Anything Goes

This just in, thanks to Homo Superior: an article at the New York Times site on homosexual behavior in animals. "Homosexual behavior" might not be a good word for what it's talking about, of course: Lindsay Young, the biologist who's quoted extensively on pair-bonding between female Laysan albatrosses, is careful to make it clear that she doesn't even know if the birds are copulating with each other. All she knows is that they share nests (39 of 125 nests at Kaena Point, Hawaii are inhabited by female pairs) and incubate eggs together. Does that make them "lesbians"? How do you decide? It's "homosexual" in the etymological sense of "same-sex" (a term used confusingly elsewhere in the article), but since the word is usually used to allude to copulatory behavior, or pair-bonding that may or may not involve copulation, people tend to jump to conclusions. "As the biologist Marlene Zuk explains, we are hard-wired to read all animal behavior as 'some version of the way people do things' and animals as 'blurred, imperfect copies of humans.'" "Hard-wired" is probably bogus, but whether you're talking about Laura Bush praising the Laysan albatrosses for their family-values monogamy, or a gay man assuming that two male orangutans fellating each other also are fans of Lady Gaga, it's certainly a common tendency.

The article spends some time on attempts to find a "Darwinian" explanation for animal homosex. "The point of heterosexual sex, Vasey said, no matter what kind of animal is doing it, is primarily reproduction." If this were an argument, it'd be circular. From the point of view of an evolutionary biologist, it's true, since he or she will have been trained to try to explain all behavior in animals (and whatever you call the equivalent stuff in plants -- do plants have behavior?) in terms of its relation to reproduction, the struggle for existence, maximizing fitness, and so on. Without anthropomorphizing other species, by asking what they "think" they're doing when they copulate, the "point" of sex in human beings, whether it be homosexual, heterosexual, or self-inflicted, is pleasure. We do it because it feels good, and the target / object that brings us pleasure is not biologically or evolutionarily pre-determined. (That's a slight overstatement, since many humans distrust pleasure and try to extirpate it; but even those people are reacting to the fact that most people derive pleasure from genital activity.)

It’s also possible that some homosexual behaviors don’t provide a conventional evolutionary advantage; but neither do they upend everything we know about biology. For the last 15 years, for example, Paul Vasey has been studying Japanese macaques, a species of two-and-a-half-foot-tall, pink-faced monkey. He has looked almost exclusively at why female macaques mount one another during the mating season. Vasey now says he is on to the answer: “It isn’t functional,” he told me; the behavior has no discernible purpose, adaptationally speaking. Instead, it’s a byproduct of a behavior that does, and the supposedly streamlining force of evolution just never flushed that byproduct from the gene pool. Female macaques regularly mount males too, Vasey explained, probably to focus their attention and reinforce their bond as mates. The females are physically capable of mounting any gender of macaque. They’ve just never developed an instinct to limit themselves to one. “Evolution doesn’t create perfect adaptations,” Vasey said. As Zuk put it, “There’s a lot of slop in the system — which,” she was sure to add, “is not the same as saying homosexuality is a mistake.”

"Evolution doesn't create perfect adapations," but a lot of Darwinians think that it should and does. But the advantage that Darwinian theory has over creationist approaches is that it explains the unintelligent design that is so common in our world, from sickle-cell anemia to the Ichneumon wasp, from burn scar tissue to the belief that wings now used for flying originally evolved to manage body temperature but turned out to provide lift too. It's true, recognizing this "doesn't upend everything we know about biology," but so many biologists have been determined to forget and ignore what we know about biology that it probably feels like it to them. Michael Ruse, for example, fumed in his interview with Tamler Sommers, "You don't make progress by sitting on your bum farting on about spandrels" (100), attacking Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin's argument that not every feature in nature can be explained in terms of adaptation. I think Ruse is wrong here as he is in other areas, and that evolution is really a lot sloppier than he wants to think.

Many people who contacted Young after the publication of her first albatross paper assumed she was a lesbian. She is not. Young’s husband, a biological consultant, was actually an author of the paper, along with Brenda Zaun (who is also not gay, for what it’s worth). Young found the assumption offensive — not because she was being mistaken for gay, but because she was being mistaken for a bad scientist; these people seemed to presume that her research was compromised by a personal agenda. Still, some of the biologists doing the most incisive work on animal homosexuality are in fact gay. Several people I spoke to told me their own sexual identities either helped spur or maintain their interest in the topic; Bruce Bagemihl argued that gay and lesbian people are “often better equipped to detect heterosexist bias when investigating the subject simply because we encounter it so frequently in our everyday lives.” With a laugh, Paul Vasey told me, “People automatically assume I’m gay.” He is gay, he added, but that fact didn’t seem to detract from his amusement.

Of course, hardly anyone (except me) thinks that heterosexuals' assumption that everyone, including all non-human species, are heterosexual, might be "compromised by a personal agenda." Forty years after Stonewall, we still are fighting about that one.

Anything Goes

This just in, thanks to Homo Superior: an article at the New York Times site on homosexual behavior in animals. "Homosexual behavior" might not be a good word for what it's talking about, of course: Lindsay Young, the biologist who's quoted extensively on pair-bonding between female Laysan albatrosses, is careful to make it clear that she doesn't even know if the birds are copulating with each other. All she knows is that they share nests (39 of 125 nests at Kaena Point, Hawaii are inhabited by female pairs) and incubate eggs together. Does that make them "lesbians"? How do you decide? It's "homosexual" in the etymological sense of "same-sex" (a term used confusingly elsewhere in the article), but since the word is usually used to allude to copulatory behavior, or pair-bonding that may or may not involve copulation, people tend to jump to conclusions. "As the biologist Marlene Zuk explains, we are hard-wired to read all animal behavior as 'some version of the way people do things' and animals as 'blurred, imperfect copies of humans.'" "Hard-wired" is probably bogus, but whether you're talking about Laura Bush praising the Laysan albatrosses for their family-values monogamy, or a gay man assuming that two male orangutans fellating each other also are fans of Lady Gaga, it's certainly a common tendency.

The article spends some time on attempts to find a "Darwinian" explanation for animal homosex. "The point of heterosexual sex, Vasey said, no matter what kind of animal is doing it, is primarily reproduction." If this were an argument, it'd be circular. From the point of view of an evolutionary biologist, it's true, since he or she will have been trained to try to explain all behavior in animals (and whatever you call the equivalent stuff in plants -- do plants have behavior?) in terms of its relation to reproduction, the struggle for existence, maximizing fitness, and so on. Without anthropomorphizing other species, by asking what they "think" they're doing when they copulate, the "point" of sex in human beings, whether it be homosexual, heterosexual, or self-inflicted, is pleasure. We do it because it feels good, and the target / object that brings us pleasure is not biologically or evolutionarily pre-determined. (That's a slight overstatement, since many humans distrust pleasure and try to extirpate it; but even those people are reacting to the fact that most people derive pleasure from genital activity.)

It’s also possible that some homosexual behaviors don’t provide a conventional evolutionary advantage; but neither do they upend everything we know about biology. For the last 15 years, for example, Paul Vasey has been studying Japanese macaques, a species of two-and-a-half-foot-tall, pink-faced monkey. He has looked almost exclusively at why female macaques mount one another during the mating season. Vasey now says he is on to the answer: “It isn’t functional,” he told me; the behavior has no discernible purpose, adaptationally speaking. Instead, it’s a byproduct of a behavior that does, and the supposedly streamlining force of evolution just never flushed that byproduct from the gene pool. Female macaques regularly mount males too, Vasey explained, probably to focus their attention and reinforce their bond as mates. The females are physically capable of mounting any gender of macaque. They’ve just never developed an instinct to limit themselves to one. “Evolution doesn’t create perfect adaptations,” Vasey said. As Zuk put it, “There’s a lot of slop in the system — which,” she was sure to add, “is not the same as saying homosexuality is a mistake.”

"Evolution doesn't create perfect adapations," but a lot of Darwinians think that it should and does. But the advantage that Darwinian theory has over creationist approaches is that it explains the unintelligent design that is so common in our world, from sickle-cell anemia to the Ichneumon wasp, from burn scar tissue to the belief that wings now used for flying originally evolved to manage body temperature but turned out to provide lift too. It's true, recognizing this "doesn't upend everything we know about biology," but so many biologists have been determined to forget and ignore what we know about biology that it probably feels like it to them. Michael Ruse, for example, fumed in his interview with Tamler Sommers, "You don't make progress by sitting on your bum farting on about spandrels" (100), attacking Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin's argument that not every feature in nature can be explained in terms of adaptation. I think Ruse is wrong here as he is in other areas, and that evolution is really a lot sloppier than he wants to think.

Many people who contacted Young after the publication of her first albatross paper assumed she was a lesbian. She is not. Young’s husband, a biological consultant, was actually an author of the paper, along with Brenda Zaun (who is also not gay, for what it’s worth). Young found the assumption offensive — not because she was being mistaken for gay, but because she was being mistaken for a bad scientist; these people seemed to presume that her research was compromised by a personal agenda. Still, some of the biologists doing the most incisive work on animal homosexuality are in fact gay. Several people I spoke to told me their own sexual identities either helped spur or maintain their interest in the topic; Bruce Bagemihl argued that gay and lesbian people are “often better equipped to detect heterosexist bias when investigating the subject simply because we encounter it so frequently in our everyday lives.” With a laugh, Paul Vasey told me, “People automatically assume I’m gay.” He is gay, he added, but that fact didn’t seem to detract from his amusement.

Of course, hardly anyone (except me) thinks that heterosexuals' assumption that everyone, including all non-human species, are heterosexual, might be "compromised by a personal agenda." Forty years after Stonewall, we still are fighting about that one.

ROUND ROUND ROUND.

Somewhere between the frantic energy of Animal Collective and the shouty brilliance of Isaac Brock lie LA (via Greece and NYC) kids GROUP, who look set to make a considerable name for themselves in the West Coast indie scene as they put the finishing touches on their self-titled debut EP. "Colours" is their debut offering, all big driving guitars, anthemic choruses and frontman Christian Zucconi's triplicate lyrics and mad man delivery coming together to create a truly unique sound that's garnering them serious buzz among A&R's coast to coast. It's been a while since we've heard such a refreshing sound coming from the fairer coast, so get involved and keep your ear to the ground for more from the LA collective in the months to come.

MP3: "Colours" - GROUP [exclusive]

Fit to Eat With the Hogs, Redux

For some reason (probably wishful thinking) I was convinced when I woke up this morning that it was Wednesday. I managed to maintain that pleasant delusion until I walked into work and realized that the student workers were the ones scheduled for Tuesday, not Wednesday.

Roy Edroso had a brief post yesterday about Norman "Still Breathing" Podhoretz, who's been defending Sarah Palin at the Wall Street Journal. Podhoretz compares Palin to Ronald Reagan:

It's hard to imagine now, but 31 years ago, when I first announced that I was supporting Reagan in his bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, I was routinely asked by friends on the right how I could possibly associate myself with this "airhead," this B movie star, who was not only stupid but incompetent. ... Ultimately, of course, we all wound up regarding him as a great man, but in 1979 none of us would have dreamed that this would be how we would feel only a few years later.

Of course, to those who aren't "we all", this is no comfort. Of course Podhoretz isn't the first to make this analogy, but "we all" to the left of him don't consider it a hopeful augury. He presses on boldly:

Take, for example, foreign policy. True, she seems to know very little about international affairs, but expertise in this area is no guarantee of wise leadership. ... What she does know—and in this respect, she does resemble Reagan—is that the United States has been a force for good in the world, which is more than Barack Obama, whose IQ is no doubt higher than hers, has yet to learn.

Doesn't the Journal have copy editors? But the derailed syntax of that last sentence is less interesting than its choice of a way to misrepresent (and in Podhoretz' moral universe, to defame) Obama. Podhoretz doesn't support his claim that Obama "has yet to learn" that "the United States has been a force for good in the world," so I don't know why he says such a ridiculous thing. What Podhoretz claims Obama has yet to learn is a staple of liberal and "progressive" (to say nothing of center-right) discourse: the US has perhaps been "deeply imperfect" at times, but it has been a force for good all the same. Even Katha Pollitt, in rejecting the jingoism that erupted after 9/11, declared "I've never been one to blame the United States for every bad thing that happens in the Third World", and Noam Chomsky routinely reminds his audiences that Americans enjoy an unusual degree of freedom compared to most countries. I've quoted before this passage by William Rusher, former publisher of the National Review and still a hardcore conservative.

Wright told his parishioners (who could be seen in the background applauding his remarks) that the U.S. government had engineered the AIDS epidemic to kill black people, and worked up to a peroration in which he resoundingly rejected the slogan "God bless America." No, he thundered: The right view was "God Damn America!" His parishioners roared their approval.

Needless to say, when questioned by reporters, Obama wasted no time distancing himself from those sentiments. He not only disagreed with them, he asserted, but if they had ever been uttered in his hearing at a service of his church, he would have felt obliged to leave the church. The United States has its defects, but its virtues far outweigh those defects.

So, why did Podhoretz say such a crazy thing? Partly, of course, because saying crazy things is part of the right-wing shtick, but also because impugning the patriotism of their opponents is the tactic they reach for first in (to use the term laughingly) debate. No doubt they enjoy watching their opponents splutter and proclaim that they are so patriotic, indeed more patriotic than the wingnuts, who really do hate America. Shoot at the dudes' feet, make them dance, it's a laugh riot.

And I just remembered C. P. Snow's remarks on dealing with this kind of attack:

However, the problem of behaviour in these circumstances is very easily solved. Let us imagine that I am called, in print, a kleptomaniac necrophilist (I have selected with some care two allegations which have not, so far as I know, been made). I have exactly two courses of action. The first, and the one which in general I should choose to follow, is to do precisely nothing. The second is, if the nuisance becomes intolerable, to sue. There is one course of action which no one can expect of a sane man: that is, solemnly to argue the points, to produce certificates from Saks and Harrods to say he has never, to the best of their belief, stolen a single article, to obtain testimonials signed by sixteen Fellows of the Royal Society, the Head of the Civil Service, a Lord Justice of Appeal and the Secretary of the M.C.C., testifying that they have known him for half a lifetime, and that even after a convivial evening they have not once seen him lurking in the vicinity of a tomb.

Such a reply is not on. It puts one in the same psychological compartment as one’s traducer. That is a condition from which one has a right to be excused.

And then I remembered that one of Roy Edroso's commenters had supplied a link to a review of Podhoretz' memoir Breaking Ranks by the ultra-libertarian Murray Rothbard. Now, in the passage I quoted, Snow was referring obliquely to attacks on his lecture The Two Cultures by F. R. Leavis, which he said "were loaded with personal abuse to an abnormal extent ... to the limit of defamation." Rothbard quoted Podhoretz' recollection of having studied with Leavis at Cambridge for three years, and of Snow as "a fairly close friend," though he claimed "I had emerged after seven years of intensive reading, largely under the guidance of those very two men, with an idea about the literary tradition very close to Snow’s." Maybe so, but he emerged with an idea about debate very close to Leavis's. It's a small world, no?

Fit to Eat With the Hogs, Redux

For some reason (probably wishful thinking) I was convinced when I woke up this morning that it was Wednesday. I managed to maintain that pleasant delusion until I walked into work and realized that the student workers were the ones scheduled for Tuesday, not Wednesday.

Roy Edroso had a brief post yesterday about Norman "Still Breathing" Podhoretz, who's been defending Sarah Palin at the Wall Street Journal. Podhoretz compares Palin to Ronald Reagan:

It's hard to imagine now, but 31 years ago, when I first announced that I was supporting Reagan in his bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, I was routinely asked by friends on the right how I could possibly associate myself with this "airhead," this B movie star, who was not only stupid but incompetent. ... Ultimately, of course, we all wound up regarding him as a great man, but in 1979 none of us would have dreamed that this would be how we would feel only a few years later.

Of course, to those who aren't "we all", this is no comfort. Of course Podhoretz isn't the first to make this analogy, but "we all" to the left of him don't consider it a hopeful augury. He presses on boldly:

Take, for example, foreign policy. True, she seems to know very little about international affairs, but expertise in this area is no guarantee of wise leadership. ... What she does know—and in this respect, she does resemble Reagan—is that the United States has been a force for good in the world, which is more than Barack Obama, whose IQ is no doubt higher than hers, has yet to learn.

Doesn't the Journal have copy editors? But the derailed syntax of that last sentence is less interesting than its choice of a way to misrepresent (and in Podhoretz' moral universe, to defame) Obama. Podhoretz doesn't support his claim that Obama "has yet to learn" that "the United States has been a force for good in the world," so I don't know why he says such a ridiculous thing. What Podhoretz claims Obama has yet to learn is a staple of liberal and "progressive" (to say nothing of center-right) discourse: the US has perhaps been "deeply imperfect" at times, but it has been a force for good all the same. Even Katha Pollitt, in rejecting the jingoism that erupted after 9/11, declared "I've never been one to blame the United States for every bad thing that happens in the Third World", and Noam Chomsky routinely reminds his audiences that Americans enjoy an unusual degree of freedom compared to most countries. I've quoted before this passage by William Rusher, former publisher of the National Review and still a hardcore conservative.

Wright told his parishioners (who could be seen in the background applauding his remarks) that the U.S. government had engineered the AIDS epidemic to kill black people, and worked up to a peroration in which he resoundingly rejected the slogan "God bless America." No, he thundered: The right view was "God Damn America!" His parishioners roared their approval.

Needless to say, when questioned by reporters, Obama wasted no time distancing himself from those sentiments. He not only disagreed with them, he asserted, but if they had ever been uttered in his hearing at a service of his church, he would have felt obliged to leave the church. The United States has its defects, but its virtues far outweigh those defects.

So, why did Podhoretz say such a crazy thing? Partly, of course, because saying crazy things is part of the right-wing shtick, but also because impugning the patriotism of their opponents is the tactic they reach for first in (to use the term laughingly) debate. No doubt they enjoy watching their opponents splutter and proclaim that they are so patriotic, indeed more patriotic than the wingnuts, who really do hate America. Shoot at the dudes' feet, make them dance, it's a laugh riot.

And I just remembered C. P. Snow's remarks on dealing with this kind of attack:

However, the problem of behaviour in these circumstances is very easily solved. Let us imagine that I am called, in print, a kleptomaniac necrophilist (I have selected with some care two allegations which have not, so far as I know, been made). I have exactly two courses of action. The first, and the one which in general I should choose to follow, is to do precisely nothing. The second is, if the nuisance becomes intolerable, to sue. There is one course of action which no one can expect of a sane man: that is, solemnly to argue the points, to produce certificates from Saks and Harrods to say he has never, to the best of their belief, stolen a single article, to obtain testimonials signed by sixteen Fellows of the Royal Society, the Head of the Civil Service, a Lord Justice of Appeal and the Secretary of the M.C.C., testifying that they have known him for half a lifetime, and that even after a convivial evening they have not once seen him lurking in the vicinity of a tomb.

Such a reply is not on. It puts one in the same psychological compartment as one’s traducer. That is a condition from which one has a right to be excused.

And then I remembered that one of Roy Edroso's commenters had supplied a link to a review of Podhoretz' memoir Breaking Ranks by the ultra-libertarian Murray Rothbard. Now, in the passage I quoted, Snow was referring obliquely to attacks on his lecture The Two Cultures by F. R. Leavis, which he said "were loaded with personal abuse to an abnormal extent ... to the limit of defamation." Rothbard quoted Podhoretz' recollection of having studied with Leavis at Cambridge for three years, and of Snow as "a fairly close friend," though he claimed "I had emerged after seven years of intensive reading, largely under the guidance of those very two men, with an idea about the literary tradition very close to Snow’s." Maybe so, but he emerged with an idea about debate very close to Leavis's. It's a small world, no?

Gold Forwards Acting Up

Was looking at the Gold forward lease rates from the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) website (you can look yourself here if interested). It looks like the 1 and 2 month lease rates have inverted for the past three trading days in a row. When you start getting into lease rates, my brain has to keep things simple so that I don't get confused. I am no Antal Fekete.

The bottom line is that when the 1 month lease rate is higher than the 2 or 3 month lease rate (the opposite of the normal situation), this can be significant. When such an anomaly only lasts for a day, it is rarely significant. When it lasts for several days in a row, it generally means significant physical Gold market tightness and suggests a pending up move in the Gold price to alleviate the shortage of physical metal and/or satiate an elevated demand for physical Gold. Is it more complicated than that? Yeah, I'm sure it is, but I can't keep up with all the nefarious paperbug schemes to sell and lease Gold one doesn't actually own and make it seem like it's a normal thing that shouldn't alarm anyone. I'm sure Nadler over at kitco.com could tell you why it is bearish for the Gold price right here and right now.

The last time a string of at least 3 days in a row of "reversed" Gold lease rates occurred in the two front months was during the early days of the Great Fall Panic of 2008. Many wanted physical Gold but there was little to be had at the advertised paper price during the panic. Gold crashed in the panic and then was right back at $1000/oz before February was over - this recovery was in a sense "telegraphed" by the long daily strings of reversed lease rates right through the fall 2008 lows in the Gold price. Prior to the fall of 2008, the last string of at least three days in a row of reversed Gold lease rates by the LBMA's measuring stick was in November and December of 2007, right before the move that took Gold from $800/oz to $1030/oz in early 2008. These strings of days with the lease rates reversed were extended in length during the Great Fall Panic of 2008 and also during the November 2007 to March bull run (even lasting into April of 2008 in the latter case). I don't claim to know what will happen next this time around with the lease rates, but I'll be watching.

Like any other data, this is only one piece of a puzzle that fits with my bullish view on Gold. Physical market tightness, reversed lease rates, poor sentiment in the Gold patch (evident due to weak public and hedge fund participation), a U.S. Dollar that is significantly overvalued relative to other colored paper debt tickets backed by nothing, a healthy correction in price, and even the negative comments I am starting to get from blog readers and others who email me convinced Gold is headed even lower because their chart analysis says so. I remain bullish and unconvinced by their bearish arguments, despite always wanting to hear from the other side why I am wrong. Call me stubborn if you want, but I still think Gold is going to surprise the majority of current market participants by blasting to a new high before the spring is over and I still think Gold stocks will outperform during this pending bull run that may have already started.

Newmont Mining (ticker: NEM) is already up about 19% off the February lows and looks to be quietly leading the Gold stocks higher. It was up significantly today despite a down day for the price of Gold. Freeport McMoran (ticker: FCX) is a copper and base metal miner that also mines Gold and made new highs today for the early uptrend that began with the early the February bottom (don't ask me why FCX often leads the Gold patch higher in the early stages of a move but it does). Of course, I placed bets with Goldcorp (ticker: GG), Yamana Gold (ticker: AUY) and the GDX and GDXJ ETFs, so this early strength by these two blue chips doesn't help me much financially but I still consider it a good sign.

I remain as biased as ever because I have already put my money where my mouth is. I can only hope to get another pay check in time to buy more stocks in the precious metals patch before the next move higher really gets going. Until the Dow to Gold ratio hits 2 (and we may go below 1 this cycle), I will become wildly bullish after every Gold price correction. Dips are buying opportunities in the Gold patch and this time will be no different.

Livin' the Vida, Loca

Well, how about that -- Ricky Martin has come out. In a blog post on his website, even, posted in Spanish and in English. GLAAD (that's the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) is excited, but decorously. The Wall Street Journal's blogger is reassuring about the economic effects of this decision on his career. And while digging around for more information, I found a post at the Bilerico Project from last December, linking to an op-ed (for ign'ant gabachos that don't understand plain Spanish, it's in English here) that Martin wrote for the Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Dia, calling for acceptance (not just tolerance) and citing by name various victims of hate crimes, including Matthew Shepard. It's quite a good piece; I'm impressed. (Unfortunately the poster, or someone, titled his post "Ricky Martin comes out for acceptance" -- Martin hadn't quite come out yet. But what a clever play on words!)

The headlines everywhere quote Martin as saying, "I am a fortunate homosexual man." That's what he says in the English version of his statement. The Spanish is somewhat different, and makes more sense to me: "Hoy ACEPTO MI HOMOSEXUALIDAD como un regalo que me da la vida" - "Today I ACCEPT MY HOMOSEXUALITY as a gift which life gives me." I like that much better. Martin's coming out is long overdue, as he himself admits; I just hope he doesn't turn out to be a major asshole on gay issues like, say, Rosie O'Donnell.

But reading this news sent me back to a book I read a couple of years ago, after having seen it cited by numerous other writers in queer and postcolonial theory: Tropics of desire: interventions from queer Latino America (NYU Press, 2000), by Jose Quiroga. I had a lot of complaints about Tropics of Desire, similar to those I've had about other queer postcolonial works. It didn't help that the word "intervention" is one of those terms which, in my view, ought to be banned from academic discourse because they pretend that writing a journal article or a monograph is some kind of political, even revolutionary act. But there was so much more wrong with the book than that, epitomized by Quiroga's discussion of Ricky Martin's refusal to come out.

For example, "Still, his [Ricky Martin's] refusal of the coming-out narrative must be engaged on its own terms" (185). Would those be the same terms as other closet cases? And what, I wondered at the time, would happen to this assertion if Martin ever does come out? "Ricky's sexuality may be disturbing for a culture that needs to define it as fast as it can" (ibid.). Erm, are we talking about Puerto Rican culture here? Or does Quiroga think that only the US wants to define people's "sexuality"? I think he does, and that's demonstrably false.

Quiroga went on:

The constant demands for Ricky to "come out," to proclaim his sexuality out in the open, are clearest examples how queer subjectivity can become an oppressive category that is always seeking validation to the extent of oppressing other choices and consigning the subtleties of sexual choice and play to a secondary status [188]...

That Ricky chooses not to become the latest Latino doll for the already constituted moneyed gay and lesbian [!] nomenklatura is something I applaud. There is much to be admired in his merchandising himself for the best and brightest capitalists rather than for the ones who gloss their financial stakes with the received pieties of a noble cause that is not noble, with humanitarian gestures that keep the prison walls intact [189f].

The "best and brightest capitalists"? Oh my. Is Martin really "merchandising himself," or is he being marketed by international capital? Is it really somehow more admirable that Sony/CBS kept him in the closet for the sake of his (or rather, its) "image"? Martin is explicit that such considerations kept him silent longer than he would have chosen to be otherwise:

Many people told me: "Ricky it's not important", "it's not worth it", "all the years you've worked and everything you've built will collapse", "many people in the world are not ready to accept your truth, your reality, your nature". Because all this advice came from people who I love dearly, I decided to move on with my life not sharing with the world my entire truth. Allowing myself to be seduced by fear and insecurity became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sabotage. Today I take full responsibility for my decisions and my actions.

As I read Quiroga I very much doubted that Martin was closeted (and I noticed that Quiroga seemed to assume that he was gay and closeted) because of a sophisticated social constructionist understanding of "sexual choice and play." Martin's coming-out statement confirms my doubts, though perhaps Quiroga would now claim that Martin has sold out to the gay and lesbian nomenklatura -- one only listens to gay Latinos, apparently, when they can be used to further one's reactionary political agenda. As for the "already constituted gay and lesbian nomenklatura," there are not only unmoneyed Anglos but moneyed and unmoneyed Latino queers who might have something to say about that.

Quiroga then denounced "the global reach of a movement that started in New York" (191), and claimed, "The homosexual rights movement critiqued generalized homophobia and claimed Stonewall as its originary moment, but it soon forgot that these events were initiated mostly by people of color -- including Latino transvestites and poor lesbians and gays" (199). So poor people are all "of color"? All people "of color" are poor? First, though, the global gay movement did not start in New York, it started in Germany over a century ago and had some small influence in the US. It was destroyed by the Nazis but re-emerged elsewhere in Europe after the end of World War II. The "homosexual rights movement" started in California at around the same time, and only gradually spread east. The Stonewall Riots and especially the formation of the Gay Liberation Movement were in many ways a rejection of the accomodationist movement exemplified by Mattachine (after the founding leftists like Harry Hay were purged). Quiroga's historical ignorance is quite remarkable.

Bernardo Garcia has remarked that "[a] better way of understanding the identity development process for Latino gay men is to view it as the management of multiple identities" [199]

Duh! as though, say, Anglo gay men don't have to manage multiple identities too: gay and Republican, gay and Roman Catholic, gay and stupid. Quiroga also mentioned "internal colonizations" (212), which reminds me that he completely ignores the fact that "Latino" or "Hispanic" cultures in America are themselves colonial. You'd never guess from this book, or from the way that Spanish-speaking Americans like to call themselves "colonized", that "colonialism" south and north of the Rio Grande involved Spanish speakers displacing and conquering and murdering and enslaving Indians. And Quiroga's construction of "Latino" simply ignores First Nations indigenous people throughout the Americas, even those who speak Spanish.

But hell, all that's blood under the bridge now. Ricky Martin's intervention retroactively deconstructs Jose Quiroga's apologetics for the closet, and quite neatly too.

Livin' the Vida, Loca

Well, how about that -- Ricky Martin has come out. In a blog post on his website, even, posted in Spanish and in English. GLAAD (that's the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) is excited, but decorously. The Wall Street Journal's blogger is reassuring about the economic effects of this decision on his career. And while digging around for more information, I found a post at the Bilerico Project from last December, linking to an op-ed (for ign'ant gabachos that don't understand plain Spanish, it's in English here) that Martin wrote for the Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Dia, calling for acceptance (not just tolerance) and citing by name various victims of hate crimes, including Matthew Shepard. It's quite a good piece; I'm impressed. (Unfortunately the poster, or someone, titled his post "Ricky Martin comes out for acceptance" -- Martin hadn't quite come out yet. But what a clever play on words!)

The headlines everywhere quote Martin as saying, "I am a fortunate homosexual man." That's what he says in the English version of his statement. The Spanish is somewhat different, and makes more sense to me: "Hoy ACEPTO MI HOMOSEXUALIDAD como un regalo que me da la vida" - "Today I ACCEPT MY HOMOSEXUALITY as a gift which life gives me." I like that much better. Martin's coming out is long overdue, as he himself admits; I just hope he doesn't turn out to be a major asshole on gay issues like, say, Rosie O'Donnell.

But reading this news sent me back to a book I read a couple of years ago, after having seen it cited by numerous other writers in queer and postcolonial theory: Tropics of desire: interventions from queer Latino America (NYU Press, 2000), by Jose Quiroga. I had a lot of complaints about Tropics of Desire, similar to those I've had about other queer postcolonial works. It didn't help that the word "intervention" is one of those terms which, in my view, ought to be banned from academic discourse because they pretend that writing a journal article or a monograph is some kind of political, even revolutionary act. But there was so much more wrong with the book than that, epitomized by Quiroga's discussion of Ricky Martin's refusal to come out.

For example, "Still, his [Ricky Martin's] refusal of the coming-out narrative must be engaged on its own terms" (185). Would those be the same terms as other closet cases? And what, I wondered at the time, would happen to this assertion if Martin ever does come out? "Ricky's sexuality may be disturbing for a culture that needs to define it as fast as it can" (ibid.). Erm, are we talking about Puerto Rican culture here? Or does Quiroga think that only the US wants to define people's "sexuality"? I think he does, and that's demonstrably false.

Quiroga went on:

The constant demands for Ricky to "come out," to proclaim his sexuality out in the open, are clearest examples how queer subjectivity can become an oppressive category that is always seeking validation to the extent of oppressing other choices and consigning the subtleties of sexual choice and play to a secondary status [188]...

That Ricky chooses not to become the latest Latino doll for the already constituted moneyed gay and lesbian [!] nomenklatura is something I applaud. There is much to be admired in his merchandising himself for the best and brightest capitalists rather than for the ones who gloss their financial stakes with the received pieties of a noble cause that is not noble, with humanitarian gestures that keep the prison walls intact [189f].

The "best and brightest capitalists"? Oh my. Is Martin really "merchandising himself," or is he being marketed by international capital? Is it really somehow more admirable that Sony/CBS kept him in the closet for the sake of his (or rather, its) "image"? Martin is explicit that such considerations kept him silent longer than he would have chosen to be otherwise:

Many people told me: "Ricky it's not important", "it's not worth it", "all the years you've worked and everything you've built will collapse", "many people in the world are not ready to accept your truth, your reality, your nature". Because all this advice came from people who I love dearly, I decided to move on with my life not sharing with the world my entire truth. Allowing myself to be seduced by fear and insecurity became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sabotage. Today I take full responsibility for my decisions and my actions.

As I read Quiroga I very much doubted that Martin was closeted (and I noticed that Quiroga seemed to assume that he was gay and closeted) because of a sophisticated social constructionist understanding of "sexual choice and play." Martin's coming-out statement confirms my doubts, though perhaps Quiroga would now claim that Martin has sold out to the gay and lesbian nomenklatura -- one only listens to gay Latinos, apparently, when they can be used to further one's reactionary political agenda. As for the "already constituted gay and lesbian nomenklatura," there are not only unmoneyed Anglos but moneyed and unmoneyed Latino queers who might have something to say about that.

Quiroga then denounced "the global reach of a movement that started in New York" (191), and claimed, "The homosexual rights movement critiqued generalized homophobia and claimed Stonewall as its originary moment, but it soon forgot that these events were initiated mostly by people of color -- including Latino transvestites and poor lesbians and gays" (199). So poor people are all "of color"? All people "of color" are poor? First, though, the global gay movement did not start in New York, it started in Germany over a century ago and had some small influence in the US. It was destroyed by the Nazis but re-emerged elsewhere in Europe after the end of World War II. The "homosexual rights movement" started in California at around the same time, and only gradually spread east. The Stonewall Riots and especially the formation of the Gay Liberation Movement were in many ways a rejection of the accomodationist movement exemplified by Mattachine (after the founding leftists like Harry Hay were purged). Quiroga's historical ignorance is quite remarkable.

Bernardo Garcia has remarked that "[a] better way of understanding the identity development process for Latino gay men is to view it as the management of multiple identities" [199]

Duh! as though, say, Anglo gay men don't have to manage multiple identities too: gay and Republican, gay and Roman Catholic, gay and stupid. Quiroga also mentioned "internal colonizations" (212), which reminds me that he completely ignores the fact that "Latino" or "Hispanic" cultures in America are themselves colonial. You'd never guess from this book, or from the way that Spanish-speaking Americans like to call themselves "colonized", that "colonialism" south and north of the Rio Grande involved Spanish speakers displacing and conquering and murdering and enslaving Indians. And Quiroga's construction of "Latino" simply ignores First Nations indigenous people throughout the Americas, even those who speak Spanish.

But hell, all that's blood under the bridge now. Ricky Martin's intervention retroactively deconstructs Jose Quiroga's apologetics for the closet, and quite neatly too.

ALWAYS LATE TO EVERYTHING.

These days official Starsmith remixes are usually reserved for the likes of superstar clientele like Lady Gaga and Timbaland, but dude still knows a jam when he hears one and was able to make time to sprinkle some of his electro stardust all over our most recent single release with Penguin Prison. Leaving behind Euro dancefloors for the Miami strip, Starsmith's remix of "The Worse It Gets" is some full on Miami Vice shit, all fluorescent technicolor, fast cars and pastel suits. Drop the top, roll up your sleeves and get your shades on, it's time to hit the town.

MP3: "The Worse It Gets" (Starsmith Remix) - Penguin Prison [exclusive]

Gold Correction Has Done It's Job

The job, of course, being to wash out weak hands. These hands generally consist of the public and momentum chasers/hedgies/short-term chart jocks. The public, in aggregate, always hates any asset class that is falling, rather than seeing it as a buying opportunity. Chart jocks migrate toward trending markets, and corrections are what happens when the trend takes a breather.

This snippet from a current commentary by Adrian Ash from bullionvault.com caught my attention:

"As a proportion of all open gold futures and options contracts, the net long position held by hedge funds and other large speculators fell to 11-month low beneath 30%."

Couple this with the current chart (data thru Friday's close) of the Rydex Precious Metals Mutual Fund total assets held data over the past 1 year. The total assets in this precious metals fund is a proxy for retail investor interest in the Gold patch and the lower the plot line, the lower the total assets held by the fund and thus, the lower the public interest (obviously an imperfect proxy, but a good one nonetheless):



So, if momentum chasing hedge funds and the public aren't interested in the Gold patch, who is? STRONG HANDS. These are the folks with more patience who buy the dips and create the bottom of every correction. I wonder if these folks ever leave footprints for we ants to see? Perhaps a recent 4 month chart of the GDX ETF might help:



Anyone claiming to be a contrarian in the Gold patch should have been buying over the past 2 months. Since the public and professional momentum chasing crowd is not in this fledgling Gold sector up trend yet, there is plenty of upside potential ahead in my opinion. We are also moving into the "silly season" (i.e. the April-May time frame) as Bob Hoye calls it, when animal spirits in the markets tend to run high. I think those spirits are going to migrate from the general markets into the precious metals patch (again) and create another big move higher. Once everyone is convinced the precious metals market is going to the moon, the strong hands will sell into the frenzy and create the next top. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Sullivan's Drivels

Homo Superior has changed his format, but he's still linking to Andrew Sullivan, who's been complaining about the current state of the Right.

Once upon a time, the intellectual conservatives in this country cherished their dissidents, encouraged argument, embraced the quirky, valued the eccentric and mocked the lock-step ideological left. Now they are what they once mocked. And they have the ideological discipline of the old left.

Like HomoSup, I wonder which "intellectual conservatives" Sullivan has in mind, and when this Once Upon a Time golden age could have been. Homo Superior mentions William F. Buckley, who was as much of an intellectual second-rater as ... well, as Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan doesn't know his history very well, particularly of the American Right, but that's hardly news. What I find funny is that Sullivan himself started out as a hard-liner except for his homosexuality, and filled the pages of The New Republic with right-wing mediocrities like himself (remember Ruth Shalit?); he no doubt likes to think of himself as "quirky" if not "eccentric," but he has never been someone you could read for substance. When George W. Bush took the Presidency, Sullivan was exultant, jeering at the anti-corporate leftists who were going to rage impotently under the new dispensation; some years later Sullivan endorsed Barack Obama, which was not really that much of a change.

Not that I have anything against hard-liners; I suppose I'm one myself, though I'm not sure which line I'm hard about. Homo Superior goes on to say:

Having said that, I have had more valuable conversations, ones without judgment or ire, with people like Buckley than I have had with those on the lock-step ideological left, and that includes many, many on the Queer Left.

Like anyone with extreme viewpoints, their definition of dissident is someone who agrees with them.

I realized I didn’t belong in the left and sometimes call myself a lapsed lefty. I now embrace the descriptor, contrarian.

(The video clip above comes from Noam Chomsky's 1969 appearance on Buckley's PBS program Firing Line. Buckley's offer to "smash you in the goddam face" is a reference to his then-recent offer, made in earnest, to do the same to Gore Vidal. Here it's supposed to be a joke, though I've never gotten its point. It's the sort of thing that should be borne in mind, though, when Buckley is eulogized. So should Buckley's vacuous debating style.)

Maybe I should embrace "contrarian" myself, but the word has been dirtied more than a little since Christopher Hitchens began touting himself as one. I don't see my own positions are particularly contrary, if I understand the word correctly, which to me implies simply staking an opposing position; I find myself over yonder somewhere. And what happens when two contrarians clash? Do they cancel each other out like matter and anti-matter?

I don't know if I "belong in the left" either, but I do know that most of the thinkers and writers I've learned the most from have been associated with the left, and that left writers and media are those I can reliably look to for accurate information about politics and culture. The few right-wingers with whom I find some common ground are those who are least lock-step themselves, like William Buckley calling for the legalization of drugs (probably the only issue on which I agree with him). On the other hand, I'm not wedded to the word "left", anymore than I am to the words "gay" or "queer."

I'm particularly amused by the notion that the left is lock-step, considering how often people on the left complain about the deep divisions, the sectarian squabbling, that divide our portion of the political spectrum. And while I'm being amused, the use of the word "extreme" as a cussword is always good for a giggle. (I'm reminded of an old joke where a man accusingly asks an uppity woman, "Are you a lesbian?" and she counters, "Are you the alternative?")

I know very well about homophobia on the left, which is detestable and gives me opportunities to express my own hard-line extremism. Harry Hay founded Mattachine after he was expelled from the Communist Party of the USA for being a queer; Black Mountain College, a lefty-liberal experimental college of the 1930s through the 1950s, fired some queer faculty, notably the anarchist writer Paul Goodman, who wrote in a famous essay called "Memoirs of an Ancient Activist",

Frankly, my experience of radical community is that it does not tolerate my freedom. Nevertheless, I am all for community because it is a human thing, only I seem doomed to be left out.

On the other hand, my homosexual acts and the overt claim to the right to commit them have never disadvantaged me much, as far as I know, in more square institutions. I have taught at half a dozen state universities. I am continually invited, often as chief speaker, to conferences of junior high school superintendents, boards of regents, guidance counsellors, task forces on delinquency, etc., etc. I say what I think right, I make passes if there is occasion -- I have even made out, which is more than I can say for conferences of SDS or Resistance. [Len Richmond and Gary Noguera, eds.,The Gay Liberation Book (Ramparts Press, 1973, p. 24]

I especially like that bit about favoring community but always being left out of it, but then I've generally found myself not wanting in to the available communities. I've generally been content to deal with communities through their writings. If I'm marginalized, well, it's a dirty job but someone has to do it, and more often than not it's because I've sidled over to the margins rather than stay close to the people who are at the center or core or mainstream -- whatever you want to call it. ("I wouldn't belong to a club that would have me for a member" -- but there's not a club made up of those of us who identify with that line, either.) I've been a little disappointed to find that I don't necessarily get along with other misfits because being a misfit is not in itself enough to have in common; but that too has been a useful lesson. And despite all this, I've never been a total isolate either. I have something resembling community, and it serves to keep me going.

What to do about American politics, though, I don't know. As an intellectual I have little to say to the Teabaggers, but then anti-intellectualism is endemic to American society, including many intellectuals. Debate is hard, disagreement is generally painful, and most people prefer not to deal with either. Andrew Sullivan has done little to improve things; I've done even less. We're probably doomed.

Sullivan's Drivels

Homo Superior has changed his format, but he's still linking to Andrew Sullivan, who's been complaining about the current state of the Right.

Once upon a time, the intellectual conservatives in this country cherished their dissidents, encouraged argument, embraced the quirky, valued the eccentric and mocked the lock-step ideological left. Now they are what they once mocked. And they have the ideological discipline of the old left.

Like HomoSup, I wonder which "intellectual conservatives" Sullivan has in mind, and when this Once Upon a Time golden age could have been. Homo Superior mentions William F. Buckley, who was as much of an intellectual second-rater as ... well, as Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan doesn't know his history very well, particularly of the American Right, but that's hardly news. What I find funny is that Sullivan himself started out as a hard-liner except for his homosexuality, and filled the pages of The New Republic with right-wing mediocrities like himself (remember Ruth Shalit?); he no doubt likes to think of himself as "quirky" if not "eccentric," but he has never been someone you could read for substance. When George W. Bush took the Presidency, Sullivan was exultant, jeering at the anti-corporate leftists who were going to rage impotently under the new dispensation; some years later Sullivan endorsed Barack Obama, which was not really that much of a change.

Not that I have anything against hard-liners; I suppose I'm one myself, though I'm not sure which line I'm hard about. Homo Superior goes on to say:

Having said that, I have had more valuable conversations, ones without judgment or ire, with people like Buckley than I have had with those on the lock-step ideological left, and that includes many, many on the Queer Left.

Like anyone with extreme viewpoints, their definition of dissident is someone who agrees with them.

I realized I didn’t belong in the left and sometimes call myself a lapsed lefty. I now embrace the descriptor, contrarian.

(The video clip above comes from Noam Chomsky's 1969 appearance on Buckley's PBS program Firing Line. Buckley's offer to "smash you in the goddam face" is a reference to his then-recent offer, made in earnest, to do the same to Gore Vidal. Here it's supposed to be a joke, though I've never gotten its point. It's the sort of thing that should be borne in mind, though, when Buckley is eulogized. So should Buckley's vacuous debating style.)

Maybe I should embrace "contrarian" myself, but the word has been dirtied more than a little since Christopher Hitchens began touting himself as one. I don't see my own positions are particularly contrary, if I understand the word correctly, which to me implies simply staking an opposing position; I find myself over yonder somewhere. And what happens when two contrarians clash? Do they cancel each other out like matter and anti-matter?

I don't know if I "belong in the left" either, but I do know that most of the thinkers and writers I've learned the most from have been associated with the left, and that left writers and media are those I can reliably look to for accurate information about politics and culture. The few right-wingers with whom I find some common ground are those who are least lock-step themselves, like William Buckley calling for the legalization of drugs (probably the only issue on which I agree with him). On the other hand, I'm not wedded to the word "left", anymore than I am to the words "gay" or "queer."

I'm particularly amused by the notion that the left is lock-step, considering how often people on the left complain about the deep divisions, the sectarian squabbling, that divide our portion of the political spectrum. And while I'm being amused, the use of the word "extreme" as a cussword is always good for a giggle. (I'm reminded of an old joke where a man accusingly asks an uppity woman, "Are you a lesbian?" and she counters, "Are you the alternative?")

I know very well about homophobia on the left, which is detestable and gives me opportunities to express my own hard-line extremism. Harry Hay founded Mattachine after he was expelled from the Communist Party of the USA for being a queer; Black Mountain College, a lefty-liberal experimental college of the 1930s through the 1950s, fired some queer faculty, notably the anarchist writer Paul Goodman, who wrote in a famous essay called "Memoirs of an Ancient Activist",

Frankly, my experience of radical community is that it does not tolerate my freedom. Nevertheless, I am all for community because it is a human thing, only I seem doomed to be left out.

On the other hand, my homosexual acts and the overt claim to the right to commit them have never disadvantaged me much, as far as I know, in more square institutions. I have taught at half a dozen state universities. I am continually invited, often as chief speaker, to conferences of junior high school superintendents, boards of regents, guidance counsellors, task forces on delinquency, etc., etc. I say what I think right, I make passes if there is occasion -- I have even made out, which is more than I can say for conferences of SDS or Resistance. [Len Richmond and Gary Noguera, eds.,The Gay Liberation Book (Ramparts Press, 1973, p. 24]

I especially like that bit about favoring community but always being left out of it, but then I've generally found myself not wanting in to the available communities. I've generally been content to deal with communities through their writings. If I'm marginalized, well, it's a dirty job but someone has to do it, and more often than not it's because I've sidled over to the margins rather than stay close to the people who are at the center or core or mainstream -- whatever you want to call it. ("I wouldn't belong to a club that would have me for a member" -- but there's not a club made up of those of us who identify with that line, either.) I've been a little disappointed to find that I don't necessarily get along with other misfits because being a misfit is not in itself enough to have in common; but that too has been a useful lesson. And despite all this, I've never been a total isolate either. I have something resembling community, and it serves to keep me going.

What to do about American politics, though, I don't know. As an intellectual I have little to say to the Teabaggers, but then anti-intellectualism is endemic to American society, including many intellectuals. Debate is hard, disagreement is generally painful, and most people prefer not to deal with either. Andrew Sullivan has done little to improve things; I've done even less. We're probably doomed.

Gold Cheerleader

Things are as bullish as ever in the Gold market. I continue to believe that we are on the threshold of a major move higher in Gold and Gold stocks and that the fall was just a warm up. The correction has certainly dragged on longer than I thought it would, but Gold is simply building a bigger and stronger base for a more powerful upward move in my opinion.

Unlike most, I see Gold and Gold stocks launching higher and I think the general stock market will be falling during this time. It happened in 2007-March 2008, the 2001-early 2003 time frame, 1973-1974 and 1930-1932. In other words, Gold and Gold stocks' biggest cyclical bull market moves in the last century were during nasty bear markets. All those who say Gold stocks are going to fall with the general markets are thinking only of the Great Fall Panic of 2008 and forgetting the illustrious history of Gold during secular stock bear markets like the one we are in now.

I think Gold is on the threshold here and remain wildly bullish at current price levels for both Gold and Gold stocks. The current look and "feel" of our current situation reminds me of the summer of 2007. Markets are likely in a topping out process with everyone looking at the exits but hoping for a few percent more of gains out of the stock market. Everyone knows economies are in trouble but many are still fully invested, planning on exiting at the first major sign of a price break in the general markets. Just as in the summer of 2007, there was proof all around that Gold was not performing well and would be no safe haven if a bear market were to strike. Blah, blah, blah. Here's what actually happened:



There were some big down days in Gold right before the move higher in 2007 that scared many retail investors off and triggered many stop loss orders, to be sure. Here's a daily chart of the action in 2007 right before the big bull run from the mid-600s to the $1030 level:



The foreign physical markets are getting tight in Gold again, always a good sign. The U.S. Dollar is strenuously overbought and yet Gold has held its ground in U.S. Dollar terms. The long end of the U.S. bond market looks like it wants to break down over the short to intermediate term. Everything is lined up for a big bull run in Gold, the ultimate money. Someone accused me of being a Gold cheerleader the other day - Lord knows we could use a few more in this mad paperbug world. From my point of view, why would one not be a Gold cheerleader during a secular Gold bull market after a healthy correction?

Those Sneaky Gays!

I love Sue's character on Glee and this webisode just proves how funny she can be!

Those Sneaky Gays!

I love Sue's character on Glee and this webisode just proves how funny she can be!

GIVE ME A STRAIGHT LINE.

So this was our go-to jam when spring first hit NYC last year and we've had this post in the works ever since, so figured we should just go ahead and get this out there. That said, there's not been much uncovered about Stockholm's mysterious Nottee in the intervening period since she first skipped across our radar way back when. We still know next to nothing about her - we're pretty sure she's related to one of the Lo-Fi-Fnk bros and we know she's got two stone cold jams in "Control" and "Young Modern Life", but that's about it - though she's just announced her debut shows outside of Scandinavia and recently posted a promising new demo to her myspace, so seems like things are starting to pick up for the Swedish chanteuse. But to be real with you, all we really care about is the fact that the sun is shining outside and "Control" sounds like a winning mix of "My Moon My Man" and that whole Lyyke Li record, and we're pretty down with that.

MP3: "Control" - Nottee

Duty, Honor, Country

I finished reading Tamler Sommers's A Very Bad Wizard yesterday, but I'll probably be writing about it for a while to come. Certain themes keep turning up, as in the concluding interview with law professor William Ian Miller about societies based on honor. In his introduction to the session Sommers writes (208),

Many Arab and Islamic societies are thought to be honor cultures, and as a result research on this topic has attracted the attention of political and military strategists. Former US Army Major William McCallister, for example, has attributed the US's initial unpopularity with Iraqis during the Iraq War to, in part, our failure to grasp the pervasive role that the concepts of shame and honor play in Iraqi society; they are as important to the Iraqis as land and water. McCallister, who now consults with the Marines in Iraq, writes that "It has taken us four years to realize that we must execute operations within the existing cultural frame of reference."

(The link to McCallister is given by Sommers in a footnote. It's amusing, in the same way that having a finger shoved down your throat is amusing. Among McCallister's recommended readings are Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, which I must reread soon and write about here; Bernard Lewis's The Multiple Identities of the Middle East; Kanan Makiya's long-discredited Republic of Fear; and The Code of Hammurabi, translated by L. W. King.)

So, really? The US was initially unpopular (well, "in part") because of "our failure to grasp the pervasive role that the concepts of shame and honor play in Iraqi society." That the US had invaded Iraq, devastated the country, killed and injured thousands of Iraqis, installed a corrupt gangster as our local puppet -- none of this, and more, rates a mention. (Though as I recall, many Iraqis did initially welcome the US invasion for dislodging Saddam Hussein from power -- but they didn't want us to stick around afterward. That seemed reasonable to me at the time, but now I realize that I misunderstood their honor culture.)

In the body of the interview (which is actually pretty interesting; I may look up Miller's writing on honor in the Icelandic sagas), Sommers brings up the subject of Iraq as follows (224):

TS: ... Let me put it like this: you see in reports from Iraq that some officers come back almost bewildered by the honor codes. One former army guy said that honor and shame are their moral currency, and that until we understand that, we're screwed. Do you think a general misunderstanding of honor cultures has led to (honest, in a way) mistakes, like thinking we'll be greeted as liberators, or that we can establish a democracy without too much pain and loss of life?

WIM: It isn't honor culture the officers don't understand; hell, they live in one. It's the particular substantive matters that trigger honor concerns in Iraq -- just what precisely they will take as a big offense and what they'll shrug off. That's where the misunderstandings take place.

Miller's initial comment is good: it's true, career military officers live in an honor culture -- but he doesn't question Sommers's delusions about US motives in Iraq. I have to remind myself that for these guys, the fact of the invasion, the aggression, is simply off the table; they don't even ignore it, because that would mean being aware in some way that it's there and it's a problem. Just as in Sommers's interview with Joseph Henrich, there is no question that the US, in its honest but bumbling way, was trying to "liberate" Iraq, to "establish a democracy without too much pain and loss of life." (Noam Chomsky likes to tell how the original Great Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company "depicts an Indian with a scroll coming from his mouth pleading 'Come over and help us.' The charter states that rescuing the population from their bitter pagan fate is 'the principal end of this plantation.'") Only the pacifists, the isolationists, the reflexive opponents of the Republicans or the US military would dwell on such trivial irrelevancies. Nor can Sommers and Miller begin to imagine, apparently, that Iraqis might see it any differently.

The pattern is familiar: we tried to help the Iraqis / Vietnamese / Haitians / Filipinos / name your favorite recipient of Euro-American assistance, to bring them democracy, freedom, Christianity, but they just aren't ready for democracy. Their values, their "norms," are different from ours, and that's "where the misunderstandings take place." Even worse, they are crafty, deceptive, corrupt and irresponsible, and we simple, innocent, direct Americans don't know how to cope with their devious ways. We're the New World -- fresh, scrubbed, untouched by Old World wickedness -- so how could we possibly understand them?

One thing that doesn't get covered in the interview, unfortunately: Sommers mentions in the introduction that among the topics covered in his more than three hour gabfest with Miller was "the appalling hypocrisy of the Israeli University boycott" (209). I guess he means this? I feel sure that Sommers's take on the matter would be every bit as profound as his understanding of Iraqis' reaction to the US coming over to help them.

Duty, Honor, Country

I finished reading Tamler Sommers's A Very Bad Wizard yesterday, but I'll probably be writing about it for a while to come. Certain themes keep turning up, as in the concluding interview with law professor William Ian Miller about societies based on honor. In his introduction to the session Sommers writes (208),

Many Arab and Islamic societies are thought to be honor cultures, and as a result research on this topic has attracted the attention of political and military strategists. Former US Army Major William McCallister, for example, has attributed the US's initial unpopularity with Iraqis during the Iraq War to, in part, our failure to grasp the pervasive role that the concepts of shame and honor play in Iraqi society; they are as important to the Iraqis as land and water. McCallister, who now consults with the Marines in Iraq, writes that "It has taken us four years to realize that we must execute operations within the existing cultural frame of reference."

(The link to McCallister is given by Sommers in a footnote. It's amusing, in the same way that having a finger shoved down your throat is amusing. Among McCallister's recommended readings are Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, which I must reread soon and write about here; Bernard Lewis's The Multiple Identities of the Middle East; Kanan Makiya's long-discredited Republic of Fear; and The Code of Hammurabi, translated by L. W. King.)

So, really? The US was initially unpopular (well, "in part") because of "our failure to grasp the pervasive role that the concepts of shame and honor play in Iraqi society." That the US had invaded Iraq, devastated the country, killed and injured thousands of Iraqis, installed a corrupt gangster as our local puppet -- none of this, and more, rates a mention. (Though as I recall, many Iraqis did initially welcome the US invasion for dislodging Saddam Hussein from power -- but they didn't want us to stick around afterward. That seemed reasonable to me at the time, but now I realize that I misunderstood their honor culture.)

In the body of the interview (which is actually pretty interesting; I may look up Miller's writing on honor in the Icelandic sagas), Sommers brings up the subject of Iraq as follows (224):

TS: ... Let me put it like this: you see in reports from Iraq that some officers come back almost bewildered by the honor codes. One former army guy said that honor and shame are their moral currency, and that until we understand that, we're screwed. Do you think a general misunderstanding of honor cultures has led to (honest, in a way) mistakes, like thinking we'll be greeted as liberators, or that we can establish a democracy without too much pain and loss of life?

WIM: It isn't honor culture the officers don't understand; hell, they live in one. It's the particular substantive matters that trigger honor concerns in Iraq -- just what precisely they will take as a big offense and what they'll shrug off. That's where the misunderstandings take place.

Miller's initial comment is good: it's true, career military officers live in an honor culture -- but he doesn't question Sommers's delusions about US motives in Iraq. I have to remind myself that for these guys, the fact of the invasion, the aggression, is simply off the table; they don't even ignore it, because that would mean being aware in some way that it's there and it's a problem. Just as in Sommers's interview with Joseph Henrich, there is no question that the US, in its honest but bumbling way, was trying to "liberate" Iraq, to "establish a democracy without too much pain and loss of life." (Noam Chomsky likes to tell how the original Great Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company "depicts an Indian with a scroll coming from his mouth pleading 'Come over and help us.' The charter states that rescuing the population from their bitter pagan fate is 'the principal end of this plantation.'") Only the pacifists, the isolationists, the reflexive opponents of the Republicans or the US military would dwell on such trivial irrelevancies. Nor can Sommers and Miller begin to imagine, apparently, that Iraqis might see it any differently.

The pattern is familiar: we tried to help the Iraqis / Vietnamese / Haitians / Filipinos / name your favorite recipient of Euro-American assistance, to bring them democracy, freedom, Christianity, but they just aren't ready for democracy. Their values, their "norms," are different from ours, and that's "where the misunderstandings take place." Even worse, they are crafty, deceptive, corrupt and irresponsible, and we simple, innocent, direct Americans don't know how to cope with their devious ways. We're the New World -- fresh, scrubbed, untouched by Old World wickedness -- so how could we possibly understand them?

One thing that doesn't get covered in the interview, unfortunately: Sommers mentions in the introduction that among the topics covered in his more than three hour gabfest with Miller was "the appalling hypocrisy of the Israeli University boycott" (209). I guess he means this? I feel sure that Sommers's take on the matter would be every bit as profound as his understanding of Iraqis' reaction to the US coming over to help them.