A note to Alexandra Petri

A note to Alexandra Petri, when she is done swooning over Sen. Rand Paul:

Rand Paul hits that point, generally speaking, before most people. He hates those squiggly, new light bulbs! His toilet doesn’t work! He wants people to know! Probably the only reason he objected to the pat-down was that the screeners would discover his full-body tattoo of the Constitution in Braille.

But the man has a point.

I know that in America all people are created equal. But I didn’t realize that this meant we all had to undergo this much airport screening. Grandmothers. Granddaughters. People with metal hips who fought in the wars. Sen. Rand Paul.

Okay, so, just so it’s clear: We can all be outraged, now? That is, now that it’s happened to Senator Rand Paul, it’s officially out of hand, now? We can say all this stuff about TSA and not be denounced as terrorist sympathizers, and the like?

I mean, it’s Rand Paul, right? Which means it’s a credible civil liberties issue. Or is that only for the right wing?

Asking the obvious question

Could someone please explain to me the following?

• How is it that a known serial adulterer being accused of asking his second wife, with whom he was cheating on his first wife, to open the relationship so that he could continue to bang the woman who eventually became his third wife, can reliably count the scandal as an asset among allegedly conservative family values voters?

What the hell is happening to American conservatives? I generally speculate something about neurotic tensions at the breaking point, but my conservative neighbors think that an unspeakably evil form of character assassination.

Just what is going on in Republican America?

Those annoying details

At first it seems like a simple notion: If you root against Tim Tebow because he openly expresses his faith, raise your hand.

Cartoonist Tim Campbell raises the issue in an editorial cartoon, that he might demonize—quite literally—those who would criticize the Almighty Tebow; the frame includes what appears to be Satan raising his hand.

Yet such questions are not so simple.

Some are disgusted by the idea of Tebow’s greatness, since he’s not actually that good of a quarterback in the context of the NFL; despite his wins, he finished the regular season with a 72.9 rating, which works out to about twenty-eighth in the league, behind such luminaries as Tarvaris Jackson (79.2) of the Seattle Seahawks (7-9), and Colt McCoy (74.6) of the Cleveland Browns (4-12). Tebow’s success, such as it is, owes much to his fellow Denver Broncos (8-8).

And, certainly, there are some among those critics who would focus on the fact of Tebow’s faith alone.

But Tebow’s faith is a Christian faith, and one wonders as he “Te-bows”, much as one might wonder about other players sharing that Biblical faith, when and where Jesus comes into the picture.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds:

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Then, of course, are the rumors that Tebow, in his autobiography published at the ripe old age of twenty-three, distorted the story of his gestation and birth for political reasons.

Which, in the end, makes Tebow’s faith seem more an advertising pitch to increase his monetary value in the American capitalist marketplace. And that might mean that the real devilish work is from those hands not raised in Campbell’s cartoon; the people who would celebrate Tebow’s blatant disregard for the words of Jesus Christ and willingness to deceive people in order to spread the Good News.

My opinion, based on someone else’s critique of yet other people’s opinions, or something like that

If you want my two cents on the fractious relationship between genre and literature (derived, of course, in consideration of someone else’s), it’s over at the Southern California Writers’ Conference blog.

If you don’t care either way, disregard this note.

Why does Facebook suck so badly?

I was thinking to let my Facebook friends know about my blogs. And then I had cause to reconsider.

See, every time you post a link to Facebook, it offers an icon to go along with the post.

Unfortunately, in the case of one of the blogs I write, Facebook will not allow me to post a picture of the blog’s author—i.e., me.

Fair enough. But I just don’t think the blog is appropriately represented by …

• … a picture of Mark Steel wearing a straw hat.
• …a cartoon of Herman Cain wearing a bra on his head.
• … Bob Englehart’s self-portrait.
• … a screenshot of a tweet about why NASCAR fans aren’t racist. (And why their behavior is Barack Obama’s fault.)
• … a cartoon of Newt Gingrich.

Those are the options Facebook allows me. Because, well, you know … Facebook knows best what defines my blogs.

This is why Facebook sucks, and Mark Zuckerman is a scourge upon humanity.

A picture is worth how many ideas?

Because it’s easier this way ….

On Friday, Glenn Greenwald noted:

And just to save you the spare click, this is what he was referring to:

To be fair, maybe it’s not simply about Time holding Americans in contempt as emotionally immature consumerist dolts. It could be something about market dynamics. Maybe Americans just aren’t that into revolutionary politics. I mean, it’s nice to cheer for the underdogs, sure, but what with those weirdos occupying New York and other cities, it is entirely possible that people really are so unsettled that we need to be pepper spraying eighty-four year-old women.

And, you know, maybe the international cover for Time (v.178, n.22) just makes Americans unnecessarily anxious. So, you know, they run a much more appropriate cover explaining why anxiety is good for people. Rather than working to make life more satisfactory, we ought to just learn how to find greater satisfaction in the things that worry us. That way, well … you know … maybe revolutionary ideas won’t occur to Americans as possible solutions for anxiety. Or something.

Even more than raw politics, this could be about marketplace politics. Sure, this might be what Time thinks of Americans, but Greenwald overlooks the question of whether or not there is a reason for that.

Today in Talking Points

It’s almost like connect the dots. Of course, that’s why they’re called “talking points”:

• Politico covers the latest conservative argument, that wealth and conscience don’t mix.
• Steve Benen explains the obvious about that argument.
• And Tom Tomorrow dusts fourteen years off an old cartoon, for obvious reasons.
• Meanwhile, Rob Goodman hopes to intellectually validate equal criticism against all political players, the feelgood fallacy also known as “both sides do it”.
• And why not get some election coverage from Karl Frisch, a Democratic strategist trying to explain what’s wrong with Republicans.
• If that doesn’t do it for you, try the latest Obama-hates-Christians “war on Christmas” lament. (At least it’s not as mortifying as Rush Limbaugh’s astonishing defense of the Lord’s Resistance Army.)

Or, it’s just another day in the life. Something about decadence. Something about the fall of Rome. Something about what we do with what we are given.

“Let me say this is as clearly and as simply as I can: Republicans did not overreach. What they did is who they are. It is what they stand for. It is what they campaign on.

To claim otherwise would be like saying fish live under water because they suffer from unquenchable thirst.“

—Karl Frisch

The Secretary of Labor sez … well, okay, a former Secretary of Labor. But, yeah. A really smart guy, you know. Econ professor. That sort of thing.

Robert Reich explains the truth about the economy, or something like that. I mean, you know, whatever. But, still, you have seen it, right?

Something about nothing, or, the question of advice columns

It is not that I disdain all advice columns, but sometimes I really do wonder about the purposes they serve. For instance, Carolyn Hax, whose column appears in The Washington Post:

Dear Carolyn:

I am 1½ years into a relationship and I have lost my libido. I have gone from wanting sex about three times a week to about once every two weeks. I’m young, I still like my boyfriend and I still find him attractive, but I find myself more interested in falling asleep than any other bedroom activity. Of course, he is still interested in having sex and has started to notice my indifference. I’ve been giving in to keep him happy, but I rarely really enjoy it. I think that’s been making the problem worse. I’m afraid this will ruin my relationship, but I have no idea how to fix it.

Adapted from an online discussion—and perhaps this should be our first clue—the resulting exchange is revealing, including the two cents we hear from other participants.

Something about beer

It would be melodramatic to start with, “Beer will save the world!” But the question of biomedical and bioenergy researches bring us to the tale of Saccaromyces cerevisiae, a yeast of a genus commonly used in the manufacture of bread, wine, and beer. S. cerevisiae is a species used to make lagers. Marco Werman of PRI’s The World, and geneticist Chris Todd Hittinger explain:

Marco Werman: … A lager is a clear, cold-fermented kind of beer. You have to use a specific kind of yeast to make the stuff. Lagers were first brewed in Bavaria in southern Germany back in the 15th century. Scientists have long known that the yeast involved was a hybrid, half European and half well, that was a mystery until now. Turns out the mystery yeast originated in Patagonia on the tip of South America. Chris Todd Hittinger is a genetic scientist and co-author of a study on lager yeast. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. Hittinger says he and his team made the discovery while investigating different species of yeast, or Saccharomyces, around the globe.

Chris Todd Hittinger: Saccaromyces is the Latin name for the close grouping of yeasts that include the ones that make ale, and bread and wine; and those are all made by cerevisiae, Saccaromyces cerevisiae. And Saccaromyces are often found in association with oak trees and also with fruits. And it turns out that all southern beech trees, they form galls in response to infection by another fungus.

According to Hittinger, the Patagonian yeast contributing to what we now know as S. cerivisiae most likely crossed the Atlantic via trade, both in the products—including fruit, drink, and even wood—and also in the fruit flies that would have come along for the species. And it is true, something about the chronology doesn’t quite match up if we stick strictly to the detail of Werman’s introduction; that is, if we stick with Columbus and 1492. But Hittinger acknowledges, “This is where the genetic research can’t be particularly informative, but we can speculate a little bit.”

Still, though, it was not questions of beer in particular that brought Hittinger to pursue the lineage of lager yeast. Yeast plays an important role in biomedical research and bioenergy development. According to Hittinger, “most of the genome technologies have actually been worked out in half a dozen fairly simple organisms, and Saccaromyces is really one of these champion research organisms.”

So, yes, it is possible that, one day, beer will save the world. But we need not go out and drink ourselves silly to celebrate the potential of one particularly interesting yeast. Indeed, there are plenty of reasons to hoist a pint, and it would seem stupid to pound ourselves into a drunken haze to celebrate health.

Then again, we are human.

Or, as a great man once said: Drink up, dreamers; you’re running dry.