You may recall last November, when former Encyclopaedia Britannica editor-in-chief Robert McHenry heavily criticized Wikipedia in an article entitled "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia."

The article caused a good deal of controversy. Wikipedia represents the new free, open source mentality of information thriving on the Internet (the kind of mentality behind Linux; also note that I am note equating "free" with "open source"), while McHenry represents the "old guard" of closed, elitist, and expensive information. It's very much like a battle between Catholics and Lutherans: on the one hand, McHenry suggests that only a select few have the credentials to disseminate information. On the other hand, Wikipedia suggests that anyone can disseminate information, and that the Internet had made this democratization (Gr. demos, "the commons, the people" + Gr. -ize, "to conform to such a way"; from the same root comes democracy, "authority of the people") of information possible.

It certainly has. Blogs are another example of the democratization of information. Whereas journalists with credentials behind them (a degree in journalism plus a respected news organization) told us the news prior to the existence of the Internet (although fringe and "underground" publications provided news as well, but were not taken to be authoritative), bloggers have no credentials beyond a background knowledge in the material they write about and excellent research skills. In the increasingly anti-authority world of the Internet, having credentials is more of a liability than not having them. Credentials mean that you're part of the establishment, that an elite person has, like a feudal lord, given you the authority to say what is factual and what is not factual (the "t-word" will not be used here, since encyclopedias are not bastions of truth, but of fact).

The Internet seems to reject information from an authority figure merely on principle, without evaluating the information itself. The fact that it comes from an elite source renders it biased, inaccurate, or "evil" by itself. When Microsoft engineer Peter Torr criticized Mozilla Firefox for being insecure, open-source apologists rushed him immediately, declaring him "narrowminded" and "a tool." Some of his comments made me a little leery, like when he referred to download mirrors at universities being operated by "a bunch of kids at some random university I've never heard of." But did the people who read his blog entry bother to consider what he was saying? Or did they immediately presume that since he (1) worked for Microsoft, and (2) was attacking Firefox, he must be an evil person and obviously stupid.

His comments about security were on target. Firefox entices its users into thinking that (1) it is hack-proof and thus (2) it will stop any nasties (spyware, adware, malware) from entering your computer. This is not the case. Torr correctly indicts Firefox for lulling its users into insecure computing practices, like readily accepting a download from a site that you have been redirected to. "Not only does this software come from a completely random university server, but I have no way of checking if it is the authentic Firefox install or some maliciously altered copy," writes Torr. There is no security authority telling the user that the product is safe. The Internet needs security, and it has that in the form of certificates which certify that the thing you downloaded really is what it claims to be. Even Firefox utilizes certificates. And where to certificates come from? Private third-party institutions, like Verisign, certify that certificates are real. If they won't do it, then who will?

The same is true for Wikipedia. Aaron Krowne, writing for Free Software Magazine, lambasted McHenry for his criticisms of Wikipedia, suggesting that he has a "a vested interest or deep-seated bias" in his hatred for Wikipedia. But what about the integrity of the information? Who will certify that the information I find on Wikipedia is true? What are the credentials of the authors of various articles? There is no certainty beyond the theory that, if enough people review and revise an article, it will become factually correct. "Wikipedia is almost becoming authoritative," says Krowne, "a fact which clearly upsets McHenry and similarly-situated individuals." Why is it upsetting? Because they are Grinch-types who sit in their high castles, cursing the fact that the people now have a free encyclopedia? Or is it because they are concerned about the quality of the information coming from Wikipedia? McHenry isn't the only person who questions Wikipedia. Krowne acknowledges that Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger also expressed doubts about Wikipedia and suggested that become less anti-elitist and have more respect for expertise. Sanger observes that "project participants have such a horror of the traditional deference to expertise, this sort of proposal has never been taken very seriously by most Wikipedians leading the project now." Why have project participants been loathe to bring in experts? The existence of "experts" and "non-experts" runs counter to the democratization of information on the Internet, where everyone is an expert, and anyone who claims to be an expert is obviously up to no good.

There are people who know more than you do. The folks at Wikipedia must learn this. Experts have spent years studying their fields and have credentials from institutions to prove it. The people who want to make information dissemination more egalitarian are frequently (though not always) armchair scholars who can put half-information in academic-sounding language to mask its inadequacies. The people who contribute to Wikipedia are the same people that you and I have met on countless message boards. They know a little bit about enough things to be dangerous, but not enough to be experts. On the Internet, the person who sounds the most authoritative is the most authoritative, whether he is or not.

In academia, we still require that web pages have credentials behind them. Any old web page won't do; it must have an authority behind it. The Internet provides a plethora of information, but not all of that information can be certified as correct. Wikipedians object to the existence of an omniscient third party certifying information to be correct or not. The fact is that someone must exist to certify whether information is correct.

In the absence of information, Wikipedians (and bloggers) will defer to opinion as a substitute for fact. Most blogs do not provide "news," but rather provide an opinion about the news. Likewise, Wikipedia provides facts as well as opinions about those facts. For a reference source, this is unnecessary and unwanted. I can form my own opinions; I just want the background material around which to base those facts. By throwing your own opinion into those facts, you have interfered with my ability to think for myself. You would have me think as you do. That's not what I want when I go to an encyclopedia.

Democracy for democracy's sake is a terrible idea. Just because an encyclopedia can be written by people from around the world does not mean that that is a good idea. The question must be asked, "Why would I want a reference source whose facts are questionable, just for the sake of calling it 'free and open'?" This is the problem: Wikipedians put the cart of demos before the horse of fact. I don't go to an encyclopedia because it espouses opinions about information accessibility that I agree with. I go to an encyclopedia for correct information, and in the case of Wikipedia, its contributors are more concerned with the information being available for dissemination by anyone than that information being correct.

What are we really talking about? Democracy means "authority of the people," but in the case of Wikipedia, the people do not have the authority. Wikipedia is currently in a state of anarchy (Gr. an, "without" + Gr. arkhos, "leader"), or more properly, ankratia ("without authority"). The ideal of the Internet is ankratia, but only in certain ways that are rather hypocritical. It is perfectly acceptable to criticize Microsoft for being a large, nameless, faceless corporation and Windows for being a terrible operating system. But to criticize Linux or Mozilla (and there are valid reasons for criticizing them) is heresy. Microsoft is regularly criticized for not adhering to standards of HTML compliance - invented by whom? An authority: the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which creates standards for Web markup languages like HTML, XML, and XHTML. Internet anarchists are perfectly content to obey some authorities and not others, as long as the authority's politics are in line with their own.

Democratization brings freedom. This we can be sure of, as far as states go. But even in the United States, we are a federal republic. A pure democracy would be crazy with 293 million people. Instead, we invest authorities with the power to do things for us. So, too, do we invest authorities with the responsibility of finding information for us. We are not experts on ancient Persia. That's why we expect other people to be. But we want them to have the ability to say something about ancient Persia and have it be factually correct. Wikipedia denies us this. And if the Wikipedian suggests that one can never know if a fact is totally true or whether or not an authority is correct, then I will say that Encyclopaedia Britannica is more correct than Wikipedia. I hardly ever use Wikipedia to look things up; I use Project Bartleby's Columbia Encyclopedia and the other reference materials available at Bartleby. I know the material has been researched by actual, real-life scholars, not kids in dorm rooms sipping Mountain Dew. I place factual correctness above the necessity of being free and open. And if you'd like a free encyclopedia, try the Columbia Encyclopedia. As for being "open," I'd prefer a closed encyclopedia if that meant that the facts were correct.

This does not mean that Wikipedia should close its doors forever. What it does mean is exactly what Larry Sanger suggests: in order to be authoritative, it must accept authority. U.S. currency is accepted around the world only because it is based on a promise from the U.S. government that the money will be worthwhile tomorrow. A Wikipedia currency would give us no such security, since it isn't backed by anything - just as the Wikipedia encyclopedia is not backed by anything but the "full faith and credit" of its contributors and its review process, all of which are suspect. "The project can both prize and praise its most knowledgeable contributors, and permit contribution by persons with no credentials whatsoever," says Sanger. If Wikipedia wishes to survive - and if the Internet wishes to be taken seriously - then we must show some deference to authority, lest the Internet become one giant, mindless message board void of cogent thought.

Posted by Mark at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Ned complained of being unable to italicize in his comments. I have set up Movable Type to respect HTML tags wherever it finds them in comments, but you must know how to put the HTML in.

To make something bold, put the bold tag before it: <b> (b is for bold). Then put another bold tag after it, with a slash before the b to tell the browser that it's the end of the item that should be bolded: </b>. Thus, if I wanted to bold a word, it would look like this: <b>word</b>. The result looks like this: word. Do the same for italicizing, except replace b with i (for italic). <i>The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain</i> yields: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. Underlining is u.

To make something a blockquote (that is, to offset a paragraph by about half an inch), surround the text you want with a <blockquote> tag in the same way you would surround text you wanted italicized with an <i> tag. And don't forget the slash at the end, or else the rest of your comment will be italicized (the browser won't know where to stop italicizing).

I hope this was helpful, as Movable Type does not have convenient tag buttons like other software.

Posted by Mark at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Doug Ross called his criticism of my earlier post "Fisking." I had no idea what that meant, so I looked it up in Urban Dictionary. Apparently, it refers to taking apart an argument, paragraph by paragraph. I had been doing that for years in STF and had no idea that it had a name! (I guess it didn't have a name until recently.) Anyway, here are some things Ned had to say:

Cynical is an understatement. Yes, corporations will benefit from private accounts, and that does include CEOs. But so will average workers whose 401ks or IRAs hold these stocks, or John Doe who owns a mutual fund.

CEOs have much more money than "average workers" invested in stocks, either in other companies or their own companies. Stock options are very common for CEOs these days. An average CEO is 65,000 shares of company stock as part of his compensation package, reports Ron Kasznik of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Furthermore, The Economist reports that 58% of the compensation of US CEOs in 2001 came in the form of stock options. Furthermore, only 1.7% of non-executive employees received stock options in 2001. (Source.) As for the "average worker," he probably doesn't own that much in stock. A New York University study showed that "the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans owned 33.6 percent of stock market wealth, while the poorest 80 percent owned less than 11 percent" in 2001. (Source.) Having stocks is all about quantity. The more stocks you have, the more money you make. If you have a few investments here and there, you're making chump change compared to people who own thousands and thousands of shares.

Come to think of it, more investment means these companies will have more capital. That translates into more jobs.

Only if these companies decide to transfer their increased revenue into hiring more workers. Giving corporations more money does not mean that they will hire more people. This same debate occurred in 2003 when Bush planned to lower the dividend tax from 38.1% to 15%. In response to a lower tax rate on dividends in 2003, a study found "an overall increase in dividend payments following enactment [of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003]." The study also found "that a firm’s dividend increases [were] positively correlated with the percentage of its shares held by individuals" (Source). I have not yet seen a study which purports that an increase in corporate revenue necessarily entails an increase in jobs.

Beyond that, what no one is mentioning is how this new reform is completely consistent with FDR's philosophy. The New Deal was one big experiement, and that includes Social Security. FDR once said "...this country needs bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

I'm certainly not a proponent of this. It's a terrible ideaa: "try something"? Even if it probably won't work? Even if it costs trillons of dollars, and economists agree that it won't solve the long-term problems with Social Security? Why not "try something" that will be guaranteed to work instead of trying the first idea that comes to mind? Shouldn't there be a commission created to look at the problems with Social Security and recommend solutions? There's a better idea. Social Security problems are not so dire that they will result in insolvency tomorrow. There's time enough to examine the problem and come up with a better solution.

And if you're cynical enough to believe that private accounts are sure-things for executives, then that means they are sure-things for every shareholder. You've just answered all the neighsayers who warn of Enron-style doom and gloom. Thank you for that.

They're sure things for executives because they have far more money invested in the system than the "average shareholder." It's not merely about having money; it's about how much money. Bush tax relief was supposed to be a great thing for John Q. Taxpayer, except that when you reduce individual income taxes for very wealthy people, they will tend to save their money rather than spend it. The Laffer hypothesis has been "rejected, including by a heavy majority of Republican economists," says Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Theoretically, people who make a lot of money will inject more money into the economy when they get a tax break. In practice, that's not what happens. A three-percent tax cut for John Q. Taxpayer is much less in real dollar amounts than a three-percent tax cut for Warren Buffett. The amounts of the same percentage differ between small numbers and large numbers, and we are concerned with dollars, not percentages.

Posted by Mark at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Ich bin ein Paul Krugmanner!

Writing an op-ed in The New York Times last Friday, Paul Krugman took Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan to task for his misguided support of George W. Bush's personalized Social Security system (please read about the system at Factcheck.org, in spite of what National Review may think of it).

I always thought Alan Greenspan was on our side. The Fed is a very independent body, usually immune to partisan politics. Yet, somehow, says Krugman, Greenspan "painted a dark (and seriously exaggerated) picture of the demographic problem, and said that what we need is a 'fully funded' system. He then conceded that Bush-style privatization would do nothing to improve the system's funding. [...] Mr. Greenspan went on to concede that the opponents of privatization are right to worry about the huge borrowing that Bush-style privatization would entail." And after all this, Greenspan still endorsed private retirement accounts! My old economics teacher, Mr. Allen, instilled in me a love for Greenspan and his objectivity. It has become increasingly apparent, however, that Greenspan is not as objective as Mr. Allen remembers him.

Okay, so the question is, why are we being told that the situation is so urgent that Social Security reform can't wait another second? In much the same way that we had to go to war with Iraq right now, we're being told that Social Security needs to be reformed right now. I'll buy that Social Security needs to be reformed, but does it have to be immediately? And if Greenspan is correct and Bush's privatization scheme won't do anything to solve Social Security's future insolvency problems, then why should we go along with the Bush plan?

To quote Hamlet, something is rotten in my refrigerator.

Or something like that.

First of all, private retirement accounts would only augment Social Security benefits, and only slightly at that. If everyone who could put money into private accounts did so, then the funds of the whole Social Security pool would decrease by that percentage, meaning that Social Security would be worse in the future for people without private investment accounts and slightly better for people with those accounts.

But let's pretend I don't care about other people. Screw them. They should have invested their money. But maybe I care about gigantic government budgets. It is estimated that $4.5 trillion will be required to finance the first twenty years of the privatization plan as funds are shifted around between the Social Security trust and private accounts. That's a lot of money to throw around for a project whose benefit is dubious at best. Let's be rational consumers, here: does marginal benefit equal marginal cost?

And then there's the timing. Why now? Why not last year? Wasn't it just as urgent then? Bush knows that this is his last four years (until they manage a constitutional amendment to give him four more years, leading us Where Many Dictatorships Have Gone Before), so he has to spend the "political capital" he made in the last election. Who stands to benefit the most from this privatization? The retiree who will get 4 or 5% more than he would without a private account? Where is his investment going? It's going into private corporations, of course. And as Americans buy stocks and mutual funds with their private investment dollars, the value of those stocks goes up. And the people who stand to gain the most from an increase in stock price are the people who have the most money invested in them: the executives of the corporations in question! So, under the Bush plan, Americans can only use their private investment money to purchase stocks in corporations A and B. The stock prices of corporations A and B go up as a result. The executives of corporations A and B see their portfolios increase in value tremendously thanks to an influx of the money from millions of Americans. And when Bush leaves office, where does he have a very cherry job waiting for him? Yes, that's right: corporations A and B are falling all over themselves to give him a position on their Boards of Directors, where he can earn millions of dollars to meet with a dozen other people in a posh conference room twice a month.

Cynical? Yes. It sounds like Bush is fabricating a crisis so as to fabricate a solution that benefits him and his friends at the end of the day.

And it's all for you.

Posted by Mark at 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Elizabeth and I wanted to watch a movie last night, so I suggested Donnie Darko. Moments before putting the DVD in, however, I spied Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on Matt's bookshelf. Elizabeth had never seen it, so I asked her if she wanted to watch Fear and Loathing instead. So we did.

The movie finished and Matt showed us an old BBC documentary about Hunter S. Thompson just to reinforce how much like Thompson Johnny Depp's acting was. We were all thoroughly impressed.

Suddenly, I received an IM from Scott telling me that Hunter S. Thompson had died. That had to have been one of the freakiest moments of my life. Scott had no idea that we were watching Fear and Loathing. We picked the movie on a whim. And I wondered if Hunter S. Thompson had shot himself while we were watching his movie. It's a rather morbid thought, but at the same time, it's a question that you would like to have answered. As we were watching Johnny Depp portray Raul Duke in a film version of Thompson's book, Thompson was exiting this world. He'll never know if Elizabeth liked it or not.

Posted by Mark at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Cory Doctrow reports:

Ian Hogben discovered that his HP laptop stores a whitelist of allowed Mini-PCI cards in its BIOS. If the WiFi card you buy isn't on the whitelist, your laptop won't boot. The anticompetitive implications for this are stunning: if you don't go to HP on bent knee before shipping your cards, they'll lock them out of their hardware and none of their customers will be able to use your card. Not to mention what happens when new cards are invented after your laptop leaves the factory: sorry, no modern hardware for you, your laptop only works with museum pieces. [Original story.]

Cory is absolutely right. While your car's owners manual says that the dealer's power steering fluid is recommended, everyone knows that the dealer's fluids are more expensive and are probably just re-branded versions of regular products, anyway. Now, imagine a dystopic future in which your car wouldn't function unless it was using only the fluids specified by the dealer. You'd get super-pissed! That's exactly what's happening here. Microsoft got busted for this kind of practice ("Either you include our Internet browser or we're taking away your license to sell Windows"). Hopefully HP will, too.

Posted by Mark at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The Los Angeles Times reports that "the Bush administration is fighting the former [Gulf War] prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime." Why? "Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money." Want to know the definition of irony? Here it is:

Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.

Deputy Sleazeball Scott McClellan had this to say about the case when asked about it in 2003: "No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein."

With this action, the U.S. government is in violation of the Geneva Convention, which says that a state can never absolve another state of liability for the torture of POWs.

(Via Metafilter.)

Posted by Mark at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Maybe I should have studied some queer theory before I wrote that SpongeBob piece. Queer theory comes from the 1980s and is an offshoot of feminist theory. Where feminist theory said that gender was a social construction, queer theory goes a step further and says sexuality is a social construction. Human sexuality is not informed by "biology" or anything scientific, since

human sexuality looks very little like animal sexuality in any regard. We are (I think, and correct me if I'm wrong) the only species that can copulate more or less at will, without regard to fertility or hormonal cycles, and that alone separates sexual behavior from reproduction for human beings. We also have an enormous repertoire of sexual behaviors and activities, only some of which are linked to reproduction, which further separates the two categories. And--most importantly--human sexual behavior is about pleasure, and about pleasure mediated by all kinds of cultural categories.

We used to insist that gender was informed by science, that male and female roles were immutable. Dad went to work. Mom stayed home. Rinse, repeat. Feminist theorists, in the 1970s, challenged the assertion that women "should" act a particular way and men "should" act a particular way. Gender, then, "was a social construct, something designed and implemented and perpetuated by social organizations and structures, rather than something merely 'true,' something innate to the ways bodies worked on a biological level." When we speak of "gender," we speak of gender roles and the signs that go along with them.

Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a French linguist and the founder of semiotics. His text, Course in General Linguistics, was published posthumously by his students, but it nonetheless made him the Founding Father of literary and cultural theory in the twentieth century. Every literary theory to develop after World War I is informed by Saussure, either as a support or a critique. Other fields, like feminist theory, use Saussure's notion of the sign.

Saussure saw language as the most important institution for human beings. Language (langue) was divided into signs. Signs represent abstract ideas, concepts, or things in a language. A sign is made of two components: the signifier (the sound pattern used to describe the concept) and the signified (the concepts being described). Thus the word "table" is composed of the pattern of sounds composing the word "table" and the concept of "table." Something to notice is that a sign is a level removed from the thing it describes. It is not the thing it describes. Saussure understood this gap of meaning between the sign and the signified, but never really addressed it, since we couldn't do anything about it. It is an inherent flaw of language.

On to queer theory!

Queer theory looks at, and studies, and has a political critique of, anything that falls into normative and deviant categories, particularly sexual activities and identities. The word "queer", as it appears in the dictionary, has a primary meaning of "odd," "peculiar," "out of the ordinary." Queer theory concerns itself with any and all forms of sexuality that are "queer" in this sense--and then, by extension, with the normative behaviors and identities which define what is "queer" (by being their binary opposites). Thus queer theory expands the scope of its analysis to all kinds of behaviors, including those which are gender-bending as well as those which involve "queer" non-normative forms of sexuality. Queer theory insists that all sexual behaviors, all concepts linking sexual behaviors to sexual identities, and all categories of normative and deviant sexualities, are social constructs, sets of signifiers which create certain types of social meaning. Queer theory follows feminist theory and gay/lesbian studies in rejecting the idea that sexuality is an essentialist category, something determined by biology or judged by eternal standards of morality and truth. For queer theorists, sexuality is a complex array of social codes and forces, forms of individual activity and institutional power, which interact to shape the ideas of what is normative and what is deviant at any particular moment, and which then operate under the rubric of what is "natural," "essential," "biological," or "god-given."

Our culture uses language as shorthand to describe behaviors as well as physical characteristics. The word "male" signifies not only male genitalia, but also a male role. The word "female" signifies a female role and female genitalia. Feminist theory called into question the first part of those signs, but not the second part. Queer theory suggests that our genitalia do not determine our gender. Our culture assigns us a gender based upon those genitalia, but that may not be how we feel about that gender.

Sexuality, though, is not a social construction. Our sexuality -- homosexual, heterosexual, or in-between -- is biological. The concepts of these sexualities, however, are socially constructed in that we give signifiers to different sexual orientations.

It's back to the drawing board on the SpongeBob theory.

(Source: Mary Klages, "Queer Theory," U of Colorado at Boulder, 29 October 1997 .)

Posted by Mark at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing is a sometimes lawyer who often works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and deals with civil liberties in digital spheres. You may remember him as the author of this summer's smash-hit "DRM Talk," given by Cory to some programmers at Microsoft.

Boing Boing produced some fascinating -- and terrifying -- examples of Your Rights Being Infringed over the weekend. In this first example, a man is taking photographs in a MUNI station in San Francisco (I assume this is a bus or train station) and some police come over and ask him to stop. He asks them to tell him where in the law it says that he can't take photographs. They admit that there is no such law, but they ask him to please stop, anyway, in the name of "security." This first example relies on people not knowing what their rights are.

In this second example, a Boing Boing reader is in Manila, Philippines, where it is state policy to use "searching for bombs" on trains and buses as an excuse to confiscate any home-created optical media. The CDs and DVDs you burned at home -- even if technically legal, even if for work or fair use -- taken! All in the name of preventing IP theft. Fortunately, Manila is not the U.S., but if MPAA and RIAA have their way, it may be, soon.

Posted by Mark at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a list of this year's Best Picture Oscar nominees:

• The Aviator
• Finding Neverland
• Million-Dollar Baby
• Ray
• Sideways

Two of those -- Ray and The Aviator -- are big-budget Hollywood films. The other three are more "independent," in that they weren't produced by one of the major studios (Warner Brothers, Paramount, Columbia [that's Sony]), New Line, or Universal). Guess what four of them are: biopics! These are all biographical films with some level of truth to them. Let me tell you about some films which didn't make it to the Oscars:

• Garden State
• Hotel Rwanda
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Kill Bill, Vol. 2
• House of Flying Daggers

Some of these films have been nominated for a few Oscars in other places (Kate Winslet of Eternal Sunshine is up for Best Actress; Don Cheadle of Hotel Rwanda is up for Best Actor), but for the most part, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the "Academy" in Academy Awards) played it safe this year. All of the above films were terrific, but they weren't biopics. I have seen four of the five above-mentioned films and none of the films nominated for Best Picture, so I suppose I have no grounds for complaint. Nonetheless, I can't imagine why a film as good as Garden State received no Oscar nominations. Neither did Kill Bill, Vol. 2, which was a fantastically-written movie. If you went to the first Kill Bill for ass-kickage, then you went to the second for great writing (normally, I hate Quentin Tarantino dialogue, but I actually liked it in Kill Bill, Vol. 2).

I suppose Hollywood thinks it's being "cutting-edge" in picking biopics for its awards (it's an unusual genre), perhaps in an attempt to appear cutting-edge. It wasn't that long ago (1997) that, for one year, independent (non-big studio-produced) films ruled the show. Only one Hollywood film, Jerry Maguire, was nominated for Best Picture, and it lost to The English Patient. The other nominees were Fargo, Secrets & Lies, and Shine. In practically every category, Hollywood films were shut out by small, independent films like Sling Blade, Trainspotting, Lone Star, and Michael Collins. Then Hollywood got its act together and started making better films (1997 was the Year of the Big Budget Action Spectacular: Independence Day, Twister, The Rock). Now, though, it decided to go the extra step and shut out the better films altogether. You see, the Academy is made up of anyone who is involved in the film business in Hollywood. If you're an actor, director, or producer, you're a member. They're voting for themselves! It's almost as self-congratulatory as the Screen Actors Guild awards, where members of SAG vote for their favorite members of SAG for the year ("We did such a good job, we deserve an award!"). The Golden Globes, on the other hand, are selected by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press, people who don't have a stake in who wins or not.

I suppose if you vote for a mediocre actor and you want a little statue, it behooves you to vote for your own mediocre film instead of a better one. Not that all of the films selected were mediocre, but compared to the films that could have been selected, they're ... well, not as good.

Posted by Mark at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ned writes:

Sexuality is socially constructed? The moustache parade is going to be after you.

I can hear it now: Gay Person: "How dare you. One is born gay; one does not become gay. Everything in life is socially constructed except for sexuality. Duh, Mark."

What I meant in saying that sexuality is socially constructed is that we assign sexuality to others based on socially-constructed ideas of gender. A person's sexuality -- that is, who he wants to have sex with -- is genetic. A person does not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual. However, the very ideas of "homosexual" and "heterosexual" are themselves socially constructed. Other cultures have different concepts of sexuality beyond the binary sexuality (homosexual/heterosexual) with which we are most (un)comfortable.

Posted by Mark at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Woo hoo! Entry number 200!

Conservative Christians are up in arms (as they always are) about SpongeBob Squarepants, the lovable children’s cartoon character who may or may not be gay. In January, songwriter Nile Rodgers created a video featuring several children’s cartoon characters singing “We Are Family” in a message of tolerance. Conservative Christians are fine with tolerance – as long as they don’t have to tolerate people that are different from them. The tolerance pledge on Rodgers’ website includes a reference to sexual tolerance, and there’s nothing more that Conservative Christians hate than dirty sodomites. SpongeBob Squarepants was one of the cartoon characters featured in the video, adding credence to some claims that he is gay. (Read all about this at CNN.com.) Stephen Hillenburg, SpongeBob’s creator, says that he thinks of all the characters on the show as asexual.

Of course this is true. Children have no concept of sex. The concept of gender and sex is wholly foreign to them. Sex is defined as what kind of genitals you have. You can be male, female, or hermaphroditic (if you have the genitals of both sexes). Your sex is wholly natural. It is not determined by you, your parents, your government, your customs, or anyone else. Gender, on the other hand, is determined by one or more of those things. A person’s gender is the social role he plays according to the genitals he has. Someone with a penis we call a man (or male), and someone with a vagina we call a woman (or female). These social roles – created by a culture based on a person’s genitalia – can be occupational, as in, “I’m a woman; therefore, I cannot be a firefighter,” or they can refer to social habits, as in, “I’m a woman; therefore, I must wear a dress.” Gender affects every aspect of our culture.

Children have no concept of gender until it is taught to them. Billy has a penis; therefore, he can be a firefighter and Sally cannot. Sally has a vagina; therefore, she must wear a dress and Billy cannot. If Freud were still in vogue (and you can thank your lucky stars that he isn’t), we would say that gender – for the male – is assigned when the father “threatens the male child’s Oedipal desire for the mother with the punishment of ‘castration.’ The repression of desire makes it possible for the male child to identify with the place of the father and with a ‘masculine’ role” (Raman Selden and Peter Widdowson, A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 3rd ed. [Lexington, Ky.: UP of Kentucky, 1993], 138). The gendering of the female is more convoluted and has been heavily criticized.

In any case, no one believes Freud anymore. Jacques Lacan provides a better explanation without the rampant misogyny. According to Lacan, the child enters into a world ruled by a language system, and eventually, he begins to understand this language. The child only truly develops a sense of “self” in what Lacan calls the “mirror stage”: when a child looks into a mirror and sees himself as a separate entity from his mother. Through this system of language, we also begin to learn that we are either “female” or “male” according to our genitals, and we become conditioned to be either “male” or “female.”

There are times, though, when gender is not based on sex. Gender can be assigned based on perceived physical characteristics which correlate with particular genitalia. Or they can be assigned completely arbitrarily, as in the case of SpongeBob. We use male pronouns with SpongeBob because, for one, his name is SpongeBob. “Bob” is a male name, assigned to people with male genitalia. Second, we use male pronouns for SpongeBob because, within the cartoon (the text), he is referred to in a male way. The text tells us that SpongeBob is male. Why is this so? Could it be because SpongeBob has male genitalia? The text also tells us that SpongeBob does not have any genitalia. Cartoon characters are neuter. They cannot have sex with each other because they have no genitalia. Therefore, sex is unimportant. Gender, on the other hand, is important, since the world of cartoons mimics our own world. We see people every day without seeing what’s inside their pants; we assume that the gender we assign to them matches their sex, and for the most part, we’re right. We have learned to match particular physical characteristics to sexualities that correspond to those characteristics. Therefore, we can bypass the genitals – and sex – altogether in determining gender. We do this with SpongeBob and other cartoons. Minnie Mouse has a bow in her hair; therefore, she is female.

What does this have to do with SpongeBob? Well, he has no sex and neither do other cartoon characters because children have no concept of sex. They have genitalia, to be sure, but they have no idea what it’s for. “During the earliest phases of infanthood the libidinal drives have no definite sexual object but play around the various erotogenic zones of the body (oral, anal, ‘phallic’),” says Selden. “Before gender or identity are established there is only the rule of the ‘pleasure principle’” (138). By the time they are old enough to watch SpongeBob, children understand gender, but they don’t necessarily understand sex. They understand that SpongeBob is male, his friend Patrick is male, and his friend Sandy is female. But they don’t understand why.

Sexuality is about who you want to have sex with. It is also socially constructed, but with good reason, which I will explain momentarily. A person who wants to have sex with someone who has different genitals is heterosexual. A person who wants to have sex with someone who has the same genitals is homosexual. Bisexual people “swing either way”; they will have sex with persons who have genitals that are similar and different to their own. While sexuality is socially constructed based on genitalia, it is done so with good reason: a homosexual society would die out after the first generation, as homosexuals cannot procreate! Thus while gendering may not serve a prosaic purpose, sexualizing serves to allow procreation of the species.

Since SpongeBob has no genitals, he has no sex. Since he has no sex, he can have no sexuality. Elizabeth offered as evidence for his homosexuality an episode where he dresses like a woman and plays wife to Patrick, who acts as his husband. SpongeBob’s cross-dressing, cross-dressing though it may be, is not tantamount to homosexuality. Being effeminate is not tantamount to homosexuality. SpongeBob has no sexuality; therefore, he cannot be heterosexual or homosexual. The text and its author simply do not care about who SpongeBob wants to have sex with. It’s not important, and any attempt to make it important must necessarily result in a misreading of the text. There is no support for the claim that SpongeBob is a homosexual.

As I was writing this, Matt asked me about Pepe Le Peu, the famous French skunk. Clearly, Pepe Le Peu likes female skunks (although in every episode, he ends up chasing a black cat who, through some accident, has ended up with a white stripe down her back). What happens when cartoon characters have attractions to other cartoon characters? Well, since sexuality is culturally assigned, and children bypass the genitals when determining gender, children can only surmise that people who look like men have feelings for (the word "sex" isn't part of a child's vocabulary) people who look like women. Dad looks like a man and he has some relationship with Mom, who looks like a woman. Pepe Le Peu is gendered male; thus, according to a child, he must be attracted to female skunks. As long as cartoon characters don't actually engage in sex, they have no sexuality, and everything about their relationships with other cartoon characters rides on a culturally-assigned level.

Posted by Mark at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm a science fiction fan, but I've also come to realize that as a fan and a student of literary theory, I make a pretty good science fiction critic.

Science fiction literature and film are two of the most socially charged genres of literature (I suppose I could just say "media"). Serious science fiction -- not the stuff by Robert Aspirin and the like -- deals with issue that we confront every day, especially if science fiction is set in the future.

Darko Suvin, probably the world authority on science fiction criticism, defines science fiction this way:

SF is distinguished by the narrative dominance or hegemony of a fictional "novum" (novelty, innovation) validated by cognitive logic. [...] Quantitatively, the postulated innovation can be of quite different degrees of magnitude, running from the minimum of one discrete new "invention" (gadget, technique, phenomenon, relationship) to the maximum of a setting (spatiotemporal locus), agent (main character or characters), and/or relations basically new and unknown to the author's environment. [...] The novum is postulated on and validated by the post-Cartesian and post-Baconian scientific method. This does not mean that the novelty is primarily a matter of scientific facts or even hypotheses; and insofar as the opponents of the old popularizing Verne-to-Gernsback orthodoxy protest against such a narrow conception of SF they are quite right. But they go too far in denying that what differentiates SF from the "supernatural" literary genres (mythical tales, fairy tales, and so on, as well as horror and/or heroic fantasy in the narrow sense) is the presence of scientific cognition as the sign or correlative of a method (way, approach, atmosphere, sensibility) identical to that of a modern philosophy of science. Science in this wider sense of methodically systematic cognition cannot be disjoined from the SF innovation, in spite of fashionable currents in SF criticism in the last 15 years -- though it should be conversely clear that a proper analysis of SF cannot focus on its ostensible scientific content or scientific data. Indeed, a very useful distinction between "naturalistic" fiction, fantasy, and SF, drawn by Robert M. Philmus, is that naturalistic fiction does not require scientific explanation, fantasy does not allow it, and SF both requires and allows it. (Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, 63-65.)

What does this mean? It means that science fiction (1) deals with some new innovation, which can also be a character or setting in addition to a thing. (2), The innovation's operation must be supported by what we call the scientific method; that is, its nature and function must be explainable through logic and reason and that operation and function must be supported through empirical (observable) means. Suvin uses the word "supernatural," which is a key component of what science fiction is not. If anything, science fiction grounds itself in the natural: in the rational, observable world. Something which exists beyond our own realm of being is off-limits -- unless it is explained through logic, reason, and empirical support. Thus the USS Enterprise is an element of science fiction because we can see that it operates utilizing an innovation (warp drive, let's say) which is explainable via scientific reasoning; that is, the ship does not go "because we say so" or because of a magic spell. It goes because of a complex reaction between matter and antimatter, mediated by a dilithium crystal, producing high-energy charged plasma, which feeds drive coils that produce a warp field that makes the ship go.

Why is it so important to pin down what science fiction is? Science fiction critics want to first define the genre and then see how that genre interacts with other genres, producing science fiction fantasy (Star Wars) and science fiction horror (Alien). Ursula K. Le Guin subsumes science fiction under fantasy, which is probably a safe bet. If we were going to divide literature into realms of realism, we would probably have "naturalistic fiction" (fiction that aims to replicate or duplicate the conditions of the author's present time and place, what Suvin calls a "spatiotemporal locus") and "fantastic fiction" (fiction that is set in a time and place that is not the author's time and place).

Even these genres get confusing, though. Stephen King produces what we might call "naturalistic horror." His characters are normal people like us and they live in normal places like we do, in our own time. This is why his stories are so frightening: the possibility exists in Stephen King that the horrific, a world usually relegated to fantasy, can enter our own world. We don't have to travel to Transylvania to encounter a vampire. One might exist in our own backyard, in our quiet Maine town, and we wouldn't know it until it was too late. Horrifying things can be found in normal places: the sub-basement of an old mill, a Colorado hotel, suburban America, or even a laundromat.

Michael Crichton writes "naturalistic science fiction," in which characters from our own time and place utilize a novum, whether it is dinosaur DNA (Jurassic Park), a time machine (Timeline), an alien spacecraft (Sphere), or an embedded microchip (The Terminal Man). His characters are, again, like us, but they find themselves in situations unlike ours through the use of scientific innovations. Ultimately, something goes horribly wrong with these innovations -- man has overstepped his boundaries -- and the characters have to get out of a precarious situation, usually with some sort of time limit (in Jurassic Park the book, Grant and the kids had to get back to the control room to stop a boat laden with hidden velociraptors before it arrived on the mainland).

Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves is a good example of fantastic science fiction, "real" science fiction. His novel is set alternatively on Earth of the future, Moon of the future, and an alternate dimension of the future. Its novum is a gateway between our dimension and an alien dimension that allows the transfer of energy between the two dimensions. This innovation is not magic; it operation is explained meticulously to the reader.

Science fiction has something to say about our society. Horror has something to say about our selves. Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man is a treatise on unchecked technological progress that could ultimately result in the dehumanization of man by technology. He wrote the book at the mere beginning of the computer revolution. Stephen King's The Stand deals with the nature of evil, something that has existed and will always exist even if society no longer exists (spolier: cf. the ending where Randall Flagg, the Dark Man, washes ashore on an island inhabited by primitive people; society is not a prerequisite for evil. It is man's nature to be evil as well as good).

We divide things into genres to see how one genre is different from another, and see how they interact and change over time. There will be more discussions of science fiction, its nature and its change, in this space -- you can count on that.

Posted by Mark at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Slashdot comes the story of a man who plugged his girlfriend's computer into her new Yahoo! DSL only to have it slow to a crawl four minutes later, laden with spyware and virus infections.

Other sites have documented how quickly a fresh copy of Windows XP can be made to go sour by spyware, malware, and viruses. But Mark Morford, author of the above-mentioned article, asks

Why the hell do people put up with this? Why is there not some massive revolt, some huge insurrection against Microsoft? Why is there not a huge contingent of furious users stomping up to Seattle with torches and scythes and crowbars, demanding the Windows Frankenstein monster be sacrificed at the altar of decent functionality and an elegant user interface?

As an IT support professional (more or less), I see this stuff all the time. It boils down to a few factors:

1. By and large, Windows users expect everything to be done for them. They figure that if Windows doesn't do something about their virus protection or spyware protection, then it isn't important; or, it doesn't even cross their minds. Linux users are used to doing things for themselves, usually on the command-line. The GUI is for convenience (I could make a mySQL database on the command-line -- and I have -- or, with significantly less typing and some mouse-clicks, I could have phpMyAdmin do it).
2. It's not a Windows user thing, but a technology user thing. Some people just don't maintain things. They don't take care of their house, their apartment, their bedroom, or their car until something is wrong. A computer, like a car, requires maintenance.

Nevertheless, we shouldn't accept this kind of behavior. Morford is correct when he says that we should demand Bill Gates's head for this kind of operation in software:

Here is your brand new car, sir. Drive it off the lot. Yay yay new car. Suddenly, new car shuts off. New car barely starts again and then only goes about 6 miles per hour and it belches smoke and every warning light on the dashboard is blinking on and off and the tires are screaming and the heater is blasting your feet and something smells like burned hair. You hobble back to the dealer, who only says, gosh, sorry, we thought you knew -- that's they way they all run. Enjoy!

Posted by Mark at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This past Wednesday, George W. Bush gave his State of the Union address to Congress. The president must report to Congress every year, and most presidents use this opportunity to disseminate their agendas for the next year. Bush's State of the Union was no different.

Domestic issues

Bush tackled domestic issues after reporting that "the state of our union is confident and strong." The first item on his agenda was a budget for the next year which "holds the growth of discretionary spending below inflation, makes tax relief permanent and stays on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009." But how does Bush expect to increase military spending while cutting the deficit in half? "My budget substantially reduces or eliminates more than 150 government programs that are not getting results or duplicate current efforts or do not fulfill essential priorities," he says. Ah, of course! Domestic programs will take a back-seat to the War on Terr' (that's not a typo; imagine saying "war on terror" with a Texas accent). No word yet on what government programs will be cut. Probably programs for poor people and minorities. And babies.

Bush then talked about job-training and giving money to community colleges. He also talked about "rewarding entrepreneurs" by "free[ing] small businesses from needless regulation." Bush likes to trump up the folktale of the "small businessman," but the truth is that multinational corporations are far more prevalent and make a lot more money in the United States than the "small businessman." Besides, it's hard to be a small businessman with Super Wal-Mart taking your customers and destroying your town. Bush will also "protect honest job creators from junk lawsuits," meaning that his administration will work to protect multinationl corporations from lawsuits, "junk" or not. Good for him.

He then talked about medical liability reform, which isn't a terribly big issue in reality, but one that his friends at insurance companies would love to see dealt with. They're paying out so much money, it's hard to make a profit!

Then Bush said this:

Nearly four years ago, I submitted a comprehensive energy strategy that encourages conservation, alternative sources, a modernized electricity grid and more production here at home, including safe, clean nuclear energy.

My Clear Skies legislation will cut power-plant pollution and improve the health of our citizens.

And my budget provides strong funding for leading-edge technology, from hydrogen-fueled cars to clean coal to renewable sources such as ethanol.

Four years of debate is enough. I urge Congress to pass legislation that makes America more secure and less dependent on foreign energy.

Let's redact that. Four years ago, Bush submitted a comprehensive energy strategy that encouraged alternative sources a little bit, but ultimately concluded that we should continue using fossil fuels. His Clear Skies legislation lessened pollution requirements, taking them back to levels not seen since the 1970s, and allowed busineses from one state to buy and sell pollution credits, allowing a business in one state to consume the balance of unused pollution credits from a business in another state. "Clear Skies," like "Healthy Forests" and "No Child Left Behind," is an Orwellian-titled piece of legislation which actually does the opposite of what it says it does.

Bush wants to reform the tex system (not going to happen) and reduce restrictions on immigration (not a bad idea, actually).

But the centerpiece of his domestic agenda Wednesday night was Social Security reform. He painted a picture of a system barely clining to life:

Today, more than 45 million Americans receive Social Security benefits, and millions more are nearing retirement. And for them, the system is sound and fiscally strong.

I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you. For you, the Social Security system will not change in any way.

For younger workers, the Social Security system has serious problems that will grow worse with time.

Social Security was created decades ago, for a very different era. In those days, people did not live as long, benefits were much lower than they are today, and a half century ago, about 16 workers paid into the system for each person drawing benefits.

Our society has changed in ways the founders of Social Security could not have foreseen. In today's world, people are living longer and therefore drawing benefits longer. And those benefits are scheduled to rise dramatically over the next few decades.

And instead of 16 workers paying in for every beneficiary, right now it's only about three workers. And over the next few decades, that number will fall to just two workers per beneficiary.

With each passing year, fewer workers are paying ever-higher benefits to an ever-larger number of retirees.

So here is the result: Thirteen years from now, in 2018, Social Security will be paying out more than it takes in. And every year afterward will bring a new shortfall, bigger than the year before.

For example, in the year 2027, the government will somehow have to come up with an extra $200 billion to keep the system afloat. And by 2033, the annual shortfall would be more than $300 billion. By the year 2042, the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt.

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

If steps are not taken to avert that outcome, the only solutions would be dramatically higher taxes, massive new borrowing or sudden and severe cuts in Social Security benefits or other government programs.

I've included "audience boos" because the audience actually booed! Last year, Democrats booed during the applause, but this is the first time I've ever since Bush -- or any president, for that matter -- booed while he was still talking! Democrats hate Bush's Social Security reforms, probably because, in the wake of their loss in November, they have to rally behind something, and opposition to Social Security reform is the best shot they have in lieu of developing an actual platform.

Factcheck.org reports that Bush's dystopic predictions are not entirely true. Factcheck reports that Bush's estimate, which comes from the Social Security Administration, is not as dire a prediction as the Congressional Budget Office's. CBO says that Social Security depletion won't occur until 2052 and "figures that the benefits cuts wouldn't be so severe, a reduction to 78% of promised benefits." Either way, the system wouldn't be "bankrupt" in the sense that a person can go bankrupt; Bush is using deceptive vocabulary. The system would still pay out benefits, but it would spend more than it takes in.

To read more about Bush's mischaracterization of Social Security reform, read the article entitled "Bush's State of the Union: Social Security 'Bankruptcy?'" at Factcheck.org.

After talking about Social Security, Bush renewed his pledge to opposte federal funding for embryonic stem cell research that does not utliize one of the few existing lines of stem cells. He talked about the spectre of "judicial activism" (meaning that contemporary culture is not a valid legal argument for re-interpreting past legal interpretations, but "tradition," "values," and "Western civilization" are perfectly acceptable arguments against altering a previous interpretation of a law to reflect changes in society since then. Brown v. Board of Education, by the way, was considered "activist" by Southern states that didn't want to integrate schools).

He also announced his support for a federal constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Thanks, George. It would be the first amendment that takes away rights from a group of people. Welcome to Germany, 1933.

Foreign policy

He then transitioned smoothly into a discussion of foreign policy, all of which constitutes the War on Terr'. He talked a lot about freedom (a word he uses so much that it's starting to lose its meaning; what about freedom for homosexuals? Nope, they're not real people. Next question, please).

Nevertheless, "The United States has no right, no desire and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." I don't know how to explain this one as anything but a lie. If we are working for freedom, and the United States model is the best model for freedom, then we must necessarily impose our form of government on others.

Is Bush going to Iran? "Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror -- pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing and end its support for terror." It still remains to be seen whether or not they're making nuclear weapons.

He ended his address with one of his trademark "Let me tell you about a guy I know, I guy like you and me" stories. The story was about a girl named Safia whose father was assassinated by Saddam. She finally got to vote in Iraq, and they flew her into Washington so she could be present as an example of what a good job Bush is doing.

The next four years will be difficult ones for people who believe in individual liberty, human rights, and don't believe in pre-emptive or opportunistic warfare. At least he can't get elected again. Unles they pass a constitutional amendment.

Posted by Mark at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)