How? Well, let’s trot out all the gender stereotypes from the past and present them as scientific fact, hm? These are all excerpted from actual Federally-funded sex education curricula. I’m feeling sick. (Full report here.)

* “Women gauge their happiness and judge their success by their relationships [while] men’s happiness and their success hinge on their accomplishments.”
* “Just as a woman needs to feel a man’s devotion to her, a man has a primary need to feel a woman’s admiration. To admire a man is to regard him with [feelings of] wonder, delight, and approval. A man feels admired when his unique characteristics and talents happily amaze her.”
* “A male is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is sexually attracted. Women usually have greater intuitiveness of how to develop a loving relationship. … While a man needs little or no preparation for sex, a woman often needs hours of emotional and mental preparation.” </UPDATE>

Your tax dollars at work. Almost a billion dollars during the rest of this decade will be spent by Washington on abstinence-only sex education. This is why the fact that social conservatives are now advocates of big government should scare everyone senseless. After all, a state senator in Alabama basically wants to burn books with homosexual characters or themes.

Anyway, that’s that. I’ll go off and dream about yet another unrequited love. In leather.