The Mel Gibson Test

To every man who is contemplating a semi-permanent future with a woman, I suggest administering the Mel Gibson test to her.

The test is simple.  Have her listen to the Mel Gibson tapes and read a little bit about the woman, Oksana Grigoriev. 

If your woman white knights the russian whore and hates on Mel Gibson, you have no future with her.

Why?  Simple.  

Suppose everything Oksana is saying is true, chiefly that he beat her.  A claim, I would add, which Gibson’s ex-wife has refuted in court stating that in the 30 years that she was married to him he never raised a hand at her.  How many ex-wives of abusive husbands do you know that would voluntarily testify in defense of them voluntarily?

Oksana’s dentist doesn’t think so either.

Nevertheless, suppose her story is true.  Does that give her the right to violate California law and record Gibson against his knowledge and then start a for-profit smear campaign by selling the illegally obtained tapes to the tabloids?  The answer should be a resounding no.  No matter how despicable wife beating is, two wrongs don’t make a right.  Her escalating retribution will do more damage to Gibson in the eyes of the tottering morons who can’t see through this story than he might have done to her veneers.  And that might is a big one.

Put yourself in Gibson’s shoes for a minute.  Do you want to be that guy?  There is a 100% chance that at some point or another you will find a way to sleight your woman.  Do you want your woman to be the kind that thinks Oksana’s actions were justifiable?  Or even admirable?  Do you want your woman to be the type that could contrive this kind of scheme?

I certainly don’t.

The more pressing issue, though, is not your woman’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction in a story with many angles.  The issue isn’t even hinged upon what your woman thinks is an appropriate punishment for the crime of woman-beating.  The issue is whether or not your woman’s knee-jerk reaction is to side with poor Oksana.  A woman who’s first thought is to consider Mel’s side of the story, and the fact that Oksana is full of crap, is the woman you want to be with.  She is far more likely to take that stance in arguments between the two of you – to consider your angle first – then to immediately assert an intolerable self-righteous posture.  If Oksana gets a pass because she too has a vagina, you’re in for a long, soul-sucking, horrible relationship.  She’s dead to you.  Get out while you can.

Feministing Friday: Shallow

Vanessa has an advanced degree but she can’t stop caring about celebrities, because celebrities and their lives are serious business.

Let us read the quoted sage wisdom of Angelina Jolie, scholar, cultural atache, Vanessa’s idol:

Children should be allowed to express themselves in whatever way they wish without anybody judging them because it is an important part of their growth. Society always has something to learn when it comes to the way we judge each other, label each other. We have far to go.

How dare you judge me for judging your parenting!

Why Abortion?

Out of all of the millions of policies that are enacted by governments all the time, why has abortion become a big one?  Why is it something we keep talking about, when in reality, whether an arbitrary woman can kill her fetus legally or not has far less impact on society as a whole than does, for example, wealth redistribution.  One of the reasons is suredly the manner in which the abortion “right” was settled, by the Supreme Court instead of actual lawmakers.  That wound has proven so far unhealed.

I think abortion is one we keep coming back to because it conveniently serves as a pristine monument to the sharp contrast in which a conservative and a liberal thinks.  This is a classic example of liberal thinking on the subject, taken from the infamous Womanist Musings, who is raising her sons to be fairies:

Pro birth activists go out of their way to tell women that if they have an abortion they will regret it for the rest of their lives.  They continually suggest that depression sets in the moment the abortion is over because we have not lived up to our essential purpose and in the process have committed murder, never mind that this is just a group of cells that could not live outside of its host. Let’s just be clear about one thing, the potential to become a child and actually being a child are two very different things.  The idea is not to give women a choice and physical control of our reproduction.  One lucky sperm does not a life or a mother make.

If there were an antithesis to the way I view the issue, this quote would be it.

First, the opening assertion is absurd.  I myself have repeatedly claimed that women who get abortions regret it, but that is based on the reports of the women I’ve known who have had abortions.  This pro-life talking point didn’t materialize out of the ether.  It came to be a talking point because it is probabilistically true.  This illustrates the classic liberal refusal to interpret the world in terms of majorities (except in elections won by even razor-thin majorities by their candidates, or majorities in general when it benefits them).  “Stereotype” is a bad word to the typical liberal.  In their thinking, if a single woman does not regret her abortion, then the regret argument is baseless on face, and all women should be free to abort all day long.

She also feels the need to put words in our mouths, by justifiying the regret in which she does not even believe, stating, “because we have not lived up to our essential purpose and in the process have committed murder.”  We don’t need a because.  If a woman regrets her abortion she regrets it.  I don’t happen to care why, and neither should you.

But here we go with the clincher of the pro-choice crowd: “never mind that this is just a group of cells that could not live outside of its host.”

This is somewhat ridiculous.  My left arm is a group of cells that cannot live without its host, and I am not sure there are any laws on the books which prevent me, a free-thinking adult with a right to choose, from cutting off my own left arm and throwing it into a dumpster.  And that might be analagous to a fetus (or an embryo), except it isn’t for two reasons.  First, I didn’t take specific action to create my left arm, and second, my arm will not grow into a human being if I don’t cut it off.  It will stay an arm, and an arm, when not attached to a human being, does not have rights.

The group-of-cells argument never carries any weight because the same could be said about anything.  If you take me, your humble author, and accurately describe me as a group of cells, I could describe my host as being the planet Earth.  I can’t survive without my host either.  Are you free to kill me?

Ultimately the status of an unborn baby is entirely subjective to the whims of our collective consciences.  The “group of cells” argument is a weak attempt to find some objective, cold, scientific response to a moral question.  As I’ve said before, one of religion’s uses in civilization is to define a moral authority upon which we all agree.  Abortion could only become legal when our civilization collectively dropped our moral authority which forbade it.  Once done, we got the version of morality that 5 out of the 9 SCOTUS judges on the Roe v. Wade case described.  You’re just giving us another version of morality based on holy science.  It doesn’t stand up.

Let’s just be clear about one thing, the potential to become a child and actually being a child are two very different things. 

The primary difference being whether or not the actual child’s mother actively prevented the potential child from becoming an actual child by aborting it.  This statement about potential vs. actuality is relatively obvious but it’s also irrelevant.  You argue that a potential child has no rights.  I argue that a potential child does have rights.  I argue that a potential child has rights because you gave it rights by creating it.  And no, every wasted sperm is not a potential child.  A sperm will not grow into a child by itself, but a healthy embryo will.

 The idea is not to give women a choice and physical control of our reproduction.

You made that choice when you spread your legs.  Do you deny it?

Let’s, for a moment, enter a hypothetical world which turns out not to be so hypothetical.  Imagine we live in a world where we all agree that we do not know, nor can ever know, whether aborting an unborn child is murder.  Whether it is right or wrong.  I say it’s not so hypothetical because morality and ethics, at least in our world, are not absolute, and people are free to believe what they want.  You, Womanist Musings, do not know for certain whether you, by aborting your pregnancy, are committing a heinous act or a benign one.  But you still want a right to control your reproduction (meaning you want no children).

Which is the clearly safer road to walk?  The one in which you keep your legs closed, or the one in which you screw like a rabbit and abort any time you pregnant?

The answer is obvious.  The only way to support abortion over abstinence is to declare boldly that you know for certain, for absolute certain, that abortion is perfectly morally acceptable and you’re killing nothing but a worthless ball of cells.

If I didn’t know better, I’d envy your conviction.

But here’s what it all comes down to, the coup de grace:

One lucky sperm does not a life or a mother make.

The classic liberal wrongthink in its purest form.  Pregnancy, you see, has nothing to do with desire, planning, and execution.  No, it has to do with luck.  The pregnant woman is merely a victim of happenstance, as though she is totally out of control of her situation.  Except for her holy, God-given right to abort her babies.  Her sacred right to choose.  Before she’s pregnant, it’s all luck.  Once she is pregnant, it’s her right to choose.  Once she’s pregnant, she’s in the driver’s seat.  Until then?  Nah.  One lucky sperm.  That’s what did it.

In the mind of a liberal nobody is ever responsible for anything.  We just have to react to whatever life throws at us and if that means possibly killing babies, so be it.  Who has time to worry about whether it’s wrong or right?  Who has time to err on the side of caution?  Something bad has just happened to me and I need to fix it!  Quick, hurry, let’s find a justification for why my fix is hunky dory in the eyes of man and the eyes of God!  Lump of cells, you say?  Perfect!  Thanks, Science!

It’s amazing we’ve come as far as we have in spite of these people.

Why do humans age?

Aging, or, “growing old” is a very interesting biological mechanism.  It fits the definition of the term “disease” in almost every sense.  Yet we, as well as the majority of species on this planet, are born with it and it would appear that our bodies are specifically designed to age and expire.

Take, for example, the telemeir.  A telemier is a strand of non-coding DNA that exists on the tails of our coding DNA strands.  Each time the cell divides, the telemier becomes shortened.  When the telemier is gone, the cell will no longer reproduce.  This is the principal cause of skin aging.  Your skin cells are constantly dying and reproducing.  Every time you cut yourself, the nearby skin cells must reproduce to produce new skin cells to fill in the gap.  But eventually there aren’t enough cells left with long enough telemiers.  They die and can’t be replaced.  So as we age, our skin becomes thinner, and appears “wrinkled” as it more closely hugs the bits it’s hiding – bones, tendons, veins, and so on.

Telemiers are a feature of DNA.  They evolved.  Our bodies evolved a self-destruct mechanism.  But why?  That doesn’t make any sense!

It’s not just us, either.  All mammals, all birds, and most reptiles have telemier strands on their DNA.  Their length in effect determines the life span of an animal.  I have a pet rat.  She is grey and elderly after only 2 years.  Why wouldn’t a rat who lives in total comfort and protection from predators not live to the same age as a human?

There are two primary reasons, both of which are entirely motivated by a cause much higher than individual survival – species survival.

The first reason that animals have a built-in expiration date is to encourage evolution.  In a species that allows its members to potentially live forever, the same individuals would be able to reproduce significantly more often.  This would have a net negative effect on diversity.  Each new generation has the potential to mutate and change.  If old generations are allowed to continue to reproduce with newer generations then it is more likely that any mutation would be bred out of a population since the “old blood” could mate with a mutated younger generation and possibly undo or dilute that mutation in their offspring.

It’s easy to see this principle in action.  One of the few families that we know that does not seem to have a fixed life expectancy is the crocodilians.  We also know that crocodiles are much the same as they were many millions of years ago.  They have evolved very little.  Why?  Because crocodiles are as close to perfect for their particular niche – river predators – as they possibly could be.  They don’t need to mutate further to enhance their survival so they don’t.  This also means that it wouldn’t matter much if a 200 year old crocodile mated with a 2 year old crocodile.  Their genome hasn’t varied much in millions of years.

The other, more pressing reason that creatures like us age for the benefit of the species is demonstrated by one of the two major human causes of death: cancer.  A cancer is essentially a mutation in a cell’s DNA that typically results in abnormal cellular reproduction.  In many cases the cell’s normal reproduction is supplanted by runaway reproduction which results in a tumor.  These cancerous cells begin to interfere with the functioning of the organism or at the very least begin to starve it of resources as these large, useless cell masses are still sucking oxygen and nutrients.   The result is usually death.

You might think, then, that we ought just let cancer solve the aging problem for us.  Since it is virutally inevitable that our species will at some point develop cancer on a long enough timeline, why do we also need to become frail and age as we naturally do?  Wouldn’t death by cancer correct the issues associated with the decreased diversity that non-aging would produce?

Possibly, but there’s another issue.  Cancer is a mutation caused by contamination of DNA, and in humans, it often happens after fifty years or so, due to the fact that we are constantly being bombarded with things that can damage DNA.  Sunlight, for example, causes melanoma.  Ultraviolet radiation can corrupt skin DNA, and eventually, that radiation might corrupt the DNA of a skin cell in such a way that it becomes a malignant tumor.  But it’s not just the sun.  It’s cosmic rays from space not all of which are blocked by Earth’s magnetic field.  It’s also trace toxins that we can’t help but be exposed to no matter how careful we are.  In the food we eat, the water we drink, everything we come in contact with.

Normally, said mutations result in cancer which kills the person.  But imagine a world in which we did not age naturally.  Although we humans in our present state are very susceptible to cancer, not everybody gets it.  If we didn’t age and die, over time, the people who appeared to be largely immune to cancer – or lucky enough to avoid it, through chance or behavioral practices – would be the ones who kept living.  They’d keep reproducing, too.  Look at crocodiles and sharks.  They don’t appear to die from cancer very often.  Whatever it is they do, they don’t seem to be as affected by DNA mutations as we are.

The key here, though, is that it is virtually guaranteed that even in these people who appear to be “immune” to cancer will experience DNA mutations.  DNA is simply not that resilient.  These people simply have not contracted fatal cancer, because either their body can defend against it (which our body does, for a large variety of mini-cancers that spring up in our bodies every day but we don’t notice because our immune systems handle it silently).  In a population filled with people who don’t age and die, over time, the DNA in their ovaries or testicles would become mutated.  And thus, they would pass down their damaged DNA to their offspring.  And now the species itself has begun to go down the path of corruption due to accumulated lifetimes of damage.

Although evolution is really nothing more than a series of mutations, remember that mutations go both ways.  Sometimes they help the individual survive better, but the vast majority of the time, the mutation in fact harms the invidual.  Evolution is also a very slow process.  Baby steps.  Hyper-mutation has a highly negative impact on species evolution as a whole, for the same reason that a scientist attempts to isolate one variable to test in every experiment.  When one is trying to tinker with a system to change its behavior, the smart one changes one thing at a time and observes the result.  If the result is positive, one keeps the change in place and then makes another change.  If the result is negative, he undoes it and tries something else.  I’ve just described evolution.  The dumb one, on the other hand, changes every aspect of the system at the same time and they tests.  Even when one notices an improvement using this technique, it’s not possible to isolate which action caused the positive outcome and therefore he has no idea which direction to continue in.  I’ve just described what happens when a large number of mutations occur in a single generation of a species.

If human beings are ever going to cure aging, we’ll first need to find a way to combat these two problems.  We are mostly immune to significant evolution – we’re terminal, like the crocodile – so the primary problem we must solve is how to keep our DNA intact.  Coincidentally, this is also the primary problemt that keeps us stranded on Earth.  Even a modest six month voyage to Mars would very likely kill the astronauts with cancer before they got there since we have no way of artificially shielding them from the enormous amounts of cosmic radiation they’ll receive along the way.  Their DNA is going to be bombarded with high doses of damaging radiation.

If we can’t shield them, then we have to repair them.  There is no way to prevent our DNA from becoming contaminated by our environments even here on earth, although we’re protected by our atmosphere and it takes a lot longer.  As a programmer, I can tell you the algorithm: for each cell in the human body, inspect its DNA.  If its DNA does not match the genome recorded at the time of your birth, replace it or repair it with a copy of your original DNA.  Simple enough.  But simple is not easy.  The means to check and repair the DNA of every cell in the human body – of which their are trillions – are still science fiction at this point.  The two most promising techniques would be some type of nano-machine or a retrovirus (custom made for each invidiual, of course – another very tall order).  If we had the ability to make body-wide DNA repairs, we would theoritically be able to restore our telemiers as well, thereby circumventing natural aging.

Will we see it in our lifetimes?  It is certainly plausible.  I suppose it depends on how old you are.

Chicken or Egg?

Over the past few years I’ve been able to observe first hand the devolution of a person into a liberal.  My findings are not surprising but I thought I would share them with you.

It is, I would think, not very hotly disputed that a person’s political outlook, particularly when young, is largely shaped by upbringing.  A young person brought up in a conservative household is likely to start out as a conservative.  What, then, changes them into a liberal?

Liberals, many of whom are college educated, love to sneer with intellectual elitism at the undisputable fact that a large number of proto-conservatives end up becoming liberals after four years of immersion at a liberal arts college.  In their minds, this somehow proves that only stupid people are conservative because young people are very likely to become liberal during college.  And since college means education, they make the leap that only uneducated people are not liberal.

Of course it doesn’t take a genius to conclude that if one is allowed to blame upbringing for conservatism and portary that negatively, one should not simultaneously be allowed to exalt liberal indoctrination at college campuses as though it were the product of free thought.  If the family environment creates a conservative, and the college environment creates a liberal, shouldn’t we view any “creation” process in equal terms?  Of course not, because a small house in the hills of Appalachia is a den of ignorance to be derided whereas the shimmering ivory Berkeley campus is a palace of worship deserving of all praise.  In the eyes of a liberal, anyway.  Once made, a liberal must fall over themselves to help these poor unforunate ignoramuses who live in places other than metro areas think and be just like them.  Interesting contradiction, don’t you think?

Anyway, I have  observed a person raised in a markedly conservative household who attended college only brielfy, as she was abruptly expelled for failure to actually do course work.

Since I have known her, she becomes more liberal by the day.  And I find that each liberal virtue she extolls seems to originate in her mind only after the virtue is in someway relevant to her.  I won’t go into the details – use your imagination.

Another less positive way to put it would be like this: the more she fails at life, the more liberal she becomes.  It would appear that her liberal beliefs emerge only to justify a course in life she’s already chosen to take.  Her beliefs did not arise independently.  They exist only as an excuse to justify actions in the past.  Or as a justification for why she isn’t doing what the rest of us are doing, such as respectably contributing to our civilization.  As opposed to whining about it.

I’ve seen the same thing in my socialist cousin.  The more inept she becomes, socially, physically, economically, the more socialist she becomes.  She is unable to fit into regular society because she is unintersting, unattractive, and she majored in something stupid which has no possibility of providing a career even lucrative enough to support herself in the most meager of ways.  She’s been out of school for over a year now and to my knowledge does not have any kind of gainful employment.  Having come from a reasonably respectable background, she is unwilling to be poor and work a minimum wage job.  She has a colllege degree!  Therefore, instead of making something of herself, she’s going to bitch and moan about the “capitalist” system which explains why in the game of life she is a loser.  The problem isn’t her, it’s the rules of the game.

The same can be said about exhibit A.  It was made clear to her from an early age, and not only because her parents said so but because the entire world said so, that life has rules.  If you want to live, you’ll eat.  If you want to eat, you need money.  If you want money, you need a job.  And so on.  You might call these notions “dated” or “antiquated” or even possibly “conservative” but you’d be better calling them “common sense.”

In order to achieve these things – namely, the machinations that produce a comfortable life – we prepared her as best we could.  Gave her a high school education (which is free), gave her the chance at college (which she subsequently squandered), and plenty of advice (which she ignored).  Now she exists in a type of limbo with no real plans for the future, or at least none that could ever be actualized withot the help (read: charity) of someone who does play by the rules of life and did succeed where she failed.  In other words, created the means to live, like money, a place to sleep, a healthy work/life balance, and so on.  In other words, won.

The more she realizes these facts that all of us already see, the more liberal she is getting.  She is falling into the same trap that my idiot cousin is falling into, namely, “it’s not me, it’s society.  We need to change.  We need to progress.”  Right.  Of course.  Same shit, different flies.  You couldn’t or wouldn’t play by the rules so you need to change them for everyone to suit yourself.  If only you had that power.

Unfortunately there are thousands, if not millions, of people like this who simply cannot succeed in the game of life for a variety of reasons and they incorrectly conclude that the rules need to be changed to better accomodate them when in reality they should just be honest with themselves and admit that they, not society, are in fact the problem that needs to be solved.

First!

Enjoy:

http://rebelliousvanilla.wordpress.com

Humanity? Please.

My misguided socialist cousin thought this quote from some nonsense progressive publication would be the best way to show her respect for the country that gives her luxuries most of the billions of people who ever lived would kill to have, such as luxuries to not actually work but instead whine about a world she’ll never change no matter how much she tweets about injustice:

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

You know what I say?

Fuck the human race.

And fuck the author of this quote for being such a bumbling idiot.  So many people are so quick to jump on the bandwagon of self loathing when it comes to the United States of America, such as my stupid cousin who never has anything good to say about us and instead only whines that we’re imperialist monsters, but yet they are so insurmountably blind to a rather glaring fact that it’s staggering.

If America is so evil and awful, what makes you possibly think the rest of the world isn’t?

Or, should I say, wouldn’t be if the shoe were on the other foot.  It’s impossible to truly speculate exactly how any other given nation, culture, or group would react if they were handed the power our government currently wields.  But based on everything history has taught us, and based on everything we see of the world as it is now, how could you possibly believe they’d do a better job?

Let’s take one of my cousin’s favorite topics: Israel is an evil oppressor and Palestine is a poor oppressed victim of imperialism.

If Hamas had the military capability that the United States had, what do you think they would do?

Or Al Qaeda?  The answer is they would kill millions and millions and millions of people.  If you think the holocaust was bad you ain’t seen nothing yet.  Imagine a theocratical radical muslim regime that already today rattles its sabres to the effect that all infidels must be killed so that Allah might return.  Imagine they actually had the might to enact that plan.  Guess what, cousin?  You’d be dead.  Or in a burka, which might as well be the same thing.

I’d rather be a colony of Israel than of Palestine any day.

(And also, fuck you, socialist cousin.  I’d love to see how kind you’d be to Palestine if they were firing rockets on Pittsburgh.)

If any given despotic African regime – and of those there are many, so take your pick – had the military capability that the United States had, what do you think they would do?

These people are known to roll into the villages of their rebel enemies and slowly hack innocent people – men, women, and chilren – limb from limb with dusty machetes.  They take pleasure in positioning their limbless victims in plain view of the pile of limbs that used to be them to further their suffering while they bleed to death.  Do you want these people to have unmanned aerial assault vehicles?

The point is:

If America is no different or morally superior to any other empire, then doesn’t it stand to reason that we’re no different or morally superior to the “human race” at large?

Empires don’t become empires through some kind of grand clandestine conspiracy.  They become empires through the natural evolution of human civilization.  All people and all nations are competing against one another at all times and eventually one will rise to the top and stay on top until it falls.

We Americans are incredibly lucky to be living as citizens of a virtually invincible empire at the height of its power during the most luxurious period of human existence.

If that’s not something to be thankful for, I don’t know what is.  As for pledging my allegiance to the human race?  Fuck that.  America isn’t perfect but it sure as shit beats any alternative, and I’m proud to call myself an American.