So anyone reading this LJ probably knows by now that a same-sex marriage bill was signed into law in New York State last night. In today's aftermath, I was reading a bit about the process and I came upon this video of State Senator Mark Grisanti speaking on the floor--he was one of the key Republicans who came out in favor of the legalization bill. Most of his comments in the video were the standard boilerplate "I know this isn't what you voted me into office to do but there you go", but he also spoke of the protections that made it into the bill for religious organizations that choose not to perform same-sex marriages. Towards the end, he let slip a statement that I found fascinating (emphasis mine):

I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife. And I also can't ignore that one of the things that was put into this bill, there are protections in this bill for churches and religious organizations, and I am proud of that because I am fearful that those protections may be lost if this bill fails. I believe that next time around those protections won't be there.

Let's delve into that a bit. Regardless of the principles behind this, here we have a politician, who at least a few weeks ago was squicked out by the thought of gay marriage, recognizing a trend and jumping on the bandwagon in time to be on the right side of history. He knows that time is not on the opposition's side; he recognizes that in five or ten years if this comes up again in New York, same-sex marriage proponents will probably have enough power to refuse to even give that concession.

But you know what? Those protections are a good thing. Frankly, I don't even think they should be necessary; in a perfect world, the government shouldn't even care what religious organizations do here. But we don't live in a perfect world, and thus these protections prevent the government from having to deal with internal strife within those organizations over whether to allow same-sex marriages or not. Will they come around eventually, like my parents' shul in New Jersey did, for example? I hope so. But that's not for me, or the government, to decide.

In any case, kudos to you, senator, for being on the right side of history, whether you did it out of a genuine change of heart or a cold political calculation. And to all my friends who care: all of us, not just NY residents, have the same thing to look forward to. Twenty years at the absolute most. I promise you.

Really, LJ? Facebook-style "social games"?

I'd thought you had largely jumped the shark with the interstitial ads, and I've mostly avoided them by staying basic, but seriously, those are just awful.

Incredible. I signed up for Google's Chrome OS beta pilot program, and they sent me this for free, with no email notification or anything. Just a UPS delivery at my door.



EDIT: My detailed impressions are up on my professional blog, if you care. I typed that whole thing on it (and this LJ post, for that matter) with no trouble!

Hey guys, just so you know, I am still here, and I am still reading my LJ friendlist. I just post more on Twitter these days, because it's more conducive to individual thoughts, and I see more of a conversation to participate in there anyway.

I do have things to post about in long form, which I might even get to soon. (Bah, I shouldn't have said that, now it's even less likely. :-P) But yeah, I am still here, and I do consider LJ still worth reading, despite annoying ads--so yes, please do keep posting! (In case you had any doubt about whether anyone's still paying attention.)

This is a rant about stupid terms in our political lexicon. In no particular order, with no particular provocation.

• judicial activism - Refers to "any court decision I don't like". All judges are humans, and therefore have opinions, and are therefore activists. Judges will make changes to public policy for as long as they have the power to do so, and to pretend that your opinion is somehow the objective, correct way to view the law is arrogant and offputting to everyone else. Even judicial precedent is itself the work of activists, and therefore cannot be said to be a basis for labeling a departure from it "activism".


• real Americans - Defined as narrowly as possible, if you live in America and carry American citizenship, you are a Real American. This unquestionably includes, and is not limited to: naturalized immigrants, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, all members of Congress, health insurance company executives, liberal elites, Tea Party members and descendants of slaves. If you are using this term to disambiguate someone from any group other than people without citizenship of the United States (and even this is arguably too narrow a definition), you are wrong.


• right to exist - This term has no definition in any legal, diplomatic or political parlance. It is a rhetorical device that Israel has rather pig-headedly framed its political status with, and is never used in the context of any entity other than the modern state of Israel. You can argue that Israel shouldn't exist in its current form or otherwise, but arguing over whether it or anything else has or hasn't the right to exist is pointless rhetorical masturbation. There is no test to determine whether any nation, political entity, person, place or thing has a "right to exist", because something either exists or it doesn't. Further debate on this subject falls under the domain of metaphysical philosophers, not politicos. Both Israel and its critics are wrong to use it. A sensible concept to use instead would be diplomatic recognition, which is well-defined, internationally respected, and an actual issue in the context of the political status of Israel.


• family values - To say nothing of how this term has been dirtied by hypocrite after hypocrite in the media, it is nebulously defined as "anything good for strong families", which is something people don't agree about. It is better suited to refer to an overarching topic of debate over ideology than something someone can vaguely say they support without further qualification, but it would be better if it were just completely superseded by statements along the lines of "My position on social issues concerning families consists of..."


• big government - There are pretty convincing ways to argue that the government is doing too much or intruding in places it shouldn't. But ranting vaguely about how big the government is will always ring hollow, because a government that serves 300,000,000+ people will be "big" no matter what. Hell, by what measure is the government "big" anyway? Number of people it employs? Amount of money it touches? How much it does? The complexity of the legal system? All of these will seem huge no matter who's in charge or what the government is doing, and thus any measure you choose must always be arbitrary and unnecessary. It's an imaginary issue, and all of the things it codes for can be better brought up in ways that can be reasonably talked about.

Can you think of any others?

I fixed Avatar!

It was easy. All it needed was a patch, and suddenly I can look at its setting without bursting out laughing!

Ready? ( Here it is. (minor spoilers)Collapse )

OK, LJ. I have a question for you.

I need an Android phone, and I need it soon, to make my 45-75 minute driving commute reasonable. Having Pandora and podcasts in the car will make my commute much, much more more pleasant--not to mention, Android 2.0 phones like the Droid have turn-by-turn navigation available for free, which is quite the boon. Also, my company would love to have an Android developer in-house, and I think I know Java well enough to jump in.

Trouble is, while I'm comfortable with paying for the phone and service plan (specifically, the Motorola Droid with unlimited data but not many calling minutes since I'm antisocial and don't call people), I'm locked into an AT&T contract for another year--and switching would incur a $120 early termination fee.

Is it worth it?

Please, talk to me. Call me an idiot for suggesting it if I deserve it. I can take it.

A few days ago, I played a game of Junta, a game of political exploitation set in a fictional banana republic, in which players are members of elite political families aiming to siphon as much aid money a generous foreign superpower provides into their own untraceable Swiss bank accounts.

The scene is important, because during the game, one of the players did something that, if performed in real life, I would consider grounds for instant termination of contact: breaking a spoken promise by clearly twisting its words. This would be something I would expect from a smartass twelve year old: he made a deal with another player in which he gained substantial cash in exchange for military support against an enemy, but the player he was making the deal with "failed" to specify when the aid should arrive, allowing him to claim that it could happen effectively at any time, possibly not even during that game round (when it was needed) or even, for that matter, during the game itself--despite the clear implication during negotiations that the aid should come during on that very turn.

It's fair to say that such a thing becomes completely meaningless if allowed to happen outside the game, so what the deal amounted to was simple extortion--cash gained through a false promise. So is that acceptable inside a game? Is there a point where "it's only a game" is no longer a valid excuse?

When I play a game, I think of it as sandboxed. When I say that, I mean it in the computer security sense--it takes place in a walled-off space, separate from the rest of my emotions, such that anything that happens inside it cannot affect anything outside it. This principle is used to great effect in programs like the browser Google Chrome, which sandboxes individual browser tabs--plenty of websites are malicious or otherwise dangerous, but if a site can't affect anything outside its tab, the worst that can happen is the tab grinds to a halt and the user closes it. (Chrome is merely the highest-profile newcomer to use this; the Unix world has been using it for decades. One can learn a lot of good life principles from Unix philosophy.)

At any rate, sandboxing a game into its own little otherspace makes me safe from taking a game too personally. I've always felt that the best games are the ones where winning and losing are equally fun; if someone beats me in a game, I would rather give them the reverence they deserve than feel insulted, since, after all, they've just demonstrated themself to be better than me--wouldn't it be better to learn from the experience than to get angry?

Well, that got a bit long-winded. I'm not really sure what I was talking about there. Any thoughts?

Just so you know... I have a real blog now that I analyze the web from.

http://perpetualstudent.net/blog

I would appreciate it if you'd check it out--I've put three posts up by now and I intend to keep updating. :)

Every now and then I witness a reminder of just how far outside the mainstream I am.

It usually comes in the form of commercials before a movie in a theater. I see shallow gender stereotypes, fetishization of stupidity (as myopian8 aptly put it, "Those people are voters!"), sports obsessions, and oversimplification of real issues. And it seems dumb to me just how cheap and phony it all is, that most formulaic TV advertising is actually effective on some people.

Being a geek really is the only way.

This has been your latest sheeple rant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/nyregion/05murder.html?_r=1&hp

HOUSTON — President Obama’s plan to deliver a speech to public school students on Tuesday has set off a revolt among conservative parents, who have accused the president of trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas and are asking school officials to excuse the children from listening.

The uproar over the speech, in which Mr. Obama intends to urge students to work hard and stay in school, has been particularly acute in Texas, where several major school districts, under pressure from parents, have laid plans to let children opt out of lending the president an ear.

There are frivolous complaints. There are ineffectual complaints. There are irrational complaints.

But there is no way to characterize these complaints, and by extension the people making them, as anything other than crazy, ignorant, uneducated, and downright stupid.

Sometimes some people in this country really, really infuriate me. I hate the glamorization of stupidity and the lack of respect for accomplishment, rationality and thought they display, and how they're willing to latch onto a label they think is somehow dirty and unconditionally hate it.

And I'm unbelievably angry that people like this stand a chance of removing my family's only chance of getting affordable and decent health insurance, in the name of purging some kind of nonexistent boogeyman and denying the legitimacy of someone who is legitimate in every way.

I am moving into Queens.

I need a roommate.

If you or anyone you know is interested, please contact me ASAP. (See my profile for contact info.)

Wow guys, I REALLY suck at flipping eggs.

HAHAHAHA DISREGARD THAT I SUCK COCKS.

What do people think of the kosher law interpretation in which poultry is not considered meat for the purposes of the no-meat-and-dairy rule? I'm curious, because I gave it some thought and realized that since poultry doesn't actually produce milk it doesn't make much sense to avoid having dairy with it. It certainly does make sense to avoid things like putting chicken and eggs together, however.

What are people's thoughts? (Obviously, non-Jewish/kosher-keeping perspectives are welcome.)

Out of morbid curiosity, I happened to wander my way to Bing, Microsoft's supposed Google killer. Wanting to see their half-baked attempt to beat out the features Google offers, I clicked along the links at the top until I hit Maps. That brought me here.

Here was Microsoft, telling me my browser (Firefox 3.5, a completely supported and mostly standards-compliant browser), may not work well with a site Microsoft released in order to beat Google.

NO.

Do you realize how much time you've made the ENTIRE WEB DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY waste on making your browser and ONLY your browser work the same way as EVERY OTHER BROWSER OUT THERE? Do you realize how much pain you've caused EVERYONE in stalling web development for years, how much you've held the entire Internet back just by DELIBERATELY REFUSING to make your browser work? And after that, do you really think that I or anyone else in the web development community has even the SLIGHTEST bit of sympathy for you if you couldn't be bothered to test your fucking gimmicky site in other browsers?

No. No, Microsoft, you don't get to tell me my browser isn't supported. If you want to beat Google, you're going to bring yourself in line with the rest of the web, and you're going to develop websites on the same terms as everybody else. You do not have the market share to demand that people use browsers you choose anymore. It's 2009. It's about time you learned how the web works and stop insulting everyone who isn't you.

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So I'm very impressed by the Palm Pre. It's the first smartphone that I've liked.

$200 for the phone, plus the plan I would get would be $70/month (450 minutes anytime, plus unlimited on weekends and after 7 PM without long distance or roaming charges, plus unlimited data including Internet and text, from Sprint).

Good idea or no? Thoughts? Maybe wait and see? And would I even use 5 GB of data (which is only $60 a month)? It's worth noting that I am not yet paying rent for myself, and I should probably consider my costs as though I am (so that I'll have a decent cash cushion when I finally move out).

I am now immersed in the real world. I am working 9:30 to 6:00 (doesn't sound quite as good as 9 to 5, but whatever), I am commuting a stupidly large distance, and tonight I bought a car, since I can't keep leeching my parents' car for my commute to White Plains.

Yes, you read that right. I am now living in debt on credit. And I own a certified used Toyota Matrix '05.


(Stock photo, mine looks more or less just like it, just more silver.)

Roomier than I might have expected for a first car, no? I just need to think of a name for it. Suggestions?

This "real world" thing is scary.

According to our yearbook, I'm an Economics major from Southampton, NY with a quotation that I've never heard.

Well done, Vassarion!

If I sign yours, I will correct it.

My God, this opera is amazing.

I want to make a movie of it. It doesn't even have to be the operatic version (though that would be awesome). I could make a movie loosely based off of the story, using characterization and aesthetics suggested by the stage directions. I can see it in my mind. Just reading the synopsis, I can see how dramatically powerful it is. And the music isn't half-bad either, from the version we're seeing in class.

I have a problem with advocacy for "traditional values".

It's not because I think what the phrase describes are inherently bad. Nor is it simply because "times have changed", and that they're outdated, society isn't what it was before, etc. It's because the phrase has no meaning whatsoever. What does it mean?

Taken literally, I can only assume it refers to values that people in the past in the same society had. But which ones does it refer to? Capitalism? Xenophobia? Gender roles? Freedom of speech? Not to mention, that very quickly becomes a slippery slope: how far back do these values go? Was there really a time in the past century or even the century before it that values were fixed enough for a long period of time that they can be considered "traditional"? And which time period? 1950's? 1920's? 1850's? 1450's? When? In any of these time periods, it's very easy to find a commonly held "traditional value" that would be easily unacceptable to people of this age, such as slavery, colonialism, gender role expectations, religious persecution, anything.

Given the ambiguity of the phrase, the only purpose it can serve is a thinly-disguised shill for "whatever I want society to be like". And that's useless in a debate, not to mention dishonest. One can't use the phrase without picking and choosing "traditional values" that one wants to advocate for, and at that point, wouldn't it be so much more productive to just describe what you're talking about?

No reason for this rant, it's just something that bugs me.

I HAVE AN INTERNSHIP FOR THE SUMMER!

I have secured a paid internship in White Plains, NY working at Reflexions Data, with the possibility of a full-time position when it's over!

This removes a tremendous load from my shoulders. No longer do I feel useless, skillless and jobless. I can code the web!

So today, in my Remembering War in East Asia class, we're doing a unit on the so-called "comfort women" of WWII. For those unfamiliar, the comfort women were women from territories occupied by the Japanese in WWII who were deceived, abducted or otherwise coerced into becoming sex slaves for soldiers with the stated aim of preventing them from raping women in the field. "Comfort women" was the euphemistic term used at the time for them (specifically, 慰安婦, ianfu), and the term survives today in discourse on the subject, used ironically or to guarantee the understanding of exactly whom is being spoken of.

This is problematic for some, as their role had nothing to do with the actual definition of the word comfort (or consolation, a meaning also present in the kanji). So we were discussing the possible use of the term "sex slaves" when someone made the following claim, rephrased because I don't remember what was said verbatim:

The term 'sex slaves' is problematic because it calls to mind other erotic meanings that could lead to inappropriate fetishization of their troubles.

I'm sorry, but what the fuck? Are you seriously telling me that despite having (presumably) read about what these women went through, about how they were taken from their homes on false promises or violence and then systematically raped 20 to 40 times a day for years, the term sex slave still makes you worry that people might fetishize it? Knowing the truth of what happened to these people doesn't just slightly override any other meaning the term may mean to you? Are you really telling me you can't keep the two separate in your head?

Get this: the implicit consent in rape fantasies, power play, sexual role playing, anything of that nature is absolutely vital, and indivisible from the entire concept. There is no comparison with an actual sex slave. NONE. It is horrifying to me that someone would think them so similar in intent that they worry about such a risk with a term like that. And at any rate, if a couple wants to role play such a scenario, it certainly wouldn't make a difference what term is used to describe the actual one!

Is anyone else as freaked out by this, or am I just crazy?

About a week and a half ago I tried to watch the 1988 Terry Gilliam film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, not knowing that in fact, the Baron Münchhausen was a real person known for telling tall tales about his exploits!

On reading the Wikipedia page, I chanced upon the section about the role-playing/storytelling game, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, in which players challenge each other to tell fantastic improvised stories from prompts ("Grand Poobah, please tell our assemblage about the time you singlehandedly defeated the entire Turkish army using only a plate of cheese and a corkscrew!") and can then expend tokens to add complications to others' stories ("But, my dear Grand Poobah, is it not true you have a horrible allergy to cork?").

I would probably suck at this game, on account of not being able to improvise for shit, but there are some people I'd love to play it with. :)

So we all know about the Golden Shield Project, right? China's notorious Internet censorship, AKA the Great Firewall of China?

It's being challenged by an Internet meme, and in an ingenious way: it's a common-sounding phrase that sounds just like a vulgarity. And they can't ban it without looking utterly ridiculous. (One Chinese blogger even suggested referring to it as something like "Wang", which would be impossible to ban on account of it being an extremely common word.) The NY Times has politely declined to explain what the dirty puns actually refer to, but hey, Wikipedia knows!

I want to see more web revolts against the Golden Shield Project. While China's web censorship terrifies me (they're the only organization I know that's capable of largely removing a leaked classified video from the Web), I'm willing to start placing bets on how many years it'll last. How awesome would it be if the Internet destroys China's authoritarian rule? Tiananman Square was one thing, but you can't round up and black-bag Internet users with any certainty based on IP addresses.

I love the Internet.

Oh, incidentally, kimono lady is gone for me again.

I do not have good luck with air travel in western Pennsylvania. First I get stranded in the middle of nowhere and forced to drive eight hours overnight with three complete strangers, and now I get delayed for eight hours in Pittsburgh before being grudgingly allowed on a plane to Newark. And the worst part was, I got a total of a sentence and a half translated out of the four and a half pages I need to translate by the end of break for my senior project.

Also, the kimono lady appears to have taken over my icon again. Weird. I swear, I didn't do it.

Now to bed before I drive to MCLA tomorrow.