I saw on the news yesterday that congress is considering legislation that will restrict youth’s ability to drive:

U.S. Senator Chris Dodd and U.S. Representatives Tim Bishop and Michael Castle were chief sponsors of the bill which will push states to adopt the Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) program. The importance of the bill was emphasized with the display of two vehicles that had been totalled in a car crash where teenagers were killed.

The main focus of this campaign and proposed federal act is to save the lives of our teenagers. Auto accident-related death is the number one killer of young people between the ages of 15 and 20. On average, 10 teenagers are killed in car crashes, either as drivers or passengers, each and every day in the U.S.

I don’t oppose most of the law on principle. Having a graduated system where more and more rights are accumulated over time would indeed save lives. While it’s true that a portion of the teenage driver accidents is a result of inexperience which would be a problem whether you’re driving for the first time at 16 or 46, there’s no question that innate maturity also plays a role. To take the items one by one:

A 3-stage licensing process (learner’s permit and intermediate stage before unrestricted driver’s license)

This strikes me as reasonable. Having a system where increased privileges are earned could be a benefit to more than just driving.

A prohibition on unsupervised nighttime driving during the learner’s permit and intermediate stages

What about a sixteen or seventeen year old with a job? What if they’re coming home after football practice or some other extra-curricular activity? There are a lot of valid reasons for kids to be driving at night. Also, what if you’re 17 and in college? Curfews have exemptions for these sorts of things. Does this law?

A passenger restriction during the learner’s permit and intermediate stage (no more than 1 non-familial passenger under the age of 21 unless a licensed driver over 21 years of age is in the vehicle);

This could be an inconvenience for parents who have their kids carpool while driving to school or at home from practice. Clancy wants to apply this rule to our future kids whether it’s the law or not. I am less convinced. The safety stats are there, of course, but there is more to life than safety (my views are this are subject to change when I am actually responsible for taking care of a kid). In fact, a law would settle this disagreement with us and probably for the better. Our kids wouldn’t be at a social disadvantage if it were the law rather than us clipping their wings. Our kids wouldn’t lose out because some other parents let their kids do what we won’t let ours.

A prohibition on non-emergency use of cell phones and other communication devices, including text messaging, during the learner’s permit and intermediate stages;

No problem with these laws in theory, but they don’t work where they’ve already been tried with adults.

Age 16 for issuance of learner’s permit and full licensure at age 18;

See above for the problem with these age limitations. Also, there’s something to be said for allowing kids more freedom while their parents are able to look after them rather than when they’ve already left for college and already dealing with the potential of too much new freedom at once. But those are relatively thin objections. Still concerned about extra-curricular activities, jobs, and other reasons the kids might be out late, though.

Any other requirement adopted by the Secretary of Transportation, including learner’s permit holding period at least 6 months; intermediate stage at least 6 months; at least 30 hours behind-the-wheel, supervised driving by licensed driver 21 years of age or older; automatic delay of full licensure if permit holder commits an offense, such as DWI, misrepresentation of true age, reckless driving, unbelted driving, speeding, or other violations as determined by the Secretary.

No arguments here.

The other problem I have with this generally is that I don’t like this being determined on the federal level. Obviously, the ship has sailed on the federal government’s right to do this. But different states have different needs and different priorities and I don’t see anything wrong with that. This doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing that is inherently an interstate problem. I would likely be more supportive of this law in the state legislature than in congress itself.

A while back a woman sued a wireless telephone carrier because they accidentally blew the lid off of her affair:

The husband became suspicious when he noticed a number frequently called on the bill and, after dialing it, was told by a man who answered that he recently had a three-week affair with Nagy. He left Nagy and their children in August 2007.

“The affair was over,” Ms Nagy told Canwest News Service. “The thing that really hurt me is that it all came out not through my own doing.”

She blamed Rogers for the breakup, for having “breached my privacy.”

It’s pretty obvious that Rogers did in fact screw up when they started sending the bill home against her wishes. She may well have a legal case depending on the fine print. But… well… her culpability in what happened all but goes without saying.

Generally speaking, though, I am unsympathetic to the notion of privacy-amongst-spouses. Before getting married, I had assumed that I would have more rights than I apparently do when it comes to Clancy. It’s not that Clancy is a secret-keeper, but rather it’s dealing with third parties that the problem comes up.

Several years ago we got a call from a bill collector that said that Clancy owed them money. However, when I asked what it was about, they couldn’t tell me due to “privacy regulations.” At first, I didn’t really know what this meant because as far as I knew they were under no obligation (generally speaking) not to tell people about your debt. In fact, I’d read articles about collection agencies telling neighbors and others about the debt in order to shame them into paying. So why couldn’t they tell me what this debt was about? The answer came pretty quickly after thinking about it. It wasn’t so much debt collection regulations, but rather HIPAA regulations. It related to medical care and they couldn’t tell me that she had sought medical care. I asked this point-blank and the collector essentially confirmed that it was medical in nature.

She couldn’t tell me more than that and she wasn’t the only one. I tried to take over the task of paying the power bill when we were living in Cascadia and I couldn’t. They wouldn’t let me. It didn’t matter whether I was her husband or not.

In my view of marriage, this really shouldn’t be. Unless there is a legal separation in place or something like that, I believe that Clancy has the right to know what I owe and to whom. I believe that she has a right to my medical records. When it comes to her, I think that I waive rights of privacy.

The medical records question is a bit stickier, though, in practice. In Estacado, Clancy would have patients that were on birth control without the knowledge of her spouse. A combination of Catholicism and macho immigrant culture. I am extremely sympathetic to these women who don’t want to bear any more children but also don’t want to run headlong into her husband’s ideology. If she gets a shot and he doesn’t know about it, it helps keep the peace. A peace based on dishonesty, but a peace nonetheless. His having access to her medical bill compromises that. I’m not comfortable with that, but I am not sure that sways my thinking all that much.

Of course, I say all this and often there are things that I don’t want to know. While I would try to talk a girlfriend out of having an abortion, under the assumption that I couldn’t it would probably be better off for everyone if I simply didn’t know about it. The same would probably apply to a wife, though Clancy and I are of a similar mind on the ethics of the issue and so it isn’t quite so much an issue. Had I married staunchly pro-choice Julianne, it might be more of an issue. Then again, pro-choice as she was, it’s unlikely she would have aborted a child in marriage the same way that she probably would have if one of our pregnancy scares had turned out to be the real deal. Would I want to know about it? Probably not. Should I have no right to know about it? Murkier. Keeping in mind here that the question is not whether abortion is some sort of special thing that a husband should have the right to know about but rather whether it would constitute some sort of exception to what I generally believe a spouse ought to be able to know about.

Also murkying the waters here is the question of STD testing. Now I believe that a spouse should be able to know if he or she is at risk of an STD from his or her spouse. However, what if a test comes up negative? Does a wife have the right to know that a test was run? It would certainly raise questions. On one hand, I don’t think that a husband or wife has a “right” to keep infidelity a secret. On the other, if getting testing means his affair is more likely to be discovered then he is less likely to get tested to begin with and who does that serve? It’s not dissimilar to the question of STD testing in general. If someone knowingly spreads HIV they can be tried to murder and it’s hard to argue that they shouldn’t. However, does that then mean the secret is not getting tested?

During the whole Schiavo mess, one of the reasons I came down in favor of pulling the plug had nothing to do with a “right to die” (though I support one) and a lot more to do with marriage. Her husband’s motivations may have been suspect, but she signed over that sort of decision-making to him when she married him. I’m even tempted to say that a spouse’s wish ought to preempt a living will, though I would need to think more on that.

Anyhow, for non-medical issues such as paying the power bill or even paying off a medical bill even if the spouse does not know what for, I lean pretty strongly in favor of a spouse being given the authority to pay bills whether overdue or current. And I think that the husband has a right to see if she’s been calling a lover. The legal question of whether or not Rogers’s policy gave her a reasonable expectation that he would not find out and if that has some sort of standing… well, that depends on what the law is and not what I think it should be.

“It’s not my fault” is still, of course, a pretty lame cop-out, regardless of what the law is or should be.

As said previously, Lisby is a mutt. Above is the before and after picture from her trip at the groomers. I can’t even get consensus on age, much less contributing breeds. So, what do y’all see?

(a) English Setter (previous owner listed dog as, though they had no specific knowledge)
(b) English Sheepdog (I think they meant “Sheepdog” and not “Setter”)
(c) Sheltie (what she was listed as at the shelter)
(d) Poodle (no or little shedding, also listed as at the shelter)
(e) Terrier/Yorkie (Groomer’s most specific guess, minimal shedding)
(f) Terrier/General (looks kinda like it with the haircut, though I suppose with a haircut you can make her look like a lot of things.
(g) Schnauzer (wrong color, for sure, though overall build is consistent. Plus, ears are very much uncropped schnauzer ears, though it may be a more common ear than I am aware.
(h) ________?

The fact that it’s so hard to tell delights me since I’m such a mutt-lover, though of course it’s the first question people ask when they find out I got a dog.

In response to this WSJ piece, I wrote a comment on League of Ordinary Gentlemen that I wanted to reproduce:

Imagine how much more successful you would be if you locked your kid in the basement with nothing but a chair, a light, and a bunch of books. Then they’d read Dickens like the dickens. No need to go crazy, of course. You can let them out for school and little league and stuff. Of course, when all the kids are talking about video games that he’s never played and TV shows he knows nothing about, he will be suitably insulated from the ability to make friends by virtue of the fact that he will have little to talk about except a bunch of books nobody else has read and little league. He won’t be able to talk about Major League Baseball cause he won’t be able to watch any games, but I’m sure they’ll be just as interested in the triple he hit on Tuesday night than the local pennant race.

Now, if we’re going to be sincere about this, we also have to watch what they read. As Mr. Spence points out, if you let them read what they’re interested in you’re actually just coddling them. Better to stick to non-fiction since fiction is full of useless things that may be “riveting” and “engrossing” but we’ve already established that it’s not important that they enjoy themselves by their own standards. They’ll learn more reading books about molecular biology. Or the dictionary.

There would be exceptions, of course. You would want them to read the classics, so that you can brag to all of your friends that your 6th grader has read Moby Dick. Unlike their peers, your peers matter.

I’m not going to argue that reading is not a good thing and that young boys would be better off if they read more. Nor am I going to argue that fart books are the literary equivalent of Moby Dick or that video games are just as good for kids as reading.

However, I find the entire premise behind this really distasteful. Basically, if you bore kids enough they will have no choice but to read. If you leave them only those books that you are sure they must find interesting then they will find those books interesting. And it’s true, to an extent, but that’s not what reading is for. I don’t argue that you should let kids do whatever they want or everything their peers are allowed to do, but surely there is some sort of balance to be struck here. Isn’t there?

Is reading (not just reading, but reading precisely what you want them to be reading) really so important that you would deprive them of the alternatives? Deprive them of the “recreational internet” which is actually full of all manner of stuff they can learn about the second it pique their interest? Deprive them of movies which allow them not just to construct the imagery as best they can but actually experience things happening right before their eyes? Or the thrill and excitement of not just reading about exciting things but actually sort of experiencing them and working your way through them in the form of video games? Is anything but text on a page illegitimate?

I have no love for video games. The only two gaming consoles I have are the PlayStation 2 and the N64, which is one generation and two generations displaced from current. But man, the more I think about the attitude presented in this piece the more it brings out the intemperate side of me. By all means, make sure that they’re not living their lives in a digital world. But don’t deprive them of the experiences that they can provide.

The Republican nominee for Secretary of State, Damon Dunn, has apparently only voted once. Should this be considered a worthwhile campaign issue? It strikes as one of those things that seems really important when a candidate you oppose is discovered to be a non-voter but that you kind of shrug off when it’s someone that’s speaking to your views.

One of the big issues in Delosa is not the non-voting population, but rather the Democratic primary voter in the Republican primary. Delosa is mostly a Republican state, but not that long ago it was a conservative Democratic one. People who were not married to the other party currently vote in the GOP primary but used to vote in the Democratic one. So just about every election during the Republican primary, some candidate in some race is running ads saying that his opponent last voted in the Democratic Primary. It’s usually not too damning unless they say something like “I’m a lifelong Republican.” Sometimes, in fact, they do. One guy running for Insurance Commissioner actually sued his rival for running a clip of him saying in a commercial that he’s a lifelong Republican (followed by proof that he voted in the Democratic primary) by alleging copyright infringement. This, of course, resulted in the clip being shown every time the story came up on the local news. The lawsuit was dropped.

Anyhow, back to the main subject of politicians that vote… it seems to be one of those things that should matter but that is so far behind ideology that it’s hard to muster up a whole bunch of care. Maybe if I’m voting in a competitive primary with lots of candidates that are reasonably close (or far) from my ideology I might consider it relevant… but even then, unless it’s part of a larger pattern of Don’t Like I am likely to throw my vote behind whichever candidate is most likely to win in the general election. So it’s kind of hard to imagine a scenario in which it would actually affect my vote.

I don’t watch a whole lot of NFL since I am mostly into the college game. But for some reason today there were numerous games of interest and so I watched. Specifically, the New Orleans Saints against the Atlanta Falcons. The game went into overtime. They showed the Falcons’ aborted drive and the Saints’ following drive which ended in a missed field goal… then they stopped showing the game. What the Heck?! They said that NFL Rules meant that they had to leave the game but they would “keep us posted” and now they’re showing Howie Long, Terry Bradford, Jimmie Johnson, and others talking about other games in the league. Dude… the defending national champions are in an overtime game in a divisional game and I don’t get to see it?!

Why would the NFL do this?! I can only think of two possibilities. First, it’s not the NFL so much as FOX that is the culprit because FOX paid some lesser amount for only x-hours of play. Second, the NFL is trying to get you to get the Season Pass, where maybe the game is still showing? But most people don’t even have the option of getting the Season Pass because it’s only available with DirecTV.

What’s particularly strange about this is after the Heidi Bowl it was the NFL that demanded that games be shown in their entirety and not be pre-empted by other programming. Now, this didn’t apply to overtime (which didn’t exist back then), but you would think that the same spirit would apply.

Does anyone know what the rule is here that would force FOX to turn away from an exciting overtime game?

I have just been notified that the Falcons won. They let me see the game-winning kick in replay. Oh, boy.

Lame.

-{via Phi, who embeds their other one involving Belle from Beauty and the Beast.}-

How the Cheap Revolution Confuses Policymakers.

A look at radio station branding. Do call letters really matter? In Colosse, most of the radio station branding names (”The Zone” or “Ultra 106″ or whatever) bear little resemblence to the call letters, which are often shared with TV stations of no relation. When someone says WCDA, you don’t know whether it’s a sports radio station or the local CBS affiliate unless it’s specified.

James Fallows on the dichotomies of China, which has problems and may be turning Japanese, which will never embrace Christianity.

An alternative to incarceration? I’m all for trying new things, though I have mixed feelings about this. The exposure I got to our parole and early release system when I was living in Deseret did not seem to be working either for the parolees or for those around them. And I’m not sure that I agree that “incarceration in America is a failure” when crime rates started going down when incarceration started up. It might fail as a deterrent, but seems to have value as a incapacitation. But it is expensive, unwieldy, and sometimes morally questionable. If we could achieve the same results doing something else, that would be really nice.

Middle Class Parents Exhausing, Say Babies.

Nick Clegg and the LDP of the UK prove how destructive winning can be.

Some of you may know of Alex Jones, the hard-core Truther behind “Loose Change” (a theory of how THE GOVERNMENT was behind it all). He’s a hard-core anti-government dude. But apparently some other Truthers and hard core anti-government dudes have it in for him because he… married a Jew.

Kansas State University has apparently been bumped from the “Top 25 universities list” list from Kaplan/Newsweek. It was ranked #16, apparently due in part to a clerical error suggesting that KSU is a selective university. The number they accidentally gave Kaplan was a 55% acceptance rate (ie they accept just over half of applicants) when the number actually should be 98%. Oops. They apparently gave Collegeboard the same inaccurate number.

Various observations about Lisby, the new dog:

1. Nobody really know what she is. The Animal Shelter said “sheltie/poodle” but I’m not seeing the sheltie. Poodle, maybe. The groomer said with little hesitation “terrier” with the yorkie singled out. Her ears look very schnauzerish. Her previous owners identified her as an English Setter. Whatever I have, it’s a pretty genuine mutt. The best kind. Whether due to poodle or yorkie or something else, though, she does not seem to shed at all. I’ve found one hair in the car and none in the basement where we are staying.
2. Age is also an unknown. The entry on the shelter’s website said 5, but another one there said 4 or 5 but then the adoption paperwork said 6. The groomer doubts she is even four. She has great, great teeth, which is usually the sign of a younger dog.
3. She was a shaggy dog when I got her, but had to get a pretty close haircut to get the mats out of her fur. This works out well for Clancy who is more of a fan of short-haired dogs since that’s what she’s used to. I’m looking forward to her hair coming back.
4. Clancy has taken a fair liking to her, as far as dogs go. She’s been a really good sport.
5. Behaviorally she has been fine. She is completely housetrained and there haven’t even been any hints of accidents. The closest that happened is that she started sounding like she was going to vomit, but she didn’t.
6. She hasn’t really eaten, which has me a bit concerned. This could be due to a couple of things. Possibly it’s the new dog food and I’m going to need to transition from the old (low-quality) to the new (high-quality, which they recommended). I stopped by the shelter to see if I could buy some of her standard fare from them. They weren’t open. I’ll try again today.
7. The other possible reason for the lack of hunger is due to something that the groomer picked up on. She apparently has an irritated or inflamed anus. I don’t know what a normal doggie anus looks like, but it does look irritated. More to the point, though, about half the time she yelps when taking a dump. If taking a dump hurts, I could imagine that eating is not an enticing proposition. Vet appointment tomorrow.
8. She doesn’t like milk bones. I’ve never seen that. Now I have a box of milk bones that she has no interest in. Unless that, too, is related to the above.
9. Her personality quirks are interesting to observe. She will not go into a door ahead of me without serious cajoling. I suspect her former owners used to close the door behind her a lot. I’ve had to do it once, to date.
10. She also really doesn’t like the leash. Not because she’s itching to escape. She doesn’t have much of an escape instinct, it doesn’t seem. Her previous owners commented on the turn-in sheet that she never tried to escape their unfenced back yard. She’s shed the collar twice, but in both cases she just sat there looking at me after having done it. It also took her less than ten minutes outside to find an escape route out of our fenced back yard, but even then she got to the other side and just stayed there, looking at me.
11. She hasn’t taken to the crate at all. It’s hard to entice her without any treats that she actually lights. I may have to find some sort of alternative treat to get her in there. It’s possible that the crate I got - the recommended size - is just smaller than she is comfortable with.
12. We’ve been living in the basement, though I’m starting to introduce her to the upstairs. I’ve been catching up on A&E’s Rubicon series on the TV down here while keeping her company. I have to leave her to go eat or use the restroom, though. She does not like being left. Given that she had a dog at previous home and spent a month or so at the shelter, I don’t think that she is used to being alone.
13. We renegotiated our lease so that we will not have to pay increased rent for having a dog. The downside is that they requested only one dog. They say that they’re flexible in the future but they just want to see how it goes. Considering that they waived the rent increase when they had no real reason to (we’d agreed to it, after all) I’ll take them at their word. They also agreed to a dug run in the back if necessary, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary.
14. I’ll be addressing the gate problem (ie Lizby’s means of escape) with some chicken wire either sometime today or tomorrow.
15. She knows how to sit but doesn’t know the word. You have to say “down”. In the couple days I’ve known her, she has learned the word “run!” but I’m having difficulty with “heel”. She’s a pretty good source of exercise. We go on sprints when we walk and she seems to enjoy it. My legs are already sore. The main goal is to tire her out so that she will be restful when we get back.

Lemondrop celebrates that (at least in a certain segment of the population) women are outearning men:

According to a recent study, if you’re a single woman between the ages of 22 and 30, and live in a larger city, chances are you’re earning more than your male counterparts. About 8 percent more, specifically.

While it may not seem like that big of a deal, that 8 percent sliver really is — mainly because the median salary for a woman with a bachelor’s degree was 33 percent lower than the salary of a man with the same degree nationally.

Now, as a general rule, celebrating that you make more than the other group is sort of in bad taste. It’s not unlike college enrollment when women surpassed men in this area and a lot of feminists talked about the 57% female rate at some universities as something worthy of celebration. In a way it is, of course, except that in that scenario now only 43% of those going to those colleges are men. Likewise, celebrating an 8% advantage for women in the above demographic is also celebrating an 8% disadvantage for men, if we’re of the mind that all things should be equal. Especially considering that the female advantage in this area came directly at the expense of men. Instead, there is sometimes an implicit mindset that anywhere that men advance it is because of sexism and anywhere women advance it is hard earned. Sometimes this is true, but sometimes it isn’t.

The article moves on to a pet peeve of mine, which are blanket statistics such as women making 80 cents on the dollar compared to men. These statistics are often bereft of context. They look at all men or all women that meet some sort of basic criteria and then treat them as though they are equal even though “full time” can mean anywhere from 35 to 65 hours a week and it can include someone that took off several years to raise children and someone that has worked solidly for fifteen.

Comparing women with college degrees with men with college degrees is problematic because not all college degrees are considered equal. I don’t mean to stereotype, but women often seem attracted to college degrees with less vocational utility. A college degree can mean a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering (where men are more prevalent) or it can mean a bachelor’s in Cultural Studies (where women are). These two people are not going to make the same amount of money coming out of college and sexism is not to blame for it. Now, we can go into the reasons as to why men go into engineering and women into more soft studies and if we’re interested in exploring the reasons for the discrepancy it’s a worthwhile discussion. A more worthwhile one than vague discussions about wage discrimination with the implied explanation being a blanket sexism.

There’s also a problem comparing men without a college degree to anybody in that men without an education have career options that women often don’t (or don’t want) for reasons that have little or nothing to do with sexism. Unless women are really interested in carrying crap on a construction site or until police departments reach parity or until they want to work 7-days-on-7-days-off on an oil rig, men are going to benefit from these decent-wage jobs that don’t require as much in the way of education (though police departments are starting to). These options come at an extreme cost to men that women often wouldn’t want to bear. Men are injured and die on the job at rates that far, far, far outstrip those of women. That is the price they pay for either not going to college or for not having the brains for better work. It’s not a monetary price, but it can be a steep one. I should also add that it’s the existence of these jobs that ultimately make me unconcerned about the degree-gap that men have. I should also add that discrimination against women in some of these fields that do not require physical strength and that women may well be happy to work could well be a problem.

I am not discounting the role of sexism in this. I think it’s real and it exists. I believe teachers have until relatively recently been underpaid precisely because it is women’s work and you could historically get away with it because the profession was filled with women that had few career options due to sexism and were less likely to be the primary breadwinner for their family. Ditto for nurses. And more recently it may or may not be a coincidence that the gap between family practitioners and surgeons has been growing as more and more women become family practitioners.

Seeing as how my wife is the primary breadwinner, the notion of wage discrimination is of greater importance to me than of most people. The notion that women are discriminated against has become a very real issue. And as I have begun to take it more seriously, I consider accusations of sexism to be more credible than I did when I was a single guy. It’s harder to have faith in the benevolence of men when suddenly their possible sexism against women actually hurts you.

To the article’s credit, after describing the problem (too vaguely for my taste), it then focuses more on what women can do about it rather than becoming an appeal for a very problematic “fair wage law” or something like that. Instead it focuses on women doing some of the things that men that may be giving them an advantage. I think that this is a positive thing to look at. Likewise, nudging women into college plans with actual career paths also seems worthwhile. Of course, we can do both of these things and still end up with a wage gap due to maternity absence spanning years and women choosing to work less hours so that they can pick up their kids from school and women more interested in careers because they are more personally fulfilling rather than monetarily rewarding. The fact that these things will always exist and that it is (in my mind) impossible and ultimately unfair to expect employers to overlook the practical ramifications of these decisions makes me pretty uncomfortable with basic wage-gap statistics even though I am concerned about sexism in the workplace.

Some students at Alabama universities are suing in order put a stop to mandatory meal plans:

According to the Auburn University website, students who live on campus must pay a minimum of $995 per semester for the dining plan. Those living off campus must pay at least $300 for the program.

“These fees are not tuition and not related to class instruction,” attorney John F. Whitaker of Whitaker, Mudd, Simms, Luke & Wells said in a statement. “Instead, these food fees are mandated because these state schools have agreed to give certain food vendors exclusive control over these student food purchases in exchange for millions of dollars being paid back to the school. The students themselves are given no option.”

Compass Group USA and Thompson Hospitality Services, both from Delaware, are food vendors specifically named in the lawsuit.

Southern Tech University’s policies requiring meal plans was, I believe, limited only to those that lived in campus. I lived on campus all four years and there was never a semester that I did not spend the entire debit. Even so, the policy used to make me angry. It wasn’t actually the existence of the policy, which the Alabama students are objecting to, but the way that the university used to want it both ways.

It seems to me that campus food ought to fall under one of two categories. Either it is there to make a profit or it is there to serve the students. I am actually okay either way. If they simply told vendors “Hey, rent this space and sell food to our students and faculty!” that would certainly be fair. The university can get some money for renting out the space and people have eating options that they can take advantage of or not. For people like me, if we were to choose “not” then we can stock up our fridges and take it from there. Granted, the options surrounding the university in the seedy part of town were somewhat limited. So really, they likely had our money anyway. If only they would have just given us the choice.

But sometimes you can’t give people a choice and I understand that. I mean, sometimes you have to force everybody to pay something so that the businesses can be profitable. Now frankly, I question the business acumen of anybody that can set up shop at a university with a captive audience of 20,000 students walking from place to place and rarely driving off campus (seedy part of town, remember, plus parking spaces were golden) who cannot turn a profit. But that can also be attributed to the university charging too much for the space.

So it creates a situation where the university gets loads of money from the food providers in return for forcing the student population to pay the service provider in order to pay the exorbitant amount of money for the contract. In other words, we were essentially paying the university. However, because of the way that they have it set up, it seems like we’re not paying the university. We’re paying for food. Nevermind the portion of the food that is going to overhead which is going straight to the university.

While I would appreciate more transparency, even this doesn’t bother me all that much. I mean, in the end we’re making our check out to the university either way and they are needing and getting the money either way. What bugs me most about it is that it is advertised as a service to us. We have to do this in order to have food available on campus. Or something like that. However, it is only a service when they’re collecting money. When they’re deciding what they give back, it’s suddenly a business again.

It ultimately seemed (and seems) to me that if we’re all in this together and we all have to contribute, then there should be a premium put on actually serving us even when it is not entirely convenient to do so. I was not asking for a diner be open at 3 in the morning. I wa not even asking for things to be open during holidays. I was asking for breakfast. Around my junior year, they stopped serving breakfast at the dorms. Just. Stopped. Why? Oh, because they weren’t making a profit. I didn’t give a rats patoot if they weren’t making a profit. They’re not there to make a profit, we are told when they are collecting the money. They’re there so that we can eat. It seems to me the ability to get breakfast is one of the things that we are paying for when they tell us that we all have to buy food. It’s supposed to be for our convenience.

I recognize that to one extent or another that they’re getting our money either way. But the only argument for mandatory meal plans is that without them we won’t have the convenience of being able to eat conveniently on campus. But when breakfast isn’t available, or when lunch is served only from 11 to 1:00 (nevermind if you have an 11:30-1 class), or there is nothing open on entire weekends, it’s not really much of a convenience, is it? It’s a business. Except when they demand we pay. Then it’s a business. That can’t be boycotted. All of the downsides to either option.

-{via OTB}-

I’m picking up the doggie from the shelter today. We’re going to stop off at the groomer before coming back home. After that it will be all about getting her accustomed to her new house. My Internet time today will be pretty light.

-{This story is actually a retelling of a story I already told. I forgot that I had actually told it before. Interestingly, this one came to a slightly different conclusion than the other. I think that I went back and forth between conclusions when I used to think about it. Anyhow, I post this because I already wrote it up and there’s no sense in it going to waste. A lot of you weren’t around when I wrote it the first time, anyhow.}-

On Thursday I went to see a Nick Byers music show. Friday I drove to Ephesus for the Ephing Anime Convention. I mention Nick Byers because nothing good ever happens after Nick Byers.

The convention at the outset was uneventful for the most part, save for a blast from the past meeting someone that I hadn’t seen in years and almost hanging out with friends I haven’t seen in over a year. I did notice all the couples, which was interesting because conventions are full of unique people and it’s always nice to see unique people with atypical interests hooking up. I, of course, was only there with my guy friends, single as single could be.

I first saw Marla outside while I was catching a breath of fresh air. I didn’t think that much about her, really. Not until I saw her at the hotel bar. That meant that she was over twenty-one. At conventions, age can be a very deceptive thing. And Gannon’s viewpoint aside, over 21 in a land of 14 year old girls in Sailor Moon outfits is a good thing.

I was generally not good at picking up people in bars, and considering how often I went to them for musical acts, it’s something I ought to have been better at. So I decided that there was nothing to lose there (something told me - correctly - that she was not from Colosse). I went up to the bar, propped myself right beside her, and said “Hello.” It was a genuine accomplishment for me to be so cavalier.

We talked about the shuttle accident that had happened in the morning. Somehow connections to the military came up and she talked about her stint in the Navy reserves and I lamely mentioned that my father worked for the DoD and my brother for either a contractor or the CIA ha ha joking I think (he was very secretive about his work in our nation’s capital and had given me a CIA mug for Christmas). The conversations from there went everywhere and the next thing I knew we were talking about what we were like when we were younger, what we were like then, what we hoped to become. I talked about my career and she talked about college. I told her about the video production company I worked for and gave her my business card. We got to know each other at the bar for about two hours before we migrated to the balcony.

Out there, the conversation started drifting more towards relationships, where we established that we were both single. We’d both had a little to drink, so the conversation had flowed quite smoothly. Our inhibitions were gone. Thanks, Wurzbock. I kept thinking that if it wasn’t for the distance between Ephesus, where she lived, and Colosse, where I did, it could really turn in to something. When talking to women I found attractive and that were single and opening up to me, it was a fairly predictable thought-track.

The night wore on and we never had a lack of things to talk about, from goofy inebriated small-talk to our station in life and what we’re looking for in life and relationships.

I made a special point to look at the back of her admissions tag. She had my business card, I figured, so it was only fair that I know her full name, which is on the back of all the tags. “Marla Fitch?” I thought to myself, remembering a girl I knew a long time ago with the last name. But that wasn’t her name, that was just an assumption on my part because I saw the F and the top part of the T. I removed my thumb and corrected myself.

To the bar, to the balcony, the bar, the balcony, our talking continued. We started making more and more physical contact. I’d say something and place my hand on her shoulder. In the bar She’d chastise me for something and tap my hand, then leave it placed on top of mine. Outside, I put my arms around her and she put her hand on my leg.

Then there was a moment. You know, that moment. But the timing wasn’t right seeing as how my best friend Clint was sitting right across the way and there was another couple there and… so I took a raincheck. Okay, not then, but what the hell. She lived in Ephesus. Nothing to lose.

My best friend went back inside, the couple other people left, and we were alone. It didn’t take long for me to make good on my word.

Once we’d broken that threshold, the evening began to speed up. We didn’t really talk about it at first. In fact, prior to that we’d never even mentioned the prospect of an ‘us’ and, to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted one. Nothing to lose, but not a whole lot to gain, either, except headaches.

Shortly after, we were joined by a crowd of people enjoying the fresh air. A young man with a goatee and sunglasses in the dark began playing his guitar for his friends. As Marla and I slow-danced to “Hotel California,” I decided that I wanted this to be for real. I just had no idea how to tell her that. I had no idea on what basis I could even imagine such a thing.

After another trip to the bar and back out to the balcony, I was looking out at the state capital absorbing it all with her under my arm. My mind was awash in alcohol, but I was trying to wade through it when she asked, “So what happens when you go back to Colosse?”

I told her that I wasn’t good at or comfortable with flings. She backed off and asked what I meant by that. Our inebriation was immediately put on hold while we discussed it. Three hours. Not a deal-killer, really. We both really wanted to try. “What can I do not to mess this up?” she asked.

Whatever my reply was, it was an outstanding one. That’s all I remember. Our next trip to the bar and she asked for another business card. She wrote her phone number on the back of it and put it on the bar. Balcony, bar. Bar, Balcony. By the end we were planning a trip together to Ponchartrain. The end of the evening was upon us as her friends arived to take her home.

The next morning, there was one image that was frozen in my mind. The card with her number sitting on the bar with my mind telling me “I probably shouldn’t leave it there. I might forget it.” Which, of course, I had.

I went back to the convention and she was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t remember her actual last name for the life of me with my mind only remembering “Fitch.”

I spent the next week or two trying to track her down, but with only “Marla” in my memory, it was pretty tough. At some point I remembered that my friend Hubert’s then-girlfriend worked at the admissions desk and had a list of the people at the convention. But she didn’t have a record of any Marla. Then, about five days later it came to me when I heard the last name on the radio. Flynn. From there it was pretty easy.

There was no grand reunion. I never saw her again. I called a couple times and she wasn’t home. She was at work. Except that she had told me that she was unemployed. I went to Ephesus again (moving a trip I had already planned a couple weeks out and stopped by. Her folks were nice, but there was… something… in the way that they told me she wasn’t home. Like I wasn’t supposed to be there. And I wasn’t. She’d had time to call me back if she had wanted to. Despite having planned it, my drive there was pretty ridiculous. My mind was having difficulty grasping the 60-to-0 that had happened. The thought occurred to me that in addition to having a job that she hadn’t told me about that there might be a boyfriend. In the end, what did it really matter?

There was really insufficient information to have really learned anything from the whole exercise. In “sour grapes” mode, I started remembering the things she did that I actually found kind of irritating. A fake accent. Jokes that weren’t funny. Her domination of the conversation. Then I decided to forget all that and remember that I actually, successfully picked someone up in a bar. That had never happened to me before. I had been picked up before, but that was it. Sure, it was illusory in that there was something wrong with the situation. And there was no sex involved (though she had actually asked, more than once, where I was staying and expressed concern that I might disturb the friend I was staying with if I came in too late and maybe I should get a hotel room). Ahh, well. Full victories were scarce enough that a partial victory would have to suffice.

Clancy bought some smoked turkey sausage a few weeks ago and warned me not to eat it all up like I did the last time because she might have a use for it and would want it to be there if she did. I gave it a week or so and then chowed down. I told myself that I would simply get some more next time I was out. Then I ate that one. It’s become a dietary staple. I keep waiting to get tired of it, but it hasn’t happened yet. But I always buy one or two when I go out… for Clancy.

I think it’s wrong, but I get a secret satisfaction whenever an ardent vegetarian I know has to start eating meat again for health reasons. This has happened a couple times over the last few months.

Eating “vegetable”-flavored high-fiber crackers along with fat-free cream cheese is doubly good for me. First, it has less fat and more fiber than what I would otherwise be eating. Second, it’s really, really easy to stop eating after a few bites. The perfect snack!

I find two of my dietary credos really in conflict with one another. One, don’t eat if you’re not hungry (and there’s no social obligation to eat). Two, make sure to eat the Magic Cereal (or something) for breakfast every day. I’ve lately not been hungry when I get out of bed. I’ve generally been going by the first creed and skipping breakfast, which is the wrong answer. I don’t actually think the end result is my spending the rest of the day trying to catch up, which is one of the things they warn you about and one of the things that I’ve noticed happen at various times in the past. Rather, it messes with my BM “regularity” which just ends up making me feel kind of weird. My system works best on the once-a-day model and it’s been three days. Also, while it doesn’t prevent me from eating more, it does have me eating a little more later in the day. I am not sure how much I buy into how much that matters, but it does have the affect of making sure I am not hungry the following morning.

I wish I knew why my laptop CD-ROM ejects every five minutes.

Apparently, our house is the site of a traditional tailgating party for an annual rivalry game taking place on Saturday. The local university is hosting this year. Apparently, the previous owners of the house always let them use the back yard for the party so they tracked us down to ask if we would allow them to continue the situation. Back when I was living in Estacado some people I knew would use our house as a launching pad because then, as now, we were near the stadium. Anyhow, since they asked nicely and they are paying us for the privilege, I figure: Why not?

I’m typing this from a regional chain. In the table across from me is a newly engaged couple (like, he popped the question “an hour ago”) and a female friend. They’re calling and telling everyone they know. They talk kind of loud. Evidently, the newly engaged girl used to date her fiance’s brother and relatively recently from what I gather (she has to clarify which of the brothers she’s marrying). While she was away from the table calling someone, the newly engaged guy and the third wheel started talking. They apparently used to date. He was making sure that she was okay with it all. She says she is.

Doggie decision coming soon.

Back when I was working at Mindstorm, a coworker of mine was talking to another coworker in earshot and was saying some things that are pretty blatantly untrue. Not untrue in the sense of “I have a different opinion” or “you’re skewing the facts” but things that are immediately and verifiably untrue. In this case, he was saying that the IRS is actually a corporation that collects money from the government like a debt collection agency as opposed to being the government entity that it is. It was all I could do not to insert myself into the conversation, but it was a good thing that I didn’t since people don’t like to be corrected and since I had just started it would have gotten us off on a bad footing. We became friends, of sorts, and he actually turned out to be a really smart guy. Just misinformed.

Right now I’m at The Copper Cafe, my favorite coffee shop in Redstone. Apparently, behind me is some sort of meeting of a group of Christian-Marxist-Greens. I’m not kidding. This was obviously a very intelligent group of people that talked about weighty things. Politics aside, it’s a group that I have typically become friends with. But as intelligent as their ideas were and their ability to consider different points of view and so on, they were operating off some pretty blatant misconceptions. Again, not wrong in the sense that I disagreed with what they were saying but rather that what they were saying was objectively wrong no matter what your ideology.

To pick one example, there was a consensus that the United States was one of the worst offenders in the world when it came to human reproduction. We are, as one of them put it, “a nation of breeders”. Now, we do tend to reproduce at higher levels than a lot of western countries, but last I checked we hovered pretty close to replacement rate and not above it. So we may be “part of the problem” if you believe that the Earth’s population should be 3 or 2 or 1 billion, but

Now, my coworkers was actually a pretty smart guy and we would become pretty decent friends. I do not hesitate nearly as much when it comes to correcting people that know me. Among other things, they’re more likely to take me seriously since they know that I am not the sort of guy that makes up things in order to win an argument. Of course, even there I can hedge somewhat. Instead of making a statement declaratively, I will say something like “My understanding is…” and, depending on the individual, we will sometimes “compromise” on something I know to be untrue but at least closer to the truth than their initial statement. I am not one to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Of course, another factor in all of this is that you can get derailed on facts that are not central to the argument. For a whole lot of people, facts are something to support the thesis rather than a thesis being the result of a careful evaluation of all the facts. A fact that doesn’t fit is then often replaced with a new (sometimes weaker) fact that does fit. To take the above example, even if I could indeed demonstrate that American breeding patters are not an outlier on the aggressive side, her point would have remained intact. Environmental damage is being done. The United States is a heavy contributor in said environmental damage (as are developing countries, which all of the CMG’s noted). These are arguments that I am not prepared to contest as environmental issues are not generally a subject of interest.

One of the more difficult things I have had to learn over the last several years is to simply let people be wrong. Both on the Internet and off of it. I tend to choose my battles very cautiously. This is such a far cry from who I used to be it is pretty ridiculous. I was an opinion columnist in college who lectured everyone on The World According To William Truman. Dad used to have to shush me when I was in high school to prevent me from spouting off on some subject of another. I’m really not sure what to attribute this personality shift. It’s partially a product of having been wrong about some things I used to be so sure about. Some of it just calming down with age.

A huge factor is the Internet itself. Back when I was so sure of myself, I was never confronted with the best arguments before or against something. Now, with enough investigation, just about every QED I ever had is challenged by somebody that actually makes a pretty good point. Either they consider an angle that I hadn’t or, just as often, I discover that they are simply operating under different assumptions than I am. From those assumptions come facts that support the assumption and reasons that the facts that don’t support that assumption are either irrelevant or something that doesn’t take the proper things into account.

“Cut off your head / Don’t hesitate / Do it today / It’s great / Throw out your brains / They’re a disease / Cut off your head / Think with your needs”

A while back Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote an interesting piece in Reason about tattoos and criminals:

Unlike a legal trademark, an underworld brand can’t be defended with little more than an expensive attorney. If another gang steps into your turf, you can opt for a violent defense of your signal of choice. But gangsters who previously relied on large gaudy tattoos to get a message across can hardly go around roughing up every 17-year-old with a tramp stamp on her tailbone.

As tattoos go mainstream, criminals have to adapt. These days, even art on your neck, collarbone, and wrists is barely enough to signal your commitment to subcultures that are totally legal.

But there are still some kinds of tattoos—including those inky eyelid admonitions and the homespun variety created with a shard of a ballpoint pen during long hours behind bars—that retain their signaling power, demonstrating a commitment to the criminal way of life. A guy with extensive Aryan Brotherhood facial tattoos is unlikely to snitch on his buddies. The only thing worse than getting an eyelid tattoo is having one removed. What’s he going to do, go into witness protection and start a new life as a kindergarten teacher in Ohio?

The criminal world is an extreme variation of what goes on in regular society and cultures and subcultures within it. The criminals are having to adapt to non-criminals using similar markings to express solidarity with non-criminal activities. The more interesting aspect of this is that non-criminals are doing it. With tattoos, it’s counter-culture that comes to mind, but that itself is a variation of what goes on in more mainstream culture, particularly among women.

Half of social organization is about differentiation. Setting up a hierarchy. Declaring yourself outside of the hierarchy. Setting yourself up within an alternate hierarchy. With tattoos and the like, it’s relatively simple and in-keeping with the motivations of Aryans in prison. The more difficult you make it to go back, the larger sacrifice you are require, the easier it is to prevent everyone from merely copying you. Having a tattoo on your shoulder that is hidden while wearing a shirt is relatively easy. My clean-cut brother Mitch has one. Counter-cultural types don’t want to be a part of any group to which Mitch belongs, so they have to do what Mitch won’t do. Though he and I haven’t talked about it, I suspect that he would think twice about putting a tattoo where a shirt wouldn’t cover it. I’ve lightly (very lightly) dallied in the idea of getting a tattoo in the past, but would never ever consider getting one that I couldn’t hide.

Which is part of the point. You have to draw a line that people like me won’t cross in order for your self-marking to be worth anything. Half of the point is to separate poseurs like Mitch and me from the people who really want to make a statement. So you replace shoulder tattoos with arm-sized ones. You replace ear rings with those ear-spacers that deform the ear. And on and on.

Even more interesting to me than this is how mainstream female fashion seems to do it in more subtle ways. Make the clothes insanely expensive so that the non-dedicated and non-wealthy can afford then. Make the shoes so uncomfortable that the non-dedicated won’t bother. Make the clothes accentuate any and all body fat so that those that aren’t a perfect size two can’t get away with wearing them.

The combination of what women to do themselves and the increasing acceptability of body markings and piercings and other things on men make me wonder if we are headed down the same path. With prole creep and tattoos becoming more and more acceptable, will mainstream male society follow-suit to the point that those of us that don’t have any markings that can’t be covered up with a t-shirt will be considered hopelessly square? Not an uplifting thought.

Quothe Kirk:

I’ve been driving since ‘83 and have never had a ticket. You guys seem to get one a week. Slow down, you Mad Max wannabes.

Actually, I have gotten only three tickets since starting this blog, which considering that I have driven some 150,000 in that period (2.5x the average) I don’t consider to be all that bad. In the year or two before that, I got two tickets. Prior to that, I got them every 90 days like clockwork. The problem was that I was dating Julianne which had me driving up and down a particular street in Phillippi that was a major revenue-generator for the city. It wasn’t a “speed trap” in the traditional sense with the speed limits set unreasonably low. Mostly it was just under heavy enforcement at on sporadic nights and for some reason it was just an easy street to speed on. When my friends and I would eat at IHOP on that street we would watch endlessly as one person after another got pulled over.

I don’t know how much of it was Sullivan Street and how much of it was that I was young and hadn’t learned proper speed control. I did periodically get tickets on other streets, but it was pretty rare.

Sheila chimed in:

I haven’t had any tickets since I bought a four-door sedan and moved a few miles from work.

I wonder if there is something to the 4-door sedan thing. Cause the car I got in the most trouble it was a red car, which are supposed to be bad. I didn’t generally speed as much in that car as in others, though. The worst car was my grandmother’s car, The Trawler. That car drove very comfortable at rather high speeds and no cruise control. After a back-to-back car accident and ticket, my folks threatened to put me back in The Trawler, which I told them would be fine (I wasn’t particularly deserving of generosity at that point) but that I was more at risk in that car than any other. The thing is… I never once got a ticket in The Trawler. Not once. The fact that the car was a land barge and older than I was and a granny’s car in more than just the sense my grandmother gave it to me is probably not a coincidence.

Right now we live on a street with a 15mph speed limit that is almost certainly going to get us a ticket at some point. It’s a school zone, but the speed limit doesn’t have school hours (and extends way, way beyond the school) so you can be driving at 3 in the morning and still get a serious ticket. I find that I avoid the street as best I can. Not because I can’t stand going 15mph, but because my internal speedometer doesn’t register appropriate speeds below 20 or 25 at all. It could become my new Sullivan Street, though I don’t know how vigorously the School Zone limit is enforced off-hours.

Anyhow, I am not really a member of the chorus because I am constantly getting tickets. I talk about it more than I get them. I think it’s one of those internal justice things. Part of the time I dismiss ticket machines as a sort of road tax. The other part of the time I get annoyed because sometimes (not always, but sometimes) something under the guise of public safety is serving something else.

James Joyner has apparently discovered the secret to wealth: get married and live on the coast. After all, that’s what most rich people do.

A new study suggests that the “double-shift”, wherein women are expected to keep working while men eat cheet-os and watch SportsCenter, is a myth. I don’t know whether this is true or not. The devil is often in the details. I do know that some highly-touted studies showing the opposite results failed to take into account the number of hours that men and women work, reducing them both to “full time” when that can mean anywhere from 40-60 hours. Maybe this one makes similar mistakes in the other direction or maybe not. I do know that this rebuttal was entirely unconvincing. Links to better rebuttals are welcome.

The author of the above study also writes about the Beauty Bias, which has been discussed here. When the subject was brought up in a previous Linkluster, nobody really contested the point that women were affected more than men. Interestingly, there is reason to believe that men are the more unfairly targeted party. This is doubly problematic because while women are under more pressure to look better than men, their burden is also their opportunity. With the exception of weight and basic hygiene, men are more likely to be targeted on things that they cannot control (such as height).

When I was a young man, the concept of alimony seemed like a ridiculous moneygrab on the part of women who didn’t earn money from men who did. Then, of course, I married a doctor and began to appreciate the role a lesser-earning partner plays and the sacrifices they (we) often make. My views have changed. With the shoe on the other foot, some women are re-evaluating the fairness of alimony, too.

What is, or should be, the protocol for surname-changing amongst gay marrieds?

Eric Schmidt of Google warns that in the future the young will have to change their names. It’s possible, though something will have to change in the meantime. I stopped blogging under my name five years ago and while the site is still up, it barely registers if you google my real name.

Facebook has been pushing me to friend a ghost since the day I joined. I really, really wish it would stop.

$4000 for a 10mb hard disk and other old-school bargains. Back then we used to say things “nobody will ever need more space/RAM/speed than this!” and of course all of those predictions turned out wrong. Build it and they will come (ie find a use for it), so to speak. Except that we’re at the point where our hard drive spaces are bigger and our computers faster than we really need them to be.

The Tragic Death of Everything. I remember when the whole gaming console industry was dead back in the late 90’s because of computers. Then, in the early 00’s PC gaming was dead because of consoles. Nintendo in particular has died several times over the last decade or so.

There is a school of thought that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Namely, that physical attractiveness is subjective and a product of cultural norms and personal taste. This is technically true insofar as people do have different tastes and everybody is attractive to somebody. There are even freaks out there that are particularly attracted to things generally considered unattractive. But there are limits to this, of course, as a lot of folks in our corner of the sphere are quick to point out. Certain attributes, facial symmetry is typically used as an example, transcend cultures. There are arguments for curves and for slender, but there is a level of fatness that is generally not considered desirable. And while there are people that have abnormal attractions, they remain exceptions and some physical features are naturally going to be more attractive to more people.

I fall more in the second camp than the first when it comes to pictures and immediate impressions. I also believe that inner beauty (subjective, typically) affects outer in that when you love someone, you view them as being more physically attractive than others you might have rated higher from a photograph. Further, some people take universality of beauty too far, I think. They make it less a general truth and more an pavlovian sort of thing. I just don’t think it’s that exact.

One of the things I find interesting is how our tastes develop within the general hierarchy. For instance, by real-world standards Taylor Swift is a really attractive young lady. So is Kristen Stewart. Yet when I look at pictures of them or see them on TV, there is simply no doubt that I think Stewart is remarkably the more attractive of the two. Others would swear that Swift is. In the land of Hollywood, where nearly everyone is quite attractive, we almost have to take our cues from relatively subjective or even arbitrary criteria. I don’t know why I find Stewart to be the more attractive of the two. But I think it has repercussions in real-life attraction amongst people in my station. Stewart has a more steely demeanor. Not cold, exactly, but sort of determined and tough. I married someone with a similar demeanor. I don’t think that’s entirely a coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that among all of the really attractive women on the TV show Las Vegas, the one that garnered the most of my attention was Sam Marquez (Vanessa Marcil). Same sort of steeliness in comparison to the flightier Delinda (Molly Sims) or sweet Mary (Nikki Cox). Of course, also notable is the fact that Marcil, Clancy, and Stewart have dark hair.

Some of it probably relates to the projection of personality. Easier to do when it comes to Las Vegas, where they are all playing characters with personalities, though I also think that Marcil and Sims were chosen precisely because they looked the part. I’ve never seen Kristen Stewart in a movie and I’ve only seen one Taylor Swift video, so it’s less a factor there. It’s more about the way that they smile for the camera and in Stewart’s case a slightly prominent chin and narrow features that I think I associate with a sort of inner toughness.

Why I would be attracted to a steeliness of expression I have no idea. It’s not like I like cold people. When I met Clancy, she was in a very comfortable element and surrounded by friends. She was smiling a good portion of the weekend. I was attracted to that… but I also don’t think that it’s a coincidence that it lines up with what seem to be particular biases. I have two “types” that I’ve historically been attracted to and Clancy (and Julianne, for that matter) falls into one. Conventional in appearance, conservative in demeanor, and relatively strong-willed or exuding a quiet strength. All of this has to do with personality more than appearance, but again, I think when we are looking at people we are looking for cues on personality matching.

All of this brings me to the inspiration of my post, which is Phi’s post on the comparative virtues of Meghan Fox and January Jones. As Phi and the commenters there note, regardless of who she actually is, Fox exudes a certain kind of sexiness that makes her the sex symbol that Jones is not. It’s that projection that makes her as attractive that she is to a lot of men. That projection is largely an object of not just personal preference but cultural preference. The same cultural preference that inexplicably made Angelina Jolie somehow considered attractive. The tastemakers, as far as such things go, have decided what is attractive and we take our cues from society.

Not because we’re mindless drones of corporate-enforced tastes, as some folks who swear in some aboriginal or African culture droopy breasts are considered hot and thus it’s all subjective. Rather, because people like Jones and Fox are both attractive by any normal criteria and thus choosing between them (and the thousands of Hollywood actresses that are similarly attractive) is susceptible to relatively insignificant criteria. Likewise, in real life when I would see two women at a bar or church or wherever else, if they’re comparatively equal, it comes down to relatively silly criteria such steely-demeanor or wearing glasses or something else that either indicates (a) this person’s personality could be compatible with my own (or more attractive to me) or (b) if I got together with her it would be more impressive to my friends.