In recent years there has been a growing number of well-written, professionally-produced films with explicitly Christian messages and values; movies intended to promote those values as much as (if not more than) to make a profit. And I’m sure they do make a profit; I doubt there’s much that Hollywood makes that a committed Christian conservative can embrace. But I’m less interested in the money than the political impact.

Fireproof and Courageous focused on Christian values in the home but October Baby takes on a larger, more political issue - abortion - and appears to do so well. The trailer looks beautiful.

The film was made and promoted - partly - for political reasons:

October Baby will eventually be released nationwide, but the initial release in Alabama and Mississippi comes with an added bonus. In November, Mississippi voters will consider Amendment 26, an amendment to their state constitution which would acknowledge the personhood of every unborn child. The release date is no accident. Directors John and Andrew Erwin are strongly pro-life and hope that their film will help to bring the pro-life message to Mississippi in a powerful way as voters consider this issue. They have also committed to giving ten percent of the film’s proceeds to organizations that help women in crisis pregnancy situations.

That ballot measure, incidentally, went down to a surprising 58-42 defeat (a few interesting explanations why are available here). I have a few things to say. First, I don’t have any particular problem with movies like this being made. I’ll probably watch it myself, if I can find a way of doing so without any money of mine making it to the film-makers; it looks well-made and I’m very very curious. And jealous. I wish progressives were making more films like this; we certainly make enough sad and depressing documentaries. I don’t want to decry conservative films; I want to decry progressives for not doing the same.

That said, I obviously disagree with the message, skillfully as it may be portrayed (notice the feet in the ad from itunes above - a dog-whistle to the evangelical community). First, every life is not beautiful, and many conservatives would be the first to say so. This movie - about a girl who discovers that her parents are not her real parents; she was adopted following a failed abortion attempt by her real mother - is not about a serial killer. The protagonist is not bin Ladin; it is a beautiful girl who I am sure will prove to be very heartwarming and sympathetic. “Isn’t the world a better place with her in it?” you’d be bound to ask yourself, and answer in the affirmative. It would defeat the purpose of the film to show a kiddy rapist like  Jerry Sandusky as an abortion survivor. Some pro-lifers may actually believe that every life is beautiful; I do not. Some people we are better off without.

But that same pro-life argument - that life is good and that you should always choose life, because it is beautiful and precious and adds love, joy, and sparkly unicorns to the world - doesn’t just apply to the question of abortion. By that reasoning, we should all be fucking each other like jackrabbits, making the most of our brief time in the sunshine of fertility. The filmmakers of October Baby ask you to imagine how wrong and terrible it would be if that beautiful, heartwarming girl in the film didn’t exist. The reason why she might not exist doesn’t matter to the argument; an abortion or a headache could have prevented her sweet face from seeing the light of day. If abortion should be condemned because it prevents beautiful girls from being born, contraception and abstinence should be condemned for the same reason. Apparently we should be encouraging 11-year-old girls to have sex, so that they can create more life; the logic of the argument as stated leads inevitably to this conclusion.

Of course a better logical argument could be made, and is made - that life begins at conception, and that it is a crime to take it afterwards. But making a philosophical argument about the timing of life doesn’t lend itself quite so heart-rendingly to movies as the idea of life. It’s easier to make a film glorifying “life” than one glorifying conception, especially for conservatives. Because there are already a lot of movies that glorify the process of conception, and they are called porn. And I doubt that any pornographic film made by Christian conservatives would compete very well.

Markos writes:

Conservatives have convinced themselves that Newt will be the better nominee because he’ll crush Obama in debates. In fact, Newt is fueling this fantasy by claiming he’ll demand seven three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with Obama.

I actually think this would be fantastic, and good for our democracy. It’s the way debates should be conducted. Not with answer times that keep getting shorter. I can see a future where debates are conducted in 15-second intervals, allowing time for half-sentence ripostes, and I hate it. Ideas need room for explication.

Gingrich will cost Republicans the House and maybe the Senate. They know it, they fear it, and as of right now, they’re trying to figure out if there’s anything they can do about it.

I hope he does. It’s a lot of fun to watch him emerge from the political grave.

From the BBC:

Mr Rubio is a rising star in the Republican party, and is often suggested as a viable vice-presidential choice for this year’s Republican presidential nominee.

If that nominee is Romney, Rubio would be an excellent choice. As a Senator from Florida (a huge swing state), as a teabag-powered elected official (Romney will have to choose another Sarah Palin, but less stupid) and, perhaps most importantly, as a Latino.

An interesting story of passing the foreign service exam. An excerpt:

Finally, around 8am we are given our instructions for the day, a schedule of where we were to be and when, and were split into two groups. My group of 6 was put in a nice corner office, with windows and everything, and we commenced our group exercise. The basic idea is that you are given a bunch of information about a fake country and projects that your embassy “task force” will be considering. Everyone has a different project and the goal at the end is to come to consensus on what will be funded and what will not, because of course money is tight. You have time to present individually (about 5 mins each) and then 20-30 mins to come to agreement on what to fund given your budget. Our group got along great, and our discussion was easy, logical, and organized. I felt I had done well on this, but no better than anyone else, even though in the end my project had the most support (maybe I’m a better negotiator than I give myself credit for J).  One down, two to go.

A very interesting explanation of why hazing exists and is unlikely to go away.

To enter such a high performing team, a person must prove their competence. Any group worth its salt will test for skill when enrolling new members. But most groups, especially elite groups, require bonds of trust and will test further. Such groups build a culture and will create traditions of initiation rites. These rites will establish:

1) Whether an individual deeply wants to join the group.
2) Whether an individual will emotionally commit to the group and its cause.
3) Whether an individual will be loyal to the group above other commitments.
4) Whether this desire manifests in emotional and physical strength to suffer to gain membership.
5) Whether the person can hold the secret with other group members.
6) Whether an individual will respect a hierarchy of the elders.

Groups that celebrate their special status will strive to achieve all the above.

They will create tests of membership and I do mean tests. A test means that the person must prepare, endure and prove him or herself. A person can fail the test and fail to exhibit the emotional or physical strength to earn privileged membership. This failure is not about skill but commitment to the group as a group.

Hazing evolves naturally from this. Hazing involves the infliction of potential harm or suffering on the initiate. It creates a barrier that must be surmounted to prove worthiness. It usually requires a form of humbling to prove the group is more important than the individual. Conquering the suffering and humiliation earns acceptance. Many rites can be silly or stunts. They can be easy, hard, ritualistic, demanding or soft symbolic actions. It once looked like a gendered male phenomenon, but sororities and women’s teams and groups have demonstrated their own competence at devising rituals and hazing on their own terms.

A person proves him or herself and becomes “one of us.” Passing the test proves their worthiness and trustworthiness—they enter the group in a deeper way beyond competence. The harder the test, as the Marines or Special Forces prove, the more abiding the loyalty. The challenges or tasks often establish a hierarchy to remind new entrants that they are entering at the lowest level and offer obeisance or “pay their dues” to gain higher levels. Ideally this should really occur on the field  in competition or task performance. Over time it does; on good teams people earn their spurs by reliable and trusted showing up that the others can rely upon.

But the deeper more atavistic belonging demands the initiation. For many athletic teams and organizations these rites drift off campus and out of sight of coaches or authorities. These are non-sanctioned informal initiations that the students have created and kept alive over time, not the inventions of transient coaches or authorities.

Their hidden and illicit nature make them all the more valuable. These tests of the young by the young degenerate easily into hazing. Peer pressure and the desire to be acknowledged drive people join in stupid, demeaning or dangerous behavior that the entrants would not indulge on their own. They can involve tests that may make sense to a nineteen year old—chugging a bottle of vodka—flashing a random group—running a gauntlet. Often they may feel funny to the perpetrators but feel humiliating or demeaning to those experiencing them.

If the hazing is done in secret, team members share a secret. Secret sharing seals them tighter and obligates them to not tell. Secret hazing cements their membership. Its very danger generates pride at having succeeded at something hard. It also means that next year they can impose the same hazing.

Hazing, initiating, rites of passage speak deeply to sealing membership  and consecrating belonging  with value beyond technocratic proof of competence and skill. It gives shared pride in passing a test, being worthy. Sharing suffering and sharing a secret bond them as much as the rite does.

Ah, Chris Dodd:

The moves were described as an “abuse of power” by one of the highest profile supporters of the anti-piracy bills.

“Some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging,” said Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America.

“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information… A so-called ‘blackout’ is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.”

First, he’s not a sitting Senator anymore, which the BBC story doesn’t make clear, but should have. Secondly, I know you’ve gotta make a living, but dude. Come on. That’s no excuse for trying to break the internet.

It seems like the internet is constantly under attack from one kind of legislation or another. Either attempts by big media companies to develop a rich new revenue stream by soaking content producers for access to customers (their existing revenue stream charges customers for access to content) by gutting net neutrality, or these over-reaching, over-broad, vaguely-worded attacks on “piracy” that, in actuality, provide a legal basis for attacking many things besides. What excites me is the growing power and political unity of the forces created by the internet, standing up for it.

An interesting effort to reform the electoral college, about which I have mixed views.

The National Popular Vote effort is predicated on the following:

1. States are allowed to assign their presidential electors however they see fit. (Note how Maine and Nebraska split their electors not only by statewide vote, but by congressional district.)2. Thus, they pass a law saying that a) once states totaling 50+1 percent of the total electoral votes pass a similar law, that b) they will assign their state’s entire electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. (The Electoral College doesn’t go away.)

In other words, once states totalling 270 electoral votes pass this law, we will collectively choose our president based on whoever wins the most votes.

It’s quite genius, actually.

After reading repeatedly about how Santorum’s defense of his views on gay marriage in front of a crowd of college students was ridiculous, and how he was ignominiously booed off the stage, I decided that I wanted to see this for myself. It’s a good thing that I did, because (a) his defense of his views was not as ridiculous as others had made it appear, and (b) there was some booing but just as much (if not more) respectful applause. Santorum’s discussion provoked some useful and productive debate. Here’s the video and then a few of my thoughts.

It was a useful rhetorical tool of Santorum, and not unjustified, to question the premise of the initial question and invert the burden of proof. Broadly speaking there seem to me to be two broad rationales for gay marriage. The first is the legal rights and protections that come with marriage, which are significant, widespread, and numerous, but which can be guaranteed legally through civil unions. Protection of these legal rights through civil unions is less effective in practice because they are more likely to be violated and less likely to be enforced. This stems in part from continuing confusion about their legal significance and in part from determined opposition by those who disagree. However one would expect that these difficulties would decline over time. The second broad rationale is that separate-but-equal does not work and cannot work. The very delineation of a separation implies and solicits discrimination which can have real-world consequences (legal rights less often enforced successfully) and psychic consequences (the stigmatization by society implied by the necessity for a separate designation, and the signal it sends to members of society to accept and replicate that stigmatization in their own interactions with members of the subject group). In other words, separate-but-equal is both an expression of discrimination and an encouragement of further discrimination.

No one in the audience raised these points and therefore Santorum did not respond to them, but I would be interested to hear his thoughts.

Santorum’s next questioner argues that the right to pursue happiness, so long as it does not harm anyone else, justifies gay marriage. Santorum responds by suggesting that, by the same reasoning, polygamous marriage should be adopted. Note that he did not say that a discussion of gay marriage logically necessitates a discussion of polygamous marriage, although he may have done so elsewhere. Instead, he is questioning the rationale for gay marriage offered by his challenger - the pursuit of happiness - and in so doing he is logically sound.

I certainly don’t think it is a logical contradiction to allow gay marriage but not polygamous marriage, any more than it is a logical contradiction to allow traditional marriage but not gay marriage. The logical contradictions arise and depend on the reasons and justifications used to justify one and not the other. In this case, it is a logical contradiction to argue that the pursuit of happiness justifies gay marriage but not polygamous marriage. When pressed, Santorum’s challenger says that she personally supports polygamous marriage, and that is a view with which I agree. She also says that this is a separate issue from gay marriage, and I also agree. Santorum’s point is that her logic for one, if sound, ought to extend to the other, and I also agree.

Finally, Santorum makes his case for why gay marriage should remain illegal. He argues that change should occur through the “public square” and not through the courts. He argues that traditional (man-woman) marriage is the way we were made by God. Traditional marriage is necessary for procreation and the continuance of civilization, and provides the best environment for children to be raised; on this basis it provides an intrinsic good to society. Every child’s birthright is to know and be loved by their mother and father; that birthright is denied when we argue that other forms of relationships are okay. When this occurs we harm children and harm society.

Santorum may not be the best spokesperson for his point of view. That said, the arguments that he makes are fallacious. He does not express why change should not occur through the courts, but this assertion begs the question. Perhaps Santorum feels that all substantive questions should be addressed by the legislature, or perhaps the most significant, leaving only the application to the judiciary, because the legislature is accountable to the public will in a way that the judiciary is not. If so, his premises include the idea that the view of the majority is always best; that the rights of the few should be entrusted to the tyranny of the majority; that the legitimacy of political institutions derives solely from their popularity and that, therefore, the judiciary is less legitimate than the legislature. His views may also imply that the judiciary is fundamentally undemocratic and that, insofar as the legislature is itself insulated or removed from the will of the people, it too is undemocratic and should be avoided in preference to direct democracy. Suffice to say that I disagree with all of these premises, as does most of our settled political thought. To support them (which Santorum may or may not) would be a significant challenge to our entire political system, as well as much of Western political thought, social science, and human rights.

If traditional marriage is what we were made for by God, why isn’t it the holy obligation of every man and woman to marry? Is single life immoral? Are priests immoral, since they never marry? Note that this also implies that a homosexual orientation cannot have a biological basis, a premise which studies of humans and animals have both severely undermined.

If traditional marriage is necessary for the birth of children and the continuance of civilization, the only way this would be relevant is if homosexual marriage in some way undermines the procreative ability of traditional marriages.

On average, do father-mother families provide better child-rearing environments than mother-mother or father-father environments? The scientific evaluation of this question is relatively new, but strong studies have undermined this assumption. But what has this to do with gay marriage? Child-rearing by single-sex couples is already possible, but presumably, it would become easier and therefore increase if gay marriage were legalized. Even if we accept both premises - that child-rearing by same-sex couples would increase and that it is worse than a traditional child-rearing environment - that raises two more questions. How much worse? And what level of worse would justify action by the state? Note that even though some heterosexual couples rape and abuse their children, this has not been used as a justification for making marriage illegal. It seems to me that gay parents would have to provide a significantly worse environment for child-rearing, and do so to a significant degree of uniformity, to even begin to justify a conversation about governmental discrimination against their collective parental rights. Finally, it is worth noting again the implied supposition that increased parenting by gay parents would somehow threaten existing parenting by heterosexual parents, with which I would also disagree.

If every child’s birthright is to know and be loved by their mother and father, this would be a strong argument against adoption. To what degree is that birthright biological? Should the state therefore make it more difficult for parents to divorce, or to habitate separately? Is being loved by a mother and a father intrinsically superior to being loved by two mothers or two fathers? Is it the responsibility of the state, generally, to judge the love contained in relationships and incentivize or inhibit them on that basis? These are just a few of the thorny questions raised by Santorum’s argumentation. Some of these questions can be answered scientifically; others are value-laden. It is itself a value-laden statement to say, as I do, that state-sponsored discrimination against a collective group of people requires a high standard of justification, a justification that I do not believe Santorum’s reasoning meets. According to Santorum, even arguing that gay marriage is okay poses a threat to children and society. The fact that these views are more easily subject to dismissal based on reason and science than those of his audience may be one reason why Santorum was keen to invert the burden of proof. That said, the views of one man, however prominent or political, are not synonymous with the broader discussion over gay marriage. It would, perhaps, be ideal if there were a forum in which the logical and scientific merits of each side could both be evaluated critically and according to similar standards, and before which the very strongest proponents of both arguments would be likely to appear. Fortunately, this has already occurred in federal district court, and the findings of fact from that ruling are applicable here and persuasive. An excellent summary is available here.

From the Post-Intelligencer:

EST VALLEY CITY, Utah (AP) — A stray cat that survived two trips to a Utah animal shelter’s gas chamber now has a new home.

Officials at West Valley City’s animal shelter in Utah say the cat named Andrea hadn’t been adopted for 30 days when shelter officials tried to put her to death in October. She survived, so they gassed her again.

Shelter officials detected no vital signs and presumed she was dead after the second try, so they put her in a plastic bag in a cooler. But when they checked the bag, they saw she had vomited on herself and had hypothermia but was alive.

The shelter then decided to stop trying to kill her.

But how much did it cost?

When newlyweds Eric Thomas and Alexandra Salmon started searching for a home in Ballard, they never imagined they’d end up building the city’s first net-zero-energy house. But that’s what they did, and they say it cost about the same as it would to buy a townhouse.

They spent $417,000 on the house, but some rebates brought the cost down to $400,000.

The $417,000 includes the cost of the property at $180,000. Thomas said the figure includes everything except plans, revisions to plans and engineering costs, which totaled less than $5,000.

And what about the house?

The 1,900-square-foot two-story house was completed in September. It has three bedrooms and a work loft, two bathrooms, a concrete slab foundation and radiant heat floors.

All the house’s power comes from a 6-kilowatt photovoltaic system. Originally, Thomas said he and Salmon were going to wait to buy the $30,000 system, but once they looked at the rebates available they chose to pay for the panels now. The couple will get a 30 percent federal tax credit at the end of the year, equal to about $9,000.

The recession both helped and hurt the project. It took a long time and many bank visits to secure financing, but Thomas said if the economy had been healthy they likely wouldn’t have been able to buy the lot because it would have been sold to a developer for townhouses. No developers were looking to build early this year, so the couple was able to negotiate.

A new variety of crab has been discovered around volcanic vents in the South Atlantic, heaped together in concentrations that approach 600 per square meter:

An interesting primer on the upcoming French Presidential election, by an author I’ve followed for about 7 years.

The law firm of Steven J. Baum, based in Buffalo, NY, represents many of the major banks in their foreclosure proceedings against homeowners. As described by the New York Times, they recently settled a lawsuit by the Justice Department, for $2 million, because the firm had “filed misleading pleadings, affidavits, and mortgage assignments in the state and federal courts in New York.” Baum is also the subject of an investigation by the NY Attorney General, and “a class-action suit claiming that Steven J. Baum has consistently failed to file certain papers that are necessary to allow for a state-mandated settlement conference that can lead to a modification.”

Needless to say, Baum does not treat homeowners very well.

But to add insult to injury, they had a Halloween party in which staff dressed up to mock the people they foreclose upon.

Let me describe a few of the photos. In one, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless people. One is holding a bottle of liquor. The other has a sign around her neck that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.” My source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade a foreclosure proceeding.

You can see the other photos and read the rest on the New York Times site.

That’s the headline for this BBC story, which discusses how

Sgt Dakota Meyer, 23, is suing BAE for defamation for comments made after he was critical of planned sales of advanced sniper scopes to Pakistan.

He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest US military accolade, for saving 36 lives in Afghanistan.

Sgt Meyer was the first living Marine awarded the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War.

The BBC article fills in the details, but the outline of the story is this: Meyer works for Ausgar Technologies, a defense contractor, and does well. Then he goes to BAE and objects to the sale of advanced sniper scopes to Pakistan. Then his BAE boss,

Mr McCreight “berated and belittled” him after he objected to the sale.

Mr McCreight mocked his Medal of Honor nomination as “pending star status” and took exception when he went on a business trip for a more senior boss.

“May I remind you whom [sic] works for who [sic]? You report to me, not Jerry or Vadim [the division president],” Mr McCreight wrote.

In an attempt to resume his old job at Ausgar, Sgt Meyer contacted his former supervisor, who told him there was likely to be an opening in his team.

However, after Sgt Meyer resigned from BAE in May 2011, Sgt Meyer received an email from an Ausgar supervisor that said the firm would not be rehiring him.

Bob Higginson, a manager who needed to approve the hiring, had been contacted by Mr McCreight, Sgt Meyer says.

According to a copy of the email included in the court documents, Mr McCreight had told him that the marine was mentally unstable, was not performing his duties and had problems with social drinking.

Those defense contractors sure love the troops, don’t they?

“Reminds me of one dude in college who used to make goats tell time.”

Super cool:

Yup - that stuff on top of the dandelion? That’s metal.

The substance is made out of tiny hollow metallic tubes arranged into a micro-lattice - a criss-crossing diagonal pattern with small open spaces between the tubes.

The researchers say the material is 100 times lighter than Styrofoam and has “extraordinarily high energy absorption” properties.

A nice spoof of the ubiquitous Mormon bus ads

The BBC reports that the Canadian law against polygamy has been upheld.

Justice Bauman said the government’s case had shown the law limits the harms expected to rise from polygamy, including spousal abuse, child neglect, and higher infant mortality.

And the progressive failure of vehicle windshield wipers. Color me unconvinced.

So what happens if you’re married and you have sex with someone else without your partner’s knowledge or consent. That’s adultery, and that’s legal. But what if you have sex with someone else and your married partner knows and consents? That’s legal too.You could have sex all day, every day, and alternate freely between your married partner and another partner. You’d be free to do so. Similarly if you all happened to live together and be in love, or maybe not. All legal.

So it seems that there are two possibilities. First, there may be something about the word “polygamy” - or the act of calling two of your relationships “marriages” - that just inevitably leads to higher rates of infant mortality, spousal abuse, and child neglect; they all either occur, or don’t, depending on the words you use to describe a relationship that is otherwise exactly the same in all material respects. Or, the State has a vested interest in regulating a far broader range of human behavior - adultery should be made illegal, as should swinging, and perhaps cohabitation. Logically, it seems to me, one or the other must follow.

Or maybe, no matter how distasteful some people or the state may believe polygamy to be, there’s nothing particularly wrong with it at all. Perhaps polygamy is seen to lead to child endangerment and deviant behaviors in the same way that homosexual relationships, or interracial relationships, were once seen to lead to the same. Supposedly sound, scientific research once said exactly this, but over time we have learned that, absent the stigmatization society inflicts, there’s no particular reason why a child with two mommies or two daddies is bound to turn out any worse than any other child. And maybe, absent real and compelling systemic evidence that polygamy or multiple sexual partners or cohabitation somehow leads inexorably to infant mortality, inferior roadway design, or the distortion of the lunar orbit, the state should leave consenting adults to do what they damn well please inside their own homes, and to call it whatever they like.

One of the impacts of the Occupy movement has been a shifting of the political dialogue and discourse in this country - much needed, and much appreciated. This change is illustrated in the following graphs from Think Progress, which I found interesting:

During the last week of July, economic discussion on cable news looked like this:

In mid-October, it looked like this:

Nice.